{"id":"01KG8AM8K5ZB43ZYPC79K37NRT","cid":"bafkreibmhn5ytfgkn52a7suckra3vm6bbkirnswyh2tvjm5jdxh42gonvm","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3907,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 8","source_file":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","start_line":3868,"text":"another, and by an admirably graduated, growing comprehensiveness,\r\nthrown into the allegorical fire, till, at length, nothing is left but\r\nthe all-engendering heart of man; which remaining still unconsumed, the\r\ngreat conflagration is naught.\r\n\r\nOf a piece with this, is the _Intelligence Office_, a wondrous\r\nsymbolising of the secret workings in men’s souls. There are other\r\nsketches still more charged with ponderous import.\r\n\r\n_The Christmas Banquet_, and _The Bosom Serpent_, would be fine subjects\r\nfor a curious and elaborate analysis, touching the conjectural parts of\r\nthe mind that produced them. For spite of all the Indian-summer sunlight\r\non the hither side of Hawthorne’s soul, the other side--like the dark\r\nhalf of the physical sphere--is shrouded in a blackness, ten times\r\nblack. But this darkness but gives more effect to the ever-moving dawn,\r\nthat forever advances through it, and circumnavigates his world. Whether\r\nHawthorne has simply availed himself of this mystical blackness as a\r\nmeans to the wondrous effects he makes it to produce in his lights and\r\nshades; or whether there really lurks in him, perhaps unknown to\r\nhimself, a touch of Puritanic gloom,--this, I cannot altogether tell.\r\nCertain it is, however, that this great power of blackness in him\r\nderives its force from its appeals to that Calvinistic sense of Innate\r\nDepravity and Original Sin, from whose visitations, in some shape or\r\nother, no deeply thinking mind is always and wholly free. For, in\r\ncertain moods, no man can weigh this world without throwing in\r\nsomething, somehow like Original Sin, to strike the uneven balance. At\r\nall events, perhaps no writer has ever wielded this terrific thought\r\nwith greater terror than this same harmless Hawthorne. Still more: this\r\nblack conceit pervades him through and through. You may be witched by\r\nhis sunlight--transported by the bright gildings in the skies he builds\r\nover you; but there is the blackness of darkness beyond; and even his\r\nbright gildings but fringe and play upon the edges of thunder-clouds. In\r\none word, the world is mistaken in this Nathaniel Hawthorne. He himself\r\nmust often have smiled at its absurd misconception of him. He is\r\nimmeasurably deeper than the plummet of the mere critic. For it is not\r\nthe brain that can test such a man; it is only the heart. You cannot\r\ncome to know greatness by inspecting it; there is no glimpse to be\r\ncaught of it, except by intuition; you need not ring it, you but touch\r\nit, and you find it is gold.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 8"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJVQAZF49HK19VVYQ1DXW","peer_type":"segment","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1FFTGRE9J93Z3K29NGY","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AM8K54DR0G74Q6MVRFCV9","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"},{"peer":"01KG8AM8K5F2VGQ1KXCX7HF7KD","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:31.333Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:38.318Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}