nd, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain
light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this
other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service:
"_Do the Duty which lies nearest thee_," which thou knowest to be a
Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.

'May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement
is even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been
dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes
revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, with amazement enough,
like the Lothario in _Wilhelm Meister_, that your "America is here or
nowhere"? The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never
yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered,
despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is
thy Ideal: work it out therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free.
Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in thyself: thy
Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of:
what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the Form
thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the
imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a
kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing
thou seekest is already with thee, "here or nowhere," couldst thou
only see!

'But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning of
Creation is--Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in
bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over
the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to
the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and
God-announcing; even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and
least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled
conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep
silent rock-foundations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with
its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we
have a blooming, fertile, heaven-encompassed World.

'I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or
even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest
infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in God's name! 'Tis
the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy who