The enthusiast bubbles up with the Spirit of
God within him, and it pours forth from him like a fountain. The word
prophecy is misunderstood. Many suppose that it is limited to mere
prediction; that is but the lesser portion of prophecy. The greater
work is to reveal God. Every true religious enthusiast is a prophet.
Language, be it remember'd, is not an abstract construction of the
learn'd, or of dictionary-makers, but is something arising out of the
work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of
humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground. Its
final decisions are made by the masses, people nearest the concrete,
having most to do with actual land and sea. It impermeates all, the
Past as well as the Present, and is the grandest triumph of the human
intellect. "Those mighty works of art," says Addington Symonds, "which
we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples
unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determin'd not by
individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations,
acting to one end, inherent in the nature of the race--Those poems of
pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words, but in living imagery,
fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations,
which we call Mythologies--these surely are more marvellous in their
infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races
which evolv'd them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology;
the true science of Origins is yet in its cradle.
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