Page:The Campaner thal, and other writings.djvu/44

 sophical idea with the old one better explain or facilitate its comprehension than the same connection which each new poetic one must have with old ones, which are the means of its creation. Sir Chaplain, I know not whom Kant has most sinned against, Truth, himself, or his school. Leibnitz's 'Monadology,' harmonia præstabilita, &c., are as much pure, brilliant emanations of genius, as any beaming form in Shakespeare or Homer. Besides, Leibnitz is a genial almighty Demiurg in the philosophical world, its greatest and first circumnavigator, and who, happier than Archimedes, found in his genius the standing-point from which he might move the philosophical universa, and play with worlds. He was an extraordinary spirit, he threw new chains on the earth, but he himself bore none: I think you agree with me, Sir Chaplain!" He replied. He did not, that the critical philosophy knew what to make of Leibnitz's experiments, his immaterial world, the asserted approximation of the definite to the indefinite line, and how to honor genius. In short, I had rather angered than conquered him.

Karlson, whom even Amor's torch could not blind to the philosophical one, took as much interest in our war as could be taken with the ears. Fortunately we all stood still. A small diamond had fallen from Nadine's neck-lace, and she sought for the silver petrified spark in the grass. Strange that a man always hopes to find a thing on the spot where he perceives his loss. Nadine looked for her hardened dew-drop on the sparkling, spangled mead. As a bright diamond of the first water, it was so easily mistaken for a dew-drop, that I remarked, seeing one in Nadine's breast-rose, "Everything is covered with soft diamonds, and who will find the hard one? The dew in your rose sparkles as brightly as the lost stone." She