FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  
tar is that at the end of the telescope-- THE STAR THAT IS LOOKING, NOT LOOKED AFTER, nor looked at." "Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds; there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the creation of the universe." This sentence is by Henry Giles. To the first portion of it I give unqualified belief. I believe, too, with John Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is nobly animal, nobly spiritual--coherently and irrevocably so; neither part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other." "Man is the metre of all things," says Aristotle, "THE HAND is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms." The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks that _sympathy_ and exception to mathematical rule which the human fingers, highly trained, impart to the keyboard, and the violin, that thing most nearly in communication with the soul of man,--pays no allegiance whatever save to the human hand well practiced in its mastery; the hand skilled in love soothes the aching brow; the whole framework of this instrument, the hand, filled with gold coins, almost without volition spurns the spurious piece; the false bank-note is lifted with suspicion; across the signature the deft fingers run to aid the eye; over the letters the mind of the sightless pushes its loyal touch, and the signal comes faithfully back to the dungeoned intelligence! OUR OPPORTUNITIES are the greatest of those of any living beings. It follows, it seems to me, that our responsibilities should be greater, both in justice and in reason. Every opportunity is equivalent to a duty. We owe--with all these miracles of the living world centered and perfected in our bodies,--a duty equally grand and difficult. Let us ennoble ourselves. John Fletcher wrote a beautiful metaphor in very clumsy verse when he said: Man is his own star, and the soul that
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104  
105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

fingers

 

nature

 

spiritual

 

instrument

 

machine

 

animal

 
living
 

greater

 

spurns

 

spurious


clumsy
 

volition

 

signature

 

suspicion

 

lifted

 

framework

 

allegiance

 

communication

 
impart
 

keyboard


violin

 
aching
 

metaphor

 

soothes

 

practiced

 
mastery
 

skilled

 
filled
 

beautiful

 

perfected


bodies

 

centered

 

miracles

 

equally

 

difficult

 

beings

 

justice

 
reason
 

equivalent

 

opportunity


responsibilities
 
signal
 

faithfully

 
letters
 
sightless
 
pushes
 

dungeoned

 

greatest

 

trained

 

ennoble