THE HUMAN IDEAL. No fact is more patent, no boast more common, than that we live in an age of sympathy, of candour, of tolerance—an age when the desire to persecute our opponents has been replaced by at least an assumed desire to comprehend them, and a disposition to welcome agreements rather than to exaggerate differences. And on general and impersonal grounds the boast is reasonable enough; on the view, at any rate, that Truth, and especially the truth about the deeper concerns of life, is a complex result to be approached by many methods, or gradually hammered out of many brains, each of which may advantageously seek to put itself at the point of view of the others. Many would, of course, dispute this advantage, on the ground that the truth which is really essential is not to be hammered out in this promiscuous way, but on the contrary has been flashed on us once for all, and is merely hidden by the dust of the hammering. VOL. I. B But the former view is the one that daily gains acceptance; and according to it the general advantage of tolerance for Truth's sake is indisputable. From the point of view of individual experience, however, the advantages are by no means so unmixed. Not, of course, but that they exist, and in a positive as well as a negative form. Not only does every one, whatever his view of the deeper bearings of this wide tolerance, count it a blessing to be thankful for that he runs no risk of bodily suffering, or even of social ostracism, for his opinions; but from the positive side, from the point of view of actual intellectual enjoyment, the prevailing controversial atmosphere has its bright and bracing qualities. There is a very real pleasure in the constant supply of able discussion on interesting topics, of polemics free from coarseness and marked by mutual respect, which are a peculiarity of these latter days. To those especially whose minds are cramped or but little exercised by their ordinary pursuits, there is a sense of healthy appetite in passing from Mr. Matthew Arnold to Mr. Frederic Harrison, or from Professor Huxley to Mr. Martineau, with the keen relish of a new course. I am not for a moment suggesting that pleasure is the chief thing to be derived from these writers. They write primarily for our edification and instruction; and that very manysidedness of Truth to which I have referred should make us grateful that our instructors, if so diverse, are at any rate so able. But for all that, the perplexities and contradictions which are thus brought before us, and which, if they are there, we have no resource but to face manfully and with the best guidance we can get, must for the time seem not joyous but grievous, not an advantage but a disadvantage. It is not in the existence and recognition of these courteously argued problems that we reap, as individuals, the benefit of our searching and sympathetic age. The only side on which the conflict can yield us positive satisfaction is the side of recreation; just as a man's mind, in following a powerful and well-expressed demonstration of pessimism, might receive from it the normal glow of healthy intellectual exercise. Let us grant, then, to the glow of intelligent and friendly controversy its fullest value. Let us grant that there are seasons of elation and expansion when we feel that the Universe just now is really very interesting, and that we have all round us eager and active minds who will leave us in no lack of intellectual pabulum. But such bits of |