What then?
have you not received greatness of heart, received courage, received
fortitude? What care I, if I am great of heart, for aught that can come
to pass? What shall cast me down or disturb me? What shall seem painful?
Shall I not use the power to the end for which I received it, instead of
moaning and wailing over what comes to pass?
XV
If what philosophers say of the kinship of God and Man be true, what
remains for men to do but as Socrates did:--never, when asked one's
country, to answer, "I am an Athenian or a Corinthian," but "I am a
citizen of the world."
XVI
He that hath grasped the administration of the World, who hath learned
that this Community, which consists of God and men, is the foremost and
mightiest and most comprehensive of all:--that from God have descended
the germs of life, not to my father only and father's father, but to all
things that are born and grow upon the earth, and in an especial manner
to those endowed with Reason (for those only are by their nature fitted
to hold communion with God, being by means of Reason conjoined with
Him)--why should not such an one call himself a citizen of the world?
Why not a son of God? Why should he fear aught that comes to pass among
men? Shall kinship with Caesar, or any other of the great at Rome, be
enough to hedge men around with safety and consideration, without a
thought of apprehension: while to have God for our Maker, and Father,
and Kinsman, shall not this set us free from sorrows and fears?
XVII
I do not think that an old fellow like me need have been sitting here
to try and prevent your entertaining abject notions of yourselves, and
talking of yourselves in an abject and ignoble way: but to prevent there
being by chance among you any such young men as, after recognising their
kindred to the Gods, and their bondage in these chains of the body and
its manifold necessities, should desire to cast them off as burdens
too grievous to be borne, and depart their true kindred.
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