United States -- History -- Constitutional period, 1789-1809 -- Fiction
His was an universal mind. On occasion he could stoop to praise one
party and vituperate another, but that was his tongue serving his
worldly interest. The man himself dealt with humanity, wherever found
and in whatever time, however differentiated, however allied, with its
ancestry of the brute and its destiny of the spirit; with the root of
the tree and the far-off flower and every intermediate development of
stem and leaf; with the soil that sustained the marvellous growth, and
with the unknown Gardener who for an unfathomable purpose had set the
inexplicable seed in an unthinkable universe. From the ephemera to the
star he accepted and conjectured, and while he often thought ill of the
living, he had never yet thought ill of life. He had long been allied
with a thinker who, with a low estimate of at least so much of human
nature as ran counter to his purposes, yet believed with devoutness in
the perfectibility of his species, and had of the future a large, calm,
and noble vision. If Lewis Rand had not Jefferson's equanimity, his sane
and wise belief in the satisfying power of common daylight, common
pleasures, all the common relations of daily life; if some strangeness
in his nature thrilled to the meteor's flight, craved the exotic,
responded to clashing and barbaric music, yet the two preached the same
doctrine. He believed in the doctrine, though he also believed that
great men are not mastered by doctrine. They made doctrine their
servant, their useful slave of the lamp. He knew--none better--that the
genie might turn and rend; that there was always one last, one fatal
thing that must not be asked. But his mind was supple, and he thought
that he could fence with the genie. Usually, when he spoke, he believed
all that he said, believed it with all the strength of his reason, and
yet--he saw the kingdoms of the world. To-night, in the autumn air, pure
and cold beneath the autumn stars, with the feeling and the fragrance of
the forest day about him, in sympathy with his audience, and conscious
in every fibre of the presence of the woman whom he loved, he saw no
other kingdom than that of high and tranquil thought.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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