University of California • Berkeley

Purchased as the gift of

Mr. & Mrs.
Stephen Walter

NATURE.

" Nature is but an imago or imitation of wisdom, the last thing
of the soul; nature being a thing which doth only do, but not
know."

PLOTINUS.

BOSTON:

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY.

M DCCC XXXVI.

Entered, according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1836,

By JAMES MUNROS & Co.

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

Cambridge Press :
Metcalf, Torry, &, Ballou.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

NATURE.

COMMODITY.

BEAUTY.

LANGUAGE.

DISCIPLINE.

IDEALISM. .

SPIRIT.

PROSPECTS.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

15

19

46

59

76

82

INTRODUCTION.

OUR age is retrospective. It builds the sep
ulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies,
histories, and criticism. The foregoing gene
rations beheld God and nature face to face ;
we, through their eyes. Why should not we
also enjoy an original relation to the universe?
Why should not we have a poetry and philoso
phy of insight and not of tradition, and a relig
ion by revelation to us, and not the history of
theirs 1 Embosomed for a season in nature,
whose floods of life stream around and through
us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to
action proportioned to nature, why should we
grope among the dry bones of the past, or put
the living generation into masquerade out of its
faded wardrobe ? The sun shines to-day also.
There is more wool and flax in the fields.

6 INTRODUCTION.

There are new lands, new men, new thoughts.
Let us demand our own works and laws and
worship.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask
which are unanswerable. We must trust the
perfection of the creation so far, as to believe
that whatever curiosity the order of things has
awakened in our minds, the order of things can
satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in
hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.
He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as
truth. In like manner, nature is already, in its
forms and tendencies, describing its own design.
Let us interrogate the great apparition, that
shines so peacefully around us. Let us inquire,
to what end is nature 1

All science has one aim, namely, to find a
theory of nature. We have theories of races
and of functions, but scarcely yet a remote
approximation to an idea of creation. We are
now so far from the road to truth, that religious
teachers dispute and hate each other, and
speculative men are esteemed unsound and

INTRODUCTION. 7

frivolous. But to a sound judgment, the most
abstract truth is the most practical. Whenever
a true theory appears, it will be its own evi
dence. Its test is, that it will explain all phe
nomena. Now many are thought not only un
explained but inexplicable ; as language, sleep,
dreams, beasts, sex.

Philosophically considered, the universe is
composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly
speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us,
all which Philosophy distinguishes as the NOT
ME, that is, both nature and art, all other men
and my own body, must be ranked under this
name, NATURE. In enumerating the values of
nature and casting up their sum, I shall use the
word in both senses ; — in its common and in
its philosophical import. In inquiries so gene
ral as our present one, the inaccuracy is not
material ; no confusion of thought will occur.
Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences
unchanged by man ; space, the air, the river,
the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his
will with the same things, as in a housCj a

8 INTRODUCTION.

canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations
taken together are so insignificant, a little chip
ping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an
impression so grand as that of the world on
the human mind, they do not vary the result.

NATURE.

CHAPTER I.

To go into solitude, a man needs to retire
as much from his chamber as from society.
I am not solitary whilst I read and write,
though nobody is with me. But if a man would
be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays
that come from those heavenly worlds, will
separate between him and vulgar things. One
might think the atmosphere was made trans
parent with this design, to give man, in the
heavenly bodies, the perpetual presence of the
sublime. Seen in the streets of cities, how
great they are ! If the stars should appear one
night in a thousand years, how would men
1

l(f NATURE.

believe and adore; and preserve for many
generations the remembrance of the city of
God which had been shown ! But every night
come out these preachers of beauty, and light
the universe with their admonishing smile.

The stars awaken a certain reverence, be
cause though always present, they are always
inaccessible ; but all natural objects make a
kindred impression, when the mind is open to
their influence. Nature never wears a mean
appearance. Neither does the wisest man
extort all her secret, and lose his curiosity by
finding out all her perfection. Nature never
became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers,
the animals, the mountains, reflected all the
wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had
delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

When we speak of nature in this manner,
we have a distinct but most poetical sense in
the mind. We mean the integrity of impres
sion made by manifold natural objects. It is
this which distinguishes the stick of timber of
the wood-cutter, from the tree of the poet.

NATURE. 11

The charming landscape which I saw this
morning, is indubitably made up of some twenty
or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke
that, and Manning the woodland beyond. But
none of them owns the landscape. There is
a property in the horizon which no man has
but he whose eye can integrate all the parts,
that is, the poet. This is the best part of these
men's farms, yet to this their land-deeds give
them no title.

To speak truly, few adult persons can see
nature. Most persons do not see the sun. At
least they have a very superficial seeing. The
sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but
shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
The lover of nature is he whose inward and
outward senses are still truly adjusted to each
other ; who has retained the spirit of infancy
even into the era of manhood. His intercourse
with heaven and earth, becomes part of his
daily food. In the presence of nature, a wild
delight runs through the man, in spite of real
sorrows. Nature says, — he is my creature,

12 NATURE.

and maugre all his impertinent griefs, he shall
be glad with me. Not the sun or the summer
alone, but every hour and season yields its
tribute of delight ; for every hour and change
corresponds to and authorizes a different state
of the mind, from breathless noon to grimmest
midnight. Nature is a setting that fits equally
well a comic or a mourning piece. In good
health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue.
Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at
twilight, under a clouded sky, without having
in my thoughts any occurrence of special good
fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.
Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the
woods too, a man casts off his years, as the
snake his slough, and at what period soever of
life, is always a child. In the woods, is per
petual youth. Within these plantations of God,
Bf decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial
festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how
he should tire of them in a thousand years.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith.
There I feel that nothing can befal me in

NATURE. 13

life, — no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my
eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing
on the bare ground, — my head bathed by the
blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, — all
mean egotism vanishes. I become a transpa
rent eye-ball. I am nothing. I see all. The
currents of the Universal Being circulate
through me ; I am part or particle of God.
The name of the nearest friend sounds then
foreign and accidental. To be brothers, to be
acquaintances, — master or servant, is then
a trifle* and a disturbance. I am the lover
of uncontained and immortal beauty. In
the wilderness, I find something more dear
and connate than in streets or villages. In the
tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant
line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as
beautiful as his own nature.

The greatest delight which the fields and
woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult
relation between man and the vegetable. I am
not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to
me and I to them. The waving of the boughs
1*

14 NATURE.

in the storm, is new to me and old. It takes
me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its
effect is like that of a higher thought or a
better emotion coming over me, when I deemed
I was thinking justly or doing right.

Yet it is certain that the power to produce
this delight, does not reside in nature, but in
man, or m a harmony of both. It is necessary
to use these pleasures with great temperance.
For, nature is not always tricked in holiday
attire, but the same scene which yesterday
breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic
of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy
today. Nature always wears the colors of the
spirit. To a man laboring under calamity, the
heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then,
there is a kind of contempt of the landscape
felt by him who has just lost by death a dear
friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down
over less worth in the population.

CHAPTER II.

COMMODITY.

WHOEVER considers the final cause of the
world, will discern a multitude of uses that
enter as parts into that result. They all admit
of being thrown into one of the following
classes; Commodity; Beauty; Language; and
Discipline.

Under the general name of Commodity,
I rank all those advantages which our senses
owe to nature. This, of course, is a benefit
which is temporary and mediate, not ultimate,
like its service to the soul. Yet although low,
it is perfect in its kind, and is the only use of
nature which all men apprehend. The misery
of man appears like childish petulance, when
we explore the steady and prodigal provision
that has been made for his support and delight
on this green ball which floats him through the

16 COMMODITY.

heavens. What angels invented these splendid
ornaments, these rich conveniences, this ocean
of air above, this ocean of water beneath, this
firmament of earth between ? this zodiac of
lights, this tent of dropping clouds, this
striped coat of climates, this fourfold year 1
Beasts, fire, water, stones, and corn serve
him. The field is at once his floor, his
work-yard, his play-ground, his garden, and his
bed.

" More servants wait on man
Than he'll take notice of."

Nature, in its ministry to man, is not only the
material, but is also the process and the result.
All the parts incessantly work into each other's
hands for the profit of man. The wind sows
the seed ; the sun evaporates the sea ; the
wind blows the vapor to the field ; the ice, on
the other side of the planet, condenses rain on
this ; the rain feeds the plant ; the plant feeds
the animal ; and thus the endless circulations
of the divine charity nourish man.

COMMODITY. 17

The useful arts are but reproductions or new
combinations by the wit of man, of the same
natural benefactors. He no longer waits for
favoring gales, but by means of steam, he
realizes the fable of ^Bolus's bag, and carries
the two and thirty winds in the boiler of his
boat. To diminish friction, he paves the road
with iron bars, and, mounting a coach with a
ship-load of men, animals, and merchandise
behind him, he darts through the country, from
town to town, like an eagle or a swallow
through the air. By the aggregate of these
aids, how is the face of the world changed,
from the era of Noah to that of Napoleon !
The private poor man hath cities, ships, canals,
bridges, built for him. He goes to the post-
office, and the human race run on his errands ;
to the book-shop, and the human race read
and write of all that happens, for him ; to the
court-house, and nations repair his wrongs.
He sets his house upon the road, and the

human race go forth every morning, and shovel

* ^
out the snow, and cut a path for him.

--•

' 1**s>" *

18 COMMODITY.

But there is no need of specifying particu
lars in this class of uses. The catalogue is end
less, and the examples so obvious, that I shall
leave them to the reader's reflection, with the
general remark, that this mercenary benefit is
one which has respect to a farther good. A
man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he
may work.

CHAPTER III.

BEAUTY.

A NOBLER want of man is served by nature,
namely, the Jove of Beauty.

The ancient Greeks called the world xoej^o?,
beauty. Such is the constitution of all things,
or such the plastic power of the human eye,
that the primary forms, as the sky, the moun
tain, the tree, the animal, give us a delight in
and for themselves ; a pleasure arising from
outline, color, motion, and grouping. This
seems partly owing to the eye itself. The eye
is the best of artists. By the mutual action of
its structure and of the laws of light, perspec
tive is produced, which integrates every mass
of objects, of what character soever, into a
well colored and shaded globe, so that where
the particular objects are mean and unaffecting,
the landscape which they compose, is round and

20 ^ BEAUTY.

symmetrical. And as the eye is the best com
poser, so light is the first of painters. There
is no object so foul that intense light will not
make beautiful. And the stimulus it affords to
the sense, and a sort of infinitude which it hath,
like space and time, make all matter gay.
Even the corpse hath its own beauty. But
beside this general grace diffused over nature,
almost all the individual forms are agreeable
to the eye, as is proved by our endless imita
tions of some of them, as the acorn, the grape,
the pine-cone, the wheat-ear, the egg, the
wings and forms of most birds, the lion's claw,
the serpent, the butterfly, sea-shells, flames,
clouds, buds, leaves, and the forms of many
trees, as the palm.

For better consideration, we may distribute
the aspects of Beauty in a threefold manner.

1. First, the simple perception of natural forms
is a delight. The influence of the forms and ac
tions in nature, is so needful to man, that, in its
lowest functions, it seems to lie on the confines
of commodity and beauty. To the body and mind

BEAUTY. 21

which have been cramped by noxious work or
company, nature is medicinal and restores their
tone. The tradesman, the attorney comes out
of the din and craft of the street, and sees the
sky and the woods, and is a man again. In
their eternal calm, he finds himself. The
health of the eye seems to demand a horizon.
We are never tired, so long as we can see far
enough.

But in other hours, Nature satisfies the soul
purely by its loveliness, and without any mix
ture of corporeal benefit. I have seen the
spectacle of morning from the hill-top over
against my house, from day-break to sun-rise,
with emotions which an angel might share.
The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes
in the sea of crimson light. From the earth,
as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I
seem to partake its rapid transformations : the
active enchantment reaches my dust, and I
dilate and conspire with the morning wind.
How does Nature deify us with a few and
cheap elements ! Give me health and a day,
2

22 BEAUTY.

and I will make the pomp of emperors ridicu
lous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set
and moon-rise my Paphos, and unimaginable
realms of faerie ; broad noon shall be my Eng
land of the senses and the understanding; the
night shall be my Germany of mystic philoso
phy and dreams.

Not less excellent, except for our less sus
ceptibility in the afternoon, was the charm, last
evening, of a January sunset. The western
clouds divided and subdivided themselves into
pink flakes modulated with tints of unspeakable
softness; and the air had so much life and
sweetness, that it was a pain to come within
doors. What was it that nature would say ?
Was there no meaning in the live repose of the
valley behind the mill, and which Homer or
Shakspeare could not re-form for me in words ?
The leafless trees become spires of flame in
the sunset, with the blue east for their back
ground, and the stars of the dead calices of
flowers, and every withered stem and stubble
rimed with frost, contribute something to the
mute music.

BEAUTY. 23

The inhabitants of cities suppose that the
country landscape is pleasant only half the year.
I please myself with observing the graces of
the winter scenery, and believe that we are as
much touched by it as by the genial influences
of summer. To the attentive eye, each moment
of the year has its own beauty, and in the
same field, it beholds, every hour, a picture
which was never seen before, and which shall
never be seen again. The heavens change
every moment, and reflect their glory or gloom
on the plains beneath. The state of the crop
in the surrounding farms alters the expression
of the earth from week to week. The succes
sion of native plants in the pastures and road
sides, which make the silent clock by which
time tells the summer hours, will make even
the divisions of the day sensible to a keen
observer. The tribes of birds and insects, like
the plants punctual to their time, follow each
other, and the year has room for all. By water
courses, the variety is greater. In July, the
blue pontederia or pickerel-weed blooms in

24 BEAUTY.

large beds in the shallow parts of our pleasant
river, and swarms with yellow butterflies in con
tinual motion. Art cannot rival this pomp of
purple and gold. Indeed the river is a per
petual gala, and boasts each month a new
ornament.

But this beauty of Nature which is seen and
felt as beauty, is the least part. The shows of
day, the dewy morning, the rainbow, moun
tains, orchards in blossom, stars, moonlight,
shadows in still water, and the like, if too
eagerly hunted, become shows merely, and
mock us with their unreality. Go out of the
house to see the moon, and 't is mere tinsel ; it
will not please as when its light shines upon
your necessary journey. The beauty that
shimmers in the yellow afternoons of October,
who ever could clutch it 1 Cio forth to find it,
and it is gone : 't is only a mirage as you look
from the windows of diligence.

2. The presence of a higher, namely, of the
spiritual element is essential to its perfection.
The high and divine beauty which can be loved

BEAUTY. 25

without effeminacy, is that which is found in
combination with the human will, and never
separate. Beauty is the mark God sets upon
virtue. Every natural action is graceful. Every
heroic act is also decent, and causes the place
and the bystanders to shine. We are taught by
great actions that the universe is the property
of every individual in it. Every rational crea
ture has all nature for his dowry and estate. It
is his, if he will. He may divest himself of it ;
he may creep into a corner, and abdicate his
kingdom, as most men do, but he is entitled to
the world by his constitution. In proportion to
the energy of his thought and will, he takes up
the world into himself. " All those things for
which men plough, build, or sail, obey virtue; "
said an ancient historian. " The winds and
waves," said Gibbon, " are always on the side
of the ablest navigators." So are the sun and
moon and all the stars of heaven. When a
noble act is done, — perchance in a scene of
great natural beauty; when Leonidas and his
three hundred martyrs consume one day in
2*

26 BEAUTY.

dying, and the sun and moon come each and
look at them once in the steep defile of Ther
mopylae ; when Arnold Winkelried, in the high
Alps, under the shadow of the avalanche, gath
ers in his side a sheaf of Austrian spears to
break the line for his comrades ; are not these
heroes entitled to add the beauty of the scene to
the beauty of the deed ? When the bark of
Columbus nears the shore of America ; — before
it, the beach lined with savages, fleeing out of
all their huts of cane ; the sea behind ; and the
purple mountains of the Indian Archipelago
around, can we separate the man from the liv
ing picture ? Does not the New World clothe
his form with her palm-groves and savannahs as
fit drapery 1 Ever does natural beauty steal in
like air, and envelope great actions. When Sir
Harry Vane was dragged up the Tower-hill,
sitting on a sled, to suffer death, as the cham
pion of the English laws, one of the multitude
cried out to him, " You never sate on so glori
ous a seat." Charles II., to intimidate the citi
zens of London, caused the patriot Lord Rus-

BEAUTY. <J7

sel to be drawn in an open coach, through the
principal streets of the city, on his way to the
scaffold. " But," to use the simple narrative of
his biographer, " the multitude imagined they
saw liberty and virtue sitting by his side." In
private places, among sordid objects, an act of
truth or heroism seems at once to draw to itself
the sky as its temple, the sun as its candle.
Nature stretcheth out her arms to embrace man,
only Jet his thoughts be of equal greatness.
Willingly does she follow his steps with the rose
and the violet, and bend her lines of grandeur
and grace to the decoration of her darling child.
Only let his thoughts be of equal scope, and the
frame will suit the picture. A virtuous man, is
in unison with her works, and makes the cen
tral figure of the visible sphere. Homer, Pin
dar, Socrates, Phocion, associate themselves
fitly in our memory with the whole geography
and climate of Greece. The visible heavens
and earth sympathize with Jesus. And in com
mon life, whosoever has seen a person of power
ful character and happy genius, will have re-

28 BEAUTY.

marked how easily he took all things along with
him, — the persons, the opinions, and the day,
and nature became ancillary to a man.

3. There is still another aspect under which
the beauty of the world may be viewed, namely,
as it becomes an object of the intellect. Be
side the relation of things to virtue, they have a
relation to thought. The intellect searches out
the absolute order of things as they stand in the
mind of God, and without the colors of affec
tion. The intellectual and the active powers
seem to succeed each other in man, and the ex
clusive activity of the one, generates the exclu
sive activity of the other. There is something
unfriendly in each to the other, but they are
like the alternate periods of feeding and work
ing in animals ; each prepares and certainly will
be followed by the other. Therefore does beau
ty, which, in relation to actions, as we have
seen comes unsought, and comes because it is un
sought, remain for the apprehension and pursuit
of the intellect ; and then again, in its turn, of
the active power. Nothing divine dies. All

BEAUTY. 29

good is eternally reproductive. The beauty of
nature reforms itself in the mind, and not for
barren contemplation, but for new creation.

All men are in some degree impressed by the
face of the world. Some men even to delight.
This love of beauty is Taste. Others have the
same love in such excess, that, not content with
admiring, they seek to embody it in new forms.
The creation of beauty is Art.

The production of a work of art throws a
light upon the mystery of humanity. A work
of art is an abstract or epitome of the world.
It is the result or expression of nature, in mini
ature. For although the works of nature are
innumerable and all different, the result or the
expression of them all is similar and single.
Nature is a sea of forms radically alike and
even unique. A leaf, a sun-beam, a landscape,
the ocean, make an analogous impression on
the mind. What is common to them all, — that
perfectness and harmony, is beauty. There
fore the standard of beauty, is the entire circuit
of natural forms, — the totality of nature ;

. .

30 BEAUTY.

which the Italians expressed by defining beauty
" il piu nelF uno," Nothing is quite beautiful
alone : nothing but is beautiful in the whole. A
single object is only so far beautiful as it sug
gests this universal grace. The poet, the pain
ter, the sculptor, the musician, the architect
seek each to concentrate this radiance of the
world on one point, and each in his several
work to satisfy the love of beauty which stimu
lates him to produce. Thus is Art, a nature
passed through the alembic of man. Thus in
art, does nature work through the will of a man
filled with the beauty of her first works.

The world thus exists to the soul to satisfy the
desire of beauty. Extend this element to the
uttermost, and I call it an ultimate end. No
reason can be asked or given why the soul seeks
beauty. Beauty, in its largest and profoundest
sense, is one expression for the universe. God
is the all-fair. Truth, and goodness, and beau
ty, are but different faces of the same All. But
beauty in nature is not ultimate. It is the
herald of inward and eternal beauty, and is

*

4

BEAUTY. 31

not alone a solid and satisfactory good. It :»
must therefore stand as a part and not as yet
the last or highest expression of the final cause
of Nature.

M * 1*

CHAPTER IV.

LANGUAGE.

A THIRD use which Nature subserves to man
is that of Language. Nature is the vehicle of
thought, and in a simple, double, and threefold
degree.

1. Words are signs of natural facts.

2. Particular natural facts are symbols of par
ticular facts.

3. Nature is the symbol of spirits.

1. Words are signs of natural facts. The
use of natural history is to give us aid in
supernatural history. The use of the outer
creation is to give us language for the beings
and changes of the inward creation. Every
word which is used to express a moral or intel
lectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to
be borrowed from some material appearance.
Right originally means straight ; wrong means
twisted. Spirit primarily means wind; trans-

LANGUAGE. 33

gression, the crossing of a line; supercilious ,
the raising of the eye-brow. We say the heart
to express emotion, the head to denote thought;
and thought and emotion are, in their turn,
words borrowed from sensible things, and now
appropriated to spiritual nature. Most of the
process by which this transformation is made,
is hidden from us in the remote time when
language was framed ; but the same tendency
may be daily observed in children. Children
and savages use only nouns or names of things,
which they continually convert into verbs, and
apply to analogous mental acts.

2. But this origin of all words that convey a
spiritual import, — so conspicuous a fact in the
history of language, — is our least debt to
nature. It is not words only that are emble
matic ; it is things which are emblematic.
Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual
fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds
to some state of the mind, and that state of the
mind can only be described by presenting that
natural appearance as its picture. An enraged
3

- /£ * - ;?**, -

iv

34 LANGUAGE.

man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm
man is a rock, a learned man is a torch. A
lamb is innocence ; a snake is subtle spite ;
flowers express to us the delicate affections.
Light and darkness are our familiar expression
for knowledge and ignorance ; and heat for
love. Visible distance behind and before us,
is respectively our image of memory and hope.
Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour,
and is not reminded of the flux of all things?
Throw a stone into the stream, and the circles
that propagate themselves are the beautiful
type of all influence. Man is conscious of a
universal soul within or behind his individual
life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of
Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom, arise and shine.
This universal soul, he calls Reason : it is not
mine or thine or his, but we are its ; we are its
property and men. And the blue sky in which
the private earth is buried, the sky with its
eternal calm, and full of everlasting orbs, is the
type of Reason. That which, intellectually
considered, we call Reason, considered in rela-

IF*

LANGUAGE. 35

tion to nature, we call Spirit. Spirit is the
Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man
in all ages and countries, embodies it in his
language, as the FATHER.

It is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or
capricious in these analogies, but that they are
constant, and pervade nature. These are not
the dreams of a few poets, here and there, but
man is an analogist, and studies relations in all
objects. He is placed in the centre of beings,
and a ray of relation passes from every other
being to him. And neither can man be under
stood without these objects, nor these objects
without man. All the facts in natural history
taken by themselves, have no value, but are bar
ren like a single sex. But marry it to human
history, and it is full of life. Whole Floras, all
Linnaeus' and BufFon's volumes, are but dry
catalogues of facts ; but the most trivial of
these facts, the habit of a plant, the organs, or
work, or noise of an insect, applied to the illus
tration of a fact in intellectual philosophy, or,
in any way associated to human nature, affects

36 LANGUAGE.

us in the most lively and agreeable manner.
The seed of a plant, — to what affecting analo
gies in the nature of man, is that little fruit
made use of, in all discourse, up to the voice of
Paul, who calls the human corpse a seed, —
" It is sown a natural body ; it is raised a
spiritual body." The motion of the earth round
its axis, and round the sun, makes the day, and
the year. These are certain amounts of brute
light and heat. But is there no intent of an
analogy between man's life and the seasons?
And do the seasons gain no grandeur or pathos
from that analogy ? The instincts of the ant
are very unimportant considered as the ant's ;
but the moment a ray of relation is seen to ex
tend from it to man, and the little drudge is
seen to be a monitor, a little body with a mighty
heart, then all its habits, even that said to be
recently observed, that it never sleeps, become
sublime.

Because of this radical correspondence be
tween visible things and human thoughts, sava
ges, who have only what is necessary, converse

LANGUAGE. 37

in figures. As we go back in history, language
becomes more picturesque, until its infancy,
when it is all poetry ; or, all spiritual facts are
represented by natural symbols. The same
symbols are found to make the original ele
ments of all languages. It has moreover been
observed, that the idioms of all languages ap
proach each other in passages of the greatest
eloquence and power. And as this is the first
language, so is it the last. This immediate de
pendence of language upon nature, this conver
sion of an outward phenomenon into a type of
somewhat in human life, never loses its power
to affect us. It is this which gives that piquan
cy to the conversation of a strong-natured
farmer or back-woodsman, which all men relish.
Thus is nature an interpreter, by whose
means man converses with his fellow men. A
man's power to connect his thought with its
proper symbol, and so utter it, depends on the
simplicity of his character, that is, upon his
love of truth and his desire to communicate it
without loss. The corruption of man is follow-
3*

38 LANGUAGE.

ed by the corruption of language. When sim
plicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas
is broken up by the prevalence of secondary de
sires, the desire of riches, the desire of plea
sure, the desire of power, the desire of praise,
— and duplicity and falsehood take place of sim
plicity and truth, the power over nature as an
interpreter of the will, is in a degree lost ; new
imagery ceases to be created, and old words are
perverted to stand for things which are not; a
paper currency is employed when there is no
bullion in the vaults. In due time, the fraud is
manifest, and words lose all power to stimulate
the understanding or the affections. Hundreds
of writers may be found in every long-civilized
nation, who for a short time believe, and make
others believe, that they see and utter truths,
who do not of themselves clothe one thought in
its natural garment, but who feed unconsciously
upon the language created by the primary
writers of the country, those, namely, who hold
primarily on nature.

LANGUAGE. 39

But wise men pierce this rotten diction and
fasten words again to visible things ; so that
picturesque language is at once a commanding
certificate that he who employs it, is a man in
alliance with truth and God. The moment our
discourse rises above the ground line of familiar
facts, and is inflamed with passion or exalted by
thought, it clothes itself in images. A man
conversing in earnest, if he watch his intel
lectual processes, will find that always a ma
terial image, more or less luminous, arises in
his mind, cotemporaneous with every thought,
which furnishes the vestment of the thought.

o

Hence, good writing and brilliant discourse are
perpetual allegories. This imagery is sponta
neous. It is the blending of experience with
the present action of the mind. It is proper
creation. It is the working of the Original
Cause through the instruments he has already
made.

These facts may suggest the advantage which
the country-life possesses for a powerful mind,
over the artificial and curtailed life of cities. We

40 LANGUAGE.

know more from nature than we can at will

* -%

communicate. Its light flows into the mind
evermore, and we forget its presence. The poet,
the orator, bred in the woods, whose senses
have been nourished by their fair and appeasing
changes, year after year, without design and
without heed, — shall not lose their lesson al
together, in the roar of cities or the broil of
politics. Long hereafter, amidst agitation and
terror in national councils, — in the hour of
revolution, — these solemn images shall reap
pear in their morning lustre, as fit symbols and
words of the thoughts which the passing events
shall awaken. At the call of a noble sentiment,
again the woods wave, the pines murmur, the
river rolls and shines, and the cattle low upon
the mountains, as he saw and heard them in his
infancy. And with these forms, the spells of per
suasion, the keys of power are put into his hands.
3. We are thus assisted by natural objects in
the expression of particular meanings. But
how great a language to convey such pepper
corn informations! Did it need such noble

LANGUAGE. 41

races of creatures, this profusion of forms, this
host of orbs in heaven, to furnish man with the
dictionary and grammar of his municipal speech?
Whilst we use this grand cipher to expedite the
affairs of our pot and kettle, we feel that we
have not yet put it to its use, neither are able.
We are like travellers using the cinders of a
volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that
it always stands ready to clothe what we would
say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the
characters are not significant of themselves.
Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no sig
nificance but what we consciously give them,
when we employ them as emblems of our
thoughts ? The world is emblematic. Parts of
speech are metaphors because the whole of na
ture is a metaphor of the human mind. The
laws of moral nature answer to those of matter
as face to face in a glass. " The visible world
and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of
the invisible." The axioms of physics trans
late the Jaws of ethics. Thus, " the whole is
greater than its part ; " " reaction is equal to

.

42 LANGUAGE.

action ; " " the smallest weight may be made to
lift the greatest, the difference of weight being
compensated by time ; " and many the like pro
positions, which have an ethical as well as phy
sical sense. These propositions have a much
more extensive and universal sense when ap
plied to human life, than when confined to
technical use.

In like manner, the memorable words of his
tory, and the proverbs of nations, consist usu
ally of a natural fact, selected as a picture or
parable of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling
stone gathers no moss ; A bird in the hand is
worth two in the bush ; A cripple in the right
way, will beat a racer in the wrong ; Make hay
whilst the sun shines ; 'T is hard to carry a full
cup even ; Vinegar is the son of wine ; The
last ounce broke the camel's back ; Long-lived
trees make roots first; — and the like. In their
primary sense these are trivial facts, but we re
peat them for the value of their analogical im
port. What is true of proverbs, is true of all
fables, parables, and allegories.

LANGUAGE. 43

This relation between the mind and matter is
not fancied by some poet, but stands in the will
of God, and so is free to be known by all men.
It appears to men, or it does not appear. When
in fortunate hours we ponder this miracle, the
wise man doubts, if, at all other times, he is not
blind and deaf;

" Can these things be,

And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder ? "

for the universe becomes transparent, and the
light of higher laws than its own, shines
through it. It is the standing problem which
has exercised the wonder and the study of
every fine genius since the world began ;
from the era of the Egyptians and the Brah
mins, to that of Pythagoras, of Plato, of Ba
con, of Leibnitz, of Swedenborg. There sits
the Sphinx at the road-side, and from age to
age, as each prophet comes by, he tries his for
tune at reading her riddle. There seems to be
a necessity in spirit to manifest itself in material

44 LANGUAGE.

forms ; and day and night, river and storm,
beast and bird, acid and alkali, preexist in
necessary Ideas in the mind of God, and are
what they are by virtue of preceding affections,
in the world of spirit. A Fact is the end or
last issue of spirit. The visible creation is the
terminus or the circumference of the invisible
world. " Material objects," said a French phi
losopher, " are necessarily kinds of scoria of
the substantial thoughts of the Creator, which
must always preserve an exact relation to their
first origin ; in other words, visible nature must
have a spiritual and moral side."

This doctrine is abstruse, and though the
images of " garment," " scoriae," " mirror,"
&c., may stimulate the fancy, we must summon
the aid of subtler and more vital expositors to
make it plain. " Every scripture is to be inter
preted by the same spirit which gave it forth,"
— is the fundamental law of criticism. A life
in harmony with nature, the love of truth and
of virtue, will purge the eyes to understand her
text. By degrees we may come to know the

LANGUAGE. 45

primitive sense of the permanent objects of na
ture, so that the world shall be to us an open
book, and every form significant of its hidden
life and final cause.

A new interest surprises us, whilst, under the
view now suggested, we contemplate the fearful
extent and multitude of objects ; since " every
object rightly seen, unlocks a new faculty of the
soul." That which was unconscious truth, be
comes, when interpreted and defined in an ob
ject, a part of the domain of knowledge, — a
new amount to the magazine of power.

CHAPTER V.

DISCIPLINE.

IN view of this significance of nature, we ar
rive at once at a new fact, that nature is a dis
cipline. This use of the world includes the
preceding uses, as parts of itself.

Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, loco
motion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give
us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning
is unlimited. They educate both the Under
standing and the Reason. Every property of
matter is a school for the understanding, — its so
lidity or resistance, its inertia, its extension, its
figure, its divisibility. The understanding adds,
divides, combines, measures, and finds everlast
ing nutriment and room for its activity in this
worthy scene. Meantime, Reason transfers all
these lessons into its own world of thought, by
perceiving the analogy that marries Matter and
Mind.

•

DISCIPLINE. 47

1. Nature is a discipline of the understanding
in intellectual truths. Our dealing with sensi
ble objects is a constant exercise in the neces
sary lessons of difference, of likeness, of order,
of being and seeming, of progressive arrange
ment ; of ascent from particular to general ; of
combination to one end of manifold forces.
Proportioned to the importance of the organ to
be formed, is the extreme care with which its
tuition is provided, — a care pretermitted in no
single case. What tedious training, day after
day, year after year, never ending, to form the
common sense ; what continual reproduction of
annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas ; what
rejoicing over us of little men ; what disputing
of prices, what reckonings of interest, — and
all to form the Hand of the mind ; — to instruct
us that " good thoughts are no better than good
dreams, unless they be executed ! "

The same good office is performed by Pro
perty and its filial systems of debt and credit.
Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow,
the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and

48 DISCIPLINE.

hate; — debt, which consumes so much time,
which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit
with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor
whose lessons cannot be forgone, and is needed
most by those who suffer from it most. More
over, property, which has been well compared
to snow, — " if it fall level to-day, it will be
blown into drifts to-morrow," — is merely the
surface action of internal machinery, like the
index on the face of a clock. Whilst now it is
the gymnastics of the understanding, it is hiv
ing in the foresight of the spirit, experience in
profounder laws.

The whole character and fortune of the indi
vidual is affected by the least inequalities in the
culture of the understanding ; for example, in
the perception of differences. Therefore is
Space, and therefore Time, that man may know
that things are not huddled and lumped, but
sundered and individual. A bell and a plough
have each their use, and neither can do the
office of the other. Water is good to drink,
coal to burn, wool to wear ; but wool cannot be

DISCIPLINE. 49

drunk, nor water spun, nor coal eaten. The
wise man shows his wisdom in separation, in
gradation, and his scale of creatures and of
merits, is as wide as nature. The foolish have
no range in their scale, but suppose every man
is as every other man. What is not good they
call the worst, and what is not hateful, they call
the best.

In like manner, what good heed, nature forms
in us ! She pardons no mistakes. Her yea is
yea, and her nay, nay.

The first steps in Agriculture, Astronomy,
Zoology, (those first steps which the farmer, the
hunter, and the sailor take,) teach that nature's
dice are always loaded ; that in her heaps and
rubbish are concealed sure and useful results.

How calmly and genially the mind apprehends
one after another the laws of physics ! What
noble emotions dilate the mortal as he enters
into the counsels of the creation, and feels by
knowledge the privilege to BE ! His insight
refines him. The beauty of nature shines in
his own breast. Man is greater that he can see
4*

50 DISCIPLINE.

this, and the universe less, because Time and
Space relations vanish as laws are known.

Here again we are impressed and even daunt
ed by the immense Universe to be explored.
4 What we know, is a point to what we do not
know.' Open any recent journal of science,
and weigh the problems suggested concerning
Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, Physiolo
gy, Geology, and judge whether the interest of
natural science is likely to be soon exhausted.

Passing by many particulars of the discipline
of nature we must not omit to specify two.

The exercise of the Will or the lesson of
power is taught in every event. From the child's
successive possession of his several senses up to
the hour when he saith, " thy will be done ! "
he is learning the secret, that he can reduce
under his will, not only particular events, but
great classes, nay the whole series of events, and
so conform all facts to his character. Nature
is thoroughly mediate. It is made to serve. It
receives the dominion of man as meekly as the
ass on which the Saviour rode. It offers all its

DISCIPLINE. 51

kingdoms to man as the raw material which he
may mould into what is useful. Man is never
weary of working it up. He forges the subtile
and delicate air into wise and melodious words,
and gives them wing as angels of persuasion
and command. More and more, with every
thought, does his kingdom stretch over things,
until the world becomes, at last, only a realized
will, — the double of the man.

2. Sensible objects conform to the premoni
tions of Reason and reflect the conscience.
All things are moral ; and in their boundless
changes have an unceasing reference to spirit
ual nature. Therefore is nature glorious with
form, color, and motion, that every globe in the
remotest heaven; every chemical change from
the rudest crystal up to the laws of life ; every
change of vegetation from the first principle of
growth in the eye of a leaf, to the tropical forest
and antediluvian coal-mine ; every animal func
tion from the sponge up to Hercules, shall hint
or thunder to man the laws of right and wrong,
and echo the Ten Commandments. Therefore

52 DISCIPLINE.

is nature always the ally of Religion : lends all
her pomp and riches to the religious sentiment.
Prophet and priest, David, Isaiah, Jesus, have
drawn deeply from this source.

This ethical character so penetrates the bone
and marrow of nature, as to seem the end for
which it was made. Whatever private purpose
is answered by any member or part, this is its
public and universal function, and is never omit
ted. Nothing in nature is exhausted in its first
use. When a thing has served an end to the
uttermost, it is wholly new for an ulterior ser
vice. In God, every end is converted into a new
means. Thus the use of Commodity, regarded
by itself, is mean and squalid. But it is to the
mind an education in the great doctrine of Use,
namely, that a thing is good only so far as it
serves ; that a conspiring of parts and efforts to
the production of an end, is essential to any
being. The first and gross manifestation of this
truth, is our inevitable and hated training*, in
values and wants, in corn and meat

DISCIPLINE. 53

It has already been illustrated, in treating of
the significance of material things, that every
natural process is but a version of a moral sen
tence. The moral law lies at the centre of na
ture and radiates to the circumference. It is the
pith and marrow of every substance, every rela
tion, and every process. All things with which
we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a
mute gospel 'I The chaff and the wheat, weeds
and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun, — it is a
sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to
the last stack which the snow of winter over
takes in the fields. But the sailor, the shepherd,
the miner, the merchant, in their several resorts,
have each an experience precisely parallel and
leading to the same conclusions. Because all
organizations are radically alike. Nor can it be
doubted that this moral sentiment which thus
scents the air, and grows in the grain, and im
pregnates the waters of the world, is caught by

man and sinks into his soul. The moral in-

i

fluence of nature upon every individual is that
amount of truth which it illustrates to him.

/

/t.

54 DISCIPLINE.

Who can estimate this? Who can guess how
much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught
the fisherman 1 how much tranquillity has been
. reflected to man from the azure sky, over whose
unspotted deeps the winds forevermore drive
flocks of stormy clouds, and leave no wrin
kle or stain ? how much industry and pro
vidence and affection we have caught from the
pantomime of brutes ? What a searching preach
er of self-command is the varying phenomenon
of Health !

Herein is especially apprehended the Unity of
Nature, — the Unity in Variety, — which meets
us everywhere. All the endless variety of things
make a unique, an identical impression. Xeno-
phanes complained in his old age, that, look
where he would, all things hastened back to
Unity. He was weary of seeing the same entity
in the tedious variety of forms. The fable of
Proteus has a cordial truth. Every particular
in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a momenj; of
time is related to the whole, and partakes of the
perfection of the whole. Each particle is a mi

•«• ^

DISCIPLINE. 55

crocosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of
the world.

Not only resemblances exist in things whose
analogy is obvious, as when we detect the type
of the human hand in the flipper of the fossil
saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great
superficial unlikeness. Thus architecture is
called ' frozen music/ by De Stael and Goethe.
' A Gothic church/ said Coleridge, ' is a petrified
religion.' Michael Angelo maintained, that, to
an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is essen
tial. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to
the imagination not only motions, as, of the
snake, the stag, and the elephant, but colors also;
as the green grass. The granite is differenced
in its laws only by the more or less of heat, from
the river that wears it away. The river, as it
flows, resembles the air that flows over it ; the
air resembles the light which traverses it with
more subtile currents; the light resembles the
heat which rides with it through Space. Each
creature is only a modification of the other ; the
likeness in them is more than the difference/ and

56 DISCIPLINE.

their radical law is one and the same. Hence it
is, that a rule of one art, or a law of one organ
ization, holds true throughout nature. So in
timate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies
under the undermost garment of nature, and be
trays its source in universal Spirit. For, it per
vades Thought also. Every universal truth
which we express in words, implies or supposes
every other truth. Omne verum vero consonat'
It is like a great circle on a sphere, comprising
all possible circles ; which, however, may be
drawn, and comprise it, in like manner. Every
such truth is the absolute Ens seen from one
side. But it has innumerable sides.

The same central Unity is still more conspic-
ous in actions. Words are finite organs of the
infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimen
sions of what is in truth. They break, chop,
and impoverish it. An action is the perfection
and publication of thought. A right action seems
to fill the eye, and to be related to all nature.
" The wise man, in doing one thing, does all ;
or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the
likeness of all which is done rightly."

DISCIPLINE. 57

Words and actions are not the, attributes of
mute and brute nature. They introduce us to
that singular form which predominates over all
other forms. This is the human. All other or
ganizations appear to be degradations of the
human form. When this organization appears
among so many that surround it, the spirit pre
fers it to all others. It says, ' From such as
this, have I drawn joy and knowledge. In such
as this, have I found and beheld myself. I will
speak to it. It can speak again. It can yield
me thought already formed and alive.' In fact,
the eye, — the mind, — is always accompanied
by these forms, male and female ; and these are
incomparably the richest informations of the
power and order that lie at the heart of things.
Unfortunately, every one of them bears the marks
as of some injury ; is marred and superficially
defective. Nevertheless, far different from the
deaf and dumb nature around them, these all
rest like fountain-pipes on the unfathomed sea of
thought and virtue whereto they alone, of all or
ganizations, are the entrances.
5

5g DISCIPLINE.

It were a pleasant inquiry to follow into de
tail their ministry to our education, but where
would it stop ? We are associated in adolescent
and adult life with some friends, who, like skies
and waters, are coextensive with our idea ; who,
answering each to a certain affection of the soul,
satisfy our desire on that side ; whom we lack
power to put at such focal distance from us, that
we can mend or even analyze them. We can
not chuse but love them. When much inter
course with a friend has supplied us with a
standard of excellence, and has increased our
respect for the resources of God who thus sends
a real person to outgo our ideal ; when he has,
moreover, become an object of thought, and,
whilst his character retains all its unconscious
effect, is converted in the mind into solid and
sweet wisdom, — it is a sign to us that his office
is closing, and he is commonly withdrawn from
our sight in a short time.

CHAPTER VI.

IDEALISM.

THUS is the unspeakable but intelligible and
practicable meaning of the world conveyed to
man, the immortal pupil, in every object of sense.
To this one end of Discipline, all parts of na
ture conspire.

A noble doubt perpetually suggests itself,
whether this end be not the Final Cause of the

p

Universe ; and whether nature outwardly exists.
It is a sufficient account of that Appearance we
call the World, that God will teach a human
mind, and so makes it the receiver of a certain
number of congruent sensations, which we call
sun and moon, man and woman, house and trade.
In my utter impotence to test the authenticity of
the report of my senses, to know whether the
impressions they make on me correspond with
outlying objects, what difference does it make,
whether Orion is up there in heaven, or some

60 IDEALISM.

god paints the image in the firmament of the
soul ? The relations of parts and the end of
the whole remaining the same, what is the dif
ference, whether land and sea interact, and
worlds revolve and intermingle without number
or end, — deep yawning under deep, and galaxy
balancing galaxy, throughout absolute space, or,
whether, without relations of time and space,
the same appearances are inscribed in the con
stant faith of man. Whether nature enjoy a
substantial existence without, or is only in the
apocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and
alike venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is
ideal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy
of my senses.

The frivolous make themselves merry with the
Ideal theory, as if its consequences were bur
lesque ; as if it affected the stability of nature.
It surely does not. God never jests with us, and
will not compromise the end of nature, by per
mitting any inconsequence in its procession.
Any distrust of the permanence of laws, would
paralyze the faculties of man. Their perma-

IDEALISM. QI

nence is sacredly respected, and his faith therein
is perfect. The wheels and springs of man are
all set to the hypothesis of the permanence of
nature. We are not built like a ship to be toss
ed, but like a house to stand. It is a natural
consequence of this structure, that, so long as
the active powers predominate over the reflective,
we resist with indignation any hint that nature
is more short-lived or mutable than spirit. The
broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter, the toll
man, are much displeased at the intimation.

But whilst we acquiesce entirely in the per
manence of natural laws, the question of the
absolute existence of nature, still remains open.
It is the uniform effect of culture on the human
mind, not to shake our faith in the stability of
particular phenomena, as of heat, water, azote j
but to lead us to regard nature as a phenome
non, not a substance ; to attribute necessary
existence to spirit ; to esteem nature as an acci
dent and an effect.

To the senses and the unrenewed understand
ing, belongs a sort of instinctive belief in the
5*

62 IDEALISM.

absolute existence of nature. In their view

"* *• '

man and nature are iadissolubly joined. Things

are ultimates, and they never look beyond their
sphere. The presence of Reason mars this
faith. The first effort of thought tends to relax
this despotism of the senses, which binds us to
nature as if we were a part of it, and shows us
nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. Until this
higher agency intervened, the animal eye sees,
with wonderful accuracy, sharp outlines and col
ored surfaces. When the eye of Reason opens,
to outline and surface are at once added, grace
and expression. These proceed from imagina
tion and affection, and abate somewhat of the
angular distinctness of objects. If the Reason
be stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines
and surfaces become transparent, and are no
longer seen ; causes and spirits are seen through
them. The best, the happiest moments of life,
are these delicious awakenings of the higher
powers, and the reverential withdrawing of na
ture before its God.

IDEALISM. 63

Let us proceed to indicate the effects of cul
ture. 1. Our first institution in the Ideal philo
sophy is a hint from nature herself.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to eman
cipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a small
alteration in our local position apprizes us of a
dualism. We are strangely affected by seeing
the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, or
through the tints of an unusual sky. The least
change in our point of view, gives the whole
world a pictorial air. A man who seldom rides,
needs only to get into a coach and traverse his
own town, to turn the street into a puppet-show.
The men, the women, — talking, running, bar
tering, fighting, — the earnest mechanic, the
lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are un
realized at once, or, at least, wholly detached
from all relation to the observer, and seen as ap
parent, not substantial beings. What new
thoughts are suggested by seeing a face of coun
try quite familiar, in the rapid movement of the
rail-road car ! Nay, the most wonted objects,
(make a very slight change in the point of vis-

64 IDEALISM.

sion,) please us most. In a camera obscura, the
butcher's cart, and the figure of one of our own
family amuse us. So a protrait of a well-known
face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down,
by looking at the landscape through your legs,
and how agreeable is the picture, though you
have seen it any time these twenty years !

In these cases, by mechanical means, is sug
gested the difference between the observer and
the spectacle, — between man and nature.
Hence arises a pleasure mixed with awe ; I may
say, a low degree of the sublime is felt from the
fact, probably, that man is hereby apprized, that,
whilst the world is a spectacle, something in
himself is stable.

2. In a higher manner, the poet communicates
the same pleasure. By a few strokes he deli
neates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the
camp, the city, the hero, the maiden, not differ
ent from what we know them, but only lifted
from the ground and afloat before the eye. He
unfixes the land and the sea, makes them revolve
around the axis of his primary thought, and dis-

IDEALISM. 65

poses them anew. Possessed himself by a he
roic passion, he uses matter as symbols of it.
The sensual man conforms thoughts to things ;
the poet conforms things to his thoughts. The
one esteems nature as rooted and fast ; the
other, as fluid, and impresses his being thereon.
To him, the refractory world is ductile and
flexible; he invests dust and stones with hu
manity, and makes them the words of the
Reason. The imagination may be defined to
be, the use which the Reason makes of the
material world. Shakspeare possesses the power
of subordinating nature for the purposes of
expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse
tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to
hand, to embody any capricious shade of thought
that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest
spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest
sundered things are brought together, by a
subtile spiritual connexion. We are made aware
that magnitude of material things is merely
relative, and all objects shrink and expand to
serve the passion of the poet. Thus, in his

66 IDEALISM.

sonnets, the lays of birds, the scents and dyes
of flowers, he finds to be the shadow of his
beloved ; time, which keeps her from him, is
his chest ; the suspicion she has awakened, is
her ornament ;

The ornament of beauty is Suspect,

A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air.

His passion is not the fruit of chance; it
swells, as he speaks, to a city, or a state.

No, it was builded far from accident ;

It suffers not in smiling pomp, nor falls

Under the brow of thralling discontent;

It fears not policy, that heretic,

That works on leases of short numbered hours,

But all alone stands hugely politic.

. ^;:*.

In the strength of his constancy, the Pyra
mids seem to him recent and transitory. And
the freshness of youth and love dazzles him
with its resemblance to morning.

Take those lips away
Which so sweetly were forsworn ;
And those eyes, — the break of day,
Lights that do mislead the morn.

IDEALISM. 67

The wild beauty of this hyperbole, I may
say, in passing, it would not be easy to match
in literature.

This transfiguration which all material objects
undergo through the passion of the poet, —
this power which he exerts, at any moment, to
magnify the small, to micrify the great, — might
be illustrated by a thousand examples from his
Plays. I have before me the Tempest, and will
cite only these few lines. "• k

ARIEL. The strong based promontory

Have I made shake, and by the spurs plucked up
The pine and cedar.

Prospero calls for music to sooth the frantic
Alonzo, and his companions ;

A solemn air, and the best comforter
To an unsettled fancy, cure thy brains
Now useless, boiled within thy skull.

Again ;

The charm dissolves apace
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.

•* *

68 IDEALISM.

Their understanding

Begins to swell : and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.

The perception of real affinities between
events, (that is to say, of ideal affinities, for
those only are real,) enables the poet thus to
make free with the most imposing forms and
phenomena of the world, and to assert the pre
dominance of the soul.

3. Whilst thus the poet delights us by animat-
ing nature like a creator, with his own thoughts,
he differs from the philosopher only herein,
that the one proposes Beauty as his main end ;
the other Truth. But, the philosopher, not less
than the poet, postpones the apparent order and
relations of things to the empire of thought.
" The problem of philosophy," according to
Plato, " is, for all that exists conditionally, to
find a ground unconditioned and absolute." It
proceeds on the faith that a law determines all
phenomena, which being known, the phenome
na can be predicted. That law, when in the

fc f

IDEALISM. 69

mind, is an idea. Its beauty is infinite. The
true philosopher and the true poet are one, and
a beauty, which is truth, and a truth, which is
beauty, is the aim of both. Is not the charm of
one of Plato's or Aristotle's definitions, strictly
like that of the Antigone of Sophocles ? It
is, in both cases, that a spiritual life has been

imparted to nature ; that the solid seeming block

••p ^

of matter has been pervaded and dissolved by
a thought ; that this feeble human being has
penetrated the vast masses of nature with an

informing soul, and recognised itself in their

. - ? . j. * .

harmony, that is, seized their law. In physics,
when this is attained, the memory disburthens
itself of its cumbrous catalogues of particulars,
and carries centuries of observation in a single

formula.

• ***"'*»*'• • '"

Thus even in physics, the material is ever

degraded before the spiritual. The astronomer,
the geometer, rely on their irrefragable analysis,
and disdain the results of observation. The
sublime remark of Euler on his law of arches,
" This will be found contrary to all experience,
6

70 IDEALISM.

yet is true ; " had already transferred nature
into the mind, and left matter like an outcast
corpse.

4. Intellectual science has been observed to
beget invariably a doubt of the existence of
matter. Turgot said, " He that has never
doubted the existence of matter, may be assured
he has no aptitude for metaphysical inquiries."
It fastens the attention upon immortal necessary
uncreated natures, that is, upon Ideas ; and in
their beautiful and majestic presence, we feel
that our outward being is a dream and a shade.
Whilst we wait in this Olympus of gods, we
think of nature as an appendix to the soul.
We ascend into their region, and know that
these are the thoughts of the Supreme Being.
" These are they who were set up from everlast
ing, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
When he prepared the heavens, they were there ;
when he established the clouds above, when he
strengthened the fountains of the deep. Then
they were by him, as one brought up with him.
Of them took he counsel."

IDEALISM. 71

Their influence is proportionate. As objects
of science, they are accessible to few men. Yet
all men are capable of being raised by piety or
by passion, into their region. And no man
touches these divine natures, without becoming,
in some degree, himself divine. Like a new
soul, they renew the body. We become physi
cally nimble and lightsome; we tread on air;
life is no longer irksome, and we think it will
never be so. No man fears age or misfortune
or death, in their serene company, for he is
transported out of the district of change.
Whilst we behold unveiled the nature of Justice
and Truth, we learn the difference between the
absolute and the conditional or relative. We
apprehend the absolute. As it were, for the
first time, we exist. We become immortal, for
we learn that time and space are relations of
matter; that, with a perception of truth, or a
virtuous will, they have no affinity.

5. Finally, religion and ethics, which may be
fitly called, — the practice of ideas, or the in
troduction of ideas into life, — have an analo-

72 IDEALISM.

gous effect with all lower culture, in degrading
nature and suggesting its dependence on spirit.
Ethics and religion differ herein ; that the one
is the system of human duties commencing from
man; the other, from God. Religion includes
the personality of God ; Ethics does not. They
are one to our present design. They both put
nature under foot. The first and last lesson of
religion is, " The things that are seen, are
temporal ; the things that are unseen are eter
nal." It puts an affront upon nature. It does
that for the unschooled, which philosophy does
for Berkeley and Viasa. The uniform language
that may be heard in the churches of the most
ignorant sects, is, — * Contemn the unsubstan
tial shows of the world; they are vanities,
dreams, shadows, unrealities ; seek the realities
of religion.' The devotee flouts nature. Some
theosophists have arrived at a certain hostility
and indignation towards matter, as the Mani-
chean and Plotinus. They distrusted in them
selves any looking back to these flesh-pots of
Egypt. Plotinus was ashamed of his body. In

IDEALISM. 73

short, they might all better say of matter, what
Michael Angelo said of external beauty, " it is
the frail and weary weed, in which God dresses
the soul, which he has called into time."

It appears that motion, poetry, physical and
intellectual science, and religion, all. tend to
affect our convictions of the reality of the ex
ternal world. But I own there is something
ungrateful in expanding too curiously the par
ticulars of the general proposition, that all cul
ture tends to imbue us with idealism. I have
no hostility to nature, but a child's love to it.
I expand and live in the warm day like corn and
melons. Let us speak her fair. I do not wish
to fling stones at my beautiful mother, nor soil
my gentle nest. I only wish to indicate the
true position of nature in regard to man, where
in to establish man, all right education tends ;
as the ground which to attain is the object of
human life, that is, of man's connexion with
nature. Culture inverts the vulgar views of na
ture, and brings the mind to call that apparent,
which it uses to call real, and that real, which
6*

74 IDEALISM.

it uses to call visionary. Children, it is true,
believe in the external world. The belief that
it appears only, is an afterthought, but with cul
ture, this faith will as surely arise on the mind
as did the first.

The advantage of the ideal theory over the
popular faith, is this, that it presents the world
in precisely that view which is most desirable to
the mind. It is, in fact, the view which Reason,
both speculative and practical, that is, philoso
phy and virtue, take. For, seen in the light of
thought, the world always is phenomenal ; and
virtue subordinates it to the mind. Idealism
sees the world in God. It beholds the whole
circle of persons and things, of actions and
events, of country and religion, not as painfully
accumulated, atom after atom, act after act, in
an aged creeping Past, but as one vast picture,
which God paints on the instant eternity, for
the contemplation of the soul. Therefore the
soul holds itself off from a too trivial and mi
croscopic study of the universal * tablet. It
respects the end too much, to immerse itself in

IDEALISM. 75

the means. It sees something more important
in Christianity, than the scandals of ecclesiasti
cal history or the niceties of criticism ; and,
very incurious concerning persons or miracles,
and not at all disturbed by chasms of historical
evidence, it accepts from God the phenomenon,
as it finds it, as the pure and awful form of re
ligion in the world. It is not hot and passionate
at the appearance of what it calls its own good
or bad fortune, at the union or opposition of
other persons. No man is its enemy. It ac
cepts whatsoever befals, as part of its lesson. It
is a watcher more than a doer, and it is a doer,
only that it may the better watch.

CHAPTER VII.

SPIRIT.

IT is essential to a true theory of nature and
of man, that it should contain somewhat pro
gressive. Uses that are exhausted or that may
be, and facts that end in the statement, cannot
be all that is true of this brave lodging wherein
man is harbored, and wherein all his faculties
find appropriate and endless exercise. And all
the uses of nature admit of being summed in
one, which yields the activity of man an infinite
scope. Through all its kingdoms, to the suburbs
and outskirts of things, it is faithful to the cause
whence it had its origin. It always speaks of
Spirit. It suggests the absolute. It is a per
petual effect. It is a great shadow pointing
always to the sun behind us.

The aspect of nature is devout. Like the
figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head,
and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest

SPIRIT. 77

man is he who learns* from nature the lesson of
worship.

Of that ineffable essence which we call Spirit,
he that thinks most, will say least. We can
foresee God in the coarse and, as it were, distant
phenomena of matter; but when we try to define
and describe himself, both language and thought
desert us, and we are as helpless as fools and
savages. That essence refuses to be recorded in
propositions, but when man has worshipped him
intellectually, the noblest ministry of nature is
to stand as the apparition of God. It is the
great organ through which the universal spirit
speaks to the individual, and strives to lead back
the individual to it.

When we consider Spirit, we see that the
views already presented do not include the
whole circumference of man. We must add
some related thoughts.

Three problems are put by nature to the
mind ; What is matter ? Whence is it 1 and
Whereto ? The first of these questions only,
the ideal theory answers. Idealism saith : mat-

78 SPIRIT.

ter is a phenomenon, not a substance. Idealism
acquaints us with the total disparity between the
evidence of our own being, and the evidence
of the world's being. The one is perfect ; the
other, incapable of any assurance ; the mind is a
part of the nature of things ; the world is a
divine dream, from which we may presently
awake to the glories and certainties of day.
Idealism is a hypothesis to account for nature
by other principles than those of carpentry and
chemistry. Yet, if it only deny the existence of
matter, it does not satisfy the demands of the
spirit. It leaves God out of me. It leaves me
in the splendid labyrinth of my perceptions, to
wander without end. Then the heart resists it,
because it baulks the affections in denying sub
stantive being to men and women. Nature is
so pervaded with human life, that there is some
thing of humanity in all, and in every particular.
But this theory makes nature foreign to me, and
does not account for that consanguinity which
we acknowledge to it.

SPIRIT. 79

Let it stand then, in the present state of our
knowledge, merely as a useful introductory
hypothesis, serving to apprize us of the eternal
distinction between the soul and the world.

But when, following the invisible steps of
thought, we come to inquire, Whence is matter ?
and Whereto? many truths arise to us out of
the recesses of consciousness. We learn that
the highest is present to the soul of man, that
the dread universal essence, which is not wis
dom, or love, or beauty, or power, but all in
one, and each entirely, is that for which all
things exist, and that by which they are ; that
spirit creates ; that behind nature, throughout
nature, spirit is present ; that spirit is one and
not compound ; that spirit does not act upon us
from without, that is, in space and time, but
spiritually, or through ourselves. Therefore,
that spirit, that is, the Supreme Being, does not
build up nature around us, but puts it forth
through us, as the life of the tree puts forth new
branches and leaves through the pores of the
old. As a plant upon the earth, so a man rests

80 SPIRIT.

upon the bosom of God; he is nourished by
unfailing fountains, and draws, at his need, inex
haustible power. Who can set bounds to the
possibilities of man ? Once inspire the infinite,
by being admitted to behold the absolute natures
of justice and truth, and we learn that man has
access to the entire mind of the Creator, is him
self the creator in the finite. This view, which
admonishes me where the sources of wisdom
and power lie, and points to virtue as to

" The golden key
Which opes the palace of eternity,"

carries upon its face the highest certificate of
truth, because it animates me to create my own
world through the purification of my soul.

The world proceeds from the same spirit as
the body of man. It is a remoter and inferior
incarnation of God, a projection of God in the
uncoYiscious. But it differs from the body in
one important respect. It is not, like that, now
subjected to the human will. Its serene order
is inviolable by us. It is therefore, to us, the
present expositor of the divine mind. It is a

SPIRIT. 81

fixed point whereby we may measure our depart
ure. As we degenerate, the contrast between
us and our house is more evident. We are as
much strangers in nature, as we are aliens from
God. We do not understand the notes of birds.
The fox and the deer run away from us ; the
bear and tiger rend us. We do not know the
uses of more than a few plants, as corn and the
appJe, the potato and the vine. Is not the land
scape, every glimpse of which hath a grandeur,
a face of him ? Yet this may show us what
discord is between man and nature, for you can
not freely admire a noble landscape, if laborers
are digging in the field hard by. The poet finds
something ridiculous in his delight, until he is
out of the sight of men.

CHAPTER VIII.

PROSPECTS.

IN inquiries respecting the laws of the world
and the frame of things, the highest reason is
always the truest. That which seems faintly
possible — it is so refined, is often faint and dim
because it is deepest seated in the mind among
the eternal verities. Empirical science is apt
to cloud the sight, and, by the very knowledge of
functions and processes, to bereave the student
of the manly contemplation of the whole. The
savant becomes unpoetic. But the best read
naturalist who lends an entire and devout atten
tion to truth, will see that there remains much
to learn of his relation to the world, and that it
is not to be learned by any addition or subtrac
tion or other comparison of known quantities,
but is arrived at by untaught sallies of the spirit,
by a continual self-recovery, and by entire
humility. He will perceive that there are far

PROSPECTS. 83

more excellent qualities in the student than
preciseness and infallibility; that a guess ii
often more fruitful than an indisputable affirma
tion, and that a dream may let us deeper into
the secret of nature than a hundred concerted
experiments.

For, the problems to be solved are precisely
those which the physiologist and the naturalist
omit to state. It is not so pertinent to man to
know all the individuals of the animal kingdom,
as it is to know whence and whereto is this
tyrannizing unity in his constitution, which ever
more separates and classifies things, endeavour
ing to reduce the most diverse to one form.
When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my
purpose to recite correctly the order and super
position of the strata, than to know why all
thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense
of unity. I cannot greatly honor minuteness in
details, so long as there is no hint to explain the
relation between things and thoughts ; no ray
upon the metaphysics of conchology, of botany,
of the arts, to show the relation of the forms ol

84 PROSPECTS.

flowers, shells, animals, architecture, to the
mind, and build science upon ideas. In a cabi
net of natural history, we become sensible of a
certain occult recognition and sympathy in re
gard to the most bizarre forms of beast, fish,
and insect. The American who has been con
fined, in his own country, to the sight of build
ings designed after foreign models, is surprised
on entering York Minster or St. Peter's at
Rome, by the feeling that these structures are
imitations also, — faint copies of an invisible
archetype. Nor has science sufficient humanity,
so long as the naturalist overlooks that wonder
ful congruity which subsists between man and
the world ; of which he is lord, not because he
is the most subtile inhabitant, but because he is
its head and heart, and finds something of him
self in every great and small thing, in every
mountain stratum, in every new law of color,
fact of astronomy, or atmospheric influence
which observation or analysis lay open. A per
ception of this mystery inspires the muse of
George Herbert, the beautiful psalmist of the

PROSPECTS. 85

seventeenth century. The following lines are
part of his little poem on Man.

" Man is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,

And to all the world besides.

Each part may call the farthest, brother;
For head with foot hath private amity,

And both with moons and tides.

" Nothing hath got so far
But man hath caught and kept it as his prey;

His eyes dismount the highest star ;

He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they

Find their acquaintance there.

" For us, the winds do blow,
The earth doth rest, heaven move, and fountains flow ;

Nothing we see, but means our good,

As our delight, or as our treasure ;
The whole is either our cupboard of food,

Or cabinet of pleasure.

" The stars have us to bed :

Night draws the curtain ; which the sun withdraws.
Music and light attend our head.

7*

86 PROSPECTS.

All things unto our flesh are kind,
In their descent and being ; to our mind,
In their ascent and cause.

-• More servants wait on man
Than he '11 take notice of. In every path,

He treads down that which doth befriend him

When sickness makes him pale and wan.
Oh mighty love ! Man is one world, and hath

Another to attend him."

The perception of this class of truths makes
the eternal attraction which draws men to sci
ence, but the end is lost sight of in attention to
the means. In view of this half-sight of sci
ence, we accept the sentence of Plato, that,
" poetry comes nearer to vital truth than his
tory." Every surmise and vaticination of the
mind is entitled to a certain respect, and we
learn to prefer imperfect theories, and sentences,
which contain glimpses of truth, to digested
systems which have no one valuable suggestion.
A wise writer will feel that the ends of study
and composition are best answered by announc
ing undiscovered regions of thought, and so

PROSPECTS. 87

communicating, through hope, new activity to
the torpid spirit.

I shall therefore conclude this essay with
some traditions of man and nature, which a
certain poet sang to me ; and which, as they
have always been in the world, and perhaps
reappear to every bard, may be both history and
prophecy,

'' The foundations of man are not in matter,
but in spirit. But the element of spirit is eter
nity. To it, therefore, the longest series of
events, the oldest chronologies are young and
recent. In the cycle of the universal man,
from whom the known individuals proceed,
centuries are points, and all history is but the
epoch of one degradation.

' We distrust and deny inwardly our sympathy
with nature. We own and disown our relation
to it, by turns. We are, like Nebuchadnezzar,
dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass
like an ox. But who can set limits to the reme
dial force of spirit ?

88 PROSPECTS.

' A man is a god in ruins. When men are
innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass
into the immortal, as gently as we awake from
dreams. Now, the world would be insane and
rabid, if these disorganizations should last for
hundreds of years. It is kept in check by
death and infancy. Infancy is the perpetual
Messiah, which comes into the arms of fallen
men, and pleads with them to return to para
dise.

* Man is the dwarf of himself. Once he was
permeated and dissolved by spirit. He filled
nature with his overflowing currents. Out from
him sprang the sun and moon ; from man, the
sun ; from woman, the moon. The laws of his
mind, the periods of his actions externized
themselves into day and night, into the year and
the seasons. But, having made for himself this
huge shell, his waters retired; he no longer fills
the veins and veinlets ; he is shrunk to a drop.
He sees, that the structure still fits him, but fits
him colossally. Say, rather, once it fitted him,
now it corresponds to him from far and on high.

PROSPECTS. gg

He adores timidly his own work. Now is man
the follower of the sun, and woman the follower
of the moon. Yet sometimes he starts in his
slumber, and wonders at himself and his house,
and muses strangely at the resemblance betwixt
him and it. He perceives that if his law is still
paramount, if still he have elemental power, " if
his word is sterling yet in nature," it is riot con
scious power, it is not inferior but superior to
his will. It is Instinct.' Thus my Orphic poet
sang.

At present, man applies to nature but half his
force. He works on the world with his under
standing alone. He lives in it, and masters it
by a penny-wisdom ; and he that works most in it,
is but a half-man, and whilst his arms are strong
and his digestion good, his mind is imbruted
and he is a selfish savage. His relation to na
ture, his power over it, is through the under
standing ; as by manure ; the economic use of
fire, wind, water, and the mariner's needle ;
steam, coal, chemical agriculture ; the repairs
of the human body by the dentist and the sur-

90 PROSPECTS.

geon. This is such a resumption of power, as
if a banished king should buy his territories
inch by inch, instead of vaulting at once into
his throne. Meantime, in the thick darkness,
there are not wanting gleams of a better light,
— occasional examples of the action of man
upon nature with his entire force, — with reason
as well as understanding. Such examples are ;
the traditions of miracles in the earliest antiqui
ty of all nations; the history of Jesus Christ;
the achievements of a principle, as in religious
and political revolutions, and in the abolition of
the Slave-trade ; the miracles of enthusiasm, as
those reported of Swedenborg, Hohenlohe, and
the Shakers ; many obscure and yet contested
facts, now arranged under the name of Animal
Magnetism; prayer; eloquence; self-healing;
and the wisdom of children. These are exam
ples of Reason's momentary grasp of the scep
tre ; the exertions of a power which exists not
in time or space, but an instantaneous in-stream
ing causing power. The difference between
the actual and the ideal force of man is happi-

PROSPECTS. 91

ly figured by the schoolmen, in saying, that the
knowledge of man is an evening knowledge,
vespertina cognitio, but that of God is a morn
ing knowledge, mat utina cognitio.

The problem of restoring to the world origi
nal and eternal beauty, is solved by the redemp
tion of the soul. The ruin or the blank, that
we see when we look at nature, is in our own
eye. The axis of vision is not coincident with
the axis of things, and so they appear not trans
parent but opake. The reason why the world
lacks unity, and lies broken and in heaps, is,
because man is disunited with himself. He
cannot be a naturalist, until he satisfies all the
demands of the spirit. Love is as much its
demand, as perception. Indeed, neither can be
perfect without the other. In the uttermost
meaning of the words, thought is devout, and
devotion is thought. Deep calls unto deep.
But in actual life, the marriage is not celebrated.
There are innocent men who worship God after
the tradition of their fathers, but their sense of
duty has not yet extended to the use of all their

92 PROSPECTS.

faculties. And there are patient naturalists,
but they freeze their subject under the wintry
light of the understanding. Is not prayer also
a study of truth, — a sally of the soul into the
unfound infinite ? No man ever prayed heartily,
without learning something. But when a faith
ful thinker, resolute to detach every object from
personal relations, and see it in the light of
thought, shall, at the same time, kindle science
with the fire of the holiest affections, then will
God go forth anew into the creation.

It will not need, when the mind is prepared
for study, to search for objects. The invariable
mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the
common. What is a day ? What is a year ?
What is summer ? What is woman ? What is a
child? What is sleep? To our blindness, these
things seem unaffecting. We make fables to
hide the baldness of the fact and conform it, as
we say, to the higher law of the mind. But
when the fact is seen under the light of an idea,
the gaudy fable fades and shrivels. We behold
the real higher law. To the wise, therefore, a

PROSPECTS. 93

fact is true poetry, and the most beautiful of fables.
These wonders are brought to our own door.
You also are a man. Man and woman, and their
social life, poverty, labor, sleep, fear, fortune,
are known to you. Learn that none of these
things is superficial, but that each phenomenon
hath its roots in the faculties and affections of
the mind. Whilst the abstract question occu
pies your intellect, nature brings it in the con
crete to be solved by your hands. It were a
wise inquiry for the closet, to compare, point by
point, especially at remarkable crises in life,
our daily history, with the rise and progress of
ideas in the mind.

So shall we come to look at the world with
new eyes. It shall answer the endless inquiry
of the intellect, — What is truth? and of the
affections, — What is good? by yielding itself
passive to the educated Will. Then shall come
to pass what my poet said ; ' Nature is not fixed
but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it. The
immobility or bruteness of nature, is the absence
of spirit ; to pure spirit, it is fluid, it is volatile,
8

92 ^PROSPECTS.

it is obedient. Every spirit builds itself a house;
and beyond its house, a world; and beyond its
world, a heaven. Know then, that the world
exists for you. For you is the phenomenon per
fect. What we are, that only can we see. All
that Adam had, all that Caesar could, you have
and can do. Adam called his house, heaven and
earth ; Caesar called his house, Rome; you per
haps call yours, a cobler's trade ; a hundred
acres of ploughed land ; or a scholar's garret.
Yet line for line and point for point, your domin
ion is as great as theirs, though without fine
names. Build, therefore, your own world. As
fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in
your mind, that will unfold its great proportions.
A correspondent revolution in things will attend
the influx of the spirit. So fast will disagreea
ble appearances, swine, spiders, snakes, pests,
mad-houses, prisons, enemies, vanish ; they are
temporary and shall be no more seen. The
sordor and filths of nature, the sun shall dry up,
and the wind exhale. As when the summer
comes from the south, the snow-banks melt, and

PROSPECTS. 95

the face of the earth becomes green before it,
so shall the advancing spirit create its orna
ments along its path, and carry with it the
beauty it visits, and the song which enchants it ;
it shall draw beautiful faces, and warm hearts,
and wise discourse, and heroic acts, around its
way, until evil is no more seen. The kingdom of
man over nature, which cometh not with obser
vation, — a dominion such as now is beyond his
dream of God, — he shall enter without more
wonder than the blind man feels who is gradu
ally restored to perfect sight.'

PS I L