the
pure runs down from them into other natures as water runs down from
a higher into a lower vessel. This natural force is no more to be
withstood than any other natural force. We can drive a stone upward for
a moment into the air, but it is yet true that all stones will forever
fall; and whatever instances can be quoted of unpunished theft, or of
a lie which somebody credited, justice must prevail, and it is the
privilege of truth to make itself believed. Character is this moral
order seen through the medium of an individual nature. An individual is
an encloser. Time and space, liberty and necessity, truth and thought,
are left at large no longer. Now, the universe is a close or pound. All
things exist in the man tinged with the manners of his soul. With what
quality is in him he infuses all nature that he can reach; nor does he
tend to lose himself in vastness, but, at how long a curve soever, all
his regards return into his own good at last. He animates all he can,
and he sees only what he animates. He encloses the world, as the patriot
does his country, as a material basis for his character, and a theatre
for action. A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True,
as the magnet arranges itself with the pole; so that he stands to all
beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso
journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the
medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level.
Thus, men of character are the conscience of the society to which they
belong.

The natural measure of this power is the resistance of circumstances.
Impure men consider life as it is reflected in opinions, events, and
persons. They cannot see the action until it is done. Yet its moral
element preexisted in the actor, and its quality as right or wrong it
was easy to predict. Everything in nature is bipolar, or has a positive
and negative pole. There is a male and a female, a spirit and a fact,
a north and a south. Spirit is the positive, the event is the negative.
Will is the north, action the south pole. Character may be ranked as
having its natural place in the north. It shares the magnetic currents
of the system. The feeble souls are drawn to the south or negative
pole. They look at the profit or hurt of the action. They never behold a
principle until it is lodged in a person. They do not wish to be lovely,
but to be loved. Men of character like to hear of their fau