“That seems to me strange doctrine,” said Arctura, with tremulous objection.
“If you do not like it, do not believe it. We inherit from our ancestors vices no more than virtues, but tendencies to both. Vice in my great-great-grandfather may in me be an impulse.”
“How horrible!” cried Arctura.
“To say that we inherit sin from Adam, horrifies nobody: the source is so far back from us, that we let the stream fill our cisterns unheeded; but to say we inherit it from this or that nearer ancestor, causes the fact to assume its definite and individual reality, and make a correspondent impression.”
“Then you allow that it is horrible to think oneself under the influence of the vices of certain wicked people, through whom we come where we are?”
“I would allow it, were it not that God is nearer to us than any vices, even were they our own; he is between us and those vices. But in us they are not vices—only possibilities, which become vices when they are yielded to. Then there are at the same time all sorts of counteracting and redeeming influences. It may be that wherein a certain ancestor was most wicked, his wife was especially lovely. He may have been cruel, and she tender as the hen that gathers her chickens under her wing. The main danger is perhaps, of being caught in some sudden gust of unsuspected impulse, and carried away of the one tendency before the other has time to assert and the will to rouse itself. But those who doubt themselves and try to do right may hope for warning. Such will not, I think, be allowed to go far out of the way for want of that. Self-confidence is the worst traitor.”
“You comfort me a little.”
“And then you must remember,” continued Donal, “that nothing in its immediate root is evil; that from best human roots worst things spring. No one, for instance, will be so full of indignation, of fierceness, of revenge, as the selfish man born with a strong sense of justice.—But you say this is not the room in which you hear the music best?”
“No, it is here.”