consciousness which no argumentation about 'evil being a lower form
of good' will ever explain away to those who 'grind among the iron
facts of life, and have no time for self-deception'-what good news
for them is there in Mr. Emerson's cosy and tolerant Epicurism?
They cry for deliverance from their natures; they know that they are
not that which they were intended to be, because they follow their
natures; and he answers them with: 'Follow your natures, and be
that which you were intended to be.' You began this argument by
stipulating that I should argue with you simply as a man. Does Mr.
Emerson's argument look like doing that, or only arguing as with an
individual of that kind of man, or rather animal, to which some iron
Fate has compelled you to belong?"

"But, I say, these books have made me a better man."

"I do not doubt it. An earnest cultivated man, speaking his whole
mind to an earnest cultivated man, will hardly fail of telling him
something he did not know before. But if you had not been a
cultivated man, Templeton, a man with few sorrows, and few trials,
and few unsatisfied desires-if you had been the village shopkeeper,
with his bad debts, and his temptations to make those who can pay
for those who cannot,-if you had been one of your own labourers,
environed with the struggle for daily bread, and the alehouse, and
hungry children, and a sick wife, and a dull taste, and a duller
head-in short, if you had been a man such as nine out of ten are-
what would his school have taught you then? You want some truths
which are common to men as men, which will help and teach them, let
their temperament or their circumstances be what they will-do you
not? If you do not, your complaint of Lady Jane's exclusive Creed
is a mere selfish competition on your part, between a Creed which
will fit her peculiarities, and a Creed which will fit your
peculiarities. Do you not see that?"

"I do-go on."

"Then I say you will not find that in Professor Windrush's school.
I say you will find it in Lady Jane's Creed."

"What? In the very Creed which excludes me?"

"Whether that Creed excludes you or not is a question of the true
meaning of its words. And that again is a question of Dialectics.
I say it includes you and all mankind."

"You must mistake her doctrines, then."

"I do not, I assure you. I know what they are; and I know, also,
the misreading of them to which your dear mother's school has
accustomed her