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An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the
sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly
questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness
of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than
distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has not been
tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by
circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every
intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and clear, the most
laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his
tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving
it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses;
yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and
parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough.
The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to
an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and
mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is
indulged.
We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that
it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life
calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are
consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of
whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be
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