mble sense of the limited
sphere from which we must regard the infinite, some of the divine
attributes, which must, in the finite mode, enter into every creation of
artistic excellence. We begin our reflections with the infinite itself.

Infinite--this word is by no means the expression of a clear idea: it is
merely the expression of an effort to attain one. It stands for the
possible attempt at an impossible conception. Man needed a term by which
to point out the direction of this effort--the cloud behind which lay,
forever invisible, the object of this attempt. The fact is, that upon
the enunciation of any one of that class of terms to which 'infinite'
belongs--the class representing thoughts of thought--he who has a right
to say he thinks at all, feels himself called upon, not to entertain a
conception, but simply to direct his mental vision toward some given
point, in the intellectual firmament, where lies a nebula never to be
resolved. And yet to this very point, which the intellect cannot define,
are our spirits forever tending. No artistic creation ever fully pleases
unless there is given in it some suggestion of this mystic attribute,
underlying and permeating all other attributes of Deity. It is the dim
unconscious feeling after this attribute which causes the forever
recurring dissatisfaction with the finite, which so ruthlessly pursues
us through life. It is the source of that vague but tender longing, that
restless but dreamy yearning, that haunting melancholy, which
characterize human souls created for the enjoyment of the infinite;
divining and insatiably thirsting for the absolute.

Let us now attempt to trace some of the various ways in which this
feeling after the infinite manifests itself. Plato and his school tried
to explain the existence of absolute ideas in the soul by the hypothesis
of its preexistence to that of the body in the bosom of the Absolute,
the Infinite, the Eternal; and, consequently, that such ideas are but
reminiscences of a more perfect life. We find the following passage in
an ode of Wordsworth's:

'Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

'Hence, in a season of calm weather,
Though inland far we be,
Our so