The boy does not choose, neither does the belly choose for him, what object shall be supremely beautiful in his eyes.  He has not resolved to see only this splendor of color, and neglect sound,—­or to give himself to sound alone, and shut his eyes to sight.  If the divine order reaches any mind, those creatures in which it appears will haunt that mind, will take lordly their own place, and hang as constellations high overhead in thought.  So long as he can turn the eye hither and thither, or lightly determine what he will see, the man is conversant with form alone, and bigots who are on that plane of experience identify him with choice, hold thought to be altogether voluntary, and burn the thinker, as though his view were a fruit, not a root, of him.  But truth is that which does not wait for our making, but makes us,—­does not lie like water at the bottom of our wells, but comes like sunshine flooding the air, and compelling recognition.  “To believe your own thought,” says a master, “that is genius”; but is not genius primarily the arrival of a thought able to authenticate itself, to compel trust, and make its own value known against the sneers or anger of the world?  From my own thought once reached there is but one appeal,—­to my own thought:  from Philip sober to Philip more sober.

The good spirit appears as a spark in our embers, and draws out these careful hands to ward itself from every gust,—­sets our tasks and crowns them.  We know that from first desire to last performance wisdom is altogether a grace.  Wisdom is this wish for wisdom, already given in the readiness to receive.  We have not cared for it, but it has cared for us.

Grown stronger, it is a guide, and needs none.  Turner sees what he must love; there is no rule for such seeing:  what he does not love is hid from him; there is no rule for such omission.  It is in the eye, not more a happy opening than a happy closing.  A private ordinance, dividing man into men, makes the same creature a wall to one, an open door to his neighbor.  The value of man appears to Scott in feudalism, to Wordsworth in contemplation, to Byron in impatience, to Kant in certainty, to Calvin in authority, to Calame in landscape, to Newton in measure, to Carlyle in retribution, to Shakspeare in society, to Dante in the contrast of right and wrong.

One man by grandeur sees mountains in the coals of his grate; another by gentleness only sunshine and grasses on Monadnock.  You will not say that he chooses, but that he is chosen so to see.  Light opens the eye without our intention, and we are at no trouble to paint on the retina what must there appear.  Success is fidelity to that which must appear.  Weak men discuss forever the laws of Art, and contrive how to paint, questioning whether this or that element should have emphasis or be shown.  If there is any question, there will be no Art.  The man must feel to do, and what he does from overmastering feeling will convince and be forever right.  The