ation than a virtue. The virtue is not to have
it, but to seek it in all earnestness; to be ready to accept the truth
even when it is most unfavorable to ourselves. I can illustrate my
meaning by a reference to a matter of everyday experience. There are
people who cannot bear to look into their own accounts from a dread
that the clear revelation of figures may be less agreeable to them than
the illusions which they cherish. There are others who possess a kind of
virtue which enables them to see their own affairs as clearly as if they
had no personal interest in them. The weakness of the first is one of
the most fatal of intellectual weaknesses; the mental independence of
the second is one of the most desirable of intellectual qualities. The
endeavor to attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great virtue, and of
all the virtues the one most indispensable to the nobility of the
intellectual life.

NOTE.--The reader may feel some surprise that I have not mentioned
honesty as an important intellectual virtue. Honesty is of great
importance, no doubt, but it appears to be (as to practical effects)
included in disinterestedness, and to be less comprehensively useful.
There is no reason to suspect the honesty of many political and
theological partisans, yet their honesty does not preserve them from
the worst intellectual habits, such as the habit of "begging the
question," of misrepresenting the arguments on the opposite side, of
shutting their eyes to every fact which is not perfectly agreeable to
them. The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and
necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward the forming of an
effective intellectual character. It is valuable rather in the
relations of the intellectual man to the outer world around him, and
even here it is dangerous unless tempered by discretion. A perfect
disinterestedness would ensure the best effects of honesty, and yet
avoid some serious evils, against which honesty is not, in itself, a
safeguard.

LETTER IV.

TO A MORALIST WHO SAID THAT INTELLECTUAL CULTURE WAS NOT CONDUCIVE TO
SEXUAL MORALITY.

That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy--Two
different kinds of immorality--Byron and Shelley--A peculiar
temptation for the intellectual--A distinguished foreign
writer--Reaction to coarseness from over-refinement--Danger of
intellectual excesses--Moral utility of culture--The most cultivated