The cardinal thought I have in mind, which I believe will provide an escape from such intolerable moral dilemmas, can best be set forth by contrasting it with its diametrical opposite. This opposite is contained in the Buddhistic doctrine of the Karma. The doctrine of Karma implies that we are what we are to-day, good or bad, or good and bad, in consequence of good or bad deeds which we performed in previous states of existence. Our present life, according to this view, is but a link added to the chain of the innumerable lives which we have left behind us. It is true, we do not remember those past existences; but all the same, they have left their indelible mark upon us. Our fortunes, too, in this present existence, are determined by our meritorious or unmeritorious behavior in the past. If, for example, a man acts as your enemy to-day, it is because in a previous state you wantonly injured him or some one like him. Bear your disappointments, then, and the harm you receive from others without complaint; you are but suffering the penalty you deserve. Not only our fortune but our character, as has been said, is thus predetermined; we are what we are, in virtue of what we have been. If a man is a mean miser, it is because in a previous existence he was already unduly covetous of wealth. 'Tis but the seed he sowed in the past, that blossoms out in the present. If a man commit murder, it is because he was already guilty of unchecked violence in previous lives. The beginnings which he made in the past culminate in the awful present.

This is indeed a plausible theory, and it would help us to read some dark riddles if it were true, but there is not the slightest reason for supposing that it is. If ever there was a theory in the air, this is one. We not only have no recollections of any past incarnations, but we have no ground for inferring that there were any. I have mentioned the theory merely in order to exhibit its opposite. And the opposite is this: that a man is not responsible for the attractive or repulsive qualities with which he is born; that these are not to be accounted as his, in the sense that he is accountable for them. The son of the dipsomaniac, for instance, is not responsible for the morbid craving that stirs in him. He begins life, so far as responsibility is concerned, so far as merit or demerit is concerned, with a fresh start. He is not responsible for the craving; he is responsible only for assenting to it. True, the pull in his case is incomparably stronger than in others; still he can resist. He is responsible, not for the hideous thing itself, but for the degree in which he yields to it. He is meritorious to the extent of the effort he puts forth not to yield to it. The reason why this point is often obscured is that from the first awakening of consciousness, from the time when first we have been capable of deliberate choice, we have more or less often assented to these evil propulsions and have thus made them our own. It has therefore become impossible to separate clearly between that element in our acts which is imposed upon us from without, and that deliberate element in the act which is our own. Nevertheless, no fair-minded person will dispute that there are qualities or predispositions, for which—hideous as they may be—we are no more responsible than we are for being born with an unprepossessing face. Men are born with certain attractive qualities and certain atrocious qualities, but moral goodness and badness consists not in having these predispositions, but rather in consenting to them and adopting them into our will.

Now this, it seems to me, throws an entirely new light upon the duality of our inner life. The fact that we discover that there is baseness within us from which we recoil as we should from a venomous snake, need not shake our throne of reason or overthrow our balance. These base things are not we; our true self does not reside in them, until, indeed, we unite with them by assenting to them. A man's natural propensities are motley, but his soul is white. One hears much nowadays of the "white man's burden." There is such a thing as the white soul's burden. These dipsomaniac cravings with which some men are handicapped, these explosive irascibilities with which some are accursed, these tendencies to impurity with which others are defiled—these are the white soul's burden. Some men are more heavily burdened than others. But it is not the nature of the burden that makes men good or bad; it is the way they bear it, or rather it is the extent to which they transform this initial nature of theirs into a better nature. There is a distinction between the natural character and the moral character; the moral character results from the changes produced in the natural character, by the power of the moral will, or by the energy of the soul striving to imprint its nobler pattern on this difficult, oft intractable material.

But if we are not blameworthy for the repellant propensities, neither are we praiseworthy on account of the attractive and gracious qualities we may possess. The state of mind of one who is conscious of a divided inner life is torture. Nothing but an heroic treatment, nothing but a radical cure will free him from that torture; the cure is to realize that our seeming virtues are often not virtues at all. We must sacrifice our fancied virtues, if we would escape from the horrid sense of utter depravity that arises from our vices. A man puts to himself the question: How is it possible that at one moment I should be sympathetic and kind, should strive to compass the happiness of my fellow-beings, should take a generous interest in public causes, and try to act justly; and that at another moment I am so selfish and base? How can there be this oscillation from one pole to the other of human character? It is the contradiction that makes the tragedy. Am I, too, not "truly one but truly two"; am I, too, a Jekyll and a Hyde, both dwelling under the same skin? The answer is: You are neither the Hyde nor the Jekyll unless you elect to be. The true self is a principle in you superior to both these natural characters, a kind of oversoul, as Emerson puts it.

Sympathy and kindness lend themselves to the building up of a virtuous character, they are the psychological bases of virtue, but they must not be confounded with virtue itself. Taken by themselves, they represent merely a felicitous mixture of the elements of which we are compounded, no more praiseworthy than their opposites are blameworthy. Sympathy and kindness must be governed and regulated by principle, if they are to be rated as moral qualities. Left uncultivated, they often produce positively immoral results. Likewise, what is called justice is often no more than a hard adherence to rules, a love of order in our relations to others, which must be tempered and softened by the quality of mercy, before it can be accounted a moral virtue. Again, a willingness to advance the interests of a class or of a people is often no more than an enlarged egotism, with most of the defects of the narrower egotism, and must be regulated by a moral principle, if it is to attain to the dignity of a moral attribute. It is only by the conformity of our thoughts, our feelings, and our acts to principle, that morality is achieved. It is only by such means that the genial and attractive tendencies of our nature are converted into genuine virtues, and the way of escape from the double life is along the line of the moral transformation of our seeming virtues. "Mend your virtues, and your vices will take care of themselves."