find some dangerous occupation for themselves, and eat away the very
life they were intended to cherish and strengthen. I should wish you to
be spared, however, the humiliation of even temporary regrets, which, at
the very least, must occasion temporary loss of precious hours, and a
decrease of that diligent labour for improvement which can only be kept
in an active state of energy by a deep and steady conviction of its
nobleness and utility; further still, (which would be worse than the
temporary consequences to yourself,) at such times of despondency you
might be led to make admissions to the disadvantage of mental
cultivation, and to depreciate those very habits of study and
self-improvement which it ought to be one of the great objects of your
life to recommend to all. You might thus discourage some young beginner
in the path of self-cultivation, who, had it not been for you, might
have cheered a lonely way by the indulgence of healthy, natural tastes,
besides exercising extensive beneficial influence over others. Your
incautious words, doubly dangerous because they seem to be the result
of experience, may be the cause of such a one's remaining in useless and
wearisome, because uninterested idleness. That you may guard the more
successfully against incurring such responsibilities, you should without
delay begin a long and serious consideration, founded on thought and
observation, both as to the relative advantages of ignorance and
knowledge. When your mind has been fully made up on the point, after the
careful examination I recommend to you, you must lay your opinion aside
on the shelf, as it were, and suffer it no longer to be considered as a
matter of doubt, or a subject for discussion. You can then, when
temporarily assailed by weak-minded fears, appeal to the former
dispassionate and unprejudiced decision of your unbiassed mind. To one
like you, there is no safer appeal than that from a present excited, and
consequently prejudiced self, to another dispassionate, and consequently
wiser self. Let us then consider in detail what foundation there may be