Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/134

124 then makes active use of the properties resulting from the form. The connection between the soul and the body is not more mysterious than the connection between the pen-maker and the pen; excepting, indeed, that our knowledge of the pen is so much more complete than our knowledge of the body. A science of the body, had we such a science, which displayed its uses, or its specific fitness to minister to the soul, would as evidently account for the attachment of the soul to the body, as the capabilities of the pen account for its connection with the fingers of the ready writer. It is, in both cases, the bond of service, of love, of use; for what other connecting principle is possible? Is this too simple for the philosophers? Nevertheless, it is the one only ground of any connection they ever formed, or could form, either with man or thing, since the world began. Unity of system alone would prescribe, that answerableness or correspondence of use be the tie between all spirit and all nature, and between each particular spirit and its bodily organ, as it confessedly is the tie which unites man to all his works, and the channel which carries forth human ends through the extensive ramifications of our mundane dwelling.

Correspondence, then, in nature means correspondence of use. Let us, however, as the first of all correspondences is that of the soul with the body, proceed to make the latter somewhat more objective, that we may see its uses more distinctly, and connect it more easily in thought with the uses of other instruments. For this purpose, let us admit that the soul or spirit itself is the spiritual or real body, and that the natural body is the well-furnished house, the admirable circumstance, of the soul. Something like the following analogical discourse may result from this point of view, in which a stand is taken further inwards, to gain distance, distinctness, and integrity for the object.

The soul being assumed as the real body, the natural body will represent all the arts of life, whether economic or æsthetic. Thus the eye is its window, telescope, microscope, and serves for the whole series of media which transparent substances proffer to vision, and which are as curious and exquisite for appearance as they are excellent for use; for the