l.

VI. RIGHT AND WRONG.--It is the mark of a good action that it appears
inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do
otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are
damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only
been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.

VII. DISCIPLINE OF CONSCIENCE.--(1) Never allow your mind to dwell on
your own misconduct: that is ruin. The conscience has morbid
sensibilities; it must be employed but not indulged, like the
imagination or the stomach. (2) Let each stab suffice for the occasion;
to play with this spiritual pain turns to penance; and a person easily
learns to feel good by dallying with the consciousness of having done
wrong. (3) Shut your eyes hard against the recollection of your sins. Do
not be afraid, you will not be able to forget them. (4) You will always
do wrong: you must try to get used to that, my son. It is a small matter
to make a work about, when all the world is in the same case. I meant
when I was a young man to write a great poem; and now I am cobbling
little prose articles and in excellent good spirits, I thank you. So,
too, I meant to lead a life that should keep mounting from the first;
and though I have been repeatedly down again below sea-level, and am
scarce higher than when I started, I am as keen as ever for that
enterprise. Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to
continue to fail, in good spirits. (5) There is but one test of a good
life: that the man shall continue to grow more difficult about his own
behaviour. That is to be good: there is no other virtue attainable. The
virtues we admire in the saint and the hero are the fruits of a happy
constitution. You, for your part, must not think you will ever be a good
man, for these are born and not made. You will have your own reward, if
you keep on growing better than you were--how do I say? if you do not
keep on growing worse. (6) A man is one thing, and must be exercised in
all his faculties. Whatever side of you is neglected, whether it is the
muscles, or the taste for art, or the desire for virtue, that which is
cultivated will suffer in proportion. ---- was greatly tempted, I
remember, to do a very dishonest act, in order that he might pursue his
studies in art. When he consulted me, I advised him not (putting it that
way for once), because his art would suffer. (7) It might be fancied
that if we c