rd such human types

[Detorres]

Urbane. Are not some born moral cripples as others are born with
physical deformities? Are not some spiritually deaf, dumb, and blind
from birth? It cannot be doubted. We are all more or less what our
fathers were, but our surroundings do much to modify us. Many men seem
to be driven on wings of passion, as leaves by tornadoes; and yet we
know that we are free, and that all life and conduct, individual and
social, must be ordered on that hypothesis. Teach men that they are not
free, and anarchy and chaos will quickly follow. No freedom? Then there
is no obligation. No one feels that he ought to do what he cannot do,
and no one will try to do what he does not feel that he ought to do. If
men are but machines, moving only as the power is turned on, there is no
moral quality in any action. If we live in a moral world, whether we can
understand it or not, we must be free to choose for ourselves. The
possibility of the soul's expansion depends on its freedom. There is no
right and no wrong, no truth and no error, if it is a slave to the
inheritance with which it was born. What gives to the invitations of
Jesus a quality so serious and so solemn is the fact that they may be
rejected. The power of choice is the most sublime endowment which man
possesses. When we have learned to know ourselves as free a long step
forward has been taken. The soul grows by a right use of the power of
choice. How may it be adjusted to this knowledge? It will undoubtedly
grow to it, but the process will be slow. It may, however, be hastened
by a use of the experience of others. No man should be allowed to begin
the battle of life as ignorant as his father was. Each new soul should
have the benefit of
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