1LAWS for Creations,For strong artists and leaders—for fresh broods of teachers, and perfect literats for America,For diverse savans, and coming musicians.2There shall be no subject but it shall be treated with reference to the ensemble of the world, and the compact truth of the world—And no coward or copyist shall be allowed;There shall be no subject too pronounced—All works shall illustrate the divine law of indirections;There they stand—I see them already, each poised and in its place,Statements, models, censuses, poems, dictionaries, biographies, essays, theories—How complete! How relative and interfused! No one super- sedes another;They do not seem to me like the old specimens,16*
[ begin page 186 ]ppp.01500.194.jpgThey seem to me like Nature at last, (America has given birth to them, and I have also;)They seem to me at last as perfect as the animals, and as the rocks and weeds—fitted to them,Fitted to the sky, to float with floating clouds—to rustle among the trees with rustling leaves,To stretch with stretched and level waters, where ships silently sail in the distance.3What do you suppose Creation is?What do you suppose will satisfy the Soul, except to walk free and own no superior?What do you suppose I have intimated to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?And that there is no God any more divine than Yourself?And that that is what the oldest and newest myths finally mean?And that you or any one must approach Creations through such laws?