or
all our life is some form of religion, and all our action some belief,
and there is but one law, however modified, for the greater and the
less. In your case I do think you are called upon to do your duty to
yourself; that is, to God in the end. Your own reason should examine
the whole matter in dispute by every light which can be put in
requisition; and every interest that appears to be affected by your
conduct should have its utmost claims considered--your father's in the
first place; and that interest, not in the miserable limits of a few
days' pique or whim in which it would seem to express itself; but in
its whole extent ... the _hereafter_ which all momentary passion
prevents him seeing ... indeed, the _present_ on either side which
everyone else must see. And this examination made, with whatever
earnestness you will, I do think and am sure that on its conclusion
you should act, in confidence that a duty has been performed ...
_difficult_, or how were it a duty? Will it _not_ be infinitely harder
to act so than to blindly adopt his pleasure, and die under it? Who
can _not_ do that?

I fling these hasty rough words over the paper, fast as they will
fall--knowing to whom I cast them, and that any sense they may contain
or point to, will be caught and understood, and presented in a better
light. The hard thing ... this is all I want to say ... is to act on
one's own best conviction--not to abjure it and accept another will,
and say '_there_ is my plain duty'--easy it is, whether plain or no!

How 'all changes!' When I first knew you--you know what followed. I
supposed you to labour under an incurable complaint--and, of course,
to be completely dependent on your father for its commonest
alleviations; the moment after that inconsiderate letter, I reproached
myself bitterly with the selfishness apparently involved in any
proposition I might then have made--for though I have never been at
all frightened of the world, nor mistrustful of my power to deal with
it, and get my purpose out of it if once I thought it worth while, yet
I could not but feel the consideration, of _what_ failure would _now_
be, paralyse all effort even in fancy. When you told me lately that
'you could never be poor'--all my solicitude was at an end--I had but
myself to care about, and I told you, what I believed and believe,
that I can at any time amply provide for that, and that I could
cheerfully and confidently undertake the removing _that_