CHAPTER XXIII. CYNICISM; OR BEWARE OF DOGS. But THE mental life is bound up with the moral. For the sake of discussion you may dissect the contents of the soul, and separate the two in thought. they are inseparable. Men may fancy that they can work in the dry light of abstraction and theory, and that the intellect can reach its conclusions apart from the movements of the conscience or of the affections; but no man can ever become as mechanical as Babbage's calculating machine. The mind proper receives a healthy tone or the reverse from the moral and emotional nature. One of the things that threatens to vitiate and spoil the intellectual life is cynicism. It is a prevalent habit in England. It does not force itself on our notice like intemperance or selfindulgence, but it is none the less injurious to the finer instincts of men and women. It consists in a depreciation of high principle, of old truths, and of self-denying habits of life. As there are different S dogs in the world, so there are many breeds of cynics. Some disgust you at once by their foul language, their swaggering ways, their vile habits, and their disreputable jocularity. Have no converse with a man whose habitual talk is unfit for woman's ears. But these are not always the most dangerous companions. You can see that they have fed on garbage, and your purest instincts. make you shrink at once from their company. The most dangerous class is composed of those who insinuate their doubts and denials in cultivated and charming language, and beneath the cover of habits which are at once regarded as perfectly gentlemanly. Sometimes they do not themselves know that they are cynics. They have caught the tone and habit from some one else, and they go on throwing out their innuendoes and uttering their sarcasms with little heed as to the effect which they are producing. There is a wholesome dread on the part of most young men of being thought milksops. They dislike the preachy-preachy tone of talk fashionable in certain circles. They have a positive delight in shocking their elders by the utterance of "very advanced" opinions, which all the while they have in their inmost heart not adopted. They would sooner be cynics than weaklings and mere echoes. soever. But nothing robs the mind of its bloom so readily as this habit, be it adopted from any reason whatThere is a fine instinct in favour of truth and right which is to the mind what the bloom is to the grape. How beautiful that instinct is! What a thousand pities to rub it away by unnecessary friction! A little flavour of the caustic gives relish to social life; but save me from the man who is nothing but a walking mustard-pot. The modern Diogenes does not live in a tub, and is not clothed with rags. He is an educated and eminent member of society. He wears a gold chain and an eye-glass, and his accents are decidedly refined in tone. But he has lost the simple, primitive love of right and justice. He is a kind of Mephistopheles who believes that every man has his price. He is willing to pat a working man on the back and call him "my fine fellow" when votes are in question. But in essential manhood and womanhood he has no belief. Scratch his skin, and you will find the dog nature beneath it. For a dog may be highly educated; he may be fit to sit in the lap of a duchess, and to adorn the hearth-rug of a drawing-room, and to be petted by all the ladies, and to be on good terms with all the gentlemen. But the chief end of his existence is, after all, nothing but dog's-meat. Anything, |