playmate, dear and distant in memory, or a happy and wealthy letter had
arrived from a noble friend. Whence this enrichment? There was nothing
in this idyl, to which, even on a first reading, I could give the name
of "new truth." The secret is, that I _have_ indeed had tidings of
old playmates, dear and distant in memory,--of those bright-eyed,
brave, imaging playmates of all later ages, the inhabitants of Homer's
world. And little can one care for novelties of thought, in comparison
with these tones from the deeps of undying youth. Bring to our lips
these cups of the fresh wine of life, if you would do good. Bring us
these; for it is by perpetual rekindlings of the youth in us that our
life grows and unfolds. Each advancing epoch of the inward life is no
less than this,--a fresh efflux of adolescence from the immortal and
exhaustless heart. Everywhere the law is the same,--Become as a little
child, to reach the heavenly kingdoms. This, however, we become not by
any return to babyhood, but by an effusion or emergence from within of
pure life,--of life which takes from years only their wisdom and their
chastening, and gives them in payment its perfect renewal.

This, then, is the proof of originality,--that one shall utter the pure
consciousness of man. If he live, and live humanly, in his speech, the
speech itself will live; for it will obtain hospitality in all wealthy
and true hearts.

But if the most original speech be, as is here explained, of that which
is oldest and most familiar in the consciousness of man, it
nevertheless does not lack the charm of surprise and all effects of
newness. For, in truth, nothing is so strange to men as the very facts
they seem to confess every day of their lives. Truisms, I have said,
are the corpses of truths; and they are as far from the fact they are
taken to represent as the perished body from the risen soul. The