Mine, perhaps, would
find neither. I followed the good--that is, good as the world's
opinion goes--the straight line in life, without any of the
enthusiasm for virtue to form a consolation and support. I looked
upon vice without that repulsion that makes resistance to it easy,
pleasant, involuntary almost. I felt no sense of strong condemnation
of those acts or failings or lapses in others which I studiously
avoided myself. Therefore, I had neither the pleasure that might be
derived from the evil itself, nor the warm satisfaction and personal
pride that comes from conscious superiority to one's neighbours. I
had lived the life of a Puritan, but I had neither the heart nor
brain of one. None of the rigid bigotry, none of the exultant
delight in morality, none of the merciless joy in trampling upon
pleasure which gives him his reward. I looked round upon life and
its many devious ways with eyes listless and indifferent to its vice
and sympathetic to its pleasure, and back upon my own straight path
with something of regret that my self-respect had been strong enough
to hold me to it. And now the temptation came to sacrifice all that
I had clung to. To abolish the thought and remembrance of my talent,
muffle and stifle the powers of the brain, and remember only that I
had the pulses and senses and blood of a man. It came over me
slowly, this phase of rebellious animalism, like a mantle falling
over me.
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