e not all dialects
'artificial'? Artificial things are not all false;--nay every true
Product of Nature will infallibly _shape_ itself; we may say all
artificial things are, at the starting of them, _true_. What we call
'Formulas' are not in their origin bad; they are indispensably good.
Formula is _method_, habitude; found wherever man is found. Formulas
fashion themselves as Paths do, as beaten Highways, leading towards
some sacred or high object, whither many men are bent. Consider it.
One man, full of heartfelt earnest impulse, finds-out a way of doing
somewhat,--were it of uttering his soul's reverence for the Highest,
were it but of fitly saluting his fellow-man. An inventor was needed
to do that, a _poet_; he has articulated the dim-struggling thought
that dwelt in his own and many hearts. This is his way of doing that;
these are his footsteps, the beginning of a 'Path.' And now see: the
second man travels naturally in the footsteps of his foregoer, it is
the _easiest_ method. In the footsteps of his foregoer; yet with
improvements, with changes where such seem good; at all events with
enlargements, the Path ever _widening_ itself as more travel it;--till
at last there is a broad Highway whereon the whole world may travel
and drive. While there remains a City or Shrine, or any Reality to
drive to, at the farther end, the Highway shall be right welcome! When
the City is gone, we will forsake the Highway. In this manner all
Institutions, Practices, Regulated Things in the world have come into
existence, and gone out of existence. Formulas all begin by being
_full_ of substance; you may call them the _skin_, the articulation
into shape, into limbs and skin, of a substance that is already there:
_they_ had not been there otherwise. Idols, as we said, are not
idolatrous till they become doubtful, empty for the worshipper's
heart. Much as we talk against Formulas, I hope no one of us is
ignorant withal of the high significance of _true_ Formulas; that they
were, and will ever be, the indispensablest furniture of our
habitation in this world.----

Mark, too, how little Johnson boasts of his 'sincerity.' He has no
suspicion of his being particularly sincere,--of his being
particularly anything! A hard-struggling, weary-hearted man, or
'scholar' as he calls himself, trying hard to get some honest
livelihood in the world, not to starve, but to live--without stealing!
A noble unconsciousness is in him. He does not 'engrave