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Show Foolish Consistency. Emerson tells us that there is no particular par-ticular virtue in consistency. - How stupid stu-pid a man must be, he says in effect, who is not wiser today than yesterday, and who does not accordingly have to change some of his opinions. "A man will never change his mind who has no mind to change," says Archbishop Arch-bishop Whately, and Faraday expresses the same idea when he charges us to remember re-member tha,t, "In knowledge that man only is to be despised who is not in a state of transition." ' There is a medium between what a worthy old gentleman calls "whifflin' about like a weathercock" and remaining remain-ing rigidly in one rut of belief. Most of us know, instances of men who cannot bring themselves to say anything which would contradict what they uttered last week or last year. A certain Irishman once declared that he had owned a horse which was fifteen feet high. A few days after he referred to the same animal as being fifteen hands high. , "But," said a listener, "yon gave it the other day as fifteen feet." "Did I, thin?" said Patrick. "Well, I'll stick to it. He was fifteen feet high." Youth's Companion. |