for myself, but proclaim it as a message to other people. It would be
a mistake, however, to suppose that theological youths are the only
class who are guilty of such presumption. Our gregarious instinct is
so strong that it is the most difficult thing for us to be satisfied
with suspended judgment. Men must join a party, and have a cry, and
they generally take up their party and their cry from the most
indifferent motives.

For my own part I cannot be enthusiastic about politics, except on rare
occasions when the issue is a very narrow one. There is so much that
requires profound examination, and it disgusts me to get upon a
platform and dispute with ardent Radicals or Conservatives who know
nothing about even the rudiments of history, political economy, or
political philosophy, without which it is as absurd to have an opinion
upon what are called politics as it would be to have an opinion upon an
astronomical problem without having learned Euclid.

The more incapable we are of thorough investigations, the wider and
deeper are the subjects upon which we busy ourselves, and still more
strange, the more bigoted do we become in our conclusions about them;
and yet it is not strange, for he who by painful processes has found
yes and no alternate for so long that he is not sure which is final, is
the last man in the world, if he for the present is resting in yes, to
crucify another who can get no further than no. The bigot is he to
whom no such painful processes have ever been permitted.

The society amongst the students was very poor. Not a single
friendship formed then has remained with me. They were mostly young
men of no education, who had been taken from the counter, and their
spiritual life was not very deep. In many of them it did not even