322 THE HUMAN FORM. 



the days of thy life." Man's work is universal; in laying bricks 

 to the hovels of his plans, he is working at other plans veiled; rear- 

 ing far and future states; the basements of ages to come; the limbs 

 and wills of his posterities; the strength, or weakness, of his own 

 soul, and by reversion, of his societies: buildings, good and bad, 

 high, and low, and broad. This is according to his incessant form, 

 which is the essential organ of activity. And if he will not work 

 but drone, his waste is universal. The ground supports him in 

 vain, and his feet kill its purpose ; herbs feed and beasts clothe him 

 for disgrace; his frame puts costliest energy in play, to be manu- 

 factured into sloth; and his soul hovers uninhabiting over his slime. 

 This is the final shape of unhappiness, the lot of apoplexed men and 

 societies, whose curse it becomes that they are lashed to the halberds 

 of use upside down, which cleaves with poison to their human forms. 

 For the human form is the divinity either of Nemesis, or of God. 



The third human form surrounding and entering into the former 

 two, is wisdom or divine light, whose care it is to make us wise. 

 And because we are shapes in which wisdom may dwell, it presses 

 us with ought and must, and throngs us with duties through our 

 eyes; for by the magnetism of our likeness it is at our side, to show 

 us the way, the truth, and the life. We can therefore no more 

 escape existence than elude the necessity to be wise, or foolish. In 

 the latter case we founder upon the human form, or stumble blind- 

 fold through a world of posts and pitfalls : for our world is even as 

 ourselves, and if we are wounded within, all things chase and gore 

 us, as the herd, a bleeding deer. But the form of wisdom is, first, 

 the understanding mind; hence its earliest pressure incites us to 

 know; and heaven known, man known, God known, the world 

 known, is its mission : the second form is the spiritual mind, which 

 elects the noblest causes from the rest, and has ears from that scrip- 

 ture : "If ye will do the works, ye shall know of the doctrine. " 

 Thus as our bodies of sense oblige us to see, work and exist, to eat, 

 drink and generate, or to pay the penalties of refusal, so our bodies 

 of understanding and wisdom bind us to answerable courses, or mulct 

 us in equal retributions. In this light we are organs of new pro- 

 ducts again, and necessity forces us to increase the wisdom, or the 

 folly, of the world. 



