ius, and hence their dangerous
attraction for men. For the like reason they ask the aid of wild
passions, as in gaming and war, to ape in some manner these flames and
generosities of the heart.

*****

INTELLECT.

GO, speed the stars of Thought
On to their shining goals;--
The sower scatters broad his seed,
The wheat thou strew'st be souls.

XI. INTELLECT.

Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it
in the chemical tables, positively to that which stands below it. Water
dissolves wood and iron and salt; air dissolves water; electric fire
dissolves air, but the intellect dissolves fire, gravity, laws,
method, and the subtlest unnamed relations of nature in its
resistless menstruum. Intellect lies behind genius, which is intellect
constructive. Intellect is the simple power anterior to all action or
construction. Gladly would I unfold in calm degrees a natural history
of the intellect, but what man has yet been able to mark the steps and
boundaries of that transparent essence? The first questions are always
to be asked, and the wisest doctor is gravelled by the inquisitiveness
of a child. How can we speak of the action of the mind under any
divisions, as of its knowledge, of its ethics, of its works, and so
forth, since it melts will into perception, knowledge into act? Each
becomes the other. Itself alone is. Its vision is not like the vision of
the eye, but is union with the things known.

Intellect and intellection signify to the common ear consideration of
abstract truth. The considerations of time and place, of you and me, of
profit and hurt tyrannize over most men's minds. Intellect separates the
fact considered, from you, from all local and personal reference, and
discerns it as if it existed for its own sake. Heraclitus looked upon
the affections as dense and colored mists. In the fog of good and
evil affections it is hard for man to walk forward in a straight line.
Intellect is void of affection and sees an object as it stands in the
light of science, cool and disengaged. The intellect goes out of the
individual, floats over its own personality, and regards it as a fact,
and not as I and mine. He who is immersed in what concerns person or
place cannot see the problem of existence. This the intellect always
ponders. Nature shows all things formed and bound. The intellect pierces
the form, overleaps the wall, detects intrinsic likeness between re