Say to the ship-master, You are to sail through a perilous strait; you will have the raging Scylla on one hand as you go.  His natural reply will be, Well, I will keep as far away from it as possible; I will keep close by the other side.  But the rejoinder must be, No, you will be quite as ill off there; you will be in equal peril on the other side:  there is Charybdis.  What you have to do is to keep at a safe distance from each.  In avoiding the one, do not run into the other.

It seems to be a great law of the universe, that Wrong lies upon either side of the way, and that Right is the narrow path between.  There are the two ways of doing wrong—­Too Much and Too Little.  Go to the extreme right hand, and you are wrong; go to the extreme left hand, and you are wrong too.  That you may be right, you have to keep somewhere between these two extremes:  but not necessarily in the exact middle.  All this, of course, is part of the great fact that in this world Evil has the advantage of Good.  It is easier to go wrong than right.

It is very natural to think that if one thing or course be wrong, its reverse must be right.  If it be wrong to walk towards the east, surely it must be right to walk towards the west.  If it be wrong to dress in black, it must be right to dress in white.  It is somewhat hard to say, Dum vitant stulti vitia, in contraria currunt—­to declare, as if that were a statement of the whole truth, that fools mistake reverse of wrong for right.  Fools do so indeed, but not fools only.  The average Jiuman being, with the most honest intentions, is prone to mistake reverse of wrong for right.  We are fond, by our natural constitution, of broad distinctions—­of classifications that put the whole interests and objects of this world to iho Tight-hand and to the left.  We long for Aye or No—­for Heads or Tails.  We are impatient of limitations, qualifications, restrictions.  You remember how Mr. Micawber explained the philosophy of income and expenditure, and urged people never to run in debt.  Income, said he, a hundred pounds a year; expenditure ninety-nine pounds nineteen shillings:  Happiness.  Income, a hundred pounds a year; expenditure a hundred pounds and one shilling:  Misery.  You see the principle involved is, that if you are not happy, you must be miserable—­that if you are not miserable, you must be happy.  If you are not any particular thing, then you are its opposite.  If you are not For, then you are Against.  If you are not black, many men will jump to the conclusion that you are white:  the fact probably being that you are gray.  If not a Whig, you must be a Tory:  in truth, you are a Liberal-Conservative.  We desiderate in all things the sharp decidedness of the verdict of a jury—­Guilty or Not Guilty.  We like to conclude that if a man be not very good, then he is very bad; if not very clever, then very stupid; if not very wise, then a fool:  whereas in fact, the man probably is a curious mixture of good and evil, strength and weakness, wisdom and folly, knowledge and ignorance, cleverness and stupidity.