it every day, side by side, in his own mind. When there is one man
who is an all-man, an epitome of a world, there shall be more all-men.
He cannot help attracting them, drawing them out, creating them. With
enough men who have a whole world in their hearts, we shall soon have a
whole world.

Whether it is true or not that the universe is most swiftly known, most
naturally enjoyed as related to one Creator or Person, as the
self-expression of one Being who loved all these things enough to gather
them together, it is generally admitted that the natural man seems to
have been created to enjoy a universe as related to himself. His most
natural and powerful way of enjoying it is to enjoy it in its relation
to persons. A Person may not have created it, but it seems for the time
being at least, and so far as persons are concerned, to have been
created for persons. To know the persons and the things together, and
particularly the things in relation to the persons, is the swiftest and
simplest way of knowing the things. Persons are the nervous system of
all knowledge. So far as man is concerned all truth is a sub-topic under
his own soul, and the universe is the tool of his own life. Reading for
different topics in it gives him a superficial knowledge of the men who
write about them. Reading to know the men gives him a superficial
knowledge, in the technical sense, of the things they write about. Let
him stand up and take his choice like a man between being superficial in
the letter and superficial in the spirit. Outside of his specialty,
however, being superficial in the letter will lead him to the most
knowledge. Man is the greatest topic. All other knowledge is a sub-topic
under a Man, and the stars themselves are as footnotes to the thoughts
of his heart.

"Things are not only related to other things," the soul of the man says,
"they are related to me." This relation of things to me is a mutual
affair, partly theirs and partly mine, and I am going to do my knowing,
act on my own knowledge, as if I were of some importance in it. Shall I
reckon with alkalis and acids and not reckon with myself? I say, "O
great Nature, O infinite Things, by the charter of my soul (and whether
I have a soul or not), I am not only going to know things, but things
shall know _me_. I stamp myself upon them. I shall receive from them and
love them and belong to them, but they shall be my things because they
are things, and they shall be to me, wh