Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/782

774 friends who daunt and overpower us, to whom for a little we yield more than their due.

This rule is universal, that no man can admire downward. All enthusiasm rises and lifts the subject of it. That which seems to you so base an activity is lifted above low natures. What matter, then, where the standard floats at this moment, since it cannot remain fixed?

Perfection retreats, as the horizon withdraws before a traveller, and lures us on and on. It even travels faster than our best endeavors can follow, and so beckons to us from farther and farther away. We may give ourselves to the ideal, or we may turn aside to appetite and sleep; but in every moment of returning sanity we are again on our feet and again upon an endless ascending road.

When a man has tasted power, when he sees the supply there is so near in Nature for all need, he hungers for reinforcement. That desire is prayer. It opens its own doors and takes supplies from God's hand. No wise man can grudge the necessary use of the mind to serve the body with shelter and food, for we go merrily to Nature, and with our milk we drink order, justice, beauty, and benignity. We cannot take the husks on which our bodies are fed, without expressing these juices also, which circulate as sap and blood through the sphere. We cannot touch any object but some spark of vital electricity is shot through us. Every creature is a battery, charged not with mere vegetable or animal, but with moral life. Our metaphysical being is fed from something hidden in rocks and woods, in streams and skies, in fire, water, earth, and air. While we dig roots, and gather nuts, and hunt and roast our meat, our blood is quickened not in the heart alone. Deeper currents are swelled. The springs of our humanity are opened in Nature; for that which streams through the landscape, and comes in at the eye and ear, is plainly the same fluid which enters as consciousness, and is the life by which we live. While we enjoy this spiritual refreshment and keep ourselves open to it, we may dig without degradation; but if our minds fasten on the thing to be done, on commodity and safety, on getting and having, those avenues seem to close by which the soul was fed. Then we forget our incalculable chances and certainties; we go mad, and make the mind a muck-rake. If a man will direct his faculties to any limited and not to illimitable ends, he cripples his faculties. No matter whether he is deluded by a fortune or a reputation or position, if he does not give himself wholly to grow and be a man, regardless of minor advantages, he has lost his way in the world. "Be true," said Schiller, "to the dream of thy youth." That dream was generous, not sordid. We must be surrendered to the perfection which claims us, and suffer no narrow aim to postpone that insatiable demand.

But the potency of life will bring back every wanderer, as he well knows. Every sinner keeps his trunk packed, ready to return to the good. The poor traders really mean to buy love with their gold. Feeling the hold of a chain which binds us even when we do not cling to it, we grow prodigal of time and power. The essence of life, as we enjoy it, is a sense of the inextinguishable ascending tendency in life; and this gives courage when there is yet no reverence or devotion.

In development of character is involved great change of circumstances. We cannot grow or work in a corner. It is not for greed alone or mainly that men make war and build cities and found governments, but to try what they can do and become, to justify themselves to themselves and to their fellows. We desire to please and help,—but still more, at first, to be sure that we can please and help. If he hears any man speak effectually in public, the ambitious boy will never rest till he can also speak, or do some other deed as difficult and as well worth doing. For the trial of faculty we must go out into the world of institutions, range ourselves beside the workers, take up their tools and strike