The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind.  The States have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer cannot get a hearing.

Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference.  What we need to know in any case is very simple.  It is but too easy to establish another durable and harmonious routine.  Immediately all parts of nature consent to it.  Only make something to take the place of something, and men will behave as if it was the very thing they wanted.  They must behave, at any rate, and will work up any material.  There is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine to uphold.  We should be slow to mend, my friends, as slow to require mending, “Not hurling, according to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety.”  The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely.  You must be calm before you can utter oracles.  What was the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the calm wisdom of Socrates?—­or whoever it was that was wise.—­Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity.

     “Men find that action is another thing
       Than what they in discoursing papers read;
     The world’s affairs require in managing
       More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed.”

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the causes of all past change in the present invariable order of society.  The greatest appreciable physical revolutions are the work of the light-footed air, the stealthy-paced water, and the subterranean fire.  Aristotle said, “As time never fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor the Nile can have flowed forever.”  We are independent of the change we detect.  The longer the lever the less perceptible its motion.  It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital.  The hero then will know how to wait, as well as to make haste.  All good abides with him who waiteth wisely; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining here than by hurrying over the hills of the west.  Be assured that every man’s success is in proportion to his average ability.  The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters annually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some freshet only.  A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet his past deed.  We know not yet what we have done, still less what we are doing.  Wait till evening, and other parts of our day’s work will shine than we had thought at noon, and we shall discover the real purport of our toil.  As when the farmer has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell best where the pressed earth shines most.