Yet the systole and diastole of the heart are not without their analogy
in the ebb and flow of love. Friendship, like the immortality of the
soul, is too good to be believed. The lover, beholding his maiden, half
knows that she is not verily that which he worships; and in the golden
hour of friendship we are surprised with shades of suspicion and
unbelief. We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he
shines, and afterwards worship the form to which we have ascribed this
divine inhabitation. In strictness, the soul does not respect men as
it respects itself. In strict science all persons underlie the same
condition of an infinite remoteness. Shall we fear to cool our love by
mining for the metaphysical foundation of this Elysian temple? Shall I
not be as real as the things I see? If I am, I shall not fear to know
them for what they are. Their essence is not less beautiful than their
appearance, though it needs finer organs for its apprehension. The
root of the plant is not unsightly to science, though for chaplets and
festoons we cut the stem short. And I must hazard the production of
the bald fact amidst these pleasing reveries, though it should prove an
Egyptian skull at our banquet. A man who stands united with his thought
conceives magnificently of himself. He is conscious of a universal
success, even though bought by uniform particular failures. No
advantages, no powers, no gold or force, can be any match for him. I
cannot choose but rely on my own poverty more than on your wealth.
I cannot make your consciousness tantamount to mine. Only the star
dazzles; the planet has a faint, moon-like ray. I hear what you say of
the admirable parts and tried temper of the party you praise, but I see
well that for all his purple cloaks I shall not like him, unless he is
at last a poor Greek like me. I cannot deny it, O friend, that the vast
shadow of the Phenomenal includes thee also in its pied and painted
immensity,--thee also, compared with whom all else is shadow. Thou art
not Being, as Truth is, as Justice is,--thou art not my soul, but a
picture and effigy of that. Thou hast come to me lately, and already
thou art seizing thy hat and cloak. Is it not that the soul puts forth
friends as the tree puts forth leaves, and presently, by the germination
of new buds, extrudes the old leaf? The law of nature is alternation
for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The
soul environs itself with fri