Page:The Yellow Book - 13.djvu/299

Rh for your mind is sensitive to the characteristics of peoples, to the huge racial tones too large to be hurriedly heard. You know the roar of the ways of men, its sum and its insignificance. And, like God, in understanding man s fallibility you pardon it.

There are so few strong men. The strong man, self-willed and of no reverence, uses himself as a sledge, of which his will is handle, and bangs out the glowing shapes of his mind on the anvil of the world; he can look into the empty skies and tell his gods that he enjoys their life because he is their creator.

The wise man may be a fool in all but other men's gathered wisdom. The renowned man is a strange waster of the hours when he slights loud reputation. The fool may find his folly, in the end, applies to more of the world's days than does the hesitation of the overlearned mind.

But the strong deep man of modernity rests firm in self-reliance and command, and is not malleable; and he knows that he is strong. Egotism is a wageless labourer who begins our greatest works for us, and when our completions justify his grand beginnings we are as great as he whom we slighted is. A great man always has great egotisms. But modernity has given man a new sorrow, fatigue of man. We wonder which outbalances this weariness, and ingratitude, and sickness, and loss of companions, or laughing, the dear vanity of loving, careless thoughts, and the boisterous wills of the animal. Sometimes we have been hurried through these fancies when old moods hurt us, or when illness gave us tired knowledge of the persistent angles of a room. Time is tired of us, and we are tired of time.

Each of us walks with a companion called delusion towards whom we some day turn, and when we look into his face we see that we have been walking with a voice, an air, a mere reflection of ourselves, that only our love has warmed into the semblance of

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