and impresses the unwary; but
cultivated people are very dubious about it. They are ready to receive
hints and suggestions, and the smallest real truth is ever welcome. But
a large book of deductive philosophy is much to be suspected. No doubt
the deductions may be right; in most writers they are so; but where did
the premises come from? Who is sure that they are the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, of the matter in hand? Who is not almost sure
beforehand that they will contain a strange mixture of truth and error,
and therefore that it will not be worth while to spend life in
reasoning over their consequences? In a word, the superfluous energy of
mankind has flowed over into philosophy, and has worked into big
systems what should have been left as little suggestions.

And if the old systems of thought are not true as systems, neither is
the new revolt from them to be trusted in its whole vigour. There is
the same original vice in that also. There is an excessive energy in
revolutions if there is such energy anywhere. The passion for action is
quite as ready to pull down as to build up; probably it is more ready,
for the task is easier.

'Old things need not be therefore true, O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah, still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again.'

But this is exactly what the human mind will not do. It will act
somehow at once. It will not 'consider it again.'

But it will be said, What has government by discussion to do with these
things? Will it prevent them, or even mitigate them? It can and does do
both in the very plainest way. If you want to stop instant and
immediate action, always make it a condition that the action shall not
begin till a considerable number of persons have talked over it, and
have agreed on it. If those persons be people of different
temperaments, different ideas, and different educations, you have an
almost infallible security that nothing, or almost nothing, will be
done with excessive rapidity. Each kind of persons will have their
spokesman; each spokesman will have his characteristic objection, and
each his characteristic counter-proposition, and so in the end nothing
will probably be done, or at least only the minimum which is plainly
urgent. In, many cases this delay may be dangerous; in many cases quick
action will be preferable. A campaign, as Macaulay well says, cannot be
directed by a 'debating society;' and many other kinds of action also
requ