into Washington's port, and America into Adams's[198] eye. Honor is
venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient
virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it
and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage,
but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old
immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and
consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward.
Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the
Spartan[199] fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is
coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he
should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I
would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand
the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl
in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the
upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and
Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no
other time or place, but is the center of things. Where he is, there
is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily,
everybody in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other
person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes
place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must
make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a
country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time
fully to accomplish his design;--and posterity seem to follow his
steps as a train of clients. A man Cæsar[200] is born, and for ages
after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds
so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue
and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of