Great men capitalize the impotency of unsupported intellect.  Ten-talent men have often known more than they would do.  The children of genius have not always lived up to their moral light.  Burns’ mind ran swiftly forward, but his will followed afar off.  If the poet’s forehead was in the clouds, his feet were in the mire.  How noble, also, Byron’s thoughts, but how mean his life!  Goethe uttered the wisdom of a sage, as did Rousseau, yet their deeds were often those we would expect from a slave with a low brow.  Even of Shakespeare, it is said in the morning he polished his sonnets, while at midnight he poached game from a neighboring estate.  Our era bestows unstinted admiration upon the essays of Lord Bacon.  How noble his aphorisms!  How petty his envy and avarice!  What scholarship was his, and what cunning also!  With what splendor of argument does he plead for the advancement of learning and liberty!  With what meanness does he take bribes from the rich against the poor!  His mind seems like a palace of marble with splendid galleries and library and banqueting hall, yet in this palace the spider spins its web and vermin make the foundations to be a noisome place.

In all ages also the intellect of the common people has discerned truth and light that the will has refused to fulfill.  Generations ago society discovered the doctrine of industry and integrity, and yet thousands of individuals still prefer to steal or beg or starve rather than work.  For centuries the work of moralists and public instructors has not been so much the making known new truth as the inspiring men to do a truth already known.  As of old, so now, the word is nigh man, even in his mouth, for enabling society to lift every social burden, right every social wrong, turn each rookery into a house, make each place wealth, make every home happiness, make every child a scholar, a patriot and a Christian.  In Solomon’s day wisdom stood in the corner of the streets but man would not regard, and the city perished.  Should the heart now join the intellect, man’s feet would swiftly find these paths that lead to prosperity and perfect peace.

Fascinating, indeed, the question how feeling and sentiment control conduct and character.  Modern machinery has thrown light upon the problems of the soul.  The engineer finds that his locomotive will not run itself, but waits for the steam to pound upon the piston.  The great ships also are becalmed until the trade winds come to beat upon the sails.  Informed by these physical facts, we now see a noble thought or ambition or social ideal is a mechanism that will not work itself, but asks the enthusiastic heart to lend power divine.  Some of earth’s greatest orators, like Patrick Henry, have been unlearned men, but no orator has ever fallen short of being an enthusiastic man.  A generation ago there appeared in Paris one whose voice was counted the most perfect voice in Europe.  Musical critics