"As to the _last_ that is not yet come. And as to its _aspect_, its
reality must be such as human eye could never convey to reading heart.
Every human idea of it _must_ be more or less wrong. And yet perhaps the
truer the aspect the stranger it would be. But is it not just with
ordinary things you are dissatisfied? And should not therefore the very
strangeness of these to you little better than rumours incline you to
examine the object of them? Will you assert that nothing strange can
have to do with human affairs? Much that was once scarce credible is now
so ordinary that men have grown stupid to the wonder inherent in it.
Nothing around you serves your need: try what is at least of another
class of phenomena. What if the things rumoured belong to a _more_
natural order than these, lie nearer the roots of your dissatisfied
existence, and look strange only because you have hitherto been living
in the outer court, not in the _penetralia_ of life? The rumour has been
vital enough to float down the ages, emerging from every storm: why not
see for yourself what may be in it? So powerful an influence on human
history, surely there will be found in it signs by which to determine
whether the man understood himself and his message, or owed his apparent
greatness to the deluded worship of his followers! That he has always
had foolish followers none will deny, and none but a fool would judge
any leader from such a fact.
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