Ask you _my_ preference, what their hue?
Surely the safe, celestial blue.
He said: "Voice classified us. The harmonious voice tells of the
harmonious soul. Millions of fiends are evoked in a breath by an
irritated one. A gentle voice converts the Furies into Muses. The
highest saint is not he who strives the most violently, but he upon
whom goodness sits gracefully, whose strength is gentleness, duty
loved, because spontaneous, and who wastes none of his power in effort;
his will being one and above temptation. True love says, 'Come to my
embrace, you are safer with me than you were with yourself, since I am
wise above knowledge, and tasting of the apple.' The sequel is bliss
and peace. But after fascination comes sorrow, remorse. The touch of
the demonized soul is poison. Read Swedenborg's Hells, he added, and
beware of demonized eyes!"
I never saw any one who seemed to purify words as Mr. Alcott does; with
him nothing is common or unclean.
He then spoke of temperance in its widest sense, as being that which
contributed to health of the whole being, body and soul alike. He
said, "We should breakfast on sunrise and sup on sunset." And he read
passages from Pythagoras, recommending music as a diet. "Pythagoras
composed melodies for the night and morning, to purify the brain. He
forbade his disciples the using of flesh meats, or drinks which heated
and disturbed the brain, or hindered the music of dreams."
At this point of the conversation, Miss Bremer and Mr. Benzon, the
Swedish consul, came in, and there was a slight pause.
Mr. Alcott then resumed the subject, and read Emerson's Bacchus,
to which he gave new significance. When he had finished, he said,
"This is the wine we want." He then spoke of the subject proposed
for the evening's conversation, which was Enthusiasm, defining it as
"an abandonment to the instincts. The seer," he said, "was one in
whom memory predominated, and many of his visions were recollections
rather of a former than revelations of a future state." This state of
clairvoyance he named "thought a-bed, or philosophy recumbent"; and
in this view he spoke of "Swedenborg, who was an enthusiast in the
latter sense, and revealed remarkable things." He quoted a passage from
Swedenborg's diary, wherein he speaks of his being created with the
power of breathing inwardly, suspending his outward breathing, and in
this way conversed with angels and spirits.