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I felt that in my first profession, as I was not blessed with the vocation necessary to it, I should have succeeded only by dint of hypocrisy, and I should have been despicable in my own estimation, even if I had seen the purple mantle on my shoulders, for the greatest dignities cannot silence a man's own conscience.
But in truth we are commonly very blind and foolish about this business of living; we lack wisdom, and we lack motive-power at the right place. Instinct is altogether too clumsy and impulse too uncertain. We need a more delicate adjustment; for this, intelligence and conscience have been developed. Morality is the way of life that intelligence and conscience oppose to instinct and impulse.
It must be obvious again, they say, from the consideration that, if it were even possible for one man to discern the conscience of another, it is impossible for him to bend or controul it. But conscience is placed both out of his sight and of his reach. It is neither visible nor tangible. It is inaccessible by stripes or torments.
He was a currier in Philadelphia, a preacher in the Society of Friends, characterized by kindly feelings, and a very tender conscience. Upon one occasion, he purchased from the captain of a vessel a quantity of oil, which he afterward sold at an advanced price.
But when I came to give him an account of more lands to be surrendered to us, wherein Piggott's wife was concerned, and she there to give her consent, Sir Robert would not hear of it, but began to talk very high that we were very cruel, and we had caution enough for our money, and he could not in conscience let the woman do it, and reproached my uncle, both he and his son, with taking use upon use for this money.
This was how God's revelation came to this brother of ours, through the working of his mind and conscience, but it was in the night seasons that they worked, not in the day and in the sunshine, but in the night when a man is left to himself with only this advantage to his thought: that like the blind he is yet undistracted by the influences which are seen.
Betty Vivian came to see me some days ago, and said that she had been expelled from the Specialities; and she asked me if, under such conditions, she ought to attend evening prayers in the chapel. I begged for her full confidence. She would not give it." "And what did you say about evening prayers?" "I said that was a matter between her own conscience and God.
There was an air of drollery and of superiority in his manner which at once struck and pleased the Hibernian. "Upon my conscience, sir, I believe you are a very honest fellow," said he, looking him earnestly in the face, "and I have a great mind to shake hands with you. Will you only just tell me who you are?" The nobleman told his name a name dear to every Briton and every Irishman.
His characterization of Flaubert as the "operative conscience or vicarious sacrifice" of a styleless literary age is the pure gold of criticism. "The piety most real to her," Fleda says in The Spoils of Poynton, "was to be on one's knees before one's high standard." Henry James himself had that kind of piety. Above all recent men of letters, he was on his knees to his high standard.
Alas! we must always have something to persecute, and individual man is never so convinced of his own wisdom as when dealing with subjects beyond human comprehension. Unfortunately, however, while the great Advocate was clear in his conscience he had scarcely clean hands. He had very recently accepted a present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France.
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