has her Horsel
and her devotees, who love her' for her own sake.

Between these two, I now felt I had to choose. My two natures had memory
in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared
between them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive
apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the
pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or
but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in
which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more than a father's
interest; Hyde had more than a son's indifference. To cast in my lot
with Jekyll was to die to those appetites which I had long secretly
indulged, and had of late begun to pamper. To cast it in with Hyde was
to die to a thousand interests and aspirations, and to become, at a blow
and for ever, despised and friendless. The bargain might appear unequal;
but there was still another consideration in the scale; for while Jekyll
would suffer smartingly in the fires of abstinence, Hyde would be not
even conscious of all that he had lost. Strange as my circumstances
were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man;
much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and
trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast
a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part, and was found
wanting in the strength to keep to it.

*****

Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty
of; but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and
hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. It was thus rather the
exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my
faults that made me what I was, and, with even a deeper trench than in
the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which
divide and compound man's dual nature. In this case I was driven to
reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies
at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of
distress. Though so profound a double dealer, I was in no sense a
hypocrite; both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself
when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured,
in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of
sorrow and suffering. And it chanced that the direction of my scientific
studies, which led wholly towards the mysti