'
Henceforth the multiplicity that you seek is one of organization and has
nothing to do with number. 'Time was,' you proclaim, that consciousness
might sift out the irrelevant. As you pass from collection to collection
individual fact becomes prolonged into general law and science dominates
the field of thought. A thousand years are as a day when subsumed by its
laws. You look at the objects of man's creating with new eyes. The
displays are no longer contests of laborious industry but of vision, and
faith. You see that truth has made itself manifest through the long
repetition of the same fundamental theme. That which is unique and
personal you are surprised to find of less value than the habit
perfected by patient practice. The routine and monotony of daily toil
become glorified in the light that now falls athwart your vision. You
learn to substitute for your personal feeling the common impersonal
element felt by the many. Your concern is not as formerly to recollect,
but to symbolize. To this end you study frieze and statuary and frequent
lectures. Your sense of social solidarity grows through mutual
comprehension of the same truths.
And again that 'vexing, forward reaching sense of some more noble
permanence' urges you on.
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