The rich would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor
their escapes and their resources.
But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her remedy.
The soul is impatient of masters, and eager for change. Housekeepers
say of a domestic who has been valuable, "She has lived with me long
enough." We are tendencies, or rather, symptoms, and none of us
complete. We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation
is the law of nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore
the horizon for a successor; but none comes and none will. His class
is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field, the
next man will appear; not Jefferson, nor Franklin, but now a great
salesman; then a road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a
buffalo-hunting explorer, or a semi-savage western general. Thus we
make a stand against our rougher masters; but against the best there
is a finer remedy. The power which they communicate is not theirs.
When we are exalted by ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the
idea, to which, also, Plato was debtor.
I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class.
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