"Rather awkward ones, sometimes. Thoughts of hatred, for instance, may issue in murder, and that may lead to your own death. If the thoughts had been curbed in the first instance, the miserable results would have been spared to all the sufferers. And `no man liveth to himself': it is very seldom that you can bring suffering on one person only. It is almost sure to run over to two or three more. And as the troubles of every one of them will run over to another two or three, like circles in the water, the sorrow keeps ever widening, so that the consequences of one small act or word for evil are incalculable. It takes God to reckon them." "Eh, don't you, now!" said Isel with a shudder. "Makes me go all creepy like, that does. I shouldn't dare to do a thing all the days of my life, if I looked at every thing that way." "Friend," said Gerhardt gravely, "these things _are_. It does not destroy them to look away from them. It is not given to us to choose whether we will act, but only how we will act. In some manner, for good or for ill, act we must." "I declare I won't listen to you, Gerard. I'm going creepy-crawly this minute. Oh deary me! you do make things look just awful." "Rubbish!" said Haimet, driving a nail into the wall with unnecessary vehemence. "It is the saying of a wise man, friends," remarked Gerhardt, "that `he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little.' And with equal wisdom he saith again, `Be not confident in a plain way.'" [Note 5.] "But it is all nonsense to say `we must act,'" resumed Haimet. "We need not act in any way unless we choose. How am I acting if I sit here and do nothing?" "Unless you are resting after work is done, you are setting an example of idleness or indecision. Not to do, is sometimes to do in a most effectual way. Not to hinder the doing of evil, when it lies in your power, is equivalent to doing it." Haimet stared at Gerhardt for a moment. "What a wicked lot of folks you would make us out to be!" "So we are," said Gerhardt with a quiet smile. "Oh, I see!--that's how you come by your queer notions of every man's heart being bad. Well, you are consistent, I must admit." "I come by that notion, because I have seen into my own. I think I have most thoroughly realised my own folly by noting in how many cases, if I were endued with the power of God, I should not do what He does: and in like manner, I most realise my own wickedness by seeing the frequent instances wherein my will raises itself up in opposition to the will of God." "But how is it, then, that I never see such things in myself?" "Your eyes are shut, for one thing. Moreover, you set up your own will as the standard to be followed, without seeking to ascertain the will of God. Therefore you do not see the opposition between them."