hese things proceed from the
eternal generation of the soul. Cause and effect are two sides of one
fact.

The same law of eternal procession ranges all that we call the
virtues, and extinguishes each in the light of a better. The great man
will not be prudent in the popular sense; all his prudence will be so
much deduction from his grandeur. But it behooves each to see, when he
sacrifices prudence, to what god he devotes it; if to ease and
pleasure, he had better be prudent still; if to a great trust, he can
well spare his mule and panniers who has a winged chariot instead.
Geoffrey draws on his boots to go through the woods, that his feet may
be safer from the bite of snakes; Aaron never thinks of such a peril.
In many years neither is harmed by such an accident. Yet it seems to
me that with every precaution you take against such an evil you put
yourself into the power of the evil. I suppose that the highest
prudence is the lowest prudence. Is this too sudden a rushing from
the centre to the verge of our orbit? Think how many times we shall
fall back into pitiful calculations before we take up our rest in the
great sentiment, or make the verge of to-day the new centre. Besides,
your bravest sentiment is familiar to the humblest men. The poor and
the low have their way of expressing the last facts of philosophy as
well as you. "Blessed be nothing" and "The worse things are, the
better they are" are proverbs which express the transcendentalism of
common life.

One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's
ugliness; one man's wisdom another's folly; as one beholds the same
objects from a higher point of view. One man thinks justice consists
in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who
is very remiss in this duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But
that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself
which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the
poor? the debt of money, or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius
to nature? For you, O broker, there is no other principle but
arithmetic. For me, commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth
of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred; nor can I
detach one duty, like you, from all other duties, and concentrate my
forces mechanically on the payment of moneys. Let me live onward; you
shall find that, though slower, the progress of my character will
liquidate all these d