which he renders, “He cried out this sentiment of Heracles, ‘O wretched Virtue, after all, thou art a name, but I cherished thee as a fact. Fortune’s slave wast thou;’ and called upon one of those with him to slay him.” Professor Wright adds that Theodorus Prodromus, a Byzantine poet of the twelfth century, said, “What Brutus says (O Virtue, etc.) I pronounce to be ignoble and unworthy of Brutus’s soul.” It seems very doubtful whence the Greek verses came. [140] _Page 233, note 1._ Just ten years earlier, Hon. Samuel Hoar, the Commissioner of Massachusetts, sent to Charleston, South Carolina, in the interests of our colored citizens there constantly imprisoned and ill used, had been expelled from that state with a show of force. See _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_. [141] _Page 234, note 1._ The sending back of Onesimus by Paul was a precedent precious in the eyes of pro-slavery preachers, North and South, in those days, ignoring, however, Paul’s message, “Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved, specially to me, but how much more unto thee, both in the flesh and in the Lord. If thou count me therefore a partner, receive him as myself.”[E] [142] _Page 235, note 1._ The hydrostatic paradox has been before alluded to as one of Mr. Emerson’s favorite symbols, the balancing of the ocean by a few drops of water. In many places he dwells on the power of minorities—a minority of one. In “Character” (_Lectures and Biographical Sketches_) he says, “There was a time when Christianity existed in one child.” For the value and duty of minorities, see _Conduct of Life_, pp. 249 ff., _Letters and Social Aims_, pp. 219, 220. [143] _Page 236, note 1._ This was a saying of Mahomet. What follows, with regard to the divine sentiments always soliciting us, is thus rendered in “My Garden:” Ever the words of the gods resound; But the porches of man’s ear Seldom in this low life’s round Are unsealed, that he may hear. [144] _Page 236, note 2._ This is the important key to the essay on Self-Reliance. [145] _Page 238, note 1._ In the “Sovereignty of Ethics” Mr. Emerson quotes an Oriental poet describing the Golden Age as saying that God had made justice so dear to the heart of Nature that, if any injustice lurked anywhere under the sky, the blue vault would shrivel to a snake-skin, and cast it out by spasms. [146] _Page 240, note 1._ There seems to be some break in the construction here probably due to the imperfect adjustment of lecture-sheets. It would seem that the passage should read: “Liberty is never cheap. It is made difficult because freedom is the accomplishment and perfectness of man—the finished man; earning and bestowing good;” etc. [147] _Page 241, note 1._ See _Lectures and Biographical Sketches_, pp. 246 and 251.