After its own law and not by arithmetic is the rate of its
progress to be computed. The soul’s advances are not made by
gradation, such as can be represented by motion in a straight
line; but rather by ascension of state, such as can be
represented by metamorphosis,-from the egg to the worm, from
the worm to the fly. The growths of genius are of a certain
total character, that does not advance the elect individual
first over John, then Adam, then Richard, and give to each the
pain of discovered inferiority, but by every throe of growth
the man expands there where he works, passing, at each
pulsation, classes, populations of men. With each divine
impulse the mind rends the thin rinds of the visible and
finite, and comes out into eternity, and inspires and expires
its air.
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