odness, beauty.
Now we feel that we are made for this higher world. Material enjoyments
may enchain our will; we may, in the indulgence of unworthy passions,
pursue what in its essence is only evil, error, and deformity; but, if
all the rays of our true nature are not extinguished, a voice issues
from the depth of our souls and protests against our debasement. Our
aspirations toward these spiritual excellences are unlimited. Our
thought sets out on its course: have we solved one question? immediately
new questions arise, which press, no less than the former, for an
answer. Our conscience speaks: have we come in a certain degree to
realize what is right and good? immediately conscience demands of us
still more. Is our feeling for beauty awakened? Well, sirs, when an
artist is satisfied with the work of his hands, do you not know at once
what to think of him? Do you not know that that man will never do any
thing great, who does not see shining in his horizon an ideal which
stamps as imperfect all that he has been able to realize? The voice
which urges us on through life from the cradle to the grave, and which,
without allowing us a moment's pause, is ever crying--Forward! forward!
this voice is not more imperious than the noble instinct which, in the
view of beauty, of truth, of good, is also saying to us--Forward!
forward! and, with the American poet, _Excelsior!_ higher, ever higher!
Many of you know that instinct familiar to the _climbers of the
Alps_,[2] as they are called, who, arrived at one summit, have no rest
so long as there remains a loftier height in view. Such is our destiny;
but the last peak is veiled in shining clouds which conceal it from our
sight. Perfection,--this is the point to which our nature aspires; but
it is the ladder of Jacob: we see the foot which rests upon the earth;
the summit hides itself from our feeble view amidst the splendors of the
infinite.

These objects of our highest desires--beauty in its supreme
manifestation, absolute holiness, infinite truth--are united in one and
the same thought--God! The attributes of the spiritual are never in us
but as borrowed attributes; they dwell naturally in Him who is their
source. God is the truth, not only because He knows all things, but
because He is the very object of our thoughts; because, when we study
the universe, we do but spell out some few of the laws which He has
imposed on things; because, to know truth is never any thing else than
t