Page:Sphere and Duties of Government.djvu/123

103 which were necessary (as I know of none who proceed exactly from the same point of view), invited me, on the one hand, to expatiate at somewhat greater length; on the other, the reflection that these considerations do not strictly belong to this subject, but are only subordinate lemmas, served to recall me within my appropriate limits. I have only to request that such a difficulty be not forgotten, in regard to my subsequent observations.

Although it is impossible to abstract the subject completely, I have endeavoured hitherto to confine my remarks to sensuous impressions only as such. But the sensual and spiritual are linked together by a mysterious bond, of which our hearts are distinctly conscious, though it remains hidden from our eyes. To this double nature of the visible and invisible world—to the deep-implanted longing for the latter, coupled with the feeling of the sweet necessity of the former, we owe all sound and logical systems of philosophy, truly based on the immutable principles of our nature, just as to the same source we are able to trace the most visionary and incoherent reveries. A constant endeavour to unite these two elements, so that each may rob as little as possible from the other, has always seemed to me the true end of wisdom. This æsthetic feeling, in virtue of which the sensuous is to us a veil of the spiritual, and the spiritual the living principle of the world of sense, is everywhere unmistakable. The continual contemplation of this "physiognomy" of nature forms the true man. For nothing exercises such a vast influence on the whole character, as the expression of the spiritual in the sensuous,—of the sublime, the simple, the beautiful in all the works of nature and products of art which surround us. Here, too, we find the difference manifested between the energizing and other sensuous impressions. If the ultimate object of all our mortal striving is solely to discover, nourish, and re-create what truly exists in