y unmolested to their own objects
of sense, and drag the mind down to their own sensual level. Sentiment
decays, the vision fades, faith in principles departs, the moment that
appetite rules. On the closing doors of that "sensual stye," as over the
gate of Dante's hell, be it written: "Let those who enter here leave
hope behind."

But a more refined operation of this pestilent indolence is its way
of infusing into the mind the delusive belief that it can attain the
objects of activity without its exercise. Under this illusion, men
expect to grow wise, as men who gamble in stocks expect to grow rich, by
chance, and not by work. They invest in mediocrity in the confident hope
that it will go many hundred per cent. above par; and so shocking has
been the inflation of the intellectual currency of late years, that this
speculation of indolence sometimes partially succeeds. But a revulsion
comes,--and then brass has to make a break-neck descent to reach its
proper level below gold. There are others whom indolence deludes by some
trash about "fits" of inspiration, for whose Heaven-sent spasms they are
humbly to wait. There is, it seems, a lucky thought somewhere in the
abyss of possibility, which is somehow, at some time, to step out
of essence into substance, and take up its abode in their capacious
minds,--dutifully kept unoccupied in order that the expected celestial
visitor may not be crowded for room. Chance is to make them king, and
chance to crown them, without their stir! There are others still, who,
while sloth is sapping the primitive energy of their natures, expect to
scale the fortresses of knowledge by leaps and not by ladders, and who
count on success in such perilous gymnastics, not by the discipline of
the athlete, but by the dissipation of the idler. Indolence, indeed,
is never at a loss for a smooth lie or delicious sophism to justify
inaction, and, in our day, has rationalized it into a philosophy of the
mind, and idealized it into a school of poetry, and organized it into a
"hospital of incapables." It promises you the still ecstasy of a divine
repose, while it lures you surely down into the vacant dulness of
inglorious sloth. It provides a primrose path to stagnant pools, to an
Arcadia of thistles, and a Paradise of mud.

But in a mind of any primitive power, intellectual indolence is sure to
generate intellectual conceit,--a little Jack Horner, that ensconces
itself in lazy heads, and, while it dwarfs ev