And the
same thing happens when I survey lives stained with folly, wrecked by
weakness, or made detestable by sin and crime. I also have known
folly, weakness, sin; but for me there were compulsions to a virtuous
life which these never knew. Why am I not as these? Perhaps because
my nature rests on a securer equipoise, or because there is in it a
certain power of moral recuperation which these have lacked, or because
I have the prudence that stops short of consummated folly, or because
my environment imposes and creates restraint, or because I have never
known the peculiar violence of temptation before which they succumbed.
There may be a hundred reasons, but scarce one which gives me cause for
boasting. With their life to live, had I done better? Exposed to
their temptations, deprived of all the helpful friendships that have
interposed between my life and ruin, should I have done as well? In
those wakeful hours of night when all my past life runs before me like
a frieze of flame, how clearly do I see how frequently I grazed the
snare, hung over gulfs of wild disaster, courted ruin, and escaped I
know not how? Remembering this, can I be hard towards those who fell?
Can I pride myself on an escape in which my will had little part, a
deliverance which was a kind of miracle, wrought not by virtue or
discretion, but by some outside force which thrust out a strong and
willing hand to save me? And, as these thoughts pursue me, I find
myself all at once regarding these wrecked and miserable lives not from
the outside but the inside.
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