I am bound to speak on such subjects, because I have never yet met, or read of, the human company who did not require, now and then at least, being reminded of such times and such personages—­of whatsoever things are just, pure, true, lovely, and of good report, if there be any manhood and any praise to think, as St. Paul bids us all, of such things, that we may keep up in our minds as much as possible a lofty standard, a pure ideal, instead of sinking to the mere selfish standard which judges all things, even those of the world to come, by profit and by loss, and into that sordid frame of mind in which a man grows to believe that the world is constructed of bricks and timber, and kept going by the price of stocks.

We are all tempted, and the easier and more prosperous we are, the more we are tempted, to fall into that sordid and shallow frame of mind.  Sordid even when its projects are most daring, its outward luxuries most refined; and shallow, even when most acute, when priding itself most on its knowledge of human nature, and of the secret springs which, so it dreams, move the actions and make the history of nations and of men.  All are tempted that way, even the noblest-hearted. Adhaesit pavimento venter, says the old psalmist.  I am growing like the snake, crawling in the dust, and eating the dust in which I crawl.  I try to lift up my eyes to the heavens, to the true, the beautiful, the good, the eternal nobleness which was before all time, and shall be still when time has passed away.  But to lift up myself is what I cannot do.  Who will help me?  Who will quicken me? as our old English tongue has it.  Who will give me life?  The true, pure, lofty human life which I did not inherit from the primaeval ape, which the ape-nature in me is for ever trying to stifle, and make me that which I know too well I could so easily become—­a cunninger and more dainty-featured brute?  Death itself, which seems at times so fair, is fair because even it may raise me up and deliver me from the burden of this animal and mortal body: 

   ’Tis life, not death for which I pant;
   ’Tis life, whereof my nerves are scant;
   More life, and fuller, that I want.

Man?  I am a man not by reason of my bones and muscles, nerves and brain, which I have in common with apes and dogs and horses.  I am a man—­thou art a man or woman—­not because we have a flesh—­God forbid! but because there is a spirit in us, a divine spark and ray, which nature did not give, and which nature cannot take away.  And therefore, while I live on earth, I will live to the spirit, not to the flesh, that I may be, indeed, a man; and this same gross flesh, this animal ape-nature in me, shall be the very element in me which I will renounce, defy, despise; at least, if I am minded to be, not a merely higher savage, but a truly higher civilised man.  Civilisation with me shall mean, not more wealth, more finery, more self-indulgence—­even more aesthetic and