did not at once sit down and sketch out his essays, Concerning Things
Slowly Learnt; and Concerning Growing Old! And two other subjects
of even greater value were, Concerning the Practical Effect of
Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the Practical Influence of
False Assertions. How the hive was buzzing when these titles were
written down: but now I really hardly remember anything of what
I meant to say, and what I remember appears wretched stuff. The
effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is flat and dead.
Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their interest;
and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of
producing an essay upon each of them. Let no one else infringe his
vested claims.

There is one respect in which I have often thought that there is
a curious absence of analogy between the moral and the material
worlds. You are in a great excitement about something or other; you
are immensely interested in reaching some aim; you are extremely
angry and ferocious at some piece of conduct; let us suppose. Well,
the result is that you cannot take a sound, clear, temperate view
of the circumstances; you cannot see the case rightly; you actually
do see it very wrongly. You wait till a week or a month passes;
till some distance, in short, intervenes between you and the matter;
and then your excitement, your fever, your wrath, have gone down,
as the matter has lost its freshness; and now you see the case
calmly, you see it very differently indeed from the fashion in
which you saw it first; you conclude that now you see it rightly.
One can think temperately now of the atrocities of the mutineers
in India, It does riot now quicken your pulse to think of them.
You have not now the burning desire you once felt, to take a Sepoy
by the throat and cut him to pieces with a cat-of-nine-tails. The