er of their morality, or the precise
conformity of their opinions to accepted standards of truth, religious
or other. Among other evils which it has inflicted, this inability to
conceive of conduct except as either right or wrong, and,
correspondingly in the intellectual order, of teaching except as either
true or false, is at the bottom of that fatal spirit of _parti-pris_
which has led to the rooting of so much injustice, disorder, immobility,
and darkness in English intelligence. No excess of morality, we may be
sure, has followed this excessive adoption of the exclusively moral
standard. '_Quand il n'y a plus de principes dans le coeur_,' says De
Senancourt, '_on est bien scrupuleux sur les apparences publiques et sur
les devoirs d'opinion_.' We have simply got for our pains a most
unlovely leanness of judgment, and ever since the days when this temper
set in until now, when a wholesome rebellion is afoot, it has steadily
and powerfully tended to straiten character, to make action mechanical,
and to impoverish art. As if there were nothing admirable in a man save
unbroken obedience to the letter of the moral law, and that letter read
in our own casual and local interpretation; and as if we had no
faculties of sympathy, no sense for the beauty of character, no feeling
for broad force and full-pulsing vitality.

To study manners and conduct and men's moral nature in such a way, is as
direct an error as it would be to overlook in the study of his body
everything except its vertebral column and the bony framework. The body
is more than mere anatomy. A character is much else besides being
virtuous or vicious. In many of the characters in which some of the
finest and most singular qualities of humanity would seem to have
reached their furthest height, their morality was the side least worth
discussing. The same may be said of the specific rightness or wrongness
of opinion in the intellectual order. Let us condemn error or
immorality, when the scope of our criticism calls for this particular
function, but why rush to praise or blame, to eulogy or reprobation,
when we should do better simply to explore and enjoy? Moral
imperfection is ever a grievous curtailment of life, but many exquisite
flowers of character, many gracious and potent things, may still thrive
in the most disordered scene.

The vast waste which this limitation of prospect entails is the most
grievous rejection of moral treasure, if it be true that nothing