re born with certain attractive
qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and
badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in
consenting to them and adopting them into our will.

Now this, it seems to me, throws an entirely new light upon the
duality of our inner life. The fact that we discover that there is
baseness within us from which we recoil as we should from a
venomous snake, need not shake our throne of reason or overthrow
our balance. These base things are not we; our true self
does not reside in them, until, indeed, we unite with them by
assenting to them. A man's natural propensities are motley, but his
soul is white. One hears much nowadays of the "white man's
burden." There is such a thing as the white soul's burden. These
dipsomaniac cravings with which some men are handicapped,
these explosive irascibilities with which some are accursed, these
tendencies to impurity with which others are defiled--these are the
white soul's burden. Some men are more heavily burdened than
others. But it is not the nature of the burden that makes men good
or bad; it is the way they bear it, or rather it is the extent to which
they transform this initial nature of theirs into a better nature.
There is a distinction between the natural character and the moral
character; the moral character results from the changes produced
in the natural character, by the power of the moral will, or by the
energy of the soul striving to imprint its nobler pattern on this
difficult, oft intractable material.

But if we are not blameworthy for the repellant propensities,
neither are we praiseworthy on account of the attractive and
gracious qualities we may possess. The state of mind of one who is
conscious of a divided inner life is torture. Nothing but an heroic
treatment, nothing but a radical cure will free him from that
torture; the cure is to realize that our seeming virtues are often not
virtues at all. We must sacrifice our fancied virtues, if we would
escape from the horrid sense of utter depravity that arises from our
vices. A man puts to himself the question: How is it possible that
at one moment I should be sympathetic and kind, should strive to
compass the happiness of my fellow-beings, should take a
generous interest in public causes, and try to act justly; and that at
another moment I am so selfish and base? How can there be this
oscillation from one pole to the other of human character?