iasm
rises and lifts the subject of it. That which seems to you so base an
activity is lifted above low natures. What matter, then, where the
standard floats at this moment, since it cannot remain fixed?

Perfection retreats, as the horizon withdraws before a traveller, and
lures us on and on. It even travels faster than our best endeavors can
follow, and so beckons to us from farther and farther away. We may give
ourselves to the ideal, or we may turn aside to appetite and sleep; but
in every moment of returning sanity we are again on our feet and again
upon an endless ascending road.

When a man has tasted power, when he sees the supply there is so near in
Nature for all need, he hungers for reinforcement. That desire is
prayer. It opens its own doors and takes supplies from God's hand. No
wise man can grudge the necessary use of the mind to serve the body with
shelter and food, for we go merrily to Nature, and with our milk we
drink order, justice, beauty, and benignity. We cannot take the husks on
which our bodies are fed, without expressing these juices also, which
circulate as sap and blood through the sphere. We cannot touch any
object but some spark of vital electricity is shot through us. Every
creature is a battery, charged not with mere vegetable or animal, but
with moral life. Our metaphysical being is fed from something hidden in
rocks and woods, in streams and skies, in fire, water, earth, and air.
While we dig roots, and gather nuts, and hunt and roast our meat, our
blood is quickened not in the heart alone. Deeper currents are swelled.
The springs of our humanity are opened in Nature; for that which streams
through the landscape, and comes in at the eye and ear, is plainly the
same fluid which enters as consciousness, and is the life by which we
live. While we enjoy this spiritual refreshment and keep ourselves open
to it, we may dig without degradation; but if our minds fasten on the
thing to be done, on commodity and safety, on getting and having, those
avenues seem to close by which the soul was fed. Then we forget our
incalculable chances and certainties; we go mad, and make the mind a
muck-rake. If a man will direct his faculties to any limited and not to
illimitable ends, he cripples his faculties. No matter whether he is
deluded by a fortune or a reputation or position, if he does not give
himself wholly to grow and be a man, regardless of minor advantages, he
has lost his way in the world. "Be t