sh consequences. They do not apprehend the universe in its
great harmony. They do not trace out its web of mutual relations--a
braid of light held in the hand of Infinite Love. They do not know the
sympathy that shoots in the crystal, and shimmers in the aurora, and
beats in the heart of the ocean, and makes the silent music that rolls
from sphere to sphere along the glittering scale of heaven. If they did,
they would discover, perhaps, that the social world is constructed upon
the same plan; and man cannot be an alien from the common humanity
however hard he may try. Yes: concerning any custom, you have not only
yourself to consider, but the bearings of its influence throughout this
tissue of hearts and minds with which you are involved. You cannot
isolate yourself from your responsibilities. You cannot shut yourself
within comfortable walls, and say--"Here is the limit of my obligations,
and here I will do as I please!" You may _say_ this, but you do not rid
yourself of these claims. Through imperceptible aqueducts your influence
runs abroad; and what you do, and what you are, contributes particles of
disease or health to the social atmosphere that envelopes all. I look
around, then, upon the vices and even the crimes of the City, and I say
that some of them find root in the customs of the respectable and the
fashionable. Profligacy, which we shrink from in its open profession,
and which appears abominable in its avowed haunts, finds encouragement
wherever the libertine receives the smile of beauty, and the guilt of
the meanest sort of a man is excused on account of an agreeable manner.
Thus the poison of the snake, and the blight of his venom on many a
reputation and many a womanly heart, is all forgotten in the
drawing-room, because of the fascination of his hiss and the glitter of
his skin. Again, the Tempter has an Ally in the world of Traffic,
wherever bad things are stamped with respectable names--when, for
instance, swindling is called "smartness," and robbery "per-centage."
Among people of less note in the world these matters are named
"cheating" and "stealing," and some of them may take punishment the more
reluctantly because they cannot perceive the difference. And, still
again, I think that a little use of intoxicating drinks is like the
little matter that kindles a great fire, and that there would not be so
much intemperance if there were not so many "temperate" drinkers. The
sluices of the grog-shop are fed