Our judgments are
based upon two things: first, upon the original preferences
of our soul; but, second, upon the mass of testimony to the
nature of God, man, and the universe which reaches us, in
divers manners, from without. For the most part these divers
manners are reducible to one, all that we learn of past times
and much that we learn of our own reaching us through the
medium of books or papers, and even he who cannot read
learning from the same source at second-hand and by the
report of him who can. Thus the sum of the contemporary
knowledge or ignorance of good and evil is, in large measure,
the handiwork of those who write. Those who write have to
see that each man's knowledge is, as near as they can make
it, answerable to the facts of life; that he shall not
suppose himself an angel or a monster; nor take this world
for a hell; nor be suffered to imagine that all rights are
concentred in his own caste or country, or all veracities in
his own parochial creed. Each man should learn what is
within him, that he may strive to mend; he must be taught
what is without him, that he may be kind to others. It can
never be wrong to tell him the truth; for, in his disputable
state, weaving as he goes his theory of life, steering
himself, cheering or reproving others, all facts are of the
first importance to his conduct; and even if a fact shall
discourage or corrupt him, it is still best that he should
know it; for it is in this world as it is, and not in a world
made easy by educational suppressions, that he must win his
way to shame or glory.
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