come conversation,
competition, persuasion, cities and war. Persons are supplementary
to the primary teaching of the soul. In youth we are mad for persons.
Childhood and youth see all the world in them. But the larger experience
of man discovers the identical nature appearing through them all.
Persons themselves acquaint us with the impersonal. In all conversation
between two persons tacit reference is made, as to a third party, to a
common nature. That third party or common nature is not social; it
is impersonal; is God. And so in groups where debate is earnest, and
especially on high questions, the company become aware that the thought
rises to an equal level in all bosoms, that all have a spiritual
property in what was said, as well as the sayer. They all become wiser
than they were. It arches over them like a temple, this unity of thought
in which every heart beats with nobler sense of power and duty, and
thinks and acts with unusual solemnity. All are conscious of attaining
to a higher self-possession. It shines for all. There is a certain
wisdom of humanity which is common to the greatest men with the lowest,
and which our ordinary education often labors to silence and obstruct.
The mind is one, and the best minds, who love truth for its own
sake, think much less of property in truth. They accept it thankfully
everywhere, and do not label or stamp it with any man's name, for it is
theirs long beforehand, and from eternity. The learned and the studious
of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction
in some degree disqualifies them to think truly. We owe many valuable
observations to people who are not very acute or profound, and who say
the thing without effort which we want and have long been hunting in
vain. The action of the soul is oftener in that which is felt and left
unsaid than in that which is said in any conversation. It broods over
every society, and they unconsciously seek for it in each other. We know
better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the
same time that we are much more. I feel the same truth how often in my
trivial conversation with my neighbors, that somewhat higher in each of
us overlooks this by-play, and Jove nods to Jove from behind each of us.

Men descend to meet. In their habitual and mean service to the world,
for which they forsake their native nobleness, they resemble those
Arabian sheiks who dwell in mean houses and affect an external pov