For instance--one of my quite bye works in learning my business of a teacher--was to read the New Testament through in the earliest Greek MS. (eleventh century) which I could get hold of. I examined every syllable of it and have more notes of various readings and on the real meanings of perverted passages than you would get through in a year's work. But I should require you to do the same work before I would discuss a text with you. From that and such work in all kinds I have formed opinions which you could no more move than you could Coniston Old Man. They may be wrong, God knows; I _trust_ in them infinitely less than you do in those which you have formed simply by refusing to examine--or to think--or to know what is doing in the world about you; but you cannot stir them. I very very rarely make presents of my books. If people are inclined to learn from them, I say to them as a physician would--Pay me my fee--you will not obey me if I give you advice for nothing. But I should like a kind neighbour like you to know something about me, and I have therefore desired my publisher to send you one[21] of my many books which, after doing the work that I have done, you would have to read before you could really use words in my meaning. [21] Crown of Wild Olive.--ED. If you will read the introduction carefully, and especially dwell on the 10th to 15th lines of the 15th page, you will at least know me a little better than to think I believe in my own resurrection--but not in Christ's: and if you look to the final essay on War, you may find some things in it which will be of interest to you in your own[22] work. [22] Translating some of Erckmann-Chatrian's.--ED. 4. VENICE, _8th September, 1879_. * * * * There is nothing whatever said as far as I remember in the July 'Fors,' about "people's surrendering their judgment." A colonel does not surrender his judgment in obeying his general, nor a soldier in obeying his colonel. But there can be no army where they _act_ on their own judgments. The Society of Jesuits is a splendid proof of the power of obedience, but its curse is falsehood. When the Master of St. George's Company bids you lie, it will be time to compare our discipline to the Jesuits. We are their precise opposites--fiercely and at all costs frank, while they are calmly and for all interests lying. 5. BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, _July 30th, 1879_.