On Compromise | Page 6

principles, into the very place of the principles themselves. Nor is the process of
deteriorating conviction confined to the greater or noisier transactions of nations. It is
impossible that it should be so. That process is due to causes which affect the mental

temper an a whole, and pour round us an atmosphere that enervates our judgment from
end to end, not more in politics than in morality, and not more in morality than in
philosophy, in art, and in religion. Perhaps this tendency never showed itself more
offensively than when the most important newspaper in the country criticised our great
naturalist's scientific speculations as to the descent of man, from the point of view of
property, intelligence, and a stake in the country, and severely censured him for revealing
his particular zoological conclusions to the general public, at a moment when the sky of
Paris was red with the incendiary flames of the Commune. It would be hard to reduce the
transformation of all truth into a subordinate department of daily politics, to a more gross
and unseemly absurdity.
The consequences of such a transformation, of putting immediate social convenience in
the first place, and respect for truth in the second, are seen, as we have said, in a distinct
and unmistakable lowering of the level of national life; a slack and lethargic quality about
public opinion; a growing predominance of material, temporary, and selfish aims, over
those which are generous, far-reaching, and spiritual; a deadly weakening of intellectual
conclusiveness, and clear-shining moral illumination, and, lastly, of a certain stoutness of
self-respect for which England was once especially famous. A plain categorical
proposition is becoming less and less credible to average minds. Or at least the slovenly
willingness to hold two directly contradictory propositions at one and the same time is
becoming more and more common. In religion, morals, and politics, the suppression of
your true opinion, if not the positive profession of what you hold to be a false opinion, is
hardly ever counted a vice, and not seldom even goes for virtue and solid wisdom. One is
conjured to respect the beliefs of others, but forbidden to claim the same respect for one's
own.
This dread of the categorical proposition might be creditable, if it sprang from attachment
to a very high standard of evidence, or from a deep sense of the relative and provisional
quality of truth. There might even be a plausible defence set up for it, if it sprang from
that formulated distrust of the energetic rational judgment in comparison with the
emotional, affective, contemplative parts of man, which underlies the various forms of
religious mysticism. If you look closely into our present mood, it is seen to be the product
mainly and above all of a shrinking deference to the status quo, not merely as having a
claim not to be lightly dealt with, which every serious man concedes, but as being the last
word and final test of truth and justice. Physical science is allowed to be the sphere of
accurate reasoning and distinct conclusions, but in morals and politics, instead of
admitting that these subjects have equally a logic of their own, we silently suspect all first
principles, and practically deny the strict inferences from demonstrated premisses. Faith
in the soundness of given general theories of right and wrong melts away before the first
momentary triumph of wrong, or the first passing discouragement in enforcing right.
Our robust political sense, which has discovered so many of the secrets of good
government, which has given us freedom with order, and popular administration without
corruption, and unalterable respect for law along with indelible respect for individual
right, this, which has so long been our strong point, is fast becoming our weakness and
undoing. For the extension of the ways of thinking which are proper in politics, to other
than political matter, means at the same time the depravation of the political sense itself.

Not only is social expediency effacing the many other points of view that men ought to
take of the various facts of life and thought: the idea of social expediency itself is
becoming a dwarfed and pinched idea. Ours is the country where love of constant
improvement ought to be greater than anywhere else, because fear of revolution is less.
Yet the art of politics is growing to be as meanly conceived as all the rest At elections the
national candidate has not often a chance against the local candidate, nor the man of a
principle against the man of a class. In parliament we are admonished on high authority
that 'the policy of a party is not the carrying out of the opinion of any section of it, but the
general consensus of the whole,' which seems to be a hierophantic