So far I have been speaking of the intellectual region, and I would sum it up by saying that I think that the duty of every thoughtful person, who desires to avoid egotism in the intellectual region, is to cultivate what may be called the scientific, or even the sceptical spirit, to weigh evidence, and not to form conclusions without evidence.  Thus one avoids the dangers of egotism best, because egotism is the frame of mind of the man who says credo quia credo.  Whereas the aim of the philosopher should be to take nothing for granted, and to be ready to give up personal preferences in the light of truth.  In dealing with others in the intellectual region, the object should be not to convince, but to get people to state their own views, and to realize that unless a man converts himself, no one else can; the method therefore should be not to attack conclusions, but to ask patiently for the evidence upon which those conclusions are based.

But there is a danger in lingering too long in the intellectual regions; the other regions of the human spirit may be called the aesthetic and the mystical regions.  To take the aesthetic region next, the duty of the philosopher is to realize at the outset that the perception of beauty is essentially an individual thing, and that the canons of what are called good taste are of all things the most shifting.  In this region the danger of dogmatism is very great, because the more that a man indulges the rapturous perception of the beauty that appeals to himself, the more likely he is to believe that there is no beauty outside of his own perceptions.  The duty of a man who wishes to avoid egotism in this region is to try and recognize faithful conception and firm execution everywhere; to realize that half, and more than half, of the beauty of everything is the beauty of age, remoteness, and association.  There is no temptation so strong for the aesthetic nature, as to deride and contemn the beauty of the art that we have just outgrown.  To take a simple case.  The Early Victorian upholsterers derided the stiffness and austerity of Queen Anne furniture, and the public genuinely admired the florid and rococo forms of Early Victorian art.  A generation passed, and Early Victorian art was relentlessly derided, while the Queen Anne was reinstalled.  Now there are signs of a growing tolerance among connoisseurs of the Early Victorian taste again.  The truth is that there is no absolute beauty in either; that the thing to aim at is progress and development in art, and that probably the most dangerous and decadent sign of all is the reverting to the beauty of a previous age rather than striking out a new line of our own.  The aim then of the man who would avoid aesthetic egotism should be, not to lay down canons of what is or what is not good art, but to try to recognize, as I have said, faithful conception and firm execution wherever he can discern it; and, for himself, to express as vividly as he can his own keenest and acutest perceptions of beauty.  The only beauty that is worth anything, is the beauty perceived in sincerity, and here again the secret lies in resolutely abstaining from laying down laws, from judging, from condemning.  The victory always remains with those who admire, rather than with those who deride, and the power of appreciating is worth any amount of the power of despising.