This law writes the laws of cities and nations. It is in vain to build
or plot or combine against it. Things refuse to be mismanaged long.
_Res nolunt diu male administrari_. Though no checks to a new evil
appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If the government is cruel,
the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will
yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will
not convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in. If the
government is a terrific democracy, the pressure is resisted by an
over-charge of energy in the citizen, and life glows with a fiercer
flame. The true life and satisfactions of man seem to elude the utmost
rigors or felicities of condition and to establish themselves with
great indifferency under all varieties of circumstances. Under all
governments the influence of character remains the same,—in Turkey and
in New England about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt,
history honestly confesses that man must have been as free as culture
could make him.
These appearances indicate the fact that the universe is represented in
every one of its particles. Every thing in nature contains all the
powers of nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; as the
naturalist sees one type under every metamorphosis, and regards a horse
as a running man, a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, a
tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats not only the main character
of the type, but part for part all the details, all the aims,
furtherances, hindrances, energies and whole system of every other.
Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is a compend of the world
and a correlative of every other. Each one is an entire emblem of human
life; of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course and its
end. And each one must somehow accommodate the whole man and recite all
his destiny.
The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The microscope cannot find
the animalcule which is less perfect for being little. Eyes, ears,
taste, smell, motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduction
that take hold on eternity,—all find room to consist in the small
creature. So do we put our life into every act. The true doctrine of
omnipresence is that God reappears with all his parts in every moss and
cobweb. The value of the universe contrives to throw itself into every
point. If the good is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the
repulsion; if the force, so the limitation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account