eling somewhat akin to the egotism of that one who,
when asked why he talked so much to himself, replied--for two reasons:
the one, that he liked to talk to a sensible man; the other, that he
liked to hear a sensible man talk. Divorcing itself from
fellow-sympathies, it broods over its own perfections, till, like
Narcissus, it falls in love with itself. And so, a highly original man
can rarely ever be a highly popular man or author. By the very
super-abundance of his excellencies, his usefulness is destroyed; just
as Tarpeia sank, buried beneath the presents of the Sabine soldiery. A
Man once appeared on earth, of perfect originality; and in him, to an
unbounded intellect was added boundless moral power. But men received
him not. They rejected his teachings; they smote him; they crucified
him.

But though the right of eminent domain over ideas does and should inhere
in one superior to us, far different is the case with words. These
'incarnations of thought' are of man's device, and therefore his; and
style--the peculiar manner in which one uses words to express ideas--is
individually personal. Indeed, style has been defined the man himself; a
definition, so far as he is recognized only as a revealer of thought,
substantially correct. In an idea word-embodied, the embodier, then,
possesses with God concurrent ownership. The idea itself may be
borrowed, or it may be his so far as discovery gives title; but the
words, in their arrangement, are absolutely his. All ideas are like
mathematical truths: eternal and unchangeable in their essence, and
originate in nature; words like figures, of a fixed value, but of human
invention; and sentences are formulae, embodying oftentimes the same
essential truth, but in shapes as various as their paternity. Words, in
sentences, should then be inviolate to their author.

Nor is this to value words above ideas--the flesh above the spirit of
which it is but the incarnation. It is not the intrinsic value of each
that we here regard, but the value of the ownership one has in each.
'Deacon Giles and I,' said a poor man, 'own more cows than any five
other men in the county.' 'How many does Deacon Giles own?' asked a
bystander. 'Nineteen.' 'And how many do you?' 'One.' And that one cow,
which that poor man owned, was worth more to _him_ than the nineteen
which were Deacon Giles's. So, when you have determined whose the style
is which enfolds a thought, whose the thought is, is as little worth