Sophia said all experience was universal.
I said nothing, but held this colloquy with myself. Thought is the best of human nature; its fulness urges expression: its need of being met, not only by one other but by every other, craves it. This craving is the acknowledgment of the universal experience. What is purely individual is perishable. Identity is to be separated from individuality for this cause.
Margaret said the element of beauty would be wanting to our creations. A fine emotion glowed through features which seem to fall like a soft veil over the soul, while it could scarce do more than animate those that were obtuse and coarse in every outline. (!)
“Then,” said William Story, and my heart thanked the preux chevalier,—“then something is wanting in the emotion itself.”
William White said, stupidly, that sunlight could not fall with equal charm on rocks and the green grass. (!)
I asked if the rock could not give what it did not receive? Flung back by rugged points and relieved by dark shadows, was not the sunlight itself transfigured?
Story said every face had its own beauty. No act that was natural could be ungraceful.
Emerson said that we all did sundry graceful acts, in our caps and tunics, which we never could do again, which we never wanted to do again.
Margaret said, at last we had touched the point. We could not restore the childhood of the world, but could we not admire this simple plastic period, and gather from it some notion of the Greek genius?
R. W. E. thought this legitimate. He would have it that we could not determine the origin of a mythos, but we might fulfil Miss Fuller’s intention.