try to recognize, as I have said, faithful conception and firm
execution wherever he can discern it; and, for himself, to express
as vividly as he can his own keenest and acutest perceptions of
beauty. The only beauty that is worth anything, is the beauty
perceived in sincerity, and here again the secret lies in
resolutely abstaining from laying down laws, from judging, from
condemning. The victory always remains with those who admire,
rather than with those who deride, and the power of appreciating is
worth any amount of the power of despising.

And now we pass to the third and most intangible region of the
spirit, the region that I will call the mystical region. This is in
a sense akin to the aesthetic region, because it partly consists in
the appreciation of beauty in ethical things. Here the danger of
the vivid personality is to let his preferences be his guide, and
to contemn certain types of character, certain qualities, certain
modes of thought, certain points of view. Here again one's duty is
plain. It is the resolute avoidance of the critical attitude, the
attempt to disentangle the golden thread, the nobility, the purity,
the strength, the intensity, that may underlie characters and views
that do not superficially appeal to oneself. The philosopher need
not seek the society of uncongenial persons: such a practice is a
useless expenditure of time and energy; but no one can avoid a
certain contact with dissimilar natures, and the aim of the
philosopher must be to try and do sympathetic justice to them, to
seek earnestly for points of contact, rather than to attempt to
emphasize differences. For instance, if the philosopher is thrown
into the society of a man who can talk nothing but motor jargon or
golfing shop--I select the instances of the conversation that is
personally to me the dreariest--he need not attempt to talk of golf