Life Without and Life Within - Or Reviews, Narratives, Essays, and Poems #260676

Every person, who can be said to really live at all, leads two lives during this period of mortal existence. The one life is outward; it is passed in reading the thoughts of others in contemplating the struggles, the defeats, the victories, the virtues, the sins, in fine, all things which make the history of those who sur round us; and in gazing upon the structures which Art has reared, or paintings which She hath inscribed on the canvas; or looking upon the grand temple of the material universe, and beholding scenes painted by a hand more skilled, more wondrous, in its creative power, than ever can be human hand. The life passed in examining What other minds have produced, or liv ing other men's lives by looking at their deeds, or in any way discerning What addresses the bodily eye or the physical ear, — this is Often Wise and well; essential, indeed, to any inner life; but it is outward, not self centred, not the product of our own individual natures.