e at all; and if we are resolved
to put our thoughts and acts to the test of reason, and to live for what
is permanently true and great, we must consent, like the best of all
ages, to be lonely in the world. All life, except the life of thought
and love, is dull and superficial. The young love for a while, and are
happy; a few think; and for the rest existence is but the treadmill of
monotonous sensation. There are but few, who, through work and
knowledge, through faith and hope and love, seek to escape from the
narrowness and misery of life to the summits of thought where the soul
breathes a purer air, and whence is seen the fairer world the multitude
forebodes. There are but few whose life is

"Effort and expectation and desire,
And something evermore about to be;"

but few who understand how much the destiny of Man hangs upon single
persons; but few who feel that what they love and teach, millions must
know and love.

"A people is but the attempt of many
To rise to the completer life of one;
And those who live as models for the mass
Are singly of more value than them all."

Only the noblest souls awaken within us divine aspirations. They are the
music, the poetry, which warms and illumines whole generations; they are
the few who, born with rich endowments, by ceaseless labor develop their
powers until they become capable of work which, were it not for them,
could not be done at all. History is the biography of aristocrats, of
the chosen ones with whom all improvement originates, who found States,
establish civilizations, create literatures, and teach wisdom. They work
not for themselves; for in spite of human selfishness and the personal
aims of the ambitious, the poet, the scholar, and the statesman bless
the world. They lead us through happy isles; they clothe our thoughts
and hopes with beauty and with strength; they dissipate the general
gloom; they widen the sphere of life; they bring the multitude beneath
the sway of law.

Now, here in America, once for all, whatever the thoughtless may
imagine, we have lost faith in the worth of artificial distinctions.
Indeed plausible arguments may be found to prove that the kind of man
democracy tends to form, has no reverence for distinctions of whatever
kind, and is without ideals, and that as he is envious of men made by
money, so he looks with the contempt of unenlightened common-sense upon
those whom character and intellect raise