But Truth does not share the fortunes of her verbal body. The grand
ideas, the master-imaginations and moving faiths of men, run in the
blood of the race; and a given degree of pure human heat infallibly
brings them out. Not more surely does the rose appear on the rose-bush,
or the apple, pear, or peach upon the trees of the orchard, than these
fruits of the soul upon nations of powerful and thrifty spirit. For
want of vitality the shrub may fail to flower, the tree to bear fruit,
and man to bring forth his spiritual product; but if Thought be
attained, certain thoughts and imaginations will come of it. Let two
nations at opposite sides of the globe, and without intercommunication
arrive at equal stages of mental culture, and the language of the one
will, on the whole, be equivalent to that of the other, nay, the very
rhetoric, the very fancies of the one will, in a broad way of
comparison, be tantamount to those of the other. The nearer we get to
any past age, the more do we find that the totality of its conceptions
and imaginings is much the same with that of our own. There are
specific variation and generic unity; and he whom the former blinds to
the latter reads the old literatures without eyes, and knows neither
his own time nor any other. Owen, Agassiz, Carpenter explain the
homologies of anatomy and physiology; but a doctrine of the homologies
of thought is equally possible, and will sometime be set forth.

The basis, then, of any sufficient doctrine of literature and literary
production is found in two statements:--

First, that the perfect truth of the universe issues, by vital
representation, into the personality of man.

Secondly, that this truth _tends_ in every man, though often in