fresh fact is not of perfect and right service till it is really and thoroughly comprehended. Too speedy legislative or other progress might place new ideas, new powers, in the hands of those unable to appreciate and use them, in the hands of the unseeing and the unfitted. I say, then, let the individual teach the truth he knows, let a minority such as yourselves, or of such, but more important, societies than your own, spread abroad their views; and when others who at present are of the majority, composing the bulk of the nation, are fit to see they will see. Only as this point is attained does the teaching reach that stage which should imply State recognition or direction, and the adoption by the nation of the truth, the ideas, or the reforms of the minority just merging into a majority. This period at which the minority becomes converted into a majority is a well-marked stage on the road to a true perception of things by the people at large, and gauges their general intelligence, their genuine comprehension of and fitness for reform.
It will be clear to you, then, that it is the duty to-day of those who differ from the majority, as in my case and your own, to speak out frankly. Thus I have spoken to you as I think, leaving my words as seeds to fall on such ground as will receive them. Many of you will be in sympathy with me, can see with me. Those who do not, or who find me too serious, too dry, or metaphysical, will perhaps twelve years later think otherwise, or by a strange chance have brought me possibly to a changed condition of mind. Life is still yet as a book to me also, I know, whose leaves are but partly turned, and whose text may contain many a hidden truth.
I daresay that, on the other hand, some good people will blame me for a few of the notions suggested. In what concerns class prejudices, or the embitterment of feeling between rich and poor, I think I have been careful to point out that there are faults on both sides; that envy or malice will bring no future good; that only the alteration of each individual, rich or poor, in his or her most inward being, the substitution of altruism (or the love of others) for egoism (or the love of self); that such are the true and only ways to enduring and complete reform. As to any other of the opinions I have expressed in these essays, I do not care if I thereby introduce a limited degree of discordance or pain into some minds. Discord, suffering, and pain generally are of a quickening nature. Herbert Spencer says that "there are three phases through which human opinion, passes—the unanimity of the ignorant, the disagreement of the inquiring,
