Divine Library is a free online public library that includes free eBook downloads and free audio books.
We work with New Thought Seekers and Sharers around the world
insuring that all New Thought Texts in the Public Domain
are available for you to read on the web for free, forever!
Navigate through this book by clicking Next Page or Previous
Page below the text of the page & jump directly to chapters using the chapter numbers above the text.
Now if I talk with a sincere wise man, and my friend, with a poet, with a conscientious youth who is still under the dominion of his own wild thoughts, and not yet harnessed in the team of society to drag with us all in the ruts of custom, I see at once how paltry is all this generation of unbelievers, and what a house of cards their institutions are, and I see what one brave man, what one great thought executed might effect. I see that the reason of the distrust of the practical man in all theory, is his inability to perceive the means whereby we work. Look, he says, at the tools with which this world of yours is to be built. As we cannot make a planet, with atmosphere, rivers, and forests, by means of the best carpenters' or engineers' tools, with chemist's laboratory and smith's forge to boot, --- so neither can we ever construct that heavenly society you prate of out of foolish, sick, selfish men and women, such as we know them to be. But the believer not only beholds his heaven to be possible, but already to begin to exist, --- not by the men or materials the statesman uses, but by men transfigured and raised above themselves by the power of principles. To principles something else is possible that transcends all the power of expedients.
Every great and commanding moment in the annals of the world is the triumph of some enthusiasm.
