UNIVERSAL ANALOGY AND SYMBOLISM. 337 



the arm ; next we move down the rails of this through compa- 

 rative powers in nature, and engines and machineries in art, and 

 complete the circumstantial empire of power j and thirdly, we see 

 in the will itself, with its own distinct facts, the arm of arm and 

 the mechanism of mechanism ; and one limb of the inner man is 

 rescued from nothingness or abstraction. In a similar way the 

 analogy of the human form makes the circuit of the world in the 

 interest of every other faculty, and brings back for each a portion 

 of the reality which belongs to man in experience. Nor does it 

 matter whether it be a psychological problem, or a problem of causes, 

 or of ethics ; for the mould of man embodies the latter just as the 

 former, and accounts of the nature of things, and theories of duty, 

 take shape and order with the same facility under the banners of 

 the human form. Social theories also are incarnate there j for it 

 has been known from of old of the human body, that its parts are 

 the exemplars of a perfect commonwealth, intelligence and morality ; 

 in other words, that it is Christianity practical to very matter, built 

 into its own shape of a man. 



But if the principle of analogy be thus coextensive with just 

 thought, it cannot fail at the top to suggest the more living princi- 

 ple of universal symbolism ; for if the mind be like the body, and 

 actuates the body, the latter becomes expressive through means of 

 the likeness and the action ; and in that case the series of existences 

 in the world becomes similarly expressive, that is to say, symbolical 

 of the mind. The face of man thus travels throughout the uni- 

 verse, and love and intelligence look out from things with an infi- 

 nite variety according to their capacities. Nature and form are 

 therefore full of meaning to the true philosopher ; that is to say, 

 they always signify something in the mind and soul of man, and 

 the last account which can be given of them is, to trace out what 

 that something is. For as the arm means power, and the eye sight, 

 (though we could not guess as much unless our own potency and 

 vision were therein,) and as power and sight seem different from 

 these tools, so the horse and the ass, gold and silver, the rose and the 

 lily, have also meanings just as apparently remote from their forms ; 

 and these meanings are inner functions from which they come and 

 to which they return. Without such meanings these things have 

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