things: the more you look at them the more you will feel this: and
it is natural to judge that what is so noble cannot be very common;
whereas in fact there is much more good in this world than we are
ready to believe. If you find an intelligent person who believes
that some particular author is by far the best in the language, or
that some particular composer's music is by far the finest, or that
some particular preacher is by far the most eloquent and useful, or
that some particular river has by far the finest scenery, or that
some particular sea-side place has by far the most bracing and
exhilarating air, or that some particular magazine is ten thousand
miles ahead of all competitors, the simple explanation in ninety-nine
cases out of a hundred is this--that the honest individual who
holds these overstrained opinions knows a great deal better than
he knows any others, that author, that music, that preacher, that
river, that sea-side place, that magazine. He knows how good they
are: and not having much studied the merits of competing things,
he does not know that these are very nearly as good.

But I do not think that there is any subject whatever in regard to
which it is so capricious and arbitrary whether you shall run it
into Scylla or into Charybdis. It depends entirely on how it strikes
the mind, whether you shall go off a thousand miles to the right or
a thousand miles to the lefn You know, if you fire a rifle-bullet
at an iron-coated ship, the bullet, if it impinge upon the iron
plate at A, may glance away to the west, while if it impinge upon
the iron plate at B, only an inch distant from A, it may glance off
towards the directly opposite point of the compass. A very little
thing makes all the difference. You stand in the engine-room of
a steamer; you admit the steam to the cylinders, and the paddles
turn ahead; a touch of a lever, you admit the selfsame steam to the