at, when presently the dream
will scatter, and we shall burst into universal power. The reason of
idleness and of crime is the deferring of our hopes. Whilst we are
waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating, and
with crimes.

Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which
we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life
will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout the surfaces. I
wish to speak with all respect of persons, but sometimes I must pinch
myself to keep awake and preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast
into each other that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an
effort to treat them as individuals. Though the uninspired man certainly
finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the divine man does
not respect them; he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of
ripples which the wind drives over the surface of the water. But this is
flat rebellion. Nature will not be Buddhist: she resents generalizing,
and insults the philosopher in every moment with a million of fresh
particulars. It is all idle talking: as much as a man is a whole, so is
he also a part; and it were partial not to see it. What you say in your
pompous distribution only distributes you into your class and section.
You have not got rid of parts by denying them, but are the more partial.
You are one thing, but Nature is one thing and the other thing, in the
same moment. She will not remain orbed in a thought, but rushes into
persons; and when each person, inflamed to a fury of personality, would
conquer all things to his poor crotchet, she raises up against him
another person, and by many persons incarnates again a sort of whole.
She will have all. Nick Bottom cannot play all the parts, work it how
he may; there will be somebody else, and the world will be round.
Everything must have its flower or effort at the beautiful, coarser or
finer according to its stuff. They relieve and recommend each other,
and the sanity of society is a balance of a thousand insanities. She
punishes abstractionists, and will only forgive an induction which
is rare and casual. We like to come to a height of land and see the
landscape, just as we value a general remark in conversation. But it
is not the intention of Nature that we should live by general views. We
fetch fire and water, run about all day among the shops and markets, and
get our clothes and shoes made and mended, a