Divineness appertains to the absolute nature of man; piquancy and charm to that which serves and modifies this.  Infinitude and immortality are of the one; the strictest finiteness belongs to the other.  In the first you can never be too deep and rich; in the second never too delicate and measured.  Yet you will easily find a man in whom the latter so abounds as not only to shut him out from others, but to absorb all the vital resource generated in his own bosom, leaving to the pure personality nothing.  The finite nature fares sumptuously every day; the other is a heavenly Lazarus sitting at the gate.

Of such individuals there are many classes; and the majority of eccentric men constitute one class.  If a man have very peculiar ways, we readily attribute to him a certain depth and force, and think that the polished citizen wants character in comparison.  Probably it is not so.  Singularity may be as shallow as the shallowest conformity.  There are numbers of such from whom if you deduct the eccentricity, it is like subtracting red from vermilion or six from half a dozen.  They are grimaces of humanity,—­no more.  In particular, I make occasion to say, that those oddities, whose chief characteristic it is to slink away from the habitations of men, and claim companionship with musk-rats, are, despite Mr. Thoreau’s pleasant patronage of them, no whit more manly or profound than the average citizen, who loves streets and parlors, and does not endure estrangement from the Post-Office.  Mice lurk in holes and corners; could the cat speak, she would say that they have a genius only for lurking in holes.  Bees and ants are, to say the least, quite as witty as beetles, proverbially blind; yet they build insect cities, and are as invincibly social and city-loving as Socrates himself.

Aside, however, from special eccentricity, there are men, like the Earl of Essex, Bacon’s soi-disant friend, who possess a certain emphatic and imposing individuality, which, while commonly assumed to indicate character and force, is really but the succedaneum for these.  They are like oysters, with extreme stress of shell, and only a blind, soft, acephalous body within.  These are commonly great men so long as little men will serve; and are something less than little ever after.  As an instance of this, I should select the late chief magistrate of this nation.  His whole ability lay in putting a most imposing countenance upon commonplaces.  He made a mere air seem solid as rock.  Owing to this possibility of presenting all force on the outside, and so creating a false impression of resource, all great social emergencies are followed by a speedy breaking down of men to whom was generally attributed an able spirit; while others of less outward mark, and for this reason hitherto unnoticed, come forward, and prove to be indeed the large vessels of manhood accorded to that generation.