ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike
beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision,
there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The
soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation,
perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with
knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic
Ocean, the South Sea,--long intervals of time, years, centuries,--are
of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state
of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is
called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of
repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new
state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one
fact the world hates, that the soul _becomes_; for that forever
degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to
shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas[215]
equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as
the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent.[216]
To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather
of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience
than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I
must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when
we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height,
and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to
principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities,
nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on
every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE.