If he could have compassed that, he would perhaps have
wanted something else that is necessary to felicity, and pined away
for the want of the title of an emperor or a god. The reason of
this is, that greatness has no reality in nature, but is a creature
of the fancy--a notion that consists only in relation and
comparison. It is indeed an idol; but St. Paul teaches us that an
idol is nothing in the world. There is in truth no rising or
meridian of the sun, but only in respect to several places: there
is no right or left, no upper hand in nature; everything is little
and everything is great according as it is diversely compared.
There may be perhaps some villages in Scotland or Ireland where I
might be a great man; and in that case I should be like Caesar--you
would wonder how Caesar and I should be like one another in
anything--and choose rather to be the first man of the village than
second at Rome. Our Country is called Great Britain, in regard only
of a lesser of the same name; it would be but a ridiculous epithet
for it when we consider it together with the kingdom of China.
That, too, is but a pitiful rood of ground in comparison of the
whole earth besides; and this whole globe of earth, which we account
so immense a body, is but one point or atom in relation to those
numberless worlds that are scattered up and down in the infinite
space of the sky which we behold.
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