m with vision, than, at the right place, with blindness!
Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a
basis of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life too, the
roots and inward circulations which stretch down fearfully to the
regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and
only the fair stem with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair
sun, shall disclose itself, and joyfully grow.

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking
Why and How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great
part, an echo of the question, let us be content to remark farther, in
the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physician
holds good in quite other departments. Of the Soul, with her
activities, we shall find it no less true than of the Body: nay, cry
the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, Man, into a
dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of disease; as, perhaps,
your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and
therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm which was
critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we observe,
with confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it as
Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind
acquainted with its strength; that here as before the sign of health
is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, what is
mechanical lies open to us: not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of
our Thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we
shape into articulate Thoughts;--underneath the region of argument and
conscious discourse, lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet
mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is
to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the
work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is
great, and cannot be understood. Thus if the Debater and Demonstrator,
whom we may rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has
done, and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest,
knows not; must speak of Inspiration, and in one or the other dialect,
call his work the gift of a divinity.

But on the whole, "genius is ever a secret to itself;" of this old
truth we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes no
airs for writing _Hamlet_ and the _Tempest_, understands not