conceived. Hence the philosopher must always be as little understood by
men of the street as was Thales by the Thracian handmaiden. He has an
innocence and a wisdom peculiar to his perspective.

"When he is reviled, he has nothing personal to say in answer
to the civilities of his adversaries, for he knows no scandals
of anyone, and they do not interest him; and therefore he is
laughed at for his sheepishness; and when others are being
praised and glorified, he cannot help laughing very sincerely
in the simplicity of his heart; and this again makes him look
like a fool. When he hears a tyrant or king eulogized, he
fancies that he is listening to the praises of some keeper of
cattle--a swineherd, or shepherd, or cowherd, who is being
praised for the quantity of milk which he squeezes from them;
and he remarks that the creature whom they tend, and out of
whom they squeeze the wealth, is of a less tractable and more
insidious nature. Then, again, he observes that the great man
is of necessity as ill-mannered and uneducated as any
shepherd, for he has no leisure, and he is surrounded by a
wall, which is his mountain-pen. Hearing of enormous landed
proprietors of ten thousand acres and more, our philosopher
deems this to be a trifle, because he has been accustomed to
think of the whole earth; and when they sing the praises of
family, and say that some one is a gentleman because he has
had seven generations of wealthy ancestors, he thinks that
their sentiments only betray the dulness and narrowness of
vision of those who utter them, and who are not educated
enough to look at the whole, nor to consider that every man
has had thousands and thousands of progenitors, and among them
have been rich and poor, kings and slaves, Hellenes and
barbarians, many times over."[427:17]

It is not to be expected that the opinion of the "narrow, keen, little,
legal mind" should appreciate the philosophy which has acquired the
"music of speech," and hymns "the true life which is lived by immortals
or men blessed of heaven." Complacency cannot understand reverence, nor
secularism, religion.

[Sidenote: The Secularism of the Present Age.]

Sect. 219. If we may believe the report of a contemporary philosopher,
the present age is made insensible to the meaning of life through
preoccupation with its very achiev