for all that is best in the good
that at this day is being done round about us, was conceived in the
spirit of one of those who neglected, it may be, many an urgent,
immediate duty in order to think, to commune with themselves, in order
to speak. Does it follow that they did the best that was to be done? To
such a question as this who shall dare to reply? The soul that is
meekly honest must ever consider the simplest, the nearest duty to be
the best of all things it can do; but yet were there cause for regret
had all men for all time restricted themselves to the duty that lay
nearest at hand. In each generation some men have existed who held in
all loyalty that they fulfilled the duties of the passing hour by
pondering on those of the hour to come. Most thinkers will say that
these men were right. It is well that the thinker should give his
thoughts to the world, though it must be admitted that wisdom befinds
itself sometimes in the reverse of the sage's pronouncement. This
matters but little, however; for, without such pronouncement, the
wisdom had not stood revealed; and the sage has accomplished his duty.

2. To-day misery is the disease of mankind, as disease is the
misery of man. And even as there are physicians for disease, so should
there be physicians for human misery. But can the fact that disease is,
unhappily, only too prevalent, render it wrong for us ever to speak of
health? which were indeed as though, in anatomy--the physical science
that has most in common with morals--the teacher confined himself
exclusively to the study of the deformities that greater or lesser
degeneration will induce in the organs of man. We have surely the right
to demand that his theories be based on the healthy and vigorous body;
as we have also the right to demand that the moralist, who fain would
see beyond the present hour, should take as his standard the soul that
is happy, or that at least possesses every element of happiness, save
only the necessary consciousness.

We live in the bosom of great injustice; but there can be, I imagine,
neither cruelty nor callousness in our speaking, at times, as though
this injustice had ended, else should we never emerge from our circle.

It is imperative that there should be some who dare speak, and think,
and act as though all men were happy; for otherwise, when the day comes
for destiny to throw open to all the people's garden of the promised
land, what happiness shall the others find t