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That this general acquiescence, this aspect of certainty, is not reached per saltum, but is of slow, often of difficult growth, marked by failures and frailties, but crowned at last with an acceptance accorded to no other product of mental activity, is illustrated by every important discovery from Copernicus to Darwin.
"Ah," said I, "see the malice of wit; and see, above all, how much more ready one is to mention a man's frailties than to enlarge upon his virtues." "To be sure," answered Hamilton, coolly, and patting his snuff-box, "to be sure, we old people like history better than fiction; and frailty is certain, while virtue is always doubtful."
But happily fear, too, is susceptible to the controlling power of autosuggestion. It is one of the first things which a person cognisant of the means to be applied should seek to eradicate from his mind. For our own sakes, too, we should avoid dwelling on the faults and frailties of our neighbours.
My soul, you think, should be free from jealousy and the other weaknesses of my sex. There you are mistaken. I am a woman, and wish to remain one. As Terence's Chremes says he is a human being, and nothing human is unknown to him, I do not hesitate to confess all feminine frailties.
He, who, at the present time, is favorable or even fair to that system, must act towards it as towards a friend with frailties who is under the prosecution of implacable foes. I think it a duty, in that case, not to inflame the public mind against the obnoxious person by any exaggeration of his faults.
But little did he think, in the blindness of self-delusion, though it was so obvious to Clarence, that he could have smiled if he had not rather inclined to weep at the frailties of human nature, little did he think that the vanity which had cost him so much remained "a monarch still," undeposed alike by his philosophy, his religion, or his remorse; and that, debarred by circumstances from all wider and more dangerous fields, it still lavished itself upon trifles unworthy of his powers and puerilities dishonouring his age.
That this hitherto unquestioned "friend of the people" was now manifesting a slight tendency toward the frailties and vanities of the common run of men, will appear from the following: "It was my nature not to feel or appear elevated, but I discovered that my appearance and deportment, at times, might look like affected humility or mock modesty, which I sincerely despised, and then I would straighten up a little."
I have seen the worst as well as the best of Appalachia. There are "places on Sand Mountain" scores of them where unspeakable orgies prevail at times. But I know that between these two extremes the great mass of the mountain people are very like persons of similar station elsewhere, just human, with human frailties, only a little more honest, I think, in owning them.
Endowed with superior genius and acquirements, she was still more endeared by humility and benevolence. Let candor throw a veil over her frailties, for great was her charity for others. She sustained the last painful scene far from every friend, and exhibited an example of calm resignation.
We say, "If this thing had happened, that other thing would have followed" a hypothesis which would lapse and become unmeaning had we always known all the facts. For no supposition contrary to fact would then have entered discourse. This ideal of direct omniscience is, however, impossible to attain; not merely accidental frailties, but the very nature of things stands in the way.
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