From a College Window

n his life, every one has known what it is, in some corridor or stairway, to see a figure advancing towards him, and then to discover with a shock of surprise that he

e said several personal things to me, of which I did not at once recognize the truth; but I have since conside

of oneself. But in one way I am glad he said them, because I do not think I could in any other manner have discerned the truth. If a friend ha

tism is a common fault, and particularly common with lonely and unmarried men, I will make no excuse for propo

anger of trying to construct his life too sedulously on his own lines; and yet these are the very people who help other people most, and in whom the hope of the race lies. Meek, humble, timid persons, who accept things as they are, who tread in beaten paths, who are easily persuaded, who are cautious, prudent, and submissive, leave things very much as they find them. I need make no attempt at indicating the line that such people ought to follow, because it is, unhappily, certain that they will follow the line o

hen there come the lesser certainties, that is to say, the certainties that justify practical action. A man who is aware that he has twenty thousand pounds in the hands of trustees, whose duty it is to pay him the interest, is justified in spending a certain income; but he cannot be said to know at any moment that the capital is there, because the trustees may have absconded with the money, and the man may not have been informed of the fact. The danger of the egotist is that he is apt to regard as scientific certainties what are only relative certainties; and the first step towards the tolerant attitude is to get rid of these prejudices as far as possible, and to perceive that the first duty of the philosopher is not to deal in assumptions, but to realize that other people's regions of what may be called practical certainties-that is to say, the assurances which justify practical action-may be both sm

conclusions without evidence. Thus one avoids the dangers of egotism best, because egotism is the frame of mind of the man who says credo quia credo. Whereas the aim of the philosopher should be to take nothing for granted, and to be ready to give up personal preferences in the light of truth. In dealing with oth

half, and more than half, of the beauty of everything is the beauty of age, remoteness, and association. There is no temptation so strong for the aesthetic nature, as to deride and contemn the beauty of the art that we have just outgrown. To take a simple case. The Early Victorian upholsterers derided the stiffness and austerity of Queen Anne furniture, and the public genuinely admired the florid and rococo forms of Early Victorian art. A generation passed, and Early Victorian art was relentlessly derided, while the Queen Anne was reinstalled. Now there are signs of a growing tolerance among connoisseurs of the Early Victorian taste again. The truth is that there is no absolute beauty in either; that the thing to aim at is progress and development in art, and that probably the most dangerous an

cal attitude, the attempt to disentangle the golden thread, the nobility, the purity, the strength, the intensity, that may underlie characters and views that do not superficially appeal to oneself. The philosopher need not seek the society of uncongenial persons: such a practice is a useless expenditure of time and energy; but no one can avoid a certain contact with dissimilar natures, and the aim of the philosopher must be to try and do sympathetic justice to them, to seek earnestly for points of contact

this relation can be a direct one is a matter for each person to decide from his own experience; but perhaps the only two things of which a human being can be said to be absolutely conscious are his own identity, and the existence of a controlling Power outside of him. And here lies the deepest danger of all, that a man should attempt to limit or define his conception of the Power that originated him, by his own preferences. The deepest mystery of all lies in the conviction, which seems to be inextricably rooted in the human spirit, namely, the instinct to distinguish between the impulses which we believe emanate from God, and the impulses whi

hen He sends us adversity, ill-health, suffering; when He permits us to sin, or if that is a faithless phrase, does not grant us strength to resist. But we must try to be patient, we must try to interpret the value of suffering, the meaning of failure, the significance of shame. Perhaps it may be ur

the vast and profound scheme of the Universe, we must at the same time believe that we have our place and our work; that God indeed purposely set us where we find ourselves; and among the complicated difficulties of

gh; it is astonishing how the act of placing our own will as far a

ershadowed with the vague depression that the resumption of work tends to bring to anxious minds. I entered a little ancient church that stood open; it was full of sunlight, and had been tenderly decked with an abundance of spring flowers. If I had been glad at heart it would have seemed a sweet place, full of peace and beautiful mysteries. But it had no

fragrance of the flowers seemed to mingle like a sweet incense with my vow. The old walls whispered of patience and hope. I do no

dering the narrow space, the little cage of bones and skin, in which our spirit is confined, like a fluttering bird, it often astoni

s they need. But even the most helpless celibate has only to embark upon relations with others, to find them multiply and increase. After all, egotism has little to do with the forming or holding of strong opinions, or even with the intentness with which we pursue our aims. The dog is the intentest of all animals, and throws himself most eagerly into his pursuits, but he is also the least egotistical and the most sympathetic of creatures. Egotism resides more in a kind of proud isolation, in a species of contempt for the opinions and aims of others. It is not, as a rule, the most successful men who are the most egotistical. The most uncompromisingly egotist I know is a would-be literary man, who has the most pathetic belief in the interest and significance of his own very halting performances, a belief which no amount of rejection or indifference can shake, and who has hardly a good word for the books of other writers. I have sometimes thought that it is in his case a species of mental disease, because he is an acute critic of all work except his own. Doctors will indeed tell one that transcendent egotism is very nearly allied to insanity; but in ordinary cases a little common sense and a little courtesy will soon suppress the manifestations of the tendency, if a man can only realize that the forming of dec

t by a careful parade of our other virtues, we are in the pilgrim's road. It is a childish fault, after all. I watched to-day a party of children at play. One detestable little boy, the clumsiest and most incapable of the party, spent the whole time in climbing up a step and jumping from it, while he entreated all the others to see how far he could project himself. There was not a child there who could not have jumped twice as far, but they were a

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his, and reached a point beyond which progress seems impossible. But we must not fling our problems and perplexities, as we are apt to do, upon the knees of God, the very instant they begin