whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to
work, becomes revealed and thrown open, and you discover with
amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your
America is here or nowhere. The situation that has not its duty,
its ideal, was never occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor,
miserable hampered actual wherein thou even now standest, here or
nowhere, is thy Ideal: work it out therefrom, believe, live, and be
free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment too is in
thyself. Thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same
Ideal out of. What matter whether such stuff be of this sort or
that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that
pinest in the imprisonment of the actual, and criest bitterly to the
gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth,
the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere,
couldest thou only see."

{52} Or Comic?

{53} In pistrinum. In the pounding-mill (usually worked by horses
or asses).

{54} Or Tragic?

{55} The old song of Percy and Douglas, Chevy Chase in its first
form.

{56} Or the Heroic?

{57} Epistles I. ii. 4. Better than Chrysippus and Crantor. They
were both philosophers, Chrysippus a subtle stoic, Crantor the first