Thursday, October 12, 2017
Compromise
George Santayana (1863-1952), "The English Church," Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1922), pp. 83-88 (at 83):
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Compromise is odious to passionate natures because it seems a surrender, and to intellectual natures because it seems a confusion; but to the inner man, to the profound Psyche within us, whose life is warm, nebulous, and plastic, compromise seems the path of profit and justice. Health has many conditions; life is a resultant of many forces. Are there not several impulses in us at every moment? Are there not several sides to every question? Has not every party caught sight of something veritably right and good? Is not the greatest practicable harmony, or the least dissension, the highest good?Id. (at 85):
Heresy is to be conceived as eccentricity within the fold, not as separation from it; it is the tacking of the ship on its voyage.
