subject for a laudatory
lecture."

"I hate reductiones ad absurdum. Let Turpin take care of himself.
I suppose I do not belong to such a very bad sort of men, but that
it may be worth my while to become a good specimen of it?"

"Certainly not; only I think, contrary to Mr. Emerson's opinion,
that you will not become even that, unless you first become
something better still, namely, a good man."

"There you are too refined for me. But can you not understand, now,
the causes of my sympathy even with Windrush and his 'spirit of
truth'?"

"I can, and those of many more. It seems that you thought you found
in that school a wider creed than the one to which you had been
accustomed?"

"There was a more comprehensive view of humanity about them, and
that pleased me."

"Doubtless, one can be easily comprehensive if one comprehends good
and bad, true and false, under one category, by denying the absolute
existence of either goodness or badness, truth or falsehood. But
let the view be as comprehensive as it will, I am afraid that the
creed founded thereon will not be very comprehensive."

"Why then?"

"Because it will comprehend so few people; fewer even than the sect
of those who will believe, with Mr. Emerson, that Harvey and Newton
made their discoveries by the 'Aristotelian method.' The sect of
those who believe that there is no absolute right and wrong, no
absolute truth external to himself, discoverable by man, will, it
seems to me, be a very narrow one to the end of time; owing to a
certain primeval superstition of our race, who, even in barbarous
countries, have always been Platonists enough to have some sort of
instinct and hope that there was a right and a wrong, and truths
independent of their own sentiments and faculties. So that, though
this school may enable you to fancy that you understand Lady Jane
somewhat more, by the simple expedient of putting on her religious
experiences an arbitrary interpretation of your own, which she would
indignantly and justly deny, it will enable her to understand you
all the less, and widen the gulf between you immeasurably."

"You are severe."

"I only wish you to face one result of a theory, which, while it
pretends to offer the most comprehensive liberality, will be found
to lead in practice to the most narrow and sectarian Epicurism for a
cultivated few. But for the many, struggling with the innate
consciousness of evil, in them and around them-an instinctive