When Tennyson makes Ulysses say, “I am a part of all that I have seen,” it ought to be rather the converse,—“What I have seen becomes a part of me.” [Illustration] 31. In what regards policy—government—the interest of the many is sacrificed to the few; in what regards society, the morals and happiness of individuals are sacrificed to the many. 32. We spoke to-night of the cowardice, the crime of a particular suicide: O. G. agreed as to this instance, but added: “There is a different aspect under which suicide might be regarded. It is not always, I think, from a want of religion, or in a spirit of defiance, or a want of confidence in God that we quit life. It is as if we should flee to the feet of the Almighty and embrace his knees, and exclaim, ‘O my father! take me home! I have endured as long as it was possible; I can endure no more, so I come to you!’” Of an amiable man with a disagreeable expressionless face, she said: “His countenance always gives me the idea of matter too strong, too hard for the soul to pierce through. It is as a plaster mask which I long to break (making the gesture with her hand), that I may see the countenance of his heart, for that must be beautiful!” [Illustration] 33. Carlyle said to me: “I want to see some institution to teach a man the truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present existence is capable; where’s the use of sending him to study what the Greeks and Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the Greeks and Romans would have been what they were, if they had just only studied what the Phœnicians did before them?” I should have answered, had I dared: “Yet perhaps the Greeks and Romans would not have been what they were if the Egyptians and Phœnicians had not been before them.” [Illustration] 34. Can there be _progress_ which is not _progression_—which does not leave a past from which to start—on which to rest our foot when we spring forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or obliterates the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or pulls down the memorials he has built by the way side. We cannot _get on_ without linking our present and our future with our past. All reaction is destructive—all progress conservative. When we have destroyed that which the past built up, what reward have we?—we are forced to fall back, and have to begin anew. “Novelty,” as Lord Bacon says, “cannot be content to add, but it must deface.” For this very reason novelty is not progress, as the French would try to persuade themselves and us. We gain nothing by defacing and trampling down the idols of the past to set up new ones in their places—let it be sufficient to leave them behind us, measuring our advance by keeping them in sight. [Illustration] 35.