t I must have some other garden. Yet I love facts, and hate
lubricity[661] and people without perception. Then I have the same
title to write on prudence that I have to write on poetry or holiness.
We write from aspiration and antagonism, as well as from experience.
We paint those qualities which we do not possess. The poet admires the
man of energy and tactics; the merchant breeds his son for the church
or the bar; and where a man is not vain and egotistic you shall find
what he has not by his praise. Moreover it would be hardly honest in
me not to balance these fine lyric words of Love and Friendship[662]
with words of coarser sound, and whilst my debt to my senses is real
and constant, not to own it in passing.

Prudence is the virtue of the senses. It is the science of
appearances. It is the outmost action of the inward life. It is God
taking thought for oxen. It moves matter after the laws of matter. It
is content to seek health of body by complying with physical
conditions, and health of mind by the laws of the intellect.

The world of the senses is a world of shows; it does not exist for
itself, but has a symbolic character; and a true prudence or law of
shows recognizes the co-presence of other laws and knows that its own
office is subaltern; knows that it is surface and not centre where it
works. Prudence is false when detached. It is legitimate when it is
the Natural History of the soul incarnate, when it unfolds the beauty
of laws within the narrow scope of the senses.

There are all degrees of proficiency in knowledge of the world. It is
sufficient to our present purpose to indicate three. One class lives
to the utility of the symbol, esteeming health and wealth a final
good. Another class live above this mark of the beauty of the symbol,
as the poet and artist and the naturalist and man of science. A third
class live above the beauty of the symbol to the beauty of the thing
signified; these are wise men. The first class have common sense; the
second, taste; and the third, spiritual perception. Once in a long
time, a man traverses the whole scale, and sees and enjoys the symbol
solidly, then also has a clear eye for its beauty, and lastly, whilst
he pitches his tent on this sacred volcanic isle of nature, does not
offer to build houses and barns thereon reverencing the splendor of
the God which he sees bursting through each chink and cranny.

The world is filled with the proverbs[663] and acts and winking