The undertone of every page, should we mask its force in hortatives,
would be,--"Buy manhood; buy verity and completeness of being; buy
spiritual endowment and accomplishment; buy insight and clearness of
heart and wholeness of spirit; pay ease, estimation, estate,--never
consider what you pay: for though pleasure is not despicable, though
wealth, leisure, and social regard are good, yet there is no tint of
inherent grace, no grain nor atom of man's spiritual substance, but it
outweighs kingdoms, outweighs all that is external to itself."
But hortatives and assertions represent feebly, and without truth of
tone, the subtile, sovereign persuasion of the book. This is said
sovereignly by _not_ being said expressly. We are at pains to affirm
only that which may be conceived of as doubtful, therefore admit a
certain doubtfulness by the act of asserting. When one begins to
asseverate his honesty, his hearers begin to question it. The last
persuasion lies in assumptions,--not in assumptions made consciously and
with effort, but in those which one makes because he cannot help it, and
even without being too much aware what he does.
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