After this, the milder doctrine of our other philosophical teacher, the Daily News, has, at first, something very attractive and assuaging.  The Daily News begins, indeed, in appearance, to weave the iron web of necessity round us like The Times.  “The alternative is between a man’s doing what he likes and his doing what some one else, probably not one whit wiser than himself, likes.”  This points to the tacit compact, mentioned [133] in my last paper, between the Barbarians and the Philistines, and into which it is hoped that the Populace will one day enter; the compact, so creditable to English honesty, that no class, if it exercise power, having only the ideas and aims of its ordinary self to give effect to, shall treat its ordinary self too seriously, or attempt to impose it on others; but shall let these others,—­the Rev. W. Cattle, for instance, in his Papist-baiting, and Mr. Bradlaugh in his Hyde Park anarchy-mongering,—­have their fling.  But then the Daily News suddenly lights up the gloom of necessitarianism with bright beams of hope.  “No doubt,” it says, “the common reason of society ought to check the aberrations of individual eccentricity.”  This common reason of society looks very like our best self or right reason, to which we want to give authority, by making the action of the State, or nation in its collective character, the expression of it.  But of this project of ours, the Daily News, with its subtle dialectics, makes havoc.  “Make the State the organ of the common reason?”—­it says.  “You may make it the organ of something or other, but how can you be certain that [134] reason will be the quality which will be embodied in it?” You cannot be certain of it, undoubtedly, if you never try to bring the thing about; but the question is, the action of the State being the action of the collective nation, and the action of the collective nation carrying naturally great publicity, weight, and force of example with it, whether we should not try to put into the action of the State as much as possible of right reason, or our best self, which may, in this manner, come back to us with new force and authority, may have visibility, form, and influence, and help to confirm us, in the many moments when we are tempted to be our ordinary selves merely, in resisting our natural taste of the bathos rather than in giving way to it?

But no! says our teacher:  “it is better there should be an infinite variety of experiments in human action, because, as the explorers multiply, the true track is more likely to be discovered.  The common reason of society can check the aberrations of individual eccentricity only by acting on the individual reason; and it will do so in the main sufficiently, if left to this natural operation.”  This is what I call the specially British form of [135] Quietism, or a devout, but excessive, reliance on an over-ruling Providence.  Providence, as the moralists are careful to tell us, generally works in human affairs by human means; so when we want to