Below me surged a
black mass of crowding, jostling, hurrying beings, so far removed they
seemed like little dots, each as large and no larger than his fellows.
Above them stretched the same blue arch of heaven, they breathed the same
air, trod in each other's footsteps; and yet I knew they were all so
different, --ignorance walked with enlightenment, vice with virtue, rich
with poor, low with high, --but I felt, poised thus above them, that they
were creatures of the same God. Go once thus, and you will understand the
feeling. And so I judged these aliens. Which was greater; which was less?
This one, who from birth and inheritance is able to stand the equal of any
one, or this one, who through birth and inheritance blinks blindly at the
good and beautiful? Character and circumstance are not altogether of our
own making; they are, to a great degree, results of inherited tendencies
over which we have no control, --accidents of birthplace, in the choosing
of which we had no voice. The high in the world do not shine altogether by
their own light, not do the lowly grovel altogether in their own
debasement, --I felt the excuse for humanity. I was overwhelmed with one
feeling, --only God can weigh such circumstantial evidence; we, in our
little knowledge of results, pronounce sentence, but final judgment is
reserved for a higher court, that sees the cross-purposes in which we are
blindly caught.
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