All visible things are emblems; what thou seest is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and body it forth.
[96]: In the Symbol proper, what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly, and directly, some embodiment and revelation of the Infinite; the Infinite is made to blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable there. By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and commanded, made happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recognised as such or not recognised: the Universe is but one vast Symbol of God: nay if thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a Symbol of God? Is not all that he does symbolical; a revelation to Sense of the mystic god-given Force that is in him?
[97]: But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it,—lie all-embracing, as the universal canvass, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves.
[98]: Sartor, p. 313, 412.
[99]: O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him; but are, in very deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a shadow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, through some moments or years, the Divine Essence is to be revealed in the flesh.
And again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings); and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad dance of the Dead,—till the scent of the morning-air summons us to our still home; and dreamy night becomes awake and day?
[100]: Creation, says one, lies before us like a glorious rainbow; but the sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us.
[101]: Past and Present, p. 76.—Sartor, p. 78, 304, 314.
[102]: The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of innumerable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Mécanique céleste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome of all laboratories and observatories with their results, in his single head,—is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye. Let those who have eyes look through him, then he may be useful.
Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callst Truth, or even by the Hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic: and "explain" all, "account" for all, or believe nothing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter. Who so recognises the unfathomable, all-pervading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere, under, over feet and among our hands; to whom the Universe is an oracle and temple, as well as a kitchen and cattle stall, he shall be a delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protusively proffer thy Hand-lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks his foot through it?