So some small consciousness doth play On the surface of our being, but the broad And permanent foundations every way Pass into mystery, are hid in Go… - John Campbell Shairp

Great men, great events, great epochs, it has been said, grow as we recede from them; and the rate at which they grow in the estimate of men is in some sort a measure of their greatness.

So full of power, yet blithe and debonair,
Rallying his friends with pleasant banter gay,
Or half a-dream chaunting with jaunty air
Great words of Goethe, catch of Béranger.

[I]t is quite certain that if from childhood men were to begin to follow the first intimations of conscience, honestly to obey them and carry them out into act, the power of conscience would be so strengthened and improved within them, that it would soon become, what it evidently is intended to be, "a connecting principle between the creature and the Creator."