s planet. Then
all things are at risk. It is as when a conflagration has broken out
in a great city, and no man knows what is safe, or where it will end.
There is not a piece of science but its flank may be turned to-morrow;
there is not any literary reputation, not the so-called eternal names
of fame, that may not be revised and condemned. The very hopes of man,
the thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and
morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.
Generalization is always a new influx of the divinity into the mind.
Hence the thrill that attends it.

Valor consists in the power of self-recovery, so that a man cannot
have his flank turned, cannot be out-generalled, but put him where you
will, he stands. This can only be by his preferring truth to his past
apprehension of truth, and his alert acceptance of it from whatever
quarter; the intrepid conviction that his laws, his relations to
society, his Christianity, his world, may at any time be superseded
and decease.

There are degrees in idealism. We learn first to play with it
academically, as the magnet was once a toy. Then we see in the heyday
of youth and poetry that it may be true, that it is true in gleams and
fragments. Then, its countenance waxes stern and grand, and we see
that it must be true. It now shows itself ethical and practical. We
learn that God is; that he is in me; and that all things are shadows
of him. The idealism of Berkeley[702] is only a crude statement of the
idealism of Jesus, and that again is a crude statement of the fact
that all nature is the rapid efflux of goodness executing and
organizing itself. Much more obviously is history and the state of the
world at any one time directly dependent on the intellectual
classification then existing in the minds of men. The things which are
dear to men at this hour are so on account of the ideas which have
emerged on their mental horizon, and which cause the present order of
things, as a tree bears its apples. A new degree of culture would
instantly revolutionize the entire system of human pursuits.

Conversation is a game of circles. In conversation we pluck up the
_termini_[703] which bound the common of silence on every side. The
parties are not to be judged by the spirit they partake and even
express under this Pentecost.[704] To-morrow they will have receded
from this high-water mark. To-morrow you shall find them stooping
under the old pack-saddle