Page:OptimismBlood.djvu/132
been driven out of their wits by fear from some trivial dereliction. Men have been too good, as well as too bad. The Christian world has applauded the sturdy moralist who approved "a good hater." He was a man of the world, in the highest sense of that expression. He had struggled to competence and distinction through poverty and neglect; and he had gained, for he needed, strength. He knew that, in this world? to be tranquil we must be tough: he knew that modesty, gentleness, and benevolence are better when assumed from principle than when coerced by native impulse; he knew that it is good to breast the tide in the love of contest and of effort, and to be generous and amenable while the great soul stands ready at a moment's warning to say no, to the death. He knew that man must stand, if he stand, or fall, if he fall, alone. Alone he comes into the world, bald, sniveling, and toothless, to live and grow and decay in body, before God; and alone in his second childhood, as bald, as sniveling, and as toothless perhaps as in his first, he lies down to die, and his experience and his philosophy alone can give him hope, while, speech- less and impotent, he judges all the earth.
We love to see our children shine: it is intellect that glorifies the world: but we forget in our eagerness to develop it that only nerve and energy can make intellect effective and serene in this jostling and contentious life. There have been more successes in the world by reason of nerve and perseverance than by reason of extraordinary subtilty of understanding. The ages are full of great intellects, unknown of the race for their want of confidence and persistency.—