reflection into a universal type becomes a
phenomenon, a phase of Conscience. All formation tends to that which
can only be called Freedom; though by that is not meant an idea, but
the creative ground of all being. This freedom is that of a guild. The
master exercises free power according to design, and in defined and
well digested method. The objects of his art are his, and he can do
with them as he pleases, nor is he fettered or circumscribed by them.
To speak accurately, this all-embracing freedom, this mastership of
dominion, is the essence, the impulse of Conscience. In it is revealed
the sacred peculiarity, the immediate creation of Personality, and
every action of the master, is at once the announcement of the lofty,
simple, evident world--God's word."

"Then is that, which I remember was once called morality, only religion
as Science, the so called theology in its proper sense? Is it but a
code of laws related to worship as nature is to God, a construction of
words, a train of thoughts, which indicates, represents the upper
world, and extends it to a certain point of progress--the religion for
the faculty of insight and judgment--the sentence, the law of the
solution and determination of all the possible relations which a
personal being sustains?"

"Certainly," said Sylvester, "Conscience is the innate mediator of
every man. It takes the place of God upon earth, and is therefore to
many the highest and the final. But how far was the former science,
called virtue or morality, from the pure shape of this lofty,
comprehensive, personal thought! Conscience is the peculiar essence of
man fully glorified, the divine archetypal man (Urmensch.) It is not
this thing and that thing; it does not command in a common tongue, it
does not consist of distinct virtues. There is but one virtue,--the
pure, solemn Will, which, at the moment of decision chooses, resolves
instantaneously. In living and peculiar oneness it dwells and inspires
that tender emblem, the human body, and can excite all the spiritual
members to the truest activity."

"O excellent father!" exclaimed Henry, "with what joy fills me the
light which flows from your words! Thus the true spirit of Fable is the
spirit of virtue in friendly disguise; and the proper spirit of the
subordinate art of poetry is the emotion of the loftiest, most personal
existence. There is a surprising selfness (Selbstheit) between a
genuine song and a noble action. The disfranchised