of facts. Pursue that variety below the surface!--the lines did but
part further and further asunder, with an ever-increasing divergency,
which made any common measure of truth impossible. Diversity of
custom!--What was it but diversity in the moral and mental view,
diversity of opinion? and diversity of opinion, what but radical
diversity of mental constitution? How various in kind and degree had
he found men's thoughts concerning death, for instance, "some (ah
me!) even running headlong upon it, with [92] a real affection"?
Death, life; wealth, poverty; the whole sum of contrasts; nay! duty
itself,--the relish of right and wrong"; all depend upon the opinion
each one has of them, and "receive no colour of good or evil but
according to the application of the individual soul." Did Hamlet
learn of him that "there is nothing either good or bad but thinking
makes it so"?--What we call evil is not so of itself: it depends only
upon us, to give it another taste and complexion.--Things, in respect
of themselves, have peradventure their weight, measure, and
conditions; but when once we have taken them into us, the soul forms
them as she pleases.--Death is terrible to Cicero, courted by Cato,
indifferent to Socrates.--Fortune, circumstance, offers but the
matter: 'tis the soul adds the form.--Every opinion, how fantastic
soever to some, is to another of force enough to be espoused at the
risk of life."

For opinion was the projection of individual will, of a native
original predilection. Opinions!--they are like the clothes we wear,
which warm us, not with their heat, but with ours. Track your way
(as he had learned to do) to the remote origin of what looks like
folly; at home, on its native soil, it was found to be justifiable,
as a proper growth of wisdom. In the vast conflict of taste,
preference, conviction, there was no real inconsistency. It was but