esterfield's principle that "Wise men never say."

The _role_ of prophet is thus a thankless and difficult one. Nor is it
quite certainly of real use to the community. For the prophet is
generally too much ahead of his times. He discounts the future at a
ruinous rate, and he takes the consequences. If you happen ever to have
read the Old Testament you must have noticed that the prophets had
generally a hard time of it.

The leader is a very different stamp of person. _He_ stands well abreast
of his contemporaries, and just half a pace in front of them; and he has
power to persuade even the inertia of humanity into taking that one
half-step in advance he himself has already made bold to adventure. His
post is honoured, respected, remunerated. But the prophet gets no
thanks, and perhaps does mankind no benefit. He sees too quick. And
there can be very little good indeed in so seeing. If one of us had been
an astronomer, and had discovered the laws of Kepler, Newton, and
Laplace in the thirteenth century, I think he would have been wise to
keep the discovery to himself for a few hundred years or so. Otherwise,
he would have been burned for his trouble. Galileo, long after, tried
part of the experiment a decade or so too soon, and got no good by it.
But in moral and social matters the danger is far graver. I would say to
every aspiring youth who sees some political or economical or ethical
truth quite clearly: "Keep it dark! Don't mention it! Nobody will listen
to you; and you, who are probably a person of superior insight and
higher moral aims than the mass, will only destroy your own influence
for good by premature declarations. The world will very likely come
round of itself to your views in the end; but if you tell them too soon,
you will suffer for it in person, and will very likely do nothing to
help on the revolution in thought that you contemplate. For thought that
is too abruptly ahead of the mass never influences humanity."

"But sometimes the truth will out in spite of one!" Ah, yes, that's the
worst of it. Do as I say, not as I do. If possible, repress it.

It is a noble and beautiful thing to be a martyr, especially if you are
a martyr in the cause of truth, and not, as is often the case, of some
debasing and degrading superstition. But nobody has a right to demand of
you that you should be a martyr. And some people have often a right to
demand that you should resolutely refuse the martyr's crown on the
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