For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be fathomed,--darker
than can be enlightened. I might not carry with me the feeling of my
audience in stating my own belief. But I have already shown the ground
of my hope, in adverting to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man
has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost lost the light
that can lead him back to his prerogatives. Men are become of no
account. Men in history, men in the world of to-day, are bugs, are
spawn, and are called "the mass" and "the herd." In a century, in a
millennium, one or two men;[72] that is to say, one or two
approximations to the right state of every man. All the rest behold in
the hero or the poet their own green and crude being,--ripened; yes, and
are content to be less, so _that_ may attain to its full stature. What a
testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of
his own nature, by the poor clansman, the poor partisan, who rejoices in
the glory of his chief! The poor and the low find some amends to their
immense moral capacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social
inferiority.[73] They are content to be brushed like flies from the path
of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him to that common
nature which it is the dearest desire of all to see enlarged and
glorified. They sun themselves in the great man's light, and feel it to
be their own element. They cast the dignity of man from their downtrod
selves upon the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of
blood to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat and
conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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