dictation understands
itself. If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm
liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the
power of character. This is true, and that other is true. But our geometry
cannot span these extreme points, and reconcile them. What to do? By
obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding on
each string, we learn at last its power. By the same obedience to other
thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some reasonable hope of
harmonizing them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity
does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with
the spirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private
solution. If one would study his own time, it must be by this method of
taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our scheme of
human life, and, by firmly stating all that is agreeable to experience on
one, and doing the same justice to the opposing facts in the others, the
true limitations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would
be corrected, and a just balance would be made.

But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for
superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and
buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves
to face it. The Spartan, embodying his religion in his country, dies
before its majesty without a question. The Turk, who believes his doom is
written on the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the world, rushes
on the enemy's sabre with undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian,
accepts the fore-ordained fate.

On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave,
The appointed, and the unappointed day;
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.

The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our Calvinists, in the last
generation, had something of the same dignity. They felt that the weight
of the Universe held them down to their place. What could _they_ do? Wise
men feel that there is something which cannot be talked or voted away--a
strap or belt which girds the world.

The Destiny, minister general,
That executeth in the world o'er all,
The purveyance which God hath seen beforne,
So strong it is that tho' the world had sworn
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay,
Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day