Hegel is said to have calmly finished his _Phaenomenologie des Geistes_ at
Jena, on the 14th October 1806, not knowing anything whatever of the
battle that was raging round him.

Matthew Arnold has suggested that we might take a lesson from the heavenly
bodies.

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

"Bounded by themselves, and unobservant
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."

It is true that

"A man is his own star;
Our acts our angels are
For good or ill,"

and that "rather than follow a multitude to do evil," one should "stand
like Pompey's pillar, conspicuous by oneself, and single in
integrity." [6] But to many this isolation would be itself most painful,
for the heart is "no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that
joins to them." [7]