ive to
man's happiness than reflection, then poetry, literature, and the arts
are of more importance to him than abstract science. If, in appealing to
spontaneous emotions, they give the legitimate influence to the heart
which it should possess, because under their influence thought and
feeling move in the proper _unity_ of their divinely linked being, then
must pure, creative, loving, and devout art at last take its rank, when
spontaneity shall be regarded as the generatrix of reflection, above the
cold and haughty pile reared by the reflective faculties alone, abstract
science.

The aspirations of man constantly sigh for the limitless; his soul
contains depths which his reason cannot fathom. How rapidly his surging
ideas come and go! What flashes of supernatural light--what fearful
obscurity! Heaven and Hell war in his soul! Strange visions traverse his
intellect, throwing their lurid light into the vague depths of his
heart. His power to love and feel seems boundless--his power to know
almost at zero. What can he predicate even of himself, with his
boundless desires for he knows not what--his fleeting emotions and
insatiable wishes! Ah! if the language of poetry, of music, of the
arts, came not to gift these passing images with external life, to fix
them in the wildered consciousness, they would surge away almost
unmarked, like lovely dreams, scarcely leaving their dim traces in the
memory. For, with the generality of common minds, the actual is death to
the ideal! But art speaks; spontaneity is justified; our inner being, so
vague before, stands revealed before us; the beautiful must be the true,
the chaos of the moral world is dispelled; we were created to _enjoy_
the attributes of God, which, finitely manifested, are Truth and Beauty;
and His light moves over the perturbed chaos of our dim being! What can
abstract science, with its cold and finite language, do for a soul
athirst for an infinite happiness? Nothing, unless its first postulate
be God! Young people, generally, and women, in whom the love of Beauty
is strongly developed, have almost a repulsion to the study of science.
Wherefore? Because it often seems to exile God from His own creation.
Let Him desert Paradise, and it becomes at once a desert. The Infinite
is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley! Besides, the
reflective reasoning faculties awaken late with those in whom the
intuitive faculties and sensibilities attain an early development. Le