Before such words as these, binding these States together as one nation, whose integrity nothing but treason would seek to destroy or weaken, the fierce invective of the Southern, and the feeble sophistry of the Northern traitor shrink to insignificance. They are at once the record and the prophecy of our success, declaring the foundation on which the Government is based, and pointing to yet greater glories to be attained in the superstructure.
'In diligent toil thy master is the bee; In craft mechanical, the worm that creeps Through earth its dexterous way, may tutor thee; In knowledge, couldst thou fathom all its depths, All to the seraph are already known: But thine, o Man, is Art--thine wholly and alone!'--SCHILLER.
'The _contemplation_ of the Divine Attributes is the source of the highest enjoyment: their _manifestation_ is the enduring base and unfailing spring of all true Art.'
Many good and great men persist in refusing to teach, save through abstract dogmas and logical formulæ, always disagreeable to and rarely comprehended by the masses, those high moral truths, which they are so eager to imbibe when presented to them under the attractive form of art. It is indeed impossible for man to grasp the essential truths of life through the understanding alone; because, created in the image of the triune God, he can only make vital truths fully his own in the symbolic unity of his triune being. If considered only as body or sensuous perception, only as soul or heart, only as spirit or intellect--he cannot be said to live at all, since it is only in the perfect union of the Three that his essential life is found. To make instruction really available to him, he must be taught as God and nature always teach him--as soul, spirit, and body. To sever them is to disintegrate the mystic core of his very being; to disregard the triune image in which he was made. As art is symbolic of man himself, it addresses itself to his whole being. Thus, man exists as:
Soul-Spirit-Body: to which the corresponding senses are--
Hearing-Seeing--Touching: the corresponding arts--
Music-Painting-Sculpture. Poetry is no fourth art; it but embraces and embodies them all in its correspondent divisions of--