GENERALLY SPEAKING

That same pleasure which the reader of Emerson so often experiences, seemed apparent in the audience at the Union last night when it turned for a time from the baffling specific to the brilliantly stated generality. Mr. Bertrand Russell set forth more clearly than it is usually heard the logically impeccable case for intellectual toleration.

The case has periodically been presented, Milton, Roger Williams, Thomas Paine were former instruments, and every case for toleration stated since has looked back to the "Bloody Tenent" or to "Arepagitica". The mind of philosophic insight takes intellectual freedom as an axiom.

When one is precipitated, however, from that generality to the welter of the specific, to fundamentalism is one's own family, to mental astigmatism in the leaders of one's own country, to freedom of speech at a university, human fallibility is almost overwhelming; and all but the stoutest hearts wallow in a slough of despond. The transcendentalist had the happy faculty, which we unfortunately have not, of soaring over this mire from the cradle to the clouds.

In the fact that the majority are condemned to the specific lies, it would seem, the strongest possible argument for the widest dissemination of those generalities which approach truth from both sides. The impact may bring war, as it did. When it took place near, the altar on the east wall, but it may also produce a Cromwell and a Harry Vane. And, as Carlyle would assert, it is the hero who directs traffic at the corners of the world.