he great island of
Atlantis--to fill up a blank in his geographical map. He found this
island of his paper calculation, and his calculation was right. Would it
have been less great if a hostile storm had shattered his fleet or driven
it back? The human mind makes a similar calculation when it measures the
super-sensual by means of the sensible, and when mathematics applies its
conclusions to the hidden physics of the superhuman. But the last test
of its calculations is still wanting, for no traveller has come back from
that land to relate his discovery. Human nature has its proper bounds,
and so also has the individual. We will give each other mutual comfort
respecting the former: Raphael will concede this to the boyish age of his
Julius. I am poor in conceptions, a stranger in many branches of
knowledge which are thought to be essential in inquiries of this nature.
I have not belonged to any philosophical school, nor have I read many
printed books. It may quite well be that I occasionally substitute my
fancies in the place of stricter logical proofs, that I mistake the rush
of my blood or the hopes of my heart for sound wisdom; yet, my dear
friend, you must not grudge me the moments I have thus lost. It is a
real gain for universal perfection: it was the provision of the Wisest
Spirit that the erring reason should also people the chaotic world of
dreams, and make fruitful even the barren ground of contradiction. It is
not only the mechanical artist who polishes the rough diamond into a
brilliant whom we ought to value, but also that one who ennobles mere
ordinary stones by giving them the apparent dignity of the diamond. The
industry displayed in the forms may sometimes make us forget the massive
truth of the substance. Is not every exercise of the thinking power,
every sharpening of the edge of the spirit, a little step towards its
perfection; and every perfection has to obtain a being and substantial
existence in a complete and perfect world. Reality is not confined to
the absolutely necessary; it also embraces the conditionally necessary:
every offspring of the brain, every work elaborated by the wit, has an
irresistible right of citizenship in this wider acceptation of creation.
In the measureless plan of nature no activity was to be left out, no
degree of enjoyment was to be wanting in universal happiness. The great
Inventive Spirit would not even permit error to be wasted, nor allow this
wide world of thought to re