Try, first, to realize to
yourselves the muscular precision of that action, and the intellectual
strain of it; for the movement of a fencer is perfect in practised
monotony; but the movement of the hand of a great painter is at every
instant governed by direct and new intention. Then imagine that
muscular firmness and subtlety, and the instantaneously selective and
ordinant energy of the brain, sustained all day long, not only without
fatigue, but with a visible joy in the exertion, like that which an
eagle seems to take in the wave of his wings; and this all life long,
and through long life, not only without failure of power, but with
visible increase of it, until the actually organic changes of old age.
And then consider, so far as you know anything of physiology, what
sort of an ethical state of body and mind that means!--ethic through
ages past! what fineness of race there must be to get it, what
exquisite balance and symmetry of the vital powers! And then, finally,
determine for yourselves whether a manhood like that is consistent
with any viciousness of soul, with any mean anxiety, any gnawing lust,
any wretchedness of spite or remorse, any consciousness of rebellion
against law of God or man, or any actual, though unconscious violation
of even the least law to which obedience is essential for the glory of
life, and the pleasing of its Giver.
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