or even like the philosophic emperor. Performing the same offices;
actually satisfying, even as they, the external claims of others;
rendering to all their dues--one thus circumstanced would be wanting,
nevertheless, in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents
around him. How tenderly--more tenderly than many stricter souls--he
might yield himself to kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in
passing judgment on others! what an exquisite conscience of other
men's susceptibilities! He knows for how much the manner, because
the heart itself, counts, in doing a kindness. He goes beyond most
people in his care for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively,
that to be but sentient is to possess rights. He conceives a hundred
duties, though he may not call them by that name, of the existence of
which purely duteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind of
pride in doing more than they, in a way of his own. Sometimes, he
may think that those men of line and rule do not really understand
their own business. How narrow, inflexible, unintelligent! what poor
guardians (he may reason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, are
some supposed careful walkers according to its letter and form. And
yet all the while he admits, as such, no moral world at all: no [9]
theoretic equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life.

But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by
natural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a
remnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains
from doing, not so much through his own free election, as from a
deference, an "assent," entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom--to
the actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure
to break away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement
with them on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. Yes!
there were the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a