e self-evident part. In
fact, these parts may be the "blind-spots" in the progress of unity.
They may be filled with little but repetition. "Nature loves analogy
and hates repetition." Botany reveals evolution not permanence. An
apparent confusion if lived with long enough may become orderly.
Emerson was not writing for lazy minds, though one of the keenest of
his academic friends said that, he (Emerson) could not explain many of
his own pages. But why should he!--he explained them when he discovered
them--the moment before he spoke or wrote them. A rare experience of a
moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all
consciousness, cannot be explained at noon. Yet it is a part of the
day's unity. At evening, nature is absorbed by another experience. She
dislikes to explain as much as to repeat. It is conceivable, that what
is unified form to the author, or composer, may of necessity be
formless to his audience. A home-run will cause more unity in the grand
stand than in the season's batting average. If a composer once starts
to compromise, his work will begin to drag on HIM. Before the end is
reached, his inspiration has all gone up in sounds pleasing to his
audience, ugly to him--sacrificed for the first acoustic--an opaque
clarity, a picture painted for its hanging. Easy unity, like easy
virtue, is easier to describe, when judged from its lapses than from
its constancy. When the infidel admits God is great, he means only: "I
am lazy--it is easier to talk than live." Ruskin also says: "Suppose I
like the finite curves best, who shall say I'm right or wrong? No one.
It is simply a question of experience." You may not be able to
experience a symphony, even after twenty performances. Initial
coherence today may be dullness tomorrow probably because formal or
outward unity depends so much on repetition, sequences, antitheses,
paragraphs with inductions and summaries. Macaulay had that kind of
unity. Can you read him today? Emerson rather goes out and shouts: "I'm
thinking of the sun's glory today and I'll let his light shine through
me. I'll say any damn thing that this inspires me with." Perhaps there
are flashes of light, still in cipher, kept there by unity, the code of
which the world has not yet discovered. The unity of one sentence
inspires the unity of the whole--though its physique is as ragged as
the Dolomites.

Intense lights--vague shadows--great pillars in a horizon are difficult
things to nai