ill go on
to the second subject of inquiry, both more difficult and of great
practical importance in the political crisis through which Europe is
passing,--namely, what relations between men are to be desired, or with
resignation allowed, in the course of their Moral Development?

Whether, that is to say, we should try to make some men beautiful at the
cost of ugliness in others, and some men virtuous at the cost of vice in
others,--or rather, all men beautiful and virtuous in the degree
possible to each under a system of equitable education? And evidently
our first business is to consider in what terms the choice is put to us
by Nature. What can we do, if we would? What must we do, whether we will
or not? How high can we raise the level of a diffused Learning and
Morality? and how far shall we be compelled, if we limit, to exaggerate,
the advantages and injuries of our system? And are we prepared, if the
extremity be inevitable, to push to their utmost the relations implied
when we take off our hats to each other, and triple the tiara of the
Saint in Heaven, while we leave the sinner bareheaded in Cocytus?

179. It is well, perhaps, that I should at once confess myself to hold
the principle of limitation in its utmost extent; and to entertain no
doubt of the rightness of my ideal, but only of its feasibility. I am
ill at ease, for instance, in my uncertainty whether our greatly
regretted Chairman will ever be Pope, or whether some people whom I
could mention, (not, of course, members of our Society,) will ever be in
Cocytus.

But there is no need, if we would be candid, to debate the principle in
these violences of operation, any more than the proper methods of
distributing food, on the supposition that the difference between a
Paris dinner and a platter of Scotch porridge must imply that one-half
of mankind are to die of eating, and the rest of having nothing to eat.
I will therefore take for example a case in which the discrimination is
less conclusive.

180. When I stop writing metaphysics this morning it will be to arrange
some drawings for a young lady to copy. They are leaves of the best
illuminated MSS. I have, and I am going to spend my whole afternoon in
explaining to her what she is to aim at in copying them.

Now, I would not lend these leaves to any other young lady that I know
of; nor give up my afternoon to, perhaps, more than two or three other
young ladies that I know of. But to keep to the fir