did not at once sit down and sketch out his essays, Concerning Things Slowly Learnt; and Concerning Growing Old!  And two other subjects of even greater value were, Concerning the Practical Effect of Illogical Reasons, and An Estimate of the Practical Influence of False Assertions.  How the hive was buzzing when these titles were written down:  but now I really hardly remember anything of what I meant to say, and what I remember appears wretched stuff.  The effervescence has gone from the champagne; it is flat and dead.  Still, it is possible that these subjects may recover their interest; and the author hereby gives notice that he reserves the right of producing an essay upon each of them.  Let no one else infringe his vested claims.

There is one respect in which I have often thought that there is a curious absence of analogy between the moral and the material worlds.  You are in a great excitement about something or other; you are immensely interested in reaching some aim; you are extremely angry and ferocious at some piece of conduct; let us suppose.  Well, the result is that you cannot take a sound, clear, temperate view of the circumstances; you cannot see the case rightly; you actually do see it very wrongly.  You wait till a week or a month passes; till some distance, in short, intervenes between you and the matter; and then your excitement, your fever, your wrath, have gone down, as the matter has lost its freshness; and now you see the case calmly, you see it very differently indeed from the fashion in which you saw it first; you conclude that now you see it rightly.  One can think temperately now of the atrocities of the mutineers in India, It does riot now quicken your pulse to think of them.  You have not now the burning desire you once felt, to take a Sepoy by the throat and cut him to pieces with a cat-of-nine-tails.  The common consent of mankind has decided that you have now attained the right view.  I ask, is it certain that in all cases the second thought is the best;—­is the right thought, as well as the calmest thought?  Would it be just to say (which would be the material analogy) that you have the best view of some great rocky island when you have sailed away from it till it has turned to a blue cloud on the horizon; rather than when its granite and heather are full in view, close at hand?  I am not sure that in every case the calmer thought is the right thought, the distant view the right view.  You have come to think indifferently of the personal injury, of the act of foul cruelty and falsehood, which once roused you to flaming indignation.  Are you thinking rightly too?  Or has not just such an illusion been practised upon your mental view, as is played upon your bodily eye when looking over ten miles of sea upon Staffa?  You do not see the basaltic columns now; but that is because you see wrongly.  You do not burn at the remembrance of the wicked lie, the crafty misrepresentation, the cruel blow; but perhaps you ought to do so.