Socrates once said, in one of his wise paradoxes, that it was
better to sin knowingly than ignorantly. That is a hard saying, but
it means that at least if we sin knowingly, there is some purpose,
some courage in the soul. We take a risk with our eyes open, and
our purpose may perhaps be changed; whereas if we sin ignorantly,
we do so out of a mere base instinct, and there is no purpose that
may be educated. Anyone who has ever had the task of teaching boys
or young men to write will know how much easier it is to teach
those who write volubly and exuberantly, and desire to express
themselves, even if they do it with many faults and lapses of
taste; taste and method may be corrected, if only the instinct of
expression is there. But the young man who has no impulse to write,
who says that he could think of nothing to say, it is impossible to
teach him much, because one cannot communicate the desire for
expression.
And the same holds good of life. Those who have strong vital
impulses can learn restraint and choice; but the people who have no
particular impulses and preferences, who just live out of mere
impetus and habit, who plod along, doing in a dispirited way just
what they find to do, and lapsing into indolence and indifference
the moment that prescribed work ceases, those are the spirits that
afford the real problem, because they despise activity, and think
energy a mere exhibition of fussy diffuseness.
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