Life is a pitching of this penny,--heads or tails. We never tire of
this game, because there is still a slight shudder of astonishment at
the exhibition of the other face, at the contrast of the two faces.
A man is flushed with success, and bethinks himself what this good
luck signifies. He drives his bargain in the street; but it occurs
that he also is bought and sold. He sees the beauty of a human face,
and searches the cause of that beauty, which must be more beautiful.
He builds his fortunes, maintains the laws, cherishes his children;
but he asks himself, why? and whereto? This head and this tail are
called, in the language of philosophy, Infinite and Finite; Relative
and Absolute; Apparent and Real; and many fine names beside.

Each man is born with a predisposition to one or the other of these
sides of nature; and it will easily happen that men will be found
devoted to one or the other. One class has the perception of difference,
and is conversant with facts and surfaces; cities and persons; and the
bringing certain things to pass;--the men of talent and action. Another
class have the perception of identity, and are men of faith and
philosophy, men of genius.

Each of these riders drives too fast. Plotinus believes only in
philosophers; Fenelon, in saints; Pindar and Byron, in poets. Read the
haughty language in which Plato and the Platonists speak of all men
who are not devoted to their own shining abstractions: other men are
rats and mice. The literary class is usually proud and exclusive. The
correspondence of Pope and Swift describes mankind around them as
monsters; and that of Goethe and Schiller, in our own time, is scarcely
more kind.