Now the other and only equally important truth in the world is that this
macrocosm of the Universe, with its harmony, cannot be apprehended at
all except as it is focussed upon the eye and intellect of Man, the
microcosm. All "transcendental" philosophy,--all discussions of the
"Absolute," of mind and matter, of "subjective" and "objective"
knowledge, of "ideas" and "phenomena," "flux" and "permanence"--all
"systems" and "schools," down from the earliest to be found in "Ritter
and Preller," through Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, on to Aquinas,
to Abelard, to the great scholastic disputants between Realism and
Nominalism; again on to Bacon, Spinoza, Locke, Comte, Hegel, and yet
again on to James and Bergson--all inevitably work out to this, that the
Universal Harmony is meaningless and nothing to Man save in so far as he
apprehends it, and that he can only apprehend it by reference to some
corresponding harmony within himself. Lacking him, the harmony (so far
as he knows) would utterly lack the compliment of an audience: by his
own faulty instrument he must seek to interpret it, if it is to be
interpreted at all: and so, like the man at the piano, he goes on "doing
his best."

* * * * *

"God created Man in His image," says the Scripture: "and," adds Heine,
"Man made haste to return the compliment." It sounds wicked, but is one
of the truest things ever said. After all, and without vanity, it is the
best compliment Man can pay, poor fellow!--and he goes on striving to
pay it, though often enough rebuked for his zeal. "Canst _thou_,"
demands the divine Interlocutor in the _Book of Job_--

_"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands