work is organic which grows so above composition or plan.  After you are engaged by the symphony, there is no escape, no pause; each note springs out of each as branch from branch of a tree.  It could be no otherwise; it cannot be otherwise conceived.  Why could not I have found this sequence inevitable, as well as another?  Plainly, the symphony was discovered, not made,—­was written before man, like astronomy in the sky.

Only the mastery of one who is mastered by Nature will control and renovate mankind.  It is easy to recognize the habit of conviction, freedom from within, and personal motive, the man bending himself as for life or death to show exactly what he sees.  The inspired man we know who appeals to a divine necessity, and says, “I can do no otherwise; God be my help! amen!”—­for whom praise and property and comfortable continuance on this planet are trifles, so great an object has opened to him in the inviolable moral law.

Every perception takes hold at last on duty as well as desire, claims and carries away the man entire, though it were to danger or death.  The system, grown friendly, has grown sacred also; departure from it is shame and guilt, as well as loss.  An artist, therefore, like the Greek, is busy with portraits of the gods, and every celebration of Beauty is another Missa Solemnis, Te Deum, and Gloria.

Whatever object becomes transparent to a man will be his medium of communication with the Maker and with mankind.  He hurries to show therein what he has seen, as children run for their companions and point their discoveries.  These are his unsolicited angels, higher above his reach than above that of the crowd; for every good thought is more a surprise to the thinker than to any other.  The seer points always from himself as a telescope to the sky; he is no creator, but a bit of broken glass in the sun.  What is any man in the presence of haunting Perfection, never to be shown without mutilation and dishonor?  Is it ours?  In Him we live and move.

While the Ego is pronounced and fills consciousness, man seems to be and do somewhat of himself; but when the universal Soul is manifest above will, his eyes turn away from that old battery; he is absorbed in what he sees,—­forgets himself, his deeds, wants, gains.  He is rapt; stands like Socrates a day and a night in contemplation; sits like Newton for twelve hours half dressed on the edge of his bed, arrested in rising.  He is that madman to the world who neglects his meat, postpones his private enterprise, regards honor and comfort as so much interruption to this commerce with reality.  We are all tired of property which is exclusion, of goods which must be taken from another to serve me.  Good should grow with sharing,—­more for me when all is given.  In the spirit there are no fences, boxes, or bags.