Nevertheless, history throbs with the mystery of this influence.  A little girl slumping by her mother’s side awoke in a severe thunder-storm, and, nestling in terror near to the mother, and shrinking into the smallest possible space, said, trembling, “Mother, are you afraid?” “No, my dear,” answered the lady, calmly.  “Oh, well,” said the child, assuming her full proportions, and again disposing herself for sleep, “if you’re not afraid, I’m not afraid,” and was soon slumbering quietly.  What volumes of gravest human history in that little incident!  So infinitely easy are daring and magnanimity, so easy is transcendent height of thought and will, when exalted spiritually, when imperial valor and purpose breathe and blow upon our souls from the lips of a living fellow!  Not, it may be, that anything new is said.  That is not required.  What another now thrills, inspires, transfigures us by saying, we probably knew before, only dared not let ourselves think that we knew it.  The universe, perhaps, had not a nook so hidden that therein we could have been solitary enough to whisper that divine suggestion to our own hearts.  But now some childlike man stands up and speaks it to the common air, in serenest unconsciousness of doing anything singular.  He has said it,—­and lo, he lives!  By the help of God, then, we too, by word and deed, will utter our souls.

Get one hero, and you may have a thousand.  Create a grand impulse in history, and no fear but it will be reinforced.  Obtain your champion in the cause of Right, and you shall have indomitable armies that charge for social justice.

More of the highest life is suppressed in every one of us than ever gets vent; and it is this inward suppression, after making due account of all outward oppressions and injuries, which constitutes the chief tragedy of history.  Daily men cast to the ground the proffered beakers of heaven, from mere fear to drink.  Daily they rebuke the divine, inarticulate murmur that arises from the deeps of their being,—­inarticulate only because denied and reproved.  And he is greatest who can meet with a certain pure intrepidity those suggestions which haunt forever the hearts of men.

No greater blunder, accordingly, was ever made than that of attempting to render men brave and believing by addressing them as cowards and infidels.  Garibaldi stands up before his soldiers in Northern Italy, and says to them, (though I forget the exact words,) “I do not call you to fortune and prosperity; I call you to hardship, to suffering, to death; I ask you to give your toil without reward, to spill your blood and lie in unknown graves, to sacrifice all for your country and kind, and hear no thanks but the Well done of God in heaven.”  Did they cower and go back?  Ere the words had spent their echoes, every man’s will was as the living adamant of God’s purpose, and every man’s hand was as the hand of Destiny, and from the shock of their onset the Austrians fled as from the opening jaws of an earthquake.  Demosthenes told Athens only what Athens knew.  He merely blew upon the people’s hearts with their own best thoughts; and what a blaze!  True, the divine fuel was nearly gone, Athens wellnigh burnt out, and the flame lasted not long; but that he could produce such effects, when half he fanned was merest ashes, serves all the more to show how great such effects may be.