The
Truth
Behind
the

Book

Telling
the

Simple
Truth

TAL

ALENT alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise; holding things because they are things. If he cannot rightly express himself to-day, the same things subsist, and will open themselves to-morrow. There lies the burden on his mind-the burden of truth to be declared-more or less understood; and it constitutes his business and calling in the world, to see those facts through, and to make them known. Representative Men.

Ν

IN every work of genius we recognise our

own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humoured inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with

masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our Own opinion from another.

E

History.

VERY man, who would do anything Mastery well, must come to it from a higher ground. A philosopher must be more than a philosopher. Plato is clothed with the powers of a poet, stands upon the highest place of the poet, and (though I doubt he wanted the decisive gift of lyric expression) mainly is not a poet, because he chose to use the poetic gift to an ulterior purpose. Representative Men.

BUT

UT great men—the word is injurious. there caste? is there fate? What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth laments the superfœtation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he says, "is your hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow; look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the dawn of

The Cheapness of

Men

The
Glory of
the
Lowly

history down, food for knives and powder? The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred-but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be low, as that we should be low; for we must have society.

ence,

Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say, society is a Pestalozzian school; all are teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things, are not long the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person of another experiand it is as if you let off water from a lake, by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a

sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about. As to what we call the masses, and common menthere are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible, on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play, and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation. Representative Men.

T is the best sign of a great nature, that it a foreground, and, like the breath of morning landscapes, invites us

onward.

I

Representative Men.

KNOW not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes,

Power
of a

Great
Nature

The Poet is Necessary

The Use

of

Genius

who cannot report the conversation they
have had with nature. The poet is the
man without impediment, who sees and
handles that which others dream of, trav-
erses the whole scale of experience, and is
representative of man, in virtue of being the
largest power to receive and to impart.
The Poet.

WHA

HAT is a great man but one of great affinities, who takes up into himself all arts, sciences, all knowables, as his food? He can spare nothing; he can dispose of everything. What is not good for virtue, is good for knowledge. Hence his contemporaries tax him with plagiarism. But the inventor only knows how to borrow; and society is glad to forget the innumerable laborers who ministered to this architect, and reserves all its gratitude for him. When we are praising Plato, it seems we are praising quotations from Solon, and Sophron, and Philolaus. Be it so. Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines, and stone