The ice had floated;
and we sometimes start to think we are spelling out the same
sentences, saying the same words, repeating the same acts as in
former years. Our ice may float also.
This preponderance of the senses can we balance and redress?
Can we give permanence to the lightnings of thought which lick up in
a moment these combustible mountains of sensation and custom, and
reveal the moral order after which the earth is to be rebuilt anew?
Grave questions truly, but such as to leave us no option. To know
the facts is already a choosing of sides, ranges us on the party of
Light and Reason, sounds the signal for the strife, and prophesies an
end to the insanity and a restoration of the balance and rectitude of
man.
_Transcendentalism_
The more liberal thought of intelligent persons acquires a new
name in each period or community; and in ours, by no very good luck,
as it sometimes appears to us, has been designated as
Transcendentalism. We have every day occasion to remark its perfect
identity, under whatever new phraseology or application to new facts,
with the liberal thought of all men of a religious and contemplative
habit in other times and countries.
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