The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: fade gradually from his mind, and began to trust less to an opinion
which he never could prove to others, and which he now found
subject to variation, from causes in which reason had no part. "If
I am accidentally left alone for a few hours," said he, "my
inveterate persuasion rushes upon my soul, and my thoughts are
chained down by some irresistible violence; but they are soon
disentangled by the Prince's conversation, and instantaneously
released at the entrance of Pekuah. I am like a man habitually
afraid of spectres, who is set at ease by a lamp, and wonders at
the dread which harassed him in the dark; yet, if his lamp be
extinguished, feels again the terrors which he knows that when it
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