Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/187

Rh the full grandeur of our destiny. We habitually, forever and ever, underrate our fate. Talk of infidels, why, all of the race of man, except in the rarest moments when they are lifted above themselves by an ecstasy, are infidels. With the very best disposition, what does my belief amount to? This poor, timid, unenlightened, thick-skinned creature, what can it believe? I am, of course, hopelessly ignorant and unbelieving until some divinity stirs within me. Ninety-nine one hundredths of our lives we are mere hedgers and ditchers, but from time to time we meet with reminders of our destiny.—We hear the kindred vibrations, music! and we put out our dormant feelers into the limits of the universe. We attain to wisdom that passeth understanding. The stable continents undulate. The hard and fixed becomes fluid.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

There are infinite degrees of life, from that which is next to sleep and death to that which is forever awake and immortal. We must not confound man with man. We cannot conceive of a greater difference than that between the life of one man and that of another. I am