Scanderbeg,[208] and Gustavus?[209] Suppose they were virtuous; did
they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act
to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men
shall act with original views, the luster will be transferred from the
actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the
eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual
reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which
men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great
proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale
of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money
but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the
hieroglyphic[210] by which they obscurely signified their
consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every
man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we
inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the
aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What
is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without
parallax,[211] without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of
beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of
independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the
essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity
or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all
later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind
which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For the
sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the
soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time,