That man seems to me a little less than human who lives as if our life in the world were but just begun, thinking only of the things of sense, recking nothing of the infinite thronging and assemblage of affairs the great stage over, or of the old wisdom that has ruled the world.  That is, if he have the choice.  Great masses of our fellow-men are shut out from choosing, by reason of absorbing toil, and it is part of the enlightenment of our age that our understandings are being opened to the workingman’s need of a little leisure wherein to look about him and clear his vision of the dust of the workshop.  We know that there is a drudgery which is inhuman, let it but encompass the whole life, with only heavy sleep between task and task.  We know that those who are so bound can have no freedom to be men, that their very spirits are in bondage.  It is part of our philanthropy—­it should be part of our statesmanship—­to ease the burden as we can, and enfranchise those who spend and are spent for the sustenance of the race.  But what shall we say of those who are free and yet choose littleness and bondage, or of those who, though they might see the whole face of society, nevertheless choose to spend all a life’s space poring upon some single vice or blemish?  I would not for the world discredit any sort of philanthropy except the small and churlish sort which seeks to reform by nagging—­the sort which exaggerates petty vices into great ones, and runs atilt against windmills, while everywhere colossal shams and abuses go unexposed, unrebuked.  Is it because we are better at being common scolds than at being wise advisers that we prefer little reforms to big ones?  Are we to allow the poor personal habits of other people to absorb and quite use up all our fine indignation?  It will be a bad day for society when sentimentalists are encouraged to suggest all the measures that shall be taken for the betterment of the race.  I, for one, sometimes sigh for the generation of “leading people” and of good people who shall see things steadily and see them whole; who shall show a handsome justness and a large sanity of view, an opportune tolerance for details, that happen to be awry, in order that they may spend their energy, not without self-possession, in some generous mission which shall make right principles shine upon the people’s life.  They would bring with them an age of large moralities, a spacious time, a day of vision.

Knowledge has come into the world in vain if it is not to emancipate those who may have it from narrowness, censoriousness, fussiness, an intemperate zeal for petty things.  It would be a most pleasant, a truly humane world, would we but open our ears with a more generous welcome to the clear voices that ring in those writings upon life and affairs which mankind has chosen to keep.  Not many splenetic books, not many intemperate, not many bigoted, have kept men’s confidence; and the mind that is impatient, or intolerant, or hoodwinked, or shut in to a petty