ing, even as they, the external claims of others; rendering to
all their dues--one thus circumstanced would be wanting, nevertheless,
in the secret of inward adjustment to the moral agents around him. How
tenderly--more tenderly than many stricter souls--he might yield
himself to kindly instinct! what fineness of charity in passing
judgment on others! what an exquisite conscience of other men's
susceptibilities! He knows for how much the manner, because the heart
itself, counts, in doing a kindness. He goes beyond most people in his
care for all weakly creatures; judging, instinctively, that to be but
sentient is to possess rights. He conceives a hundred duties, though
he may not call them by that name, of the existence of which purely
duteous souls may have no suspicion. He has a kind of pride in doing
more than they, in a way of his own. Sometimes, he may think that
those men of line and rule do not really understand their own business.
How narrow, inflexible, unintelligent! what poor guardians (he may
reason) of the inward spirit of righteousness, are some supposed
careful walkers according to its letter and form. And yet all the
while he admits, as such, no moral world at all: no [9] theoretic
equivalent to so large a proportion of the facts of life.

But, over and above such practical rectitude, thus determined by
natural affection or self-love or fear, he may notice that there is a
remnant of right conduct, what he does, still more what he abstains
from doing, not so much through his own free election, as from a
deference, an "assent," entire, habitual, unconscious, to custom--to
the actual habit or fashion of others, from whom he could not endure to
break away, any more than he would care to be out of agreement with
them on questions of mere manner, or, say, even, of dress. Yes! there
were the evils, the vices, which he avoided as, essentially, a failure
in good taste. An assent, such as this, to the preferences of others,
might seem to be the weakest of motives, and the rectitude it could
determine the least considerable element in a moral life. Yet here,
according to Cornelius Fronto, was in truth the revealing example,
albeit operating upon comparative trifles, of the general principle
required. There was one great idea associated with which that
determination to conform to precedent was elevated into the clearest,
the fullest, the weightiest principle of moral action; a principle
under which one mig