nse is shown, above all
things, in seeking the practicable which is within our power, by
preference to a more exquisite ideal which is unattainable. Not, I
grant, in moral or religious things. Then I willingly allow, we are
forbidden to sit down contented with imperfect attempts, or to make
deliberate compromises with the slightest known evil in principle. To
this doctrine I heartily subscribe. But surely in matters _not_ moral,
in questions of erudition or of antiquarian speculation, or of
historical research, we are under a different rule. Here, and in similar
cases, it is our business, I conceive with Solon legislating for the
Athenians, to contemplate, not what is best in an abstract sense, but
what is best under the circumstances of the case. Now the most important
circumstances of this case are--that the memory of young ladies must be
assumed as a faculty of average power, both as to its apprehensiveness
and as to its tenacity; its power of mastering for the moment, and its
power of retaining faithfully; that this faculty will not endure the
oppression of mere blank facts having no organization or life of logical
relation running through them; that by 'not enduring' I mean that it
cannot support this harassing and persecution with impunity[34]; that
the fine edge of the higher intellectual powers will be taken off by
this laborious straining, which is not only dull, but the cause of
dulness; that finally, the memory, supposing it in a given and rare case
powerful enough to contend successfully with such tasks, must even as
regards this time required, hold itself disposable for many other
applications; and therefore, as the inference from the whole, that not
any slight or hasty, but a most intense and determinate effort should be
made to substitute some technical artifices for blank pulls against a
dead weight of facts, to substitute fictions, or artificial imitations
of logical arrangement, wherever that is possible, for blind
arrangements of chance; and finally, in a process which requires every
assistance from compromise and accommodation constantly to surrender the
rigour of superstitious accuracy, (which, after all its magnificent
pretensions, _must_ fail in the performance), to humbler probability of
a reasonable success.

I have dwelt upon this point longer than would else have been right,
because in effect here lies the sole practical obstacle to the
realization of a very beautiful framework of chronology,