of Solon, to be named happy, if you are permitted fellowship with a man
of rich mind, whose individual savor you always finely perceive,
and never more than finely,--who yields you the perpetual sense of
community, and never of confusion, with your own spirit. The happiness
is all the greater, if the fellowship be accorded by a mind eminently
superior to one's own; for he, while yet more removed, comes yet nearer,
seeming to be that which our own soul may become in some future life,
and so yielding us the sense of our own being more deeply and powerfully
than it is given by the consciousness in our own bosom. And going
forward to the supreme point of this felicity, we may note that the
worshipper, in the ecstasy of his adoration, feels the Highest to be
also Nearest,--more remote than the borders of space and fringes of
heaven,--more intimate with his own being than the air he breathes or
the thought be thinks; and of this double sense is the rapture of his
adoration, and the joy indeed of every angel, born.

Divineness appertains to the absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm
to that which serves and modifies this. Infinitude and immortality are
of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other. In the first
you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never too delicate and
measured. Yet you will easily find a man in whom the latter so abounds
as not only to shut him out from others, but to absorb all the vital
resource generated in his own bosom, leaving to the pure personality
nothing. The finite nature fares sumptuously every day; the other is a
heavenly Lazarus sitting at the gate.

Of such individuals there are many classes; and the majority of
eccentric men constitute one class. If a man have very peculiar ways, we
readily attribute to him a certain depth and force, and think that the
polished citizen wants character in comparison. Probably it is not so.