motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight to utter darkness.—He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time be has arrived at a given point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is merely that between the hour-hand, and that which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the motion, of the latter both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue: for he has lied to mankind only and not to himself—the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.
120. Inward Blindness.
Talk to a blind man—he knows, he
