Behold this midnight splendor, worlds on worlds; Ten thousand add and twice ten thousand more, Then weigh the whole: one soul outweighs them all, And calls the seeming vast magnificence Of unintelligent creation, poor.
And as this is true of intelligence, with the suggestion which that faculty so naturally offers, of the inextinguishable nature of mind, so is it true of the moral nature of man. No accumulation of material grandeur, even if it fill the universe, has any dignity in our eyes, compared with moral grandeur: as poetry has also expressed:
Look then abroad through nature, to the range Of planets, suns, and adamantine spheres, Wheeling unshaken through the void immense, And speak, O man! Can this capacious scene With half that kindling majesty exalt Thy strong conception, as when Brutus rose Refulgent from the stroke of Cæsar's fate Amid the band of patriots; and his arm Aloft extending, like eternal Jove When guilt calls down the thunder, call'd aloud On Tully's name, and shook his crimson steel, And bade the Father of his Country, Hail! For lo! the tyrant prostrate in the dust, And Rome again is free.
This action being taken, as it is here meant to be conceived, for one of the highest examples of moral greatness. And however we may judge of this action, we must allow that the characters which are implied in this praise of it,--the loftiest kinds of moral excellence,--are more suitable to the highest idea of the object and purpose of a Deity creating worlds, than would be any mere material structure of planets and suns, whether kept in their places by adamantine spheres, wheeling unshaken through the void immense, or themselves wheeling unshaken by the power of a universal law. The thoughts of Rights and Obligations, Duty and Virtue, of Law and Liberty, of Country and Constitution, of the Glory of our Ancestors, the Elevation of our Fellow-Citizens, the Freedom and Happiness and Dignity of Posterity,--are thoughts which belong to a world, a race, a body of beings, of which any one individual, with the capacities which such thoughts imply, is more worthy of account, than millions of millions of mollusks and belemnites, lizards and fishes, sloths and pachyderms, diffused through myriads of worlds.