y stir
within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his
destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive
for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he
cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal
nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a
fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with
our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which
determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the
West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination--what Wilberforce
is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land
weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green
an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring
eternity.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called
resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you
go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the
bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair
is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of
mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is
a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief
end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it
appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living
because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is
no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun
rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of
thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What
everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to
be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted
for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What
old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds
for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough
once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new
people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the
globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the
phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor
as yout