THE Kingdom of God is within you. TOT circa unum caput tumultuantes Deos Quid aliud est anima quam Deus in corpore humano hospitans? SENECA Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig. MARCUS AURELIUS LET me ever worship the great God of this little god, my soule. HENRY MONTAGU, EARL OF MANCHESTER You will never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars. THOMAS TRAHERNE GOD created Man in His image-and Man made haste to return the compliment. HEINE IF If Children, then Heirs Fa man should be able to assent to this doctrine as he ought, that we are all sprung from God in an especial manner, and that God is the father both of men and of gods, I suppose that he would never have any ignoble or mean thoughts about himself. If Cæsar should adopt you, no one could endure your arrogance. What, then, and if you know you are the son of God, will you not be elated? Yet we do not so; but while these two things are mingled in the generation of man-body in common with the animals, and reason and intelligence in common with the gods --many incline to this kinship which is miserable and mortal, and some few to that which is divine and happy. EPICTETUS I Valedictory to the River Duddon THOUGHT of Thee, my partner and my guide, As being past away-vain sympathies! For backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes, I see what was, and is, and will abide; 1 i.e. the Emperor. THE UNIVERSAL IN MAN Still glides the Stream, and shall for ever glide; The elements, must vanish ;-be it so! We feel that we are greater than we know. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH T The Universal in Man HERE is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has befallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. . . . Of the universal mind each individual man is one more incarnation. All its properties consist in him. Every step in his private experience flashes a light on what great bodies of men have done, and the crises of his life refer to national crises. Every revolution was first a thought in one THE UNIVERSAL IN MAN man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is a key to that era. Every reform was once a private opinion; and when it shall be a private opinion again, it will solve the problem of the age. It is remarkable that involuntarily we always read as superior beings. Universal history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures in the sacerdotal, the imperial palaces, in the triumphs of will or of genius-anywhere lose our ear, anywhere make us feel that we intrude, that this is for our betters; but rather it is true that in their grandest strokes, there we feel most at home. All that Shakespeare says of a king, yonder slip of a boy that reads in a corner feels to be true of himself. We sympathise in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities, of men; because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found for us, as we ourselves in that place would have done or applauded. A wise and good soul, therefore, never needs look for allusions personal and laudatory in discourse. He hears the commendation, not of himself, but more sweet, of that character he seeks, in every word that is said concerning character; yea, further, in every fact that befalls,—in the running river and the rustling corn. Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the firmament. RALPH WALDO EMERSON |