neighborhood, a single, narrow round of existence; the gain of
being human accrues in the choice of change and variety and of
experience far and wide, with all the world for stage--a stage
set and appointed by this very art of choice--all future
generations for witnesses and audience. When you talk with a man
who has in his nature and acquirements that freedom from
constraint which goes with the full franchise of humanity, he
turns easily with topic to topic; does not fall silent or dull
when you leave some single field of thought such as unwise men
make a prison of. The men who will not be broken from a little
set of subjects, who talk earnestly, hotly, with a sort of
fierceness, of certain special schemes of conduct, and look
coldly upon everything else, render you infinitely uneasy, as if
there were in them a force abnormal and which rocked toward an
upset of the mind; but from the man whose interest swings from
thought to thought with the zest and poise and pleasure of the
old traveler, eager for what is new, glad to look again upon what
is old, you come away with faculties warmed and heartened--with
the feeling of having been comrade for a little with a genuine
human being. It is a large world and a round world, and men grow
human by seeing all its play of force and folly.


VI

Let no one suppose that efficiency is lost by such breadth and
catholicity of view. We deceive ourselves with instances, look at
sharp crises in the world's affairs, and imagine that intense and
narrow men have made history for us. Poise, balance, a nice and
equable exercise of force, are not, it is true, the things the