"Founded in reason, loyal, just, and pure, Relations dear, and all the charities Of father, son, and brother,--"
and also in the general sorrows of mankind, thereby, in joy and grief, entering sympathetically into the hearts of common men; to keep in the highway of life, not turning aside to the eccentric, the sensational, the abnormal, the brutal, the base, but seeing them, if they must come within our vision, in their place only by the edges of true life; and, if, being men, we are caught in the tragic coil, to seek the restoration of broken order, learning also in such bitterness better to understand the dark conflict forever waging in the general heart, the terror of the heavy clouds hanging on the slopes of our battle, the pathos that looks down even from blue skies that have kept watch o'er man's mortality,--so, even through failure, to draw nearer to our race; this, as I conceive it, is to lead the ideal life. It is a message blended of many voices of the poets whom Shelley called, whatever might be their calamity on earth, the most fortunate of men; it rises from all lands, all ages, all religions; it is the battle-cry of that one great idea whose slow and hesitating growth is the unfolding of our long civilization, seeking to realize in democracy the earthly, and in Christianity the heavenly, hope of man,--the idea of the community of the soul, the sameness of it in all men. To lead this life is to be one with man through love, one with the universe through knowledge, one with God through the will; that is its goal, toward that we strive, in that we believe.
And Thou, O Youth, for whom these lines are written, fear not; idealize your friend, for it is better to love and be deceived than not to love at all; idealize your masters, and take Shelley and Sidney to your bosom, so shall they serve you more nobly and you love them more sweetly than if the touch and sight of their mortality had been yours indeed; idealize your country, remembering that Brutus in the dagger-stroke and Cato in his death-darkness knew not the greater Rome, the proclaimer of the unity of our race, the codifier of justice, the establisher of our church, and died not knowing,--but do you believe in the purpose of God, so shall you best serve the times to be; and in your own life, fear not to act as your ideal shall command, in the constant presence of that other self who goes with you, as I have said, so shall you blend with him at the end. Fear not either to believe that the soul is as eternal as the order that obtains in it, wherefore you shall forever pursue that divine beauty which has here so touched and inflamed you,--for this is the faith of man, your race, and those who were fairest in its records. And have recourse always to the fountains of this life in literature, which are the wells of truth. How to live is the one matter; the wisest man in his ripe age is yet to seek in it; but Thou, begin now and seek wisdom in the beauty of virtue and live in its light, rejoicing in it; so in this world shall you live in the foregleam of the world to come.