h the rest
of the spirit which they are charged to defend. The passions of which
the end is the continuance of the race; the indignation which is to arm
it against injustice, or strengthen it to resist wanton injury; and the
fear[63] which lies at the root of prudence, reverence, and awe, are all
honorable and beautiful, so long as man is regarded in his relations to
the existing world. The religious Purist, striving to conceive him
withdrawn from those relations, effaces from the countenance the traces
of all transitory passion, illumines it with holy hope and love, and
seals it with the serenity of heavenly peace; he conceals the forms of
the body by the deep-folded garment, or else represents them under
severely chastened types, and would rather paint them emaciated by the
fast, or pale from the torture, than strengthened by exertion, or
flushed by emotion. But the great Naturalist takes the human being in
its wholeness, in its mortal as well as its spiritual strength. Capable
of sounding and sympathizing with the whole range of its passions, he
brings one majestic harmony out of them all; he represents it fearlessly
in all its acts and thoughts, in its haste, its anger, its sensuality,
and its pride, as well as in its fortitude or faith, but makes it noble
in them all; he casts aside the veil from the body, and beholds the
mysteries of its form like an angel looking down on an inferior
creature: there is nothing which he is reluctant to behold, nothing that
he is ashamed to confess; with all that lives, triumphing, falling, or
suffering, he claims kindred, either in majesty or in mercy, yet
standing, in a sort, afar off, unmoved even in the deepness of his
sympathy; for the spirit within him is too thoughtful to be grieved, too
brave to be appalled, and too pure to be polluted.

Sec. LIX. How far beneath these two ranks of men shall we place, in the
scale of being, those whose pleasure is only in sin or in suffering; who
habitually contemplate humanity in poverty or decrepitude, fury or
sensuality; whose works are either temptations to its weakness, or
triumphs over its ruin, and recognize no other subjects for thought or
admiration than the subtlety of the robber, the rage of the soldier, or
the joy of the Sybarite. It seems strange, when thus definitely stated,
that such a school should exist. Yet consider a little what gaps and
blanks would disfigure our gallery and chamber walls, in places that we
have long appr