158 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



CCCXLIV 



I believe that history might be, and ought to be, 

 taught in a new^ fashion so as to make the meaning 

 of it as a process of evolution — intelligible to the 

 young. 



CCCXLV 



Government by average opinion is merely a 

 circuitous method of going to the devil ; those 

 who profess to lead but in fact slavishly follow this 

 average opinion are simply the fastest runners and 

 the loudest squeakers of the herd which is rushing 

 blindly down to its destruction. 



CCCXLV I 



It's very sad to lose your child just when he was 

 beginning to bind himself to you, and I don't know 

 that it is much consolation to reflect that the longer 

 he had wound himself up in your heart-strings the 

 worse the tear would have been, which seems to 

 have been inevitable sooner or later. One does not 

 weigh and measure these things while grief is fresh, 

 and in my experience a deep plunge into the waters 

 of sorrow is the hopefullest way of getting through 

 them on to one's daily road of life again. No one 

 can help another very much in these crises of life ; 

 but love and sympathy count for something. 



CCCXLVII 



There is amazingly little evidence of "reverential 

 care for unoffending creation " in the arrangements 

 of nature, that I can discover. If our ears were 

 sharp enough to hear all the cries of pain that are 

 uttered in the earth by men and beasts, we should be 

 deafened by one continuous scream ! 



And yet the wealth of superfluous loveliness in the 

 world condemns pessimism. It is a hopeless riddle. 



