* * * * * The duty of the State as to toleration cannot be decided by an appeal to rights. Everybody admits that government is sometimes justified in suppressing what is honestly believed. But if government had not been resisted we should have had no Christianity. The vindication of the authority of the State is a vindication of persecution, and if we dispute this authority we cannot logically disallow dangerous licence. There is no way out of the difficulty so long as we generalise. Toleration is an abstraction, nothing but a word. What we have to decide is, whether it is wise or unwise to send to prison the people now before us who preach bigamy, assassination of kings, or theological heresy. * * * * * When we struggle to see more than we possibly can see we undervalue what we indubitably see. * * * * * There is but little thinking, or perhaps it is more correct to say but little reflection, in the Bible. There is profound sympathy with a few truths, but ideas are not sought for their own sake. Carlyle is Biblical. It has been said scoffingly that he is no thinker. It is his glory that he is not. * * * * * What we have toiled after painfully often lies unused. No opportunity occurs for saying or doing a tithe of it. The hour demands its own special wisdom. * * * * * When we really love we cannot believe that our love is mortal. We feel, not only that it is immortal, but that it is eternal, in the sense in which Spinoza uses the word. It is not the attraction of something entirely limited and personal to that which is also limited and personal. * * * * * We think of rest as natural to bodies, and motion as something added. But the new doctrine is that motion is primary. Nothing is at rest, and, so far as we know, rest has never been. It is an astounding conception. * * * * * There is a certain distance at which each person whom we know is naturally placed from us. It varies with each, and we must not attempt to alter it. We may clasp him who is close, and we are not to pull closer him who is more remote. * * * * * Many people would be much better if they would let themselves be as good as they really are. They seem to take delight in making themselves less. * * * * * We are much misled by characters in fiction or on the stage, for they are always more consistent than men and women in real life. Real men and women are seldom controlled for twenty-four hours by the same motives or principles. If my friend is mean to-day, let me not doubt his generosity to-morrow. Let me joyously believe in it when the morrow comes. * * * * *