Page:Familiar letters of Henry David Thoreau.djvu/224

 200 GOLDEN AGE OF ACHIEVEMENT. [1848,

practically in our lives to correct all the defects which our imagination detects. The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high. So high as a tree aspires to grow, so high it will find an atmosphere suited to it. Every man should stand for a force which is perfectly irresistible. How can any man be weak who dares to be at all? Even the tenderest plants force their way up through the hardest earth, and the crev ices of rocks ; but a man no material power can resist. What a wedge, what a beetle, what a catapult, is an earnest man ! What can resist him?

It is a momentous fact that a man may be good, or he may be bad ; his life may be true, or it may be false ; it may be either a shame or a glory to him. The good man builds himself up ; the bad man destroys himself.

But whatever we do we must do confidently (if we are timid, let us, then, act timidly), not expecting more light, but having light enough. If we confidently expect more, then let us wait for it. But what is this which we have ? Have we not already waited ? Is this the beginning of time ? Is there a man who does not see clearly beyond, though only a hair s breadth beyond where he at any time stands ?

If one hesitates in his path, let him not pro ceed. Let him respect his doubts, for doubts,