Every plan he had ever had,
every design which he had made his own by an originality that even his
foes acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession,
shining, magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of
his soul he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and
ultimate effect. Yet he knew himself detached from them, inactive,
incapable, because he could not see with the eyes of the body. The great
essential thing to him was that one thing he had lost. A man might be a
cripple and still direct the great concerns of life and the business of
life. He might be shorn of limb and scarred of body, but with eye sight
still direct the courses of great schemes, in whatever sphere of life his
purposes were at work. He might be deaf to every sound and forever dumb,
but seeing enabled him still to carry forward every enterprise. In
darkness, however, those things were naught, because judgment must depend
on the eyes and senses of others. The report might be true or false, the
deputy might deceive, and his blind chief might never know the truth
unless some other spectator of his schemes should report it; and the
truth could not surely be checked, save by some one, perhaps, whose life
was joined to his, by one that truly loved him, whose fate was his.
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