panying a material development. History, the great satirist, brings
together Alexander and the blower of peas to hint to us that the tube of
the one and the sword of the other were equally transitory; but
meanwhile Aristotle was conquering kingdoms out of the unknown, and
establishing a dynasty of thought from whose hand the sceptre has not
yet passed. So there are Charles V, and Luther; the expansion of trade
resulting from the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries, and the
Elizabethan literature; the Puritans seeking spiritual El Dorados while
so much valor and thought were spent in finding mineral ones. It seems
to be the purpose of God that a certain amount of genius shall go to
each generation, particular quantities being represented by individuals,
and while no _one_ is complete in himself, all collectively make up a
whole ideal figure of a man. Nature is not like certain varieties of the
apple that cannot bear two years in succession. It is only that her
expansions are uniform in all directions, that in every age she
completes her circle, and like a tree adds a ring to her growth be it
thinner or thicker.

Every man is conscious that he leads two lives, the one trivial and
ordinary, the other sacred and recluse; the one which he carries to the
dinner-table and to his daily work, which grows old with his body and
dies with it, the other that which is made up of the few inspiring
moments of his higher aspiration and attainment, and in which his youth
survives for him, his dreams, his unquenchable longings for something
nobler than success. It is this life which the poets nourish for him,
and sustain with their immortalizing nectar. Through them he feels once
more the white innocence of his youth. His faith in something nobler
than gold and iron and cotton comes back to him, not as an upbraiding
ghost that wrings its pale hands and is gone, but beautiful and
inspiring as a first love that recognizes nothing in him that is not
high and noble. The poets are nature's perpetual pleaders, and protest
with us against what is worldly. Out of their own undying youth they
speak to ours. "Wretched is the man," says Goethe, "who has learned to
despise the dreams of his youth!" It is from this misery that the
imagination and the poets, who are its spokesmen, rescue us. The world
goes to church, kneels to the eternal Purity, and then contrives to
sneer at innocence and ignorance of evil by calling it green. Let every
man thank God