Again, even minds that are not commonplace are affected for the worse by the same spirit. They are aware of the existence of the great speculative subjects and of their importance, but the pressure of the political spirit on such men makes them afraid of the conclusions to which free inquiry might bring them. Accordingly they abstain from inquiry, and dread nothing so much as making up their minds. They see reasons for thinking that, if they applied themselves seriously to the formation of true opinions in this or that department, they would come to conclusions which, though likely to make their way in the course of some centuries, are wholly unpopular now, and which might ruin the influence of anybody suspected of accepting, or even of so much as leaning towards, them. Life, they reflect, is short; missionaries do not pass for a very agreeable class, nor martyrs for a very sensible class; one can only do a trifling amount of good in the world, at best; it is moral suicide to throw away any chance of achieving even that trifle; and therefore it is best not only not to express, but not to take the trouble to acquire, right views in this quarter or that, and to draw clear away from such or such a region of thought, for the sake of keeping peace on earth and superficial good will among men. It would be too harsh to stigmatise such a train of thought as self-seeking and hypocritical. It is the natural product of the political spirit, which is incessantly thinking of present consequences and the immediately feasible. There is nothing in the mere dread of losing it, to hinder influence from being well employed, so far as it goes. But one can hardly overrate the ill consequences of this particular kind of management, this unspoken bargaining with the little circle of his fellows which constitutes the world of a man. If he may retain his place among them as preacher or teacher, he is willing to forego his birthright of free explanation; he consents to be blind to the duty which attaches to every intelligent man of having some clear ideas, even though only provisional ones, upon the greatest subjects of human interest, and of deliberately preferring these, whatever they may be, to their opposites. Either an individual or a community is fatally dwarfed by any such limitation of the field in which one is free to use his mind. For it is a limitation, not prescribed by absorption in one set of subjects rather than another, nor by insufficient preparation for the discussion of certain subjects, nor by indolence nor incuriousness, but solely by apprehension of the conclusions to which such use of the mind might bring the too courageous seeker. If there were no other ill effect, this kind of limitation would at least have the radical disadvantage of dulling the edge of responsibility, of deadening the sharp sense of personal answerableness either to a God, or to society, or to a man's own conscience and intellectual self-respect.