state as not out of nature, we mean such results as proceed from the
legitimate growth of our mental constitution, which we suppose to
be grounded in permanent, universal principles; and, whatever
modifications, however subtile, and apparently visionary, may follow
their operation in the world of sense, so long as that operation
diverge not from its original ground, its effect must be, in the
strictest sense, natural. Thus the wildest visions of poetry, the
unsubstantial forms of painting, and the mysterious harmonies of
music, that seem to disembody the spirit, and make us creatures of the
air,--even these, unreal as they are, may all have their foundation
in immutable truth; and we may moreover know of this truth by its own
evidence. Of this species of evidence we shall have occasion to speak
hereafter. But there is another kind of growth, which may well be
called unnatural; we mean, of those diseased appetites, whose effects
are seen in the distorted forms of the _conventional_, having no
ground but in weariness of the true; and it cannot be denied that this
morbid growth has its full share, inwardly and outwardly, both of
space and importance. These, however, must sooner or later end as they
began; they perish in the lie they make; and it were well did not
other falsehoods take their places, to prolong a life whose only
tenure is inconsequential succession,--in other words, Fashion.

If it be true, then, that even the commonplaces of life must all in
some degree partake of the mental, there can be but one rule by which
to determine the proper rank of any object of pursuit, and that is by
its nearer or more remote relation to our inward nature. Every system,
therefore, which tends to degrade a mental pleasure to the subordinate
or superfluous, is both narrow and false, as virtually reversing its
natural order.