y on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible
perspiration toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should
continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth
is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The
words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are
significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as
common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they
express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are
once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only
a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning red,
if they ever got up early enough. "They pretend," as I hear, "that the
verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect,
and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas"; but in this part of the world
it is considered a ground for complaint if a man's writings admit
of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the
potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails
so much more widely and fatally?

I do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be
proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than
was found with the Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue
color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and
preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. The
purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like
the azure ether beyond.

Some are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally,
are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the
Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better
than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to
the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every
one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such
desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the
music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important
that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak. Shall he turn
his spring into summer? If the cond