He pretends to most of the vices, and assures us that if there is any virtue in him it entered by stealth. He had many nevertheless: honesty, geniality, humor, equanimity, pity, moderation, tolerance. He tossed explosive ideas into the air, but caught and extinguished them before they fell. In an age of dogmatic slaughter he begged his fellow men to moderate their certainties this side of murder; and he gave the modern world one of its first examples of a tolerant mind. We forgive his faults because we share them. And we find his self-analysis fascinating because we know that it is about us
...more
