PRUDENCE r75

he may not stand in bitter and false relations to other
men; for the best good of wealth is freedom. Let him
practise the minor virtues. How much of human life
is lost in waiting! let him not make his fellow-crea-
tures wait. How many words and promises are
promises of conversation! let his be words of fate.
When he sees a folded and sealed scrap of paper float
round the globe in a pine ship, and come safe to the
eye for which it was written, amidst a swarming
population, let him likewise feel the admonition to
integrate his being across all these distracting forces,
and keep a slender human word among the storms,
distances, and accidents that drive us hither and
thither, and, by persistency, make the paltry force of
one man reappear to redeem its pledge, after months
and years, in the most distant climates.

We must not try to write the laws of any one virtue,
looking at that only. Human nature loves no con-
tradictions, but is symmetrical. The prudence which
secures an outward well-being is not to be studied by
one set of men, whilst heroism and holiness are
studied by another, but they are reconcilable. Pru-
dence concerns the present time, persons, property,
and existing forms. But as every fact hath its roots in
the soul, and, if the soul were changed, would cease
to be, or would become some other thing, the proper
administration of outward things will always rest on
a just apprehension of their cause and origin; that is,
the good man will be the wise man, and the single-
hearted, the politic man. Every violation of truth is
not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the
health of human society. On the most profitable lie,
the course of events presently lays a destructive tax;