become
cautious, prudent, and decisive thus, instead of generous, hopeful, and
high-hearted.

But to despair too soon of an era, to despise and satirise an age, a
national temper, is a deep and fatal mistake. The world moves onwards
patiently and inevitably, obeying a larger and a mightier law. What is
rather the duty of all who love what is noble and beautiful is not to
carp and bicker over faulty conditions, but to realise their aims and
hopes, to labour abundantly and patiently, to speak and feel sincerely,
to encourage rather than to condemn, _Serviendum lietandum_ says the
brave motto. To serve, one cannot avoid that; but to serve with
blitheness, that is the secret.

XXII

I cannot help wondering what the substance was which my
fellow-traveller to-day was consuming under the outward guise of
cigarettes. It had a scent that was at once strange and afflicting. It
was no more like tobacco than tobacco is like violets. It seemed as
though it must have been carefully prepared and procured for some
unknown purpose, but it was impossible to connect pleasure with it. It
had a corroding mineral scent, and must have been digged, I think, out
of the bowels of the surely not harmless earth. And the man himself! He
was primly and precisely dressed, but he had an indefinable resemblance
to a goat; his hair curled like horns; and he had the thin, restless,
sneering lips, the impudent, inexpressive eyes of the goat. I found
myself curiously oppressed by him. I hated his slow, deliberate
movements; the idea that the air he breathed should mingle with the air
of the carriage, and be transferred to my own lungs and blood, was
horrible to me. I pitied those who had to serve him, and the relations
compelled to own him. Yet I cannot trace the origin of this deep
repugnance. There are innumerable natural objects far more hideous and
outwardly repellent, but which yet do not possess this nauseating
quality. Such shuddering hostility may lie far deeper than the outward
appearance, and arise from some innate enmity of soul. It is a wholly
unreasonable thing, no doubt, and yet it transcends all reason and
surmounts all moral principle. I should not, I hope, refuse to help or
succour such a man if he were in need or pain; but I do not wish to see
him or to be near him, nor can I desire that he should continue to
exist.

It is an interesting question how far it is allowable to dislike other
people. Of course we are bound to love