ears. See how old views have died out of New England
and new ones come in. Every man is fortified in his opinions, yet no man
can hold his opinions. The closer they are hugged, the faster in any
community they change. The ideas of such men as Swedenborg, Goethe,
Emerson, float in the air like spores, and wherever they light they
thrive. The crabbedest dogmatist cannot escape; for, if he open his eyes
to seek his meet, some sunshine will creep in. We have combustibles
stored in the stupidest of us, and a spark of truth kindles our
slumbering suspicion. Since the great reality is organized in man, and
waits to be revealed in him, it is of no avail to shut out the same
reality from our ears. Thinkers have held to be dangerous, and excluded
from the desks of public instruction; but the boys were already occupied
with the same thoughts. They would hear nothing new at the lecture, and
they are more encouraged by the terror of the elders than by any word
the wise man could speak. In pursuit of truth, the difficulty is to ask
a question; for in the ability to ask is involved ability to reach an
answer. The serious student is occupied with problems which the doctors
have never been able to entertain, and he knows that their discourse is
not addressed to him. If you have not wit to understand what I seek, you
may croak with the frogs: you are left out of my game.

And the old people, unhappily, suspect that this boy, whose theory they
do not comprehend, is master of their theory. They are puzzled and
panic-stricken; they strike in the dark. In all controversy, the strong
man's position is unassailed. His adversary does not see where he is,
but attacks a man of straw, some figment of his own, to the amusement of
intelligent spectators. Always our combatant is talking quite wide of
the whole question. So the wise man can never have an opponent; for
whoever is able to face and find him has already gone over to his side.
By material defences, we shut our light for a little, by going where
only our own views are repeated, and so boxing ourselves from all
danger of conviction; but if a strong thinker could gain the mere brute
advantage of having an audience confined in their seats to hear him out,
he would carry them all inevitably to his conclusion. They know it and
run away. But the press has made our whole world of civilization one
great lecture-room, from which no reading man can escape, and the only
defence against progress is stol