ils that stare us in the face, and
that might be averted with the least prudence or resolution. But nothing
can be done. How should it? A slight evil, a distant danger, will not
move them; and a more imminent one only makes them turn away from it in
greater precipitation and alarm. The more desperate their affairs grow,
the more averse they are to look into them; and the greater the effort
required to retrieve them, the more incapable they are of it. At first,
they will not do anything; and afterwards, it is too late. The very
motives that imperiously urge them to self-reflection and amendment,
combine with their natural disposition to prevent it. This amounts
pretty nearly to a mathematical demonstration. Ease, vanity,
pleasure are the ruling passions in such cases. How will
you conquer these, or wean their infatuated votaries from them? By the
dread of hardship, disgrace, pain? They turn from them, and you who
point them out as the alternative, with sickly disgust; and instead of a
stronger effort of courage or self-denial to avert the crisis, hasten
it by a wilful determination to pamper the disease in every way, and arm
themselves, not with fortitude to bear or to repel the consequences, but
with judicial blindness to their approach. Will you rouse the indolent
procrastinator to an irksome but necessary effort, by showing him
how much he has to do? He will only draw back the more for all your
entreaties and representations. If of a sanguine turn, he will make
a slight attempt at a new plan of life, be satisfied with the first
appearance of reform, and relapse into indolence again. If timid and
undecided, the hopelessness of the undertaking will put him out of heart
with it, and he will stand still in despair. Will you save a vain man
from ruin, by pointing out the obloquy and ridicule that await him in
his present career? He smiles at your forebodings as fantastical; or the
more they are realised around him, the more he is impelled to keep out
the galling conviction, and the more fondly he clings to flattery and
death. He will not make a bold and resolute attempt to recover his
reputation, because that would imply that it was capable of being soiled
or injured; or he no sooner meditates some desultory project, than he
takes credit to himself for the execution, and is delighted to wear
his unearned laurels while the thing is barely talked of. The chance of
success relieves the uneasiness of his apprehensions; so that