. So it is, though in quite a different direction, with the
esteem which Society professes for intellectual pursuits. It is an
esteem in great part merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is
nominal, and still it helps and favors the early development of the
genuine faculty where it exists. It is certainly a great help to us
that fashionable society, which has such a tremendous, such an almost
irresistible power for good or evil, does not openly discourage our
pursuits, but on the contrary regards them with great external deference
and respect. The recognition which Society has given to artists has been
wanting in frankness and in promptitude, though even in this case much
may be said to excuse a sort of hesitation rather than refusal which was
attributable to the strangeness and novelty of the artistic caste in
England; but Society has far more than a generation professed a respect
for literature and erudition which has helped those two branches of
culture more effectually than great subsidies of money. The exact truth
seems to be that Society is sincere in approving our devotion to these
pursuits, but is not yet sufficiently interested in them to appreciate
them otherwise than from the outside, just as a father and mother
applaud their boys for reading Thucydides, yet do not read him
themselves, either in the original or in a translation.

All that I care to insist upon is that there is a degree of
incompatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives which
makes it necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the other as our
own. There is no hostility, there need not be any uncharitable feeling
on one side or the other, but there must be a resolute choice between
the two. If you decide for the intellectual life, you will incur a
definite loss to set against your gain. Your existence may have calmer
and profounder satisfactions, but it will be less amusing, and even in
an appreciable degree less _human_; less in harmony, I mean, with the
common instincts and feelings of humanity. For the fashionable world,
although decorated by habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object,
and arrives at enjoyment by those methods which the experience of
generations has proved to be most efficacious. Variety of amusement,
frequent change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, pleasant
occupation of the mind without fatigue--these things do indeed make
existence agreeable to human nature, and the science of liv