Every ultimate fact is only the first of a new series. Every general
law only a particular fact of some more general law presently to
disclose itself. There is no outside, no inclosing wall, no
circumference to us. The man finishes his story,—how good! how final!
how it puts a new face on all things! He fills the sky. Lo! on the
other side rises also a man and draws a circle around the circle we had
just pronounced the outline of the sphere. Then already is our first
speaker not man, but only a first speaker. His only redress is
forthwith to draw a circle outside of his antagonist. And so men do by
themselves. The result of to-day, which haunts the mind and cannot be
escaped, will presently be abridged into a word, and the principle that
seemed to explain nature will itself be included as one example of a
bolder generalization. In the thought of to-morrow there is a power to
upheave all thy creed, all the creeds, all the literatures of the
nations, and marshal thee to a heaven which no epic dream has yet
depicted. Every man is not so much a workman in the world as he is a
suggestion of that he should be. Men walk as prophecies of the next
age.
Step by step we scale this mysterious ladder: the steps are actions;
the new prospect is power. Every several result is threatened and
judged by that which follows. Every one seems to be contradicted by the
new; it is only limited by the new. The new statement is always hated
by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of
scepticism. But the eye soon gets wonted to it, for the eye and it are
effects of one cause; then its innocency and benefit appear, and
presently, all its energy spent, it pales and dwindles before the
revelation of the new hour.
Fear not the new generalization. Does the fact look crass and material,
threatening to degrade thy theory of spirit? Resist it not; it goes to
refine and raise thy theory of matter just as much.
There are no fixtures to men, if we appeal to consciousness. Every man
supposes himself not to be fully understood; and if there is any truth
in him, if he rests at last on the divine soul, I see not how it can be
otherwise. The last chamber, the last closet, he must feel was never
opened; there is always a residuum unknown, unanalyzable. That is,
every man believes that he has a greater possibility.
Our moods do not believe in each other. To-day I am full of thoughts
and can write what I please. I see no reason why I should not have the
same thought, the same power of expression, to-morrow. What I write,
whilst I write it, seems the most natural thing in the world; but
yesterday I saw a dreary vacuity in this direction in which now I see
so much; and a month hence, I doubt not, I shall wonder who he was that
wrote so many continuous pages. Alas for this infirm faith, this will
not strenuous, this vast ebb of a vast flow! I am God in nature; I am a
weed by the wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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