But were
it not for the channel of passion, this will could never have been
approached at all even by reasons the most cogent. Rhetoric often
succeeds, where mere dry logic would have been thrown away. God help
vast numbers of the human race, if their wills were approachable only
through their reasons! They would indeed be fixtures.
8. Another fact to notice is the liability of reason's gaze to become
morbid and as it were inflamed by unremitting exercise. I do not here
allude to hard study, but to overcurious scanning of the realities of
this life, and the still greater realities and more momentous
possibilities of the world to come. There is a sense of the
surroundings being too much for us, an alarm and a giddiness, that
comes of sober matter-of-fact thought over-much prolonged. Then it
happens that one or more undeniable truths are laid hold of, and
considered in strong relief and in isolation from the rest: the result
is a distorted and partial view of truth as a whole, and therewith the
mind is troubled. Here the kindlier passions, judiciously allowed to
play, come in to soothe the wound and soreness of pure intellect, too
keen in its workings for one who is not yet a pure spirit.
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