e can in Greek, in Punic, in Roman houses, only that
we may wiselier see French, English and American houses and modes of
living. In like manner we see literature best from the midst of wild
nature, or from the din of affairs, or from a high religion. The field
cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have
his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to find the parallax of any
star.

Therefore we value the poet. All the argument and all the wisdom is not
in the encyclopaedia, or the treatise on metaphysics, or the Body of
Divinity, but in the sonnet or the play. In my daily work I incline to
repeat my old steps, and do not believe in remedial force, in the power
of change and reform. But some Petrarch or Ariosto, filled with the new
wine of his imagination, writes me an ode or a brisk romance, full of
daring thought and action. He smites and arouses me with his shrill
tones, breaks up my whole chain of habits, and I open my eye on my own
possibilities. He claps wings to the sides of all the solid old lumber
of the world, and I am capable once more of choosing a straight path in
theory and practice.

We have the same need to command a view of the religion of the world. We
can never see Christianity from the catechism:--from the pastures, from
a boat in the pond, from amidst the songs of wood-birds we possibly
may. Cleansed by the elemental light and wind, steeped in the sea of
beautiful forms which the field offers us, we may chance to cast a right
glance back upon biography. Christianity is rightly dear to the best
of mankind; yet was there never a young philosopher whose breeding had
fallen into the Christian church by whom that brave text of Paul's was
not specially prized:--"Then shall also the Son be subject unto Him who
put all things under him, that God may be all in all." Let the claims
and virtues of persons be never so great and welcome, the instinct of
man presses eagerly onward to the impersonal and illimitable, and gladly
arms itself against the dogmatism of bigots with this generous word out
of the book itself.

The natural world may be conceived of as a system of concentric circles,
and we now and then detect in nature slight dislocations which apprise
us that this surface on which we now stand is not fixed, but sliding.
These manifold tenacious qualities, this chemistry and vegetation, these
metals and animals, which seem to stand there for their own sake, are
means and methods on