And what are, after all, these social relations which call for so much
courage, and which can create so much suffering to most of us as we
conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a
moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics,
which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and
contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good,
the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing
most necessary to us all. We are apt to like it and its excitements
almost too well, or to hate it, with its excesses and its mistakes, too
bitterly. We are rarely just to society.
The rounded, and harmonious, and temperate understanding and use of
society is, however, the very aim and end of education. We are born to
live with each other and not for ourselves. If we are cheerful, our
cheerfulness was given to us to make bright the lives of those about us;
if we have genius, that is a sacred trust; if we have beauty, wit,
joyousness, it was given us for the delectation of others, not for
ourselves; if we are awkward and shy, we are bound to break the crust,
and to show that within us is beauty, cheerfulness, and wit. "It is but
the fool who loves excess." The best human being should moderately like
society.--MRS. JOHN SHERWOOD.
* * * * *
XXVIII.
JOHN MARSHALL
(BORN 1755--DIED 1835.)
IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY--HIS MARRIAGE--LAW LECTURES--AT THE BAR--HIS
INTELLECTUAL POWERS--ON THE BENCH.
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