Though in many of its aspects this visible world seems formed
in love, the invisible spheres were formed in fright.
But not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness,
and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul;
and more strange and far more portentous--why, as we have seen,
it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay,
the very veil of the Christian's Deity; and yet should be as it is,
the intensifying agent in things the most appalling to mankind.
Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless
voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind
with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths
of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not
so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same
time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there
is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape
of snows--a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink?
And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers,
that all other earthly hues--every stately or lovely emblazoning--
the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded
velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls;
all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent
in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified
Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover
nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further,
and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every
one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains
white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium
upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses,
with its own blank tinge--pondering all this, the palsied universe
lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland,
who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes,
so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental
white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.
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