that now in heaven seem fixed forever.  There is nothing in the created universe of which it was not the prophecy in its primal conception; there is nothing of which it is not the interpretation and ultimatum in its final form.  The laws which rule the world as forces are, in it, thoughts and liberties.  All the grand imaginations of men, all the glorified shapes, the Olympian gods, cherubic and seraphic forms, are but symbols and adumbrations of what it contains.  As the sun, having set, still leaves its golden impress on the clouds, so does the absolute nature of man throw up and paint, as it were, on the sky testimonies of its power, remaining itself unseen.  Only, therefore, is one a poet, as he can cause particular traits and events, without violation of their special character, or concealment of their peculiar interest, to bear the deep, sweet, and infinite suggestion of this.  All princeliness and imperial worth, all that is regal, beautiful, pure in men, comes from this nature; and the words by which we express reverence, admiration, love, borrow from it their entire force:  since reverence, admiration, love, and all other grand sentiments, are but modes or forms of noble unification between men, and are therefore shown to spring from that spiritual unity of which persons are exponents; while, on the other hand, all evil epithets suggest division and separation.  Of this nature all titles of honor, all symbols that command homage and obedience on earth, are pensioners.  How could the claims of kings survive successions of Stuarts and Georges, but for a royalty in each peasant’s bosom that pleads for its poor image on the throne?

In the high sense, no man is great save he that is a large continent of this absolute humanity.  The common nature of man it is; yet those are ever, and in the happiest sense, uncommon men, in whom it is liberally present.

But every man, besides the nature which constitutes him man, has, so to speak, another nature, which constitutes him a particular individual.  He is not only like all others of his kind, but, at the same time, unlike all others.  By physical and mental feature he is distinguished, insulated; he is endowed with a quality so purely in contrast with the common nature of man, that in virtue of it he can be singled out from hundreds of millions, from all the myriads of his race.  So far, now, as one is representative of absolute humanity, he is a Person; so far as, by an element peculiar to himself, he is contrasted with absolute humanity, he is an Individual.  And having duly chanted our Credo concerning man’s pure and public nature, let us now inquire respecting this dividing element of Individuality,—­which, with all the force it has, strives to cut off communication, to destroy unity, and to make of humanity a chaos or dust of biped atoms.

Not for a moment must we make this surface nature of equal estimation with the other.  It is secondary, very secondary, to the pure substance of man.  The Person first in order of importance; the Individual next,—­