able. We are
like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs.
Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would
say, we cannot avoid the question, whether the characters are not
significant of themselves. Have mountains, and waves, and skies, no
significance but what we consciously give them, when we employ
them as emblems of our thoughts? The world is emblematic. Parts of
speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of
the human mind. The laws of moral nature answer to those of matter
as face to face in a glass. "The visible world and the relation of its
parts, is the dial plate of the invisible." The axioms of physics
translate the laws of ethics. Thus, "the whole is greater than its part;"
"reaction is equal to action;" "the smallest weight may be made to
lift the greatest, the difference of weight being compensated by
time;" and many the like propositions, which have an ethical as well
as physical sense. These propositions have a much more extensive
and universal sense when applied to human life, than when confined
to technical use.

In like manner, the memorable words of history, and the proverbs of
nations, consist usually of a natural fact, selected as a picture or
parable of a moral truth. Thus; A rolling stone gathers no moss; A
bird in the hand is worth two in the bush; A cripple in the right way,
will beat a racer in the wrong; Make hay while the sun shines; 'T is
hard to carry a full cup even; Vinegar is the son of wine; The last
ounce broke the camel's back; Long-lived trees make roots first;
--and the like. In their primary sense these are trivial facts, but we
repeat them for the value of their analogical import. What is true of
proverbs, is true of all fables, parables, and allegories.

This relation between the mind and matter is not fancied by some
poet, but stands in the will of God, and so is free to be known by all
men. It appears to men, or it does not appear. When in fortunate
hours we ponder this miracle, the wise man doubts, if, at all other
times, he is not blind and deaf;

--"Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer's cloud,
Without our special wonder?"

for the universe becomes transparent, and the light of higher laws
than its own, shines through it. It is the standing problem which has
exercised the wonder and the study of every fine genius since the
world began; from the era of the Egyptians and the