hat weigh upon men
and incline them to sadness. And yet there is none more docile, more
eager to follow the direction we could so readily give, did we but know
how best to avail ourselves of this docility. In reality, if we think
of it, the past belongs to us quite as much as the present, and is far
more malleable than the future. Like the present, and to a much
greater extent than the future, its existence is all in our thoughts,
and our hand controls it; nor is this only true of our material past,
wherein there are ruins that we perhaps can restore; it is true also of
the regions that are closed to our tardy desire for atonement; it is
true above all of our moral past, and of what we consider to be most
irreparable there.

5

"The past is past," we say, and it is false; the past is always
present. "We have to bear the burden of our past," we sigh, and it is
false; the past bears our burden. "Nothing can wipe out the past," and
it is false; the least effort of will sends present and future
travelling over the past to efface whatever we bid them efface. "The
indestructible, irreparable, immutable past!" And that is no truer
than the rest. In those who speak thus it is the present that is
immutable, and knows not how to repair. "My past is wicked, it is
sorrowful, empty," we say again; "as I look back I can see no moment of
beauty, of happiness or love; I see nothing but wretched ruins . . ."
And that is false; for you see precisely what you yourself place there
at the moment your eyes upon it.

6

Our past depends entirely upon our present, and is constantly changing
with it. Our past is contained in our memory; and this memory of ours,
that feeds on our heart and brain, and is incessantly swayed by them,
is the most variable thing in the world, the least independent, the
most impressionable. Our chief concern with the past, that which truly
remains and forms part of us, is not what we have done, or the
adventures that we have met with, but the moral reactions bygone events
are producing within us at this very moment, the inward being they have
helped to form; and these reactions, that give birth to our sovereign,
intimate being, are wholly governed by the manner in which we regard
past events, and vary as the moral substance varies that they encounter
within us. But with every step in advance that our feelings or
intellect take, a change will come in this moral substance; and then,
on the instant,