628 THE MOUNTAIN. 



over by the same law of organic necessity. This majestic 

 simplicity carries the soul into a region of perpetual wonder, 

 demanding, as "the only condition of real insight, veneration 

 and love." Patient labor, and assiduous devotion in effort, 

 to explain the smallest minutiaB of the world, present the only 

 pathway to the secrets of nature, or mode of realizing our 

 connection with her great system of ends and uses. The 

 vaticination of the genius of the Greek comes then as a first 

 inspiration of science, and the myth of Pan is the song of 

 the "cell.*"f 



* " Primordial utricle" of Hugo von Mohl. 



f As an instance of flagrant and reckless profanity of a would-be 

 philosopher, and sacrilegious disregard, to the religious sentiments as 

 organized in the worship of the Gentile world for ages, and embodied 

 in the wonderful mythologies of the different nations, witness the 

 following extract; from which it may appear well enough for an im- 

 pertinent theological Philistine, ensconced in the comfortable cocoon 

 of modern Christianity and smartness, to talk in this manner; but 

 to the true philosopher, the myth is really the higher world seen 

 through the glass of nature, possibly, somewhat darkly: 



"Great latitude must be allowed on the score of poetry, and the 

 despotism of private opinion, in rendering all classics and classical 

 allusion, myths and Scriptures. As to profound philosophical and 

 philological interpretations of the Greek or any other myths, is not a 

 man his own horizon? or can a man lift himself up by his own ears? 

 and, looking from the obscure depths of the well of his own nature, 

 what can he see but its walls, upon which is written inscrutable mys- 

 tery ; or possibly extending his vision beyond those walls, he may 

 discern a spot of azure or a star gleaming in still more immeasurable 

 depths of the infinite heavens, upon which is written everlasting in- 

 comprehensibility and wonder. As is the man, so is his reading of 

 all myths, symbols, scriptures, men, and gods. A wise natural guess 

 would probably come as near to the gist or hidden meaning of many 

 of the fables which have occupied the world's solemn consideration 

 as the thousand-and-one interpretations of the most acute mytholo- 

 gists. Numberless are the ways through which the Infinite communi- 

 cates with the finite, and numberless are the ways which the finite 

 has of reading the hieroglyphics of the Infinite. 



"Human scribes and interpreters are infirm, and it is supreme 

 folly for one man to try to think for any other man; absurd for one 

 man to attempt to read or interpret anything for another man, or for 



