ere is to know. That is a stern and
dreadful truth; the secret is impenetrably sealed from us; but, "though
the heart ache to contemplate it, it is there."

XVII

HABITS

Walter Pater says, in his most oracular mood, in that fine manifesto of
a lofty Epicureanism which is known as the Conclusion to the
Renaissance essays, that to form habits is failure in life. The
difficulty in uttering oracles is that one is obliged for the sake of
being forcible to reduce a statement to its simplest terms; and when
one does that, there are generally a whole group of cases which appear
to be covered by the statement, which contradict it. It is nearly
impossible to make any general statement both simple enough and large
enough. In the case of Pater's pronouncement, he had fixed his mental
gaze so firmly on a particular phenomenon, that he forgot that his
words might prove misleading when applied to the facts of life. What he
meant, no doubt, was that one of the commonest of mental dangers is to
form intellectual and moral prejudices early in life, and so to
stereotype them that we are unable to look round them, or to give
anything that we instinctively dislike a fair trial. Most people in
fact, in matters of opinion, tend to get infected with a species of
Toryism by the time that they reach middle age, until they get into the
frame of mind which Montaigne describes, of thinking so highly of their
own conjectures as to be prepared to burn other people for not
regarding them as certainties. This frame of mind is much to be
reprobated, but it is unhappily common. How often does one meet
sensible, shrewd, and intelligent men, who say frankly that they are
not prepared to listen to any evidence which tells against their
beliefs. How rare it is to meet a man who in the course of an argument
will say, "Well, I had never thought of that before; it must be taken
into account, and it modifies my view." Such an attitude is looked upon
by active-minded and energetic men as having something weak and even
sentimental about it. How common it is to hear people say that a man
ought to have the courage of his opinions; how rare it is to find a man
who will say that one ought to have the courage to change one's
opinions. Indeed, in public life it is generally considered a kind of
treachery to change, because people value what they call loyalty above
truth. Pater no doubt meant that the duty and privilege of the
philosopher is to keep his inne