These little
airy edifices had all the fantastic lightness of the elf-world and all
the vaporous freshness of dawn. They recalled to me the poetry of the
north, wafting to me a breath from Caledonia or Iceland or Sweden,
Frithiof and the Edda, Ossian and the Hebrides. All that world of cold
and mist, of genius and of reverie, where warmth comes not from the sun
but from the heart where man is more noticeable than nature--that chaste
and vigorous world in which will plays a greater part than sensation and
thought has more power than instinct--in short the whole romantic cycle
of German and northern poetry, awoke little by little in my memory and
laid claim upon my sympathy. It is a poetry of bracing quality, and acts
upon one like a moral tonic. Strange charm of imagination! A twig of
pine wood and a few spider-webs are enough to make countries, epochs,
and nations live again before her.
December 26, 1852. (Sunday.)--If I reject many portions of our theology
and of our church system, it is that I may the better reach the Christ
himself. My philosophy allows me this. It does not state the dilemma as
one of religion or philosophy, but as one of religion accepted or
experienced, understood or not understood. For me philosophy is a manner
of apprehending things, a mode of perception of reality.
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