side to No on the other side of almost all conceivable questions,
the pendulum swings. Sometimes it swings over from Yes to No in a
few hours or days; sometimes it takes centuries to pass from the one
extremity to the other. In feeling, in taste, in judgment, in the
grandest matters and the least, the pendulum swings. From Popery to
Puritanism; from Puritanism back towards Popery; from Imperialism
to Republicanism, and back towards Imperialism again; from Gothic
architecture to Palladian, and from Palladian back to Gothic;
from hooped petticoats to drapery of the scantiest, and from that
backwards to the multitudinous crinoline; from crying up the science
of arms to crying it down, and back; from the schoolboy telling you
that his companion Brown is the jolliest fellow, to the schoolboy
telling you that his companion Brown is a beast, and back again;
from very high carriages to very low ones and back; from very short
horsetails to very long ones and back again--the pendulum swings.
In matters of serious judgment it is comparatively easy to discern
the rationale of this oscillation from side to side. It is that
the evils of what is present are strongly felt, while the evils of
what is absent are forgotten; and so, when the pendulum has swung
over to A, the evils of A send it flying over to B, while when it
reaches B the evils of B repel it again to A. In matters of feeling
it is less easy to discover the how and why of the process: we
can do no more than take refuge in the general belief that nature
loves the swing of the pendulum. There are people who at one time
have an excessive affection for some friend, and at another take
a violent disgust at him: and who (though sometimes permanently
remaining at the latter point) oscillate between these positive
and negative poles. You, being a sensible man, would not feel very
happy if some men were loudly crying you up: for you would be very
sure that in a little while they would be loudly crying you dovvn.