definition; as when Aristotle defines space to be
an immovable vessel in which things are contained;
--or when Plato defines a line to be a flowing
point; or figure to be a bound of solid; and many
the like. What a joyful sense of freedom we have
when Vitruvius announces the old opinion of artists
that no architect can build any house well who does
not know something of anatomy. When Socrates, in
Charmides, tells us that the soul is cured of its
maladies by certain incantations, and that these
incantations are beautiful reasons, from which
temperance is generated in souls; when Plato calls
the world an animal; and Timaeus affirms that the
plants also are animals; or affirms a man to be a
heavenly tree, growing with his root, which is his
head, upward; and, as George Chapman, following him,
writes,--

"So in our tree of man, whose nervie root
Springs in his top;" --

when Orpheus speaks of hoariness as "that white
flower which marks extreme old age;" when Proclus
calls the universe the statue of the intellect;
when Chaucer, in his praise of 'Gentilesse,' compares
good blood in mean condition to fire, which, though
carried to the darkest house betwixt this and the
mount of Caucasus, will yet hold its natural office
and burn as bright as if twenty thousand men did it
behold; when John saw, in the Apocalypse, the ruin