as little say more, as I could see what is below the horizon;
and therefore, when asked as to the consequences of what I had said,
had no answer to give. Again, sometimes when I was asked, whether
certain conclusions did not follow from a certain principle, I might
not be able to tell at the moment, especially if the matter were
complicated; and for this reason, if for no other, because there
is great difference between a conclusion in the abstract and a
conclusion in the concrete, and because a conclusion may be modified
in fact by a conclusion from some opposite principle. Or it might
so happen that I got simply confused, by the very clearness of the
logic which was administered to me, and thus gave my sanction to
conclusions which really were not mine; and when the report of those
conclusions came round to me through others, I had to unsay them. And
then again, perhaps I did not like to see men scared or scandalised
by unfeeling logical inferences, which would not have touched them to
the day of their death, had they not been made to eat them. And then
I felt altogether the force of the maxim of St. Ambrose, "Non in
dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum;"--I had a great
dislike of paper logic. For myself, it was not logic that carried me
on; as well might one say that the quicksilver in the barometer
changes the weather. It is the concrete being that reasons; pass a
number of years, and I find my mind in a new place; how? the whole
man moves; paper logic is but the record of it. All the logic in the
world would not have made me move faster towards Rome than I did; as
well might you say that I have arrived at the end of my journey,
because I see the village church before me, as venture to assert that
the miles, over which my soul had to pass before it got to Rome,
could be annihilated, even though I had had some far clearer view
than I then had, that Rome was my ultimate destination. Great acts
take time. At least this is what I felt in my own case; and therefore
to come to me with methods of logic, had in it the nature of a
provocation, and, though I do not think I ever showed it, made me
somewhat indifferent how I met them, and perhaps led me, as a means
of relieving my impatience, to be mysterious or irrelevant, or to
give in because I could not reply. And a greater trouble still than
these logical mazes, was the introduction of logic into every subject
whatever, so far, that is, as it was done. Befor