Lectures and Miscellanies

reproduced in nature, until they become fixed or embodied in act. We know nothing in respect either to the nature or the intensity of our passions until they become developed in action. No one knows the sentiment and life of Love in his own bosom by intuition, but only as some outward occasion arises for its exhibition. No one knows the force of the parental sentiment, save as it is called into consciousness by intercourse with his children. Nor does any one know the reach and subtilty of his intellect, until some outward strug- gle of truth and error has evoked the evidence. And all this for a very good reason, namely, that power, no matter of what sort, has no passive existence, has no existence apart from performance. Power in other words is purely active. It is never power save in producing. You may say for ex- ample, that A has greatly more powerful passions that B. But in making this judgment you do not mean to intimate that A has a greater material bulk of passion than B, but only that his passions are more influential upon his action. The measure of a passion's intensity is the control it exerts upon action. His passions are the most potent who is most impelled to action by them. Power is by no means contingent upon bulk. In fact it is impaired by it. Daniel Lambert added six hundred pounds to the avoirdupois of ordinary humanity. Daniel was not therefore six hundred times more a man.