Page:Biographical and critical studies by James Thomson ("B.V.").djvu/354

 338 CRITICAL STUDIES interest me in the least ; that so much as I have seen of it in what works of Swedenborg I have read, has appeared to me mainly elaborate pedagogic trifling, not at all tempting me to study of the whole. I am Emerson's impatient reader who asks : — "What have I to do with jasper and sardonyx, beryl and chalcedony ; what with arks and passovers, ephas and ephods ; what with lepers and emerods ; what with heave-offerings and unleavened bread ; chariots of fire, dragons crowned and horned ; behemoth and unicorn ? Good for Orientals, these are nothing to me. The more learning you bring to explain them, the more glaring the impertinence. The more coherent and elaborate the system, the less I like it. I say, with the Spartan : ' Why do you speak so much to the purpose, of that which is nothing to the purpose ? ' " Again, I thoroughly agree with the spirit of Emerson's judgment when he writes : — " His perception of nature is not human and universal, but is mystical and Hebraic. He fastens each natural object to a theologic notion — a horse signifies carnal understanding [Wilkinson differs in rendering: "he says that the ass corre- sponds to scientific truth ; the horse, to intellectual truth." — " Biography," p. 99] ; a free, perception ; the moon, faith ; a cat means this ; an ostrich, that ; an artichoke, this other ; and poorly tethers every symbol to a several ecclesiastical sense. The slippery Proteus is not so easily caught. In nature, each individual symbol plays innumerable parts, as each particle of matter circulates in turn through every system. The central identity enables any one symbol to express successively all the qualities and shades of real being." The great symbolisms and analogies, as of warmth and love, light and intelligence, and their operations and effects, are universal and obvious to all, being wide as nature, including human nature ; the petty,