_Yet_ is it _there_ alone The longed-for rest is found; Alone through these dark gates May pass the _homeward_ bound. The silent heart beneath, That pain and sorrow bore, Hath only found true peace _There_, where it beats no more. REASON, RHYME, AND RHYTHM. CHAPTER V.--ORDER, SYMMETRY, AND PROPORTION. No numbers can be conceived of but as a collection of unities; in adding unity, many, to itself, we only form a unity of a higher rank: it is in taking unities successively from these numbers that we return to the first unity. Thus variety or plurality, which at first seemed destructive of unity, actually rests upon it, admitting it as an elementary constituent of its very being. The _collective_ idea of the world, _infinite variety, collection of individualities_, could not exist in us without the idea of _unity_; and closely associated with the conception of unity, is the idea of Absolute Order. Whatever may be the disturbances which we witness either in physical or moral nature, we always believe that Order will succeed the momentary interruption of law. Even when we see earth a prey to the most dreadful catastrophes, we always regard such a state of things as a _passing_ crisis, destined to return to the law of order. Surrounded as it is from the cradle to the grave by an infinite variety of phenomena, the human mind for their investigation devotes itself to the search of a small number of laws, which will link them all, persuaded there is no phenomenon or being so rebellious to a correct classification, that its proper place or role cannot be assigned it in the great system of Eternal Order. Even the savage believes in the periodic return, in the constant and regular recurrence of natural phenomena: such convictions must be based upon an instinctive belief in an Absolute and Universal Order. If we turn our gaze upon the Author of all things at the time of the creation, we will perceive that He must have conceived the grand plan of the universe as a single or united thought; that He has distributed being to all that is in different degrees; that He has subjected them all to the immutable laws of His wisdom; and that the laws under which they are ranged to receive the Divine action are, in fact, the necessary conditions of their existence. The more distant the link in the chain of being is from God, the more are the laws multiplied, divided, ramified, so as to weave in their vast net that infinite variety which extends to the utmost limits of creation; but as we approach Him in thought, these innumerable laws form themselves into groups, these groups are again resolved into more general laws, until at last we arrive at _one_ which embraces all the others, to which they are all attached as to a common centre, and from which they obtain force and direction.