Our genius has a most real, concrete, and altogether terrestrial tendency: there seems to be a considerable majority of Sadducees among us, or, as Plato calls them, “uninitiated persons, who believe in nothing but what they can lay hold of with their hands. These men will make railways, telegraphs, and tunnels, and build crystal palaces, and collect mechanical products from the ends of the earth, and exhibit in every possible shape and variety the sublime of what is mechanical and material; but for the supersensual ideas, they will have none of them.”[[90]]
Nevertheless, if we look through the history of the world’s genius, we shall find its greatest successes to lie in the practical. Homer begged; Tasso begged in a different way; Galileo was racked; De Witt assassinated,—and all for wishing to improve their species. At the same time, Raffaelle, Michel Angelo, Zeuxis, Apelles, Rubens, Reynolds, Titian, Shakspeare, were rich and happy. Why? because with their genius they combined practical prudence. This is the grand secret of success.
[90]. Professor Blackie; Edinburgh Essays, 1856.
WORTH OF ENERGY.
A man with knowledge but without energy is a home furnished but not inhabited; a man with energy but no knowledge, a house dwelt in but unfurnished.
Mr. Sharp[[91]] counsels us: “Prefer a life of energy to a life of inaction. There are always kind friends enough ready to preach up caution and delay, &c. Yet it is impossible to lay down any general rule of a prudential kind. Every one must be judged of after a careful review of all its circumstances; for if one, only one, be overlooked, the decision may be injurious or fatal. Thus, there will ever be many conflicting reasons for and against a spirit of enterprise and a habit of caution.
“Those who advise others to withstand the temptations of hope will always appear to be wiser than they really are, for how often can it be made certain that the rejected and untried hazard would have been successful? Besides, those who dissuade us from action have corrupt but powerful allies in our indolence, irresolution, and cowardice. To despond is very easy, but it requires works as well as faith to engage successfully in a difficult undertaking.
“There are, however, few difficulties that hold out against real attacks: they fly, like the visible horizon, before those who advance. A passionate desire and an unwearied will can perform impossibilities, or what seem to be so to the cold and the feeble. If we do but go on, some unseen path will open among the hills.