For the problems to be solved are precisely those
which the physiologist and the naturalist omit to
state. It is not so pertinent to man to know all
the individuals of the animal kingdom, as it is to
know whence and whereto is this tyrannizing unity
in his constitution, which evermore separates and
classifies things, endeavoring to reduce the most
diverse to one form. When I behold a rich land-
scape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly
the order and superposition of the strata, than to
know why all thought of multitude is lost in a
tranquil sense of unity. I cannot greatly honor
minuteness in details, so long as there is no
hint to explain the relation between things and
thoughts; no ray upon the metaphysics of con-
chology, of botany, of the arts, to show the rela-
tion of the forms of flowers, shells, animals, archi-
tecture, to the mind, and build science upon ideas.
In a cabinet of natural history, we become sen-
sible of a certain occult recognition and sympathy
in regard to the most unwieldly and eccentric
forms of beast, fish, and insect. The American
who has been confined, in his own country, to the
sight of buildings designed after foreign models, is
surprised on entering York Minster or St. Peter's
at Rome, by the feeling that these structures are
imitations also, -- faint copies of an invisible ar-
chetype. Nor has science sufficient humanity, so

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