The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1Webster, Daniel
History
The Works of Daniel Webster, Volume 1
Webster, Daniel
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed,
they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless
advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head
of the government; no more, as we have recently seen them, aged and
venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They
are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die!
To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all
that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs
of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in
the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and
homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live,
emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and
efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue
to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country,
but throughout the civilized world. A superior and commanding human
intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift,
is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then
giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent
heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common
mass of human mind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and
finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all
light, all on fire, from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon
died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his
miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just
mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and
gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still
known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in
the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of
space.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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