ch ordinarily springs from the combativeness
of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. The
phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of
self-defence. It is our safeguard against injury. Its principle regards
our well-being; and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously
with its development. It follows, that the desire to be well must
be excited simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a
modification of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I
term perverseness, the desire to be well is not only not aroused, but a
strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the
sophistry just noticed. No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly
questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness
of the propensity in question. It is not more incomprehensible than
distinctive. There lives no man who at some period has not been
tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by
circumlocution. The speaker is aware that he displeases; he has every
intention to please, he is usually curt, precise, and clear, the most
laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his
tongue, it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving
it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses;
yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and
parentheses this anger may be engendered. That single thought is enough.
The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the desire to
an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret and
mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences) is
indulged.

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that
it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life
calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are
consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of
whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be
undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow, and why?
There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with
no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more
impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety
arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because u