US when he leapt into the gulf,
had he been so drunk as not to know what he was about. The will which
depends on unscrupulousness is like the benumbed hand or intoxicated
soul. Quench conscience, as a sense of right and obligation, and you
can, of course, do a great deal from which another would shrink--and
therefore be called "weak-minded" by the fools.

There is another type of person who imposes on the world and on self
as being strong-minded and gifted with Will. It is the imperturbable
cool being, always self-possessed, with little sympathy for emotion.
In most cases such minds result from artificial training, and they
break down in real trials. I do not say that they cannot weather a
storm or a duel, or stand fire, or get through what novelists regard
as superlative stage trials; but, in a moral crisis, the gentleman or
lady whose face is all Corinthian brass is apt like that brass in a
fire to turn pale. These folk get an immense amount of undeserved
admiration as having Will or self-command, when they owe what staying
quality they have (like the preceding class) rather to a lack of good
qualities than their inspiration.

There are, alas! not a few who regard _Will_ as simply identical with
mere obstinacy, or stubbornness, the immovability of the Ass, or Bull,
or Bear--that is, they reduce it to an animal power. But, as this
often or generally amounts in animal or man to mere insensible
sulkiness--as far remote as possible from enlightened mental action,
it is surely unjust to couple it with the _Voluntary_ or pure
intelligent _Will_, by which all must understand the very acme of
active Intellect.

Therefore it follows, that the errors, mistakes, and perversions which
have grown about Will in popular opinion, like those which have
accumulated round Christianity, are too often mistaken for the truth.
Pure Will is, and must be by its very nature, perfectly _free_, for
the more it is hindered, or hampered, or controlled in any way, the
less is it independent volition. Therefore, pare Will, free from all
restraint can only act in, or as, Moral Law. Acting in accordance with
very mean, immoral, obstinate motives is, so to speak, obeying as a
slave the devil. The purer the motive the purer the Will, and in very
truth the purer the stronger, or firmer. Every man has his own idea of
Will according to his morality--even as it is said that every man's
conception of God is himself infinitely magnified--or, as SYDNEY SMIT