is never at a loss for a smooth lie or delicious sophism to justify
inaction, and, in our day, has rationalized it into a philosophy of the
mind, and idealized it into a school of poetry, and organized it into a
"hospital of incapables." It promises you the still ecstasy of a divine
repose, while it lures you surely down into the vacant dulness of
inglorious sloth. It provides a primrose path to stagnant pools, to an
Arcadia of thistles, and a Paradise of mud.

But in a mind of any primitive power, intellectual indolence is sure to
generate intellectual conceit,--a little Jack Horner, that ensconces
itself in lazy heads, and, while it dwarfs every power to the level of
its own littleness, keeps vociferating, "What a great man am I!" It is
the essential vice of this glib imp of the mind, even when it infests
large intellects, that it puts Nature in the possessive case,--labels
all its inventions and discoveries "My truth,"--and moves about the
realms of art, science, and letters in a constant fear of having its
pockets picked. Think of a man's having vouchsafed to him one of those
awful glimpses into the mysteries of creation which should be received
with a shudder of prayerful joy, and taking the gracious boon with
a smirk of all-satisfied conceit! One page in what Shakspeare calls
"Nature's infinite book of secrecy" flies a moment open to his eager
gaze, and he hears the rustling of the myriad leaves as they close and
clasp, only to make his spirit more abject, his vanity more ravenous,
his hatred of rivals more rancorous and mean. That grand unselfish
love of truth, and joy in its discovery, by whomsoever made, which
characterize the true seeker and seer of science and creative art, alone
can keep the mind alive and alert, alone can make the possession of
truth a means of elevating and purifying the man.

But if this conceit, in powerful natures, tends to belittle character,