nor looked at." "Man is greater than a world, than systems of worlds;
there is more mystery in the union of soul with the physical than in the
creation of the universe." This sentence is by Henry Giles. To the
first portion of it I give unqualified belief. I believe, too, with John
Ruskin, that "the basest thought possible concerning man is that he has
no spiritual nature; and the foolishest misunderstanding of him possible
is, that he has, or should have, no animal nature. For his nature is
nobly animal, nobly spiritual--coherently and irrevocably so; neither
part of it may, but at its peril, expel, despise, or defy the other."
"Man is the metre of all things," says Aristotle,
"THE HAND
is the instrument of instruments, and the mind is the form of forms."
The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than
that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the
unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest
engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the
type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human
fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks
that _sympathy_ and exception to mathematical rule which the human
fingers, highly trained, impart to the keyboard, and the violin, that
thing most nearly in communication with the soul of man,--pays no
allegiance whatever save to the human hand well practiced in its
mastery; the hand skilled in love soothes the aching brow; the whole
framework of this instrument, the hand, filled with gold coins, almost
without volition spurns the spurious piece; the false bank-note is
lifted with suspicion; across the signature the deft fingers run to aid
the eye; over the letters the mind of the sightless pushes its loyal
touch, and the signal comes faithfully back to the dungeoned
intelligence!