All life is the
shadow of a smoke-wreath, a gesture in the empty air, a hieroglyph
traced for an instant in the sand, and effaced a moment afterward by a
breath of wind, an air-bubble expanding and vanishing on the surface of
the great river of being--an appearance, a vanity, a nothing. But this
nothing is, however, the symbol of the universal being, and this passing
bubble is the epitome of the history of the world.
The man who has, however imperceptibly, helped in the work of the
universe, has lived; the man who has been conscious, in however small a
degree, of the cosmical movement, has lived also. The plain man serves
the world by his action and as a wheel in the machine; the thinker
serves it by his intellect, and as a light upon its path. The man of
meditative soul, who raises and comforts and sustains his traveling
companions, mortal and fugitive like himself, plays a nobler part still,
for he unites the other two utilities. Action, thought, speech, are the
three modes of human life. The artisan, the savant, and the orator, are
all three God's workmen. To do, to discover, to teach--these three things
are all labor, all good, all necessary. Will-o'-the-wisps that we are,
we may yet leave a trace behind us; meteors that we are, we may yet
prolong our perishable being in the memory of men, or at least in the
contexture of after events.
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