primarily not in action, but in motives to action; in the will, not in
the deed; not in what we actually do, but in what we actually endeavour
to do; in the love we give, rather than in the love that we receive.
What defiles a man is that which comes out of his heart--evil thoughts,
murders, adulteries. The thoughts may never find utterance in a word,
the murders and adulteries may never be fulfilled in act; and yet, if a
man be restrained, not by his own will, but only by outer circumstances,
his immorality will be the same. The primary things we are '_responsible
for_,' observes a recent positive writer,[12] are '_frames of mind into
which we knowingly and willingly work ourselves_': and when these are
once wrong, he adds, '_they are wrong for ever: no accidental failure
of their good or evil fruits can possibly alter that_.' And as with what
is wrong or vicious, so with what is right or virtuous; this in a like
manner proceeds out of the mind or heart. '_The gladness of true
heroism_,' says Dr. Tyndall, '_visits the heart of him who is really
competent to say, "I court truth."_' It is not, be it observed, the
objective attainment of truth that creates the gladness. It is the
subjective desire, the subjective resolution. The moral end, for the
positivist just as much as for the believer, is a certain inward state
of the heart, or mind--a state which will of necessity, if possible,
express itself in action, but whose value is not to be measured by the
success of that expression. The battle-ground of good and evil is within
us; and the great human event is the issue of the struggle between them.

And this leads us on to the second point. The language used on all hands
respecting this struggle, implies that its issue is of an importance
great out of all proportion to our own consciousness of the results of
it, nay, even that it is independent of our consciousness. It is implied
that though a man may be quite ignorant of the state of his own heart,
and though no one else can so much as guess at it, what that state is is