Tradition Is A More
Interrupted And Feebler Memory.
This world is but canvas to our imaginations.
I see men with
infinite pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, what I,
with at least equal pains, would realize to my imagination, - its
capacities; for certainly there is a life of the mind above the
wants of the body, and independent of it. Often the body is
warmed, but the imagination is torpid; the body is fat, but the
imagination is lean and shrunk. But what avails all other wealth
if this is wanting? "Imagination is the air of mind," in which
it lives and breathes. All things are as I am. Where is the
House of Change? The past is only so heroic as we see it.
It is the canvas on which our idea of heroism is painted, and
so, in one sense, the dim prospectus of our future field. Our
circumstances answer to our expectations and the demand of our
natures. I have noticed that if a man thinks that he needs a
thousand dollars, and cannot be convinced that he does not, he
will commonly be found to have them; if he lives and thinks a
thousand dollars will be forthcoming, though it be to buy
shoe-strings with. A thousand mills will be just as slow to
come to one who finds it equally hard to convince himself that
he needs _them_.
Men are by birth equal in this, that given Themselves and
their condition, they are even.
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