Whatever comprehends less than that--whatever is less than
the laws of light and of astronomical motion--or less than the laws
that follow the thief, the liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through
this life and doubtless afterward--or less than vast stretches of
time, or the slow formation of density, or the patient upheaving of
strata--is of no account. Whatever would put God in a poem or system
of philosophy as contending against some being or influence, is also
of no account. Sanity and ensemble characterize the great master
--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt. The great master has nothing
to do with miracles. He sees health for himself in being one of the
mass--he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. To the perfect shape
comes common ground. To be under the general law is great, for that
is to correspond with it. The master knows that he is unspeakably
great, and that all are unspeakably great--that nothing, for instance,
is greater than to conceive children, and bring them up well--that to
_be_ is just as great as to perceive or tell.
In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest
more than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty.
They out of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided,
and they must sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing
can warp or degrade it.
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