Nor can the push of charity
or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest reason,
whether it bring arguments to hand or no. No specification is necessary--to
add or subtract or divide is in vain. Little or big, learned or unlearned,
white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration
down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or
female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure
profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through
the whole scope of it for ever. If the savage or felon is wise, it is
well--if the greatest poet or savant is wise, it is simply the same--if the
President or chief justice is wise, it is the same--if the young mechanic
or farmer is wise, it is no more or less. The interest will come round--all
will come round. All the best actions of war and peace--all help given to
relatives and strangers, and the poor and old and sorrowful, and young
children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons--all
furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves--all the self-denial
that stood steady and aloof on wrecks, and saw others take the seats of the
boats--all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a
friend's sake or opinion's sake--all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by
their neighbours--all the vast sweet love and precious suffering of
mothers--all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded--all the
grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we
inherit--and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient
nations unknown to us by name or date or location--all that was ever
manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no--all that has at any time been
well suggested out of the divine heart of man, or by the divinity of his
mouth, or by the shaping of his great hands--and all that is well thought
or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe, or on any of the
wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here--or that is
henceforth to be well thought or done by you, whoever you are, or by any
one--these singly and wholly inured at their time, and inured now, and will
inure always, to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring.
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