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triumph."
"Yet," replied I, "nature always presents to our eyes the appearance of a
patient: while there is an active principle in man which is capable of
ruling fortune, and at least of tacking against the gale, till it in some
mode conquers it."
"There is more of what is specious than true in your distinction," said my
companion. "Did we form ourselves, choosing our dispositions, and our
powers? I find myself, for one, as a stringed instrument with chords and
stops--but I have no power to turn the pegs, or pitch my thoughts to a
higher or lower key."
"
Other men," I observed, "may be better musicians."
"I talk not of others, but myself," replied Raymond, "and I am as fair an
example to go by as another. I cannot set my heart to a particular tune, or
run voluntary changes on my will. We are born; we choose neither our
parents, nor our station; we are educated by others, or by the world's
circumstance, and this cultivation, mingling with our innate disposition,
is the soil in which our desires, passions, and motives grow."
"
There is much truth in what you say," said I, "and yet no man ever acts
upon this theory. Who, when he makes a choice, says, Thus I choose, because
I am necessitated? Does he not on the contrary feel a freedom of will
within him, which, though you may call it fallacious, still actuates him as
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