Page:In the dozy hours, and other papers.djvu/201

 Rh Even the involuntary humor of such disclosures cannot win them forgiveness; for the tendency to permit the individual spirit to run amuck through criticism is resulting in a lower standard of correctness. "The true value of souls," says Mr. Pater, "is in proportion to what they can admire;" and the popular notion that everything is a matter of opinion, and that one opinion is pretty nearly as good as another, is immeasurably hurtful to that higher law by which we seek to rise steadily to an appreciation of whatever is best in the world. Nor can we acquit our modern critics of fostering this self-assertive ignorance, when they so lightly ignore those indestructible standards by which alone we are able to measure the difference between big and little things. It seems a clever and a daring feat to set up models of our own; but it is in reality much easier than toiling after the old unapproachable models of our forefathers. The originality which dispenses so blithely with the past is powerless to give us a correct estimate of anything that we enjoy in the present.

It is but a short step from the offhand opinions of scientific or literary men to the offhand