sentment,' he says, in a very deep and a very serious
passage--'Resentment being out of the case, there is not, properly
speaking, any such thing as direct ill-will in one man towards another.'
Well, great and undisputed as Butler's authority is in all these matters,
at the same time he would be the first to admit and to assert that a
man's inward experience transcends all outward authority. Well, I am
filled with shame and pain and repentance and remorse to have to say it,
but my experience carries me right in the teeth of Butler's doctrine. I
have dutifully tried to look at Butler's inviting and exonerating
doctrine in all possible lights, and from all possible points of view, in
the anxious wish to prove it true; but I dare not say that I have
succeeded. The truth for thee--my heart would continually call to me--the
best truth for thee is in me, and not in any Butler! And when looking as
closely as I can at my own heart in the matter of ill-will, what do I
find--and what will you find? You will find that after subtracting all
that can in any proper sense come under the head of real resentment, and
in cases where real resentment is out of the question; in cases where you
have received no injury, no neglect, no contempt, no anything whatsoever
of that kind, you will find that there are men innocent of all that to
you, yet men to whom you entertain feelings, animosities, antipathies,
that can be called by no other name than that of ill-will. Look within
and see. Watch within and see. And I am sure you will come to subscribe
with me to the humbling and heart-breaking truth, that, even where there
is no resentment, and no other explanation, excuse, or palliation of that
kind, yet that festering, secret, malignant ill-will is working in the
bottom of your heart. If you doubt that, if you deny that, if all that
kind of self-observation and self-sentencing is new to you, then observe
yourself, say, for one week, and report at the end of it whether or no
you have had feelings and thoughts and wishes in your secret heart toward
men who never in any way hurt you, which can only be truthfully described
as pure ill-will; that is to say, you have not felt and thought and
wished toward them as you would have them, and all men, feel and think
and wish toward you.

4. 'To will is present with me, but how to perform I find not,' says the
apostle; and again, 'Ye cannot do the things that ye would.' Or, as
Dante has it,