books. He got his education from contact with fellow-men, and he
thought, and a man is worth just what nature impresses upon him. A man
standing by the sea, or in a forest, or looking at a flower, or hearing
a poem, or looking in the eyes of the woman he loves, receives all that
he is capable of receiving--and if he is a great man the impression is
great, and he uses it for the purpose of benefiting his fellow-man.

Thomas Paine was not rich, he was poor, and his father before him was
poor, and he was raised a sailmaker, a very lowly profession, and yet
that man became one of the mainstays of liberty in this world. At one
time he was an excise man, like Burns. Burns was once--speak it softly
--a gauger--and yet he wrote poems that will wet the cheek of humanity
with tears as long as the world travels in its orb around the sun.

Poverty was his brother, necessity his master. He had more brains than
books; more courage than politeness; more strength than polish. He
had no veneration for old mistakes, no admiration for ancient lies. He
loved the truth for truth's sake and for man's sake. He saw oppression
on every hand, injustice everywhere, hypocrisy at the altar, venality on
the bench, tyranny on the throne, and with a splendid courage he
espoused the cause of the weak against the strong, of the enslaved many
against the titled few.

In England he was nothing. He belonged to the lower classes--that is,
the useful people. England depended for her prosperity upon her
mechanics and her thinkers, her sailors and her workers, and they are
the only men in Europe who are not gentlemen. The only obstacles in the
way of progress in Europe were the nobility and the priests, and they
are the only gentlemen.