session, is adequate to explain it; but I have no more doubt it
actually, positively, literally did occur, than I have of the existence
of the sun _im Himmel da_."

CULTURE.

The word of ambition at the present day is Culture. Whilst all the world
is in pursuit of power, and of wealth as a means of power, culture
corrects the theory of success. A man is the prisoner of his power. A
topical memory makes him an almanac; a talent for debate, a disputant;
skill to get money makes him a miser, that is, a beggar. Culture reduces
these inflammations by invoking the aid of other powers against the
dominant talent, and by appealing to the rank of powers. It watches
success. For performance Nature has no mercy, and sacrifices the
performer to get it done,--makes a dropsy or a tympany of him. If she
wants a thumb, she makes one at the cost of arms and legs, and any
excess of power in one part is usually paid for at once by some defect
in a contiguous part.

Our efficiency depends so much on our concentration, that Nature
usually, in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world,
overloads him with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working power.
It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect,
it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances. If she create
a policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions and of plots to
circumvent them. "The air," said Fouche, "is full of poniards." The
physician Sanctorius spent his life in a pair of scales, weighing his
food. Lord Coke valued Chaucer highly, because the Canon Yeman's Tale
illustrates the Statute _Hen. V. Chap. 4_, against Alchemy. I saw a man
who believed the principal mischiefs in the English state were derived
from the devotion to musical concerts. A freemason, not long since, set
out to explain to this country, that the principal cause of the success
of General Washington was the aid he derived from the freemasons.

But, worse than the harping on one string, Nature has secured
individualism by giving the private person a high conceit of his weight
in the system. The pest of society is egotists. There are dull and
bright, sacred and profane, coarse and fine egotists. 'Tis a disease
that, like influenza, falls on all constitutions. In the distemper
known to physicians as _chorea_, the patient sometimes turns round
and continues to spin slowly on one spot. Is egotism a metaphysical
varioloid of this malady? The man run