"Imago Dei in animo; mundi, in corpore."
Man is a soul, informed by divine ideas, and bodying forth their image. His mind is the unit and measure of things visible and invisible. In him stir the creatures potentially, and through his personal volitions are conceived and brought forth in matter whatsoever he sees, touches, and treads under foot, the planet he spins.
He omnipresent is,All round himself he lies,Osiris spread abroad,Upstaring in all eyes:Nature his globed thought,Without him she were not,Cosmos from chaos were not spoken,And God bereft of visible token.
A theometer—an instrument of instruments—he gathers in himself all forces, partakes in his plenitude of omniscience, being the Spirit's acme, and culmination in nature. A quickening spirit and mediator between mind and matter, he conspires with all souls, with the Soul of souls, in generating the substance in which he immerses his form, and wherein he embosoms his essence. Not elemental, but fundamental, essential, he generates elements and forces, perpetually replenishing his waste;—the final conflagration a current fact of his existence. Does the assertion seem incredible, absurd? But science, grown luminous and transcendent, boldly declares that life to the senses is a blaze refeeding steadily its flame from the atmosphere it kindles into life, its embers the spent remains from which rises perpetually the new-born Phœnix into regions where flame is lost in itself, and light is its resolvent emblem.[G]
"Thee, eye of heaven, the great soul envies not,By thy male force is all we have, begot."
"This kindles the fire which exists in every thing, is received by every thing. While it sheds a full light, it is itself hidden. Its presence is unknown, unless some material be given to induce the exertion of its power. It is invisible, as well as unquenchable; and it has the faculty of transforming into itself every thing it touches. It renovates every thing by its vital heat, it illumines every thing by its flashing beams; it can neither be confined nor intermingled; it divides and yet is immutable. It always ascends, it is constantly in motion; it moves by its own will and power, and sets in motion every thing around it. It has the power of seizing, but cannot itself be grasped. It needs no aid. It increases silently and breaks forth in majesty upon all. It generates, it is powerful, invisible, and omnipotent. If neglected, its existence might be forgotten, but on friction being applied, it flashes out again like the sword from its scabbard, shines resplendently by its own natural properties, and soars into the air. Many other powers may yet be noticed as belonging to it. For this reason theologians have asserted that all substances being formed of fire, are thus created as nearly as possible in the image of God."
Illustration: Flower
[E]"Truth can be known by the thinking reason. It has been known by speculative thinkers scattered through the ages. Their systems exist and may be mastered. Their differences are not radical, but lie rather in the mode of exposition—the point of departure, the various obstacles overcome, and the character of thetechniqueused. Their agreement is central and pervading. The method of speculative cognition is to be distinguished from that of sensuous certitude, and from the reflection of the understanding by the exhaustive nature of its procedure. It considers its subject in a universal manner and its steps are void of all arbitrariness.
In order to detect a speculative system, ask the following questions of it: 1. "Is the highest principle regarded as a fixed, abstract, and rigid one, or as a concrete and self-moving one?" 2. "Is the starting point of the system regarded as the highest principle, and the onward movement of the same merely a result deduced analytically; or is the beginning treated as the most abstract and deficient, while the final result is the basis of all?" In other words, "Is the system a descent from a first principle or an ascent to one?" This will detect a defect of the method, while the former question, (1,) will detect defects in the content or subject matter of the system."—William T. Harris.
[F]"There are four modes of knowledge which we are able to acquire in the present life:
1. The first of these results from opinion, by which we learn that a thing is, without knowing the why; and this constitutes that part of knowledge which was called by Aristotle and Plato, erudition; and which consists in moral instructions for the purpose of purifying ourselves from immoderate desires.
2. But the second is produced by the sciences, which from establishing certain principles as hypotheses, conduct to necessary conclusions whereby we arrive at the knowledge of the why, as in the mathematical sciences, but at the same time are ignorant with respect to the principles of these conclusions, because they are merely hypothetical.
3. The third species of knowledge is that which results from Plato's dialectic; in which by a progression through ideas, we arrive at the first principles of things, and at that which is no longer hypothetical, and thus dividing some things and analyzing others, by producing many things from one, and one from many.
4. But the fourth species is still more simple than this; because it no longer uses analyses or compositions, but whole things themselves by intuition, and becomes one with the object of its perception; and this energy is the Divine Reason, which Plato speaks of, and which far transcends other modes of knowledge."—Thomas Taylor.
[G]"Man feeds upon air, the plant collecting the materials from the atmosphere and compounding them for his food. Even life itself, as we know it, is but a process of combustion, of which decomposition is the final conclusion. Through this combustion all the constituents return back into air, a few ashes remaining to the earth from whence they came. But from these embers, slowly invisible flames arise into regions where our science has no longer any value."—Schleiden.
"But all the Gods we have are in The Mind,By whose proportions only we redeemOur thoughts from out confusion, and do findThe measure of ourselves and of our powers,And that all happiness remains confinedWithin the kingdom of this breast of ours,Without whose bounds all that we look on liesIn others' jurisdiction, others' powers,Out of the circuit of our liberties."
Daniel.
Illustration: Banner with grasshopper
i.—ideas.
The Ancients had a happy conception of mind in their Pantheon of its Powers. They fabled these as gods celestial, mundane, infernal, according to their several prerogatives and uses. It appears their ideal metaphysic has not as yet been surpassed or superseded altogether, as the classic mythology still holds its high place in modern thought and the schools as a discipline and culture. And for the reason that thought is an Olympian, and man a native of the cloudlands, whatever his metaphysical pretensions. It is only as we sit aloft that we oversee the world below and comprehend aright its drift and revolutions. Ixion falling out of the mist, which he illicitly embraced, is the visionary mistaking images for ideas, and thus paying the cost in his downfall. Plumage, wings or none, imagination or understanding, the fledged idea or the footed fact, the fleet reason or slow—these distribute mankind into thinkers or observers. Only genius combines the double gifts in harmonious proportions and interplay, possessing the mind entire, and is a denizen of both hemispheres. The idealist is the true realist, grasping the substance and not its shadow. The man of sense is the visionary or illusionist, fancying things as permanencies, and thoughts as fleeting phantoms. A Ptolemaist in theory, and earth-bound, he fears to venture above his terra firma into the real firmament whereinto mind is fashioned to spring, and command the wide prospect around.
"Things divine are not attained by mortals who understand body merely,But only those who are lightly armed arrive at the summit."
Thought is the Mercury; and things are caught on the wing, and by the flying spectator only. Nature is thought in solution. Like a river whose current is flowing steadily, drop displacing drop, particle following particle of the passing stream, nothing abides but the spectacle. So the flowing world is fashioned in the idealist's vision, and is the reality which to slower wits seems fixed in space and apart from thought, subsisting in itself. But thought works in the changing and becoming, not in the changed and become; all things sliding by imperceptible gradations into their contraries, the cosmos rising out of the chaos by its agency. Nothing abides; all is image and expression out of our thought.
So Speech represents the flowing essence as sensitive, transitive; the word signifying what we make it at the moment of using, but needing life's rounded experiences to unfold its manifold senses and shades of meaning.[H]Definitions, however precise, fail to translate the sense. They confine in defining; good for the occasion, but leaps in the dark; at best, guesses at the meanings we seek; parapets built in the air, the lighter the safer; mere ladders of sound, whose rounds crumble as we tread. We write as we speak. The silence bars away the sense, closing shape and significance from us. Here is the mind facing its image the world, and wishing to see the reflection at a glance, a trope. No. The world is but the symbol of mind, and speech a mythology woven of both. Each thing suggests the thought imperfectly, and thought is translatable only by thought. Our standards are ideas, those things of the mind and originals of words.
Thought's winged hand,Marshals in trope and toneThe ideal band.Genius aloneHolds fast in eyeThe fleeing God—Brings Beauty nigh—Senses descryFootsteps he trod,Figures he drew,Shapes old and new,The fair, the true,In soul and sod.
Nature is thought immersed in matter, and seen differently as viewed from the one or the other. To the laborer it is a thing of mere uses; to the scholar a symbol and a muse. The same landscape is not the same as seen by poet and plowman. It stands for material benefit to the one, immaterial to the other. The artist's point of view is one of uses seen as means of beauty, that being the complement of uses. His faculties handle his organs; the hands, like somnambulists, playing their under parts to ideas; these, again, serving uses still higher. The poet, awakened from the sleep of things, beholds beauty in essence and form, being thus admitted to the secret of causes, the laws of pure Being.
The like of Persons. Every one's glass reflects his bias. If the thinker views men as troglodytes—like Plato's groundlings, unconscious of the sun shining overhead; men of the senses, and mere makeweights—they in turn pronounce him the dreamer, sitting aloof from human concerns, an unproductive citizen and waste power in the world. Still, thought makes the world and sustains it; atom and idea alike being its constituents. Nor can thought, from its nature, at once become popular. It is the property and delight of the few fitted by genius and culture for discriminating truth from adhering falsehood, and of setting it forth in its simplicity and truth to the understandings of the less favored. Apart by pursuit from the mass of mankind, or at most taking a separate and subordinate part in affairs that engage their sole attention, the thinker seems useless to all save those who can apprehend and avail themselves of his immediate labors; and the less is he known and appreciated as his studies are of lasting importance to his race. Yet time is just, and brings all men to the side of thought as they become familiar with its practical benefits, else the victory were not gained for philosophy, and wisdom justified in him of her chosen children.
Ideas alone supplement nature and complement mind. Our senses neither satisfy our sensibility nor intellect. The mind's objects are mind itself; imagination the mind's eye, memory the ear, ideas of the one imaging the other, and the mind thus rounding its history. And hence the pleasurable perspective experienced in surveying our personality from obverse sides in the landscape of existence—culture, in its inclusive sense, making the tour of our gifts, and acquainting us with ourselves and the world we live in. All men gain a residence in the senses and the family of natural things; few come into possession of their better inheritance and home in the mind—the Palace of Power and Personality. Sons of earth rather by preference, and chiefly emulous for their little while of its occupancy, its honors, emoluments, they here pitch their tents, here plant fast their hopes, and roll through life they know not whither.
ii.—the gifts.
Instinct is the fountain of Personal power, and mother of the Gifts. With instinct there may be an embryo, but sense must be superinduced to constitute an animal—memory, moral sentiment, reason, imagination, personality, to constitute the man. The mind is the man, not the outward shape: all is in the Will. The animal may mount to fancy in the grade of gifts; but reason, imagination, conscience, choice—the mediating, creative, ruling powers—the personality—belong to man alone. But not to all men, save in essence and possibility. Man properly traverses the hierarchy of Powers—spiritual, intellectual, moral, natural, animal—their full possession and interplay enabling him to hold free colloquy with all, giving the whole mind voice in the dialogue. Thus:
In accordance with this gradation of gifts, man and animals may be classified as to their measures of intelligence respectively; instinct being taken as the initial gift and prompter of the rest in their order of genesis, growth and adaptability: man alone, when fully unfolded in harmony, being capable of ranging throughout the entire scale.[I]
Thus:
Illustration: Brain
Nature does not contain the Personal man. He is the mind with the brute omitted, or, conversely, the animal transfigured and divinized by the Spirit. It is a slow process; long for the individual, longeval for the race. Centuries, millenniads elapse, mind meanwhile travailing with man, the birth arrested for the most part, or premature, the translation from germ to genius being supernatural, thought hardly delivered from spine and occiput into face and forehead, the mind uplifted and crowned in personality.
Pure mind alone is face,Brute matter surface all;As souls immersed in space,Ideal rise, or idol fall.
iii.—person.
The lapsed Personality, or deuce human and divine, has played the prime part in metaphysical theology of times past, as it does still. But rarely has thought freed itself from the notion of duplicity, triplicity, and grounded its faith in the Idea of the One Personal Spirit, as a pure theism, and planted therein a faith and cultus. If we claim this for the Hebrew thought, as it rose to an intuition in the mind of its inspired thinker, it passed away with him; since Christendom throughout mythologizes, rather than thinks about his attributes; is divided, subdivided into sects, schools of doctrine; each immersed so deeply in its special individualism as to be unable to rise to the comprehension of the Personal One. Nor, considering the demands mind makes upon the senses,—these inclining always to idolatry,—is it surprising that this spiritual theism, seeking its symbols in pure thought, without image graven or conceived, should find any considerable number of followers. Yet a faith less supersensuous and ideal, any school of thought, code of doctrine, creed founded on substance, force, law, tradition, authority, miracle, is a covert superstition, ending logically in atheism, necessity, nihilism, disowning alike personality, free agency. Nature is sufficient for the creature, but person alone for man, without whose immanency and inspirations, man were heartless and worshipless. The Person wanting all is wanting. For where God is disembosomed, spectres rule the chaos within and without.[J]
"Make us a god," said man:Power first the voice obeyed,And soon a monstrous formIts worshippers dismayed;Uncouth and huge, by nations rude adored,With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred."Make us a god," said man:Art next the voice obeyed,Lovely, serene, and grand,Uprose the Athenian maid:The perfect statue, Greece with wreathed brows,Adores in festal rites and lyric vows."Make us a god," said man:Religion followed art,And answered, "Look within;Find God in thine own heart—His noblest image there, and holiest shrine,Silent revere—and be thyself divine."
"Make us a god," said man:Power first the voice obeyed,And soon a monstrous formIts worshippers dismayed;Uncouth and huge, by nations rude adored,With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred.
"Make us a god," said man:Art next the voice obeyed,Lovely, serene, and grand,Uprose the Athenian maid:The perfect statue, Greece with wreathed brows,Adores in festal rites and lyric vows.
"Make us a god," said man:Religion followed art,And answered, "Look within;Find God in thine own heart—His noblest image there, and holiest shrine,Silent revere—and be thyself divine."
iv.—choice.
Heaven hell's pit copes:Nor fathoms any sin's abyss, or clambers out,Save by the steps his choice hath delved.
The gods descend in the likeness of men, and ascending transfigure the man into their Personal likeness. Descending below himself he debases and disfigures this image; as by choice he leaps upwards, so by choice he lapses downwards. Yet, while free to choose, he sinks himself never beneath himself absolutely, hisbeneathsubsisting by his election only. His choices free or fetter, elevate or debase, deify or demonize his humanity. Superior to all forces is the Spirit within, doing or defying his determinations, ever holding him fast to the consequences. Obeying its dictates or disobeying, frees or binds. It has golden chains for the good, for others iron. Love is its soft, yet mighty curb; freedom its easy yoke; fate its fetter.
Nor man in evil willingly doth rest,Nor God in good unwillingly is blest.
There is no appeal from the decisions of this High Court of Duty in the breast. The Ought is the Must and the Inevitable. One may misinterpret the voice, may deliberate, disobey the commandment, but cannot escape the consequences of his election. The deed decides. Nor is the Conscience appeased till sooner or later our deserts are pronounced—The welcome "well done," or the dread "depart."
"'Tis vain to flee till gentle mercy showHer better eye. The further off we goThe swing of justice deals the mightier blow."
Only the repenting consciousness of freedom abused restores the lost holiness, redeems from the guilty lapse—the sin that in separating us from the One, revealed the fearful Doubleness within, opening the yawning pit down which we stumbled, to become the prey of the undying worm.
"Meek love alone doth wash our ills away."
And with love enough, knowledge were useless. It comes in defect of love. Exhaustless in its sources, love supersedes knowledge, being the proper intellect of spirit and spring of intuition—God being very God, because his love absorbs all knowledge and contains his Godhead. Knowing without loving is decease from love, and lapse from pure intellect into sense. Knowledge is not enough. The more knowledge, the deeper the depths left unsounded, the more exacting our faith in the certainty of knowing. Our faith feels after its objects, if haply by groping in the darkness of our ignorance we may fathom its depths, and find ourselves in Him who is ever seeking us. "Although no man knoweth the spirit of a man save The Spirit within him, yet is there something in him that not even man's spirit knoweth."
"WHO placed thee here, did something then infuseWhich now can tell thee news."
Illustration: Flower
[H]
[I]"One would think nothing were easier for us than to know our own mind, discern what was our main scope and drift, and what we proposed to ourselves as our end in the several occurrences of our lives. But our thoughts have such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and for this reason the right method is to give them voice and accent. And this, in our default, is what the philosophers endeavor to do to our hand, when, holding out a kind of vocal looking-glass, they draw sound out of our breast, and instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest manner."—Lord Shaftesbury.
[J]"The first principle of all things is Living Goodness, armed with Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a man's soul be once sunk by evil fate or desert, from the sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold conceit that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or in the stark root of unknowing nature and brute necessity, all the subtle cords of reason, without the timely recovery of that divine torch within the hidden spirit of his heart, will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit of atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and piety than subtle argument, and sincere devotion than curious dispute. But contemplations concerning the dry essence of the Godhead have for the most part been most confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape, to smell the rose than to chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the meanest of men are capable of the former, very few successful in the latter; and the less, because the reports of those that have busied themselves that way have not only seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one another. But we should in charity refer this to the nature of thepigeon's neckthan to mistake and contradiction. One and the same object in nature affords many different aspects. And God is infinitely various and simple; like a circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform line, or an infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible perfections of God than rashly to deny what appears not to us from our particular posture."—Henry More.
"Had man withstood the trial, his descendants would have been born one from another in the same way that Adam—i. e., mankind—was, namely, in the image of God; for that which proceeds from the Eternal has eternal manner of birth."—Behmen.
Illustration: Banner with beetle
i.—vestiges.
Boehme, the subtilest thinker on Genesis since Moses, conceives that nature fell from its original oneness by fault of Lucifer before man rose physically from its ruins; and moreover, that his present existence, being the struggle to recover from nature's lapse, is embarrassed with double difficulties by defection from rectitude on his part. We think it needs no Lucifer other than mankind collectively conspiring, to account for nature's mishaps, or man's, since, assuming man to be nature's ancestor, and nature man's ruins rather, himself were the impediment he seeks to remove; nature being the child of his choices, corresponding in large—or macrocosmically—to his intents. Eldest of creatures, the progenitor of all below him, personally one and imperishable in essence, if debased forms appear in nature, these are consequent on man's degeneracy prior to their genesis. And it is only as he lapses out of his integrity, by debasing his essence, that he impairs his original likeness, and drags it into the prone shapes of the animal kingdom—these being the effigies and vestiges of his individualized and shattered personality. Behold these upstarts of his loins, everywhere the mimics jeering at him saucily, or gaily parodying their fallen lord.
"Most happy he who hath fit place assignedTo his beasts, and disafforested his mind;Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast,And is not ape himself to all the rest."
It is man alone who conceives and brings forth the beast in him that swerves and dies. Perversion of will by mis-choice precipitates him into serpentine form, duplicated in sex,
"Parts of that Part which once was all."
'Tisbut one and the same soul in him, entertaining a dialogue with himself, that is symbolized in the Serpent, Adam, and the woman; nor needs there fabulous "Paradises Lost or Regained," for setting in relief this serpent symbol of temptation, this Lord or Lucifer in our spiritual Eden:
"First state of human kind,Which one remains while man doth findJoy in his partner's company;When two, alas! adulterate joined,The serpent made the three."
ii.—serpent symbol.
Better is he who is above temptation, than he who, being tempted, overcomes, since the latter but suppresses the evil inclination stirring in his breast which the former has not. Whoever is tempted has so far sinned as to entertain the tempting lust within, betraying his lapse from singleness or holiness. The virtuous choose, are virtuous by choice; the holy, being one, deliberate not—their volitions answering spontaneously to their desires. It is the cleft personality, orotherwithin, which seduces the Will, and is the Adversary and Deuce we become individually, and impersonate in the Snake.
Chaste love's a maid,Though shapen as a man.
But one were an Œdipus to expound this serpent mythology; whereby is symbolized the mysteries of genesis, and of The One rejoining man's parted personality, and thus recreating mankind. Coeval with flesh, the symbol appears wherever traces of civilization exist; a remnant of it in the ancient Phallus worship having come to us disguised in our Mayday dance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge merely. The serpent symbolized divine wisdom, also; and it was under this acceptation that it became associated with those "traditionary teachers of mankind whose genial wisdom entitled them to divine honors." An early Christian sect, called Ophites, worshipped it as the personation of natural knowledge. So the injunction, "Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves," becomes the more significant when we learn thatseraphin the original means a serpent;cherub, a dove. And these again symbolize facts in osteological science as connected with the latest theories of the vertebrated cranium,[K]which view Nature as ophiomorphous—a series of spines, crowned, winged, webbed, finned, footed in structure—set erect, prone, trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or lower; man, holding the sceptre of dominion as he maintains his inborn rectitude, or losing his prerogative as lapsed from his integrity—hereby debasing his form and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes distributed throughout nature's kingdoms. Or, again as aspiring for lost supremacy, he uplift and crown his fallen form with forehead, countenance, speech,—thus liberating the genius from the slime of its prone periods, and restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, fellowship, the ideal arts.
"Unless above himself he canErect himself, how poor a thing is man."
iii.—embryons.
"The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work, in the divine mind before it exists in the creature."
As the male impregnates the female, so mind charges matter with form and fecundity; the spermatic world being life in transmission and body in embryo; the egg a genesis and seminary of forms, the kingdoms of animated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk, and awaiting the quickening magnetism that ushers them into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds in series the lineaments of all forms in the living hierarchy, to be fixed at last in its microcosm, unreeling therefrom its faculties into filamental organs, spinning so minutely the threads, "that were it physically possible to dissolve away all other members of the body, there would still remain the full and perfect figure of a man. And it is this perfect cerebro-spinal axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments, that, physically speaking, is the man."[L]The mind contains him spiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and his kind. Every creature assists in its own formation, souls being essentially creative and craving form.
"The creature ever delights in the image of the Creator;And the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to herself;Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated of God;For she glories in the harmony under which the human body exists."
Throughout the domain of spirit desire creates substance wherein all creatures seek conjunction, lodging and nurture. Nor is there anything in nature save desire holding substances together, all things being dissolvable and recombinable in this spiritual menstruum.
"'Tis the blossom whence there blowsEverything that lives and grows;It doth make the heavens to moveAnd the sun to burn in love:The strong to weak it seeks to yoke,And makes the ivy climb the oak,Under whose shadows lions wild,Softened thereby grow tame and mild.It all medicine doth appease,It burns the fishes in the seas,Not all the skill its wounds can stanch,Not all the sea its thirst can quench:It did make the bloody spearOnce a leafy coat to wear,While in his leaves there shrouded laySweet birds for love that sing and play;And of all the joyful flame,Bud and blossom this we name."
iv.—temperament.
Temperament is a fate, oftentimes, from whose jurisdiction its victims hardly escape, but do its bidding herein, be it murder or martyrdom. Virtues and crimes are mixed in one's cup of nativity, with the lesser or larger margin of choice. Unless of chaste extraction, his regeneration shall be wrought with difficulty through the struggling kingdom of evil into the peaceful realm of good. Blood is a destiny. One's genius descends in the stream from long lines of ancestry, from fountains whence rose Adam the first and his Eve. The oldest and most persistent of forces, if once ennobled by virtue and refined by culture, it resists base mixtures long, preserving its purity and power for generations. All gifts descend in the torrent; all are mingled in the ecstasy, as purity or passion prevail; genius being the fruit of chaste conjunctions, brute force of adulterous—the virgin complexions or the mixed.[M]
"Our generation moulds our state,Its virtues, vices, fix our fate;Nor otherwise experience proves,The unseen hands make all the moves,If some are great, and some are small,Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall,—Not figures these of speech,—forefathers sway us all.Me from the womb the midnight muse did take,She clothed me, nourished, and mine headWith her own hands she fashioned;She did a cov'nant with me make,And circumcised my tender soul, and thus she spake:'Thou of my church shalt be,Hate and renounce (said she)Wealth, honour, pleasure, all the world for me.Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar,Content thyself with the small barren praise,That neglected verse does raise.'She spake, and all my years to comeTook their determined doom:Their several ways of life, let others choose,Their several pleasures let them use,But I was born for love and for a muse.With fate what boots it to contend?Such I began, such am, and so shall end:The star that did my being frameWas but a lambent flame;Some light indeed it did dispense,But less of heat and influence.No matter, poet, let proud fortune seeThat thou canst her despise no less than she does thee;Why grieve thyself or blush to beAs all the inspired tuneful seers,And all thy great forefathers were from Shakspeare to thy peers."
"Our generation moulds our state,Its virtues, vices, fix our fate;Nor otherwise experience proves,The unseen hands make all the moves,If some are great, and some are small,Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall,—Not figures these of speech,—forefathers sway us all.
Me from the womb the midnight muse did take,She clothed me, nourished, and mine headWith her own hands she fashioned;She did a cov'nant with me make,And circumcised my tender soul, and thus she spake:'Thou of my church shalt be,Hate and renounce (said she)Wealth, honour, pleasure, all the world for me.Thou neither great at court, nor in the war,Nor at th' exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar,Content thyself with the small barren praise,That neglected verse does raise.'
She spake, and all my years to comeTook their determined doom:Their several ways of life, let others choose,Their several pleasures let them use,But I was born for love and for a muse.
With fate what boots it to contend?Such I began, such am, and so shall end:The star that did my being frameWas but a lambent flame;Some light indeed it did dispense,But less of heat and influence.
No matter, poet, let proud fortune seeThat thou canst her despise no less than she does thee;Why grieve thyself or blush to beAs all the inspired tuneful seers,And all thy great forefathers were from Shakspeare to thy peers."
Yet, biassed by temperament as we may be, whether for good or for evil, such measure of freedom is ours, nevertheless, as enables us to free ourselves from its tendencies and temptations. In the breast of each is a liberating angel, at whose touch, when we will it persistently, the doors of our dungeon fly open and loose their prisoner.
[K]"Spix, in his 'Cephalogenesis,' aids Oken's theory of the spinal cranium in endowing the artist's symbol of the cherub with all that it seemed to want before that discovery; namely: with a thorax, abdomen and pelvis, arms, legs, hands and feet."—Owen.
[L]"Thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother's womb. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in a secret place, and there curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth: there thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect: and in thy Book were all my members written, which in continuance were fashioned when as yet there was none of them."—Psalmcxxxix: 13, 15, 16.
[M]Boehme thus classifies and describes the temperaments:
"Lapsing out of her innocency, man's soul enters into a strange inn or lodging, wherein he is held sometime captive as in a dungeon, wherein are four chambers or stories, in one of which she is fated to remain, though not without instincts of the upper wards (if her place be the lowest) and hope of finding the keys by which she may ascend into these also. These chambers are the elements of his constitution, and characterized as the four temperaments or complexions, namely:
I. The melancholic or earthy.II. The phlegmatic or aqueous.III. The choleric or fiery.IV. The sanguine or ethereal.
I. The splenetic or melancholic partakes of the properties of the earth, being cold, dark, and hungry for the light. It is timid, incredulous, empty, consuming itself in corrosive cares, anxieties and sorrows, being sad when the sun shines, and needs perpetual encouragement. Its color is dark.
II. The phlegmatic being nourished from the earth's moisture, is inclined to heaviness; is gross, effeminate, dull of apprehension, careless, indifferent. It has but faint glimpses of the light, and needs much inculcation from without. Its color is brown.
III. The choleric is of the fiery temper, inclined to violence, wrath, obstinacy, irreverence, ambition. It is impulsive, contentious, aspires for power, and authority. It is greedy of the sun, and glories in its blazing beams. Its color is florid.
IV. The sanguine, being tempered of ether, and the least imprisoned, is cheerful, gentle, genial, versatile, naturally chaste, insinuating, searching into the secret of things natural and spiritual, and capable of divining the deepest mysteries. It loves the light, and aspires toward the sun. Its complexion is fair."
"Generation is not a creation of life, but a production of things to sense, and making them manifest. Neither is change death, but a hiding of that which was."—Hermes Trismegistus.