another mystery. "My child," says the mother, 66 you can see your little hand move, but you can not see the force that moves it." There is but one mystery and one miracle, the miracle of free self-activity. "Were it not miraculous," asks Carlyle, "could I stretch forth my hand and clutch the sun? Yet thou seest me daily stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of weight, and not to see that the true inexplicable God-revealing miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth my hand at all; that I have free force to clutch aught therewith?" Does it seem that in denying the right of question and explanation I leave but little for you to do? If so, try to realize the influence of music, poetry, gesture, and picture, and, what is still more important, understand that all truth must be rooted in, watered by, and brought to blossom through experiences which, beginning in infancy, recur throughout the whole of life. The Weathervane will mean little either to you or to Harold unless it incites you to give him plenty of outdoor life. Let the zephyrs fan his cheek. Let him battle with the storm wind. As he grows older do not fear to let him measure his strength against the wind on water as well as on land. Enrich him with the joys of Emerson's wild-eyed boy, Whom the rain and the wind purgeth, Whom the dawn and the day star urgeth. Open his ears to the pæan which sounds through the forest when "the grand old harper smites his thunder harp of pines." Open his soul not only to the influence of Nature, but also to the influence of Nature's interpreters, the poets. Read to him, from the Odyssey, of Eolus holding the winds in his cave; from the Iliad, of the great battle between the Fire-God and the Rivers, wherein the help of the wind gave victory to his ally; from the Vedic hymns of the fierce Maruts, "who toss the clouds. across the singing sea, who shake the rocks and tear asunder the trees of the forest"; and when at last his soul is ready for the message turn his thought both to the transcendent God who "clothes Himself with light as with a garment, and walks upon the wings of the wind," and to that immanent spirit which, like the wind, "bloweth where it listeth." Then shall he understand the presentiments which now haunt his dreaming soul, and wide awake look into the open eyes of Truth.* If I have succeeded in suggesting to your mind the thoughts which Froebel's Wind Song wakens in my own you will now be ready to recognize the truth that "the union of the one and the many is an everlasting quality in thought itself which never grows old in us." Reason is itself a unity in manifoldness, hence it can never be satisfied save as it reduces the manifold to unity. The wonder of the child over the many objects moved by the wind is but an adumbration of the wrestling of mature thought with all forms of the manifold. It was because it proved that each thing in the universe is relative to every other, and hence that the universe *I do not know whether I have made myself clear, but my general thought is that with little children we should limit our effort to bringing them in contact with the actual experiences out of which the race through analogy evolved its insights. Froebel suggests in his picture that they should notice the different things the wind does. As they grow older they should be led to notice the differences between still air, the gentle breeze, the brisk wind, the gust, the tornado. They should also distinguish the different sounds made by the wind-its whispers, songs, sighs, moans, whistles, shrieks, roars. In a word, they should be impressed with all its actual activities, and left to themselves to make out its spiritual analogies. To give them the spiritual meaning is simply to thwart the whole natural process of development. 66 is one, that Newton's thought of gravitation was epoch-making in science. It was because it pictured the world "as a whole, moved and animated by internal forces," that Humboldt's Cosmos merited and won its great celebrity. It was the conviction that every creature is a note in the great harmony which must be studied in the whole," which inspired Goethe's search for the intermaxillary bone. It was his poetic and philosophic craving to reduce diversities to unity which impelled him to botanical research, and led to the discovery of the metamorphosis of plants. It is because it endows all objects in time with the unity which gravitation gives to all objects in space, that the theory of evolution has achieved its unparalleled triumph. To solve the problem of the many and the one is the sole passion of thought, and in its ever-widening syntheses we recognize the gathering force of that finally resistless current with which the mind sweeps out upon the world. LETTER IV. MAKING BY UNMAKING. Oh, have you thought out all it means Only to soul life is it given To own the hour that's fled, Blest token that we most shall live When men shall call us dead. HENRIETTA R. ELIOT. ALL GONE! All gone! the supper's gone! White bread and milk so sweet, For baby dear to eat. All gone! the supper's gone! Tongue, you had a share, I know. Through your rosy gate it slips. Where it went, if you would tell. Little cheeks, grow red: You have all been fed. EMILY HUNTINGTON MILLER. |