THE ACTUAL AND THE IDEAL.

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again, is not in the same good condition with another which always flourished on the Trunk. For though the First does not grow out of its Kind, yet it suffers someAntoninus.

what in its Figure and Beauty.

We have seen or heard of many extraordinary young men who never ripened, or whose performance in actual life was not extraordinary. When we see their air and mien, when we hear them speak of society, of books, of religion, we admire their superiority; they seem to throw contempt on the whole state of the world; theirs is the tone of a youthful giant, who is sent to work revolutions. But they enter an active profession, and the forming Colossus shrinks to the common size of man. The magic they used, was the ideal tendencies which always make the Actual ridiculous; but the tough world had its revenge the moment they put their horses of the sun to plough in its furrow. They found no example and no companion, and their heart fainted. What then? The lesson they gave in their first aspirations is yet true, and a better valor, and a purer truth, shall one day execute their will, and put the world to shame. Emerson.

At this very moment there is perhaps hardly a youth to be found, who does not believe, that, like a shrine, the sanctuary of a saint, or a mummy case, he bears secretly about within him a spiritual giant, and that, if the shrine or the mummy case could be opened, the said giant would be found within, alive and vigorous. Yes, the writer of

78

EVERY PERSON HOLY TO US.

this sentence was, in early life, five or six great men in quick succession, as he imitated them exactly. But when we come to years, that is, to understanding what is really great, we find ourselves to be nobody. Richter.

Most natures are insolvent; cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and so do lean and beg day and night continually. Emerson.

Thou art in the end what thou art. Put on wigs with millions of curls, set thy foot upon ell-high rocks. Thou what thou art.

abidest ever

Goethe.

"Here I am!" that his

friends sparing him may rejoice in him.

Ib.

A man can at last only say

Lass uns nicht vergessen

Dass von sich selbst der Mensch nicht scheiden kann.

Ib.

To sit idle aloft, like living statues, like absurd Epicurus-gods in pampered isolation, in exclusion from the glorious fateful battle-field of this God's-world, it is a poor life for a man, when all Upholsterers and French Cooks have done their utmost for it! Nay, what a shallow delusion is this we have all got into. That any man should or can keep himself apart from men, have 'no business' with them, except a cash account 'business!'

EVERY PERSON HOLY TO US.

79

It is the silliest tale a distressed generation of men ever

took to telling one another.

Men cannot live isolated;

we are all bound together, for mutual good or else for mutual misery, as living nerves in the same body. No highest man can disunite himself from any lowest.

Men reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of

a man.'

In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men.

Carlyle.

How true is that of Novalis: It is certain, my belief gains quite infinitely, the moment I can convince another mind thereof!' Carlyle.

We must never undervalue any person. The workman loves not that his work should be despised in his presence. Now God is present everywhere, and every person is his work. De Sales.

Grau, theurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Lebens goldner Baum.

Goethe.

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a form, in forms, like my own.

I live in

society; with persons who answer to thoughts in my own

mind, or outwardly express to me a certain obedience to the great instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of a common nature; and so these other souls, these separated selves, draw me as nothing else can. Persons are supplementary to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons. Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience of men discovers the identical nature appearing through them all. Emerson.

A person is ever holy to us; is the pitifullest mortal person, think you, indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or, failing all these, unite ourselves to him? Carlyle.

I indeed regarded men with an excess both of love and fear.

The mystery of a person, indeed, is ever divine, to him that has a sense for the godlike. Ib.

RELATIONS TO OTHER MEN.

SOCIETY.

LIFE A BETTER TEACHER THAN BOOKS.

Books and solitude have their uses, and for the earnest aspirant after spiritual perfection they are altogether indispensable; but they are not the only, nor yet the chief means of the Soul's growth in grace, which is advanced by thorough acquaintance with the woes and the wants, the wishes and the workings of one human soul, far more efficiently than by the diligent perusal of a hundred folios.

The discharge of duty to one another is not only exemption from the sin of omitting it; it is also growing strength, it is self-knowledge. The really earnest performance of any one duty thrills the mind with a consciousness of power, which is itself an increase of strength; it quickens into activity the disinterested feeling, and throws up from the soul's depths as it were into our notice, truths which, for their beauty and worth, it surprises us should never have occurred to our minds.

Of the relations of life many have plainly a religious