resultant which, when reduced to harmony, they would produce. It
embodies a finished humanity which only varied exercises could have
attained, for as the body is the existent ground for all possible
actions, in which as actions they exist only potentially, so a perfect
body, such as a sculptor might conceive, which ought to be ready for all
excellent activities, cannot present them all in act but only the
readiness for them. The features that might express them severally must
be absorbed and mastered, hidden like a sword in its scabbard, and
reduced to a general dignity or grace. Though such immersed eloquence be
at first overlooked and seldom explicitly acknowledged, homage is
nevertheless rendered to it in the most unmistakable ways. When lazy
artists, backed by no great technical or moral discipline, think they,
too, can produce masterpieces by summary treatment, their failure shows
how pregnant and supreme a thing simplicity is. Every man, in proportion
to his experience and moral distinction, returns to the simple but
inexhaustible work of finished minds, and finds more and more of his own
soul responsive to it.

Human nature, for all its margin of variability, has a substantial core
which is invariable, as the human body has a structure which it cannot
lose without perishing altogether; for as creatures grow more complex a
greater number of their organs become vital and indispensable. Advanced
forms will rather die than surrender a tittle of their character; a fact
which is the physical basis for loyalty and martyrdom. Any deep
interpretation of oneself, or indeed of anything, has for that reason a
largely representative truth. Other men, if they look closely, will make
the same discovery for themselves. Hence distinction and profundity, in
spite of their rarity, are wont to be largely recognised. The best men
in all ages keep classic traditions alive. These men have on their side
the weight of superior intelligence, and, though they are few, they
might even claim the weight of numbers, since the few of all ages, added
together, may be more than the many who in any one age follow a
temporary fashion. Classic work is nevertheless always national, or at
least characteristic of its period, as the classic poetry of each people
is that in which its language appears most pure and free. To translate
it is impossible; but it is easy to find that the human nature so
inimitably expressed in each masterpiece is the same that,