merely as man, but as John; I blush and ache till John is something
pronounced and maintained against the mob of centuries, till men must
feel his singularity and solidity, as the ocean is displaced and
readjusted by every drop of rain. More or less, I must at least purely
avail. Erectness is delivery to the private law, and something in each
remains erect, and lifts him above the brute and the crowd. He is, and
feels himself to be: he will advance and give the law of his life.

The brain is itself a nut from the tree Ygdrasil; it carries the world,
and in the first glances we anticipate all knowledge. The joy of life
does not wait for any theory of life, for we have only slept since the
thought in us was embodied in this system; we took part in the making;
we are drowsily at home with ourselves therein; we forget, yet do not
forget, the roundness of design. As in a common experience we are often
close upon some name which we seek to recall,--we feel, but cannot touch
it,--so the secret of Nature lies close to the mind, and sustains us as
if by magnetic communication, while we have yet no faculty to explore
our own being or this apparition of it, the whirl of worlds.

We have rightly held genius to be miracle; but our great hope is
postponed for lack of perception that all life is miracle, that man in
every endowment is a form of the same plastic, incalculable power. Yet
as we are brought to seek goodness, being sinners, so we shall be
brought to seek the last perception, being dolts. The masters have not
been quite masters, and their theory has never respected the natural as
opening to a supernatural mind. We eat and drink and wait to be
arrested, not by sunshine, but lightning. It comes at last, revealing
from heaven the height and depth of our human prospect. The vision is
appalling; the seer is stricken to the ground; he has no organ able to
bear this light; he is blinded; he runs trembling for counsel to Paul,