chosen ill, you have De-formed it, and that forever! In some
choices it had been better for you that a red-hot iron bar struck
you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you had so chosen. "You
will know better next time!" No. Next time will never come. Next
time the choice will be in quite another aspect--between quite
different things,--you, weaker than you were by the evil into
which you have fallen; it, more doubtful than it was, by the
increased dimness of your sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing
wrong, nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger only by doing
right, whether forced or not; the prime, the one need is to do
THAT, under whatever compulsion, until you can do it without
compulsion. And then you are a Man.

11. "What!" a wayward youth might perhaps answer, incredulously,
"no one ever gets wiser by doing wrong? Shall I not know the world
best by trying the wrong of it, and repenting? Have I not, even as
it is, learned much by many of my errors?" Indeed, the effort by
which partially you recovered yourself was precious: that part of
your thought by which you discerned the error was precious. What
wisdom and strength you kept, and rightly used, are rewarded; and
in the pain and the repentance, and in the acquaintance with the
aspects of folly and sin, you have learned SOMETHING; how much
less than you would have learned in right paths can never be told,
but that it IS less is certain.

12. Your liberty of choice has simply destroyed for you so much
life and strength, never regainable. It is true, you now know the
habits of swine, and the taste of husks; do you think your father
could not have taught you to know better habits and pleasanter
tastes, if you had stayed in his house; and that the knowledge you