It humanized his wisdom and enabled him to express it in a familiar and dramatic form.

It placed at his disposal, that is, the great classic vehicle of popular expression, which is the parable and the spoken word.
Of course, it was just because he shared so completely the amusements and the occupations of his neighbors that his private personal culture had no embarrassing effects.

Neither he nor his neighbors were in the least aware that he had been placed thereby in a different intellectual class.

No doubt this loneliness and sadness of his personal life may be partly explained by a dumb sense of difference from his fellows; and no doubt this very loneliness and sadness intensified the mental preoccupation which was both the sign and the result of his personal culture.

But his unconsciousness of his own distinction, as well as his regular participation in political and professional practice, kept his will as firm and vigorous as if he were really no more than a man of action.