It cannot be brushed aside as mere popular superstition, formed of fancies and prejudices, to which intelligent opposition would be useless.

Nothing is in fact more false than the way in which popular opinions are often belittled and made light of.

The opinion of the world, however reached, becomes in the course of years or centuries the nearest approach we can make to final judgment on human things.

Don Quixote may be dumb to one man, and the sonnets of Shakespeare may leave another cold and weary.

But the fault is in the reader.