ot for us; if we were earth-worms,
liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much
sensation might not be good for us. But, being human creatures, _it
is_ good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive,
and our honor is precisely in proportion to our passion.

28. You know I said of that great and pure society of the dead, that
it would allow "no vain or vulgar person to enter there." What do you
think I meant by a "vulgar" person? What do you yourselves mean by
"vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought; but,
briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation.
Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped
bluntness of body and mind; but in true inbred vulgarity, there is a
deathful callousness, which, in extremity, becomes capable of every
sort of bestial habit and crime, without fear, without pleasure,
without horror, and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead
heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, that men
become vulgar; they are forever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they
are incapable of sympathy,--of quick understanding,--of all that, in
deep insistence on the common, but most accurate term, may be called
the "tact" or "touch-faculty" of body and soul; that tact which the
Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all
creatures;--fineness and fullness of sensation beyond reason;--the
guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but determine what
is true:--it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can
recognize what God has made good.

29. We come then to the great concourse of the Dead, not merely to
know from them what is True, but chiefly to feel with them what is
just. Now, to feel with them, we must be like them: and none of us can
become that without pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and
tested knowledge,--not the first thought that comes,--so the true
passion is disciplined and tested passion,--not the first passion that
comes. The first that come are the vain, the false, the treacherous;
if you yield to them they will lead you wildly and far in vain pursuit,
in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true passion
left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong,
but only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force and
justice; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. The