Page:Encheiridion of Epictetus - Rolleston 1881.pdf/28

xxii differentists. But it leaves room also for a view of life very different from these, a view entirely opposed to the doctrine that a man should aim at insulating himself in the world by deadening his mind, as far as possible, to the attractions and impressions of external things. In this view the pleasures of the senses and affections are regarded as energies of the soul which supply just as needful and just as worthy a part of our total humanity as, for instance, moral conscientiousness and religious adoration. And this is not a lowering of things deemed high; it is a raising of things which too many deem common and unclean. 'I make holy,' says Walt Whitman, 'whatever I touch, or am touch'd from.' Only, in order that the things which are called secular, and which it is often thought right to despise or dread, may be discerned in this their true character, they must be seen in the light of the ever-present thought of unity; and Whitman's saying must be borne mind— I