Not only resemblances exist in things whose analogy is obvious, as
when we detect the type of the human hand in the flipper of the
fossil saurus, but also in objects wherein there is great superficial
unlikeness. Thus architecture is called "frozen music," by De Stael
and Goethe. Vitruvius thought an architect should be a musician. "A
Gothic church," said Coleridge, "is a petrified religion." Michael
Angelo maintained, that, to an architect, a knowledge of anatomy is
essential. In Haydn's oratorios, the notes present to the imagination
not only motions, as, of the snake, the stag, and the elephant, but
colors also; as the green grass. The law of harmonic sounds
reappears in the harmonic colors. The granite is differenced in its
laws only by the more or less of heat, from the river that wears it
away. The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the
air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtile currents;
the light resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each
creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is
more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.
A rule of one art, or a law of one organization, holds true throughout
nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under
the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal
Spirit. For, it pervades Thought also. Every universal truth which we
express in words, implies or supposes every other truth. _Omne
verum vero consonat_. It is like a great circle on a sphere,
comprising all possible circles; which, however, may be drawn, and
comprise it, in like manner. Every such truth is the absolute Ens
seen from one side. But it has innumerable sides.
The central Unity is still more conspicuous in actions. Words are
finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions
of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it. An action is
the perfection and publication of thought. A right action seems to fill
the eye, and to be related to all nature. "The wise man, in doing one
thing, does all; or, in the one thing he does rightly, he sees the
likeness of all which is done rightly."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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