What we realize as truth in the objective and other natural worlds is not the absolute but only the relative truth from our existing point of view, by our present imperfect senses and cognizance. It is subjective—out of the person himself. Here, and here only, all balances, all rests.

We must not say one word against real materials. But the wise know that they do not become real till touched by emotions, the mind. All the objective grandeurs of the world, for highest purposes, yield themselves up and depend on mentality alone. The mind, which alone builds the permanent edifice, haughtily builds it to itself. By it, with what follows it, are convey’d to mortal sense the culminations of the materialistic, the known, and a prophecy of the unknown.

Ere visible effects can come, thought must come; before all realities must exist their thought. “The mountains, rivers, forests, and the elements that gird them round about would be only blank conditions of matter if the mind did not fling its own divinity around them.”—This I think is one of the most indicative sentences I ever read.

The one brain includes those beautiful wonders the perceptions or senses, the subtle processes of thought and reason and causality, and an infinite variety else, so diverging and converging as to either make much of the finest thread of silk or wind its fingers round the world.

These physical realities we call the world are doubtless only essentially real in the impressions they leave and perpetuate upon the rational mind—the immortal soul. The topics of the world—the world itself, with all of its affairs—divide away and disappear in comparison with those things that come directly home to, or rise up out of, your own body and soul.

Truths unfold to you and emit themselves more fragrant than roses from living buds,
But it must be in yourself,
It shall come from the soul,
It shall be love.

After all is said and done in the way of argument, the whole raises but bubble of the sea-ooze against that unspeakable something in my own soul, which makes me know. There is in the soul an instinctive test of the sense and actuality of anything—of any statement of fact or morals. Let this decide. After all reasoning and analogy, and their most palpable demonstrations of anything, we have the real satisfaction when the soul tells and tests by its own archchemic power, superior to the learnedest proofs, as one glance of living sight is more than quarto volumes of description and of maps.

Tests sit, inner, secure, unapproachable to analysis, in the soul,
They are the judges of outer authorities and of all traditions,
They corroborate as they go only whatever corroborates themselves and touches themselves;
For all that, they have it forever in themselves to corroborate far and near without one exception.
The only test of the virtue or excellence of anything is that it pleases the soul,
The soul has never been once fooled and never can be fooled,
Heave for soundings over the whole sea, the lead hits hard bottom here, if nowhere else,
The soul, by its innate tests, must be the judge and standard of all things.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book,
Whatever thoroughly satisfies the soul is truth,
Whatever the litigation, whatever the cause to be argued, or the knot untied, this is the bar of appeals, the supreme court.
I subject all the teachings of the schools, and all dicta and authority, to the tests of myself,
I have dismiss’d whatever insulted my own soul,
And I encourage you to subject the same to the tests of yourself,
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul.

 Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof; something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul. The soul is restless and sad until it gets some clue, however indirect, to the relations between itself and time, space, and all the processes and objects that fill them.

The soul realizes only what is proportional to itself. The soul, sailing space forever, visiting every region, as a ship the sea, has within itself the vitality of all that is harmonious or pleasant. Every apparition in this world is but to rout the real object up from sleeping in yourself, that something to remind you may appear. The reason that anything pleases the soul, is that it finds its relations there, and awakes it.

The soul speaks for all, materials too, but can be understood only by the like of itself—the reason that what is wisdom to one is gibberish to another.
I seem to be right, you seem to be right—
Do you regard that as being impossible?
Maybe what is wrong for him is right for me,
Such things, too, do happen.

Listen to all sides, learn from all,
Considering well what they say, what they have to offer,
But think upon all subjects for yourself, filter them from yourself, decide for yourself,
Obey no man, obey yourself only.
Though the lore of the whole earth deny what I say, it amounts but to this: So it seems to them,
I simply answer: So it seems to me,
This is my way, my pleasure, my choice;
I will no longer look what things are rated to be, but what they really are to me.

Yet I think I have at least enough philosophy not to be too absolutely certain of anything,
Maybe the things I perceive only seem to me what they are, (as doubtless they indeed but seem,) as from my present point of view,
And might prove, (as of course they would,) naught of what they appear from entirely changed points of view,
Would be entirely changed and perhaps overthrown and reversed if we were advanced to superior development and points of view. 

I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them. It always keeps the way beyond open—always gives a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.
That great quality shared now by the greatest men, the faculty that is the mark of their greatness, is not to be too damned sure about anything. All the sages, then, now, always keep themselves free for new impressions.

I do not doubt that, whatever I know at a given time, there wait for me more which I do not know. All I know at any time suffices for that time only.
I feel like saying to the metaphysicians and moralists:  Hold your horses, keep them well in hand—you never know when you’ve got to take a sharp turn-about! It’s like in medicine—this year’s dogma is tomorrow thrown away.

What we thought we knew all about, we know little or nothing about,
And they who presume to teach know least of all about,
It is so unspeakably greater than we thought.
Our boasted knowledge, precious and manifold as it is, sinks into niches and corners before the infinite knowledge of the unknown. 

There are senses in which we do not know—I know and I don’t know;
Portals: What are those of the known but to ascend and enter the unknown?
Our judgments and views, what are they, even the best and most labored of them, but vestibules to far, far fuller views and judgments.
Human thought must possess a certain fluid, aerial character, akin to space itself,
Obscure to those of little or no imagination, but indispensable to the highest purposes,
The untold pointed at—the heavens all paved with it.

Above the doors of teaching the inscription is to appear:
Though little or nothing can be absolutely known, perceiv’d, except from a point of view which is evanescent, we know at least one permanency:
Time and space furnish successive chains, completions of material births and beginnings, solve all discrepancies, fears, and doubts, and eventually fulfil happiness—
And the prophecy of those births throws the true arch over all teaching, all science.

NEXT: THE POET’S TRUTH 

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