Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/149

Rh scenery of existence, and the living souls of the drama, were entirely changed from age to age, and new species and genera arose in myriads out of the womb of the universal mother. Also the activity of the human mind is similarly in abeyance. Scores of sacred books, of influential religions, whose fossils are now extant in Asia and in the traditions of Northern Europe, originated from the powers of man in remoter periods, and were as collateral growths in the great banyan tree of primitive Revelation. These religions were at that time spiritual, and full of correspondences. Given out by particular men, they yet manifestly wore the impress of the spirit-land, and were genuine powers in nature. They held commissions from heaven, and kept the consciences of nations. Modern ages, however, until of late, have not produced one such hieroglyphic, with the exception of the Revelations of Mahomet and Swedenborg. The ages of metaphysical philosophy are not ages of spiritual productiveness, but of doubt, fear, and inaction. They cudgel nature for what they gain, and fail of her co-operation. The world is as stubborn as an ass to their elaborate sciences. It is not remarkable that impuissant ages should know nothing of creation, and nothing of correspondence, since they are not themselves creative; and nature reflects, by correspondence, their own barrenness and hypocrisy, and appears therefore to be callous and dead to humanity and the soul.

Hypocrisy I say, because hypocrisy is a superior term of non-correspondence. And this hypocrisy lies in the real sensuality and theoretical Puritanism of metaphysical philosophy, which, recognizing the immense perceptions and possessions of the senses, makes of the mind only the sharp point of the pyramid, of which sense is the broad basis; and consequently gives the senses all power; or power as possessors of all within the horizon, while the mind is limited to a pin's point in space; for the conception of a mind absolutely sundered from space is a mere pretence, which words necessarily repudiate.

However, under the expansive influence of a doctrine and progressive science of correspondences, this pyramidal mode of thought, in which like a wasting flame the mind rises