" How carefully it limits its kind of evidence, shutting out
everything that sounds like personal communication, revelation, in its
impatient independence; how studiously it orphans itself. And then
how, in some moods, orphaned by its arrogance, it suddenly becomes
intensely cognizant of its orphanage, and the child's hunger for a
Father takes possession of its heart and it is dreary and miserable!
I always know, when I speak thus of types of men, that you will think
that I am talking of those types in their extreme specimens. I am
not speaking to-day of the miracles of physical vitality, nor of the
over-successful men with their colossal fortunes, nor of the mighty
thinkers only. We all have our certain share in these various kinds of
life, and each of us may make his little share a seed of pride. We
are strangely ingenious here. We have an easy faculty of persuading
ourselves that ours is best of everything and growing arrogant,
unfilial and worldly over it. I speak to the men confident in their
youth and health, to the merchants strong in their business credit,
to the thoughtful brains at work over their problems of settling the
universe for themselves.
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