The prophet with such a message as this will, of course, appeal for
the most part to the experience of exceptional moments--those
moments when "we see into the life of things;" when the face of
Nature sends to us "gleams like the flashing of a shield;"--hours
such as those of the Solitary, who, gazing on the lovely distant
scene,
Would gaze till it became
Far lovelier, and his heart could not sustain
The beauty, still more beauteous.
But the idealist, of whatever school, is seldom content to base his
appeal to us upon these scattered intuitions alone. There is a whole
epoch of our existence whose memories, differing, indeed, immensely
in vividness and importance in the minds of different men, are yet
sufficiently common to all men to form a favourite basis for
philosophical argument. "The child is father of the man;" and
through the recollection and observation of early childhood we may
hope to trace our ancestry--in heaven above or on the earth beneath--
in its most significant manifestation.
It is to the workings of the mind of the child that the philosopher
appeals who wishes to prove that knowledge is recollection, and that
our recognition of geometrical truths--so prompt as to appear
instinctive--depends on our having been actually familiar with them
in an earlier world.
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