Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

Crabbed Age and Youth 105
there are two sides to a question. History
is one long illustration. The forces of nature
are engaged, day by day, in cudgelling it
into our backward intelligences. We never
pause for a moment's consideration, but we
admit it as an axiom. An enthusiast sways
humanity exactly by disregarding this great
truth, and dinning it into our ears that this
or that question has only one possible solu-
tion ; and your enthusiast is a fine florid
fellow, dominates things for a while and
shakes the world out of a doze ; but when
once he is gone, an army of quiet and unin-
fluential people set to work to remind us of
the other side and demolish the generous
imposture. While Calvin is putting every-
body exactly right in his Institutes^ and hot-
headed Knox is thundering 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