changed by it. This uses, and is
not used. It distances those who share it, from those who share it not.
Those who share it not are flocks and herds. It dates from itself; not
from former men or better men--gospel, or constitution, or college, or
custom. Where it shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things
make a musical or pictorial impression. The world of men show like a
comedy without laughter:--populations, interests, government,
history;--'tis all toy figures in a toy house. It does not overvalue
particular truths. We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an
intellectual man. But, in his presence, our own mind is roused to
activity, and we forget very fast what he says, much more interested in
the new play of our own thought, than in any thought of his. 'Tis the
majesty into which we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn
of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. Once we were stepping a
little this way, and a little that way; now, we are as men in a balloon,
and do not think so much of the point we have left, or the point we would
make, as of the liberty and glory of the way.

Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic power. He who sees
through the design, presides over it, and must will that which must be. We
sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. Our
thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not
to be separated from thought, and not to be separated from will. They must
always have coexisted. It apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead,
which refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will
of all mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the soul itself
which constitutes them men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in
the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which
carries with it all atoms which rise to that height; but I see that, when
souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and
motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the
universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the
air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows
the worlds into order and orbit.

Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the mind up into a
sphere where all is plastic. Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he
whose thought is deepest will be the strongest c