28 LITEEAEY VALUES 



verse is intelligiMe to us because it is akin to our 

 own minds. Our minds are rather akin to it and 

 are derived from it. Emerson made much of this 

 thought. The truth here indicated is undoubtedly 

 the basis of all true analogy — this unity, this one- 

 ness of creation ; but the analogies that " are con- 

 stant and pervade Nature " are probably not so nu- 

 merous as Emerson seemed to fancy. Thus one can 

 hardly agree with him that there is " intent " of ana- 

 logy between man's life and the seasons, because 

 the seasons are not a universal fact of the globe, and 

 man's life is. The four seasons are well defined in 

 New England, but not in Ecuador. 



The agreement of appearances is one thing, the 

 identity of law and essence is another, and the agree- 

 ment of man's life with the seasons must be consid- 

 ered accidental rather than intentional. 



Language is full of symbols. We make the 

 world without a symbol of the world within. We 

 describe thoughts, and emotions, in the terms of an 

 objective experience. Things furnish the moulds in 

 which our ideas are cast. Size, proportion, mass, 

 vista, vastness, height, depth, darkness, light, coarse, 

 fine, centre, surface, order, chaos, and a thousand 

 other terms, we apply alike to the world without 

 and to the world within. We know a higher temper- 

 ance than concerns the body, a finer digestion and 

 assimilation than go on in it. 



Our daily conversation is full of pictures and par- 

 ables, or the emblematic use of things. From life 

 looked at as a voyage, we get the symbolic use of 



