Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/351

Rh Yet there are some great principles to guide us. That there are in this world matters of vast human import which are eternally right or eternally wrong, all men believe. Whether that great right comes, as the simpler, clearer minded think, from the spoken word of God, or whether it is simply another way of saying: this deed makes for the good of mankind, or that, for the ill—however it may be, all men know that there are in this world here and there and again and again great partings of the ways—the one way wrong, the other right, in some vast and eternal sense. This certainly is true at times—in the mighty crises of lives and nations. On the other hand, it is also true, as human experience again and again shows, that the usual matters of human debate and difference of opinion are not so vitally important, or so easily classified; that in most cases there is much of right and wrong on both sides and, so usual is it to find this true, that men tend to argue it always so. Their life morality becomes always a wavering path of expediency, not necessarily the best or the worst path, as they freely even smilingly admit, but a good path, a safe path, a path of little resistance and one that leads to the good if not to the theoretical (but usually impracticable) best. Such philosophy of the world's ways is common, and probably it is well that thus it is. And yet we all feel its temporary, tentative character; we instinctively distrust its comfortable tone, and listen almost fearfully for the greater voice; its better is often so far below that which we feel is a