periority of Intellect, and think I had included all
under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they
were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect,
imagination, fancy, &c., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a
capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's 'intellectual nature',
and of his 'moral nature', as if these again were divisible, and
existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms
of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to
speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It
seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part,
radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep for
ever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but _names_; that
man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is
essentially one and indivisible; that what we call imagination, fancy,
understanding, and so forth, are but different figures of the same
Power of Insight, all indissolubly connected with each other,
physiognomically related; that if we knew one of them, we might know
all of them. Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man,
what is this but another _side_ of the one vital Force whereby he is
and works? All that a man does is physiognomical of him. You may see
how a man would fight, by the way in which he sings; his courage, or
want of courage, is visible in the word he utters, in the opinion he
has formed, no less than in the stroke he strikes. He is _one_; and
preaches the same Self abroad in all these ways.
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still walk: but,
consider it,--without morality, intellect were impossible for him; a
thoroughly immoral _man_ could not know anything at all! To know a
thing, what we can call knowing, a man must first _love_ the thing,
sympathize with it: that is, be _virtuously_ related to it. If he have
not the justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the
courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn, how shall he
know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded in his knowledge.
Nature, with her truth, remains to the bad, to the selfish and the
pusillanimous for ever a sealed book: what such can know of Nature is
mean, superficial, small; for the uses of the day merely.--But does
not the very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it knows where
the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very frequent everywhe
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