Non-Fiction > Uncollected essays > Volumes 33-38, 1876-1878 - Cornhill magazine > Volume 37

CRABBED AGE AND YOUTH. 359
everybofly exactly right in his Institutes and hot-headed Knox is thun-
dering in the pulpit, Montaigne is already looking at the other side in
his library in Perigord, and predicting that they will find as much to
quarrel about in the Bible as they had found already in the Church.
Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is
nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both
are wrong. Let them agree to differ ; for who knows but what agreeing
to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of diSer-
ence 1
I suppose it is written that any one who sets ujJ for a bit of a philo-
sopher, must contradict himself to his very face. For here have I fairly
talked myself into thinking that we have the whole thing before us
at last ; that there is no answer to the mystery, excejit that there are as
many as you please ; that thei-e is no centre to the maze because, like the
fixmous sphere, its centre is everywhere ; and that agreeing to difier with
every ceremony of politeness, is the only " one undisturbed song of pure
CDUcent " to which we are ever likely to lend our musical voices,
E. L. S.