would let
even that work instead of neglecting it, it would gain strength from
hour to hour, and waken up one at a time each torpid and dishonored
faculty till our whole nature became alive with strivings against self,
and every avenue was open wide for God. But the apathy, the numbness of
the soul, what can be said of such a symptom but that it means the
creeping on of death? There are accidents in which the victims feel no
pain. They are well and strong they think. But they are dying. And if
you ask the surgeon by their side what makes him give this verdict, he
will say it is this numbness over the frame which tells how some of the
parts have lost already the very capacity for life.

Nor is it the least tragic accompaniment of this process that its
effects may even be concealed from others. The soul undergoing
Degeneration, surely by some arrangement with Temptation planned in the
uttermost hell, possesses the power of absolute secrecy. When all within
is festering decay and rottenness, a Judas, without anomaly, may kiss
his Lord. This invisible consumption, like its fell analogue in the
natural world, may even keep its victim beautiful while slowly slaying
it. When one examines the little _Crustacea_ which have inhabited for
centuries the lakes of the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, one is at first
astonished to find these animals apparently endowed with perfect eyes.
The pallor of the head is broken by two black pigment specks,
conspicuous indeed as the only bits of color on the whole blanched body;
and these, even to the casual observer, certainly represent well-defined
organs of vision. But what do they with eyes in these Stygian waters?
There reigns an everlasting night. Is the law for once at fault? A swift
incision with the scalpel, a glance with a lens, and their secret is
betrayed. The eyes are a mockery. Externally they are organs of
vision--the front of the eye is perfect; behind, there is nothing but a
mass of ruins. The optic nerve is a shrunken, atrophied and insensate
thread. These animals have organs of vision, and yet they have no
vision. They have eyes, but they see not.

Exactly what Christ said of men: They had eyes, but no vision. And the
reason is the same. It is the simplest problem of natural history. The
_Crustacea_ of the Mammoth Cave have chosen to abide in darkness.
Therefore they have become fitted for it. By refusing to see they have
waived the right to see. And Nature has grimly humored them.