Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men wouldsteadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it withsuch things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. If werespected only what is inevitable and has a right to be , music and poetry would resoundalong the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthythings have any permanent and absolute existence, --that petty fears and petty pleasure arebut the shadow of reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes andslumbering, by consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life ofroutine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundation. Children, whoplay life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live worthily, butwho think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book,that "there was a king’s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought upby a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to thebarbarous race with which be lived. One of his father’s ministers having discovered him,revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and heknew himself to be a prince. So soul, from the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes itsown character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself tobe Brahme." We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should give us an account ofthe realities he beheld, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at ameeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop. Or a dwelling-house, and say what thatthing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Menesteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adamand after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all thesetimes and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the presentmoment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all ages. And we are enabled toapprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching ofthe reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to ourconceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives inconceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had as fair and noble a design but some of hisposterity at least could accomplish it.
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