"Come, my dears; I have spoken too seriously," she added. "Go and take
your things off, and come and let us have some quiet work before
luncheon-time."

CHAPTER IX.

Some persons fidget at intellectual difficulties, and, successfully or
not, are ever trying to solve them. Charles was of a different cast of
temper; a new idea was not lost on him, but it did not distress him, if
it was obscure, or conflicted with his habitual view of things. He let
it work its way and find its place, and shape itself within him, by the
slow spontaneous action of the mind. Yet perplexity is not in itself a
pleasant state; and he would have hastened its removal, had he been
able.

By means of conversations such as those which we have related (to which
many others might be added, which we spare the reader's patience), and
from the diversities of view which he met with in the University, he had
now come, in the course of a year, to one or two conclusions, not very
novel, but very important:--first, that there are a great many opinions
in the world on the most momentous subjects; secondly, that all are not
equally true; thirdly, that it is a duty to hold true opinions; and,
fourthly, that it is uncommonly difficult to get hold of them. He had
been accustomed, as we have seen, to fix his mind on persons, not on
opinions, and to determine to like what was good in every one; but he
had now come to perceive that, to say the least, it was not respectable
in any great question to hold false opinions. It did not matter that
such false opinions were sincerely held,--he could not feel that respect
for a person who held what Sheffield called a sham, with which he
regarded him who held a reality. White and Bateman were cases in point;
they were very good fellows, but he could not endure their unreal way of
talking, though they did not feel it to be unreal themselves. In like
manner, if the Roman Catholic system was untrue, so far was plain
(putting aside higher considerations), that a person who believed in the
power of saints, and prayed to them, was an actor in a great sham, let
him be as sincere as he would. He mistook words for things, and so far
forth, he could not respect him more than he respected White or Bateman.
And so of a Unitarian; if he believed the power of unaided human nature
to be what it was not; if by birth man is fallen, and he thought him
upright, he was holding an absurdity. He might redeem and cover this
blot by a th