And now a few, a very few, words on the latter portion of your letter. You know, my dearest Friend, how I acted myself, and that my example cannot be urged in confirmation of my judgment. I certainly strive hard to divest my mind of every prejudice, to look at the question sternly through the principle of Right separated from all mere Expedience, nay, from the question of earthly happiness _for its own sake_. But I cannot answer to myself that the image of any serious obstacle to your peace of heart, that the Thought of your full development of soul being put a stop to, of a secret anxiety blighting your _utility_ by cankering your happiness, I cannot be sure--I cannot be sure that this may not have made me _weigh_ with a trembling and unsteady hand, and less than half the presumption of error, afforded by the shrinking and recoil of your moral sense or even feeling, would render it my duty and my impulse to bring my conclusion anew to the ordeal of my Reason and Conscience. But on your side, my dear Friend! try with me to contemplate the question as a problem in the _science_ of Morals, in the first instance, and to recollect that there are false or intrusive weights possible in the other scale; that our very virtues may become, or be transformed into temptations to, or occasions of, _partial_ judgment; that we may judge partially _against_ ourselves from the very fear, perhaps contempt, of the contrary; that self may be moodily gratified by _self_-sacrifice, and that the Heart itself, in its perplexity, may acquiesce for a time in the decision as a more safe way; and, lastly, that the question can only be fully answered, when Self and Neighbour, as equi-distant [S^G^N] from the conscience or God, are blended in the common term, a _Human Being_: that we are _commanded_ to love ourselves as our Neighbour in the Law that requires a Christian to love his Neighbour as himself.
But indeed I persuade myself that this dissonance is not real between us, and that it would not have seemed to exist, had I continued the subject into the possible particular cases; _e.g._, suppose a case in which the misery, and so far the moral incapacitation, of both parties were certainly foreseen as the immediate consequence. A morality of Consequences I, you well know, reprobate; but to exclude the necessary _effect_ of an action is to take away all meaning from the word action--_to strike Duty with blindness_. I repeat it, that I do not, cannot find it in myself to believe, that _on any one_ case, made out in all its limbs, features, and circumstances, your heart and mine would prompt different verdicts.