It was in virtue of his _sincerity_, of his speaking still in some sort from the heart of Nature, though in the current artificial dialect, that Johnson was a Prophet. Are not all dialects "artificial"? Artificial things are not all false;--nay every true Product of Nature will infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all artificial things are, at the starting of them, _true_. What we call "Formulas" are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good. Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man is found. Formulas fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading toward some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. Consider it. One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds out a way of doing somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest, were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that; these are his footsteps, the beginning of a "Path." And now see: the second men travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being _full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there: _they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our habitation in this world.--