Note 8:1 — I

I suspect that most reforms pass through this stage. A man somehow feels clear that some new course is, for him, right, though he cannot marshal the arguments convincingly in favour of it, and may even admit that the weight of obvious evidence is on the other side. We read of judges in the seventeenth century who believed that witches ought to be burned and that the persons before them were witches, and yet would not burn them—evidently under the influence of vague half-realized feelings. I know a vegetarian who thinks that, as far as he can see, carnivorous habits are not bad for human health and actually tend to increase the happiness of the species of animals eaten—as the adoption of Swift's Modest Proposal would doubtless relieve the economic troubles of the human race, and yet feels clear that for him the ordinary flesh meal (or 'feasting on corpses') would 'partake of the nature of sin'. The path of progress is paved with inconsistencies, though it would be an error to imagine that the people who habitually reject any higher promptings that come to them are really any more consistent.