CHAPTER I.

Confession, or The Blind Heart.


"Who dares bestow the infant his true name?
The few who felt and knew, but blindly gave
Their knowledge to the multitude--they fell
Incapable to keep their full hearts in,
They, from the first of immemorial time,
Were crucified or burnt."--Goethe's "Faust."





The pains and penalties of folly are not necessarily death. They
were in old times, perhaps, according to the text, and he who kept
not to himself the secrets of his silly heart was surely crucified
or burnt. Though lacking in penalties extreme like these, the present
is not without its own. All times, indeed, have their penalties for
folly, much more certainly than for crime; and this fact furnishes
one of the most human arguments in favor of the doctrine of rewards
and punishments in the future state. But these penalties are not
always mortifications and trials of the flesh. There are punishments
of the soul; the spirit; the sensibilities; the intellect--which
are most usually the consequences of one's own folly. There is a
perversity of mood which is the worst of all such penalties. There
are tortures which the foolish heart equally inflicts and endures.
The passions riot on their own nature; and, feeding as they do