r fortune.

One would think from the talk of men, that riches and poverty were a great
matter; and our civilization mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that
they do not think the white man with his brow of care, always toiling,
afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within doors, has any advantage of
them. The permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false
position, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in all that he
does. Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume; and our life--the
life of all of us--identical. For we transcend the circumstance
continually, and taste the real quality of existence; as in our
employments, which only differ in the manipulations, but express the same
laws; or in our thoughts, which wear no silks and taste no ice-creams. We
see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.

The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xenophanes measured their
force on this problem of identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless
the atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend and act with one
another. But the Hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the liveliest
feeling, both of the essential identity, and of that illusion which they
conceive variety to be: "The notions, _I am_, and _This is mine_, which
influence mankind, are but delusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, O
Lord of all creatures! the conceit of knowledge which proceeds from
ignorance." And the beatitude of man they hold to lie in being freed from
fascination.

The intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth in a trope, and the
will by clothing the laws of life in illusions. But the unities of Truth
and of Right are not broken by the disguise. There need never be any
confusion in these. In a crowded life of many parts and performers, on a
stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the
same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to
his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute nature. It would be hard to
put more mental and moral philosophy than the Persians have thrown into a
sentence:--

Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise:
Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice.

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and
gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal
enters the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with them alone, they
pouring on him benediction