At another he suggests: "Our
body to be possessed by two different spirits, so that half the visage
shall express one mood, and the other half another." "A man living a
wicked life in one place and simultaneously a virtuous and religious one
in another." Then he perceives that this same uncertainty and
contradiction affects the lightest and seemingly most harmless things in
the world. "The world is so sad and solemn," he muses, "that things
meant in jest are liable, by an overpowering influence, to become
dreadful earnest." And then he applies this, as in the following: "A
virtuous but giddy girl to attempt to play a trick on a man. He sees
what she is about, and contrives matters so that she throws herself
completely into his power, and is ruined,--all in jest." Likewise, the
most desirable things, by this same law of contradiction, often prove
the least satisfactory. Thus: "A person or family long desires some
particular good. At last it comes in such profusion as to be the great
pest of their lives." And this is equally true, he finds, whether the
desired thing be sought in order to gratify a pure instinct or a wrong
and revengeful one. "As an instance, merely, suppose a woman sues her
lover for breach of promise, and gets the money by instalments, through
a long series of years. At last, when the miserable victim were utterly
trodden down, the triumpher would have become a very devil of evil
passions,--they having overgrown his whole nature; so that a far greater
evil would have come upon himself than on his victim.
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