85.  It need not surprise us that thinkers like Balzac should have loved to dwell on these humble lives.  Eternal sameness runs through them, and yet does each century mark profoundest change in the atmosphere that enwraps them.  The sky above has altered, but these simple lives have ever the self-same gestures; and it is these unchanging gestures that tell of the altered sky.  A great deed of heroism fascinates us; our eye cannot travel beyond the act itself; but insignificant thoughts and deeds lead us on to the horizon beyond them; and is not the shining star of human wisdom always situate on the horizon?  If we could see these things as nature sees them, with her thoughts and feelings, we should realise that the uniform mediocrity that runs through these lives cannot truly be mediocre, from the mere fact of its uniformity.  And indeed this matters but little; we can never judge another soul above the high-water mark of our own; and however insignificant a creature may seem to us at first, as our own soul emerges from shadow, so does the shadow lift from him.  There is nothing our eyes behold that is too small to deserve our love; and there where we cannot love, we have only to raise our lamp till it reaches the level of love, and then throw its light around.  Let only one ray of this light go forth every day from our soul, we may then be content.  It matters not where the light falls.  There is not a thing in this world whereupon your glance or your thought can rest but contains within it more treasure than either of these can fathom; nor is there a thing so small but it has a vastness within that the light that a soul can spare can, at best, but faintly illumine.

86.  Is not the very essence of human destiny, stripped of the details that bewilder us, to be found in the most ordinary lives?  The mighty struggle of morality on the heights is glorious to witness; but so will a keen observer profoundly admire a magnificent tree that stands alone in a desert, and, his contemplation over, once more go back to the forest, where there are no marvellous trees, but trees in countless abundance.  The immense forest is doubtless made up of ordinary branches and stems; but is it not vast, is it not as it should be, seeing that it is the forest?  Not by the exceptional shall the last word ever be spoken; and indeed what we call the sublime should be only a clearer, profounder insight into all that is perfectly normal.  It is of service, often, to watch those on the peaks who do battle; but it is well, too, not to forget those in the valley below, who fight not at all.  As we see all that happens to these whose life knows no struggle; as we realise how much must be conquered in us before we can rightly distinguish their narrower joys from the joy known to them who are striving on high, then perhaps does the struggle itself appear to become less important; but, for all that, we love it the more.  And the reward is the sweeter to us for the silence that enwraps