I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome Picture, though it be but of an Horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony: and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music where ever there is a harmony, order, or proportion: and thus far we may maintain the music of the Spheres; for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all Church-Music. For myself, not only for my obedience, but my particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern-Music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer. There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear, as the whole World, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto Music: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their souls, are born Poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto Rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his Story, fall upon a verse; and Cicero, the worst of Poets, but declaiming for a Poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect Hexameter. I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession: I do not secretly implore and wish for Plagues, rejoyce at Famines, revolve Ephemerides^29 and Almanacks in expectation of malignant Aspects,^30 fatal Conjunctions,^30 and Eclipses.^30 I rejoice not at unwholesome Springs, nor unseasonable Winters: my Prayer goes with the Husbandman`s; I desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be put out of temper. Let me be sick myself if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him no good, methinks it is scarce honest gain; though I confess, `tis but the worthy salary of our well-intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable: yet not for my own sake, or that they be beyond my Art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own. And to speak more generally, those three Noble Professions which all civil Commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not any way exempt from their infirmities; there are not only diseases incurable in Physic, but cases indissolvable in Laws, Vices incorrigible in Divinity. If General Councils may err, I do not see why particular Courts should be infallible; their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of Man, and the Laws of one do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft-times the opinions of his Predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules, and the Logic of his proper Principles. Again, (to speak nothing of the Sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure not only but whose nature is unknown,) I can cure the Gout or Stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride or Avarice in others. I can cure Vices by Physic when they remain incurable by Divinity, and shall obey my Pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this; which, though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is Nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.
For my Conversation,^31 it is like the Sun`s, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man bad, and the worst, best; that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good: there is no man`s mind of such discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tunable disposition may not strike a harmony. Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is the posie of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst; there are in the most depraved and venomous dispositions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an Antiperistasis become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in nature: the greatest Balsams do lie also enveloped in the bodies of most powerful Corrosives. I say, moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own Antidote, and that which preserves them from the venom of themselves, without which they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the corruption that I fear within me, not the contagion of commerce without me. `Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me; `tis I that do infect myself; the man without a Navel yet lives in me; I feel that original canker corrode and devour me; and therefore Defenda me Dios de me, "Lord deliver me from myself," is a part of my Litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole World about him. Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus, though it be the Apophthegm of a wise man, is yet true in the mouth of a fool. Indeed, though in a Wilderness, a man is never alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor any thing that can be said to be alone and by itself, but God, Who is His own circle, and can subsist by Himself; all others, besides their dissimilary and Heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot subsist without the concourse^37 of God, and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone and by itself, which is not truly one; and such is only God: all others do transcend an unity, and so by consequence are many.

Of Harmony

Sir Thomas Browne
(1605-1682)

Interests

How shall I find a name for that subtle feeling which seized hold
upon me this morning in the twilight of waking?
It was a reminiscence, charming, indeed, but nameless, vague, and featureless, like the figure of a woman seen for an instant by a sick man in the uncertainty of delirium, and across the shadows of his darkened room. I had a distinct sense of a form which I had seen somewhere, and which had moved and charmed me once, and then had fallen back with time into the catacombs of oblivion. But all the rest was confused: place, occasion, and the figure itself, for I saw neither the face nor its expression.
The whole was like a fluttering veil under which the enigma - the secret, of happiness -might have been hidden. And I was awake enough to be sure that it was not a dream.
In impressions like these we recognize the last trace of things which are sinking out of sight and call within us, of memories which are perishing. It is like a shimmering marsh-light falling upon some vague outline of which one scarcely knows whether it represents a pain or a pleasure-a gleam upon a grave. How Strange! One might almost call such things the Ghosts of the soul, reflections of past happiness, the manes of our dead emotions.
If, as the Talmud, I think, says, every feeling of love gives birth involuntarily to an invisible Genius or spirit which yearns to complete its existence, and these glimmering phantoms, which have never taken to themselves form and reality, are still wandering in the limbo to the soul, what is there to astonish us in the strange apparitions which sometimes come to visit our pillow? At any rate, the fact remains that I was not able to force the phantom to tell its Name, nor give any shape or distinctness to my reminiscence.
What a melancholy aspect life may wear to us when we are floating down the current of such dreamy thoughts as these! It seems like some vast nocturnal shipwreck in which a hundred loving voices are clamouring for help, while the pitiless mounting wave is silencing all the cries one by one, before we have been able, in this darkness of death, to press a hand or give the farewell kiss. From such a point of view destiny looks harsh, savage, and cruel, and the tragedy of life rises like a rock in the midst of the dull waters of daily triviality.
It is impossible not to be serious under the weight of indefinable anxiety produced in us by such a spectacle. The surface of things may be smiling or commonplace, but the depths below are austere and terrible. As soon as we touch upon eternal things, upon the destiny of the soul, upon truth or duty, upon the secrets of life and death, we become grave whether we will or no.
Love at it's highest point- Love sublime, unique, invincible - leads us strait to the brink of the great abyss, for it speaks to us directly of the infinite and of eternity. It is eminently religious: it may even become religion. When all around a man is wavering and changing-when everything is growing dark and featureless to him in the far distance of an unknown future - when the world seems but a fiction or a fairy-tale, and the universe a chimera-when the whole edifice of ideals vanishes in smoke, and all realities are penetrated with doubt- what is the fixed point which may still be his?
The faithful heart of a woman!
There he may rest his head; there he will find strength to live, strength to believe, and, if need be, strength to die in peace with a benediction on his lips. Who knows if love and its beatitude, clear manifestation as it is of the universal harmony of things, is it not the best demonstration of a fatherly and understanding God, Just as it is the shortest road by which to reach Him? Love is a faith, and one faith leads to another. And this faith is happiness, light and force. Only by it does a man enter into the series of the living, the awakened, the happy, the redeemed- of those true men who know the value of existence and who labour for the glory of God and of Truth. Till then we are but babblers and Chatterers, spendthrifts of our time, our faculties, and our gifts, without aim, without real joy- weak, infirm, and useless beings, of no account in the scheme of things,. Perhaps it is through love that I shall find my way back to faith, to religion, to energy, to concentration. It seems to me, at least, that if I could but find my work-fellow and my destined companion, all the rest would be added unto me, as though to confound my unbelief and make me blush for my despair.
Believe, then, in fatherly Providence, and dare to love.

Of Love
Henri-Frederic Amiel

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'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

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