Noble senses cost much; noble susceptibilities cost vastly more.  Compare oxen with men in respect to the amount of feeling and nervous wear and tear which they severally experience.  The ox enjoys grass and sleep; he feels hunger and weariness, and he is wounded by that which goes through his hide.  But upon the nerve of the man what an incessant thousandfold play!  Out of the eyes of the passers-by pleasures and pains are rained upon him; a word, a look, a tone thrills his every fibre; the touch of a hand warms or chills the very marrow in his bones.  Anticipation and memory, hope and regret, love and hate, ideal joy and sorrow and shame, ah, what troops of visitants are ever present with his soul, each and all, whether welcome guests or unwelcome, to be nourished from the resources of his bosom!  And out of this high sensibility of man must come what innumerable stabs of quick agony, what slow, gasping hours of grief and pain, that to the cattle upon the hills are utterly unknown!  But do you envy the ox his bovine peace?  It is precisely that which makes him an ox, It is due to nothing but his insensibility,—­by no means, as I take occasion to assure those poets who laud outward Nature and inferior creatures to the disparagement of man,—­by no means due to composure and philosophy.  The ox is no great hero, after all, for he will bellow at a thousandth part the sense of pain which from a Spartan child wrings no tear nor cry.

Yes, it is precisely this sensibility which makes man human.  Were he incapable of ideal joy and sorrow, he, too, were brute.  It is through this delicacy of conscious relationship, it is through this openness to the finest impressions, that he can become an organ of supernal intelligence, that he is capable of social and celestial inspirations.  High spiritual sensibility is the central condition of a noble and admirable life; it is the hinge on which turn and open to man the gates of his highest glory and purest peace.  Yet for this he must pay away all that induration of brutes and boors which sheds off so many a wasting excitement and stinging chagrin, as the feathers of the water-fowl shed rain.

In entering, therefore, upon any noble course of life, any generous and brave pursuit of excellence, understand, that, so far as ordinary coin is concerned, you are rather to pay, than to be paid, for your superiorities.  Understand that the pursuit of excellence must indeed be brave to be prosperous,—­that is, it is always in some way opposed and imperilled.  Understand, that, with every step of spiritual elevation which you attain, some part of your audience and companionship will be left behind.  Understand, that, if you carry lofty principles and philosophic intelligence into camps, these possessions will in general not be passed to your credit, but will be charged against you; and you must surpass your inferiors in their own kinds of virtue to regain what of popular regard these cost you.  Understand, that, if you have