renchancy. But there was enough true love and
loyalty and chivalry in the pair to furnish out a hundred marriages.
Yet one sees Carlyle stamping and cursing through life, and never
seeing what lay close to his hand. I admire his life not because it
was a triumph, but because it was such a colossal failure, and so
finely atoned for by the noble and great-minded repentance of a man
who recognised at last that it was of no use to begin by trying to be
ruler over ten cities, unless he was first faithful in a few things.

XVIII

SYMPATHY

But there is one thing which we must constantly bear in mind, and
which all enthusiastic people must particularly recollect, namely,
that our delight and interest in life must be large, tolerant, and
sympathetic, and that we must not only admit but welcome an immense
variety of interest. We must above all things be just, and we must be
ready to be both interested and amused by people whom we do not like.
The point is that minds should be fresh and clear, rather than
stagnant and lustreless. Enthusiastic people, who feel very strongly
and eagerly the beauty of one particular kind of delight, are sadly
apt to wish to impose their own preferences upon other minds, and not
to believe in the worth of others' preferences. Thus the men who feel
very ardently the beauty of the Greek Classics are apt to insist that
all boys shall be brought up upon them; and the same thing happens in
other matters. We must not make a moral law out of our own tastes and
preferences, and we must be content that others should feel the appeal
of other sorts of beauty; that was the mistake which dogged the
radiant path of Ruskin from first to last, that he could not bear that
other people should have their own preferences, but considered that
any dissidence from his own standards was of the nature of sin. If we
insist on all agreeing with ourselves it is sterile enough; but if we
begin to call other people hard names, and suspecting or vituperating
their motives for disagreeing with us, we sin both against Love and
Light. It was that spirit which called forth from Christ the sternest
denunciation which ever fell from his lips. The Pharisees tried to
discredit His work by representing Him as in league with the powers of
evil; and this sin, which is the imputing of evil motives to actions
and beliefs that appear to be good, because our own beliefs are too
narrow to include them, is the sin which Christ said coul