The Buried Temple | Page 9

and has his very good reason. All
this, however, does not for a moment delude that which lies deepest
within us. An act of injustice must always shake the confidence a man
had in himself and his destiny; at a given moment, and that generally of
the gravest, he has ceased to rely upon himself alone; and this will not
be forgotten, nor will he ever again be wholly himself. He has confused,
and probably corrupted, his fortune by the introduction of strange
powers. He has lost the exact sense of his personality and of the force
that is in him. He can no longer clearly distinguish between what is his
own and comes from himself, and what he is constantly borrowing
from the pernicious collaborators whom his weakness has summoned.
He has ceased to be the general who has none but disciplined soldiers
in the army of his thoughts; he becomes the usurping chief around
whom are only accomplices. He has forsworn the dignity of the man
who will have none of the glory at which his heart can only smile as
sadly as an ardent, unhappy lover will smile at a faithless mistress.
He who is truly strong will examine with eager care the praise and
advantages that his actions have won for him, and will silently reject
whatever oversteps a certain line that he has drawn in his consciousness.
And the stronger he is, the more nearly will this line approach the one
that has already been drawn by the secret truth that lies at the bottom of

all things. An act of injustice is almost always a confession of
weakness; and very few such confessions are needed to reveal to the
enemy the most vulnerable spot of the soul. He who commits an unjust
deed that he may gain some measure of glory, or preserve the little
glory he has, does but admit that what he desires or what he possesses
is beyond his deserving, and that the part he has sought to play exceeds
his powers of loyal fulfilment. And if, notwithstanding all, he persist in
his endeavour, his life will soon be beset by falsehoods, errors, and
phantoms.
And at last, after a few acts of weakness, of treachery, of culpable
self-indulgence, the survey of our past life can bring discouragement
only, whereas we have great need that our past should inspire and
sustain us. For therein alone do we truly know what we are; it is only
our past that can come to us, in our moments of doubt, and say: "Since
you were able to do that thing, it shall lie in your power to do this thing
also. When that danger confronted you, when that terrible grief laid you
prostrate, you had faith in yourself, and you conquered. The conditions
to-day are the same; do you but preserve your faith in yourself, and
your star will be constant." But what reply shall we make if our past
can only whisper: "Your success has been solely due to injustice and
falsehood, wherefore it behoves you once more to deceive and to lie"?
No man cares to let his eyes rest on his acts of disloyalty, weakness, or
treachery; and all the events of bygone days which we cannot
contemplate calmly and peacefully, with satisfaction and confidence,
trouble and restrict the horizon which the days that are not yet are
forming far away. It is only a prolonged survey of the past that can give
to the eye the strength it needs in order to sound the future.
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No, it was not the inherent justice of things that punished Napoleon for
his three great acts of injustice, or that will punish us for our own in a
less startling, but not less painful, fashion. Nor was it an unyielding,
incorruptible, irresistible justice, "attaining the very vault of heaven."
We are punished because our entire moral being, our mind no less than
our character, is incapable of living and acting except in justice.

Leaving that, we leave our natural element; we are carried, as it were,
into a planet of which we know nothing, where the ground slips from
under our feet, and all things disconcert us; for while the humblest
intellect feels itself at home in justice, and can readily foretell the
consequences of every just act, the most profound and penetrating mind
loses its way hopelessly in the injustice itself has created, and can form
no conception of what results shall ensue. The man of genius who
forsakes the equity that the humble peasant has at heart will find all
paths strange to him; and these will be stranger still should he overstep
the limit his own sense of justice imposes: for the justice that soars
aloft, keeping pace with the intellect, creates