THE ACCUSATION 191 



jected to our own judgment. And we are not prepared 

 for such a task. The present age exhibits tendencies not 

 unlike those of the youth who leaves school for college, 

 and who for the first time is required to exercise his judg- 

 ment upon his studies. He exercises it badly as a matter 

 of course ; for judgment, like every other faculty, has to 

 be educated. He draws from his reading the shallowest 

 and most obvious conclusions : fatalism from science, doubt 

 and negation from philosophy. Order and continuity in 

 history, heredity within the mental disposition and in- 

 violable law in the environment, seem to preclude liberty, 

 and the inter-relation of good and evil to destroy the con- 

 trast between them. Every issue seems debatable ; nay, 

 every issue, he finds, has been already debated, and there 

 is no conclusion which is not supported by some great 

 name. The youth, under the first consciousness of his 

 freedom and of dawning powers, delights to exercise them. 

 He plays with principles, worrying them on first teething 

 like a young puppy to recall the simile of Plato. Nothing 

 is sacred to him, and nothing is true. He becomes for a 

 time either a sceptic who denies the possibility of know- 

 ledge, or a sophist who delights in altering the true 

 perspective of things. Meantime, his intellectual 

 guardian, if he is wise, looks on, not interfering over 

 much, but bears him 



" Go wantoning awhile 

 Unplagued by cord in nose, and thorn in jaw." 



He hints, perhaps, that scepticism is after all only another 

 form of the dogmatism against which the young man is in 

 revolt. He indicates that even sophistry is an old acquaint- 

 ance. He stimulates the youth to revolt against these too ; 



