my gaze falls first on the golden bracken that waves joyously over
the sandstone ridge without, and then, within, on a little white
shelf where lies the greatest book of our greatest philosopher. I
open it at random and consult its sortes. What comfort and counsel
has Herbert Spencer for those who venture to see otherwise than the
mass of their contemporaries?

"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth,
lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure
himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view.
Let him duly realise the fact that opinion is the agency through
which character adapts external arrangements to itself--that his
opinion rightly forms part of this agency--is a unit of force,
constituting, with other such units, the general power which works
out social changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give
full utterance to his innermost conviction; leaving it to produce
what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these
sympathies with some principles and repugnances to others. He,
with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an
accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that while
he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and
that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not
carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider
himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the
Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain
belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that
belief. For, to render in their highest sense the words of the
poet--