Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/151

Rh from without, even as the essence is the form proceeding from within. In short, outward nature, hereditary nature, the influences of the age, the instructions of the parent and the teacher, the light of truth and revelation, are all circumstances; and will is the organ which acts according to them, or not at all; and freedom is the state of preparation, before the will is fully made up to act. Thus man is the conductor of correspondences, and also the modifier; for, in making what use of things he pleases, man draws down new and different influences from the spiritual sphere, which give rise to new and appropriate extensions of the creation.

In fine, the science of correspondence is the most mathematical, mechanical, or intellectual of the sciences. The foundation of it is justice or equation, and the working of the law ensures permanent equilibrium in the world. Grounded primarily for human knowledge upon the felt correspondence of the soul with the body, and the connection between the two, it first infers, and then scientifically demonstrates, the pervading fact of correspondence and connection in all other relations. Correspondence of the individual with the society, of both with the world, of all with the Word, and of the Word with Divine Truth in the heavens, is in reality the bond wherewith God has bound in one the sheaves of his great universe. It is the system of the world. The perception of this, or of the uses of things, is one important phasis of the understanding of universals. When this understanding comes, the main study will be to put things through all their uses, or to bring nature into generative conditions with spirit. From the bed of this state, new creations must arise in all the kingdoms of nature, so as to gratify the heavens with many and desirable children; and the earth, even as Sarah, will smile, in her apparent old age, at the fertility of the regenerate creation. &quot;The barren woman shall rejoice, and be a fruitful mother of children.&quot; Then the doctrine will be exemplified, not in schools or dry diagrams, but in garden and in grove, in arts like nature, and in growths like art, in new messengers of truth and instruction, growing in the night from the sportive soil, from no seed but heaven, yet with no mystery, because in the fulness of time, and in the