Thus the whole
argument falls to the ground when we confess that possession of
knowledge does not guarantee the application of it. Therefore the two
things, knowledge and virtue, according to universal experience, are
not identical. Humanists indeed use the word "knowledge" for the most
part in an esoteric sense. Knowledge is virtue in the sense that it
enables us to see virtue as excellent and desirable; it is not virtue
in the sense that it alone enables us to acquire it.
Who, indeed, that has ever lived in the far country does not know
that one factor in its fascination was a bittersweet awareness of the
folly, the inevitable disaster, of such alien surroundings. Who
also does not know that often when the whole will is set to identify
conduct with conviction, it may be, for all its passionate and bitter
sincerity, set in vain. In every hour of every day there are hundreds
of lives that battle honestly, but with decreasing spiritual forces,
with passion and temptation. Sometimes a life is driven by the fierce
gales of enticement, the swift currents of desire, right upon the
jagged rock of some great sin. Lives that have seemed strong and fair
go down every day, do they not, and shock us for a moment with their
irremediable catastrophe? And we must not forget that before they went
down, for many a month or even year they have been hard beset lives.
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