an could long escape the benefit which it brings. Every principle of
science, every deduction of philosophy, is a tool. Our very religion, as
we dare to name it, is a key which opens the heavens to admit myself and
family. Art offers only life; but perhaps that will appear worth taking
without looking beyond. Can we look beyond? Life is an end in itself,
and so better than any tool.

What is that which underlies all arts as their essence, the thing to be
expressed and celebrated? What is poetry, the creation from which the
artist is named? We shall answer boldly: it is no shaping of forms, but
a making of man. Nature is a _plenum_, is finished, and the Divine
account with her is closed; but man is only yet a chick in the egg. With
him it is still the first day of creation, and he has not received the
benediction of a completed work. And yet the completion is involved and
promised in our daily experience. Man is a perpetual seeker. He sees
always just before him his own power, which he must hasten to overtake.
He weighs himself often in thought; yet it is not his present, but a
presumptive value, of which he is taking account. We are continually
entering into our future, and it is so near us, we are already in every
hour so full of it, that we draw without fraud on the credit of
to-morrow. The student who has bought his first law-book is already a
great counsellor. With the Commentaries he carries home consideration
and the judicial habit. Some wisdom he imbibes through his pores and
those of the sheepskin cover. Now he is grave and prudent, a man of the
world and of authority; but if he had chosen differently, and brought
home the first book of Theology, his day would have been tinted with
other colors. For every choice carries a future involved in itself, and
we begin to taste that when we take our course toward it. The habit of
leaning forward and living in advance of himself has made its mark upon
every man. We look not at the history or performance of the stranger,
but at his pretensions. These are written in his dress, his air and
attitude, his tone and occupation. The past is already nothing, the
present is sliding away; to know any man, we must keep our eyes out in
advance on the road he is following. For man is an involuntary, if not a
willing traveller. Time does not roll from under his feet, but he is
carried along with the current, and can never again be where or what he
was. Nothing in his experience can ever