Page:Morley--Translations from the Chinese.djvu/23

xiii Young Revolutionist is dangerous: it is the Elderly Revolutionist who really makes things revolve. In the young, skepticism is mere biology and demiurge: in the mature it is intellectual. And as for matters of theology (in which you have betrayed much acute interest), the study of divinity is usually placed at the wrong end of life. Surely no man should be allowed unanswerably to pulpiteer the Future Life until he is himself near enough to it to make it a reality to his spirit. But if parsons must be ordained in youth, then they should begin as Bishops, and work downward to the really vital office of curate. For the Bishop is respectfully hearkened to for his dignity and his scarlet hood; but the curate is listened to (if at all) only for what he says.

It seems too bad, I suddenly realize, to make you the victim of this grotesquely irrelevant pronouncement. But it must stand as your misfortune, since you who write so exquisitely and think with such delicate humorous honesty have shown yourself unwittingly as the ideal liaison officer between the generations. Those who would try absurdly to persuade us that there is some deep-seated and inevitable hostility between the Young Men and their Elders can never stir up more than a sham battle while we see you pacing pensively between the opposing trenches. After all, the one paramount virtue, not peculiar to any age, is sincerity.

Which of course suggests the delicious problem as to how far a man may be insincere quite innocently and unconsciously. That indeed is too perilous to discuss. But truly I sometimes