and perfectly confuted. Somewhat after this idea, the
"verticalism" and "involution" will be shown to be direct from
Nature; the gilding, &c., disposed of on the ground of the old piety
using the most precious materials as the most religious and worthy of
them; and hence, by a very easy and probable transition, they
concluded that that which was most soul-worthy, was also most
natural."]

Dialogue I., in the House of Kalon

_Kalon._ Welcome, my friends:--this day above all others; to-day is
the first day of spring. May it be the herald of a bountiful
year,--not alone in harvests of seeds. Great impulses are moving
through man; swift as the steam-shot shuttle, weaving some mighty
pattern, goes the new birth of mind. As yet, hidden from eyes is the
design: whether it be poetry, or painting, or music, or architecture,
or whether it be a divine harmony of all, no manner of mind can tell;
but that it is mighty, all manners of minds, moved to involuntary
utterance, affirm. The intellect has at last again got to work upon
thought: too long fascinated by matter and prisoned to motive
geometry, genius--wisdom seem once more to have become human, to have
put on man, and to speak with divine simplicity. Kosmon, Sophon,
again welcome! your journey is well-timed; Christian, my young
friend, of whom I have often written to you, this morning tells me by
letter that to-day he will pay me his long-promised visit. You, I
know, must rejoice to meet him: this interchange of knowledge cannot
fail to improve us, both by knocking down and building up: what is
true we shall hold in common; what is false not less in common
detest. The debateable ground, if at last equally debateable as it
was at first, is yet ploughed; and some after-comer may sow it with
seed, and reap therefrom a plentiful harvest.

_Sophon._ Kalon, you speak wisely. Truth hath many sides like a
diamond with innumerable facets, each one alike brilliant and
piercing. Your information respecting your friend Christian has not a
little interested me, and made me desirous of knowing him.

_Kosmon._ And I, no less than Sophon, am delighted to hear that we
shall both see and taste your friend.

_Sophon._ Kalon, by what you just now said, you would seem to think a
dearth of original thought in the world, at any time, was an evil:
perhaps it is not so; nay, perhaps, it is a good! Is not an
interregnum of genius necessary somewhere? A great genius, sun-like,
compels lesser s