Olympus and deep Orcus,--he whose coarse fibre never felt the
shudder of the world at the shaking of the ambrosial locks, nor a
thrill in the air when a hero fails,--what can this grand stoop of the
ideal upon the actual world signify to him? To what but an ethical
genius in men can appeal for guest-rites be made by the noble
"Meditations" of Marcus Antoninus, or the exquisite, and perhaps
incomparable, "Christian Morals" of Sir Thomas Browne?
Appreciative genius is centrally the same with productive
genius; and it is the Shakspeare in men alone that prints Shakspeare
and reads him. So it is that the works of the masters are, as it were,
perpetually re-written and renewed in life by the genius of mankind.

In saying that constant re-origination is the method of Nature, I do
not overlook the element nor underrate the importance of Imitation.
This it is that secures continuity, connection, and structural unity.
By vital imitation the embryonic man assumes the features and
traits of his progenitors. After birth the infant remains in the
matrix of the household; after infancy the glowing youth is held in
that of society; and processes kindred with those which bestowed
likeness to father and mother go on to assimilate him with a social
circle or an age. Complaint is made, and by good men, of that implicit
acquiescence which keeps in existence Islam, Catholicism, and the like,
long after their due time has come to die; yet, abolish the law of
imitation which causes this, and the immediate disintegration of
mankind will follow. Mortar is much in the way, when we wish to take
an old building to pieces and make other use of the bricks; do you
therefore advise its disuse?

But imitation would preserve nothing, did not the law of re-origination
keep it company. We are not born from our parents alone, but from the