that sordid frame of mind in which a man grows to believe that the world
is constructed of bricks and timber, and kept going by the price of
stocks.

We are all tempted, and the easier and more prosperous we are, the more
we are tempted, to fall into that sordid and shallow frame of mind.
Sordid even when its projects are most daring, its outward luxuries most
refined; and shallow, even when most acute, when priding itself most on
its knowledge of human nature, and of the secret springs which, so it
dreams, move the actions and make the history of nations and of men. All
are tempted that way, even the noblest-hearted. _Adhaesit pavimento
venter_, says the old psalmist. I am growing like the snake, crawling in
the dust, and eating the dust in which I crawl. I try to lift up my eyes
to the heavens, to the true, the beautiful, the good, the eternal
nobleness which was before all time, and shall be still when time has
passed away. But to lift up myself is what I cannot do. Who will help
me? Who will quicken me? as our old English tongue has it. Who will
give me life? The true, pure, lofty human life which I did _not_ inherit
from the primaeval ape, which the ape-nature in me is for ever trying to
stifle, and make me that which I know too well I could so easily become--a
cunninger and more dainty-featured brute? Death itself, which seems at
times so fair, is fair because even it may raise me up and deliver me
from the burden of this animal and mortal body:

'Tis life, not death for which I pant;
'Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant;
More life, and fuller, that I want.

Man? I am a man not by reason of my bones and muscles, nerves and brain,
which I have in common with apes and dogs and horses. I am a man--thou