es and a life not
yet at one.

Why should we make it a point with our false modesty to disparage
that man we are and that form of being assigned to us? A good man
is contented. I love and honor Epaminondas, but I do not wish to be
Epaminondas. I hold it more just to love the world of this hour than
the world of his hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least
uneasiness by saying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action
to be good, when the need is, and sitting still to be also good.
Epaminondas, if he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with
joy and peace, if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords
space for all modes of love and fortitude. Why should we be busybodies
and superserviceable? Action and inaction are alike to the true. One
piece of the tree is cut for a weathercock and one for the sleeper of a
bridge; the virtue of the wood is apparent in both.

I desire not to disgrace the soul. The fact that I am here certainly
shows me that the soul had need of an organ here. Shall I not assume the
post? Shall I skulk and dodge and duck with my unseasonable apologies
and vain modesty and imagine my being here impertinent? less pertinent
than Epaminondas or Homer being there? and that the soul did not know
its own needs? Besides, without any reasoning on the matter, I have
no discontent. The good soul nourishes me and unlocks new magazines
of power and enjoyment to me every day. I will not meanly decline the
immensity of good, because I have heard that it has come to others in
another shape.

Besides, why should we be cowed by the name of Action? 'Tis a trick of
the senses,--no more. We know that the ancestor of every action is a
thought. The poor mind does not seem to itself to be any thing unless it
have an outside badge,--some Gentoo diet, or Quaker coat, or Calvinistic
prayer-meeting, or philanthropic society, or a great donation, or a high
office, or, any how, some wild contrasting action to testify that it is
somewhat. The rich mind lies in the sun and sleeps, and is Nature. To
think is to act.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of
an infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with the
celestial air until it eclipses the sun and moon. Let us seek one peace
by fidelity. Let me heed my duties. Why need I go gadding into the
scenes and philosophy of Greek and Italian history before I have
justified myself to my benefa