entance easily
takes the form of an assertion that the devil is getting the upper
hand; and we may hope that the pessimist view is only a form of the
discontent which is a necessary condition of improvement. Anyhow, the
diametrical conflict of prophecies suggests one remark which often
impresses me. We are bound to call each other by terribly hard names. A
gentleman assures me in print that I am playing the devil's game;
depriving my victims, if I have any, of all the beliefs that can make
life noble or happy, and doing my best to destroy the very first
principles of morality. Yet I meet my adversary in the flesh, and find
that he treats me not only with courtesy, but with no inconsiderable
amount of sympathy. He admits--by his actions and his argument--that
I--the miserable sophist and seducer--have not only some good impulses,
but have really something to say which deserves a careful and
respectful answer. An infidel, a century or two ago, was supposed to
have forfeited all claim to the ordinary decencies of life. Now I can
say, and can say with real satisfaction, that I do not find any
difference of creed, however vast in words, to be an obstacle to decent
and even friendly treatment. I am at times tempted to ask whether my
opponent can be quite logical in being so courteous; whether, if he is
as sure as he says that I am in the devil's service, I ought not, as a
matter of duty, to be encountered with the old dogmatism and arrogance.
I shall, however, leave my friends of a different way of thinking to
settle that point for themselves. I cannot doubt the sincerity of their
courtesy, and I will hope that it is somehow consistent with their
logic. Rather I will try to meet them in a corresponding spirit by a
brief confession. I have often enough spoken too harshly and vehemently
of my antagonists. I have tried to fix upon them too unreservedly what
seemed to me the logical consequences of their dogmas. I have condemned
their attempts at a milder interpretation of their creed as proofs of
insincerity, when I ought to have done more justice to the legitimate
and lofty motives which prompted them. And I at least am bound by my
own views to admit that even the antagonist from whose utterances I
differ most widely may be an unconscious ally, supplementing rather
than contradicting my theories, and in great part moved by aspirations
which I ought to recognise even when allied with what I take to be
defective reasoning. We are