Then, whenever
claiming to be first-class works, they are to be strictly and sternly
tried by their foundation in, and radiation, in the highest sense, and
always indirectly, of the ethic principles, and eligibility to free,
arouse, dilate.
As, within the purposes of the Kosmos, and vivifying all meteorology,
and all the congeries of the mineral, vegetable and animal worlds--all
the physical growth and development of man, and all the history of the
race in politics, religions, wars, &c., there is a moral purpose, a
visible or invisible intention, certainly underlying all--its results
and proof needing to be patiently waited for--needing intuition,
faith, idiosyncrasy, to its realization, which many, and especially
the intellectual, do not have--so in the product, or congeries of the
product, of the greatest literatus. This is the last, profoundest
measure and test of a first-class literary or esthetic achievement,
and when understood and put in force must fain, I say, lead to works,
books, nobler than any hitherto known. Lo! Nature, (the only complete,
actual poem,) existing calmly in the divine scheme, containing all,
content, careless of the criticisms of a day, or these endless and
wordy chatterers. And lo! to the consciousness of the soul, the
permanent identity, the thought, the something, before which the
magnitude even of democracy, art, literature, &c., dwindles, becomes
partial, measurable--something that fully satisfies, (which those
do not.
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