Lastly, a polity of discussion not only tends to diminish our
inherited defects, but also, in one case at least, to augment a
heritable excellence. It tends to strengthen and increase a subtle
quality or combination of qualities singularly useful in practical
life-a quality which it is not easy to describe exactly, and the
issues of which it would require not a remnant of an essay, but a
whole essay to elucidate completely. This quality I call ANIMATED
MODERATION.
If anyone were asked to describe what it is which distinguishes the
writings of a man of genius who is also a great man of the world
from all other writings, I think he would use these same words,
'animated moderation.' He would say that such writings are never
slow, are never excessive, are never exaggerated; that they are
always instinct with judgment, and yet that judgment is never a dull
judgment; that they have as much spirit in them as would go to make
a wild writer, and yet that every line of them is the product of a
sane and sound writer. The best and almost perfect instance of this
in English is Scott. Homer was perfect in it, as far as we can
judge; Shakespeare is often perfect in it for long together, though
then, from the defects of a bad education and a vicious age, all at
once he loses himself in excesses.
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