This man is much to
be envied. He can, indeed, "trust in his heart and what the world calls
illusions." To him the earth is yet green and fresh, the world smiling
and good-humored, friends are fast and loving, woman a very well-spring
of innocent and unbought love. The world thinks him an old simpleton;
but he is wiser than the world. He is not to be scared by sad proverbs,
nor frightened by dark sayings. An enviable man, he sits, in the evening
of life, loving and trusting his fellow-men, and, from the mere
freshness of his character, having many gathered round him whom he can
still love and trust.
With another sort of philosophers all around is mere illusion, and the
mind of man shall in no way be separated from it; from the beginning to
the end it is all the same. Our organization, they would have us
believe, creates most of our pleasure and our pain. Life is in itself an
ecstasy. "Life is as sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman, dripping
all day over a cold pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the
farmer in the field, the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street,
the hunter in the woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the
ball--all ascribe a certain pleasure to their employment which they
themselves give to it. Health and appetite impart the sweetness to
sugar, bread, and meat." So fancy plays with us; but, while she tricks
us, she blesses us. The mere prosaic man, who strips the tinsel from
every thing, who sneers at a bridal and gladdens at a funeral; who tests
every coin and every pleasure, and tells you that it has not the true
ring; who checks capering Fancy and stops her caracoling by the whip of
reality, is not to be envied.
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