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Excerpt from Essays
There are few positions more embarrassing than that of men who hold moderate opinions in regard to questions upon which excitement is running high. They rarely escape a thirdsman's proverbial fate. They are equally obnoxious to the partisans whom they have left behind, and to the partisans of whose extravagance they fall short. They are regarded by each side as combining the demerits of an antagonist and a deserter. Each party equally despises the lukewarm zeal and time serving temper which can only take up half a cause. The pursuer of the golden mean must be content with the intrinsic value of the intermediate course that he selects. He will win no human sympathy, and must submit to be cast out as crotchety by every enthusiastic mind. An enemy is more tolerable than a friend who advances to your aid encased in a panoply of ifs and buts. It is still more irritating when the lukewarmness of your ally takes the form of historical precision. Nothing can be more aggravating than, at the moment when men are nerving themselves for a death-grapple with an overwhelming foe, to have their bravery subjected to a pedantic literary criticism, and pared down to the standard of a set of pettifogging facts.
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