Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.
The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers us—this knowledge of what she is beforehand—the practical certainty which thisinterioracquaintance with her, this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to command—thatcomprehensivecommand of results which the knowledge ofthe true causesinvolves—the causes which are always present in all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all the difference—the 'power' ofthis knowledge, its power to relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that 'wonder'—that is, 'the seed of knowledge'—brought forththisplant, wasnotone to overlook or make light of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can appease—that love which leads it to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.
'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit ofdwellingupon abstractions, it is by farthe safestmethod to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division,and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical.' Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life,the mistressto its theoric;'—'letthatmark out and limit the theoretical.'
That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning, as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to reduce it to certainemptyand barren generalities, the mere husks and shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of them, by the torture andpressof the method,—the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map is, to direct the way between London and York.'
The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing here now in this question of the consulship,—that so practical and immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out every other from the human consideration. If learninghadanything to offer on that subject, which wouldnotexcite the scorn of practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.
We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play requires,—the practical question marks it out,—we have just as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark the expression:—'it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences'—the particular sciences,—the branches of science—fromthose foundations which bear a relationto the practical division. We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a learned treatise,—a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,—the solid continuity—that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is continued:—that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth toscorn, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on themagicrobes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,—not of fifties,—not of hundreds,—not of thousands—sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,—sitting down to this feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's question:This, so far as it goes at least, this istruth. And the rod of that enchantment waspluckedhere. It is but a branch from this same trunk—this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practicewillscorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.
Continued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops nowthisbranch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,—time mellowed,—ready to fall unshaken. Built onthat'foundation,' rises now this fair structure, the doctrine ofthe state. That knowledge of nature in general, thatinteriorknowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly. It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter our—Persian. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is Nature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we arewithin, and the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude wind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and the poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our 'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract has laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is visible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked to the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time cleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced speech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart of nature, isnotthe ventriloquist's artifice, isnota poor showman's trick. It is great nature's voice—her own; and the magician who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the priest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart of her mystery—is 'the Interpreter.'
'Swear by thy double selfAnd that's an oath of credit.'
'Having thus far proceeded… Is it not meetThat I did amplify my judgment inOther conclusions?'
It is the trunk of theprima philosophiathen which puts forth these new and wondrous boughs, into all the fields of human speculation and practice, filling all our outdoor, penetrating all our indoor life, with their beauty and fragrance; overhanging every roof, stooping to every door, with their rich curtains and clusters of ornament and delight, with their ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of practice—brought down to particulars, ready for use—with their dispersed directions overhanging every path,—with their aphorisms made out of the pith and heart of sciences, 'representing a broken knowledge, and,therefore, inviting the men of speculation to inquire farther.'
It is from this trunk of ascientificuniversality, of a useful, practical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality, to which the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to their simple forms and 'causes in nature,' conducts the scientific experimenter,—it is from this primal living trunk and heart of sciences, to which the new method of learning conducts us, that this great branch of scientific practice comes, which this drama with its 'transitory shows' has brought safely down to us;—this two-fold branch of ethics and politics, which come to us—conjoined—as ethics and politics came in other systems then not scientific,—making in their junction, and through all their divergencies, 'the forbidden questions' of science.
Thescienceof this essentially conjoined doctrine is that which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'The naturewhich is formedin everything,' and not in man only, and the faculty, in man, of comprehending that wider nature, is that which makes the higher ground, from which ascienceof his own specific nature, and the explanation of its phenomenon, is possible to man. Except from this height of acommon nature, there is no such thing as a scientific explanation of these phenomena possible. And this explanation is what the specific nature in man, with itsspeculativegrasp of a larger whole—with its speculative grasp of a universal whole,—with its instinctivemoralreach and comprehension corresponding to that,—constitutionally demands and 'anticipates.'
And the knowledge of this nature which is formed in everything, and not in man only, is the beginning, not of a speculative science of the human nature merely,—it is the beginning,—it is the indispensable foundation of the arts in which a successful artistic advancement of that nature, or an artistic cure or culture of it is propounded. The fact that the 'human nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a 'nature,' the fact that the human species isa species,—the fact that the human kind is but akind, neighboured with many others from which it is isolated by its native walls of ignorance,—neighboured with many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more or lesskind-ly, more or less hostile,—species, kinds, whose dialects of the universal laws, man has not found,—the fact that the universal, historic principles are operant in all the specific modifications of human nature, and control and determine them, the fact that the human life admits of a scientific analysis, and that its phenomena require to be traced to their true forms,—this is the fact which is the key to the new philosophy,—the key which unlocks it,—the key to the part speculative, and the part operative of it.
And this is the secret of the difference between this philosophy and all other systems and theories of man's life on earth that had been before it, or that have come after it. For this new and so solid height of natural philosophy,—solid,—historical,—from its base in the divergency of natural history, to its utmost peak of unity,—this scientific height of a common nature, whose summit is 'prima philosophia,' with its new universal terms and axioms,—this height from which man, as a species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous notions and theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with which history itself is always flying in the face of them,—from which the specific bias in them is everywhere detected,—this new 'pyramid' of knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces the conflict ofviews, the clash of man'sopinionsshall not sound: this is the system which has had, and shall have, no rival.
And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human notions—specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce,—powers, true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal form.
To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Manas man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and dogmas.
From the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has gained—not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to theà priorisources of knowledge and belief in man,—which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply—with the torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries, stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are hid.
The radical universal fact—the radical universal distinction of thedoublenature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man only, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war in nature—the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the phenomena of his own nature to theircauses,—who has no bridge from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it were;—this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is,a partormemberof a greater body, whereof the latter is in degreethe greaterandthe worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more general form'—this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species, with a recommendation that it should bestrongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally actual and active principles are tracked to theirproperspecific modifications in man, and not to their development in his actual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human kind—the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law—is brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affections,—this double nature of good, as it is developed in man, with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger whole than his particular and private nature can comprehend—with his large discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other—with that distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only—that nature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind only—that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to—that, on the one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and walled in,—these two universal natures of good, and all the passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their confusion,—this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its true specific human development, whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation, through all their characterization, through all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.
Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless those universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate inmatterandconstruction accordingtothe truedefinitions, they are speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter, and the new construction according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our eyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'
He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he hasthe true definitionin his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical phenomena are convertible,—the motives from which all movement proceeds, the true original simple powers,—the unknown, into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known into which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms 'which are always presentwhen the particular natureis present, and universally attest that presence; which are always absent when the particular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence; which always increase as the particular nature increases; which always decrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of definitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform with; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from what height ofgeniusthey achieved their command; but that was two thousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of Europe; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found that theEnglishnotions at least, and theGreeknotions of things in general differed very materially—essentially—when they came to be put on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to beperceptibleat once, though the world has not yet begun toappreciatethem. It was a difference that was expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in its 'effects.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new course. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of elevationsituate upon a cliff, did descry thatformsare the true object of knowledge,' that was his discovery,—'butlost the fruit of that opinion by'—shutting himself up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part issohumble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'
But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of the New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others,—which were not included in the 'idols.' He tells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things first. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:—'We do not, however, deny that other instancescan perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins after the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the 'elementary motions,'—outlined, and enriched with such observations as he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of that beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded, decomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of predominance,'—'instances which point out the predominance and submission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in action,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in action,]—'which is the moreenergeticandsuperior, or more weak and inferior.'
'These "elementary notions" direct and are directed by each other, according to their strength,—quantity,excitement, concussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance,some magnetssupport iron sixty times their own weight;so fardoes the motion oflesser congregationpredominate overthe greater, but if the weight be increasedit yields.'
[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions, tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which applyas widely; though he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this class of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given weight, andso farthe notion oflibertypredominates over that ofthe greater congregation; but if the weight begreater, the former motionyields. A piece of leather, stretchedto a certain point, does not break, andso farthe motion of continuitypredominates' [for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that he is handling]—'so farthe motion of continuitypredominatesover that of tension; but if the tension begreater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuityyields.A certain quantityof water flows through a chink, andso farthe motion of greater congregationpredominatesover that of continuity; but if the chink besmaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphurpredominates, beingassistedby that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; andso of the rest.'
Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the 'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the predominance ofpowers, compared with each other, and which of them isthe more energetic andSUPERIOR, or moreweakand INFERIOR'; and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its illustration of another in this system of learning, where things are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is aclassof instances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling instances, which showthe predominance of powers, and inwhat mannerandproportionthey predominate and yield, must be searched for with active and industrious diligence.'
'Themethod and natureof this yielding' [ofthis yielding—SUBJECTION is the question] 'must also be diligently examined; as,for instance, whether the motions' ['of liberty'] 'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained; for in all bodies with which we are acquainted,there is no real, but an apparent rest, either in the whole, or in the parts. This apparent rest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the case of Hamlet, as well as in that of some others whose acts were suspended, and whose wills were arrested then, by considerations not less comprehensive than his]—'either by equilibrium,or by the absolute predominanceof motions. By equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, whichrest if the weight be equal. By predominance, as in perforated jars, in which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the predominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'
'It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before),how far the yielding motions exert themselves.For, ifa manbe held stretched out on the groundagainst hisWILL, with arms and legs bound down,orotherwise confined'—[as the Duke of Kent's were, for instance]—'and yet strive with all his power to get up, the struggle is not the less, though ineffectual. Thereal state of the case' [namely, whether the yielding motion be, as it were, annihilatedby the predominance, or there be rather a continued, though an invisible effort] 'will perhaps appearin the CONCURRENCE of MOTIONS, although it escape our notice intheir conflict.' So delicately must philosophy needs be conveyed in a certain stage of a certain class of wrestling instances, wherea combinationof powers hostile to science produces an 'absolute predominance' of powers, and it is necessary that the yielding motion should at least appear to be 'as it were, annihilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the invisible effort at all. 'For on account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no difficulty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the axioms which these particular instances adduced here, and 'others which might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield. This is an instance of the freedom with which philosophical views on certain subjects are continually addressed in these times, to that immediate audience of the few 'who will perhaps see farther into them than the common reader,' and to those who shall hereafter apply to the philosophy issued under such conditions—the conditions above described, that key of 'Times,' which the author of it has taken pains to leave for that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which makes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated. There are more and less powerful motives concerned inthiswrestling instance, as he goes on to demonstrate.
'THE RULES ofsuch instancesofpredominance as occurshould becollected, such asthe following'—and the rule which he gives, by way of a specimen of theserules, is a very important one for a statesman to have, and it is one which the philosopher has himself 'collected' fromsuchinstances as occurred—'The moregeneralthe desired advantage is, thestrongerwill bethe motive. The motion ofconnection, for instance, which relates tothe intercourse of the parts of the universe, is more powerful than that ofgravity, which relates to the intercourse ofdensebodies. Again; the desire of a private good does not,in general, prevail against that of a public one, except where thequantities are small' [it is the generallawhe is propounding here; and the exception, the anomaly, is that which he has to note]; 'would that such were the case in civil matters.'
But that application to 'civil matters,' which the statesman, propounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge of the actual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source of relief to the human estate,—that application, which he could only make here in these side-long glances, is made in the Play without any difficulty at all. These instances, which he produces here in his professed work of science, are produced as illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he is going to bring to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his genius, on the powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human nature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it tends—those larger wholes and greater congregations, which parliaments, and pulpits, and play-houses, and books, were forbidden then, on pain of death and torture and ignominy, to meddle with.Here, he tells us, he finds it to the purpose to select 'suggestiveinstances, such aspoint outthat which is advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part of science to makejudiciousinquiries and wishes.'
These instances, which he produces here, are searching; but they are none too searching for his purpose. They do not come any nearer to nature than those others which he is prepared to add to them. The treatment is not any more radical and subtle here than it is in those instances in which 'he comes to particulars,' under the pretence of play and pastime, in other departments,—those in which the judicious inquiry into the laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules 'the most generally useful to mankind.'
This is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this Play,—this Play, in which the great question, not yet ready for the handling of the unlearned, but ripe already for scientific treatment,—the question of the wrestling forces,—the question of the subjection and predominance of powers,—the question of the combination and opposition of forces in thosearrested motionswhich makestates, is so boldly handled. Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not real—where the 'yielding' forces are only,as it were, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute predominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,' but predominators—not as states, but revolutions. The science 'that ends in matter and new constructions'—new construction, 'according to true definitions,' is what these citizens, whom this Poet has called up from their horizontal position by way of anticipation, are already, under his instructions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which these very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken into the account, are what these men, whom this Magician has set upon their feet here, whose lips he has opened and whose arms he has unbound with the magic of his art, are going to have before they lie down again, or, at least, before they make a comfortable state for any one to trample on, though theymay, perhaps, for a time seem, 'as it were, annihilated.'
These trueforms, theserealdefinitions, this new kind ofideas, these new motions, new in philosophy, new inhumanspeech, old in natures,—written in her book ere man was,—these universal, elementary, original motions, which he is exhibiting here in the philosophic treatise, under cover of a certain class of instances, are the very ones which he is trackingherein the Play, into all the business of the state. This is that same new thread which we saw there in the grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space filled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however, to show that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,—how. But here it is the more chosen substance; and every point of this illustrious web is made of its involutions,—is a point of 'illustration.'
Yes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised field of his labours,—that field of 'noblest subjects,' for the culture of which he will have all nature put under contribution; here he is at large, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from his chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' andtheirunions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious, unknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles together, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where itceases, orseems to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is vanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in 'water,' arrested 'in perforated jars,' or 'flowing through a chink,' or resisting gravity,ifthe chink be smaller, or in the balanced 'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of all nature,—the weaker enslaved, butthere,—notannihilated; he who saw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those dense palpable masses, or in the lever, assisted by human hands, vanquishing its mighty opposite, things that old philosophies had not dreamt of,—reports of mysteries,—revelations for those who have the key,—words from that book of creative power, words from that living Word, whichhemust study who would have his vision of God fulfilled, who would make of his 'good news' something more than a Poet's prophecy. He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless sulphur, in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of fire and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the resisting ball,—not less real to his eye, because not apparent,—or in thevillanouscompound itself, while yet the spark is wanting,—'rules' for other 'wrestling instances,' forothercombinations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome; requiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of forces, not less butmorescientifically artistic,—rules for the enlargement of forces, waiting buttheirspark, then, to demonstrate, with more fearful explosions,theirexpansibility, threatening 'to lay all flat.'
For here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the unreported actualities, are working still, in obedience to their orders, which they had not from man, and taking no note of his. 'For man, as theinterpreterof nature,does, andunderstandsas much as his observations ON THE ORDER OF THINGS,orTHE MIND,permitshim, and neitherknowsnoris capableof more.' 'Man, whileoperating, can only apply or withdraw natural bodies. NATURE INTERNALLY PERFORMS THE REST'; and 'the syllogism forcesassent, butnotthings.'
Great things this Interpreter promises to man from these observations and interpretations, which he and his company are ordering; great things he promises from the application of this new method of learning tothisdepartment of man's want; because those vague popular notions—those spontaneous but deep-rooted beliefs in man—those confused, perplexed terms, with which he seeks to articulate them, and not those acts which make up his life only—are out of nature, and all resolvable into higher terms, and require to be returned intothesebefore man can work with them to purpose.
Greatnewsfor man he brings; the powers which are working in the human life, andnotthose which are working without it only, are working in obedienceto laws. Great things he promises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and waiting and watching for her coming.
Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole, which is the worthier—that law of the common-weal, which is the human law—that law which in man is reason and conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only—nay,notin man as yet, but prefigured only—his ideal; his true form—not in man, who 'IS' not, but 'becoming.'
But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of things in general into the human constitution—in tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of human life—the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields—the criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.'
This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man which we find on another page—that constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a common-weal—that constitution whereby his relation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his individual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with advancement—that constitution whereby the highest good of the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its intention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation to society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question of 'the government of every man over himself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in 'the little state of man'—the question as to which is 'nobler'—comes to be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.
'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;—we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature—or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs give the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,' and sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of 'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative philosophy at present is—
'Why all these things change from their ordinance,Their natures, andpre-formed faculties,To monstrous quality.'
—'There's something in thismorethannatural,—ifphilosophy could find it out!
And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see whatgen, orgenusit is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.
The experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces assent, andnotthings.
The question here isnotof divinity, as some might suppose. There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid,—its perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven and earth may pass, but not that.
The question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this most vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet—on both sides of it—going about with 'tickets ofleave,' of one kind and another; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about them. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes;—they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The difficulty is just this;—here we have it in a nut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.
'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the signs of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then]—'ifour notionsarefantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground. But [theyare] they are, for the most part,improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are justtwomethods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from the very outset some abstract anduselessgeneralities,—the other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most common in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist in the discovery ofnew effects, for the subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars, easilypoint out and defineNEW PARTICULARS, andimpart activity to the sciences.'
'We are wont to callthat human reasoningwhich we apply to nature, THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that which is properlydeduced fromTHINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.'—(A radical distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine of the mind to establish). 'Anticipationsare sufficiently powerful in producingunanimity; for if men were all to become evenuniformly mad, they might agree tolerably wellwith each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that isthe assentthat is wanting).
'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, andnotthings.'
The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude theories of the nature of things,—the difference between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in which science begins.
And we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths with which science has already overpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in which its powers have been already tested.
These rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in their broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men, through all their range, from thea prioriconceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgarpreconceptionsandprejudicesof the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful,—but, considering the time, none too fanciful,—designation of 'the Idols';—(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading),—'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason—scientific, as well as rhetorical reason,—for dividing and distinguishing them. But under that common designation ofimages, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all particulars—which is more universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments;—that universal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. Thatuniversal, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into the account,—that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all the learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.
We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nurture,—none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in the popular dialecthere, any more than the chemist or the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men withtheirtruer language in the fields they occupy. The new Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these same terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the sense in which he uses them.
Incorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under certain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake to teach.
When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have none of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and analyze them; and all,—allthat is in them,—all, and more, will be in his;butscientifically cleared, 'divided with the mind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.
And it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief which the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth, fire, air, water,—terms which antiquity thought fine enough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without suspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.
It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that areactualin our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strengththere, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of sciencethere, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,—so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,— so long as a merehumanword-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence,—keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, —the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, —the word to which rude nature bows anew,—the word which is Power.
But while the world is resounding with those new relations to the powers of nature which the science of nature has established in other fields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the end and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that department of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given over to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera,—to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present.
We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite book of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent order there.
And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature which are included in the human nature,—the powers which in thisspecificform of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic—these powers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach them with another vocabulary.
The forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call themhere, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation,—any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it byhisname,—which was just as good as the name—and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it,—any more than it would have come, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his syllogism.
But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff ofhisgenera and species,—when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven andcame. It came fast enough then. It was 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came. There was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new interpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or ceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.
But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system 'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly anticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if, peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.
And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds.
'Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use.'—Novum Organum.
Difficult, then, as the problem of Civil Government appeared to the eye of the scientific philosopher, and threatening and appalling as were those immediate aspects of it which it presented at that moment, he does not despair of the State. Even on the verge of that momentous political and social crisis, 'though he does not need to go to heaven to predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' 'he thinks he sees ways to save us,' and he finds in his new science of Man the ultimate solution of that problem.
That particular and private nature which is in all men, let them re-name themselves by what names they will, that particular and private nature which intends always the individual and private good, has in itself 'an incident towards the good of society,' which it may use as means,—which it must use, if highly successful,—as means to its end. Even in this, when science has enlightened it, and it is impelled by blind and unsuccessful instinct no longer, the man of science finds a place where a pillar of the true state can be planted; even here the scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the human constitution, a foundation-stone,—a stone that does not crumble—a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand must rest on.
Even that 'active good,' which impels 'the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller model,'—that principle which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on other things,—on the state, on the world, if it can,—though it is its own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular powers for 'effecting itsgoodwill,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece represents,—this is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and selectest means.
But that is not all. The bettering ofitself, the perfection of its own form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, amotive, anactual'power in everything that moves.' This is one of the primal, universal, natural motions. It is in the universal creative stamp of things; and strong as that is, the rock on which here, too, the hope of science rests—strong as that is, the pillar of the state, which here, too, it will rear. For to man the highest 'passivegood,' and this, too, is of the good which is 'private and particular,' is, constitutionally, that whereby 'the conscience of good intentions, however succeeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the provision—the most luxurious provision—which can be made for security and repose,—whereby the mere empirical experimenter in good will count it a higher felicity to fail in good and virtuous ends towards the public, than to attain the most envied success limited to his particular.
Thus, even in these decried 'private' motives, which actuate all men—these universal natural instincts, which impel men yet more intensely, by the concentration of the larger sensibility, and the faculty of the nobler nature of their species, to seek their own private good,—even in these forces, which, unenlightened and uncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and social dissolution, or 'monstrous' social combination,—even in these, the scientific eye perceives the basis of new structures, 'constructions according to true definitions,' in whichallthe ends that nature in man grasps and aspires to, shall be artistically comprehended and attained.
But this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's 'hope.' This is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance. This is the place on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the pile he will rear. There is an unborrowed foundation, there is an internal support for the state in man. For along with that particular and private nature of good, there is another in all men;—there is another motive, which respects and beholds the good of society, not mediately, but directly asitsend,—which embraces in its intention 'the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, andnot—not—our own proper, individual form'; and this is the good 'which is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation and advancement of a more general form.' And this, also, is anactualforce in man, proceeding from the universal nature of things and original in that, not in him. This, also, is in the primeval creative stamp of things; and here, also, the science of the interpretation of nature finds in the constitution of man, and in the nature of things, the foundations of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all hewn and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand ere man was, the everlasting pillars of the common-weal.
But in manthislaw, also,—this law chiefly,—has itsspecial, essentially special, development. 'It is muchmoreimpressed on man, if he de-generatenot.' Great buildings have been reared on this foundation already; great buildings, old and time-honoured, stand on it. The history of human nature is glorious, even in its degeneracy, with the exhibition of this larger, nobler form of humanity asserting itself, triumphing over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It is a species in which the organic law transcends the individual, and embraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which those who seek the good of the kind, and subordinate the private nature to that, are noble, and chief. It is a species in which the law of the common-weal is for ever present to the private nature, as the law of its own being, requiring, under the pains and penalties of the universal laws of being, subjection.
Science cannot originate new forces in nature. 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural forces. Nature, internally, performs the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of 'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's word had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the parts and members of that body that science sought to frame, what word of creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of life could she find, what breath of God could she boast, that she should think to frame of such material the body politic, the organic whole, the living, free, harmonious, triumphant common-weal.
But here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving, moving in the dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature had provided reason, and required science and scientific art. That has not been tried. And that is why this question of the state, dark as it is, portentous, hopeless as its aspects are, if we limit the survey to our present aids and instrumentalities, is already, to the eye of science, kindling with the aurora of unimagined change, advancements to the heights of man's felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of poets' visions, that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams with its scientific reality.
There has been no help from science in this field hitherto. The proceeding of the world has been instinctive and empirical thus far, in the attainment of the ends which the complex nature of man requires him to seek. Men have been driven, and swayed hither and thither, by these different and apparently contradictory aims, without anyscienceof the forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces will seek,—'it is their nature to,'—whether in man, or in any other form in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of declamation that is ever going to stop them. The power that is in everything that moves, the forces of universal nature are concerned in the acts that we deprecate and cry out upon. It is the original constitution of things, as it was settled in that House of Commons, to whose acts the memory of Man runneth not, that is concerned in these demonstrations; and philosophy requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by all means, coming into any collision with those statutes. 'We must so order it,' says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in this case from antiquity—'we must so order it, as by no means to contend with universal nature.' 'To attempt to kick against natural necessity,' he says in his own name, and in his own peculiar and more impressive method of philosophic instruction—'to attempt to kick against natural necessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to outkick his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing 'what is in our power, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of Learning, applying that universal rule of practice to our present subject.
Here, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive form, traced to the height of universal nature, and brought down to the specific nature in man—here, as they lie on the ground of the common nature in man, for the first time scientifically abstracted—are the powers which science has to begin with in this field. The varieties in the species, and the individual differences so remarkable in this kind, are not in this place under consideration. But here is thecommonnature in this kind, which must make the basis of any permanent universal social constitution for it. Different races will require that their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their social constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for the better, look for change. But this is the universal platform that science is clearing here. This is the WORLD that she is concerning herself with here, in the person of that High Priest of hers, who, also, took that to be his business.
Here are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is this universal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist, merely, and maintain his form—which is nature's first law, they tell us—but to 'better himself' in some way. As Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks advancement'; and advancement he will have, or strive to have, if not 'formalandessential,' then 'local.' He is instinctively impelled to it; and in his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature has prescribed to him, the 'tempest of human life' arises.
The scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these universal forces, and undertake to found society on their annihilation. Science will count that structure unsafe which is founded on the supposed annihilation of these forces in anything that moves. The man of science knows, that though by the predominance of powers, or by the equilibrium of them, they may be for a time, 'as it were, annihilated,' they are in every creature; and nature in the instincts, though blind, is cunning, and finds ways and means of overcoming barriers, and evading restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself when once she finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these forces, the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in the constitution of man, overlooking them from that height, will thankfully accept them, and make much of them. These are just the motive powers that science has need of; she could not compose her structure without them, which is only the perfecting of the structure which the great Creating Wisdom had already outlined and pre-ordered—not a machine, but a living organic whole.
Science takes this 'piece of work' as she finds him, ready, waiting for the hand of art—imperfect, unfinished, but with the proceeding of nature incorporated in him—with the creative, advancing, perfecting motion, incorporated in him as his essence and law;—imperfect, but with nature working within him for the rest, urging him to self-perfection. She takes him as she finds him, a creature of instinct, but with his large, rich, undeveloped, yet already active nature of reason, and conscience, and religion, already struggling for the mastery, counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check, with nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in man, because eyes were included in nature's definition of him, as it was written beforehand in her book, her universal book of types and orders—eyes, and not instinct only—'that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.' 'O'er that art, which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.' The want of this pre-ordered art is the want here still. The war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here still. That is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of investigation with which science has pursued and found out nature elsewhere—that same intense, indefatigable concentration of endeavour, which has been rewarded with such 'magnitude of effects' in other fields—that same, in a higher degree, in more powerful combinations, proportioned to the magnitude and common desirableness of the object, is what is wanting here. It is the instincts that are at fault here,—'the blind instincts, that seeing reason' should 'guide.'
That is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm begins, that 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder that the world is full of the uproar of this arrested work, this violated intent of nature. She will storm on till we hear her. Woe to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who think to violate her intent and prosper! 'The storm continues,' and it will continue, pronounce on it what incantations we may, so long as the elemental forces of all nature are meeting in our lives, and dashing in blind elemental strength against each other, and the brooding spirit of the social life, the composing spirit of the larger whole, cannot reconcile them, because the voices that are filling the air with the discord of their controversy, and out-toning the noise of this battle with theirs, are crying in one key, 'Let there be darkness here'; because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is held back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away; because the night of human ignorance still covers all this battle-ground, and hides the combatants.
Science is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages has spoken it, 'and now the times give it proof'; the times in which the methods of earlier ages, in the rapid advancement of learning in other fields, are losing their vitalities, and leaving us without those means of social combination, without those social bonds which the rudest ages of instinct and intuition, which the most barbaric peoples have been able to command. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific proof, when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their power to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving faith of earlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in its struggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its divine realities, because they have not been translated into their speech and language, and think thereisno such thing; and under all the exterior splendours of a material civilization advanced by science, society tends to internal decay, and the primal war of atoms.
To meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it isnotenough to call these powers that are actual in the human nature, but which are not yet reconciled and reduced to their true and natural order—it is not enough at this age of the world, at this stage of human advancement in other fields—to call these forces by some general names which include their oppositions, and to require for want of skill that a part of them shall be annihilated; it is not enough to express a strong disapprobation of the result as it is, and to require, in never-so-authoritative manner, that it shall be otherwise. No matter what names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter underwhatpains and penalties we require it, the result—whatever we may say to the contrary—the result does not follow. That is not the way. Those who try it, and who continue to try it in the face of no matter what failures, may think it is; but there is a voice mightier than theirs, drowning all their speech, telling us in thunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments that brutes might understand, telling us that it is not!