The time is such an one as he might rejoice to look
upon; and if we would serve it as it should be served, we should
seek to be human after his wide-eyed sort. The serenity of power;
the naturalness that is nature's poise and mark of genuineness;
the unsleeping interest in all affairs, all fancies, all things
believed or done; the catholic understanding, tolerance,
enjoyment, of all classes and conditions of men; the conceiving
imagination, the planning purpose, the creating thought, the
wholesome, laughing humor, the quiet insight, the universal
coinage of the brain--are not these the marvelous gifts and
qualities we mark in Shakespeare when we call him the greatest
among men? And shall not these rounded and perfect powers serve
us as our ideal of what it is to be a finished human being?
We live for our own age--an age like Shakespeare's, when an old
world is passing away, a new world coming in--an age of new
speculation and every new adventure of the mind; a full stage, an
intricate plot, a universal play of passion, an outcome no man
can foresee. It is to this world, this sweep of action, that our
understandings must be stretched and fitted; it is in this age we
must show our human quality.
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