I see upon earth but one order of created beings which enjoy the power of ignoring or beguiling, by their freedom and swiftness of motion, this universal sadness of impotent aspiration; I mean those beings which belong to earth, so to speak, only by the tips of their wings; which the air itself cradles and supports, most frequently without being otherwise connected with them than by guiding them at their need and their caprice.
A life of ease, yet sublime! With what a glance of scorn may the weakest bird regard the strongest, the swiftest of quadrupeds--a tiger, a lion! How it may smile to see them in their utter powerlessness bound, fastened to the earth, which they terrify with vain and useless roaring--with the nocturnal wailings that bear witness to the bondage of the so-called king of animals, fettered, as we are all, in that inferior existence which hunger and gravitation equally prepare for us!
Oh, the fatality of the appetites! the fatality of motion which compels us to drag our unwilling limbs along the earth! Implacable heaviness which binds each of our feet to the dull, rude element wherein death will hereafter resolve us, and says, "Son of the earth, to the earth thou belongest! A moment released from its bosom, thou shalt lie there henceforth for ages."
Do not let us inveigh against nature; it is assuredly the sign that we inhabit a world still in its first youth, still in a state of barbarism--a world of essay and apprenticeship, in the grand series of stars, one of the elementary stages of the sublime initiation. This planet is the world of a child. And thou, a child thou art. From this lower school thou shalt be emancipated also; thy wings shall be majestic and powerful. Thou shalt win and deserve, while here, by the sweat of thy brow, a step forward in liberty.
Let us make an experiment. Ask of the bird while still in the egg what he would wish to be; give him the option. Wilt thou be a man, and share in that royalty of the globe which men have won by art and toil?
No, he will immediately reply. Without calculating the immense exertion, the labour, the sweat, the care, the life of slavery by which we purchase sovereignty, he will have but one word to say: "A king myself, by birth, of space and light, why should I abdicate when man, in his loftiest ambition, in his highest aspirations after happiness and freedom, dreams of becoming a bird, and taking unto himself wings?"