contemplation, I should not venture to pronounce with much confidence
in favor of the former. Mankind have such a deep stake in inward
illumination, that there is much to be said by the hermit or monk in
defense of his life of thought and prayer. A certain partiality, a
headiness, and loss of balance, is the tax which all action must pay.
Act, if you like,--but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too
strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the
victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces
them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment,
becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in
some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form and
lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker
has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates
of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.
But where are his new things of today? In actions of enthusiasm, this
drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher
aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of
cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the
speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and
sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation. The Hindoos
write in their sacred books, "Children only, and not the learned, speak
of the speculative and the practical faculties as two. They are but
one, for both obtain the selfsame end, and the place which is gained
by the followers of the one is gained by the followers of the other.
That man seeth, who seeth that the speculative and the practical
doctrines are one." For great action must draw on the spiritual nature.
The measure of action is the sentiment from which it proceeds. The
greatest action may easily be one of the most private circumstances.

This disparagement will not come from the leaders, but from inferior