omote the good of
the other. But the moment we rest with the reason and the understanding
there must be opposition and divergence, for they apprehend things by
parts, and not by the mass; they deal with facts, and not with laws.

The fullest truth, as we have already hinted, never shapes itself into
words on our lips. What we can speak is generally only foam from the
surface, with more or less sediment in it; while the pure current flows
untouched beneath. The deepest depths in a man have no tongue. He is
like the sea, which finds expression only on its shoals and rocks; the
great heart of it has no voice, no utterance.

The religious creeds will never be reconciled by logic; the more
emphatically they are expressed, the more they differ. Ideas, in this
respect, resemble the trees, which branch and diverge more and more
widely as they proceed from the root and the germinal state. Men
are radically the same in their feelings and sentiments, but widely
different in their logic. Argument is reaction, and drives us farther
and farther apart.

As the intellect expresses by detachment and contrast, it follows,
that, the more emphatically an idea is expressed, the more it will be
disencumbered of other ideas and stand relieved like a bust chiselled
from a rock. It is suggestive and prospective, and, by being detached
itself, will relieve others and still others. It makes a breach in
the blank wall, and the whole is now pregnable. New possibilities are
opened, a new outlook into the universe. Nothing, so to speak, has
become something; one base metal has been transmuted into gold, and so
given us a purchase on every other. When one thought is spoken, all
others become speakable. After one atom was created, the universe would
grow of its own accord. The difficulty in writing is to utter the
first thought, to break the heavy silence, to overcome the settled
equilibrium, and disentangle one idea from the embarrassing many. It is
a struggle for life. There is no place to begin at. We are burdened with
unuttered and unutterable truth, but cannot, for the life of us, grasp
it. It is a battle with Chaos. We plant shaft after shaft, but to no
purpose. We get an idea half-defined, when it slips from us, and all is
blank again in that direction. We seem to be struggling with the force
of gravity, and to come not so near conquering as to being conquered.
But at last, when we are driven almost to despair, and in a semi-passive
state inw