Much is there, yet, demanding line and outline in our Vistas, not only
on these topics, but others quite unwritten. Indeed, we could talk the
matter, and expand it, through lifetime. But it is necessary to return
to our original premises. In view of them, we have again pointedly to
confess that all the objective grandeurs of the world, for highest
purposes, yield themselves up, and depend on mentality alone. Here,
and here only, all balances, all rests. For the mind, which alone
builds the permanent edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it,
with what follows it, are convey'd to mortal sense the culminations of
the materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the unknown. To
take expression, to incarnate, to endow a literature with grand and
archetypal models--to fill with pride and love the utmost capacity,
and to achieve spiritual meanings, and suggest the future--these, and
these only, satisfy the soul. We must not say one word against real
materials; but the wise know that they do not become real till touched
by emotions, the mind. Did we call the latter imponderable? Ah, let us
rather proclaim that the slightest song-tune, the countless ephemera
of passions arous'd by orators and tale-tellers, are more dense, more
weighty than the engines there in the great factories, or the granite
blocks in their foundations.
Approaching thus the momentous spaces, and considering with reference
to a new and greater personalism, the needs and possibilities of
American imaginative literature, through the medium-light of what we
have already broach'd, it will at once be appreciated that a vast
gulf of difference separates the present accepted condition of these
spaces, inclusive of what is floating in them, from any condition
adjusted to, or fit for, the world, the America, there sought to be
indicated, and the copious races of complete men and women, along
these Vistas crudely outlined.
Pages:
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397