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Page 59
Self-will, love of pleasure, quick excitability, and consequent
irritability, are the marked ingredients in every strong character; its
strength must be employed against itself to produce any high moral
superiority.
There is an analogy between the metaphysical truths above spoken of and
that fact in the physical history of the world, that coal-mines are
generally placed in the neighbourhood of iron-mines. This is a provision
involved in the nature of the thing itself; and we know that, without
the furnaces thus placed within reach, the natural capabilities of the
useful ore would never be developed.
In the same way, we know that an accompanying furnace of affliction and
temptation is necessarily involved in that very strength of character
which we admire; and also, that, without this fiery furnace, the vast
capabilities of their nature, both moral and mental, could never be
fully developed.
Suffering, sorrow, and temptations are the invariable conditions of a
life of progress; and suffering, sorrow, and temptations are all of them
always in proportion to the energies and capabilities of the character.
There is another analogy in animated nature, illustrative of the case of
those who, without injury to themselves, (the injury to our neighbour
is, as I said before, a different part of the subject,) may attend the
ball-room, the theatre, and the race-course. Those animals lowest in the
scale of creation, those who scarcely manifest one of the energies of
vitality, are also those which are the least susceptible of suffering
from external causes. The medus� are supposed to feel no pain even in
being devoured, and the human zoophyte is, in like manner, comparatively
out of the reach of every suffering but death. Have you not seen some
beings endowed with humanity nearly as destitute of a nervous system as
the medus�, nearly as insusceptible of any sensation from the accidents
of life. Some of these, too, may possess virtue and piety as well as the
animal qualities of patience and sweetness of temper, which are the mere
results of their physical organization. No degree of effort or
discipline, however, (indeed they bear within themselves no capabilities
for either,) could enable such persons to become eminently useful,
eminently respected, or eminently loved. They have doubtless some work
appointed them to do, and that a necessary work in God's earthly
kingdom; but theirs are inferior duties, very different from those which
you, and such as you, are called on to fulfil.
Have I in any degree succeeded in reconciling you to the
unvaryingly-accompanying penalties necessary to qualify the glad
consciousness of possessing intellectual powers, a warm heart, and a
strong mind? Your high position will indeed afford you far less
happiness than that which may belong to the lower ranks in the scale of
humanity; but the noble mind will soon be disciplined into dispensing
with happiness;--it will find instead--blessedness.
If yours be a more difficult path than that of others, it is also a more
honourable one: in proportion to the temptations endured will be the
brightness of that "crown of life which the Lord hath promised to them
that love him."[94]
But there is, perhaps, less necessity for trying to impress upon your
mind a sense of your superiority than for urging upon you its
accompanying responsibility, and the severe circumspection it calls upon
you to exercise. Thus, from what I have above written, it necessarily
follows that you cannot evade the question I am now pressing upon you by
observing the effect of dissipation upon others, by bringing forward the
example of many excellent women who have passed through the ordeal of
dissipation untainted, and, still themselves possessing loving hearts
and simple minds, are fearlessly preparing their daughters for the same
dangerous course. Remember that those from whom you would shrink from a
supposed equality on other points cannot be safely taken as examples for
your own course of life. Your own concern is to ascertain the effect
produced upon your own mind by different kinds of society, and to
examine whether you yourself have the same healthy taste for simple
pleasures and unexciting pursuits as before you engaged, even as
slightly as you have already done, in the dissipation of a London
season.
I once heard a young lady exclaim, when asked to accompany her family on
a boating excursion, "Can any thing be more tiresome than a family
party?" Young as she was, she had already lost all taste for the simple
pleasures of domestic life. As she was intellectual and accomplished,
she could still enjoy solitude; but her only ideas of pleasure as
connected with a party were those of admiration and excitement. We may
trace the same feelings in the complaints perpetually heard of the
stupidity of parties,--complaints generally proceeding from those who
are too much accustomed to attention and admiration to be contented with
the unexciting pleasures of rational conversation, the exercise of
kindly feelings, and the indulgence of social habits--all in their way
productive of contentment to those who have preserved their mind in a
state of freshness and simplicity. Any greater excitement than that
produced by the above means cannot surely be profitable to those who
only seek in society for so much pleasure as will afford them
_relaxation_; those who engage in an arduous conflict with ever-watchful
enemies both within and without ought carefully to avoid having their
weapons of defence _unstrung_. I know that at present you would shrink
from the idea of making pleasure your professed pursuit, from the idea
of engaging in it for any other purpose but the one above stated--that
of necessary relaxation; I should not otherwise have addressed you as I
do now. Your only danger at present is, that you may, I should hope
indeed unconsciously, _acquire_ the habit of requiring excitement during
your hours of relaxation.
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