NOR is there more to be said for the temper which is always halving differences in a problem and trying to find a middle course. The middle course, mechanically defined, may be the wrong course. The business of a man steering up a difficult estuary is to keep to the deep-water channel, and that channel may at one hour take him near the left shore and at another hour close to the right shore. The path of false moderation sticks to the exact middle of the channel, and will almost certainly land the pilot on a sandbank.

These are the vices that spring from a narrow study of history and the remedy is a broader and juster interpretation. At one season it may be necessary to be a violent innovator, and at another to be a conservative; but the point is that a clear objective must be there, and some chart of the course to steer by. History does not provide a perfect chart, but it gives us something better than guess-work. It is a bridle on crude haste; but it is not less a spur for timidity and false moderation.