the facts of our unenlightend beliefs and our vulgar moralities; and since these moralities are what we most care about, that therefore we also should leave these philosophers to themselves, nor concern ourselves at all with their lofty proceedings. This moral I think, on the whole, to be the best; though in our days perhaps it also is the hardest for all of us to practise. And the moral which comes next is, of course, the philosophical one, that, seeing the vulgar are after all the vulgar, we should not be at pains to agree with their superstitions; but since philosophy is the opposite of no philosophy, we rather should esteem ourselves, according as our creed is different from, and hence is higher than theirs. And this moral, as for some persons it is the only one possible, so also I recommend it them as their certain road to an unmixed happiness. But there remains still left a third moral, which, as I am informed, has been drawn by others; that if we are not able to rest with the vulgar, nor to shout in the battle of our two great schools, it might then be perhaps worth our while to remember that we live in an island, and that our national mind, if we do not enlarge it, may also grow insular; that not far from us there lies (they say so) a world of thought, which, with all its variety, is neither one nor the other of our two philosophies, but whose battle is the battle of philosophy itself against two undying and opposite one-sidednesses; a philosophy which thinks what the vulgar believe; a philosophy, lastly, which we all have refuted, and, having so cleared our consciences, which some of us at least might take steps to understand.
