That misconception which interpreted the moderative virtues as habitual repressions only, seems to be vanishing in many signihcant quarters from the modern mind; and it will now be perhaps very largely conceded that chastity and temperance may possess other vital elements than an automatic negation ot corporal pleasures. It is in proportion as these vital elements are understood that Gerard Hopkins will be appreciated, tor they are the integrating factors of his great sensitive and poetic powers.

Castitas dupliciter sumitur: . ... et metaphorice . . . . pro moderatione delectationis quae oritur ex conjunctione mentis ad objectum. Moderation, here, as always, is the operative word, and it is significant of the times we live in that it should at once suggest, not conformity to order and right reason, a vital use informed by the intelligence, but a less than full use. But rightly a use conformable to reason is a full use par excellence, not only on the part of the intelligence which vindicates its proper activity, but also on the part of the thing used, be that the erotic faculty or the poetic sensibility, which, by direction towards its proper end, gains power and does not lose it, gains joy also and does not lose it; because the intelligence alone can use it according to the true nature of its being. It is arguable that a man unchaste and disbelieving in the principles by which chastity is a true virtue may be wider and more vehement in his pleasures than a chaste man, but he is denied the joy of the chaste man, to which pleasure is but fuel, because he has set his senses to war against the real nature both of his mind and of the pleasures involved.