The Choir Invisible

"But of my life otherwise. I take it fir granted that you would know where I

stand, what I have become, whether I have kept faith with the ideals of my

youth.

"I have succeeded, perhaps reached now what men call the highest point of

their worldly prosperity, made good my resolve that no human power should

defeat me. All that Macbeth had not I have: a quiet throne of my own,

children, wife, troops of friends, duties, honours, ease. There have been

times when with natural misgiving lest I had wandered too far these many

summers on a sea of glory, I have prepared for myself the lament of Wolsey

on his fall: yet ill fortune had not overwhelmed me or mine.

"All this prosperity, as the mere fruit of my toil, has been less easy than

for many. I may not boast the Apostle that I have fought a good fight, but I

can say that I fought a hard one. The fight will always be hard for any man

who undertakes to conquer life with the few simple weapons I have used and

who will accept victory only upon such terms as I have demanded. For be my

success small or great, it has been won without inner compromise or other

form of self-abasement. No man can look me in the eyes and say I ever

wronged him for my own profit; none may charge that I have smiled on him in

order to use him, or call him my friend that I might make him do for me the

work of a servant.

"Do not imagine I fail to realize that I have added my full share to the

general evil of the world: in part unconsciously, in part against my

conscious will. It is the knowledge of this influence of imperfection

forever flowing from myself to all others that has taught me charity with

all the wrongs that flow from others toward me. As I have clung to myself

despite the evil, so I have clung to the world despite all the evil that is

in the world. To lose faith in men, not humanity; to see justice go down and

not believe in the triumph of injustice; for every wrong that you weakly

deal another or another deals you to love more and more the fairness and

beauty of what is right; and so to turn with ever-increasing love from the

imperfection that is in us all to the Perfection that is above us all--the

perfection that is God: this is one of the ideals of actual duty that you

once said were to be as candles in my hand. Many a time this candle has gone

out; but as quickly as I could snatch any torch--with your sacred name on my

lips--it has been relighted.