. . . For I was
afraid thou wouldst hear me too soon, and heal me at once of my
disease of lust, which I wished to satiate rather than to see
extinguished. With what lashes of words did I not scourge my own
soul. Yet it shrank back; it refused, though it had no excuse to
offer. . . . I said within myself: 'Come, let it be done now,'
and as I said it, I was on the point of the resolve. I all but
did it, yet I did not do it. And I made another effort, and
almost succeeded, yet I did not reach it, and did not grasp it,
hesitating to die to death, and live to life, and the evil to
which I was so wonted held me more than the better life I had not
tried."[92]
[92] Confessions, Book VIII., Chaps. v., vii., xi., abridged.
There could be no more perfect description of the divided will,
when the higher wishes lack just that last acuteness, that touch
of explosive intensity, of dynamogenic quality (to use the slang
of the psychologists), that enables them to burst their shell,
and make irruption efficaciously into life and quell the lower
tendencies forever. In a later lecture we shall have much to say
about this higher excitability.
Pages:
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312