"Our native love of reality joins with this experience to teach us a little
reserve, and to dissuade a too sudden surrender to the brilliant qualities of
persons. Young people admire talents or particular excellences; as we grow
older, we value total powers and effects, as, the impression, the quality, the
spirit of men and things. The genius is all. The man, — it is his system: we do
not try a solitary word or act, but his habit. The acts which you praise, I
praise not, since they are departures from his faith, and are mere compliances.
The magnetism which arranges tribes and races in one polarity, is alone to be
respected; the men are steel-filings. Yet we unjustly select a particle, and
say, 'O steel-filing number one! what heart-drawings I feel to thee! what
prodigious virtues are these of thine! how constitutional to thee, and
incommunicable.' Whilst we speak, the loadstone is withdrawn; down falls our
filing in a heap with the rest, and we
continue our mummery to the wretched shaving. Let us go for universals; for
the magnetism, not for the needles. Human life and its persons are poor
empirical pretensions. A personal influence is an ignis fatuus. If they say, it
is great, it is great; if they say, it is small, it is small; you see it, and
you see it not, by turns; it borrows all its size from the momentary estimation
of the speakers: the Will-of-the-wisp vanishes, if you go too near, vanishes if
you go too far, and only blazes at one angle. Who can tell if Washington be a
great man, or no? Who can tell if Franklin be? Yes, or any but the twelve, or
six, or three great gods of fame? And they, too, loom and fade before the
eternal."
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
