ellectual
responsibility. In the opening sentences of the first chapter we spoke
of a wise suspense in forming opinions, a wise reserve in expressing
them, and a wise tardiness in trying to realise them. Thus we meant to
mark out the three independent provinces of compromise, each of them
being the subject of considerations that either do not apply at all to
the other two, or else apply in a different degree. Disingenuousness or
self-illusion, arising from a depressing deference to the existing state
of things, or to what is immediately practicable, or to what other
people would think of us if they knew our thoughts, is the result of
compromising truth in the matter of forming and holding opinions.
Secondly, positive simulation is what comes of an unlawful willingness
to compromise in the matter of avowing and publishing them. Finally,
pusillanimity or want of faith is the vice that belongs to unlawful
compromise in the department of action and realisation. This is not
merely a division arranged for convenience of discussion. It goes to the
root of conduct and character, and is the key to the present mood of our
society. It is always a hardy thing to attempt to throw a complex matter
into very simple form, but we should say that the want of energy and
definiteness in contemporary opinions, of which we first complained, is
due mainly to the following notion; that if a subject is not ripe for
practical treatment, you and I are therefore entirely relieved from the
duty of having clear ideas about it. If the majority cling to an
opinion, why should we ask whether that is the sound and right opinion
or the reverse? Now this notion, which springs from a confusion of the
three fields of compromise with one another, quietly reigns almost
without dispute. The devotion to the practical aspect of truth is in
such excess, as to make people habitually deny that it can be worth
while to form an opinion, when it happens at the moment to be incapable
of realisation, for the reason that there is no direct prospect of
inducing a sufficient number of persons to share it. 'We are quite
willing to think that your view is the right one, and would produce all
the improvements for which you hope; but then there is not the smallest
chance of persuading the only persons able to carry out such a view; why
therefore discuss it?' No talk is more familiar to us than this. As if
the mere possibility of the view being a right one did not obviously
enti