A man is not so ready to break the laws of nature when he sees he will break himself in doing it. He may not fear God, but he fears fever and consumption. He may have a gay heart, but he will not like the occupation of being his own sexton and digging his own grave. When he sees that death lurks in the frequent glass, for instance, that spoils the flavor of the wine. He takes less pride in the beeswing who sees the shroud in the bottle. He may hope that God will forgive him, but he knows that death will not. He who holds the scythe is accustomed to cut down fools, whether they be peers or sweeps. Death knows the fool at a glance. To prevent any mistake, Disease has marked him with her broad arrow. The young man who once has his eyes well open to this state of the case, will be considerate as to the quality of his pleasures, especially when he knows that alluring but unwholesome pleasure is in the pay of death. Temperance advocates made more converts by exhibiting the biological effects of alcohol than by all their exhortations.
The moral nature of man is as palpable as the physical to those who look for its signs. There is a moral squint in the judgment, as plain to be seen as a cast in the eyes. The voice is not honest; it has the accent of a previous conviction in it. The speech has contortions of meaning in it. The sense is limp and flaccid, showing that the mind is flabby. Such a one has the backbone of a fish; he does not stand upright. As the Americans say, he does not "stand square" to anything. There is no moral pulse in his heart. If you could take hold of his soul, it would feel like a dead oyster, and would slip through your fingers. Everybody knows these people. You don't consult them; you don't trust them. You would rather have no business transactions with them. If they are in a political movement, you know they will shuffle when the pinch of principle comes.
Crime has its consequences, and criminals, little and great, know it. When Alaric A. Watts wrote of the last Emperor of the French:—
"Safe art thou, Louis!—for a time;
But tremble!—never yet was crime,
Beyond one little space, secure.
The coward and the brave alike
Can wait and watch, can rush and strike.
Which marks thee? One of them, be rare,—"
few thought the bold prediction true; but it came to pass, and the Napoleonic name and race became extinct, to the relief of Europe.
Trouble comes from avowing unpopular ideas. Diderot well saw this when he said: "There is less inconvenience in being mad with the mad than in being wise by oneself." One who regards truth as duty will accept responsibilities. It is the American idea
"To make a man and leave him be."
But we must be sure we have made him a man,—self-acting, guided by reasoned proof, and one who, as Archbishop Whately said, "believes the principles he maintains, and maintains them because he believes them."
A man is not a man while under superstition, nor is he a man when free from it, unless his mind is built on principles conducive and incentive to the service of man.