“A vast similitude interlocks all,” says Whitman, “spans all the objects of the universe and compactly holds and encloses them.” Everywhere in Nature Emerson said he saw the figure of a disguised man. The method of the universe is intelligible to us because it is akin to our own minds. Our minds are rather akin to it and are derived from it. Emerson made much of this thought. The truth here indicated is undoubtedly the basis of all true analogy--this unity, this oneness of creation; but the analogies that “are constant and pervade Nature” are probably not so numerous as Emerson seemed to fancy. Thus one can hardly agree with him that there is “intent” of analogy between man’s life and the seasons, because the seasons are not a universal fact of the globe, and man’s life is. The four seasons are well defined in New England, but not in Ecuador. The agreement of appearances is one thing, the identity of law and essence is another, and the agreement of man’s life with the seasons must be considered accidental rather than intentional. Language is full of symbols. We make the world without a symbol of the world within. We describe thoughts, and emotions, in the terms of an objective experience. Things furnish the moulds in which our ideas are cast. Size, proportion, mass, vista, vastness, height, depth, darkness, light, coarse, fine, centre, surface, order, chaos, and a thousand other terms, we apply alike to the world without and to the world within. We know a higher temperance than concerns the body, a finer digestion and assimilation than go on in it. Our daily conversation is full of pictures and parables, or the emblematic use of things. From life looked at as a voyage, we get the symbolic use of anchor, compass, pole-star, helm, haven; from life considered as a battle, we read deep meanings in shield, armor, fencing, captain, citadel, panic, onset. Life regarded under the figure of husbandry gives us the expressive symbols of seedtime and harvest, planting and watering, tares and brambles, pruning and training, the chaff and the wheat. We talk in parables when we little suspect it. What various applications we make of such words as dregs, gutter, eclipse, satellite, hunger, thirst, kindle, brazen, echo, and hundreds of others. We speak of the reins of government, the sinews of war, the seeds of rebellion, the morning of youth, the evening of age, a flood of emotion, the torch of truth, burning with resentment, the veil of secrecy, the foundations of character, a ripple of laughter, incrusted dogmas, corrosive criticism. We say his spirits drooped, his mind soared, his heart softened, his brow darkened, his reputation was stabbed, he clinched his argument. We say his course was beset with pitfalls, his efforts were crowned with success, his eloquence was a torrent that carried all before it, and so on.