The powers that have been treated of in the preceding essays are
sometimes found to work well so long as they work upon abstractions; but
so soon as they are required to work upon the daily Life, they fail of
reaching so high a point of excellence as we think we had reason to
anticipate. This results from the want of either discrimination,
courage, or earnestness; and the inner nature cannot be thoroughly
trained until these faculties are so developed by its life-giving power,
that their weakness ceases to interfere with its movements when it seeks
to manifest itself in external Life.
Thought can discriminate abstractions long before it can discriminate
facts in their relations with Life. It can reason logically of the true
and the false in the realms of the mind long before it can tell the
right from the wrong with correctness and readiness in the daily
ongoings of events. To discriminate justly here, we must be able to
dissipate the mists with which the love of self and the love of the
world obscure the way in which we tread; hiding that which we _ought_
to love, and displaying in enlarged proportions the things that we _do_
love, until reason loses all just data, and accepts whatever passion
offers as foundation for its judgments. Persons thus misled, often think
they really meant to walk steadfastly in the right path, and that they
are not responsible for having wandered into the wrong.
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