We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universalthat error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.
Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are.
And last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears as vindicator, levelling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in man, and always striking soon or late when justice is not done. What is useful will last, what is hurtful will sink.
I am the owner of the sphere, Of the seven stars and the solar year, of Caesar's hand, and Plato's brain, Of Lord Christ's heart, and Shakespeare's strain.
But harder still it has proved to resist and rule the dragon Money, with his paper wings. Chancellors and Boards of Trade, Pitt, Peel, and Bobinson, and their parliaments, and their whole generation, adopted false principles, and went to their graves in the belief that they were enriching the country which they were impoverishing.
The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity
The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitants of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics.