lopment and
growth, on our living habitually and intelligently in our higher nature,
the laws of which as communicated to us by other minds are in part
prophecies of experience not yet actual in ourselves. It is the
touchstone of experience, after all, that tries all things in both
worlds, and experience in the spiritual world may be long delayed; it is
power of mind that makes wide generalizations in both; and the
conception of spiritual law is the most refined as perhaps it is the
most daring of human thoughts.

The expansion of the conception of ideal literature so as to embrace
these other aspects, in addition to that of rational knowledge which has
thus far been exclusively dwelt upon, requires us to examine its nature
in the regions of beauty, joy, and conscience, in which, though
generalization remains its intellectual method, it does not make its
direct appeal to the mind. It is not enough to show that the creative
reason in its intellectual process employs that common method which is
the parent of all true knowledge, and by virtue of its high matter,
which is the divine order in the soul, holds the primacy among man's
faculties; the story were then left half told, and the better part yet
to come. To enlighten the mind is a great function; but in the mass of
mankind there are few who are accessible to ideas as such, especially on
the unworldly side of life, or interested in them. Idealism does not
confine its service to the narrow bounds of intellectuality. It has a
second and greater office, which is to charm the soul. So characteristic
of it is this power, so eminent and shining, that thence only springs
the sweet and almost sacred quality breathing from the word itself.
Idealism, indeed, by the garment of sense does not so much clothe wisdom
as reveal her beauty; so the Greek sculptor discloses the living form by
the plastic folds. Truth made virtue is her work of power, and she
imposes upon man no harder task than the mere beholding of that sight--

"Virtue in her shape how lovely,"

which since it first abashed the devil in Paradise makes wrong-doers
aware of their deformity, and yet has such subtle and penetrating might,
such fascination for all finer spirits, that they have ever believed
with their master, Plato, that should truth show her countenance
unveiled and dwell on earth, all men would worship and follow her.

The images of Plato--those images in which alone he could adequately
body forth