Plato says, Pericles owed this
elevation to the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke descended from a higher
sphere when he would influence human affairs. Franklin, Adams,
Jefferson, Washington, stood on a fine humanity, before which the brawls
of modern senates are but pot-house politics.
But there are higher secrets of culture, which are not for the
apprentices, but for proficients. These are lessons only for the brave.
We must know our friends under ugly masks. The calamities are our
friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his address to the Muse:--
"Get him the time's long grudge, the court's ill-will,
And, reconciled, keep him suspected still,
Make him lose all his friends, and, what is worse,
Almost all ways to any better course;
With me thou leav'st a better Muse than thee,
And which thou brought'st me, blessed Poverty."
We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and play at heroism. But the wiser
God says, Take the shame, the poverty, and the penal solitude that
belong to truth-speaking. Try the rough water, as well as the smooth.
Rough water can teach lessons worth knowing. When the state is unquiet,
personal qualities are more than ever decisive. Fear not a revolution
which will constrain you to live five years in one. Don't be so tender
at making an enemy now and then. Be willing to go to Coventry sometimes,
and let the populace bestow on you their coldest contempts. The finished
man of the world must eat of every apple once.
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