We can behold nothing pure; and all
that we see is compounded and mixed. Nature stands related to us at a
certain angle, and a little remove either way--back toward its grosser
side, or up toward its ideal tendency--would place it beyond our ken. It
is like the rainbow, which is a partial and an incomplete development,--
pure white light split up and its colors detached and dislocated, and
which is seen only from a certain stand-point.
We remark, therefore, that all things are made of one stuff, and on the
principle that a difference in degree produces a difference in kind.
From the clod and the rock up to the imponderable, to light and
electricity, the difference is only more or less of selection and
filtration. Every grade is a new refinement, the same law lifted to a
higher plane. The air is earth with some of the coarser elements purged
away. From the zooephyte up to man, more or less of spirit gives birth to
the intervening types of life. All motion is but degrees of gravitating
force; and the thousand colors with which the day paints the earth are
only more or less of light. All form aspires toward the circle, and
realizes it more or less perfectly. By more or less of heat the seasons
accomplish their wonderful transformations on the earth and in the air.
In the moral world, the eras and revolutions that check history are only
degrees in the development of a few simple principles; and the variety
of character that diversifies the world of men and manners springs from
a greater or less predominance of certain individual traits.
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