not know if there be a spectator in the world; his
most public deed shall be done in a divine privacy, on which no eye
intrudes,--his most private in the boundless publicities of Nature; his
deed, when done, falls away from him, like autumn apples from their
boughs, no longer his, but the world's and destiny's; neither the
captive of yesterday nor the propitiator of to-morrow, he abides simply,
majestically, like a god, in being and doing. Meanwhile, blame and
praise whirl but as unrecognized cloudlets of gloom or glitter beneath
his feet, enveloping and often blinding those who utter them, but to him
never attaining.

It is not easy at present to suggest the real measure and significance
of such manhood, because this age has debased its imagination, by the
double trick, first, of confounding man with his body, and next, of
considering the body, not as a symbol of truth, but only as an agent in
the domain of matter,--comparing its size with the sum total of physical
space, and its muscular power with the sum total of physical forces. Yet

"What know we greater than the soul?"

A man is no outlying province, nor does any province lie beyond him.
East, West, North, South, and height and depth are contained in his
bosom, the poles of his being reaching more widely, his zenith and nadir
being more sublime and more profound. We are cheated by nearness and
intimacy. Let us look at man with a telescope, and we shall find no star
or constellation of sweep so grand, no nebulae or star-dust so provoking
and suggestive to fancy. In truth, there are no words to say how either
large or small, how significant or insignificant, men may be. Though
solar and stellar systems amaze by their grandeur of scale, yet is true
manhood the maximum of Nature; though microscopic and sub-microscopic
protophyta amaze by their inconceivable littleness, yet is mock manhood
Nature's minimum. The latter is the only negative quantity known to
Nature; the former the only revelation of her entire heart.

In concluding, need I say that only the pure can repose in his
action,--only he obtain deliverance by his deed, and after deliverance
from it? The egotism, the baseness, the partialities that are in our
performance are hooks and barbs by which it wounds and wearies us in the
passage, and clings to us being past.

Law governs all; no favor is shown; the event is as it must be; only he
who has no blinding partiality toward himself, who is whole and on