impulses, that we teach people this indirect and tactical procedure
in life, and to judge by remote consequences instead of the
immediate face of things. The very desire to act as our own souls
would have us, coupled with a pathetic disbelief in ourselves,
moves us to follow the example of others; perhaps, who knows? they
may be on the right track; and the more our patterns are in number,
the better seems the chance; until, if we be acting in concert with
a whole civilised nation, there are surely a majority of chances
that we must be acting right. And again, how true it is that we
can never behave as we wish in this tormented sphere, and can only
aspire to different and more favourable circumstances, in order to
stand out and be ourselves wholly and rightly! And yet once more,
if in the hurry and pressure of affairs and passions you tend to
nod and become drowsy, here are twenty-four hours of Sunday set
apart for you to hold counsel with your soul and look around you on
the possibilities of life.

This is not, of course, all that is to be, or even should be, said
for these doctrines. Only, in the course of this chapter, the
reader and I have agreed upon a few catchwords, and been looking at
morals on a certain system; it was a pity to lose an opportunity of
testing the catchwords, and seeing whether, by this system as well
as by others, current doctrines could show any probable
justification. If the doctrines had come too badly out of the
trial, it would have condemned the system. Our sight of the world
is very narrow; the mind but a pedestrian instrument; there's
nothing new under the sun, as Solomon says, except the man himself;
and though that changes the aspect of everything else, yet he must
see the same things as other people, only from a different side.