the heart within the limits of the self; a thousand efforts are needed to break these bonds.  The joy of well-doing is the prize of having done well, and we must deserve the prize before we win it.  There is nothing sweeter than virtue; but we do not know this till we have tried it.  Like Proteus in the fable, she first assumes a thousand terrible shapes when we would embrace her, and only shows her true self to those who refuse to let her go.

Ever at strife between my natural feelings, which spoke of the common weal, and my reason, which spoke of self, I should have drifted through life in perpetual uncertainty, hating evil, loving good, and always at war with myself, if my heart had not received further light, if that truth which determined my opinions had not also settled my conduct, and set me at peace with myself.  Reason alone is not a sufficient foundation for virtue; what solid ground can be found?  Virtue we are told is love of order.  But can this love prevail over my love for my own well-being, and ought it so to prevail?  Let them give me clear and sufficient reason for this preference.  Their so-called principle is in truth a mere playing with words; for I also say that vice is love of order, differently understood.  Wherever there is feeling and intelligence, there is some sort of moral order.  The difference is this:  the good man orders his life with regard to all men; the wicked orders it for self alone.  The latter centres all things round himself; the other measures his radius and remains on the circumference.  Thus his place depends on the common centre, which is God, and on all the concentric circles which are His creatures.  If there is no God, the wicked is right and the good man is nothing but a fool.

My child!  May you one day feel what a burden is removed when, having fathomed the vanity of human thoughts and tasted the bitterness of passion, you find at length near at hand the path of wisdom, the prize of this life’s labours, the source of that happiness which you despaired of.  Every duty of natural law, which man’s injustice had almost effaced from my heart, is engraven there, for the second time in the name of that eternal justice which lays these duties upon me and beholds my fulfilment of them.  I feel myself merely the instrument of the Omnipotent, who wills what is good, who performs it, who will bring about my own good through the co-operation of my will with his own, and by the right use of my liberty.  I acquiesce in the order he establishes, certain that one day I shall enjoy that order and find my happiness in it; for what sweeter joy is there than this, to feel oneself a part of a system where all is good?  A prey to pain, I bear it in patience, remembering that it will soon be over, and that it results from a body which is not mine.  If I do a good deed in secret, I know that it is seen, and my conduct in this life is a pledge of the life to come.  When I suffer injustice, I say to myself, the Almighty who does all things well will reward me:  my bodily needs, my poverty, make the idea of death less intolerable.  There will be all the fewer bonds to be broken when my hour comes.