The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 76, February, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The last refreshment is intercourse with a kingly mind, which has no
need to shift its centre, but lies abroad hemispheric, and sleeps like
sunshine, bathing silently the earth and sky. Such a mind is at home,
not in position, but in a vital relation to Nature, which leaves no
spaces dark and cold for wandering, and knows no change that is worth
the name of change. It is rest to be with one who is at rest, who
cannot go to or go from his happiness, for whom the meaning of Deity is
here and now. What stillness and depth of manner are communicated to all
who sound the deeps of life! what a refuge is their society from wit,
zeal, and gossip, from petty estimates and demands! To these, now first
encountered, we have been always known; in them we meet no private
motive, no accomplishment, reputation, ability, immediate haunting
purpose, but a Sabbath from personal fortunes. We meet the great above
all that can be mine or thine, above gifts and accidents in common
manhood and prosperity. Swedenborg reports no encounter on higher
ground. The seven heavens open to me in a mind which gives rank to its
own facts, and wherever it is housed still finds the universe only a
larger body around the soul.
Genius declares the total or representative value of its own facts
against the neglect or contempt of mankind. Intelligence is centre of
centres, and all things diminish as they recede from the eye. Every
natural law is some hint to us of our commanding position. The good
thought is never a toilsome going abroad, but some settling at home to
new intimacy with the fortune which waits on all. It is no putting out
legs, but a putting down roots to take possession of the earth and the
nether heavens, while we fill the upper sky with climbing shoots.
Intelligence is at one with the system, able to entertain it as a unit,
to refer every particle, dark as a particle, to its shining place in the
transparent whole. How can I afford to drop my errand, to go wonder
after the fore-world, after Plato, Washington, or Paul? These are men
who never dropped their errands to go wonder after the Maker himself.
They found God in the thing lying nearest to be done. As right action in
the remotest corner is a world-victory, so right thought applied to the
lowest circumstance is cosmic thought. In the fortune of the hour we
have a home beyond the fortune of the hour. The least circle of order
now organized and established in our lives is not a poor house frozen to
the ground, but a ship able to outride the currents of time, a charmed
circle of security which will serve us still in every following world.
Our future is to be found, not in multiplication of examples, but in
deeper sympathy with all we have superficially known.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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