which rules the world as we see it ruled, masters and takes to itself
for extension all laws below its own level, wields Nature as an
instrument, breaks down a weaker will, and carries away the material
mind until some God from above shall deliver it. Will is that living
Fate of which exterior necessity is but the form. From it we are
instantly delivered in conviction, and find it ever after the servant,
not the synonyme of man.

The boy does not choose, neither does the belly choose for him, what
object shall be supremely beautiful in his eyes. He has not resolved to
see only this splendor of color, and neglect sound,--or to give himself
to sound alone, and shut his eyes to sight. If the divine order reaches
any mind, those creatures in which it appears will haunt that mind, will
take lordly their own place, and hang as constellations high overhead in
thought. So long as he can turn the eye hither and thither, or lightly
determine what he will see, the man is conversant with form alone, and
bigots who are on that plane of experience identify him with choice,
hold thought to be altogether voluntary, and burn the thinker, as though
his view were a fruit, not a root, of him. But truth is that which does
not wait for our making, but makes us,--does not lie like water at the
bottom of our wells, but comes like sunshine flooding the air, and
compelling recognition. "To believe your own thought," says a master,
"that is genius"; but is not genius primarily the arrival of a thought
able to authenticate itself, to compel trust, and make its own value
known against the sneers or anger of the world? From my own thought once
reached there is but one appeal,--to my own thought: from Philip sober
to Philip more sober.

The good spirit appears as a spark in our embers, and draws out these
careful hands to ward itself from every gust,--sets our tasks and crowns