A glance of the eye or a touch of the hand often
transfers an emotion from one mind to another with a facility and
clearness of which words are incapable. There are no things we believe
so completely as those which we _feel_ to be true, yet there are none
about which we reason so imperfectly.
The motive-power in man is Affection. What he loves he wills, and what
he wills he performs. Our Character is the complex of all that we love.
We often think we love traits of Character that we cannot possess; but
we deceive ourselves. All that we truly love we strive to attain,
and all that we strive after rightly we do attain. The cause of
self-deception on this point is, that we think we love a certain trait
of Character when we only love its reward; or that we hate other traits
when we only hate their punishment.
The passionate man perceives that his ungoverned temper causes him
trouble, and occasions him to commit acts of injustice, and to say
things for which he is afterwards ashamed; and he exclaims, "I wish I
could acquire self-control; but alas! a hasty temper is natural to me,
and I cannot overcome it." Tell such a man that he is just what he loves
to be, and he will deny it without hesitation; and yet the love of
combating and of overcoming by force are the darling loves of his heart;
and when he fancies that he is wishing to overcome these propensities,
he is thinking only of the worldly injury his temper may occasion him,
and not of the hatefulness of anger in itself.
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