f
sympathy even with _things_,--or he would believe _them_ and not
hearsays. No sympathy even with things; how much less with his
fellow-men! He cannot unite with men; he is an anarchic man. Only in a
world of sincere men is unity possible;--and there, in the long-run, it
is as good as _certain_.

For observe one thing, a thing too often left out of view, or rather
altogether lost sight of in this controversy: That it is not necessary a
man should himself have _discovered_ the truth he is to believe in, and
never so _sincerely_ to believe in. A Great Man, we said, was always
sincere, as the first condition of him. But a man need not be great in
order to be sincere; that is not the necessity of Nature and all Time,
but only of certain corrupt unfortunate epochs of Time. A man can
believe, and make his own, in the most genuine way, what he has received
from another;--and with boundless gratitude to that other! The merit of
_originality_ is not novelty; it is sincerity. The believing man is the
original man; whatsoever he believes, he believes it for himself, not
for another. Every son of Adam can become a sincere man, an original
man, in this sense; no mortal is doomed to be an insincere man. Whole
ages, what we call ages of Faith, are original; all men in them, or the
most of men in them, sincere. These are the great and fruitful ages:
every worker, in all spheres, is a worker not on semblance but on
substance; every work issues in a result: the general sum of such work
is great; for all of it, as genuine, tends towards one goal; all of
it is _additive_, none of it subtractive. There is true union, true
kingship, loyalty, all true and blessed things, so far as the poor Earth
can produce blessedness for men.

Hero-worship? Ah me, that a man be self-subsistent, original, true, or
what we call it, is surely the farthest in the world from indisposing
him to reverence and believe other men's truth! It only disposes,
necessitates and invincibly compels him to disbelieve other men's dead
formulas, hearsays and untruths. A man embraces truth with his eyes
open, and because his eyes are open: does he need to shut them before he
can love his Teacher of truth? He alone can love, with a right gratitude
and genuine loyalty of soul, the Hero-Teacher who has delivered him
out of darkness into light. Is not such a one a true Hero and
Serpent-queller; worthy of all reverence! The black monster, Falsehood,
our one enemy in this world, l