Excerpt from Principles and Portraits
In a scientific age, requiring that every thing shall be clearly observed, conceived, and described, it concerns us not to overlook what no sphere of definition can include. Exact discovery, like the projection of a map or chart and the figures in a picture, needs its undefined background. The atoms that combine in definite proportions, the imponderables of light and heat, - which Goethe said change bleak and brown winter to the green and blooming landscape, - proceed from and refer to somewhat immense. We can define a proposition, hut not that germinal ocean of life from which Agassiz thought come all animal and vegetable forms. Definition is limitation within measures of weight, space, and time; but how much cannot he put in pound or notched on any scale! Definition is discrimination; but are we not able to contemplate the whole? Yes, if universe be a lawful word.
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