The philosophy of the Greeks,
the physical views of the Middle Ages, and even those of a more recent
period, have been eminently imbued with the charm springing from similar
illusive phantoms of the imagination. At the limits of circumscribed
knowledge, as from some lofty island shore, the eye delights to penetrate
p 82
to distant regions. The belief in the uncommon and the wonderful lends a
definite outline to every manifestation of ideal creation; and the realm of
fancy -- a fairy-land of cosmological, geognostical, and magnetic visions --
becomes thus involuntarily blended with the domain of reality.
Nature, in the manifold signification of the word -- whether considered as
the universality of all that is and ever will be -- as the inner moving
force of all phenomena, or as their mysterious prototype -- reveals itself
to the simple mind and feelings of man as something earthly, and closely
allied to himself. It is only within the animated circles of organic
structure that we feel ourselves peculiarly at home. Thus, wherever the
earth unfolds her fruits and flowers, and gives food to countless tribes of
animals, there the image of nature impresses itself most vividly upon our
senses. The impression thus produced upon our minds limits itself almost
exclusively to the reflection of the earthly.
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