'Now, and for us, it is a time to Hellenize and
to praise knowing; for we have Hebraized too much and have overvalued
doing. But the habits and discipline received from Hebraism remain for
our race an eternal possession. And as humanity is constituted, one must
never assign the second rank to-day without being ready to restore them
to the first to-morrow.' Sir William W. Hunter, Preface to Orissa.)

Fourth Thesis:--

To be and not to seem is the end of life.

The Greek in the age of Plato admitted praise to be one of the chief
incentives to moral virtue, and to most men the opinion of their fellows
is a leading principle of action. Hence a certain element of seeming
enters into all things; all or almost all desire to appear better than
they are, that they may win the esteem or admiration of others. A man of
ability can easily feign the language of piety or virtue; and there
is an unconscious as well as a conscious hypocrisy which, according
to Socrates, is the worst of the two. Again, there is the sophistry
of classes and professions. There are the different opinions about
themselves and one another which prevail in different ranks of society.
There is the bias given to the mind by the study of one department
of human knowledge to the exclusion of the rest; and stronger far the
prejudice engendered by a pecuniary or party interest in certain tenets.
There is the sophistry of law, the sophistry of medicine, the sophistry
of politics, the sophistry of theology. All of these disguises wear the
appearance of the truth; some of them are very ancient, and we do not
easily disengage ourselves from them; for we have inherited them, and
they have become a part of us. The sophistry of an ancient Greek sophist
is nothing compared with the sophistry of a religious order, or of a
church in which during many ages falsehood has been accumulating, and
everything has been said on one side, and nothing on the other. The
conventions and customs which we observe in conversation, and the
opposition of our interests when we have dealings with one another ('the
buyer saith, it is nought--it is nought,' etc.), are always obscuring
our sense of truth and right. The sophistry of human nature is far more
subtle than the deceit of any one man. Few persons speak freely from
their own natures, and scarcely any one dares to think for himself: most
of us imperceptibly fall into the opinions of those around us, which
we partly help to make. A man wh