* * * * *

_Case of Casuistry._--Wraxall justly notices that errors like Prince
Rupert's from excess of courage, however ruinous, are never resented by
a country. _Ergo_ the inference that prudence would be, always if in
Byng's or Lord St. German's cases, in a matter of doubt held to be bold
fighting; and yet in morals is that an allowable position?

6.--Personal Confessions, etc.

Avaunt, ye hypocrites! who make a whining pretence, according to a fixed
rule, of verbally uttering thanks to God for every chastisement, and who
say this is good for you. So do not I, being upright, and God seeing my
heart, who also sees that I murmur not; but if it were not good in the
end, yet I submit. He is not offended that with upright sincerity I give
no thanks for it. And I say that, unless a man perceives the particular
way in which it has been good for him, he cannot sincerely, truly, or so
as not to mock God with his lips, give thanks simply on an _a priori_
principle, though, of course, he may submit in humbleness.

I do not believe that the faith of any man in the apparent fact that he
will never again see such a person (_i.e._, by being removed by death)
is real. I believe that the degree of faith in this respect is regulated
by an original setting or fixing of our nature quite unconscious to
ourselves. So, again, I believe that hope is never utterly withdrawn,
despair is never absolute. And again, I believe that, at the lowest
nadir, the resource of dying as a means of escape and translation to new
chances and openings is lodged in every man far down below the
sunlights of consciousness. He feels that his death is not final; were
it otherwise he could not rush at the escape so lightly. Indeed, were
his fate fixed immutably, I feel that it would not have been left
possible for him to commit suicide.

_Justice._--You say in the usual spirit of vanity, Y or X has the same
degree of the spirit of justice as V. This is easily said, but the test
is, what will he _do_ for it? Suppose a man to propose rewards
exclusively to those who assisted at a fire, then X and Y, suppose, have
equally seen that many did _not_ assist, even refused to do so. But X
perhaps will shrink from exposing them; V will encounter any hatred for
truth and justice by exposing the undeserving.

It is a foolish thing to say 'Hard words break no bones.' How impossible
to call up from the depths of forgotten times all the