The binding force in this order is
what literature, ideal literature, most brings out and emphasizes in its
generalizations, that causal union which has hitherto been spoken of in
the region of plot only; but it exists in every aspect of this order,
and literature universalizes experience in all these realms, in the
provinces of beauty and passion no less than in those of virtue and
knowledge, and its method is the same in all.
Is not our knowledge of this fourfold order in its principles, in those
relations of its phenomena which constitute its laws, of the highest
importance of anything of human concern? In harmony with these laws, and
only thus, we ourselves, in whom this order is, become happy, righteous,
wise, and beautiful. In ideal literature this knowledge is found,
expressed, and handed down age after age--the knowledge of necessary and
permanent relations in these great spheres which, taken together,
exhaust the capacities of life. Man's moral sense is strong in
proportion as he apprehends necessity in the sequence of will and act;
his intellect is strong, his emotions, his sense of beauty, are strong
in the same way in proportion as he apprehends necessity in each several
field of experience.
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