In a man or his work, over all special excellence or failure, prevails the general authority or value.
Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it. If he had known so much as this, he would never have earned it.
All matter, indeed, is capable of entertaining thought.
The complete subjugation of the body to the mind prophesies the sovereignty of the latter over the whole of nature. The instincts are to a certain extent a sort of independent nobility, of equal date with the mind, or crown,—ancient dukes and princes of the regal blood. They are perhaps the mind of our ancestors subsided in us, the experience of the race.
A small sum would really do much good, if the donor spent himself with it and did not merely relinquish it to some distant society whose managers do the good or the evil with it. How much might be done for this town with a hundred dollars! I could provide a select course of lectures for the summer or winter with that sum, which would be an incalculable benefit to every inhabitant. With a thousand dollars I could purchase for this town a more complete and select library than exists in the State out of Cambridge and Boston, perhaps a more available one than any. Men sit palsied and helpless by the side of their buried treasures.[508]
After all those who do most good with money, do it with the least, because they can do better than to acquire it.
March 13, 1846. The song sparrow and blackbird heard to-day. The snow going off. The ice in the pond one foot thick.
Men talk much of coöperation nowadays, of working together to some worthy end; but what little coöperation there is, is as if it were not, being a simple result of which the means are hidden, a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will coöperate with equal faith everywhere. If he has not faith he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To coöperate thoroughly implies to get your living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one earning his means as he went, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions, or coöperate, since one would not operate at all. They would part company at the first and most interesting crisis in their adventures.
END OF VOLUME I
The Riverside Press
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