Or foreland on a new-discovered coast;
And Point Rash-Judgment is the name it bears.”[21]
Forbear to judge: for how pitifully little is the all we really know one of another! Mr. Froude has forcibly remarked—even admitting the remark to be a truism—that whoever has attended but slightly to the phenomena of human nature has discovered how inadequate is the clearest insight which he can hope to attain into character and disposition. “Every one is a perplexity to himself and a perplexity to his neighbours; and men who are born in the same generation, who are exposed to the same influences, trained by the same teachers, and live from childhood to age in constant and familiar intercourse, are often little more than shadows to each other, intelligible in superficial form and outline, but divided inwardly by impalpable and mysterious barriers.” And yet how ready each “weak unknowing hand” to hurl the bolts of Heaven against whomsoever it deems to be Heaven’s foe.
Sir James Stephen bids all hail to Rhadamanthus on his posthumous judgment-seat in the nether regions. But when Rhadamanthus comes above ground, holds in his hand the historical pen, and resolves all the enigmas of hearts which ceased to beat long centuries ago, more confidently than most of us would dare to interpret the mysteries of own, Sir James for one wishes him back again at the confluence of Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus. For, “it is, after all, nothing more than the surface of human character which the retrospective scrutiny of the keenest human eye is able to detect.” It is in a subsequent portion of the same instructive treatise, that the writer pronounces human justice to be severe, not merely because man is censorious, but because he reasonably distrusts himself, and fears lest his weakness should confound the distinctions of good and evil; and Divine justice to be lenient, because there alone love can flow in all its unfathomable depths and boundless expansion, impeded by no dread of error, and diverted by no misplaced sympathies.[22]
In the course of some remarks on the harshness with which man is disposed to regard the fellow-man whose doctrine, in matters of religious faith, differs from his own, the author of the “Caxton Essays” is impressive on the fact that He who hath reserved to Himself the right of judging, has imperatively said to man, whose faculty of judging must be, like man himself, erring and human, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Now, argues the essayist, of all our offences, it is clear that that offence of which man can be the least competent judge is an offence of defective faith. “For faith belongs to our innermost hearts, and not to our overt actions. And religious faith is therefore that express tribute to the only Reader of all hearts, on the value of which man can never, without arrogant presumption, set himself up as judge.”
If even-handed justice, says Mr. Anthony Trollope, were done throughout the world, some apology would be found for most offences. Not that the offences would thus be wiped away, and black become white; but much that is now very black would, he submits, be reduced to that sombre, uninviting shade of ordinary brown which is so customary to humanity.“[23] It is much the same humane thought which underlies Pelayo’s apology for Roderick, when we read how closely that generous prince would and did
... “cherish in his heart the constant thought
Something was yet untold, which, being known,
Would palliate his offence, and make the fall
Of one till then so excellently good,