nfathomable,
craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly.
The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of
the conflict within us,--of the definite with the indefinite--of the
substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus
far, it is the shadow which prevails,--we struggle in vain. The clock
strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is
the chanticleer--note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It
flies--it disappears--we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor
now. Alas, it is too late!

We stand upon the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss--we
grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.
Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and
horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling. By gradations,
still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor
from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights.
But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into
palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon
of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one
which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the
delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our
sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a
height. And this fall--this rushing annihilation--for the very reason
that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most
ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever
presented themselves to our imagination--for this very cause do we now
the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us
from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There
is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who,
shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge. To
indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably
lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I
say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we
fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss,
we plunge, and are destroyed.

Examine these similar actions as we will, we shall find them resulting
solely from the spirit of the Perverse. We perpetrate them because we
feel that we should not. Be