Yet such people as these often deserve pity as much as blame: they are,
perhaps, unconscious of the degree in which habit has made them
insensible to the perversion of truth in their statements; and even now
they scarcely believe that what seems to them so true should appear and
really be false to others. The intellectual effects of such habits are
equally injurious with the moral ones. All natural clearness and
distinctness of intellect becomes gradually obscured; the memory becomes
perplexed; the very style of writing acquires the taint of the
perverted mind. Truth is impressed upon every line of Dr. Arnold's
vigorous diction, while other writers of equal, perhaps, but less
respectable eminence, betray, even in their mode of expression, the
habitual want of honesty in their character and in their statements.

In your case, none of the habits of which I have spoken are, as yet,
firmly implanted. A warm temper, ardent feelings, and a vivid
imagination are, as yet, the only causes of your errors. You have still
time and power to struggle against them, as the chains of habit have not
been added to those of nature. But, before the struggle begins, you must
be convinced of its necessity; and this is probably the point on which
you are entirely incredulous. Listen to me, then, while I help you to
discover the hidden mysteries of a heart that "is deceitful above all
things," and let the self-examination I urge upon you be prompt, be
immediate. Let it be exercised through the day that is coming; watch the
manner in which you express yourself on every subject; observe,
especially those temptations which will assail you to venture upon
greater deviations from truth than those which you think you may
harmlessly indulge in, under the sanction of vivid imagination, poetic
fancy, &c. This latter part of the examination may throw great light on
the subject: people are not assailed frequently and strongly by
temptations that have never, at any former time, been yielded to.