ch once
held possession of this planet. Meanwhile the mystery is not without
its uses. It certainly may made a power in the human soul; but it is
a power which has feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be,
will be, and I hope is turned to account, both in steadying and
strengthening intellect, and in; rescuing man from that littleness to
which, in the struggle for existence, or for precedence in the world,
he is continually prone.

__________________

Musings on the Matterhorn, July 27, 1868.

Hacked and hurt by time, the aspect of the mountain from its higher
crags saddened me. Hitherto the impression it made was that of savage
strength; here we had inexorable decay. But this notion of decay
implied a reference to a period when the Matterhorn was in the full
strength of mountainhood. Thought naturally ran back to its remoter
origin and sculpture. Nor did thought halt there, but wandered on
through molten worlds to that nebulous haze which philosophers have
regarded, and with good reason, as the proximate source of all
material things. I tried to look at this universal cloud, containing
within itself the prediction of all that has since occurred; I tried
to imagine it as the seat of those forces whose action was to issue in
solar and stellar systems, and all that they involve. Did that
formless fog contain potentially the _sadness_ with which I regarded the
Matterhorn? Did the _thought_ which now ran back to it simply return to
its primeval home? If so, had we not better recast our definitions of
matter and force; for, if life and thought be the very flower of both,
any definition which omits life and thought must be inadequate, if not
untrue. Are questions like these warranted? Why not? If the final
goal of man has not been yet attained; if his development has not been
yet arrested, who can say that such yearnings and questionings are not
necessary to the opening of a finer vision, to the budding and the
growth of diviner powers? When I look at the heavens and the earth,
at my own body, at my strength and weakness, even at these ponderings,
and ask myself, Is there no being or thing in the universe that knows
more about these matters than I do; what is my answer? Supposing our
theologic schemes of creation, condemnation, and redemption to be
dissipated; and the warmth of denial which they excite, and which, as
a motive force, can match the warmth of affirmation, dissipated at the
same time; w