ear
that there was no inequality such as men fancy, between them; that a
perfect understanding, a like receiving, a like perceiving, abolished
differences; and the poet would confess that his creative imagination
gave him no deep advantage, but only the superficial one that he could
express himself and the other could not; that his advantage was a knack,
which might impose on indolent men but could not impose on lovers of
truth; for they know the tax of talent, or what a price of greatness the
power of expression too often pays. I believe it is the conviction of
the purest men, that the net amount of man and man does not much vary.
Each is incomparably superior to his companion in some faculty. His want
of skill in other directions has added to his fitness for his own work.
Each seems to have some compensation yielded to him by his infirmity,
and every hindrance operates as a concentration of his force.

These and the like experiences intimate that man stands in strict
connection with a higher fact never yet manifested. There is power over
and behind us, and we are the channels of its communications. We seek
to say thus and so, and over our head some spirit sits which contradicts
what we say. We would persuade our fellow to this or that; another self
within our eyes dissuades him. That which we keep back, this reveals.
In vain we compose our faces and our words; it holds uncontrollable
communication with the enemy, and he answers civilly to us, but believes
the spirit. We exclaim, 'There's a traitor in the house!' but at last it
appears that he is the true man, and I am the traitor. This open channel
to the highest life is the first and last reality, so subtle, so quiet,
yet so tenacious, that although I have never expressed the truth, and
although I have never heard the expression of it from any other, I
know that the whole truth is here for me. What if I cannot answer your
questions? I am not pained that I cannot frame a reply to the question,
What is the operation we call Providence? There lies the unspoken thing,
present, omnipresent. Every time we converse we seek to translate it
into speech, but whether we hit or whether we miss, we have the fact.
Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence
that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for
contemplation forever.

If the auguries of the prophesying heart shall make themselves good in
time, the man who shall be born, whos