a consciousness of the millions of spheres, shining and shone upon, that crowd these spaces, then there would be no room for the question, Is the spectacle of the heavens sublime?

797. After having thus glanced at the beauty of the visible world, and noted also the organic origin of those emotions which connect themselves with music, we reach the border of another subject, demanding to be considered by itself, namely, the relation of the human mind to the unknown and the infinite.

XXII.

THE RELATION OF THE HUMAN MIND TO THE UNKNOWN AND THE INFINITE.

798. THE relation of the human mind to the unknown and the infinite! What is it that we mean? It may be a real but an unconscious relationship, or it may be a real relationship of which all men have a more or less distinct consciousness, or it may be a real relationship of which certain classes of minds only are conscious, while others are not so in any sensible degree. We take it in this last sense.

terms where

799. There are many to whom the very in we express the assumed fact of any such correspondence would be either an enigma or a subject of mockery. Just so it is as to the several branches of abstract philosophy, mathematical and physical; for to very many around us this is a region unapproachable, and an utter blank; just so it is as to the bright fields of elevated sentiment-the world of taste, of

feeling, and of poetry-to multitudes around us; just so it is as to the regions of Art, to multitudes; just so `it is as to the loftier and more generous moral impulses, to many; just so it is, to many, as to what we now affirm, namely, the relation of the human mind to the unknown and the infinite: it is as if it were not.

800. Those to whom it would be so are found to occupy extreme positions on the intellectual scale, as thus: there is the very lowest and the most degraded order of minds, whether in the depths of civilized communities or in the wilds of savage life, whose eye, from youth to age, is never diverted from its earthward fixedness; then there are the frivolous, and the sensual, and the sordid, of whom there are many in every luxurious community; and then there are those who have reasoned themselves out of every belief, and have allowed sophistry and paradox to consume within them the very viscera of the moral life.

801. Notwithstanding any such exceptive instances, or all of them put together, the human Mind does in truth stand in a real relationship to the unknown and the infinite, and of this relationship it has a vivid consciousness, unless, indeed, its genuine perceptions have been, as above said, overborne.

802. It is on occasion of some contrast or some antagonism that the idea of this relationship most often presents itself. In search of an instance, we go back to the subject of the last section. The beautiful in Nature seldom presents itself otherwise than under some condition of imperfection and limitation. The flower-garden has its cankers, and its blights, and its fading and decaying splendors. The bright landscape

of June suggests a contrast with the rigors and discomforts of February. The beauty of the material world is just bright and fair enough to stimulate that imaginative faculty the creations of which could never be acclimated to earth. So it is that this sense, which opens to us so much of pure and intense enjoyment, does not fail to suggest conceptions which can never be realized unless it might be in some brighter and distant sphere. From the cottage flower-garden, such as it shows itself on a summer's morning, there is a pathway which the imaginative man does not fail often to tread, leading to the unknown and the infinite, even to a world of absolute beauty, and of beauty never to decay.

803. On a path that is still more direct, the human mind finds its way toward the unknown and the infinite when we stand in presence of those objects in nature which give rise to the emotions of sublimity. In front of Alpine altitudes, with their vast upheaved masses, commingled cloud, rock, glacier, cataract, there is excited not simply admiration and awe, but there is a feeling that these terrestrial marvels are samples only, shown off upon this planet in order to suggest to man the idea of scenes in some other world still more stupendous. If earth has its Alps, and its Andes, and its Himalayas, what shall be the spectacle of awe which a world unknown might open to our gaze?

804. Telluric catastrophes, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, deluges, and whatever else combines ideas of destructive force with the conception of sublimity, has a further influence in carrying the mind, if it be sensitive in this manner, into those abysses of imaginative

terror where the unknown and the infinite may

be con

ceived of as unveiling their powers to the utmost.

805. There is yet a path which may be trod with less trepidation, and with more fruit and advantage. The nocturnal heavens may at a first glance seem more magnificent than sublime; but undoubtedly it is sublime when, by aid of reason, we penetrate this magnificence, and become cognizant of the reality which is beyond. Now there is here to be noted a change in our modes of thought which has been long in progress, and which is now advancing toward its consummation. This consummation will bring with it a consciousness of relationship to the unknown and the infinite of a far more substantial and impressive kind than hitherto has been admitted.

806. The Hebrew lyrist, it is manifest, had, in the course of his midnight meditations, learned to penetrate beyond the visible screen, with its shining decorations. "When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars which Thou hast ordained"—these modes of expression indicate what we might say was an astronomic conception of the celestial mechanism or framework-a scheme of bodies in movement, in comparison of which vast masses and movements man and his petty fortunes seemed of small significance. But this same scheme, as to its vastness and these motions, was then unknown, and, as unknown, the starry heavens most fitly symbolized the divine attributes: they spake of God to man, and they set forth to his intellect and to his imagination the relationship of the creature to the Creator.

807. This continued to be the ground or condition

of astronomic sentiment among those cultured nations that had not admitted the scientific spirit, and that lived remote from the schools of philosophy; but in other regions the abstractive faculty took the lead, and Science made its inroads, not only upon delusions and upon illusions, but also upon the ground of genuine religious sentiment and of (true) poetic feeling. The advances of the strict and demonstrative sciences have a constant tendency to drive off from the field they occupy, first, superstitions and popular errors, and then religious feeling. It is not because scientific discoveries and demonstrated principles contain in themselves aught that is contradictory to a rational religious belief, but it is because the faculties which are called into exercise, and which are powerfully stimulated in the course of scientific pursuits, are antagonistic to feeling of every kind; or, if they do not make war upon genuine and spontaneous emotions, yet they quash and neutralize them,

808. A scientific age may, by chance, be also a religious age; but if the two powers are ever synchronous, it will be only because they occupy spaces in the community that are far remote from each other, and between which there is little or no intercourse.

809. But in course of time, that which comes about is this: the discoveries of science and its ascertained facts make their way from the centre, where they originated, outward and abroad among the people: first, it is the more highly educated that receive them; and at length the broad popular mind admits and assimilates whatever philosophy in conclave has achieved. When this sporadic assimilation has well taken place,