under the most unfavourable circumstances, his soul still remains alive to the grandeur of the moral law. He cannot screen himself from the influence and authority of this imposing grandeur over his actions, and it is only from being penetrated with a sense of it, that he acts without reference to enjoyment; for he never loses the consciousness that no misfortune whatever would compel him to adopt another behaviour.
It is, however, true that the soul only acquires this strength in a way similar to that we before described—only by a mighty internal pressure, and a manifold external struggle. But strength properly branches out, like its substance, from man's sensuous nature; and however seemingly remote, still reposes on that as its central stem. Now he who ceaselessly strives to exalt his faculties, and to infuse into them new youth and vigour by frequent enjoyment; who often calls in his strength of character to aid him in asserting his independence of sensualism, while he endeavours to combine this independence with the most exquisite susceptibility; whose deep unerring sense unweariedly searches after the truth; whose just and delicate feeling for the beautiful leaves no attractive form unnoticed; whose impulse to receive into himself his external perceptions, and to impregnate them with new issues—to transform all shapes of beauty into his own individuality, and fuse into each his entire being,—strives to generate new forms of beauty;—such a one may cherish the consoling consciousness that he is in the true path to approach that ideal which even the boldest flight of fancy has ventured to point out to human aspirations.
I have in this brief sketch endeavoured to show how intimately sensualism, with all its beneficial consequences, is interwoven with the whole tissue of human life and pursuits. Although such a topic is in itself somewhat foreign
