This disjoining of deed from
will, of practice from theory, is to put asunder what God has joined by
an indissoluble sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action
become corrupt; and there is no self-delusion more fatal than that which
makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while
the life is grovelling and sensual,--witness Coleridge. In his case we
feel something like disgust. But where, as in his son Hartley, there is
hereditary infirmity, where the man sees the principle that might rescue
him slip from the clutch of a nerveless will, like a rope through the
fingers of a drowning man, and the confession of faith is the moan of
despair, there is room for no harsher feeling than pity. Rousseau showed
through life a singular proneness for being convinced by his own
eloquence; he was always his own first convert; and this reconciles his
power as a writer with his weakness as a man. He and all like him mistake
emotion for conviction, velleity for resolve, the brief eddy of sentiment
for the midcurrent of ever-gathering faith in duty that draws to itself
all the affluents of conscience and will, and gives continuity of purpose
to life. They are like men who love the stimulus of being under
conviction, as it is called, who, forever getting religion, never get
capital enough to retire upon and spend for their own need and the common
service.
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