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It is very pleasant to be able to settle everything on the instant, if we settle right, but judgment and deliberation have their parts to play in our affairs. When we have to choose at all, it is seldom that all our grounds for choice lie on the surface or immediately within reach. We do not observe that it is the fullest minds that find their way to a choice quickest; nor does it always prove that it was the best choice because the chooser remains satisfied with it. Indeed, it is one property of learning and knowledge to hold men's judgment in suspense until every contingency has been passed in review. Such habitual promptness as reason sanctions is, however, indispensable to those crowning efforts of rapid decision—that is, choice of alternatives-which we call presence of mind, and without which courage is often useless. In a great fire, a lady, conscious of having much valuable property in her room, rushed back to save what she could. There was money, there were jewels, and other fine things. By desperate exertions she reached the spot; and at length emerged from the smoke and flame panting and breathless, convulsively clasping in her hands-a small-tooth comb. The power to choose in the last moment had deserted her, leaving us to speculate on what habits of mind might have helped her to turn an impulse of courage and daring to better account. To know how to choose, then, is a triumph of natural powers, of thought, reason, and self-discipline. To know when to choose marks discretion and good sense. The very effort of choice gives strength and

nerve to the mind; yet a prudent man will scarcely desire unlimited opportunities for it will readily admit that to see where there is no choice and frankly to accept the inevitable is often a mark of the highest wisdom-and will gladly recognise the interference of chance and accident, even in those actions which are considered as particularly subjects of choice. For, after all, choice is a thing to fear. There is something irrevocable in it; it is not only in marriage or the wedding-gown that choice is once for all. An important decision, once come to and acted upon, cannot be wholly reversed. The looker-on does not know why, but nothing can be absolutely undone in this life. Persons jealous to shape their own course, who turn their backs upon obvious or natural influences, and choose for themselves, assume a responsibility which, while it does not remove them from the operations of chance, seems to change it into an austere, unfriendly power, visiting upon them every mistake of conduct, every failure of judgment. To them chance never appears the indulgent harmoniser and reconciler, the gentle Providence which it not seldom shows itself to such as own their inability to direct their own course, and willingly submit to the guidance of events or to the sway of circumstances.

ONE'S OWN WAY.

A GOOD many qualities and propensities are visited with universal censure, which people would not abuse so much if there were any danger of their warning being taken literally, or, indeed, having much effect at all. The moralist habitually indulges in a strain of animadversion, secure that the instinct which he denounces is too deeply fixed and ingrained for any chance of his words producing much effect, and would be frightened to be taken too much at his word. This is a fact which needs to be constantly kept in mind. A great deal of the best teaching is only valuable under the tacit understanding of this resistance in our nature to its indiscriminate reception; so that whatever the words of the teacher may seem to imply, extermination is not really contemplated, only a pruning of excess, bringing the quality in question under due subordination. Thus selfishness is unreservedly denounced, because the instinct of self-love is really invulnerable. In like manner, the young are warned

against the love of dress in terms which seem to counsel an utter disregard of the graceful and becoming, because it may be safely assumed that no words will ever persuade them not to set themselves off to advantage, and that we might as well preach to the roses as to the virgin that loveth to go gay, to abandon all care for shape and texture and colour at our bidding. Amongst these qualities, only evil in excess—and beneficial, and even indispensable, short of this excess-which have yet been the object of constant reprobation and a theme for reproof and warning without end, is the love of one's own way. Divines, moralists, and poets, all conspire, as far as words go, to quench this lesser development of the spirit of liberty, as though love of one's own way implied wilfulness, hardness of heart, insubordination, all that is ungentle and unlovable. But it is, after all, only seeming-experience teaches them quite another lesson. The poet, for all his sweet testimony to the yielding submissive spirit which moves through life

"Com' animal gentil che non fa scusa

Ma fa sua voglia della voglia altrui"

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must himself be free as air before he can indite a line. The moralist does not find his thoughts at his command or his judgment in working order while under the control of others--he must be his own master before he can impose his salutary restraints on mankind-and the divine is probably the most self-willed of the three, only after a method peculiarly his own. He must have his time, his thoughts, his movements entirely at his own

disposal, subject to none but voluntary distractions and self-imposed rules, before he can dictate, with sufficient force to be effective, his arguments for an implicit subjugation of the will to the Church and to the world. One and all know quite well-or might know, from themselves and their own requirements-that something of one's own way is as necessary to the intellectual and even moral faculties as light and air to vegetation. It is the abuse, the excess, they are warring against, so far as their teaching is wise and good— not the desire itself, which is simply the consciousness of a separate existence, and the impulse to preserve and assert this individuality. It is the repugnance of a free agent to lapse into an instrument, a tool, a machine. Of course always to assert the will is insubordination and anarchy, but never to give it play is bondage. The question is, where to find the golden mean.

Surely no one will have too much of his own way who is careful never to infringe on the rights of others, and who is ready to admit that every individual in the world has such rights, and ought to be allowed a sphere for their exercise. Always, and as a rule, to yield, is to encourage others in a tyranny which is bad for them. This is known to be the case in religious, or quasi-religious, communities, where abnegation of the will is strongly and technically enforced, and where a domineering spirit sometimes gains a frightful ascendancy. What is so bad for one cannot be good for the rest who seek to throw on their neighbour an inalienable responsibility. But we are growing too serious, and, in so do

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