Let us not, as the Germans advise, endeavor to go
abroad and vex our bowels that we may be somebody else to explain
him. If I am not I, who will be?
But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the darkness
is not so much a quality of the past as of tradition. It is not
a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which makes thus
dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart of this
generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies outspread fair
and sunshiny in floods of light, for there is the sun and
daylight in her literature and art. Homer does not allow us to
forget that the sun shone,--nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon. Yet
no era has been wholly dark, nor will we too hastily submit to
the historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze of light.
If we could pierce the obscurity of those remote years, we should
find it light enough; only _there_ is not our day. Some
creatures are made to see in the dark. There has always been the
same amount of light in the world. The new and missing stars,
the comets and eclipses, do not affect the general illumination,
for only our glasses appreciate them.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244