NON-ACTING 109
I should prefer not to express my opinion furthei on any matter whatever. Those who were of our opinion will con- tinue to be so for some time yet ; those who lield other views will cling to them more and more tenaciously. It would be better to have no discussions. * Opinions are like nails,' said a moralist, a friend of mine: 'the more one liits them the more one drives thtin in.'
It is not that I have no opinion on what one calls the ^reat questions of life, and on the diverse forms in which the mind of man momentarily clothes the subjects of which it treats. Rather, that opinion is so correct and absolute, that I j)refer to keep it for my own guidance, having no ambition to create an^'thing, or to destroy anything. 1 should have to go back to great political, social, j)hilo- soj)hical and religious problems, and that would take us too far, were I to follow you in the study you are conmiencing of the small exterior occurrences they have lately aroused, and that they arouse in each new generation. Each new generation, indeed, comes with ideas and passions old as life itself, which each generation believes no one lias ever had before, for it, for the tirst time, finds itself subject to their influence, and is convinced it is about to change the aspect of everything.
Humanity for thousands of years has been trying to solve that great ]troblem of cause and ethct, which will, ])erhaps, take thousands of years yet to settle, if, indeed (as I think it should be), it is ever settled. Of this problem children of twenty declare that they have an irrefutable solution in their quite young heads. And as a first argument, at the tirst discussion, one sees them hitting those who do not share their opinions. Are we to conclude that this is a sign that a whole society is readopting the religious ideal, which has been tem})orarily obscured and abandoned ? Or is it not, with all these young apostles, simply a physiological question of warm blood and vigorous muscles, such as threw the young generation of twenty years ago into the opposite movement ? I incline to the latter supposition.
He would indeed be foolish, who in these manifestations of an exuberant period of life found proof of development that was tinal, or even durable. There is in it nothing more than an attack of growing fever. Whatever the ideas may be, for the sake of which these young people have been hitting one another, we may safely wager that they will
