This insight throws us on the party and interest of the Universe,
against all and sundry; against ourselves, as much as others. A man
speaking from insight affirms of himself what is true of the mind:
seeing its immortality, he says, I am immortal; seeing its
invincibility, he says, I am strong. It is not in us, but we are in it.
It is of the maker, not of what is made. All things are touched and
changed by it. This uses, and is not used. It distances those who
share it, from those who share it not. Those who share it not are
flocks and herds. It dates from itself;—not from former men or better
men,—gospel, or constitution, or college, or custom. Where it shines,
Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things make a musical or
pictorial impression. The world of men show like a comedy without
laughter:—populations, interests, government, history;—’tis all toy
figures in a toy house. It does not overvalue particular truths. We
hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an intellectual man.
But, in his presence, our own mind is roused to activity, and we forget
very fast what he says, much more interested in the new play of our own
thought, than in any thought of his. ’Tis the majesty into which we
have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn of egotisms, the
sphere of laws, that engage us. Once we were stepping a little this
way, and a little that way; now, we are as men in a balloon, and do not
think so much of the point we have left, or the point we would make, as
of the liberty and glory of the way.
Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic power. He who sees
through the design, presides over it, and must will that which must be.
We sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. Our
thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity,
not to be separated from thought, and not to be separated from will.
They must always have coexisted. It apprises us of its sovereignty and
godhead, which refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or thine,
but the will of all mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as
the soul itself which constitutes them men. I know not whether there
be, as is alleged, in the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent
westerly current, which carries with it all atoms which rise to that
height, but I see, that when souls reach a certain clearness of
perception, they accept a knowledge and motive above selfishness. A
breath of will blows eternally through the universe of souls in the
direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the air which all
intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows the worlds
into order and orbit.
Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the mind up into a
sphere where all is plastic. Of two men, each obeying his own thought,
he whose thought is deepest will be the strongest character. Always one
man more than another represents the will of Divine Providence to the
period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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