* * * * *
LUCIDITY.
At the close of an interesting address lately delivered at the reopening
of the Liverpool University College and School of Medicine, Mr. Matthew
Arnold said if there was one word which he should like to plant in the
memories of his audience, and to leave sticking there after he had gone,
it was the word _lucidity_. If he had to fix upon the three great wants
at this moment of the three principal nations of Europe, he should say
that the great want of the French was morality, that the great want of
the Germans was civil courage, and that our own great want was lucidity.
Our own want was, of course, what concerned us the most. People were apt
to remark the defects which accompanied certain qualities, and to think
that the qualities could not be desirable because of the defects which
they saw accompanying them. There was no greater and salutary lesson for
men to learn than that a quality may be accompanied, naturally perhaps,
by grave dangers; that it may actually present itself accompanied by
terrible defects, and yet that it might itself be indispensable. Let him
illustrate what he meant by an example, the force of which they would
all readily feel.
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