-but by every throe of growth the man expands there where
he works, passing, at each pulsation, classes, populations, of men. With
each divine impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and
finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires its air.
It converses with truths that have always been spoken in the world, and
becomes conscious of a closer sympathy with Zeno and Arrian than with
persons in the house.

This is the law of moral and of mental gain. The simple rise as by
specific levity not into a particular virtue, but into the region of all
the virtues. They are in the spirit which contains them all. The soul
requires purity, but purity is not it; requires justice, but justice is
not that; requires beneficence, but is somewhat better; so that there is
a kind of descent and accommodation felt when we leave speaking of moral
nature to urge a virtue which it enjoins. To the well-born child all the
virtues are natural, and not painfully acquired. Speak to his heart, and
the man becomes suddenly virtuous.

Within the same sentiment is the germ of intellectual growth, which
obeys the same law. Those who are capable of humility, of justice,
of love, of aspiration, stand already on a platform that commands the
sciences and arts, speech and poetry, action and grace. For whoso dwells
in this moral beatitude already anticipates those special powers which
men prize so highly. The lover has no talent, no skill, which passes for
quite nothing with his enamoured maiden, however little she may possess
of related faculty; and the heart which abandons itself to the Supreme
Mind finds itself related to all its works, and will travel a royal road
to particular knowledges and powers. In ascending to this primary
and aboriginal sentiment we have come from our remote station on the
circumference instantaneously to the centre of the world, where, as in
the closet of God, we see causes, and anticipate the universe, which is
but a slow effect.

One mode of the divine teaching is the incarnation of the spirit in a
form,--in forms, like my own. I live in society, with persons who answer
to thoughts in my own mind, or express a certain obedience to the great
instincts to which I live. I see its presence to them. I am certified of
a common nature; and these other souls, these separated selves, draw me
as nothing else can. They stir in me the new emotions we call passion;
of love, hatred, fear, admiration, pity; thence