A Fearful Symmetry

by Mark Anthony Signorelli (March 2013)

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

That dozens of academics continue to try to square this circle should not blind us to the futility of the endeavor. The concepts and methods of science simply do not add up to a total, or even an adequate, picture of our experience.

In this way the species which delights as beautiful, pleasant, and wholesome suggests that there is primordial beauty, pleasure, and wholesomeness in that first Species, in which there is supreme proportion and equality with the generating Source, in which there is power flowing not from images of the imagination but from the truth of apprehension, in which there is an impression which preserves and satisfies and dispels all need in the one who apprehends.2

[1] Abrams, M.H., The Mirror and the Lamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), 163.

Distant Lands and Near, is now available.  His personal website can found at: markanthonysignorelli.com

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