Proverbial Philosophy / The First and Second Series

by Unknown

OF THINGS.

Taken separately from all substance, and flying with the feathered flock of thoughts,

The idea of a thing hath the nature of its Soul, a separate seeming essence:

Intimately linked to the idea, suggesting many qualities,

The name of a thing hath the nature of its Mind, an intellectual recorder:

And the matter of a thing, concrete, is a Body to the perfect creature,

Compacted three in one, as all things else within the universe.

Nothing canst thou add to them, and nothing take away, for all have these proportions,

The thought, the word, the form, combining in the Thing:

All separate, yet harmonizing well, and mingled each with other,

One whole in several parts, yet each part spreading to a whole:

The idea is a whole; and the meaning phrase that spake idea, a whole;

And the matter, as ye see it, is a whole; the mystery of true triunity:

Yea, there is even a deeper mystery,—which none, I wot, can fathom,

Matter, different from properties whereby the solid substance is described;

For, size and weight, cohesion and the like, live distinct from matter,

Yet who can imagine matter, unendowed with size and weight?

As in the spiritual, so in the material, man must rest with patience,

And wait for other eyes wherewith to read the books of God.

Men have talked learnedly of atoms, as if matter could be ever indivisible;

They talk, but ill are skilled to teach, and darken truth by fancies:

An atom by our grosser sense was never yet conceived,

And nothing can be thought so small, as not to be divided:

For an atom runneth to infinity, and never shall be caught in space,

And a molecule is no more indivisible than Saturn's belted orb.

Things intangible, multiplied by multitudes, never will amass to substance,

Neither can a thing which may be touched, be made of impalpable proportions;

The sum of indivisibles must needs be indivisible, as adding many nothings,

And the building up of atoms into matter is but a silly sophism;

Lucretius, and keen Anaximander, and many that have followed in their thoughts,

In the foolishness of men without a God fancied to fashion Matter

Of intangibles, and therefore uncohering, indivisibles, and therefore Spirit.

Things breed thoughts; therefore at Thebes and Heliopolis,

In hieroglyphic sculptures are the priestly secrets written:

Things breed thoughts; therefore was the Athens of idolatry

Set with carved images, frequent as the trees of Academus:

Things breed thoughts; therefore the Brahmin and the Burman

With mythologic shapes adorn their coarse pantheon:

Things breed thoughts; therefore the statue and the picture,

Relics, rosaries, and miracles in act, quicken the Papist in his worship:

Things breed thoughts; therefore the lovers at their parting,

Interchanged with tearful smiles the dear reminding tokens:

Things breed thoughts; therefore when the clansman met his foe,

The bloodstained claymore in his hand revived the memories of vengeance.

Things teach with double force; through the animal eye, and through the mind,

And the eye catcheth in an instant, what the ear shall not learn within an hour.

Thence is the potency of travel, the precious might of its advantages

To compensate its dissipative harm, its toil and cost and danger.

Ulysses, wandering to many shores, lived in many cities,

And thereby learnt the minds of men, and stored his own more richly:

Herodotus, the accurate and kindly, spake of that he saw,

And reaped his knowledge on the spot, in fertile fields of Egypt:

Lycurgus culled from every clime the golden fruits of justice;

And Plato roamed through foreign lands, to feed on truth in all.

For travel, conversant with Things, bringeth them in contact with the mind;

We breathe the wholesome atmosphere about ungarbled truth:

Pictures of fact are painted on the eye, to decorate the house of intellect,

Rather than visions of fancy, filling all the chambers with a vapour.

For, in Ideas, the great mind will exaggerate, and the lesser extenuate truth;

But in Things the one is chastened, and the other quickened, to equality:

And in Names,—though a property be told, rather than some arbitrary accident,

Still shall the thought be vague or false, if none have seen the Thing:

For in Things the property with accident standeth in a mass concrete,

These cannot cheat the sense, nor elude the vigilance of spirit.

Travel is a ceaseless fount of surface education,

But its wisdom will be simply superficial, if thou add not thoughts to things:

Yet, aided by the varnish of society, things may serve for thoughts,

Till many dullards that have seen the world shall pass for scholars:

Because one single glance will conquer all descriptions,

Though graphic, these left some unsaid, though true, these tended to some error;

And the most witless eye that saw, had a juster notion of its object,

Than the shrewdest mind that heard and shaped its gathered thoughts of Things.

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