land." On reverence for the authority of bygone generations depends the
permanence of every form of thought or belief, as much as of all social,
national, and family life: but on reverence of the spirit, not merely
of the letter; of the methods of our ancestors, not merely of their
conclusions. Ay, and we shall not be able to preserve their
conclusions, not even to understand them; they will die away on our lips
into skeleton notions, and soulless phrases, unless we see that the
greatness of the mighty dead has always consisted in this, that they
were seekers, improvers, inventors, endued with that divine power and
right of discovery which has been bestowed on us, even as on them;
unless we become such men as they were, and go on to cultivate and
develop the precious heritage which they have bequeathed to us, instead
of hiding their talent in a napkin and burying it in the earth; making
their greatness an excuse for our own littleness, their industry for our
laziness, their faith for our despair; and prating about the old paths,
while we forget that paths were made that men might walk in them, and
not stand still, and try in vain to stop the way.

It may be said, certainly, as an excuse for these Alexandrian Greeks,
that they were a people in a state of old age and decay; and that they
only exhibited the common and natural faults of old age. For as with
individuals, so with races, nations, societies, schools of thought--
youth is the time of free fancy and poetry; manhood of calm and strong
induction; old age of deduction, when men settle down upon their lees,
and content themselves with reaffirming and verifying the conclusions of
their earlier years, and too often, alas! with denying and
anathematising all conclusions which have been arrived at since their
own meridian. It is sad: but it is patent and common. It is sad to
think that the day may come to each of us, when we shall have ceased to
hope for discovery and for progress; when a thing will seem e priori