Life is made of illusions, and a very common one is the opinion you hear
expressed in every village: 'O yes, if I lived in New York or
Philadelphia, Cambridge or New Haven or Boston or Andover there might be
fit society; but it happens that there are no fine young men, no
superior women in my town.' You may hear this every day; but it is a
shallow remark. Ah! have you yet to learn that the eye altering alters
all; "that the world is an echo which returns to each of us what we
say"? 'Tis not examples of greatness, but sensibility to see them, that
is wanting. The good botanist will find flowers between the street
pavements, and any man filled with an idea or a purpose will find
examples and illustrations and coadjutors wherever he goes. Wit is a
magnet to find wit, and character to find character. Do you not know
that people are as those with whom they converse? And if all or any are
heavy to me, that fact accuses me. Why complain, as if a man's debt to
his inferiors were not at least equal to his debt to his superiors? If
men were equals, the waters would not move; but the difference of level
which makes Niagara a cataract, makes eloquence, indignation, poetry, in
him who finds there is much to communicate. With self-respect, then,
there must be in the aspirant the strong fellow-feeling, the humanity,
which makes men of all classes warm to him as their leader and
representative.
We are thus forced to express our instinct of the truth, by exposing the
failures of experience. The man whom we have not seen, in whom no regard
of self degraded the adorer of the laws,--who by governing himself
governed others; sportive in manner, but inexorable in act; who sees
longevity in his cause; whose aim is always distinct to him; who is
suffered to be himself in society; who carries fate in his eye;--he it
is whom we seek, encouraged in every good hour that here or hereafter he
shall be found.
IMMORTALITY.
IMMORTALITY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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