Like the sun, which, to the
poor worldling, now appears in the zenith, now in the horizon, and again is
faintly reflected from the moon’s disk, and has the credit of describing
an entire great circle, crossing the quinoctial and solstitial colures,
— without detriment to his steadfastness or mediocrity. The golden mean,
in ethics, as in physics, is the centre of the system, and that about which
all revolve; and, though to a distant and plodding planet it be the uttermost
extreme, yet one day, when that planet’s year is complete, it will be
found to be central. They who are alarmed lest Virtue should so far demean
herself as to be extremely good, have not yet wholly embraced her, but
described only a slight arc of a few seconds about her; and from so small and
ill-defined a curvature, you can calculate no centre whatever; but their mean
is no better than meanness, nor their medium than mediocrity.
The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He
recognizes no faith but a creed, thinking this straw, by which he is moored,
does him good service, because his sheet-anchor does not drag. “The
house-roof fights with the rain; he who is under shelter does not know
it.” In his religion the ligature, which should be muscle and sinew, is
rater like that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in their hands,
when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, — the other end being
attached to the statue of the goddess. But frequently, as in their case, the
thread breaks, being stretched; and he is left without an asylum.
The divinity in man is the true vestal fire of the temple, which is never
permitted to go out, but burns as steadily, and with as pure a flame, on the
obscure provincial altars as in Numa’s temple at Rome. In the meanest
are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed. We say,
justly, that the weak person is “flat,” — for, like all
flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is,
on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the
way through life. Most things are strong in one direction; a straw
longitudinally; a board in the direction of its edge; a knee transversely to
its grain; but the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its
flat side, and is equally strong every way. The coward is wretchedly
spheroidal at best, too much educated or drawn out on one side, and depressed
on the other; or may be likened to a hollow sphere, whose disposition of
matter is best when the greatest bulk is intended.
We shall not attain to be spherical by lying on one or the other side for an
eternity, but only by resigning ourselves implicitly to the law of gravity in
us, shall we find our axis coincident with the celestial axis, and by
revolving incessantly through all circles, acquire a perfect sphericity.
Mankind, like the earth, revolve mainly from west to east, and so are
flattened at the pole. But does not philosophy give hint of a movement
commencing to be rotary at the poles too, which in a millennium will have
acquired increased rapidity, and help restore an equilibrium? And when at
length every star in the nebulæ and Milky Way has looked down with mild
radiance for a season, exerting its whole influence as the polar star, the
demands of science will in some degree be satisfied.
The grand and majestic have always somewhat of the undulatoriness of the
sphere. It is the secret of majesty in the rolling gait of the elephant, and
of all grace in action and in art. Always the line of beauty is a curve.
