Proverbial Philosophy / The First and Second Series

by Unknown

OF INVENTION.

Man is proud of his mind, boasting that it giveth him divinity,

Yet with all its powers can it originate nothing;

For the Great God into all His works hath largely poured out Himself,

Saving one special property, the grand prerogative,—Creation.

To improve and expand is ours, as well as to limit and defeat;

But to create a thought or a thing is hopeless and impossible.

Can a man make matter?—and yet this would-be god

Thinketh to make mind, and form original idea:

The potter must have his clay, and the mason his quarry,

And mind must drain ideas from everything around it.

Doth the soil generate herbs, or the torrid air breed flies,

Or the water frame its monads, or the mist its swarming blight?—

Mediately, through thousand generations, having seed within themselves,

All things, rare or gross, own one common Father.

Truly spake Wisdom, There is nothing new under the sun:

We only arrange and combine the ancient elements of all things.

Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion;

A sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes:

From the basket and acanthus, is modelled the graceful capital;

The shadowed profile on the wall helpeth the limner to his likeness;

The footmarks, stamped in clay, lead on the thoughts to printing;

The strange skin garments cast upon the shore suggest another hemisphere:

A falling apple taught the sage pervading gravitation;

The Huron is certain of his prey, from tracks upon the grass:

And shrewdness, guessing out the hint, followeth on the trail;

But the hint must be given, the trail must be there, or the keenest sight is as blindness.

Behold the barren reef, which an earthquake hath just left dry;

It hath no beauty to boast of, no harvest of fair fruits:

But soon the lichen fixeth there, and, dying, diggeth its own grave,

And softening suns and splitting frosts crumble the reluctant surface;

And cormorants roost there, and the snail addeth its slime,

And efts, with muddy feet, bring their welcome tribute;

And the sea casteth out her dead, wrapped in a shroud of weeds;

And orderly nature arrangeth again the disunited atoms;

Anon, the cold smooth stone is warm with feathery grass,

And the light sporules of the fern are dropt by the passing wind,

The wood-pigeon, on swift wing, leaveth its crop-full of grain,

The squirrel's jealous care planteth the fir-cone and the filbert:

Years pass, and the sterile rock is rank with tangled herbage;

The wild-vine clingeth to the briar, and ivy runneth green among the corn,

Lordly beeches are studded on the down, and willows crowd around the rivulet,

And the tall pine and hazel-thicket shade the rambling hunter.

Shall the rock boast of its fertility? shall it lift the head in pride?—

Shall the mind of man be vain of the harvest of its thoughts?

The savage is that rock; and a million chances from without,

By little and little acting on the mind, heap up the hot-bed of society;

And the soul, fed and fattened on the thoughts and things around it,

Groweth to perfection, full of fruit, the fruit of foreign seeds.

For we learn upon a hint, we find upon a clue,

We yield an hundred-fold; but the great sower is Analogy.

There must be an acrid sloe before a luscious peach,

A boll of rotting flax before the bridal veil,

An egg before an eagle, a thought before a thing,

A spark struck into tinder to light the lamp of knowledge,

A slight suggestive nod to guide the watching mind,

A half-seen hand upon the wall, pointing to the balance of Comparison.

By culture man may do all things, short of the miracle,—Creation;

Here is the limit of thy power,—here let thy pride be stayed:

The soil may be rich, and the mind may be active, but neither yield unsown;

The eye cannot make light, nor the mind make spirit.

Therefore it is wise in man to name all novelty Invention;

For it is to find out things that are, not to create the unexisting:

It is to cling to contiguities, to be keen in catching likeness,

And with energetic elasticity to leap the gulphs of contrast.

The globe knoweth not increase, either of matter or spirit;

Atoms and thoughts are used again, mixing in varied combinations;

And though, by moulding them anew, thou makest them thine own,

Yet have they served thousands, and all their merit is of God.

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