It is not that this lively creature of God is indeed perfected with a
soul; this it would be superstition to believe. It has no more a person
than any other of its material fellows, but in its vagary of way, in the
largeness of its apparent freedom, in its rush of purpose, it seems to
mirror the action of mighty spirit. When a great wind comes roaring over
the eastern flats towards the North Sea, driving over the Fens and the
Wringland, it is like something of this island that must go out and
wrestle with the water, or play with it in a game or a battle; and when,
upon the western shores, the clouds come bowling up from the horizon,
messengers, outriders, or comrades of a gale, it is something of the sea
determined to possess the land. The rising and falling of such power,
its hesitations, its renewed violence, its fatigue and final repose--all
these are symbols of a mind; but more than all the rest, its exultation!
It is the shouting and the hurrahing of the wind that suits a man.
Note you, we have not many friends. The older we grow and the better we
can sift mankind, the fewer friends we count, although man lives by
friendship. But a great wind is every man's friend, and its strength is
the strength of good-fellowship; and even doing battle with it is
something worthy and well chosen. If there is cruelty in the sea, and
terror in high places, and malice lurking in profound darkness, there is
no one of these qualities in the wind, but only power.
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