But sympathy is warmth and light too. It is, as it were, the moral
atmosphere connecting all animated natures. Putting aside, for a
moment, the large differences that opinions, language, and education
make between men, look at the innate diversity of character.
Natural philosophers were amazed when they thought they had found a
new-created species. But what is each man but a creature such as
the world has not before seen? Then think how they pour forth in
multitudinous masses, from princes delicately nurtured to little
boys on scrubby commons, or in dark cellars. How are these people
to be understood, to be taught to understand each other, but by
those who have the deepest sympathies with all? There cannot be a
great man without large sympathy. There may be men who play loud-
sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage, where kings and
great people sometimes enter who are only characters of secondary
import--deputy great men. But the interest and the instruction lie
with those who have to feel and suffer most.

Add courage to this openness we have been considering, and you have
a man who can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can
adventure, can, in short, use all the means that insight and
sympathy endow him with.

I see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations
than there are in the greatness of individuals. Extraneous
circumstances largely influence nations as individuals; and make a
larger part of the show of the former than of the latter; as we are
wont to consider no nation great that is not great in extent or
resources, as well as in character. But of two nations, equal in
other respects, the superiority must belong to the one which excels