Judgment is the faculty of discrimination in ideas, of establishing a connection between the state of our conscience and reality. But as conscience varies according to the nature of social situations, it does not seem possible to apply a fixed rule to judgment, though it always requires affirmation. Whatever be the degree of judgment one possesses, one cannot exercise it in the case of others without first applying the precept, “Know thyself”—an ancient utterance which has lost a little in value since it has been handed down, without sincerity, from generation to generation. This precept is, nevertheless, held in honour by the finer spirits, for it is obvious that the appeal to our conscience should be placed above all others. Without this, as Nicati says, “the man who forgets to examine himself, and whose personality is effaced thereby, counts for less than the inert matter whose very resistance constitutes personality.”

He who lives according to his conscience, and after his own moral laws, may be satisfied. When he comes to judge himself, he knows that his life has been passed in the observance of his own personal principles.

We must, then, seek in ourselves a standard of judgment, remembering the beautiful words of Thomas À Kempis: “Turn thine eyes unto thyself, and beware thou judge not the deeds of other men. In judging of others, a man laboureth in vain, often erreth, and easily sinneth; but in judging and discussing of himself, he always laboureth fruitfully.”

Nevertheless, in self-judgment, it is right to apply severely to ourselves the rules of reason and virtue so far as our own nature permits. It is to be noted that witty people, or those with a good memory, are not the most capable of clear and profound judgment. Assimilation is prejudicial to reflection; memory is not thought.

When our own ideas are clear to us, we shall not judge others without due study of their reasons for what they do, the motives by which they have been governed, the circumstances which may have influenced their estimate of good and evil. Thus our attitude will be more kindly, and we shall avoid all the evils springing from injustice and false judgment.

Our own conscience is not always in the ascendant. We often yield to weakness, and it is only just that our knowledge of the limitations of the human will should move us to indulgence towards our fellow-men.

Such indulgence consists in recognising our own weaknesses, and in not condemning others for what we consider their errors.

The first condition for judging clearly and soundly is the constant attention to our mental life, acknowledging to ourselves our own changes of mood, ceaselessly fighting the enemy within us.

From the altruistic point of view, we should picture to ourselves the person to be judged in the circumstances which have prompted his action—difficult though it be to perceive the differences between characters and shades of feeling—according to the numberless cases in which such action takes place. This is the reason why historians, in the act of composition, so often pass false judgments on the past. In their desire to make the characters live again, to call up vanished scenes, they become partisans, loving or hating those whom they have never known. Purely in deference to their own opinion, they fail in tolerance and indulgence. They do not estimate the worth of men of past days according to the moral tone of the epoch in which they lived; they judge of a society as a whole in the light of isolated documents, so that the men of vanished ages cut but a poor figure in their eyes to-day.

Now, the truth is that men are no greater now than in the other ages of the world. Removed from our own time by twenty-two centuries, the heroes of Plutarch remain as noble as our heroes of to-day; and in the domain of science, religion, and philosophy we have but changed names without changing at all in judgment and logic, without modifying the conditions of happiness or the outward signs of courage, and without developing the human “I.”