You have seen a man carrying
heavy weight in life, perhaps in the form of inveterate wrong-headedness
and suspiciousness; but instead of pitying him, our impulse would rather
be to beat him upon that perverted head. We pity physical malformation
or unhealthiness; but our bent is to be angry with intellectual and
moral malformation or unhealthiness. We feel for the deformed man, who
must struggle on at that sad disadvantage; feeling it, too, much more
acutely than you would readily believe. But we have only indignation for
the man weighted with far worse things, and things which, in some cases
at least, he can just as little help. You have known men whose extra
pounds, or even extra ton, was a hasty temper, flying out of a sudden
into ungovernable bursts: or a moral cowardice leading to trickery and
falsehood: or a special disposition to envy and evil-speaking: or a
very strong tendency to morbid complaining about their misfortunes and
troubles: or an invincible bent to be always talking of their sufferings
through the derangement of their digestive organs. Now, you grow angry
at these things. You cannot stand them. And there is a substratum of
truth to that angry feeling. A man _can_ form his mind more than he can
form his body.
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