offensive members of society, whose existence is a social pest,
invariably think themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never
get over their astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their
contemporaries. Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in
heroes and archangels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare
contrivance that lodged the due inertia in every creature, the
conserving, resisting energy, the anger at being waked or changed?
Altogether independent of the intellectual force in each, is the pride
of opinion, the security that we are right. Not the feeblest grandame,
not a mowing idiot, but uses what spark of perception and faculty is
left, to chuckle and triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities
of all the rest. Difference from me is the measure of absurdity. Not
one has a misgiving of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought that
made things cohere with this bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the
midst of this chuckle of self-gratulation, some figure goes by, which
Thersites too can love and admire. This is he that should marshal us
the way we were going. There is no end to his aid. Without Plato, we
should almost lose our faith in the possibility of a reasonable book.
We seem to want but one, but we want one. We love to associate with
heroic persons, since our receptivity is unlimited; and, with the
great, our thoughts and manners easily become great. We are all wise
in capacity, though so few in energy. There needs but one wise man in
a company, and all are wise, so rapid is the contagion.

Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from egotism, and
enable us to see other people and their works. But there are vices and
follies incident to whole populations and ages. Men resemble their
contemporaries, even more than their progenitors. It is observed in
old couples, or in persons who have been housemates for a course of
years, that they grow alike; and, if they should live long enough, we