all, as
by being great and spreading when he is great. "I love and honor
Epaminondas," said Emerson, "but I do not wish to be Epaminondas. I
hold it more just to love the world of this hour than the world of his
hour. Nor can you, if I am true, excite me to the least uneasiness by
saying, 'He acted and thou sittest still.' I see action to be good
when the need is, and sitting still to be also good. Epaminondas, if
he was the man I take him for, would have sat still with joy and peace,
if his lot had been mine. Heaven is large, and affords space for all
modes of love and fortitude." "The fact that I am here certainly shows
me that the Soul has need of an organ here, and shall I not assume the
post?"

The vanity of all superserviceableness and pretence was never more
happily set forth than by Emerson in the many passages in which he
develops this aspect of his philosophy. Character infallibly proclaims
itself. "Hide your thoughts!--hide the sun and moon. They publish
themselves to the universe. They will speak through you though you
were dumb. They will flow out of your actions, your manners and your
face. . . . Don't say things: What you are stands over you the while
and thunders so that I cannot say what you say to the contrary. . . .
What a man _is_ engraves itself upon him in letters of light.
Concealment avails him nothing, boasting nothing. There is confession
in the glances of our eyes; in our smiles; in salutations; and the
grasp of hands. His sin bedaubs him, mars all his good impression.
Men know not why they do not trust him, but they do not trust him. His
vice glasses the eye, casts lines of mean expression in the cheek,
pinches the nose, sets the mark of the beast upon the back of the head,
and writes, O fool! fool! on the forehead of a king. If you would not
be known to do a thing, never do it; a man may play the fool in the
drifts of a desert, but every grain of sand shall seem to see.--How can
a man be concealed? How can he be concealed?"

On the other hand, never was a sincere word or a sincere thought
utterly lost. "Never a magnanimity fell to the ground but there is
some heart to greet and accept it unexpectedly. . . . The hero fears
not that if he withstood the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go
unwitnessed and unloved. One knows it,--himself,--and is pledged by it
to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the
end a better proclamation than the re