19. The soul grows clotted by contagion, Embodies and imbrutes, till she quite lose The divine property of her first being. 20. Look to thy wretched self! 21. Dost thou not cry, e'er night's long rack is o'er, 22. Is not thy youth 23. Men imagine, forsooth, that they are free when subject to no law but their passions. SELFINDULGENCE IS SLAVERY 24. They do not reckon up the endless disappointments, the mortal weariness, the mishaps, the humiliations, which are certain to befall them. 25. The flesh may be pleased and served in a way that hath no disgrace accompanying it in the world. 26. A man may make the pleasing of his appetite, without any infamous excesses, to be his felicity and highest end; for sickness and shame are displeasing to the flesh. LICENTIOUS- RESPECT- 27. Many a man covereth a life of sensuality, not only with a seeming temperance, unreproved of men, but also with a seeming strictness and austerity. But conscience might tell them where they have their good things. THE LAW OF 28. With what bitterness the moral rigorists of all ages have condemned the impulse which attracts the sexes toward each other, and how often they have tried, though vainly, to crush it! PURITY 29. But here the true attitude is indicated by the definition of morality as a science of limits. 30. The moral law prescribes bounds, within which this emotional force shall be free to operate, and claims for it the holy name of love, so long as it remains within the bounds prescribed, and, being within, remains reverently conscious of them. 31. A man that breaketh wedlock, saying thus in his heart: "Who seeth me? I am compassed about with darkness, the walls cover me, and nobody seeth me: what need I to fear?" 32. This man shall be punished in the streets of the city, and where he suspecteth not he shall be taken. 33. Thus shall it go also with the wife that leaveth her husband for another. 34. Her memory shall be cursed, and her reproach shall not be blotted out. 35. Lust is a sharp spur to vice, which always putteth the affections into a false gallop. 36. Desire himself runs out of breath, And getting, doth but gain his death ; INDULGENCE PASSION 37. Desire attained is not desire, But as the cinders of the fire. 38. But true love is a lasting fire, Which viewless vestals tend, That burns forever in the soul, And knows nor change nor end. KEEP 39. A seared conscience, and a hardened, senseless heart, are to every sin as a man that is fast CONSCIENCE asleep is to thieves; they may come in and do what they will, so they do not waken him. SENSITIVE BY DISCIPLINE 40. Look most to the holy constitution of thy mind and life, and then sinful passions will fall off, like scabs from a healthful body when the blood is purified. 41. Keep thy conscience continually tender, and then it will check the first appearance of sinful passions, and will smart at the mere thought of sin. 42. Trust not to any present, actual resistance, but to habitual mortification of passions and fortification of the soul against them. 43. If reason and conscience exercise and maintain their authority, and passion be every day soundly rebuked, it will wither like a plant that is cropped as fast as it springeth. 44. Observe the immediate troublesome effects, and the disorders of thy soul, and so turn these fruits of passion against itself. 45. Mark how passion discomposes thee, and disturbs thy reason, and makes thy mind like muddied waters, and breeds a diseased unquietness in thee, unfitting thee for thy work, and breaking thy peace; so that thou neither knowest nor enjoyest thyself. 46. Keep as far from all occasions of thy passions as other duties will allow thee: and contrive thy affairs and occasions into as great an opposition as may be to the temptation. 47. Deliberate and foresee the end: examine whether passion tend to that which will be approvable when it is past. 48. Looking to the end doth shame all sinful passions: they are blind, and moved only by things present. 49. They cannot endure the sight of the time to come, nor to be examined whither they go, or where is their home. CHAPTER XXXV OUR COMMERCE INDUSTRY AND LAWS OF PROPERTY ARE BASED ON SELFISHNESS 1. It is only necessary to ask a few questions as to the progress of the articles of commerce from the fields where they grew, to our houses, to become aware that we eat and drink and wear THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT perjury and fraud in a hundred commodities. 2. We are all implicated in this charge. The sins of our trade belong to no class, to no individual. Everybody partakes, everybody confesses, yet none feels himself accountable. 3. The trail of the serpent reaches into all the lucrative professions and practices of man. 4. Nay, the evil custom reaches into the whole institution of property, until our laws which establish and protect it seem not to be the issue of love and reason, but of selfishness. 5. Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. 6. We live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey; we keep clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. IN THE SWEAT OF OTHER MEN'S BROWS |