does not know a star in the sky. The solstice[263] he does not
observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar
of the year is without a dial in his mind. His notebooks impair his
memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance office increases
the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery
does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some
energy, by a Christianity intrenched in establishments and forms, some
vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom
where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard
of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular
equality may be observed between great men of the first and of the
last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of
the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than
Plutarch's[264] heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in
time is the race progressive. Phocion,[265] Socrates, Anaxagoras,[266]
Diogenes,[267] are great men, but they leave no class. He who is
really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be
his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and
inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate
men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good.
Hudson[268] and Bering[269] accomplished so much in their fishing
boats, as to astonish Parry[270] and Franklin,[271] whose equipment
exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an
opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena
than any one since. Columbus[272] found the New World in an undecked
boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of
means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few
years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man.