And it chanced that the direction of my scientific studies, which led wholly toward the mystic and the transcendental, re-acted and shed a strong light on this consciousness of the perennial war among my members. Though so profound a double-dealer, I was in no sense a hypocrite both sides of me were in dead earnest I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering. In this case, I was driven to reflect deeply and inveterately on that hard law of life, which lies at the root of religion and is one of the most plentiful springs of distress.
![too sweet to pass up empire of sin too sweet to pass up empire of sin](http://www.veganempire.net/uploads/1/3/1/5/131595185/editor/f53-4.jpg)
It was thus rather the exacting nature of my aspirations than any particular degradation in my faults, that made me what I was and, with even a deeper trench than in the majority of men, severed in me those provinces of good and ill which divide and compound man's dual nature. Many a man would have even blazoned such irregularities as I was guilty of but from the high views that I had set before me, I regarded and hid them with an almost morbid sense of shame. Hence it came about that I concealed my pleasures and that when I reached years of reflection, and began to look round me and take stock of my progress and position in the world, I stood already committed to a profound duplicity of life. And indeed the worst of my faults was a certain impatient gaiety of disposition, such as has made the happiness of many, but such as I found it hard to reconcile with my imperious desire to carry my head high, and wear a more than commonly grave countenance before the public.
![too sweet to pass up empire of sin too sweet to pass up empire of sin](https://i1.wp.com/www.persiantouring.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/serkeh.jpg)
#Too sweet to pass up empire of sin full#
Chapter 10: Henry Jekyll's Full Statement of the Case I WAS born in the year 18- to a large fortune, endowed besides with excellent parts, inclined by nature to industry, fond of the respect of the wise and good among my fellow-men, and thus, as might have been supposed, with every guarantee of an honourable and distinguished future.