’We but level that lift
  To pass and continue beyond.’

But an individuality must ‘crystallise out’ somewhere, and its final value will not so much depend on the number of states it has passed through, as how it has lived each on the way, with what depth of conviction and force of sincerity.  For a modern young man to thus experience all round, and pass, and continue beyond where such great ones as St. Bernard, Pascal, and Swedenborg, have anchored their starry souls to shine thence upon men for all time, is no uncommon thing.  It is more the rule than the exception:  but one would hardly say that in going further they have gone higher, or ended greater.  The footpath of pioneer individualism must inevitably become the highway of the race.  Every American is not a Columbus.

There are two ways in which we may live our spiritual progress:  as critics, or poets.  Most men live theirs in that critical attitude which refuses to commit itself, which tastes all, but enjoys none; but the greatest in that earnest, final, rooted, creative, fashion which is the way of the poets.  The one is as a man who spends his days passing from place to place in search of a dwelling to his mind, but dies at last in an inn, having known nought of the settled peace of a home; but the other, howsoever often he has to change his quarters, for howsoever short a time he may remain in any one of his resting-places, makes of each a home, with roots that shoot in a night to the foundations of the world, and blossomed branches that mingle with the stars.

Criticism is a good thing, but poetry is a better.  Indeed, criticism properly is not; it is but a process to an end.  We could really do without it much better than we imagine:  for, after all, the question is not so much how we live, but do we live?  Who would not a hundred times rather be a fruitful Parsee than a barren philosophe?  Yes, all lies, of course, in original greatness of soul; and there is really no state of mind which is not like Hamlet’s pipe—­if we but know the ’touch of it,’ ‘it will discourse most eloquent music.’

Now, it was that great sincerity in Narcissus that has always made us take him so seriously.  And here I would remark in parenthesis, that trivial surface insincerities, such as we have had glimpses of in his dealings, do not affect such a great organic sincerity as I am speaking of.  They are excrescences, which the great central health will sooner or later clear away.  It was because he never held an opinion to which he was not, when called upon, practically faithful; never dreamed a dream without at once setting about its translation into daylight; never professed a creed for a week without some essay after the realisation of its new ideal; it was because he had the power and the courage to glow mightily, and to some purpose; because his life had a fiery centre, which his eyes were not afraid of revealing—­that I speak of his great sincerity, a great capacity for intense life.  Shallow patterers of divine creeds were, therefore, most abhorrent to him.  ’You must excuse me, sir,’ I remember his once saying to such a one, ’but what are you doing with cigarette and salutaris?  If I held such a belief as yours, I would stand sandalled, with a rope round my waist, before to-morrow.’