how to prize. Thus has it often been urged against moralists, among
them Epictetus, that they were apt to concern themselves with none
but the wise alone. In this reproach is some truth, as some truth
there must be in every reproach that is made. And indeed, if we had
only the courage to listen to the simplest, the nearest, most
pressing voice of our conscience, and be deaf to all else, it were
doubtless our solitary duty to relieve the suffering about us to the
greatest extent in our power. It were incumbent upon us to visit and
nurse the poor, to console the afflicted; to found model factories,
surgeries, dispensaries, or at least to devote ourselves, as men of
science do, to wresting from nature the material secrets which are
most essential to man. But yet, were the world at a given moment to
contain only persons thus actively engaged in helping each other,
and none venturesome enough to dare snatch leisure for research in
other directions, then could this charitable labour not long endure;
for all that is best in the good that at this day is being done
round about us, was conceived in the spirit of one of those who
neglected, it may be, many an urgent, immediate duty in order to
think, to commune with themselves, in order to speak. Does it follow
that they did the best that was to be done? To such a question as
this who shall dare to reply? The soul that is meekly honest must
ever consider the simplest, the nearest duty to be the best of all
things it can do; but yet were there cause for regret had all men
for all time restricted themselves to the duty that lay nearest at
hand. In each generation some men have existed who held in all
loyalty that they fulfilled the duties of the passing hour by
pondering on those of the hour to come. Most thinkers will say that
these men were right. It is well that the thinker should give his
thoughts to the world, though it must be admitted that wisdom
befinds itself sometimes in the reverse of the sage's pronouncement.