“What, you are one of those precise folks who make conscience of their thoughts? I call that all stuff and nonsense,” replied Haimet, throwing down the hammer he was using.
“If I make no conscience of my thoughts, of what am I to make conscience?” was the answer. “Thought is the seed, act the flower. If you do not wish for the flower, the surest way is not to sow the seed. Sow it, and the flower will blossom, whether you will or no.”
“That sort of thing may suit you,” said Haimet rather in an irritated tone. “I could never get along, if I had to be always measuring my thoughts with an ell-wand in that fashion.”
“Do you prefer the consequences?” asked Gerhardt.
“Consequences!—what consequences?”
“Rather awkward ones, sometimes. Thoughts of hatred, for instance, may issue in murder, and that may lead to your own death. If the thoughts had been curbed in the first instance, the miserable results would have been spared to all the sufferers. And ‘no man liveth to himself’: it is very seldom that you can bring suffering on one person only. It is almost sure to run over to two or three more. And as the troubles of every one of them will run over to another two or three, like circles in the water, the sorrow keeps ever widening, so that the consequences of one small act or word for evil are incalculable. It takes God to reckon them.”
“Eh, don’t you, now!” said Isel with a shudder. “Makes me go all creepy like, that does. I shouldn’t dare to do a thing all the days of my life, if I looked at every thing that way.”
“Friend,” said Gerhardt gravely, “these things are. It does not destroy them to look away from them. It is not given to us to choose whether we will act, but only how we will act. In some manner, for good or for ill, act we must.”
“I declare I won’t listen to you, Gerard. I’m going creepy-crawly this minute. Oh deary me! you do make things look just awful.”
“Rubbish!” said Haimet, driving a nail into the wall with unnecessary vehemence.