But I am sometimes afraid, lest I
indulge my quiet by criminal negligence, and voluntarily forget the
great charge with which I am entrusted. If I favour myself in a
known error, or am determined by my own ease in a doubtful question
of this importance, how dreadful is my crime!"
"No disease of the imagination," answered Imlac, "is so difficult
of cure as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt; fancy
and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift
their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from
the dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or
religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain; but
when melancholy notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the
faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or
banish them. For this reason the superstitious are often
melancholy, and the melancholy almost always superstitious.
"But do not let the suggestions of timidity overpower your better
reason; the danger of neglect can be but as the probability of the
obligation, which, when you consider it with freedom, you find very
little, and that little growing every day less.
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