Intellectual masters like Emerson
and Renan. ignore conscience; they refuse to acknowledge the
selfishness, the baseness, the cruelty of society; they are deaf to
the groans of creation; they smile, and expect us to smile, whilst
they clap a purple patch of rhetoric on the running sores of humanity.
No sackcloth must pass their gate, and no craftsman of Ind ever wove
gossamer half so delicate and delightful as the verbal veil with which
these literary artists attempt to conceal the leprosy of our nature.
And men generally are willing to dupe themselves touching the fact
and power of sin; they are strongly disinclined to look directly and
honestly at that inner confusion of which we are all more or less
conscious. We willingly acknowledge our transgression of the higher
law, that we do the things we ought not to do, and leave undone the
things that we ought to do; we have an unpleasant feeling that all is
not right, nay, indeed, that something is seriously wrong; but we do
not unshrinkingly acquaint ourselves with the malady of the spirit as
we should at once acquaint ourselves with any malady hinting itself in
the flesh.
Pages:
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196