we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement in all human
tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir or pure
metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, centred in any one
body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the
creation, scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place
producing all, and almost all some. So that 'tis well if a perfect man
can be made out of many men, and to the perfect eye of God, even out of
mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others. Could
we intimately apprehend the ideated man, and as he stood in the
intellect of God upon the first exertion by creation, we might more
narrowly comprehend our present degeneration, and how widely we are
fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this
corruptive elongation, from a primitive and pure creation we are almost
lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from his Creator,
but we ourselves from Adam, our Tycho and primary generator.

If generous honesty, valor, and plain dealing be the cognizance of thy
family or characteristic of thy country, hold fast such inclinations
sucked in with thy first breath, and which lay in the cradle with thee.
Fall not into transforming degenerations, which under the old name
create a new nation. Be not an alien in thine own nation; bring not
Orontes into Tiber; learn the virtues, not the vices, of thy foreign
neighbors, and make thy imitation by discretion, not contagion. Feel
something of thyself in the noble acts of thy ancestors, and find in
thine own genius that of thy predecessors. Rest not under the expired
merits of others; shine by those of thine own. Flame not, like the
central fire which enlighteneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most
men think there is no such thing to be seen. Add one ray unto the common
lustre; add not only to the number, but the note of thy generation; and
prove not a cloud, but an asterisk in thy region.

Since thou hast an alarum in thy breast, which tells thee thou hast a
living spirit in thee above two thousand times in an hour, dull not away
thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To
strenuous minds there is an inquietude in overquietness and no
laboriousness in labor; and to tread a mile after the slow pace of a
snail, or the heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia, were a most tiring
penance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Oly