To go still deeper into the matter, we find that we are living in an age of exceptionally rapid change, and all rapid changes have great dangers because of the difficulty we find in adapting ourselves to altered conditions. And the result of partial failure is seen not merely in complete break-downs, but also in a general lowering of the vitality of the nation. We are nearly all more or less nervous in the more usual signification of the misused word. We have less of the calm confidence that our fathers had; we indulge in alternate and spasmodic conceit and cowardice; self-doubt one moment, self-assertion the next. The way in which we skulk through life in terror of one another is truly ridiculous. Our sensitiveness to the opinion of others is extreme. Can we not realise that the opinion of others is of little moment? It matters, indeed to themselves, though not to us; for the mode in which people accustom themselves to think inevitably alters their nervous structure. It is for them we should be concerned if they think wrongly; not for ourselves. And while we spend our precious time in doubting and fearing, in disputing as to whether men have wills or women have minds, the great force-current flows tranquilly onwards, men and women alike being but fleeting forms, capable of infinite development or of utter degeneration. One fertile source of danger to our stability has been the marvellous speed at which human thought has advanced in this century. Owing to recent scientific discoveries and mechanical inventions, the minds of our younger generations have, in some respects, become more enlightened than the less plastic minds of their elders. This inequality has produced a great strain in many relations of life. Old theories have been tested by the light of fresh information, and much misery and nerve-deterioration have been occasioned in families by the rejection by the younger members of tenets held sacred by their parents; real high principle having, on both sides, prevented the sacrifice of belief, which alone could effect a compromise. Each side seems to the other to be cruel and unreasonable; yet both are right, even if both are wrong. The elder, owing to their lack of faith, close their eyes to God’s ever-progressive revelation; the younger, in their determination to believe only what is demonstrable, lose sight of the value of much that they deem worthy of rejection. The position may be illustrated by the following allegory. THE STORY OF THE AMPHIBIANS. _The streams of God flowed ever from the hills and watered the plain, and the waters of one of the streams gathered themselves together in a hollow place, and formed a lake where dwelt the great Amphibians. Now the Amphibians flourished in this lake and on its shores because its waters were brackish, and they believed it to be in this respect far superior to any other lakes of the plain._