Is Not Light Grander Than Fire?

I Grow Daily To Honor Facts More And More, And Theory Less And Less.

Man's Unhappiness, As I Construe, Comes Of His Greatness; It Is Because There Is An Infinite In Him, With Which All His Cunning He Cannot Quite Bury Under The Finite... Try Him With Half Of A Universe, Of An Omnipotence, He Sets To Quarreling With The Proprietor Of The Other Half, And Declares Himself The Most Maltreated Of Men. Always There Is A Black Spot In Our Sunshine: It Is Even, As I Said, The Shadow Of Ourselves.

So Much Of Truth, Only Under An Ancient Obsolete Vesture, But The Spirit Of It Still True, Do I Find In The Paganism Of Old Nations. Nature Is Still Divine, The Revelation Of The Workings Of God; The Hero Is Still Worshipable: This, Under Poor Cramped Incipient Forms, Is What All Pagan Religions Have Struggled, As They Could, To Set Forth.

The Steam-engine I Call Fire-demon And Great; But It Is Nothing To The Invention Of Fire.

All Sorts Of Heroes Are Intrinsically Of The Same Material; That Given A Great Soul, Open To The Divine Significance Of Life, Then There Is Given A Man Fit To Speak Of This, To Sing Of This, To Fight And Work For This, In A Great, Victorious, Enduring Manner; There Is Given A Hero, -- The Outward Shape Of Whom Will Depend On The Time And The Environment He Finds Himself In.