"Opinion in good men," says Milton, "is but knowledge in the ******." All opinions, properly so called, are stages on the road to truth.It does not follow that a man will travel any further; but if he has really considered the world and drawn a conclusion, he has travelled as far.This does not apply to formulae got by rote, which are stages on the road to nowhere but second childhood and the grave.To have a catchword in your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opinion; still less is it the same thing as to have made one for yourself.There are too many of these catchwords in the world for people to rap out upon you like an oath and by way of an argument.They have a currency as intellectual counters; and many respectable persons pay their way with nothing else.They seem to stand for vague bodies of theory in the background.The imputed virtue of folios full of knockdown arguments is supposed to reside in them, just as some of the majesty of the British Empire dwells in the constable's truncheon.They are used in pure superstition, as old clodhoppers spoil Latin by way of an exorcism.And yet they are vastly serviceable for checking unprofitable discussion and stopping the mouths of babes and sucklings.
And when a young man comes to a certain stage of intellectual growth, the examination of these counters forms a gymnastic at once amusing and fortifying to the mind.
Because I have reached Paris, I am not ashamed of having passed through Newhaven and Dieppe.They were very good places to pass through, and I am none the less at my destination.All my old opinions were only stages on the way to the one I now hold, as itself is only a stage on the way to something else.I am no more abashed at having been a red-hot Socialist with a panacea of my own than at having been a sucking infant.Doubtless the world is quite right in a million ways; but you have to be kicked about a little to convince you of the fact.And in the meanwhile you must do something, be something, believe something.It is not possible to keep the mind in a state of accurate balance and blank; and even if you could do so, instead of coming ultimately to the right conclusion, you would be very apt to remain in a state of balance and blank to perpetuity.Even in quite intermediate stages, a dash of enthusiasm is not a thing to be ashamed of in the retrospect: if St.Paul had not been a very zealous Pharisee, he would have been a colder Christian.
For my part, I look back to the time when I was a Socialist with something like regret.I have convinced myself (for the moment) that we had better leave these great changes to what we call great blind forces: their blindness being so much more perspicacious than the little, peering, partial eyesight of men.I seem to see that my own scheme would not answer; and all the other schemes I ever heard propounded would depress some elements of goodness just as much as they encouraged others.Now I know that in thus turning Conservative with years, I am going through the normal cycle of change and travelling in the common orbit of men's opinions.I submit to this, as I would submit to gout or gray hair, as a concomitant of growing age or else of failing animal heat; but I do not acknowledge that it is necessarily a change for the better - Idaresay it is deplorably for the worse.I have no choice in the business, and can no more resist this tendency of my mind than I could prevent my body from beginning to totter and decay.If I am spared (as the phrase runs) I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism.
Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious.Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.
As we go catching and catching at this or that corner of knowledge, now getting a foresight of generous possibilities, now chilled with a glimpse of prudence, we may compare the headlong course of our years to a swift torrent in which a man is carried away; now he is dashed against a boulder, now he grapples for a moment to a trailing spray; at the end, he is hurled out and overwhelmed in a dark and bottomless ocean.We have no more than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from our theories; we are spun round and round and shown this or the other view of life, until only fools or knaves can hold to their opinions.We take a sight at a condition in life, and say we have studied it; our most elaborate view is no more than an impression.If we had breathing space, we should take the occasion to modify and adjust; but at this breakneck hurry, we are no sooner boys than we are *****, no sooner in love than married or jilted, no sooner one age than we begin to be another, and no sooner in the fulness of our manhood than we begin to decline towards the grave.It is in vain to seek for consistency or expect clear and stable views in a medium so perturbed and fleeting.This is no cabinet science, in which things are tested to a scruple; we theorise with a pistol to our head; we are confronted with a new set of conditions on which we have not only to pass a judgment, but to take action, before the hour is at an end.And we cannot even regard ourselves as a constant; in this flux of things, our identity itself seems in a perpetual variation; and not infrequently we find our own disguise the strangest in the masquerade.In the course of time, we grow to love things we hated and hate things we loved.Milton is not so dull as he once was, nor perhaps Ainsworth so amusing.It is decidedly harder to climb trees, and not nearly so hard to sit still.