d they have enough of vagueness and vacillation in their theory to win
them ready acceptance from a mixed audience. The vagueness and
vacillation are not devices of timidity; they are the honest result of
the writer's own mental character, which adapts him to be the instructor
and the favorite of "the general reader." For the most part, the general
reader of the present day does not exactly know what distance he goes; he
only knows that he does not go "too far." Of any remarkable thinker,
whose writings have excited controversy, he likes to have it said that
"his errors are to be deplored," leaving it not too certain what those
errors are; he is fond of what may be called disembodied opinions, that
float in vapory phrases above all systems of thought or action; he likes
an undefined Christianity which opposes itself to nothing in particular,
an undefined education of the people, an undefined amelioration of all
things: in fact, he likes sound views--nothing extreme, but something
between the excesses of the past and the excesses of the present. This
modern type of the general reader may be known in conversation by the
cordiality with which he assents to indistinct, blurred statements: say
that black is black, he will shake his head and hardly think it; say that
black is not so very black, he will reply, "Exactly." He has no
hesitation, if you wish it, even to get up at a public meeting and
express his conviction that at times, and within certain limits, the
radii of a circle have a tendency to be equal; but, on the other hand, he
would urge that the spirit of geometry may be carried a little too far.
His only bigotry is a bigotry against any clearly defined opinion; not in
the least based on a scientific scepticism, but belonging to a lack of
coherent thought--a spongy texture of mind, that gravitates strongly to
nothing. The one thing he is staunch for is, the utmost liberty of
private haziness.

But precisely these characteristics of the general reader, rendering him
incapable of assimilating ideas unless they are administered in a highly
diluted form, make it a matter of rejoicing that there are clever,
fair-minded men, who will write books for him--men very much above him in
knowledge and ability, but not too remote from him in their habits of
thinking, and who can thus prepare for him infusions of history and
science that will leave some solidifying deposit, and save him from a
fatal softening of the intellect