With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE-Hamlet

154. THE HIGHER PANTHEISM IN A NUTSHELL

ONE, who is not, we see; but one, whom we see not, is;
Surely, this is not that; but that is assuredly this.

What, and wherefore, and whence: for under is over and under; If thunder could be without lightning, lightning could be without thunder.

Doubt is faith in the main; but faith, on the whole, is doubt;
We cannot believe by proof; but could we believe without?

Why, and whither, and how? for barley and rye are not clover; Neither are straight lines curves; yet over is under and over.

One and two are not one; but one and nothing is two;
Truth can hardly be false, if falsehood cannot be true.

Parallels all things are; yet many of these are askew;
You are certainly I; but certainly I am not you.

One, whom we see not, is; and one, who is not, we see;
Fiddle, we know, is diddle; and diddle, we take it, is dee.
A. C. SWINBURNE

156. THE AMERICAN FORM OF GOVERNMENT

We as Americans are intolerant believers in our form of government. Every child learns to think that it is the best in the world, not only for us but for all men. Every demagogue learns to bellow forth his unlimited, unquestioning certainty of that superiority and universal applicability. I am not here to dispute the belief-only to define the facts about it. If our form of government is the best, it cannot be so because it is the cheapest. On the contrary, it is one of the most expensive in the world. Nor can it be the best because it is the most efficient. On the contrary, it is one of the slowest in the world; the most complicated, cumbrous, and limited. And even within the spheres in which it

will work, our form of government is not the easiest to work. On the contrary, it requires, to keep it running successfully, more public spirit, more study about candidates, more time for multitudinous elections, more watchfulness of public officials, and a higher average of intelligence than any other in the world. Now, if these things are so, if our government does in any measure have these defects, then the old question of the Philistines comes up with insistent force, "Wherein lies its great strength?"

The answer has become a truism. Its strength lies in the quality of man it develops. The real merit is not in the machinery, but in the skilled intelligence absolutely required to frame and to work it; in the combination of respect for authority on the one hand, with training in individual initiative on the other, which this work brings out and which the government has thus far scrupulously and religiously guarded.

WHITELAW REID

157. EMBERS

THAT time of year thou may'st in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang:
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest:
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by:
-This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

158. PURITAN NARROWNESS AND BREADTH

The Puritan is a stern figure enough, but it is a manly figure withal, full of strength and force and purpose. He had grave faults, but they were the faults of a strong and not a weak nature, and his virtues were those of a robust man of lofty aims.

It is true that he drove Roger Williams into exile and persecuted the Antinomians; but he founded successful and God-fearing commonwealths. He hanged Quakers, and in a mad panic put old women to death as witches; but he planted a college in the

wilderness and put a schoolhouse in every village. He made a narrow creed the test of citizenship; but he founded the town meeting, where every man helped to govern, and where all men were equal before the law. He banished harmless pleasures, and cast a gloom over daily life; but he formed the first union of states in the New England confederacy, and through the mouth of one of the witchcraft judges uttered an eloquent protest against human slavery a century before Garrison was born or Wilberforce began his agitation.

He refused liberty of conscience to those who sought it beneath the shadow of his meeting-house; but he kept the torch of learning burning brightly in the New World. In the fullness of time he broke the fetters which he had himself forged for the human mind, as he had formerly broken the shackles of Laud and Charles. He was rigid in his prejudices, and filled with an intense pride of race and home; but when the storm of war came upon the colonies he gave without measure and without stint to the common cause. HENRY CABOT LODGE-The Puritan *

159. THE ORIGIN OF OUR ETHICAL CODE

Men should seriously set themselves to revise their ethical code in the light of its origin. The ethical like the legal code of a people stands in need of constant revision. The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change. In our own rules of conduct, in what we call the common decencies of life as well as in weightier matters of morality, there survive savage taboos, which, masquerading as an expression of divine will or draped in the flowing robes of a false philosophy, have maintained their credit long after the crude ideas out of which they sprang have been discarded by the progress of thought and knowledge-while on the other hand many ethical precepts and social laws, which now rest firmly on a basis of utility, may at first have drawn some portion of their sanctity from the ancient system of superstition. In primitive society murder derived much of its horror from a fear of the angry ghost. Thus superstition may serve as a convenient crutch to morality till she is strong enough to walk alone. The ancient Semites appear to have passed through a course of moral evolution not unlike that which we see in process among the Esquimaux; and some of the old laws of Israel are clearly savage taboos disguised as commands of the deity.

J. G. FRAZER †

*From Speeches and Addresses. By permission of, and special arrangement with, Houghton and Mifflin Company, authorized publishers.

† From The Golden Bough, published by The Macmillan Company.

160. WOLSEY'S CHARGE TO CROMWELL CROMWELL, I did not think to shed a tear

In all my miseries; but thou hast forc'd me,
Out of thy honest truth, to play the woman.
Let's dry our eyes: and thus far hear me, Cromwell;
And, when I am forgotten, as I shall be,

And sleep in dull cold marble, where no mention
Of me more must be heard of, say, I taught thee,
Say, Wolsey, that once trod the ways of glory,
And sounded all the depths and shoals of honour,
Found thee a way, out of his wrack, to rise in;
A sure and safe one, though thy master miss'd it.
Mark but my fall, and that that ruin'd me.
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition:
By that sin fell the angels; how can man then,
The image of his Maker, hope to win by 't?

Love thyself last: cherish those hearts that hate thee;
Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.

To silence envious tongues; be just, and fear not.

Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,

Thy God's, and truth's; then if thou fall'st, O Cromwell!
Thou fall'st a blessed martyr. Serve the king;

And, prithee, lead me in:

There take an inventory of all I have,

To the last penny; 'tis the king's: my robe,

And my integrity to heaven is all

I dare now call mine own. O Cromwell, Cromwell!
Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal

I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE-Henry VIII

161. THE LITTLE BLACK BOY

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissèd me,

And, pointing to the east, began to say: