nal.

We are amphibious creatures, weaponed for two elements, having two sets
of faculties, the particular and the catholic. We adjust our instrument
for general observation, and sweep the heavens as easily as we pick out
a single figure in the terrestrial landscape. We are practically skilful
in detecting elements for which we have no place in our theory, and no
name. Thus we are very sensible of an atmospheric influence in men and
in bodies of men, not accounted for in an arithmetical addition of all
their measurable properties. There is a genius of a nation, which is
not to be found in the numerical citizens, but which characterizes the
society. England, strong, punctual, practical, well-spoken England
I should not find if I should go to the island to seek it. In the
parliament, in the play-house, at dinner-tables, I might see a great
number of rich, ignorant, book-read, conventional, proud men,--many
old women,--and not anywhere the Englishman who made the good speeches,
combined the accurate engines, and did the bold and nervous deeds. It
is even worse in America, where, from the intellectual quickness of the
race, the genius of the country is more splendid in its promise and more
slight in its performance. Webster cannot do the work of Webster. We
conceive distinctly enough the French, the Spanish, the German genius,
and it is not the less real that perhaps we should not meet in either
of those nations a single individual who corresponded with the type. We
infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which
is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a course of
many hundred years has contributed a stone. And, universally, a good
example of this social force is the veracity of language, which cannot
be debauched. In any controversy concerning morals, an appeal may be
made with safety to the sentiments which the language of the people
expresses. Proverbs, words, and grammar-inflections convey the public
sense with more purity and precision than the wisest individual.

In the famous dispute with the Nominalists, the Realists had a good deal
of reason. General ideas are essences. They are our gods: they round
and ennoble the most partial and sordid way of living. Our proclivity
to details cannot quite degrade our life and divest it of poetry. The
day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale, yet
he is saturated with the laws of the world. His measures are the