To one, the cloudy rendezvous is
a wild dance, with a terror at its heart; to another, a majestic march
of heavenly hosts, with Truth in their centre pointing their course, but
as yet restraining her voice. The greatest forces lie in the region of
the uncomprehended.
I will go farther.--The best thing you can do for your fellow, next to
rousing his conscience, is--not to give him things to think about, but
to wake things up that are in him; or say, to make him think things for
himself. The best Nature does for us is to work in us such moods in
which thoughts of high import arise. Does any aspect of Nature wake but
one thought? Does she ever suggest only one definite thing? Does she
make any two men in the same place at the same moment think the same
thing? Is she therefore a failure, because she is not definite? Is it
nothing that she rouses the something deeper than the understanding--the
power that underlies thoughts? Does she not set feeling, and so thinking
at work? Would it be better that she did this after one fashion and not
after many fashions? Nature is mood-engendering, thought-provoking: such
ought the sonata, such ought the fairytale to be.
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