"Let foreign nations of their language boastWhat fine variety each tongue affords,I like our language as our men and coast,Who cannot dress it well want wit not words."
"Great, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of our tongue before the Norman conquest, in this, that the old English could express most aptly all the conceptions of the mind in their own speech without borrowing from any."
We still draw from the same wells of meaning as did Chaucer and Camden; the language, by additions from foreign sources, as by native growth, having now become the most composite of any; it is the one we speak, and affect to teach. If we have few masters, it is because we yet cultivate other tongues at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness and beauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, but fail to inform us by what happy chances, whether by force of genius altogether, or more natural methods of study, the language and literature came to its prime in that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to listen to the great authors and teachers of those golden days when our tongue had the sweep and splendor, the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and flexibility proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from these authorities by what method they attained to their proficiency in its use; instructors of Princes, as they were, and inspirers of those who made the literature.
Roger Ascham—Queen Elizabeth's school-master—proposed after teaching the common rudiments of grammar to begin a course of double translation, first from Latin into English, and shortly after from English into Latin, correcting the mistakes of the student and leading to the formation of a classical style, by pointing out the differences between the re-translation and the original, and explaining their reasons. "His whole system is built upon the principle of dispensing as much as possible with the details of grammar, and he supports his theory by a triumphant reference to its practical effects, especially as displayed in the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well known proficiency in Latin, he declares to have been obtained without grammatical rules, after the very simplest had been mastered."
Sir Philip Sidney, whose opinions are of the highest importance in these matters, speaking in his "Defence of Poesie," says:
"Another will say that English wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise that it wants not grammar; for grammar it might have, but needs not, being so easie in itselfe and so void of those cumbersome differencies of cases, genders, moods and tenses, which I think was a piece of the tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to schoole to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the minde which is the end of speech, that it hath equally with any other tongue in the world."[D]
Milton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue owes most, and who spent much time in compiling an English Dictionary, writes in one of his Italian Letters:
"Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely the manners and men and to rule them at home and in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first place above all others I should esteem worthy of honor. But next to him, the man who strives in maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking and writing derived from a good age of the nation, and as it were to fortify the same round with a kind of wall, the daring to overleap which a law only short of that of Romulus should be used to prevent. Should we choose to compare the two in respect to utility, it is the former alone that can make the social existence of the citizens just and holy, but it is the latter that makes it splendid and beautiful, which is the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe, supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against an enemy invading the territory; the other takes to himself the task of extirpating and defeating by means of a learned detective police of ears, and a light-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which makes large inroads upon the minds of men and is a destructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to be considered of small importance what language, pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their customary degree of propriety in speaking it—a matter which oftener than once was the salvation of Athens. Nay, as it is Plato's opinion, that, by a change in the manner and habit of dress, serious commotions and mutations are portended in a commonwealth, I, for my part, would rather believe that the fall of that city, and low and obscure condition, followed on the general vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech. For let the words of a country be in part unhandsome and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear, and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with minds already prepared for any amount of servility? On the other hand, we have never heard that any empire, any state, did not flourish in at least a middling degree as long as its liking and care for its language lasted."
Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression. If we consult our experience we shall find that we owe much to the home dialect, the school, the books we read, the letters we write; to our fellowships, the practice of such living speakers and writers as chance threw in our way, our habits of thinking, observations of life and things, the cultivation of the sensibilities, imagination, the common sense, more than all else besides. A man's speech is the measure of his culture; a graceful utterance the first born of the arts.
Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it poorly; books and colleges at second hand; the eye craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars: actual contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons as these rise and roll. And whoever will strike bold strokes for institutions and literature, must be often afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping the select rhetoric for his theme.
Illustration: Design of a mask
[C]"It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop Berkeley, "to tell my readers that the greatest of men had ever a high esteem of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied patriots, magistrates and lawgivers to the most flourishing states, as well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And yet it were happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato."
[D]"We learn languages," says Luther, "much better by way of mouth at home, in the street, than out of books. Letters are dead words; the utterances of the mouth, are living words, which in writing can never stand forth so distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language, which men could learn to speak with correctness and propriety by the rules of grammar. Yet let none think or conclude from all this, that I would reject the grammars altogether."
"As great a storeHave we of books as bees of herbs, or more,And the great task to try them, know the good,To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food,Is a rare scant performance."
Daniel.
Illustration: Banner with bee
Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select the more enjoyable; and like these are approached with diffidence, nor sought too familiarly nor too often, having the precedence only when friends tire. The most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, they frankly declare the author's mind, without giving offence. Like living friends they too have their voice and physiognomies, and their company is prized as old acquaintances. We seek them in our need of counsel or of amusement, without impertinence or apology, sure of having our claims allowed. A good book justifies our theory of personal supremacy, keeping this fresh in the memory and perennial. What were days without such fellowship? We were alone in the world without it. Nor does our faith falter though the secret we search for and do not find in them will not commit itself to literature, still we take up the new issue with the old expectation, and again and again, as we try our friends after many failures at conversation, believing this visit will be the favored hour and all will be told us. Nor do I know what book I can well spare, certainly none that has admitted me, though it be but for the moment and by the most oblique glimpse, into the mind and personality of its author; though few there are that prefer such friendly claim to one's regard, and satisfy expectation as he turns their leaves. Our favorites are few; since only what rises from the heart reaches it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men wheresoever love and letters journey.
Nor need we wonder at their scarcity or the value we set upon them; life, the essence of good letters as of friendship, being its own best biographer, the artist that portrays the persons and thoughts we are, and are becoming. And the most that even he can do, is but a chance stroke or two at this fine essence housed in the handsome dust, but too fugitive and coy to be caught and held fast for longer than the passing glance; the master touching ever and retouching the picture he leaves unfinished.
"My life has been the poem I would have writ,But I could not both live and utter it."
I find books like persons more attractive as they are the more suggestive, more mythical and difficult to render at once to the senses, and enjoy them the more for this blending of nature with mind,—the text sparkling with the author's personality. What is thus implied is more gracefully delivered than if written literally; it piques then the fancy more and calls the higher gifts into play; and an author best serves me who, speaking alike to imagination and reason, arms with figures apt for occasions, thus pluming the genius for discourse. And the like may be said of the dictionaries: opened at hazard in lively moods, the columns become charged with thought, as if each word were blood-wise and fleshed with meaning. Again, books professing system and completeness are wont to be dry and unprofitable save for their facts and inferences; truth the flowing essence of things, the substance of being, accosting the mind most gracefully as a flowing form, fixed for the moment of passing only in the mind's eye, and is studied to best advantage rather in books of biography and poetry than of history or science, wherein the personality is oftenest lost in abstractions of fact. Reading, like conversation, is an idealism most profitable as it calls imagination into play, and thus leads forth all other gifts.
Books of table-talk have this advantage over most others; being the best companions for the moment, they can be taken up and laid down without loss, and when sensible are best whetstones for the wits. With the essayists, the poets, books of letters and lives, one's library were always alive and inviting. Good for moments these are always good: we may open by chance, dip anywhere, read in any order, begin at the last paragraph and read backward as well; obvious consecutiveness being of less consequence. Nor do I find the logic the worse when thus seemingly broken and obscure, since each paragraph is a unit standing apart yet all related in the perspective which the reader commands. We could not spare from our galaxy the great essayists and moralists, Pliny, Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne Cowley, Coleridge, and the rest; each delineating in his proper way that antique faith in man and the world, which being one and universal in essence, unites all mankind. We know the history of these pieces of life, these experiences recorded for us by their inspired authors, as if themselves were scribes of the spirit and committed it to letters for our especial benefit.
Any library is an attraction. And there is an indescribable delight—who has not felt it that deserves the name of scholar—in mousing at choice among the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and finding the oldest of these sometimes newest of the new, fresher, more suggestive than the book just published and praised in the reviews. Nor is the pleasure scarcely less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening by preference at the end rather than title-page, and seizing the author's conclusions at a glance. Very few books repay the reading in course. Nor can we excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to copy passages into our common places, for quotation, proverbs, meditation, or other uses. A good book is fruitful of other books; it perpetuates its fame from age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers.
One must be rich in thought and character to owe nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to profitable reading; and the less reading is better than more;—book-struck men are of all readers least wise, however knowing or learned.
"Books cannot make the mind,Which we must bring apt to be set aright,Yet do they rectify it in that kindAnd touch it so as that they turn that wayWhere judgment lies. And though we may not findThe certain place of truth, yet do they stayAnd entertain us near about the same,And give the soul the best delight that mayEncheer it most, and make our spirits enflameTo thoughts of glory and to worthy deeds."
Moreover for gifts, what so gracefully bestowed as fitting books conveying what no words of the giver could convey? Were the history of the few books of the heart published, what more enduring compliment would this confer on their authors! Perhaps the finest books have least fame and find but a few choice readers. 'Tis high praise bestowed on an author that his book is taken up with love and expectation, we coming to his page again and again without disappointment. To be enjoyable a book must be wholesome like nature, and flavored with the religion of wisdom.
Books of letters bring the reader nearest to the life and personality of the writer:
"For more than kisses letters mingle souls,For then friends absent meet."
Written with this advantage of perspective, the epistle is oftentimes more acceptable than were the interview, more discreet and opportune, since committing ourselves to the writing with a kind of reserved abandonment, if I may thus characterize our mood, which in conversation we might naturally overleap, we give that only in which another may modestly sympathize and share—so shading our egotism as to tell all about ourselves with the delicacy of self-respect without wounding that of others. Epistolary correspondence is the most difficult and delicate of all composition. And this perhaps accounts for the few books of the kind in our or any language; and the best of these mostly written by women who give themselves heartily to sentiment. One may think himself fortunate if the gift be his, and his experience find expression in his correspondence. Perhaps the diary has this advantage over letters; we make it our confidant committing to its leaves what we would not to another; sure of the sacred trust being kept for us. And the most interesting biographies are composed largely of these. The more autobiographical the more attractive. The keeping of a journal is an education. Let every one try his hand at one and begin young. If it get the best of his hours and an autobiography out of him, neither his time has been misspent nor has he lived in vain. A life worth living is worth recording. To what end lives any, if he fail of getting apparent order at least into it; living in a manner worthy of celebrity? Life were poor enough that does not organize the chaos and bring the joy of creation, pronouncing it and all things good, excellence ever falling naturally into order and melody. Let one value above all literary fame the gift of seizing and portraying his privatest thought,—the homely furnitures and primogenitures,—and if but partially successful consider himself as having attained the fairest laurels the muse has to bestow. As the best fruits of the season fall latest and keep the longest, so those of a lifetime; and fortunate is he whose genius thus gathers his choicest samples housed carefully in a book for any who may relish their flavor.
One cannot be well read unless well seasoned in thought and experience. Life makes the man. And he must have lived in all his gifts and become acclimated herein to profit by his readings. Living at the breadth of Shakspeare, the depth of Plato, the height of Christ, gives the mastery, or if not that, a worthy discipleship. Life alone divines life. We read as we live; the book being for us the deeper or the shallower as we are. If read from the reason, it answers to the reason, but fails of finding imagination, the moral sentiment, the affections, fails of making valid its claims upon the deepest instincts of the heart,—those critics of inspiration and interpreters,—all books owing their credibility to the fact of being written from, and addressed to these, as eye-witnesses and sponsors. Mothers of our mothers we are ever at their teats. Most owe more to tradition than to culture or literature; the best of literature as of nurture, being still largely tinctured with tradition. Our debt to the Hebrew scriptures has been greater doubtless than to any literature hitherto accessible to us of the Saxon stock; greater than to all foreign literatures besides. And now the instincts prompt thoughtful minds as never before to explore the prime sources and drink freely at the fountains.
"Are mouldy records now the living springs,Whose healing waters slake the thirst within?Oh! never yet hath mortal drankA draught restorativeThat well'd not from the depths of his own soul."
Very desirable it were since the gates of the East are now opening wide and giving the free commerce of mind with mind, to collect and compare the Bibles of the races for general circulation and careful reading. For still out of the Theban night rays the light of our day and blends with all our thinking and doing—China, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Palestine, Greece, Rome, Britain—the christendom and world of to-day.
Why nibbling always whereYe nothing fresh can findUpon those rocks?Lo! meadows green and fair!Come pasture here your mind,Ye bleating flocks.
Why nibbling always whereYe nothing fresh can findUpon those rocks?
Lo! meadows green and fair!Come pasture here your mind,Ye bleating flocks.
"Counsel is not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only useful among men, but the latter is for the most part reserved for the gods."—Pythagoras.
Illustration: Banner with butterfly
i.—religious.
"Who shapes his Godhead out of flesh or stone,Knows not a God; but he who lives like one."
Know, that seeing you, I divine your gods also. Why name them then one by one so sentimentally and so often? Being yours individually, so unmistakably in your image, surely none needs question or desire them. A thousand thanks if you will lisp never a syllable more about them. As I treat them civilly by my silence, why persist thus pertinaciously in thrusting their claims upon my attention and then questioning my piety for not christening them? O! rare respecting silence, deep is the religion that fathoms thine; speaking most reverently when deepest, and divining mysteries that none names devoutly. What if the sacred name were the silent syllable in the saint's devotions, and he
"One of the few, who in his townHonors all preachers, is his own?Sermons ne'er hears, or not so manyAs leaves no time to practise any?—Hears, ponders reverently, and thenHis practice preaches o'er again.His parlor sermons rather areThose to the eye than to the ear;His prayers taking price and strengthNot from their loudness nor their length:His murmurs have their music too,Ye mighty pipes, as well as you;Nor yields the noblest nestOf warbling seraphim to the ears of loveA choicer lesson, than the joyful breastOf some poor panting turtle dove."
One sometimes thinks silence for a century were most worshipful since speech babbles so badly. Has not harlequin in bands and book played out his part the world over?—the drawl of sacred names been heard till sacred names seem profane, and it were devout to fall into silence about them more eloquent than any speeches about sanctity? If infidelity, indifference, scepticism, sweep secretly the breadth and depths of Christendom, 'tis but the binding spell of these superstitions about the name of One whom the love and admiration of all good men hold precious and will not let perish from love and remembrance.
What were Christ Jesus' life and gospel sweet,If not in loving hearts he fix his holy seat?
If one's life is not worshipful, no one cares for his professions. Piety is a sentiment: the more natural it is, the wholesomer. Nor is there piety where charity is wanting. "If one love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen." None are deceived as to the spirit of their acquaintances: the instinct of every village, every home, intimates true character. We recognize goodness wherever we find it. 'Tis the same helpful influence, beautifying the meanest as the greatest service by its manners, doing most when least conscious, as if it did it not.
"A man's best things are nearest him,Lie at his feet;It is the distant and the dimThat we are sick to greet."
Let us have unspoken creeds and these quick and operative. I wish mine to be so, for though it embosoms doctrines fit to shine in words, it seems most becoming to publish truths thus vital by example rather, sentiments so private shrinking from the frost of distrust, the heat of controversy. Personal in their traits and colored with individual hues, they court the confidences of silence, and are unspeakable.
One needs but brighten his eyes to look deep into the depths of his heart and settle all disputes. Enlarge by a thought our view, exalt it by a sentiment, we find all men of our creed; or, far better, superior to party or creed. The uprise of an idea, perception of a principle, makes many one and inseparable. The liberal mind is of no sect; it shows to sects their departures from the ideal standard, and thus maintains pure religion in the world. But there are those whose minds, like the pupil of the eye, contract as the light increases. 'Tis a poor egotism that sees only its own image reflected in its vision. "Only as thou beest it thou seest it." How differently the different sects interpret the scriptures, each according to its light and training! I imagine our Bible is more loosely read, least understood of any book in the English tongue: conceive a fresh generation coming to its perusal as to a volume just issued in modern type from a popular bookstore and reviewed in the journals. How better acquit ourselves to the Bibles of the world than by fairly measuring our private convictions with their spirit and teachings? Let us first acquaint ourselves with these Records of Revelation before we claim for ours the merit of being the only inspired volume; ourselves the favored people—as if the Truth were a geographical resident dwelling in our neighborhood only.
When thou approachest to The One,Self from thyself thou first must free,Thy cloak duplicity cast clean aside,And in the Being's Being Be.
One does not like to disturb the faith of his neighbors, yet cannot speak truly on religious themes without touching the sensibilities of the weak, and sometimes wounding where he sought sympathy and support. It takes a good man to speak tenderly of matters of faith and practice in which good people have been bred, their hearts being prompt to feel and act without questioning the head. Precious souls, if not overwise, or strong for reform; the weak saints being as formidable impediments as the strong sinners, both blocking the ways to amendment. But temperament, inborn tendencies, predispositions, determine one's cast of thinking or no-thinking, and go far to shape his religious opinions. Our instincts, faithfully drawn out and cherished by purity of life, lead to Theism as their flower and fruit. If swayed by the senses we are natural Pantheists, at best idolaters and unbelievers in the Personal Mind. The passions prevailing, incline us to Atheism, or some superstition ending in scepticism, and indifference to all religious considerations.
"Some whom we call virtuous, are not soIn their whole substance, but their virtues growBut in their humors, and at seasons show.For when through tasteless, flat humility,In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he.So is the blood sometimes: whoever ranTo danger unimportuned, he was thenNo better than a sanguine, virtuous man.So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fearAll contributions to this world forbear,Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.Spiritual, choleric critics, who in allReligions find fault, and forgive no fall,Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.We're thus but parcel gilt, to gold we're grownWhen virtue is our soul's complexion—Who knows his virtue's name or place has none."
"Some whom we call virtuous, are not soIn their whole substance, but their virtues growBut in their humors, and at seasons show.
For when through tasteless, flat humility,In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see,'Tis but his phlegm that's virtuous and not he.
So is the blood sometimes: whoever ranTo danger unimportuned, he was thenNo better than a sanguine, virtuous man.
So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fearAll contributions to this world forbear,Have virtue in melancholy, and only there.
Spiritual, choleric critics, who in allReligions find fault, and forgive no fall,Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall.
We're thus but parcel gilt, to gold we're grownWhen virtue is our soul's complexion—Who knows his virtue's name or place has none."
ii.—personal.
Persist in being yourself, and against fate and yourself. Faith and persistency are life's architects, while doubt and despair bury all under the ruins of any endeavor. You may pull all your paradises about your ears save your earliest; that is to be yours sometime. Strive and have; still striving till striving is having. We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes. Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in life's lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the falling of our manliness into decay. These blanks were all prizes had we the equanimity to take them without whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer arise not from circumstances chiefly, but from ourselves. If the dose is nauseous or bitter, 'tis because we are, else it were not drank off with the disgust we manifest. Sweet, bitter or sour,—we taste one thing in everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each once be clean delivered of himself how salutary were all things and sufficing. "'Tis in morals as in dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid of it."
Only virtue is fame; nor is it forward in sounding its own praises, being sure that merit never sleeps untold, nor dies without honors. It cannot: once lived and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it publishes itself in spite of every concealment and sometime blazes its fame abroad by myriads of trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of bashfulness, or hidden under the bushel of misapprehension, or inopportunity, flames forth at fitting moment, irradiates the world thereafter forever, streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring from on high.
It is as ignoble to go begging conditions as to go begging bread. If too feeble, too proud or unapt to create these, one may make up his mind to dispense with any advantage that power on that side of life confers. Not a circumstance, like the animal whose place in nature is determined, but a creator of circumstances, man brings to his help freedom, opportunity, art, to build a world out of the world in harmony with his wants. If his occupation is spoiling him 'tis the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to quit it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. He must be a bad economist who squanders himself on his maintenance; wasting both his days and himself. His gifts are too costly for such cheap improvidence. One's character is the task allotted him to form, his faculties the implements, his genius the workman, life the engagement, and with these gifts of nature and of God, shall he fail to quarry forth from his opportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? "The wise man does not submit to employments which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends himself to them only."
Nor is any man greatest standing apart in his individualism; his strength and dignity come by sympathy with the aims of the best men of the community of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the crowd, craving popularity for propping repute, forfeits his claim to reverence and expires in the incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as columns of the temple whose dome covers all, against whose pillared sides multitudes lean; at whose base they kneel in times of trouble. Stand fast by your convictions and there maintain yourself against every odds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty God, and a majority against all the world:
Vox priva, vox Dei.
iii.—political.
"To God, thy country, and thyself be true,If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard."
Both conformity and nonconformity are alike impracticable. When the conformist can stay clean in his conformity, the nonconformist come clean out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead self-consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. I have never known the followers of either to come clean out of themselves even, but casting their tributes to expediency or authority, surrender unreservedly to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into free institutions, it behooves all to preserve that freedom unimpaired, neither intimidated nor bribed by persons or parties: see that these take nothing of theirs with consent, least of all that which gives consent its dignity and worth,—one's integrity. Good men should not obey bad laws too well, lest bad men taking courage from the precedent, disobey good ones.
"Know there's on earth a yet auguster thing,Veiled though it be, than President or King."
The honorable man prefers his privilege of standing uncommitted to parties when these fail to represent the whole of honor and justice for the state. But when politics become attractive by being principled, senates and cabinets the legislators and executives of justice and common rights, servants of the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and faithful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and patriotic suffrage for having affairs administered through the best men, whom best men promote to offices to which their virtues give dignity and distinction. There are times nevertheless in one's history when abstinence from this first privilege of a freeman and republican, seems a duty best performed in its non-performance, the true means of preserving self-respect, by standing magnanimously as a protest for the right against the wrong—a vote less on the wrong side of a mixed issue, being as two cast on the right side, the silent significance of a name known as the representative of honor and justice, showing where lies the wrong and the shame—the blush of a defeat on the cheek of an ill-gotten victory. Of no party properly, a good man votes by his virtues for mankind, too just to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor.
At best the state's polity is deliberative, ruling the right as far as is practicable under the circumstances. Of mixed elements, it contents itself with mixed results,—the best permitted under the mixed conditions. But the statesman may not compromise principle for the sake of accommodating legislation to suit the interests of party. If he ride that horse too fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General intelligence interposes the effective check upon political ambition and carries forward state affairs. But if, unequal to self-government, the people have attained to that sense of freedom and no more, which renders liberty a snare, then the state stumbles towards a despotism, call the rule by any fine name you please. No greater calamity can befall a people than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling liberty; any impotency of indecision betraying a lapse into slavery from which the gravest deliberative wisdom cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the yoke and wear it restively meanwhile, were a servitude that only slavery itself can cure.
Where sleep the godsThere mob-rule sways the state,Treason hath plots and fell debate,Brother doth brother darkly brand,Few faithful midst sedition's storm do stand,The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land.
"States are destroyed, not so much from want of courage as for want of virtue, and the most pernicious of all ignorance is, when men do not love what they approve; written laws being but images of, or substitutes for those true laws which ought to be present in every human soul through a perfect insight into good."
the soul's errand.
"Go, Soul, the Body's guest,Upon a thankless errand;Fear not to touch the best,The truth shall be thy warrant;Go, since all else must die,And give all else the lie.Go tell the Court it glowsAnd shines like rotten wood;Go tell the Church it showsWhat's good, but does not good:If Court and Church reply,Give Court and Church the lie.Tell Potentates they liveActing, but base their actions;Not loved, unless they give,Nor strong, save by their factions:If Potentates reply,Give Potentates the lie.Tell men of high condition,That rule affairs of state,Their purpose is ambition,Their practice chiefly hate:And if they do reply,Then give them all the lie.Tell those that brave it most,They beg for more by spending;Who, in their greatest cost,Seek nothing but commending:And if they make reply,Spare not to give the lie.Tell Zeal it lacks devotion;Tell Love it is but lust;Tell Time it is but motion;Tell Help it is but dust:And wish them no reply,For thou must give the lie.Tell Age it daily wasteth;Tell Honor how it alters;Tell Beauty that it blasteth;Tell Favor that she falters:And as they do reply,Give every one the lie.Tell Wit how much she wranglesIn fickle points of niceness;Tell Wisdom she entanglesHerself in over niceness;And if they do replyThen give them both the lie.Tell Physic of her boldness;Tell Skill it is pretension;Tell Charity of coldness;Tell Law it is contention;And if they yield reply,Then give them all the lie.Tell Fortune of her blindness;Tell Nature of decay;Tell Friendship of unkindness;Tell Justice of delay;And if they do reply,Then give them still the lie.Tell Arts they have no soundness,But vary by esteeming;Tell Schools they lack profoundnessAnd stand too much on seeming:If Arts and Schools reply,Give Arts and Schools the lie.Tell Faith it's fled the city;Tell how the country erreth;Tell manhood, shakes off pity,Tell Virtue least preferreth;And if they do reply,Spare not to give the lie.So when thou hast, as ICommanded thee, done blabbing;Although to give the lieDeserves no less than stabbing;Yet stab at thee who will,No stab the soul can kill."
"Go, Soul, the Body's guest,Upon a thankless errand;Fear not to touch the best,The truth shall be thy warrant;Go, since all else must die,And give all else the lie.
Go tell the Court it glowsAnd shines like rotten wood;Go tell the Church it showsWhat's good, but does not good:If Court and Church reply,Give Court and Church the lie.
Tell Potentates they liveActing, but base their actions;Not loved, unless they give,Nor strong, save by their factions:If Potentates reply,Give Potentates the lie.
Tell men of high condition,That rule affairs of state,Their purpose is ambition,Their practice chiefly hate:And if they do reply,Then give them all the lie.
Tell those that brave it most,They beg for more by spending;Who, in their greatest cost,Seek nothing but commending:And if they make reply,Spare not to give the lie.
Tell Zeal it lacks devotion;Tell Love it is but lust;Tell Time it is but motion;Tell Help it is but dust:And wish them no reply,For thou must give the lie.
Tell Age it daily wasteth;Tell Honor how it alters;Tell Beauty that it blasteth;Tell Favor that she falters:And as they do reply,Give every one the lie.
Tell Wit how much she wranglesIn fickle points of niceness;Tell Wisdom she entanglesHerself in over niceness;And if they do replyThen give them both the lie.
Tell Physic of her boldness;Tell Skill it is pretension;Tell Charity of coldness;Tell Law it is contention;And if they yield reply,Then give them all the lie.
Tell Fortune of her blindness;Tell Nature of decay;Tell Friendship of unkindness;Tell Justice of delay;And if they do reply,Then give them still the lie.
Tell Arts they have no soundness,But vary by esteeming;Tell Schools they lack profoundnessAnd stand too much on seeming:If Arts and Schools reply,Give Arts and Schools the lie.
Tell Faith it's fled the city;Tell how the country erreth;Tell manhood, shakes off pity,Tell Virtue least preferreth;And if they do reply,Spare not to give the lie.
So when thou hast, as ICommanded thee, done blabbing;Although to give the lieDeserves no less than stabbing;Yet stab at thee who will,No stab the soul can kill."
Illustration: Two fish
"Philosophy is one of the richest presents that man ever received from heaven, being that which raises the mind into the contemplation of eternal things, and is the science which of all others affords the most agreeable entertainment."—Evelyn.
"The age, the present times, are notTo snudge in, and embrace a cot;Action and blood now get the game,Disdain treads on the peaceful name:Who sits at home, too, bears a loadGreater than those that gad abroad."
Henry Vaughan.
Illustration: Banner with mythical characters
i.—tendencies.
Our time is revolutionary. It drifts strong and fast into unitarianism and the empire of ideas. All things are undergoing reform and reconstruction; the fellowship of all souls intent on laying broad and deep the foundations of the new institutions. The firm of Globe Brothers & Co., prospers in both hemispheres, every citizen being a partner in the concern. The nations are leagued together on the basis of mutual assistance, finding the old alliances founded on force and fear to be insecure; the people seeing it best to be friends and copartners in conducting the world's affairs;—trade the natural knot tying them by the coarser wants only; world-politics their bond of union and prosperity. No longer playing independent parts safely, they co-operate and conspire for the common welfare, interposing such checks as each individually requires for his security. Ruling is conducted not by legislation nor diplomacy, but by social and commercial inter-communication; every man opening out for himself the sphere suited to his gifts, and taking his thinking and doing into head and hands as a loyal man and citizen. Power is stealing with a speed and momentum unprecedented from the few to the many; is played out on a theatre world-wide, whole populations taking part in affairs; the distance once separating extremes being bridged; middle men with human sympathies and broad common-sense taking the lead and setting the old pretensions aside. A daring realism overleaping the old barriers gives government into the hands of the whole people, rulers being their servants, not masters; presidents and kings the representatives of ideas and paying loyal homage to these crowned heads; the old virtues of reverence for man, fidelity to principle, so venerable and sacred in private stations, seeking reappearance in public life.
If once the great, the wise, were in the minority, and none dreamed of reason becoming popular, reason is fast becoming republicanized; from being the exclusive property of the few is diffusing itself universally as the common possession of the multitude.
Imperial thought now holds her powerful sway,And drives the peoples on their prosperous way.
The freshest, best thoughts of the best minds of all times are claimed by the community; itself the awakened critic and prompter of the best; all thirsting for information,—world-wisdom,—and drinking off eagerly the lore of centuries. Knowledge everywhere diffused is accessible to all, rolls with the globe, dashes against the shores of every sea, delves the caverns, climbs the hill-tops with sun and moon, for the common benefit. If Hesiod wrote for his times that
"Riches are the soul of feeble men,"
our time is fast translating his line practically:
Riches are the hand of able men;
Capitalists holding kings and presidents in check while playing the better game of civilization, equalizing indirectly by legislative philanthropies the extremes—every man's needs being taken as drafts drawn by Providence on opulence, to be honored at sight:
"Stewards of the gods aloneAre we; have nothing of our ownSave what to us the gods commit,And take away when they see fit."
Once all crimes were capital and punished with death. Now this Draconian code has been so meliorated and softened by the diffusion of mercy and humanity as to take life for life only; is pleading powerfully for the abolition of the death-penalty altogether.
The sects are losing their monopoly in the heavenly luminary, closing no longer their brazen cope of darkening doctrines on the religious horizon to vitiate the social and political morals of mankind. The faiths of the cultivated nations are being revised, Christendom itself drifting with irresistible speed and momentum into a world-religion, commensurate with the advancing thought of advancing minds everywhere. As the Greeks received their Gods from Egypt and Phœnicia, Rome hers from Greece, and we ours from Rome, Judea and Britain, by the law of interfusion we are ripening into a cosmopolitan faith, with its Pantheon for all races.
ii.—method.
Ours were a trivial time if busied in building solely from the senses in facts of understanding, having nothing ideal to enshrine. Without symbols, peoples perish. Things must be exalted into some fair image of mind, the senses and gifts magnetized to body forth thoughts; the eye beholding these in what the hands fashion. Ideas supplement and symbolize facts: the field of realities lying behind unseen; the paddock of the common sense being but an enclosure within the immeasurable spaces of which thought is royal ranger,—owner of domains far larger and richer than these confine or survey, ideal estates which only mind can claim; quarries out of which nature itself is hewn, eye and hand are shapen. Head and hand should go abreast with thought. If the age of iron and bronze has been welding chains and fetters about the forehead and limbs, here, too, is the Promethean thought, using the new agencies let loose by the Dædalus of mechanic invention in the service of soul as of the senses. Having recovered the omnipotence in nature, the omnipresence, graded space, tunnelled the abyss, joined ocean and land by living wires, stolen the chemistry of the solar ray, made light our painter, the lightning our runner, discovered the polar axis, set matter on fire, thought is pushing its inquiries into the hitherto unexplored regions of man's personality, for whose survey and service every modern instrumentality lends the outfit and means—facilities ample, unprecedented—new instruments for the new discoveries—new eyes for the new spectacles. Using no longer contentedly the fumbling fingers of the old circuitous logic, the genius takes the track of the creative thought,—intuitively, cosmically, ontologically. A subtler analysis is finely discriminated, a broader synthesis generalized from the materials accumulated in the mind during the centuries, the globe's contents being gathered in from all quarters, the Book of Creation illustrated anew, and posted to date. The new calculus is ours. An organon alike serviceable to metaphysician and naturalist—whereby things answer to thought, facts are resolved into truths, images into ideas, matter into mind, power into personality, man into God; the One soul in all souls revealed as the Creative Spirit pulsating in all breasts, immanent in all atoms, prompting all wills, and personally embosoming all persons in one unbroken synthesis of Being.[E]
"It has hitherto, unhappily, been the misfortune of the mere materialist, in his mania for matter on the one hand and dread of ideas on the other, to invert this creative order, and thus hang the world's picture as a man with his heels upwards"—a process conducting of necessity to conclusions as derogatory to himself as to Nature's author. Assuming matter as his basis of investigation, force as father of thought, he confounds faculties with organs, life with brute substance, piles his atom atop of atom, cements cell on cell, in constructing his column, sconce mounting sconce aspiringly as it rises, till his shaft of gifts crown itself surreptitiously with the ape's glorified effigy, as Nature's frontispiece and head—life's atomy with life omitted altogether, man wanting. Contrarywise reads the ideal naturalist the book of lives. Opening at Spirit, and thence proceeding to ideas, he finds their types in matter, life unfolds itself naturally in organs, faculties begetting forces, mind moulding things substantially, its connections and interpendencies appear in series and degrees as he traces the leaves, thought the key to originals, man connexus, archetype, and classifier of things; he, straightway, leading forth abreast of himself the animated creation from the chaos,—the primeval Adam naming his mates, himself their ancestor, contemporary and survivor.[F]
iii.—man.