,
"I know a little of her worth.
"And I will tell you what I know,
"That, in the first place, she is a fact, and as such, it is not wise to
ignore her, but at least to walk once round her, and see her back as well
as her front.
"The case to me seems to be this. A man feels in himself the love of
praise. Every man does who is not a brute. It is a universal human faculty;
Carlyle nicknames it the sixth sense. Who made it? God or the devil? Is
it flesh or spirit? a difficult question; because tamed animals grow to
possess it in a high degree; and our metaphysician does not yet allow
them spirit. But, whichever it be, it cannot be for bad: only bad when
misdirected, and not controlled by reason, the faculty which judges between
good and evil. Else why has God put His love of praise into the heart of
every child which is born into the world, and entwined it into the holiest
filial and family affections, as the earliest mainspring of good actions?
Has God appointed that every child shall be fed first with a necessary
lie, and afterwards come to the knowledge of your supposed truth, that the
praise of God alone is to be sought? Or are we to believe that the child is
intended to be taught as delicately and gradually as possible the painful
fact, that the praise of all men is not equally worth having, and to use
his critical faculty to discern the praise of good men from the praise
of bad, to seek the former and despise the latter? I should say that the
last was the more reasonable.
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