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one of them into the ideal shape, if we wait for her a thousand years. Let us send for a Greek architect to do it for her. He comes-the great Greek architect, with measure and rule. Will he not also make the weight for the winds? and weigh out the waters by measure? and make a decree for the rain, and a way for the lightning of the thunder?¹ He sets himself orderly to his work, and behold! this is the mark of Nature, and this is the thing into which the great Greek architect improves the sea-

Qalatta, qalatta:² Was it this, then, they wept to see from the sacred mountain-those wearied ones?

§ 4. But the sea was meant to be irregular! Yes, and were not also the leaves, and the blades of grass; and, in a sort, as far as may be without mark of sin, even the countenance of man? Or would it be pleasanter and better to have us all alike, and numbered on our foreheads, that we might be known one from the other?

§ 5. Is there, then, nothing to be done by man’s art? Have we only to copy, and again copy, for ever, the imagery of the universe? Not so. We have work to do upon it; there is not any one of us so simple, nor so feeble, but he has work to do upon it. But the work is not to improve, but to explain. This infinite universe is unfathomable, inconceivable, in its whole; every human creature must slowly spell out, and long contemplate, such part of it as may be possible for him to reach; then set forth what he has learned of it for those beneath him; extricating it from infinity, as one gathers a violet out of grass; one does not improve either violet or grass in gathering it, but one makes the flower

¹ [Job xxviii. 25, 26.]

² [The cry of the Ten Thousand on getting the first sight of the sea from the top of “The Sacred Mountain,” see Xenophon, Anab. iv. 7, 24.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]