Lay Morals | Page 6

perceive that life was a handicap upon strange,
wrong- sided principles; and not, as he had been told, a fair and equal
race. He began to tremble that he himself had been unjustly favoured,
when he saw all the avenues of wealth, and power, and comfort closed
against so many of his superiors and equals, and held unwearyingly
open before so idle, so desultory, and so dissolute a being as himself.
There sat a youth beside him on the college benches, who had only one
shirt to his back, and, at intervals sufficiently far apart, must stay at
home to have it washed. It was my friend's principle to stay away as
often as he dared; for I fear he was no friend to learning. But there was
something that came home to him sharply, in this fellow who had to
give over study till his shirt was washed, and the scores of others who
had never an opportunity at all. IF ONE OF THESE COULD TAKE
HIS PLACE, he thought; and the thought tore away a bandage from his
eyes. He was eaten by the shame of his discoveries, and despised
himself as an unworthy favourite and a creature of the back-stairs of
Fortune. He could no longer see without confusion one of these brave
young fellows battling up-hill against adversity. Had he not filched that
fellow's birthright? At best was he not coldly profiting by the injustice
of society, and greedily devouring stolen goods? The money, indeed,
belonged to his father, who had worked, and thought, and given up his
liberty to earn it; but by what justice could the money belong to my
friend, who had, as yet, done nothing but help to squander it? A more
sturdy honesty, joined to a more even and impartial temperament,
would have drawn from these considerations a new force of industry,
that this equivocal position might be brought as swiftly as possible to
an end, and some good services to mankind justify the appropriation of
expense. It was not so with my friend, who was only unsettled and
discouraged, and filled full of that trumpeting anger with which young
men regard injustices in the first blush of youth; although in a few
years they will tamely acquiesce in their existence, and knowingly
profit by their complications. Yet all this while he suffered many
indignant pangs. And once, when he put on his boots, like any other

unripe donkey, to run away from home, it was his best consolation that
he was now, at a single plunge, to free himself from the responsibility
of this wealth that was not his, and do battle equally against his fellows
in the warfare of life.
Some time after this, falling into ill-health, he was sent at great expense
to a more favourable climate; and then I think his perplexities were
thickest. When he thought of all the other young men of singular
promise, upright, good, the prop of families, who must remain at home
to die, and with all their possibilities be lost to life and mankind; and
how he, by one more unmerited favour, was chosen out from all these
others to survive; he felt as if there were no life, no labour, no devotion
of soul and body, that could repay and justify these partialities. A
religious lady, to whom he communicated these reflections, could see
no force in them whatever. 'It was God's will,' said she. But he knew it
was by God's will that Joan of Arc was burnt at Rouen, which cleared
neither Bedford nor Bishop Cauchon; and again, by God's will that
Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, which excused neither the
rancour of the priests nor the timidity of Pilate. He knew, moreover,
that although the possibility of this favour he was now enjoying issued
from his circumstances, its acceptance was the act of his own will; and
he had accepted it greedily, longing for rest and sunshine. And hence
this allegation of God's providence did little to relieve his scruples. I
promise you he had a very troubled mind. And I would not laugh if I
were you, though while he was thus making mountains out of what you
think molehills, he were still (as perhaps he was) contentedly practising
many other things that to you seem black as hell. Every man is his own
judge and mountain-guide through life. There is an old story of a mote
and a beam, apparently not true, but worthy perhaps of some
consideration. I should, if I were you, give some consideration to these
scruples of his, and if I were he, I should do the like by yours; for it is
not unlikely that there may be something under both. In the meantime
you must hear how my friend acted.