Order and Right may freely enter to be man. He who can open any object
to its source is touched therein by the finger of God, and insight is
inevitable consecration. Give the coward a suspicion of our human
destiny, and he is no longer coward; he would gladly be cut in pieces
and burned in any flame to shed abroad that light. Life has such an
irresistible tendency to extend, that it makes of the man a mere
vehicle, takes him for hands and feet, wheels and wings: he is glad only
when the truth runs and prevails. Enthusiasm, devotion, earnestness are
names for this possession of the deep thinker by his thought. He lives
in that, and has in it his prosperity, no longer in the flesh. The
inspired man becomes great by absorption in a great design; he is
preoccupied, and trifles, for which other men are bought and sold, shine
before him as beads of glass with which savages are wheedled. We drop
our playthings, our banks and coaches, crowns, swords, colleges, and
sugar-plums in a heap together, when any moment opens to us the scope of
our activity, and carries far forward the curve through which we have
already run.

The divine authority of Genius is given in this descent and superiority
to will. That which in me I must obey, that also above me all men must
obey. Will is the centre of the practical man, of all force, not moral,
but brute or natural, and is identified in the common thought with
myself, as I am a natural cause. Will is the sum of physical forces
necessary for self-preservation, is reagency against the formidable
rivalry of every other organization. In this animal centre the laws are
carried up, as reins are gathered to be put into the hands of a driver,
and being tied in a knot just where the physical touches the celestial
sphere, they seem to be moral, and Will much more than the body is in
popular thought inseparable from man. It is an organ into which he has
thrown himself in reckless neglect of his privilege, a grasping hand