fter its safe excitements! In this
contemplation alone do we find it possible to attain that pleasurable
elevation, _that excitement of the soul_, which we recognize as always
dependent upon our introduction into the Realm of the Ideal. This
excitement of the _soul_ is easily distinguished from the excitement of
the _mind_ consequent upon the perception of logical truths, the
satisfaction of the reason; or from passion, the excitement of the
_heart_. The excitement of the _soul_ is strictly and simply the
temporary satisfaction of the human aspiration for the Supernal Beauty;
and is quite independent of the search for finite truths for the
gratification of the _intellect_; or of that of passion, which is the
intoxication of the _heart_. For in regard to passion of the heart, its
home lies too near the senses to be entirely safe, and its tendency may
be to degrade;--while there may be high and useful truths which do not
move the _soul_ in the least.

The arts, then, always occupied with the reproduction of Beauty, gain
their power over the soul of man by reminding him of the Divine
Attributes. His thirst for the beautiful belongs to his immortality, for
it never rests in the appreciation of mere finite beauty, but struggles
wildly to obtain the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of
the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations
among the things and thoughts of time, to attain a portion of that
loveliness whose elements pertain to Eternity alone; and thus, when by
poetry or music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find
ourselves melted into tears, we are not moved through any excess of
pleasure, but through an impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp
_now, wholly, here on earth_, those divine and rapturous joys of which,
through the poem or through the music, we obtain but brief and
indeterminate glimpses:

'Tears, idle tears, we know not whence they're flowing,
Tears from the depths of some _divine despair_.'

Tears of the created, the finite, for the Creator, the Infinite!

Every phenomenon of the material world is not a sign of the divine
thought, when considered apart from its relations with other things, as
every isolated word in a language is not, in itself, a sign of our
thought. There is something in the nature of things which constitutes
the visible sign the symbol of the Invisible. To reveal or suggest the
Absolute, it is not sufficient for the artist to co