BIKDS AND POETS. 147 



That this entity must be infinitely remote from the posi- 

 tive being of God is self-evident. 



" As if the cause of life could think and live." 



God's being must be something immeasurably beyond the 

 ideas of thinking and living, as they appear to us for how 

 could like create its like ? It may pro-CTe&le creation is ab- 

 solute and beyond this ; the power of pro-creation is from 

 it an endowment : so that in applying the term creativeness 

 to any being under God, we must be understood as using it 

 in the sense of production or projection out of the laws of 

 its own life. 



We are no 



" Magian with his powerful wand," 



setting up to reveal, or be doctrinal of that which may not 

 be known ; but yet, we protest " we love similitudes," and 

 are fain to test how far they may playfully and safely carry 

 us ; for we mean to demonstrate (save the mark !) that these 

 Birds of which we are to treat are no less than the " winged 

 words " of this Earth's Poetry I 



Do they not express the supremest graces of a purely sen- 

 suous life of action which we have shown to be a neces- 

 sity of that vital energy permeating the globe and all that is 

 therein ? 



Now let us see how we can make our Earth a Poet to 

 discourse in sweet living numbers ! This must be compara- 

 tively with Man, of course. There are, as we have before 

 said, two souls ; Man possesses a soul a peculiar energy, 

 " breathed into his nostrils the breath of life " Eternal life, 

 higher than the life of the Earth, and to which its vital prin- 

 ciple has been given as a medium. 



Then, as the soul is man's highest vitality, why may not 

 the Principle of Life, which is to the Earth its highest vi- 

 tality, be to it the soul 



' The lightning of its being," 



