WHY DO MEN STUPEFY THEMSELVES? 31
People drink and smoke^ not casually, not from dulness, not to cheer themselves up, not because it is pleasant, but in order to drown the voice of conscience in themselves. And if that is so, how terrible must be the consequences ! Indeed, think what a building would be like erected by people who did not use a straight plumb-rule to get the walls perpendicular, nor right-angled squares to get the corners correct, but used a soft rule which would bend to suit all irregu- larities in the walls, and a square that expanded to fit any angle, acute or obtuse.
Yet, thanks to self-stupefaction, that is just what is being done in life. Life does not accord with con- science, so conscience is made to bend to life.
Tliis is done in the life of individuals, and it is done in the life of humanity as a whole, which consists of the lives of individuals.
To grasp the full significance of such stupefying of one's consciousness, let each one carefully recall the spiritual conditions he has passed through at each period of his life. Every one will find that at each period of his life certain moral questions confronted him, which he ought to solve, and on the solution of which the whole welfare of his life depended. For the solution of these questions great concentration of attention was needful. Such concentration of attention is a labour. In every labour, especially at the com- mencement, there is a time when the work seems diffi- cult and painful, and when human weakness prompts a desire to abandon it. Physical work seems painful at first; mental work seems yet more painful. As Lessing says : people are inclined to cease to think at the point at which thought begins to be difficult ; but it is just there, I would add, that thinking begins to be fruitful. A man feels that to decide the ques- tions confronting him needs labour — often painful labour — and he wishes to evade this. If he had no means of stupefying his faculties he could not expel
