ndard of opinion and refinement blends countless generations in its
improgressive, everlasting mould!

Not only is there a wilful and habitual blindness in near kindred to
each other's defects, but an incapacity to judge from the quantity of
materials, from the contradictoriness of the evidence. The chain of
particulars is too long and massy for us to lift it or put it into the
most approved ethical scales. The concrete result does not answer to any
abstract theory, to any logical definition. There is black, and white,
and grey, square and round--there are too many anomalies, too many
redeeming points, in poor human nature, such as it actually is, for us
to arrive at a smart, summary decision on it. We know too much to come
to any hasty or partial conclusion. We do not pronounce upon the present
act, because a hundred others rise up to contradict it. We suspend our
judgments altogether, because in effect one thing unconsciously balances
another; and perhaps this obstinate, pertinacious indecision would be
the truest philosophy in other cases, where we dispose of the question
of character easily, because we have only the smallest part of the
evidence to decide upon. Real character is not one thing, but a thousand
things; actual qualities do not conform to any factitious standard in
the mind, but rest upon their own truth and nature. The dull stupor
under which we labour in respect of those whom we have the greatest
opportunities of inspecting nearly, we should do well to imitate before
we give extreme and uncharitable verdicts against those whom we only
see in passing or at a distance. If we knew them better, we should be
disposed to say less about them.

In the truth of things, there are none utterly worthless, none without
some drawback on their pretensions or some alloy of imperfection. It has
been observed that a familiarity with the worst characters lessens our
abhorrence of them; and a wonder is often expressed that the greatest
criminals look like other men. The reason is that _they are like other
men in many respects._ If a particular individual was merely the wretch
we read of, or conceive in the abstract, that is, if he was the mere
personified idea of the criminal brought to the bar, he would not
disappoint the spectator, but would look like what he would be--a
monster! But he has other qualities, ideas, feelings, nay, probably
virtues, mixed up with the most profligate habits or desperate acts.
This need not