re, whether it
was of love or of suspicion. So, he had to harden himself against
what naturally had a great effect upon him, the estimate which he
felt that people round him were making of him. There was nothing
brusque, rough, contemptuous in his brushing aside these popular
judgments. He gave them all due weight, and yet he felt, 'From all
that this lowest tribunal may decide, there are two appeals, one to
my own conscience, and one to my Master in heaven.'

Now, I suppose I need not say a word about the power which that
terrible court which is always sitting, and which passes judgment
upon every one of us, though we do not always hear the sentences
read, has upon us all. There is a power which it is meant to have. It
is not good for a man to stand constantly in the attitude of defying
whatever anybody else chooses to say or to think about him. But the
danger to which we are all exposed, far more than that other extreme,
is of deferring too completely and slavishly to, and being far too
subtly influenced in all that we do by, the thought of what A, B, or
C, may have to say or to think about it. 'The last infirmity of noble
minds,' says Milton about the love of fame. It is an infirmity to
love it, and long for it, and live by it. It is a weakening of
humanity, even where men are spurred to great efforts by the thought
of the reverberation of these in the ear of the world, and of the
honour and glory that may come therefrom.

But not only in these higher forms of seeking after reputation, but
in lower forms, this trembling before, and seeking to conciliate, the
tribunal of what we call 'general opinion,' which means the voices of
the half-dozen people that are beside us and know about us, besets us
all, and weakens us all in a thousand ways. How many men would lose
all the motive that they have for living reputable lives, if nobody
knew anything about it? How many of you, when you go to London, and
are strangers, frequent places that you would not be seen in in
Manchester? How many of us are hindered, in courses which we know
that we ought to pursue, because we are afraid of this or that man or
woman, and of what they may look or speak? There is a regard to man's
judgment, which is separated by the very thinnest partition from
hypocrisy. There is a very shadowy distinction between the man who,
consciously or unconsciously, does a thing with an eye to what people
may say about it, and the man who pretends to be what he