Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead.  We read that when in the expedition of Alexander, Onesicritus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indian sect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of those new philosophers of the West, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one of them named Dandamis answered, that “They appeared to him to have been men of genius, but to have lived with too passive a regard for the laws.”  The philosophers of the West are liable to this rebuke still.  “They say that Lieou-hia-hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to the end their resolutions, and that they dishonored their character.  Their language was in harmony with reason and justice; while their acts were in harmony with the sentiments of men.”

Chateaubriand said:  “There are two things which grow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances in years:  the love of country and religion.  Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts an attachment justly due to their beauty.”  It may be so.  But even this infirmity of noble minds marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and faith.  It is the allowed infidelity of age.  There is a saying of the Yoloffs, “He who was born first has the greatest number of old clothes,” consequently M. Chateaubriand has more old clothes than I have.  It is comparatively a faint and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and intrinsic one.  It is because the old are weak, feel their mortality, and think that they have measured the strength of man.  They will not boast; they will be frank and humble.  Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep.  Humility is still a very human virtue.  They look back on life, and so see not into the future.  The prospect of the young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with the present.  In the declining day the thoughts make haste to rest in darkness, and hardly look forward to the ensuing morning.  The thoughts of the old prepare for night and slumber.  The same hopes and prospects are not for him who stands upon the rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who expects the setting of his earthly day.

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hinderance.  However flattering order and expediency may look, it is but the repose of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth and in this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant.  Let us see if we cannot stay here, where He has put us, on his own conditions.  Does not his law reach as far as his light?  The expedients of the nations clash with one another, only the absolutely right is expedient for all.