In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.
Every man alone is sincere.
At the entrance of a second person,
hypocrisy begins.
We parry and fend the approach
of our fellow-man by compliments,
by gossip, by amusements, by affairs.
We cover up our thought from him
under a hundred folds.
He walks abreast with his days and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession', for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances.
It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.
Astronomy is a cold, desert science, with all its pompous figures,-depends a little too much on the glass-grinder, too little on the mind. 'T is of no use to show us more planets and systems. We know already what matter is, and more or less of it does not signify.