Donne says, “Who are a little wise the best fools be.” Cudworth says, “We have all of us by nature μάντευμά τε (as both Plato and Aristotle call it), a certain divination, presage and parturient vaticination in our minds, of some higher good and perfection than either power or knowledge.” Aristotle himself declares, that there is λόγον τι κρεῖττον, which is λόγον ἀρχή,—(something better than reason and knowledge, which is the principle and original of all). Lavater says, “Who finds the clearest not clear, thinks the darkest not obscure.”
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to be intoxicated even with the fumes, call it, of that divine nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.[129]
Midwinter
It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our minds’ histories, how little exercised we have been in our minds, how few experiences we have had.[130]
[Four pages missing.]
The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by a wolf is not a mere fable; the founders of every state which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar source. It is because the children of the empire were not suckled by wolves that they were conquered and displaced by the children of the northern forests who were.[131]
America is the she wolf to-day, and the children of exhausted Europe exposed on her uninhabited and savage shores are the Romulus and Remus who, having derived new life and vigor from her breast, have founded a new Rome in the West.
It is remarkable how few passages, comparatively speaking, there are in the best literature of the day which betray any intimacy with Nature.