Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

volve and intermingle without number or end, deep yawning under deep, and galaxy balanng galaxy, throughout absolute space, or, nether, without relations of time and space, › same appearances are inscribed in the conint faith of man? Whether nature enjoy a bstantial existence without, or is only in the ocalypse of the mind, it is alike useful and ke venerable to me. Be it what it may, it is eal to me, so long as I cannot try the accuracy my senses.

The frivolous make themselves merry with the eal theory, as if its consequences were bursque; as if it affected the stability of nature. surely does not. God never jests with us, and ll not compromise the end of nature, by peritting any inconsequence in its procession. Any strust of the permanence of laws, would paryze the faculties of man. Their permanence sacredly respected, and his faith therein is rfect. The wheels and springs of man are all to the hypothesis of the permanence of nare. We are not built like a ship to be tossed, t like a house to stand. It is a natural conseence of this structure, that, so long as the tive powers predominate over the reflective, we sist with indignation any hint that nature is

broker, the wheelwright, the carpenter man, are much displeased at the intim

But whilst we acquiesce entirely in manence of natural laws, the questi absolute existence of nature still rema It is the uniform effect of culture on t mind, not to shake our faith in the st particular phenomena, as of heat, wat but to lead us to regard nature as phe not a substance; to attribute necessary to spirit; to esteem nature as an accide effect.

To the senses and the unrenewed un ing, belongs a sort of instinctive bel absolute existence of nature. In th man and nature are indissolubly joined are ultimates, and they never look bey sphere. The presence of Reason faith. The first effort of thought tend this despotism of the senses, which b nature as if we were a part of it, and nature aloof, and, as it were, afloat. higher agency intervened, the animal with wonderful accuracy, sharp outline ored surfaces. When the eye of Reas to outline and surface are at once add and expression. These proceed from

ngular distinctness of objects. If the Reason e stimulated to more earnest vision, outlines nd surfaces become transparent, and are no onger seen; causes and spirits are seen through em. The best moments of life are these delious awakenings of the higher powers, and the verential withdrawing of nature before its God. Let us proceed to indicate the effects of culure. 1. Our first institution in the Ideal phi-sophy is a hint from nature herself.

Nature is made to conspire with spirit to mancipate us. Certain mechanical changes, a mall alteration in our local position apprizes us fa dualism. We are strangely affected by seeg the shore from a moving ship, from a balloon, through the tints of an unusual sky. The st change in our point of view, gives the hole world a pictorial air. A man who seldom des, needs only to get into a coach and traverse s own town, to turn the street into a puppetThe men, the women, talking, runng, bartering, fighting, the earnest mechanic, e lounger, the beggar, the boys, the dogs, are realized at once, or, at least, wholly detached om all relation to the observer, and seen as parent, not substantial beings. What new oughts are suggested by seeing a face of

[ocr errors]

the railroad car! Nay, the most wonte (make a very slight change in the poi ion,) please us most. In a camera ob

butcher's cart, and the figure of one of

family amuse us. face gratifies us.

So a portrait of a w

Turn the eyes ups

by looking at the landscape through and how agreeable is the picture, th have seen it any time these twenty yea

[ocr errors]

In these cases, by mechanical mean gested the difference between the obs the spectacle, between man and natu arises a pleasure mixed with awe; Im low degree of the sublime is felt from probably, that man is hereby appriz whilst the world is a spectacle, som himself is stable.

2. In a higher manner, the poet com the same pleasure. By a few strokes ates, as on air, the sun, the mountain, the city, the hero, the maiden, not diffe what we know them, but only lifted ground and afloat before the eye. H the land and the sea, makes them revol the axis of his primary thought, and them anew. Possessed himself by

asual man conforms thoughts to things; the et conforms things to his thoughts. The one eems nature as rooted and fast; the other, as id, and impresses his being thereon. To him, refractory world is ductile and flexible; he -ests dust and stones with humanity, and kes them the words of the Reason. The agination may be defined to be, the use ich the Reason makes of the material world. akspeare possesses the power of subordinatnature for the purposes of expression, beyond poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation e a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it embody any caprice of thought that is upmost in his mind. The remotest spaces of ture are visited, and the farthest sundered ngs are brought together, by a subtile spirit. I connection. We are made aware that magude of material things is relative, and all ects shrink and expand to serve the passion of poet. Thus, in his sonnets, the lays of birds, escents and dyes of flowers, he finds to be shadow of his beloved; time, which keeps from him, is his chest; the suspicion she has akened, is her ornament;

The ornament of beauty is Suspect,

A crow which flies in heaven's sweetest air.

« PreviousContinue »