cipio's dream of his, we feel sure that he had, in truth,
within him a recognition of a future life.

In discussing the character of a man, there is no course of error so
fertile as the drawing of a hard and fast line. We are attracted by
salient points, and, seeing them clearly, we jump to conclusions, as
though there were a light-house on every point by which the nature of
the coast would certainly be shown to us. And so it will, if we accept
the light only for so much of the shore as it illumines. But to say that
a man is insincere because he has vacillated in this or the other
difficulty, that he is a coward because he has feared certain dangers,
that he is dishonest because he has swerved, that he is a liar because
an untrue word has been traced to him, is to suppose that you know all
the coast because one jutting headland has been defined to you. He who
so expresses himself on a man's character is either ignorant of human
nature, or is in search of stones with which to pelt his enemy. "He has
lied! He has lied!" How often in our own political contests do we hear
the cry with a note of triumph! And if he have, how often has he told
the truth? And if he have, how many are entitled by pure innocence in
that matter to throw a stone at him? And if he have, do we not know how
lies will come to the tongue of a man without thought of lying? In his
stoutest efforts after the truth a man may so express himself that when
afterward he is driven to compare his recent and his former words, he
shall hardly be able to say even to himself that he has not lied. It is
by the tenor of a man's whole life that we must judge him, whether he be
a liar or no.

To expect a man to be the same at sixty as he was at thirty, is to
suppose that the sun at noon shall be graced with the colors which adorn
its setting. And there are men whose intellects are set on so fine a
pivot that a variation in the breeze of the moment, which coarser minds
shall not feel, will carry them round with a rapidity which baffles the
common eye. The man who saw his duty clearly on this side in the morning
shall, before the evening come, recognize it on the other; and then
again, and again, and yet again the vane shall go round. It may be that
an instrument shall be too fine for our daily uses. We do not want a
clock to strike the minutes, or a glass to tell the momentary changes in
the atmosphere. It may be found that for the work of the world, the
coarse work--and