VIII SUBSTITUTE FOR CONSCIENCE: T HOSE inclined to be conscientious often delude themselves with merely entertain ing the sentiment of morality instead of obeying its precepts. There is a sort of virtuosity which marches only to music and on smooth pavements. Yet it has in it the heroic thrill; one imagines one's self willing to withstand the fiercest charges of temptation and to storm batteries of evil, yet is conscience only dreaming of these things, not purposing them. There was an orator much sought by Associations for his eloquent pluming of virtue. He undoubtedly believed in righteousness, for it is incredible that he could have played the actor so well without feeling his part; yet he was the victim of several contemptible vices, which, when known, utterly discredited him for even ordinary manly courage. A preacher was in prison for a crime which he confessed. During his incarceration he spoke with such power to his fellow-convicts that many of them were persuaded to a better life. He was intensely honest, seemed to feel the bolts of Sinai rankling within his own heart; but, on his release from prison, he challenged again the divine and human judgment by repeating his former crimes. Many readers of our most popular novels pursue the villain from page to page with absolute hatred, despise the shiftless and incompetent characters, and love the good and strong; yet some of the most impressionable readers might themselves have been taken by the writers as models of the weakness or viciousness they describe. Indeed, the writers of some most excellent books have been utterly disreputable in private and public life, from Bacon, "greatest and meanest of mankind," to the scribbler of temperance stories who does his work in the intervals of debauch. A detective tells of his having followed a street garroter into a theater to arrest him. The play was, as too often the case, the "ins and outs of villainy. The cutthroat in the audience raged over the success of the cut-throat on the stage, cried like a woman over the suffering of the unfortunate victim, and roared his applause when the buskined rascal was brought to justice. The detective adds, "The signs of deepest emotion had not left his face when I laid my hand on him, and he tried to stab me.' Pope Benedict XII., when asked by the French King Philip VI. to side with him in a matter, replied, "If I had two souls, I would willingly sacrifice one to do your Majesty this service; but, as I have only one soul, I cannot go beyond what I think right." Many persons have not the same sense of the singleness of their personality. Mr. Hyde of action retires into Dr. Jekyl of sentiment. It has been affirmed that dwelling much on the virtues of merely fictitious characters, as in constant novel reading or theater going, destroys the moral stamina for actual life: conscience burns its ammunition in blank cartridges and has little left for shot. Certainly no artillerist ever learned marksmanship through exploding powder. Men and women practically engaged in charity works are apt to know less than their neighbors of the fiction literature of poverty and misfortune: and they care less for it, for they constantly witness scenes which make the romance like "a painted ship upon a painted ocean" as compared with the actual storm and wreck. Romance cannot reproduce the groans of those buried in the débris of life's hopes, nor the sobs that are like the sound of the blood dropping from a broken heart, nor the gleam in the eye of those made desperate through oppression, nor even the tragedy played on the little stage of a single face when the soul supplies the actors. Now and then, say once or twice in a generation, is there one sufficiently gifted with talents to appreciate and express real experiences. The ordinary |