i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 145
practical the learned. Nothing escapes, nothing daunts criticism, that is, the passing of judgment about which the judges do not doubt. Judgment means the pronouncing on what a thing really is, and the application to it of a rule, and standard, and law, which we assume to be beyond dispute. To this rule and standard we are for ever bringing not only actions and opinions, but whole courses of conduct, with all their intricate train of accompanying events, and what we call dispositions and characters, with their endless lights and shades, their perplexing contradictions, their terrible or pathetic mysteries. All comes naturally within our range of judgment : on all, we seriously or lightly, conscientiously or carelessly, wisely or stupidly, fairly or unfairly, exercise our judgment. We cannot help it. It is a part of our lives.
These judgments swell into what is called public opinion — the great force which has to do with the changes of society and institutions, which settles what shall stand and what shall fall. They accumulate into the traditions, the moral standards of a society or a generation, its governing beliefs, its tyrannical usages. And in private life and affairs this unceasing and universal habit of judging appears in all the manifold incidents of our relations and intercourse, as members of a family or a body, as friends, or acquaintances, as working with or working against others, as indifferent lookers-on, as in accidental contact with them. From morning to night we are judging what they do, and what they are ; and they are judging us. Out of it grow our preferences, our admirations, our likings and dislikings, our lifelong friendships; it expresses itself in our strong words of approval and condemna- tion, it hardens into our bitter animosities, our unconquerable antipathies. A case of conduct comes before us, and whether it is our duty to judge it, or only our amusement and our pastime, we judge it. A person with all those things which make one man different from another — his special qualities, his habits and purposes and ways — comes before us and we judge him. And this is not here and there, or now and then, but all day long and everywhere, as a matter of course, with every one. It is part of the necessary system of the world : we see clearly that without this exercise of human judgment, in its many forms, the world could not go on.
And a great deal of it is righteous, wise, salutary judgment ; judgment which supports what is good, which directs what is 1 cor. — 10
146 OUR THREE JUDGES
just and right, which brands and confounds evil. The quality of human judgment is as various as the objects on which it is exercised. There is responsible judgment and irresponsible, there is deliberate and well-informed judgment, and there is off-hand and cruelly ignorant judgment. But besides what is reasonable and deliberate in judgment, there is a vast mass of judging with no purpose, with no control, of which nothing is meant to come or can come, except perhaps mischief. And what judging! What amazing and easy generalizations from the slenderest facts ! What recklessness of evidence ! What ingenious constructions put on the simplest and the most imaginary appearances ! What defiant confidence and certainty, coupled with the grossest indifference to the actual truth, and the grossest negligence to ascertain it ! What superb facility in penetrating and divining hidden corruption of motives for unavowed ends !
TI Nice distinctions are troublesome. It is so much easier to say that a thing is black, than to discriminate the particular shade of brown, blue, or green to which it really belongs. It is so much easier to make up your mind that your neighbour is good for nothing, than to enter into all the circumstances that would oblige you to modify that opinion.1
*[ Part of the fascination of Principal Eainy for those who knew him was that this man, compelled to assume leadership, had no ambition to do " eminent service " but only to be " eminently spiritual " ; that, forced into the forefront of battle after battle, he had set his hopes on the refinement and quiet of the life of a scholar ; that, often appearing to be, or at least charged with being, a wily ecclesiastic, he was really one with a child's heart of trust and love and obedience towards God. It was this subtle paradox of character and career that, in part, made him so interesting alike to friend and opponent.2
To your judgments give ye not the reins With too much eagerness, like him who ere The corn be ripe, is fain to count the grains:
For I have seen the briar through winter snows Look sharp and stiff — yet on a future day High on its summit bear the tender rose:
And ship I've seen, that through the storm hath past, Securely bounding o'er the watery way, At entrance of the harbour wrecked at last.3
1 George Eliot, Amos Barton. 2 Life of Principal Rainy, i. 147.
8 Dante, Paradiso, xiii. 130-38, tr. by Wright.
i CORINTHIANS iv. 3, 4 i47
1. Now, for one to say, " With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man's judgement," is not a conclusive proof of apostolic mission or apostolic life. Defiance of man's judgment, indifference to public opinion, cannot ordin- arily be considered a symptom of moral health, and it may be the finishing stroke in the education of a scoundrel. Indeed, a man can hardly be said to have thoroughly accomplished the curriculum of the school of vice, and to have fairly earned his diploma in crime, till he has beaten out of his nature all respect for the moral judgments of his fellows, and bred in himself a scorn for the verdict of public opinion. Even the pretence of goodness, with an eye to the demands of public opinion, is a moral crutch to a man. When he flings it away he loses the last support of decency. A regard for the favourable judgment of our fellows is usually the surviving grace which attends the death-bed of the virtues ; and when she, the nurse, is discharged, the man surrenders himself to a moral collapse.