“What he ought, I said, my lord.”
“Well, what he ought,” yielded the earl almost angrily.
“He could not find it proved that he had no faculty for generating a free will. He might indeed doubt it the more; but the positive only, not the negative, can be proved.”
“Where would be the satisfaction if he could only prove the one thing and not the other?”
“The truth alone can be proved, my lord; how should a lie be proved? The man that wanted to prove he had no freedom of will, would find no satisfaction from his test—and the less the more honest he was; but the man anxious about the dignity of the nature given him, would find every needful satisfaction in the progress of his obedience.”
“How can there be free will where the first thing demanded for its existence or knowledge of itself is obedience?”
“There is no free will save in resisting what one would like, and doing what the Truth would have him do. It is true the man’s liking and the truth may coincide, but therein he will not learn his freedom, though in such coincidence he will always thereafter find it, and in such coincidence alone—for freedom is harmony with the originating law of one’s existence.”
“That’s dreary doctrine.”
“My lord, I have spent no little time and thought on the subject, and the result is some sort of practical clearness to myself; but, were it possible, I should not care to make it clear to another save by persuading him to arrive at the same conviction by the same path—that, namely, of doing the thing required of him.”
“Required of him by what?”