But now you know that a very marked difference obtains between the human form, or personality, and that of mere mineral, vegetable, or animal existence. It is true, that the human form, equally with these lower forms, confesses itself the offspring of a marriage between a common nature and a specific subject. Rather let me say, that the human form makes this confession with supreme distinctness: for the marriage in question is so much more emphatically pronounced in that form, that it may be said to be comparatively unpronounced in every other. For example, every mineral, every vegetable, and every animal form, while they exhibit great reciprocal diversity, yet sink into the same undistinguishable level before the universality of man. Take the highest of these forms, the animal. Compared with the vegetable and mineral forms of life, the animal ranks heaven high by the bare fact of will and consequent motion. But when you view the animal form in itself, when you ask how it stands related to the universal life, you instantly see that it has no individuality answering to that universality. In short, you find no unitary animal form below the human. The lion is out of all unison with the cow, the fox with the sheep, the serpent with the dove: look where you will, diversity not unity, discord not concord, is the law of animal life. One animal preys upon another; one half of the animal kingdom lives

by destroying the other half. Now man, so far as his natural form is concerned, resumes all these distinctive differences of the lower natures, and fuses them in the bosom of his own unity. He is not only devouring as the fire, and unstable as the water he is fixed as the rock, hard as the iron, sensitive as the flower, graceful and flowing as the vine, majestic as the oak, lowly as the shrub. But especially does he reproduce in himself all the animal characteristics. He is indolent as the sloth, he is busy as the bee, he is stupid as the ox, he is provident as the beaver, he is blind as the bat, he is far-sighted as the eagle, he grovels like the mole, he soars like the lark, he is bold as the lion, timid as the fawn, cunning as the fox, artless as the sheep, venomous as the serpent, harmless as the dove: in short, all the irreconcileable antagonisms of animate nature meet and kiss one another in the unity of the human form. It perfectly melts and fuses the most obdurate contrarieties in the lap of its own universality. It is this universality of the human form which endows it with the supremacy of nature, and fits it to embosom the Divine infinitude. Because it adequately resumes in its own unity the universe of life; because it sops up, so to speak, and reproduces in its own individuality all mineral, all vegetable, and all animal forms, it claims the rightful lordship of nature, or coerces nature under its own subjection. Thus the marriage I speak of is perfectly ratified only in the

human form, because in that form alone does the feminine or individual element bear any just ratio to the masculine and universal one. In short, man is the sole measure of the universe, because he alone combines in the form of his natural individuality every conceivable characteristic of universal life.

It is clear, therefore, that although man may be said to be subject to his nature just as truly as the horse and the rose are subject to theirs, yet the human nature is of such a measureless scope and dignity, claims such a universal pith and variety, as to lift all its subjects at one and the same coup out of the realm of physics, and bring that realm within the invincible grasp of their subjectivity. Physics ends precisely where man begins. Mineral, vegetable, and animal exist only to endow his commanding individuality, only to universalize his form, only to give him a basis broad enough to image the Creator's infinitude. He is the dazzling blossom of the universe, the peerless fruit by whose interior chemistry unripe Nature ripens all her juices to gladden the heart of creative Love. Thus by the very law of its creation all nature aspires to the human form, confessing itself the mere blind type and stuttering prophecy of that unmatched perfection. In a word, nature acknowledges herself contained in man, cheerfully dons his livery, and obediently reflects his life.

We can have no difficulty now in estimating

the exact difference between man and all lower forms of life. He, at his lowest, is a universal form of life they, at their highest, are only partial forms. In this distinction is expressed all the distance between man and nature, between human history and mere animal or vegetable growth and decay, between man's eternal progress and nature's eternal immobility, between the starry splendours in short of human society or fellowship, and the dull ungenial fires of mere brute community. For it is this difference which makes man a fit subject of God, and suspends nature's alliance with Him only on man's mediation. But this subject can hardly be broached short of another letter, and for the present I subscribe myself,

Yours truly,

F

LETTER XIV.

MY DEAR W.

Paris, Dec. 25th, 1856.

I HAVE now virtually answered the question which in my ninth Letter I represented you as asking, namely: how the rectification of our intellectual methods recommended by Swedenborg, avails to give us a right apprehension of creation, and promote a truly scientific cosmology. That is to say, I have alleged nearly all the considerations which determine the answer to that question, and little remains but to draw the answer out in legible characters. But before doing this, I want to fix your attention upon what I have already discussed, but what I have not perhaps sufficiently insisted upon, and that is, the immense peculiarity or distinction of the human form. I have shewn you that creation is bound by the creative unity to wear a unitary form, and that this unitary form is that of humanity. Now what is the human form as distinguished from all lower forms? What is the distinctive form of man, his form as contrasted with the animal or vegetable or mineral form?