The old Chinese fairy story hits upon a fundamental and vital truth.
These celestials tell their children that each child is accompanied by
day and by night, every moment of his life, by an invisible fairy, who
is provided with a pencil and tablet. It is the duty of this fairy to
put down every deed of the child, both good and evil, in an indelible
record which will one day rise as a witness against him. So it is in
very truth with our brains. The wrong act may have been performed in
secret, no living being may ever know that we performed it, and a
merciful Providence may forgive it; but the inexorable monitor of our
deeds was all the time beside us writing the record, and the history of
that act is inscribed forever in the tissues of our brain. It may be
repented of bitterly in sackcloth and ashes and be discontinued, but its
effects can never be quite effaced; they will remain with us a handicap
till our dying day, and in some critical moment in a great emergency we
shall be in danger of defeat from that long past and forgotten act.
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