He did not learn to look on humanity without respect, or to meet the stare of appealing eyes from man or animal, without genuine response--without sympathy.

He never joined in any jest over suffering, not to say betted on the chance of the man who lay panting under the terrors of an impending operation.

Can one be capable of such things, and not have sunk deep indeed in the putrid pit of decomposing humanity?
It is true that before he began to practice, Faber had come to regard man as a body and not an embodiment, the highest in him as dependent on his physical organization--as indeed but the aroma, as it were, of its blossom the brain, therefore subject to _all_ the vicissitudes of the human plant from which it rises; but he had been touched to issues too fine to be absolutely interpenetrated and inslaved by the reaction of accepted theories.

His poetic nature, like the indwelling fire of the world, was ever ready to play havoc with induration and constriction, and the same moment when degrading influences ceased to operate, the delicacy of his feeling began to revive.

Even at its lowest, this delicacy preserved him from much into which vulgar natures plunge; it kept alive the memory of a lovely mother; and fed the flame of that wondering, worshiping reverence for women which is the saviour of men until the Truth Himself saves both.