Fear not either to believe that the soul is as eternal
as the order that obtains in it, wherefore you shall forever pursue that
divine beauty which has here so touched and inflamed you,--for this is
the faith of man, your race, and those who were fairest in its records.
And have recourse always to the fountains of this life in literature,
which are the wells of truth. How to live is the one matter; the wisest
man in his ripe age is yet to seek in it; but Thou, begin now and seek
wisdom in the beauty of virtue and live in its light, rejoicing in it;
so in this world shall you live in the foregleam of the world to come.
DEMOCRACY
Democracy is a prophecy, and looks to the future; it is for this reason
that it has its great career. Its faith is the substance of things hoped
for and the evidence of things unseen, whose realization will be the
labour of a long age. The life of historic nations has been a pursuit
toward a goal under the impulse of ideas often obscurely
comprehended,--world-ideas as we call them,--which they have embodied in
accomplished facts and in the institutions and beliefs of mankind,
lasting through ages; and as each nation has slowly grown aware of the
idea which animated it, it has become self-conscious and conscious of
greatness.
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