r~* — ****** 
 
 Ex Libris 
 ! C. K. OGDEN 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH 
 
 BY 
 
 TWO BROTHERS 
 
 second edition: 
 with large additions. 
 
 SECOND SERIES 
 
 Mauris S' clpiaros oaris dicd£ei koKojs. 
 The best divine is he who well divines. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND WALTON, 
 
 UPPER GOWER STREET ! 
 
 SOLD BY MACMILLAN, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 1848.
 
 ■ , At at things that are upon earth ; 
 Hardly do we guess «£££*, that are before us : 
 
 contrahuntur maxune, et m parv^ ^ ^^ pnM/> 
 
 ATH IUM 
 
 CANCELLED. 
 
 LIBRARY.
 
 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 This volume is called a second Edition ; for a 
 portion of it was contained in the former : but 
 more than three fourths are new. The first eight 
 sheets were printed off ten years ago : hence, in 
 the discussion on the Progress of mankind, no 
 notice is taken of the views concerning Develop- 
 ment in reference to religious truth, which have 
 lecently been exciting so much agitation and con- 
 fusion. Indeed almost all the new matter in- 
 serted in this Volume was written above ten 
 years since, though, in transcribing it for the press, 
 I have often modified and enlarged it to bring it 
 into conformity with my present convictions. A 
 succession of other works has hitherto interrupted 
 the prosecution of this ; and several are now call- 
 ing me away from it. But, as soon as I can get 
 my hands free, I hope, God willing, to publish a 
 second Edition of the original Second Volume. 
 This second Series only goes down to the end of 
 the original First Volume. 
 
 J. C. H. 
 
 ROCKEND. 
 
 May 10th, 1848. 
 
 M
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 P. 58, 1. 21. dele comma after world. 
 144, 1. '6. ruad, We have learnt.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 In the wars of the middle ages, when the 
 armies were lying in their camps, single knights 
 would often sally forth to disport themselves in 
 breaking a lance. In modern warfare too the » 
 stillness of a night before a battle is ever and 
 anon interrupted by a solitary cannon-shot ; which 
 does not always fall without effect. Ahab was 
 slain by an arrow let off at a venture : nor are 
 his the only spolia opima that Chance has borne 
 away to adorn her triumphs. 
 
 Detacht thoughts in literature, under what- 
 soever name they may be cast forth into the 
 world, — Maxims, Aphorisms, Essays, Resolves, 
 Hints, Meditations, Aids to Ileflexion, Guesses, — 
 may be regarded as similar sallies and disportings 
 of those who are loth to lie rusting in inaction, 
 though they do not feel themselves called to act 
 more regularly and in mass. And these too are 
 not wholly without worth and power ; which is 
 not uniformly in proportion to bulk. One of the 
 lessons of the late wars has been, that large dis- 
 ciplined bodies are not the only effective force : 
 
 VOL. II. H
 
 2 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Cossacks and Guerillas, we have seen, may render 
 good service in place and season. A curious and 
 entertaining treatise might be written de vi quae 
 resiclet in minimis. Even important historical 
 events have been kindled by the spark of an 
 epigram or a jest. 
 
 In some cases, as in Novalis, we see youthful 
 genius gushing in radiant freshness, and sparkling 
 and bringing out some bright hue on every object 
 around, until it has found or made itself a more 
 continuous channel. And as spring sheds its blos- 
 soms, so does autumn its golden fruit. Mature 
 and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing 
 up the results of its experience in weighty sen- 
 tences. Solomon did so : the wise men of India 
 and of Greece did so : Bacon did so : Goethe in his 
 old age took delight in doing so. The sea throws 
 up shells and pebbles that it has smoothed by 
 rolling them in its bosom : and what though 
 children alone should play with them ? " Cheered 
 by their merry shouts, old Ocean smiles." 
 
 A dinner of fragments is said often to be the 
 best dinner. So are there few minds but might 
 furnish some instruction and entertainment out of 
 their scraps, their odds and ends of thought. 
 They who cannot weave a uniform web, may at 
 least produce a piece of patchwork ; which may 
 be useful, and not without a charm of its own. 
 The very sharpness and abruptness with which 
 truths must be asserted, when they are to stand 
 singly, is not ill fitted to startle and rouse sluggish
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and drowsy minds. Nor is the present shattered 
 and disjointed state of the intellectual world un- 
 aptly represented by a collection of fragments. 
 When the waters are calm, they reflect an image 
 in its unity and completeness ; but when they 
 are tossing restlessly, it splits into bits. So too, 
 when the central fires are raging, they shake the 
 mainland, and strew it with ruins, but now and 
 then cast up islands. And if we look through 
 history, the age of Asia seems to have past away ; 
 and we are approaching to that of Polynesia. 
 
 Only whatsoever may be brought together in 
 these pages, though but a small part be laid 
 within the courts of the temple itself, may we 
 never stray so far as to lose it out of sight : 
 and along with the wood and hay and stubble, 
 may there be here and there a grain of silver, if 
 not of gold. u. 
 
 Poetry is the key to the hieroglyphics of 
 Nature. 
 
 On the outside of things seek for differences ; 
 on the inside for likenesses. 
 
 Notions may be imported by books from abroad : 
 ideas must be grown at home by thought. 
 
 If the imagination be banisht from the garden 
 of Eden, she will take up her abode in the island 
 of Armida ; and that soon changes into Circe's, u.
 
 4 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Why have oracles ceast ? Among other rea- 
 sons, because we have the books of the wise in 
 their stead. But these too will not answer 
 aright, unless the right question be put to them. 
 Nay, when the answer has been uttered, he who 
 hears it must know how to interpret and to apply 
 it. u. 
 
 One may develope an idea : it is what God 
 has taught us to do in his successive revelations. 
 But one cannot add to it, least of all in another 
 age. 
 
 Congruity is not beauty : but it is essential to 
 beauty. In every wellbred mind the perception of 
 incongruity impedes and interrupts the perception 
 of beauty. Hence the recent opening of the view 
 upon St Martin's church has marred the beauty of 
 the portico : the heavy steeple presses down on it 
 and crushes it. The combination is as monstrous 
 as it would be to tack on the last act of Addison's 
 Cato to the Philoctetes of Sophocles. 
 
 In truth steeples, which belong to the upward- 
 looking principle of Christian architecture, never 
 harmonize well with the horizontal earthly cha- 
 racter of the Greek temple. To understand the 
 beauty of the latter, one must see it free from this 
 extraneous and incompatible incumbrance. One 
 should see it too with a southern sky to crown it, 
 and look through it. u.
 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 5 
 
 Homer calls words winged : and the epithet is 
 peculiarly appropriate to his ; which do indeed 
 seem to fly, — so rapid and light is their motion ; 
 and which have been flying ever since over the 
 whole of the peopled earth, and still hover and 
 brood over many an awakening soul. Latin 
 marches ; Italian floats ; French hops ; English 
 walks ; German rumbles along : the music of 
 Klopstock's hexameters is not unlike the tune 
 with which a broad- wheel waggon tries to solace 
 itself, when crawling down a hill. But Greek 
 flies, especially in Homer. 
 
 His meaning, or rather the meaning of his age, 
 in assigning that attribute to words, was probably 
 to express their power of giving wings to thoughts, 
 whereby they fly from one breast to another. 
 For a like reason may letters be called winged, 
 as speeding the flight of thoughts far beyond the 
 reach of sounds, and prolonging it for ages after 
 the sounds have died away ; so that the thoughts 
 entrusted to them are wafted to those who are 
 far off both in space and in time. Above all does 
 the epithet belong to printing : for, by means 
 of its leaden types, that which has been bred in 
 the secret caverns of the mind, no sooner comes 
 forth, than thousands of wings are given to it at 
 once, and it roams abroad in a thousand bodies ; 
 each several body moreover being the exact coun- 
 terpart of all the others, to a degree scarcely 
 attained by any other process of nature or of 
 art.
 
 (3 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 TW, coot apv'iBaiv Tr(T(rjva>v edvea TroXXa, 
 Xi)vav *] yepaveou r; kvkvoiv hovKi^obflpav, 
 ev0a Kai tv6a norcovTai ayaWofievai irrepvytcrcnv, 
 ic\ayyr)8ov 7rpoKa8i£ovTcoi>, apapayd 8e re \eip.d>v. 
 
 U. 
 
 The schoolmen have been accused of syllogizing 
 without facts. Their accusers, those I mean who 
 sophisticate and explain away the dictates of their 
 consciousness, do worse : they syllogize against 
 facts, facts not doubtful and obscure, but manifest 
 and certain ; seeing that " to feel a thing in oneself 
 is the surest way of knowing it." South, Vol. ii. 
 p. 236. 
 
 They who profess to give the essence of things, 
 in most cases merely give the extract ; or rather 
 an extract, or, it may be, several, pickt out at 
 chance or will. They repeat the blunder of the 
 Greek dunce, who brought a brick as a sample 
 of a house : and how many such dunces do we 
 still find, calling on us to judge of books by like 
 samples ! At best they just tap the cask, and 
 offer you a cup of its contents, having previously 
 half filled the cup with water, or some other less 
 innocent diluent. u. 
 
 When a man cannot walk without crutches, he 
 would fain make believe they arc stilts. Like 
 most impostors too, he gives ear to his own lie ; 
 till, lifting up one of them in a fit of passion, to 
 knock down a person who doubts him, he falls to
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the ground. And there he has to remain sprawl- 
 ing : the crutch, hy help of which he contrived t<> 
 stand, will not enable him to rise. u. 
 
 What do you mean by the lords spiritual ? askt 
 Madame de Stael : are they so called because they 
 are so spirit uels ? How exactly do esprit and 
 spirituel express what the French deem the highest 
 power and glory of the human mind ! A large 
 part of their literature is mousseux : and whatever 
 is so soon grows flat. 
 
 Our national word and quality is sense ; which 
 may perhaps betray a tendency to materialism ; 
 but which at all events comprehends a greater 
 body of thought, thought that has settled down 
 and become substantiated in maxims. u. 
 
 Hardly any period of afterlife is so rich in vivid 
 and rapturous enjoyment, as that when know- 
 ledge is first unfolding its magical prospects to 
 a genial and ardent youth ; when his eyes open to 
 discern the golden network of thought wherein 
 man has robed the naked limbs of the world, and 
 to see all that he feels teeming and glowing within 
 his breast, embodied in glorified and deathless 
 forms in the living gallery of Poetry. So long as 
 we continue under magisterial discipline and guid- 
 ance, we are apt to regard our studies as a 
 mechanical and often irksome taskwork. Our 
 growing presumption is loth to acknowledge that 
 we are unable to walk alone, that our minds need
 
 8 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 leadingstrings so mucli longer than our bodies. 
 But when the impatient scholar finds himself set 
 free, with the blooming paradise of imagination 
 and thought spread out before him, his mind, 
 like the butterfly, by which the Greeks so aptly 
 and characteristically typified their spirit, exult- 
 ing in the beauty which it everywhere perceives, 
 both without itself and within, and delighting to 
 prove and exercise its newly developt faculty of 
 admiring and loving, will hover from flower to 
 flower, from charm to charm ; and now, seeming 
 chiefly to rejoice in its motion, and in the glancing 
 of its bright and many-coloured wings, merely 
 snatches a passing kiss from each, now sinks down 
 on some chosen favorite, and loses all conscious- 
 ness of sense or life in the ecstasy of its 
 devotion. 
 
 In more advanced yearsj the student rather 
 resembles the honey-seeking, honey-gathering, 
 honey-storing bee. He estimates : he balances : 
 he compares. He picks out what seems best to 
 him from the banquet lying before him : and even 
 this he has to season to his own palate. But at 
 first everything attracts, everything pleases him. 
 The simple sense, whether of action or of feel- 
 ing, whatever may be their object, is sufficient. 
 The mind roams from fancy to fancy, from truth 
 to truth, from one world of thought to another 
 world of thought, with an ease, rapidity, ami 
 elastic power, like that with which it has been 
 imagined that the soul, when freed from the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 9 
 
 body, will wander from star to star. Nay, even 
 after the wild landscape, through which youth 
 strayed at will, has been laid out into fields and 
 gardens, and enclosed with fences and hedges, after 
 the footsteps, which had bounded over the flower- 
 strewn grass, have been circumscribed within trim 
 gravel walks, the vision of its former happiness will 
 still at times float before the mind in its dreams. 
 Unless it has been bent down and hardened by 
 the opposition it has had to struggle with, it 
 will still retain a dim vivifying hope, although 
 it may not venture to shape that hope into words, 
 that it may again one day behold a similar harmo- 
 nious universe bursting forth from the jarring and 
 fragmentary chaos of hollow realities, — that in its 
 own place and station it may, as Frederic Schlegel 
 expresses it, 
 
 Build for all arts one temple of communion, 
 Itself a new example of their union ; — 
 
 and that it may at least witness the prelude to 
 that final consummation, when, as in the begin- 
 ning, all things will again be one. u. 
 
 Set a company of beginners in archery shooting 
 at a mark. Their arrows will all fly wide of it, 
 some on one side, some on the opposite : ami 
 while they are all thus far off, many a dispute will 
 arise as to which of them has come the nearest. 
 But in proportion as they improve in skill, their 
 arrows will fall nearer to the mark, and to each 
 other : and when they are fixt in the target, there
 
 10 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 is much less controversy about them. Now sup- 
 pose them to attain to such a pitch of mastery, 
 that every arrow shall go straight to the bull's eye : 
 they will all coincide. This may help us to un- 
 derstand how the differences of the wise and good, 
 which are often so perplexing and distracting now, 
 will be reconciled hereafter; when the film of 
 mortality is drawn away from their eyes, and 
 their faculties are strengthened to see truth, and to 
 strive after it, and to reach it. n. 
 
 Only if we would hit the truth, we must indeed 
 aim at it. Else the more we improve in handling 
 the bow, the further away from it shall we send 
 our arrows. As for that numerous class, who, 
 instead of aiming at truth, have merely aimed at 
 glorifying themselves, their arrows will be found 
 to have recoiled, like that of Adrastus in Statins, 
 and to be sticking their deadly barbed points 
 into their own souls. Alas ! there are many such 
 pseudo-Sebastians walking about, bristled with 
 suicidal darts, living martyrs to their own vain- 
 glory, u. 
 
 Heroism is active genius ; genius, contemplative 
 heroism. Heroism is the self-devotion of genius 
 manifesting itself in action ; »} 6das twos (j)vo-f<os 
 ivipyeia, as a Greek would more closely have 
 defined it. 
 
 Tbesc are the men to employ, in peace as well
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. ] 1 
 
 as in war, the men who are afraid of no fire, 
 except hell-fire. 
 
 How few, how easily to be counted up, are the 
 cardinal names in the history of the human mind ! 
 Thousands and tens of thousands spend their days 
 in the preparations which are to speed the pre- 
 destined change, in gathering and amassing the 
 materials which are to kindle and give light and 
 warmth, when the fire from heaven has descended 
 on them. But when that flame has once blazed 
 up, its very intensity too often shortens its dura- 
 tion. Many, yea without number, are the sutlers 
 and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who 
 attend the march of intellect. Many are busied in 
 building and fitting up and painting and emblazon- 
 ing the chariot ; others in lessening the friction 
 of the wheels : others move forward in detach- 
 ments, and level the way it is to pass over, and 
 cut down the obstacles which would impede its 
 progress. And these too have their reward. If 
 so be they labour diligently in their calling, not 
 only will they enjoy that calm contentment which 
 diligence in the lowliest task never fails to win ; 
 not only will the sweat of their brows be sweet, 
 and the sweetener of the rest that follows ; but, 
 when the victory is at last achieved, they come in 
 for a share in the glory : even as the meanest 
 soldier who fought at Marathon or at Leipsic 
 became a sharer in the glory of those saving 
 days; and within his own household circle, the
 
 12 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 approbation of which approaches the nearest to 
 that of an approving conscience, was lookt upon as 
 the representative of all his brother heroes, and 
 could tell such tales as made the tear glisten on 
 the cheek of his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes 
 with an unwonted sparkling eagerness. 
 
 At length however, when the appointed hour is 
 arrived, and everything is ready, the master-mind 
 leaps into the seat that is awaiting him, and fixes 
 his eye on heaven ; and the selfmoving wheels roll 
 onward ; and the road prepared for them is soon 
 past over ; and the pioneers and sutlers are left 
 behind ; and the chariot advances further and 
 further, until it has reacht its goal, and stands as 
 an inviting beacon on the top of some distant 
 mountain. 
 
 Hereupon the same labours recur. Thousands 
 after thousands must toil to attain on foot to the 
 spot, to which genius had been borne in an 
 instant ; and much time is spent in clearing and 
 paving the road, so that the multitude may be 
 able to go along it, — in securing for all by re- 
 flexion and analysis, what the prophetic glance of 
 intuit inn had descried at once. And then again 
 the like preparations are to be made for the advent 
 of a second seer, of another epoch-making master- 
 mind. Thus, when standing on the beach, yoti 
 may see the rpiKu/ua, as the Greeks called it, out- 
 running, not only the waves that went before, but 
 those that come after it : and you may sometimes 
 have to wait long, ere any reaches the mark, which
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 13 
 
 some mighty over-arching onrushing billow, some 
 flucttis decumanus has left. 
 
 That there have been such third and tenth 
 waves among men, will be apparent to those who 
 call to mind how far the main herd of meta- 
 physicans are still lagging behind Plato ; and how, 
 for near two thousand years, they were almost all 
 content to feed on the crumbs dropt from Ari- 
 stotle's table. It is proved by the fact, that even 
 in physical science, the progress of which, it is 
 now thought, nothing can check or retard, — and in 
 which, more than in any other province of human 
 activity, whatever knowledge is once gained forms 
 a lasting fund for afterages to inherit and trade 
 with, — not a single step was taken, not a single 
 discovery made, as Whewell observes, either in 
 mechanics or hydrostatics, between the time of 
 Archimedes and of Galileo. Indeed the whole of 
 Whewell's History of Science so strikingly illus- 
 trates the foregoing remarks, that, had they not 
 been written long before, they might be supposed 
 to be drawn immediately from it. The very plan 
 of his work, which his subject forces upon him, 
 divides itself in like manner into preludes, or 
 periods of preparation, inductive epochs, when the 
 great discoveries are made, and sequela, during 
 which those discoveries are more fully establishl 
 and developt, and more generally diffused. 
 
 Or, if we look to poetry. — to which the law of 
 progression no way applies, any more than to 
 beauty, but which, like beauty, is mostly in its
 
 14 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 prime during the youth of a nation, and then is 
 wont to decline, — so entirely do great poets soar 
 beyond the reach, and almost beyond the ken of 
 their own age, that we have only lately begun to 
 have a right understanding of Shakspeare, or of 
 the masters of the Greek drama, — to discern the 
 principles which actuated them, the purposes they 
 had in view, the laws they acknowledged, and the 
 ideas they wisht to impersonate. 
 
 And is the case different in the ails ? What do 
 we see in architecture, but two ideas shining upon 
 us out of the depth of bygone ages, that of the 
 Greek temple, and that of the Gothic minster ? 
 Each of these was a living idea, and, as such, 
 capable of manifold development, expansion, and 
 modification. Nor were they unwilling to descend 
 from their sacred throne, and to adapt themselves 
 to the various wants of civil life. But what 
 architectural idea has sprung up since;' These 
 are both the offspring of dark ages : what have 
 we given birth to, since we dreamt we had a 
 sun within us ? One might almost suppose 
 that, as Dryden says, in his stupid epigram on 
 Milton, "The force of Nature could no further 
 go ;" so that, " To make a third, we joined the 
 other two." If of late years there has been any 
 improvement, it consists solely in this, that 
 we have separated the incongruous elements, 
 and have tried to imitate each style in a man- 
 ner more in accord with its original principle : 
 although both of them are ill suited for divers
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 15 
 
 reasons to the needs of modem society. Yet 
 nothing like a new idea has arisen, unless it be 
 that of the factory, or the gashouse, or the gaol. 
 
 In sculpture, it is acknowledged, the Greeks still 
 stand alone : and among the Greeks themselves 
 the art declined after the age of Phidias and Praxi- 
 teles. In painting too who has there been for the 
 last century worthy to hold Raphael's palette ? 
 Even in what might be deemed a mechanical 
 excellence, colouring, we are put to shame, when 
 we presume to shew our faces by the side of our 
 greater ancestors. u. 
 
 From what has just been said, we may per- 
 ceive how baseless and delusive is the vulgar 
 notion of the march of mind, as necessarily ex- 
 hibiting a steady regular advance, within the 
 same nation, in all things. Even in the mecha- 
 nical arts, — which depend so little on individual 
 eminence, and which seem to require nothing more 
 than the talents ordinarily forthcoming, according 
 as there is a demand for them, in every people, — 
 although the progress in them is more continuous, 
 and outlasts that in higher things, yet, when 
 the intellectual and moral energy of a nation 
 has declined, that decline heroines perceptible 
 after a while in the very lowest brandies of trade 
 and manufacture. Civilization will indeed outlive 
 that energy, and keep company for a long time 
 with luxury. But if luxury extinguishes the 
 energy of a people, so that it cannot revive, its
 
 16 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 civilization too will at length sink into barbarism. 
 The decay of the Roman mind under the empire 
 manifests itself not merely in its buildings, its 
 statues, its language, but even in the coins, in the 
 shape and workmanship of the commonest utensils. 
 
 In fact it is only when applied on the widest 
 scale to the whole human race, that there is the 
 slightest truth in the doctrine of the perfectibility, 
 or rather of the progressiveness of man. Nay, 
 even when regarded in this light, if we take 
 nothing further into account, than what man can 
 do and will do for himself, the notion of his per- 
 fectibility is as purely visionary, as the search 
 after an elixir of life, or any other means of 
 evading the pains and frailties of our earthly 
 nature. The elixir of life we have ; the doc- 
 trine and means of perfectibility we have ; and 
 we know them to be true and sure. But they 
 are not of our own making. They do not lie 
 within the compass of our own heing. They come 
 to us from without, from above. The only view 
 of human nature, as left to itself, which is not 
 incompatible with all experience, is not its perfec- 
 tibility, but its corruptibility. 
 
 This is the view to which we are led by the 
 history of the antediluvian world. This is the 
 view represented in the primeval fable of the four 
 ages ; the view exprest in those lines of the 
 Roman poet : 
 
 Aetas parentum, pejor avis, tulit 
 Nos nequiores, mox daturos 
 l'roLreriiem vitiosiorein.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 17 
 
 Indeed it is the view which man has in all ages 
 taken of his own nature ; whether his judge- 
 ment was determined by what he saw within 
 himself, or in the world around him. It is 
 the view to which he is prompted when his 
 thoughts fall back on the innocence .of his own 
 childhood, when he compares it with his present 
 debasement, and thinks of the struggles he has had 
 to maintain against himself, and against others, in 
 order to save himself from a still more abject 
 degradation. The same lesson is taught him 
 by the destinies of nations ; which, when they 
 have left their wild mountain-sources, will mostly 
 meander playfully for a while amid hills of beauty, 
 and then flow majestically through plains of luxu- 
 riant richness, until at last they lose themselves in 
 morasses, and choke themselves up with their own 
 alluvion. 
 
 Of a like kind is the main theme and subject 
 of poetry. Its scroll, as well as that of history 
 is like the roll which was spread out before the 
 prophet, written within and wit/tout : and the 
 matter of the writing is the same, lamentations, 
 and mourning, and woe. When we have swal- 
 lowed it submissively indeed, it turns to sweet- 
 ness ; but not till then: in the words of the 
 Greek philosopher, it is through terrour and pity 
 that poetry purifies our feelings. Hence the name 
 of the highest branch of poetry is become a syno- 
 nym for every disaster: tragedy is but another 
 term for lamentations and mourning and woe : 
 
 VOL. II. c
 
 18 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 while epic poetry delights chiefly to dwell on the 
 glories and fall of a nobler bygone generation. 
 With such an unerring instinct does man's spirit 
 recoil from the thought of an earthly elysium, 
 as attainable by his own powers, however great 
 and admirable they may be. What though his 
 strength may seem vast enough to snatch the cup 
 of bliss ! what though his intellect appear subtile 
 enough to compass or steal it ! what though he 
 send his armies and fleets round the globe, and 
 his thoughts among the stars, and beyond them ! 
 he knows that the disease of his will is sure to 
 undermine both his strength and his intellect ; 
 and that the higher they mount for the moment, 
 the more terrible will their ruin be, and the more 
 certain. He knows that Sisyphus is no less sure 
 than Typhoeus of being cast into hell through 
 his own perversity ; and that only through the 
 flames of the funeral pile can Hercules rise into 
 glory. It was reserved for a feebleminded, earth- 
 worshiping, self-idolizing age to find out that a 
 tragedy should end happily. 
 
 Nor will the boasted discovery of modern times, 
 the division of labour, — which the scnters-out of 
 allegories will suppose to be the truth veiled in 
 the myth of Kehama's self-multiplication, when 
 he is marching against Padalon to seize a throne 
 among the gods, — avail to alter this. The Roman 
 fable warns us what is sure to ensue, when the 
 members split and set up singly : and the state 
 England at this day affords sad confirmation
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 19 
 
 to the lesson, that, unless they work together 
 under the sway of a constraining higher spirit, 
 they jar and clash and cumber and thwart and 
 maim each other. 
 
 The notion entertained by some of the ancients, 
 that, when a person has soared to an inordinate 
 pitch of prosperity, the envy of the gods is pro- 
 voked to cast him down, is merely a perversion 
 of the true idea. Man's wont has ever been to 
 throw off blame upon anything except himself; 
 even upon the powers of heaven, when he can 
 find no earthly scapegoat. At the same time 
 this very notion bears witness of the pervading 
 conviction that a state of earthly perfection is an 
 impossibility. The fundamental idea both of the 
 tragic «r»7 and of the historic vi^ms is, that 
 calamities are the inevitable consequences of sins ; 
 that the chain which binds them together, though 
 it may be hidden and mysterious, is indissoluble ; 
 and that, as man is sure to sin, more especially 
 when puft up by prosperity, he is also sure to 
 perish. The sins of the fathers are indeed re- 
 garded by both as often visited upon the children, 
 even to the third and fourth generation ; not 
 however without their becoming in some measure 
 accessory to the guilt. Were they not so, the 
 calamities would be as harmless as the wounds 
 of Milton's angels. 
 
 This however, which is the essential point in 
 the whole argument, — the concatenation of mural 
 and physical evil, and the everlasting necessity by
 
 20 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 which sin must bring forth death, — has mostly 
 been left out of thought by the broachers and 
 teachers of perfectibility. Perceiving that man's 
 outward relations appeared to be perfectible, they 
 fancied that his nature was so likewise : or rather 
 they scarcely heeded his nature, and lookt solely 
 at his outward relations. They saw that his do- 
 minion over the external world seemed to admit 
 of an indefinite extension. They saw that his 
 knowledge of outward things had long been pro- 
 gressive ; that vast stores had been piled up, 
 which were sure to increase, and could scarcely 
 be diminisht : so, by a not unnatural confusion, 
 they assumed that the greater amount of know- 
 ledge implied a proportionate improvement in the 
 faculties by which the knowledge is acquired ; 
 although a large empire can merely attest the 
 valour of those who won it, without affording evi- 
 dence either way with regard to those who inherit 
 it. All the while too it was forgotten that ;i 
 man's clothes are not himself, and that, if the 
 spark of life in him goes out, his clothes, however 
 gorgeous, must sink and crumble upon his crum- 
 bling body. 
 
 The strange inconsistency is, that the very 
 persons who have indulged in the most splendid 
 visions about the perfectibility of mankind, have 
 mostly rejected the only principle of perfectibility 
 which has ever found place in man, the only 
 principle by which man's natural corruptibility 
 has ever been checkt, the only principle by which
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 21 
 
 nations or individuals have ever been regenerated. 
 The natural life of nations, as well as of indi- 
 viduals, has its fixt course and term. It springs 
 forth, grows up, reaches its maturity, decays, 
 perishes. Only through Christianity has a nation 
 ever risen again : and it is solely on the operation 
 of Christianity that we can ground anything like 
 a reasonable hope of the perfectibility of mankind ; 
 a hope that what has often been wrought in indi- 
 viduals, may also in the fulness of time be wrought 
 by the same power in the race. u. 
 
 I met this morning with the following sentences. 
 " An upholsterer nowadays makes much hand- 
 somer furniture than they made three hundred 
 years ago. The march of mind is discernible in 
 everything. Shall religion then be the only thing 
 that continues wholly unimproved ?" 
 
 What ? Does the march of mind improve the 
 oaks of the forest ? does it make them follow its 
 banners to Dunsinane, or dance, as Orpheus did of 
 old ? does it improve the mountains ? does it im- 
 prove the waves of the sea ? does it improve the sun '. 
 The passage is silly enough : I merely quote it, be- 
 cause it gives plain utterance to a delusion, which is 
 floating about in thousands, I might say in mil- 
 lions of minds. Some things we improve ; and so 
 we assume that we can improve, and are to im- 
 prove all things ; as though it followed that. 
 because we can mend a pen, we can with the 
 same ease mend an eagle's wing ; as thoughj
 
 22 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 because nibbing the pen strengthens it, paring 
 the eagle's wings must strengthen them also. 
 People forget what things are progressive, and 
 what improgressive. Of those too which are pro- 
 gressive, they forget that some are borne along 
 according to laws independent of human controll, 
 while others may be shoved or driven on by the 
 industry and intelligence of man. Nay, even 
 among those things with which the will and wit 
 of man might seem to have the power of dealing 
 freely, are there none which have not kept on 
 advancing at full speed along with the march of 
 mind ? Where are the churches built in our days, 
 which are so much grander and more beautiful 
 than those of York and Salisbury, of Amiens and 
 Cologne, as to warrant a presumption that they 
 who can raise a worthier house for God, are also 
 likely to know God, and to know how to worship 
 him better ? 
 
 In one point of view indeed we do improve 
 both the oaks and the mountains, both the sea 
 and even the sun ; not in themselves absolutely, 
 but in their relations to us. We make them 
 minister more and more to our purposes ; and we 
 derive greater benefits from them, which increase 
 with the increase of civilization. In this sense too 
 may we, and ought we to improve religion ; not in 
 itself, but in its relations to us ; so that it may 
 do us more and more good, or, in other words, may 
 exercise a greater and still greater power over 
 us. That is to say, we are to improve ourselves,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 23 
 
 in the only way of doing so effectually : we are 
 to increase the power of religion over us, by obey- 
 ing it, by submitting our wills to it, by receiving 
 it into our hearts with more entire devotion and 
 love. u. 
 
 Every idea, when brought down into the region 
 of the empirical understanding, and contemplated 
 under the relations of time and space, involves 
 a union of opposites, which are bound together 
 and harmonized in it : or rather, being one and 
 simple in its own primordial fulness, it splits, 
 when it enters into the prismatic atmosphere of 
 human nature. Thus too is it with Christianity, 
 from whatever point of view we regard it. If we 
 look at it historically, it is at once unchangeable 
 and changeable, at once constant and progressive. 
 Were it not unchangeable and constant, it could 
 not be the manifestation of Him who is the same 
 yesterday, today, and for ever. Were it not 
 changeable and progressive, it would not be 
 suited to him with whom today is never like 
 yesterday, nor tomorrow like today. Therefore 
 it is both at once ; one in its essence and change- 
 less, as coming from God ; manifold and variable 
 in its workings, as designed to pervade and hallow 
 every phase and element of man's being, his 
 thoughts, his words, his deeds, his imagination, 
 his reason, his affections, his duties. For it is 
 not an outward form : it is not merely a law, 
 manifesting itself by its own light, cast like a sky
 
 24 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 around man, and guiding him by its polar con- 
 stellations : its light comes down to him, and 
 dwells with him, and enters into him, and min- 
 gling with and strengthening his productive powers, 
 issues forth again in blossoms and fruits. Ac- 
 cordingly, as those powers are various, so must 
 the blossoms and fruits be that spring from 
 them. 
 
 If we compare our religious writers, ascetical 
 or doctrinal, with those of France or Germany, 
 we can hardly fail to perceive that, in turning 
 from one nation to another, we are opening a new 
 vein of thought : so remarkably and characteris- 
 tically do they differ. I am not referring to the 
 errours, Romanist or rationalist, with which many 
 of our continental neighbours are tainted : inde- 
 pendently of these, each picks out certain portions 
 of the truth, such as are most congenial to the 
 temper of his own heart and mind. Nor is he 
 wrong in doing so : for the aim of Christianity is 
 not to stifle the germs of individual character, and 
 to bring down all mankind to a dead level. On 
 the contrary, it fosters and devclopes the cen- 
 tral principle of individuality in every man, and 
 frees it from the crushing burthen with which the 
 lusts of the flesh and the vanities of life overlay 
 it ; as we may observe from the very first in the 
 strongly markt characters of Peter and James and 
 John and Paul. 
 
 So too, if we compare the religious writers of 
 the present day with those who lived a hundred
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 25 
 
 years ago, — or these with the great divines of the 
 seventeenth century, — or these with the reformers, 
 — or these with the schoolmen and the mystics of 
 the middle ages, — or these with the Latin fathers, 
 or with the Greek, — we must needs be struck by 
 a number of peculiarities in the views and feel- 
 ings of each age. The forms, the colouring, the 
 vegetation change, as we pass from one zone of 
 time to another : nor would it require a very 
 nice discrimination to distinguish, on reading any 
 theological work, to what age of Christianity it 
 belongs. Doctrines are differently brought for- 
 ward, differently mast : some become more pro- 
 minent than they have hitherto been, while others 
 fall into the background. New chains of logical 
 connexion are drawn between them. New wants 
 are felt ; new thoughts and feelings arise ; and 
 these too need to be hallowed. The most power- 
 ful and living preachers and writers have ever been 
 those, who, full of the spirit of their own age, haw- 
 felt a calling and a yearning to bring that spirit 
 into subjection, and to set it at one with the spirit 
 of Christ. 
 
 In this manner Christianity also becomes sub- 
 ject to the law of change, to which Time and all 
 its births bow down. In a certain sense too the 
 change is a progress ; that is to say, in extent. 
 Christianity is ever conquering some new province 
 of human nature, some fresh national variety of 
 mankind, some hitherto untenanted unexplored 
 region of thought or feeling, The Btar-led wisdom
 
 26 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of the East came to worship the Lord of Truth, as 
 soon as he appeared upon earth : and already in 
 Paul and John do we see how the reason of man 
 is transfigured hy the incarnation of the Eternal 
 Word. At Alexandria it was attempted to shew 
 what system of truths would arise from this union 
 of the human reason with the divine : and ever 
 since, from Origen down to Schleiermacher and 
 Hegel and Schelling, the highest endeavour of the 
 greatest philosophers has been to Christianize their 
 philosophy ; although in doing so they have often 
 been deluded into substituting a fiction of their 
 own, some phantom of logical abstractions, or some 
 idol of a deified Nature, for the living God of the 
 Gospel. Errours of all kinds have indeed beguiled 
 Philosophy by the way : yet the inmost desire of 
 her soul has ever been to celebrate her atonement 
 with Religion : and often, when she has gone 
 astray after the lusts of the world, this has been 
 in the bitterness of her heart, because the mis- 
 judging sentinels of Religion, instead of inviting 
 and welcoming her and cheering her on, reviled 
 her and drove her away. Hence too, in those ages 
 when she has been too fast bound in scholastic 
 chains, she has been wont to utter her plaint in 
 the broken sighs of the mystics. 
 
 " Throughout the history of the Church (says 
 Neander, in the introduction to his great work), 
 we see how Christianity is the leaven that is 
 destined to pervade the whole lump of human 
 nature." The workings of this leaven he traces
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 out vrtth admirable skill and beauty, and in a 
 spirit combining knowledge with faith and love 
 in a rare and exquisite union. Indeed the setting 
 forth this twofold manifestation of Christianity, in 
 its constancy and in its progressiveness, is the 
 great business of its historian. For such a history 
 precious hints are to be found in the Letters 
 recently publisht on the Kingdom of Christ, one 
 of the wisest and noblest works that our Church 
 has produced since the Ecclesiastical Polity. 
 Whereas the common run of Church-historians 
 are wont to disregard one of the two elements ; 
 either caring solely for that which is permanent 
 in Christianity, without regard to its progressive- 
 ness ; or else degrading it into a mere human 
 invention, which man is to mould and fashion 
 according to the dictates of his own mind. 
 
 After all it must never be forgotten that an 
 increase in extent is very different from an in- 
 crease in intensity. Like every other power, 
 Religion too, in widening her empire, may impair 
 her sway. It has been seen too often, both in 
 philosophy and elsewhere, that, when people have 
 fancied that the world was becoming Christian, 
 Christianity was in fact becoming worldly. u. 
 
 The tendency of man, we have seen, is much 
 rather to believe in the corruptibility, than in the 
 perfectibility of his nature. The former is the 
 idea embodied in almost every mythology. It 
 is the idea to which Poetry is led by the contrast
 
 28 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 between her visions and the realities of life. It 
 is the idea prompted by man's consciousness of 
 his own helplessness, of his own caducity and 
 mortality, of his own sinfulness, and of his utter 
 inability to contend against the powers of nature, 
 against time, against death, and against sin. 
 Perhaps too, as in looking back on the past we 
 are fonder of dwelling, whether with thankfulness 
 or regret, on the good than on the evil that has 
 befallen us, so conversely in our anticipations of 
 the future fear may be stronger than hope. At 
 least it is so with persons of mature years : and 
 only of late have the young usurpt the right 
 of determining public opinion. Even in those 
 ages when men had the best grounds for know- 
 ing that in sundry things they surpast their 
 ancestors, they were still disposed of old to look 
 rather at the qualities in which they conceived 
 themselves to have degenerated ; and they deemed 
 that the accessions in wealth or knowledge were 
 more than counterbalanced by the decay of the in- 
 tegrity, simplicity, and energy which adorned the 
 avtyes Mapada)vofiax<n. In this there may have 
 been much exaggeration, and no little delusion : 
 but at all events it is a unanimous protest lifted 
 up from every quarter of the earth, by all nations 
 and languages, against the notion of the perfec- 
 tiliility of mankind. 
 
 The opposite belief, that there is any point of 
 view from which mankind can be regarded as pro- 
 gressive, so that the regular advances already
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 29 
 
 made may warrant a hope that afterages will go 
 on advancing in the same direction, seems to have 
 been originally excited by the progress of science, 
 and to have been confined thereto. Perhaps it 
 may have been by the Romans, — on whom such 
 a vast influx of knowledge poured in, as if to 
 make amends for the downfall of everything else, 
 in the latter ages of the republic, and the earlier 
 of the empire, — that such a notion was first dis- 
 tinctly entertained. Thucydides was indeed well 
 aware that Greece had been increasing for centu- 
 ries in power and wealth and civilization ; and he 
 strongly urges that the events of his own time are 
 superior in importance to any former ones. More 
 than once too he explicitly asserts the law, which 
 is tacitly and practically recognized by all men, 
 that, according to the constitution of human na- 
 ture, we may count that the future will resemble 
 the past. But the calamities of which he was a 
 witness, seemed rather to forebode the destruction 
 of Greece, than its attaining to any higher emi- 
 nence ; and the Greek mind had not learnt to 
 digest the thought that barbarians could become 
 civilized. It was not till the age of Polybius that 
 this confession was extorted by the spreading 
 power of Rome. Nor was it possible for the 
 Greeks to conceive, how the various elements of 
 their nationality, which were so beautiful in their 
 distinctness, would be fused together, like the 
 Corinthian brass in the legend, by their destroyers, 
 to become the material of a bulkier and massier,
 
 30 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 though less graceful and finely-proportioned state. 
 Their philosophers speculated about the origin and 
 growth of civil society, the primary institution of 
 governments, and the natural order in which one 
 form passes into another : but they too saw 
 nothing in the world before their eyes, to breed 
 hope with regard to the future ; and Plato avows 
 that, through the frailty of man, even his perfect 
 commonwealth must contain the seeds of its own 
 dissolution. 
 
 The theory of a cycle in which the various 
 
 forms of government succeed one another, is 
 
 adopted by Polybius ; who feels such confidence 
 
 in it as to declare (vi. 9), that by its help a 
 
 man, judging dispassionately, may with tolerable 
 
 certainty prognosticate what fortunes and changes 
 
 await any existing constitution. He goes no 
 
 further however than to lay down (vi. 51), that 
 
 in the life of a state, as in that of an individual, 
 
 there is a natural order of growth, maturity, and 
 
 decay. Men were still very far from the idea 
 
 that, while particular states and empires rise and 
 
 fall, the race is slowly but steadily advancing 
 
 along its predestined course. Indeed near two 
 
 thousand years were to pass away, before this 
 
 idea could be contemplated in its proper light. 
 
 It was necessary that the human race should be 
 
 distinctly regarded as a unit, as one great family 
 
 scattered over the world. It was necessary that 
 
 the belief iii particular national gods should be 
 
 superseded by the faith in the one true God,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 31 
 
 the Father of heaven and earth. It was necessary 
 that we should be enabled to take a wide, dis- 
 criminating, catholic survey of all the nations that 
 have ever risen above the historical horizon ; and 
 that we should have learnt not to look upon 
 any of them as wholly outcast from the scheme 
 of God's providence ; that we should be convinced 
 how each in its station has had a part to act, 
 a destiny to fulfill. 
 
 Even science as yet could hardly be said to 
 exhibit a growing body of determinate results : 
 nor was there anything like a regular progress in 
 it anterior to the Alexandrian school. Among 
 the Roman men of letters, on the other hand, we 
 find the progressiveness of science asserted as a 
 law. Ne quis desperel saecula proficere semper, 
 says Pliny (ii. 13). The same assurance is 
 declared by Seneca in the well-known conclusion 
 of his Natural Questions. Feniet tempus, quo ista 
 quae nunc latent, in lucem dies extrakat, et hngi- 
 oris aevi diliyentia. — Feniet tempits, quo posteri 
 nostri tarn aperta nos nescisse mirentur. — Malta 
 saeculis tunc futuri* rum, memoria nostri exo- 
 leverit, reservantur. — Non semel quaedam sacra 
 traduntur ; Kleusis sercat quod osteudat revi- 
 sentibus. Herum uufuru, surra sua non simul 
 tradit. Initiates nos credimus : in vestibulo ejus 
 haeremus. These sentences, even after deducting 
 what must always be deducted on account of the 
 panting and puffing of Seneca's shortbieathed 
 brokenwinded style, still shew a confidence of the
 
 32 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 increase of knowledge, which was hardly to be 
 found in earlier times. It is worth noting that 
 this confidence, both in him and in Pliny, is 
 inspired by the discoveries in astronomy ; which, 
 Whewell remarks {Hist, of the Ind. Sci. i. 90), 
 was " the only progressive science produced by the 
 ancient world." With regard to maritime dis- 
 covery a like confidence is exprest in those lines 
 of the chorus in the Medea : 
 
 Yenient annis saecula seris, 
 (Juibus Oceanus vincula rerutn 
 Laxet, et in^ens pateat tellus ; 
 Tcthyscjue novos dete^at orbes ; 
 Nee sit terris ultima Thule : 
 
 lines evidently belonging to a later age than that 
 of Ovid, to whom the Medea has without sufficient 
 warrant been ascribed. It must have afforded 
 some consolation to those who lived when the old 
 world was sinking so fast into its grave, and when 
 its heart and soul and mind all bore tokens of the 
 deadly plague that was consuming it, to see even 
 this brighter gleam in the distance. Even this, 
 I say : for the prospect of the progress of science 
 was not connected with that of any general im- 
 provement of mankind. On the contrary Seneca 
 combines it in strange contrast with the increase 
 of every corruption. Tarde magna proveniunU 
 III quod id, urn tutu agirnus unimo, nondum per- 
 fecimus, ut pessimi essemus. Adhuc in i>c<>- 
 ceesu vitia sunt. He was not so intoxicated with 
 tin' fruit of the tree of knowledge, ;is to fancy,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 33 
 
 like the sophists of later times, that it was the 
 fruit of the tree of life. On the contrary, he pro- 
 nounces that the earth will be overflowed by 
 another deluge, and that every living creature -will 
 be swallowed up ; and that then, on the retreat 
 of the waters, every animal will be produced anew, 
 dabiturque terris homo inschis scelerum. Sed Mis 
 quoque innocentia non durabit, nisi dum novi sunt. 
 Cito nequitia subrepit : virtus difficilis inventu est, 
 rectorem ducemque desiderat. Etiam sine ma- 
 bistro vitia discuntur : (Nat. Quaest. iii. 30). 
 
 Nor could the perfectibility of mankind gain a 
 place among the dreams of the middle ages. The 
 recollections of the ancient world had not so 
 entirely past away : the fragments of its wreck 
 were too apparent : men could not but be aware 
 that they were treading among the ruins of a much 
 more splendid state of civilization. It is true, 
 human nature was not at a standstill during that 
 millenary. A new era was preparing. Mighty 
 births were teeming in the womb ; but they were 
 as yet unseen. Men were laying the foundations 
 of a grander and loftier edifice : but this is a 
 work which goes on underground, which makes 
 no show ; and the labourers themselves little knew 
 what they were doing. Even in respect of that 
 which raised them above former ages, their purer 
 faith, while the spirit of that faith casts down 
 every proud thought, and stifles every vain boast, 
 they were perpetually looking back, with shame 
 and sorrow for their own lulling oft', to the holirjes - 
 
 VOL. II. v
 
 34 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and zeal of the primitive Christians. Indeed, as 
 by our bodily constitution pain, however local, 
 pierces through the whole frame, and almost dis- 
 ables us for receiving any pleasurable sensations 
 through our other members, thereby warning us 
 to seek for an immediate remedy ; so have we a 
 moral instinct, which renders us acutely sensitive 
 to the evils of the present time, far more than 
 to those of the past ; thus rousing us to strive 
 against that which is our only rightful foe. Our 
 imagination, on the other hand, recalling and 
 enhancing the good of the past, shews us that 
 there is something to strive after, something to 
 regain. It shews us that men may be exempt 
 from the evil which is galling us, seeing that they 
 have been so. Moreover, that which survives of 
 the past is chiefly the good, evil from its nature 
 being akin to death; and this good is in divers 
 ways brought continually before us, in all that is 
 precious of the inheritance bequeathed to us by 
 our ancestors. Every son, with the heart of a 
 son, is thankful for what his father has done for 
 him and left to him : nor will any but an unna- 
 tural one uncover his father's nakedness, even for 
 his own eyes to look upon it. So far indeed were 
 men in the middle ages from deeming themselves 
 better than their forefathers, or expecting anything 
 like a progressive improvement, an opinion often 
 got abroad that the last days were at hand, and 
 that the universal unprecedented corruption was a 
 sign and prelude of their approach.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 35 
 
 The great discoveries of the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries, which opened one world after 
 another to men's eyes, and taught them at length 
 to know the nature and compass of the earth and 
 of the heavens, might indeed have awakened pre- 
 sumptuous thoughts. But Luther at the same 
 time threw open the Bible to them. He opened 
 their eyes to look into the moral and the spiritual 
 world, and to see more clearly than before, how 
 the whole head was sick, and the whole heart 
 faint. The revival of letters too, while it opened 
 the ancient world to them, almost compelled them 
 to acknowledge that in intellectual culture they 
 were mere barbarians in comparison with the 
 Greeks and Romans : and for a long time men's 
 judgements were spellbound, as Dante's was by 
 Virgil, so that they vailed their heads, as before 
 their masters, even when their genius was mount- 
 ing above them. Hence the belief that mankind 
 had degenerated became so prevalent, that Hake- 
 will, in the first half of the seventeenth century, 
 deemed it necessary to establish by a long and 
 elaborate induction that it was without any sub- 
 stantial ground. 
 
 As he wrote early in Charles the First's reign, 
 before the close of the most powerful and brilliant 
 age in the history of the human mind, one might 
 have thought he would have found no difficulty in 
 convincing the contemporaries of Shakspeare and 
 Bacon, that men's wits had not shrunk or weak- 
 ened. But a genial age, like a genial individual.
 
 36 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 is unconscious of its own excellence. For the 
 element and lifeblood of genius is admiration and 
 love. This is the source and spring of its power, 
 its magic, beautifying wand : and it finds so much 
 to admire and love in the various worlds which 
 compass it around, it cannot narrow its thoughts 
 or shrivel up its feelings to a paralytic worship 
 of itself. Hakewill begins his Apology with de- 
 claring, that " the opinion of the world's decay 
 is so generally received, not only among the 
 vulgar, but by the learned, both divines and 
 others, that its very commonness makes it cur- 
 rent with many, without any further examina- 
 tion." In his preface he speaks of himself as 
 '• walking in an untrodden path, where he cannot 
 trace the prints of any footsteps that have gone 
 before him ;" and, to excuse the length of his 
 book, he pleads his having " to grapple with such 
 a giant-like monster." Nor does even he ven- 
 ture beyond denying the decay of mankind. He 
 is far from asserting that there is any improve- 
 ment ; only that there is " a vicissitude, an 
 alternation and revolution" (p. 332), that, " what 
 is lost to one part, is gained to another, and what 
 is lost at one time, is recovered at another ; and 
 so the balance, by the divine providence overruling 
 all, is kept upright." " As the heavens remain 
 unchangeable, (he says in his preface,) so doth the 
 Church triumphant in heaven : and as all things 
 under the cope of heaven vary and change, so doth 
 the militant here on earth, it hath its timed and
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 37 
 
 turns, sometimes flowing, and again ebbing with 
 the sea, — sometimes waxing, and again waning 
 with the moon ; which great light, it seems, the 
 Almighty therefore set the lowest in the heavens, 
 and nearest the earth, that it might daily put us 
 in mind of the constancy of the one, and the 
 inconstancy of the other; herself in some sort 
 partaking of both, though in a different manner, — 
 of the one in her substance, of the other in the 
 copy of her visage." He also acknowledges the 
 important truth, that, if there be any deteriora- 
 tion, it has a moral cause. But the conception of 
 a melioration, of an advance, seems never to have 
 entered his head. 
 
 It is sometimes worth while to shew how 
 recent is the origin of opinions, which are now 
 regarded as incontestable and almost self-evident 
 truths. The writer of a letter publisht by Cole- 
 ridge in the Friend says (Vol. iii. p. 13): " The 
 faith in the perpetual progression of human nature 
 toward perfection — will, in some shape, always be 
 the creed of virtue." Wordsworth too, in the 
 beautiful answer in which he prunes off some of 
 the excrescences of this notion, still gives bis 
 sanction to the general assertion : " Let us ailoAv 
 and believe that there is a progress in the species 
 toward unattainable perfection ; or, whether this 
 be so or not, that it is a necessity of a good and 
 greatly gifted nature to believe it." A necessity 
 it is indeed for a good and highly gifted nature 
 to believe that something may be done for the
 
 38 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 bettering of mankind, and for the removal of the 
 evils weighing upon them. Else enterprise would 
 flag and faint ; which is never vigorous and stre- 
 nuous, unless it breathe the mountain-air of hope. 
 It must have something to aim at, some prize 
 to press forward to. But when we look on 
 the state of the world around us, there is so 
 much to depress and breed despondence, — so much 
 of the good of former times has past away, so 
 much fresh evil has rusht in, — that no thoughtful 
 man will hastily pronounce his own age to be 
 on the whole better than foregoing ones. Rather, 
 as almost every example shews, from meditating 
 on the evils he has to contend against, — on their 
 number, their diffusion, their tenacity, and their 
 power, — will he incline to deem it worse. And 
 so far is the perfectibility of man from forming 
 an essential article of his creed, that I doubt 
 whether such a notion was ever entertained, as 
 a thing to be realized here on earth, till about 
 tlie middle of the last century. 
 
 Even Bacon, the great prophet of science, who 
 among all the sons of men seems to have lived 
 the most in the future, who acknowledged that 
 his words required an age, saeculum forte in- 
 h'tj mm ad prolnnithnn, nmtjilimi autem saeculv 
 ad perficiendum, and who was so imprest with 
 tliis belief, that in his will he left "his name 
 and memory to forein nations and to the next 
 ages/' — even he, in his anticipations of the 
 increase of knowledge, which was to ensue upon
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 39 
 
 the adoption of his new method, hardly goes 
 beyond the declaration in the book of Daniel, 
 that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
 shall be increast. Let me quote the noble 
 passage in which, just before the close of his 
 Adcancement of Learning, he gives utterance to 
 his hopes. "Being now at some pause, looking 
 back into that I have past through, this writing 
 seemeth to me, as far as a man can judge of 
 his own work, not much better than that noise 
 or sound which musicians make while they are 
 tuning their instruments ; which is nothing plea- 
 sant to hear, yet is a cause why the music is 
 sweeter afterward : so have I been content to tune 
 the instruments of the muses, that they may play 
 who have better hands. And surely, when I set 
 before me the condition of these times, in which 
 Learning hath made her third visitation or circuit, 
 in all the qualities thereof, — as the excellency and 
 vivacity of the wits of this age ; the noble helps 
 and lights which we have by the travails of 
 ancient writers ; the art of printing, which com- 
 municateth books to men of all fortunes; the 
 openness of the world by navigation, which hath 
 disclosed multitudes of experiments and a mass 
 of natural history ; the leisure wherewith these 
 times abound, not employing men so generally in 
 civil business, as the states of Greece did in re- 
 spect of their popularity, and the state of Rome in 
 respect of the greatness of her monarchy ; the pre- 
 sent disposition of these times to peace ; and the
 
 40 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 inseparable propriety of time, which is ever more 
 and more to disclose truth ; — I cannot but be 
 raised to this persuasion, that this third period 
 of time will far surpass that of the Grecian 
 and Roman learning." And in the Norton 
 Qrganum (i. cxxix.), where he enumerates the 
 benefits likely to accrue to mankind from the 
 increase of knowledge, he wisely adds, with re- 
 gard to its moral influence : "Si quis deprava- 
 tionem scientiarum ad malitiam et luxuriam et 
 similia objecerit, id neminem moveat. Illud enim 
 de omnibus mundanis bonis dici potest, ingenio, 
 fortitudme, viribus, forma, divitiis, luce ipsa, et 
 reliquis. Recuperet modo genus humanum jus 
 suum in naturam, quod ei ex dotatione divina 
 competit ; et detur ei copia : usum vero recta ratio 
 et sana religio gubernabit." 
 
 Thus far all is sound and sure. Bacon's pro- 
 phecies of the advance of science have been fulfilled 
 far beyond what even he could have anticipated. 
 For knowledge partakes of infinity : it widens 
 with our capacities : the higher we mount in it, 
 the vaster and more magnificent are the prospects 
 it stretches out before us. Nor are we in these 
 days, as men are ever apt to imagine of their own 
 times, approaching to the end of them : nor shall 
 we be nearer the end a thousand years hence than 
 we are now. The family of Science has multi- 
 plied : new sciences, hitherto unnamed, unthought 
 of, have arisen. The seed which Bacon sowed 
 sprang up, and grew to be a mighty tree ; and the
 
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 41 
 
 thoughts of thousands of men came and lodged in 
 its branches : and those branches spread " so 
 broad and long, that in the ground The bended 
 twigs took root, and daughters grew About the 
 mother tree, a pillared shade High overarcht . . . 
 and echoing walks between "... walks where 
 Poetry may wander, and wreathe her blossoms 
 around the massy stems, and where Religion may 
 hymn the praises of that Wisdom, of which Science 
 erects the hundred-aisled temple. 
 
 But Bacon likewise saw and acknowledged that 
 Science of itself could not perfect mankind, and 
 that right reason and pure religion were wanting 
 to prevent its breeding evil. Although he had 
 crost the stormbeaten Atlantic, over which men 
 had for ages been sailing to and fro almost im- 
 progressively, and though in the confidence of his 
 prophetic intuition he gave the name of Good 
 Hope to the headland he had reacht, yet, when 
 he cast his eyes on the boundless expanse of 
 waters beyond, he did not venture, like Magellan, 
 to call it the Pacific. Once indeed a voice was 
 heard to announce the rising of peace on earth : 
 but that peace man marred : the bringer of it he 
 slew : and, as if to shew how vain such a dream 
 is, Magellan also was slain soon after he lancht 
 out upon the sea, which in the magnanimous 
 enthusiasm of his joy he named the Pacific. Calm 
 too as the Pacific appeared at first, it was soon 
 found to have no exemption from the tempests 
 of earth, which have been raging over it ever
 
 42 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 since with no less fury than they displayed on 
 the Atlantic before. If Bacon's hopes were too 
 sanguine in any respect, it was in trusting that 
 reason and religion would guide and direct science. 
 He did not sufficiently foresee how the old idola- 
 tries would revive, — how men would still worship 
 the creature, under the form of abstractions and 
 laws, instead of the living lawgiving Creator. 
 
 Every age of the world has had its peculiar 
 phase of this idolatry, its peculiar form and aspect, 
 under which it has conceived that the powers of 
 earth would effect what can only be effected by 
 the powers of heaven. Every age has its peculiar 
 interests and excellencies, which it tries to render 
 paramount and absolute. The delusion of the 
 last century has been, that science will lead 
 mankind to perfection. In looking at the history 
 of science, it must strike every eye that, while 
 the growth of poetry and philosophy is organic and 
 individual, the increase of science is rather me- 
 chanical and cumulative. Every poet, every phi- 
 losopher must begin from the beginning. What- 
 ever he brings forth must spring out of the depths 
 of his own nature, must have a living root in 
 his heart. Pindar did not start where Homer 
 left off', and engage in improving upon him : the 
 very attempt would have been a proof of feeble- 
 ness. And what must be the madness of a man 
 who would undertake to improve upon Shak- 
 speare ! As reasonably might one set out to tack 
 a pair of leaders before the chariot of the sun.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 43 
 
 The whole race of the giants would never pile 
 an Ossa on this Olympus : their missiles would roll 
 back on their heads from the feet of the gods 
 that dwell there. Even Goethe and Schiller, 
 when they meddled with Shakspeare, and would 
 fain have mended him, have only proved, what 
 Voltaire, and Dryden himself, had proved before, 
 that " Within his circle none can walk but he." 
 Nor, when Shakspeare's genius past away from 
 the earth, did any one akin to him reign in his 
 stead. Indeed, according to that law of alterna- 
 tion, which is so conspicuous in the whole history 
 of literature, it mostly happens that a period of 
 extraordinary fertility is followed by a period of 
 dearth. After the seven plenteous years come 
 seven barren years, which devour the produce of 
 the plenteous ones, yet continue as barren and 
 illfavoured as ever. 
 
 Nor may a philosopher, any more than a poet, 
 be a mere link in a chain : he must be a staple 
 firmly and deeply fixt in the adamantine walls 
 of Truth. If he rightly deserves the name, his 
 mind must be impregnated with some of the pri- 
 mordial ideas, of life and being, man and nature, 
 fate and freedom, order and law, thought and will, 
 power and God. He may have received them 
 from others ; but he must receive them as seeds : 
 they must teem and germinate within him, and 
 mingle with the essence of his spirit, and must 
 shape themselves into a new Original growth. He 
 who merely takes a string of propositions from
 
 44 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 former writers, and busies himself in drawing fresh 
 inferences from them, may be a skilful logician or 
 psychologer, but has no claim to the high title 
 of a philosopher. For in this too does philosophy 
 resemble poetry, that it is not a bare act of the 
 intellect, but requires the energy of the whole 
 man, of his moral nature and will and affections, 
 no less than of his understanding. It is the 
 ideal pole, to which poetry is the real antithesis ; 
 and it bears the same relation to science, as poetry 
 does to history. Hence those dissensions among 
 philosophers, which are so often held up as the 
 great scandal of philosophy, and the like of which 
 are hardly found in science. They may, no doubt, 
 be carried on in a reprehensible temper ; that, 
 however, belongs to the individuals, not to phi- 
 losophy : so far as they are merely diversities, 
 they may and ought to exist harmoniously side 
 by side, as different incarnations of Truth. A 
 great philosopher will indeed find pupils, who 
 will be content to be nothing more ; who will 
 work out and fill up his system, and follow it 
 in its remoter applications ; who will be satraps 
 under him, and go forth under his command to 
 push on his frontier. But if any among them 
 have a philosophical genius of their own, they 
 will set up after a while for themselves ; as we 
 see in the history of philosophy in the only two 
 countries where it has flourisht, Greece and Ger- 
 many. They who have light in themselves will 
 not revolve as satellites. They do not continue
 
 GUESSES AT Ttll'TH. 45 
 
 the servants and agents of their master's mind, 
 but, like the successors of Alexander, establish 
 independent thrones, and found new empires in 
 the regions of thought. Hence too the other great 
 scandal of philosophy, its improgressiveness, may 
 easily be accounted for. The essence of philo- 
 sophy being, not an accmaintance with empirical 
 results, but the possession of the seminal idea, — 
 the possessing it, and the being possest by it, 
 in a spiritual union and identification, — it may 
 easily happen that philosophers in early ages should 
 be greater and wiser than in later ones ; greater 
 not merely subjectively, as being endowed with 
 a mightier genius, but as having received a 
 higher initiation into the mysteries of Truth, as 
 having dwelt more familiarly with her, and gazed 
 on her unveiled beauty, and laid their heads in 
 her bosom, and caught more of the inspiration 
 ever flowing from the eternal wellhead eV a<po- 
 ra-njs Kopvcpfjs iro\vni8aKos "ldrjs. In fact they have 
 no slight advantage over their successors, in that 
 there are fewer extraneous terrene influences to rise 
 and disturb the serenity of their vision. 
 
 Science, on the other hand, is little subject to 
 similar vicissitudes : at least it has not been so 
 since the days of Bacon. Neither in science itself, 
 nor in that lower class of the arts which arise 
 out of its practical application, has any individual 
 work an enduring ultimate value, unless from its 
 execution : and this would be altogether inde- 
 pendent of its scientific value, and would belong
 
 46 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 to it solely as a work of art. In science its main 
 worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to some- 
 thing beyond. Even the Principia, as Newton 
 with characteristic modesty entitled his great work, 
 is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy, 
 and no more an ultimate work, than Watt's 
 steam-engine, or Arkwright's spinning-machine. 
 It may have a lasting interest from its execu- 
 tion, or from accidental circumstances, over and 
 above its scientific value : but, as a scientific 
 treatise, it was sure to be superseded ; just as 
 the mechanical inventions of one generation, 
 whatever ingenuity they may betoken at the 
 time, are superseded and thrown into the back- 
 ground by those of another. Thus in science 
 there is a continual progress, a pushing onward : 
 no ground is lost ; and the lines keep on ad- 
 vancing. We know all that our ancestors knew, 
 and more : the gain is clear, palpable, indisput- 
 able. The discoveries made by former ages have 
 become a permanent portion of human know- 
 ledge, and serve as a stable groundwork to build 
 fresh discoveries atop of them ; as these in their 
 turn will bear up another story, and this again 
 another. Thus it came to pass that, as the 
 multitudes in the plain of Shinar fancied they 
 could erect a tower, the summit of which should 
 reach to heaven, in like manner the men of science 
 in the last century conceived that the continued 
 augmentations of science would in time raise 
 them up above all the frailties of humanity.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 47 
 
 Confounding human nature with this particular 
 exertion of its faculties, they assumed that the 
 increase of the latter involved an equivalent im- 
 provement of the whole. And this mistake was 
 the easier, inasmuch as scientific talents have little 
 direct connexion with our moral nature, and may 
 exist in no low degree without support from it. 
 
 At all events the advance of science afforded 
 a kind of sanction to the belief in a continually 
 progressive improvement. Along with it came 
 the rapid growth of wealth, and of the arts 
 which minister to wealth, whether by feeding or 
 by pampering it : and these naturally tend to 
 enervate and epicureanize men's minds, to " incar- 
 nate and imbrute" the soul, "till she quite loses 
 The divine property of her first being," to lower 
 the dignity of thought, and to relax the severe 
 purity of feeling ; so that people learn to account 
 happiness the one legitimate object of all aim, and 
 that too a happiness derived from nothing higher 
 than the temperate harmless indulgence of our 
 pleasurable appetites. Moreover the chief intellec- 
 tual exploits of the eighteenth century consisted, 
 not in the discovery and establishment of new 
 truths, but in the exposure and rejection of cer- 
 tain prejudices and superstitions, or of opinions 
 deemed to be such. Now self-conceit, like every 
 other evil spirit, delights in negativeness, far more 
 than in anything positive and real : so the boast- 
 ers went on ringing the changes <»\ their own en- 
 lightenment, and on the darkness and ignorance
 
 48 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of their ancestors, and cried exultingly, We are 
 awake ! we are awake ! not from any conscious- 
 ness of active energy and vision, but because they 
 had ceast to dream. 
 
 In this manner a belief in the perfectibility of 
 man got into vogue, more especially in France ; 
 although the fearful depravation of morals merely 
 bespoke his corruptibility, and might rather have 
 been thought to portend that he was degenerating 
 into a brute. Rousseau indeed was seduced, partly 
 by the fascination of a dazzling paradox, and partly 
 by the nervous antipathies of his morbid genius, 
 to maintain the deleteriousness of the arts and 
 sciences, and that the only effect of civilization 
 had been to debase man from the type of his 
 aboriginal perfection. And this notion was not 
 without speciousness, if the state of French society 
 in his days was to be taken as exhibiting the 
 necessary effects of civilization. Thus, as one 
 extreme is ever sure to call forth the opposite, 
 the deification of civilized man led to the setting 
 up of an altar on mount Gerizim in honour of 
 savage man ; and the age reeled to and fro 
 between them, passing from the bloody rites of 
 the one to the lascivious rites of the other, till 
 the two were mingled together, and murder and 
 lust solemnized their unhallowed nuptials in the 
 kennel of the Revolution. 
 
 Among the apostles of perfectibility, several 
 tried to combine this twofold worship. They 
 mixt up the idea of progressiveness, derived
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 49 
 
 from the condition of civilized man, with a vague 
 phantom of perfection, placed by the imagina- 
 tion in a supposititious state of nature, a new- 
 fangled golden age, anterior to all social insti- 
 tutions. Although every plausible argument for 
 anticipating the future progressiveness of man- 
 kind must rest on the fact, that such a hope 
 is justified on the whole by the lessons of the 
 past, they maintained that everything had hitherto 
 been vicious and corrupt, that man hitherto had 
 only gone further and further astray, but that 
 nevertheless, by a sudden turn to the right about, 
 he would soon reach the islands of the blessed. 
 Now a thoughtful survey of the past will indeed 
 force us to acknowledge that the progress hither- 
 to has not been uniform, nor always equally 
 apparent. We must not overlook the numerous 
 examples which history furnishes in proof that, 
 according to the French proverb, il faut reader 
 pour mieux scatter. We are to recognize the 
 necessity that the former things, beautiful and 
 excellent as they may have been after their kind, 
 should pass away, in order that the ground might 
 be prepared for a more widely diffused and more 
 spiritual culture. But unless we discern how, 
 through all the revolutions of history, life has 
 still been triumphing over death, good over evil, 
 we have nothing to warrant an expectation that 
 this will be so hereafter. Moreover, though a great 
 and momentous truth is involved in the Baying, 
 that, when need is highest, then aid is nighest, this 
 
 VOL. II. k
 
 50 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 comfort belongs only to such as acknowledge that 
 man's waywardness is ever crost and overruled 
 by a higher power. Whereas those who were 
 most sanguine about the future, spurned the 
 notion of superhuman control ; while they only 
 found matter for loathing in the present or the 
 past. To their minds " old things all were over- 
 old ;" and they purpost to begin altogether anew, 
 and " to frame a world of other stuff." 
 
 Nor did this purpose lie idle. In the work 
 of destruction too they prospered : not so in that 
 of reconstruction. As the spirit of the age was 
 wholly negative, as men could find nothing to love 
 or revere in earth or in heaven, in time or in 
 eternity, it was not to be wondered at that they 
 set up their own understanding on the throne of 
 a degraded, godless, chance-ridden universe. But 
 having no love or reverence, they wrought in the 
 dark, and dasht their heads against the laws 
 and sanctities, to which they would not bow. 
 It may be regarded as one of those instances of 
 irony so frequent in history, that the moment 
 chosen by man to assert his perfectibility should 
 have been the very moment when all the powers 
 of evil were about to be let loose, and to run 
 riot over the earth. Happiness was the idol ; 
 and lo ! the idol burst ; and the spectral form of 
 Misery rose out of it, and stretcht out its gaunt 
 hand over the heads of the nations; and millions 
 of hearts shrank and were frozen by its touch. 
 Liberty was the watchword, liberty and equality :
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 51 
 
 and an iron despotism strode from north to south, 
 and from east to west ; and all men cowered at 
 its approach, and croucht beneath its feet, and 
 were trampled on, and found the equality they 
 coveted in universal prostration. Peace was the 
 promise ; and the fulfilment was -more than twenty 
 years of fierce desolating war. 
 
 The whirlblast came ; the desert sands rose up, 
 
 And shaped themselves : from earth to heaven they stood, 
 
 As though they were the pillars of a temple 
 
 Built by Omnipotence in its own honour. 
 
 But the blast pauses, and their shaping spirit 
 
 Is fled : the mighty columns were but sand ; 
 
 And lazy snakes trail o'er the level ruins. 
 
 Yet Condorcet, as is well known, even during 
 the Reign of Terrour, when himself doomed to the 
 guillotine, employed the time of his imprisonment 
 in drawing up a record of his speculations on the 
 perfectibility of mankind : and full of errour as 
 his views are, one cannot withhold all admiration 
 from a dauntlessness which could thus persevere in 
 hoping against hope. 
 
 Speculations of this sort are so remote from tin- 
 practical common-sense and the narrowminded 
 empiricism, which were the chief characteristics 
 inherited by English philosophy from its master, 
 Locke, that the doctrine of perfectibility hardly 
 found any strenuous advocate amongst us, until 
 it was taken up by Godwin. The good and pious 
 saw that wealth and luxury had not come with- 
 out their usual train of moral evils ; and they 
 foreboded the judgements which those evils must
 
 52 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 call down. Berkeley, for instance, in one of his 
 letters, quotes the above-cited lines of Horace, as 
 about to be verified in the increasing depravation 
 of the English people. In his Essay toward pre- 
 venting the Ruin of Great Britain, occasioned by 
 the failure of the Southsea scheme, he says : 
 " Little can be hoped, if we consider the corrupt 
 degenerate age we live in. Our symptoms are 
 so bad, that, notwithstanding all the care and 
 vigilance of the legislature, it is to be feared the 
 final period of our state approaches." And in 
 his Verses ou the Prospect of planting Arts and 
 Learning in America, after speaking of the decay 
 of Europe, he adds : 
 
 Westward the course of empire takes its way : 
 
 The first four acts already past, 
 A fifth shall close, the drama with the day : 
 
 Time's noblest offspring is the last. 
 
 Hartley too, who, in spite of his material fan- 
 tasmagoria, ranks high among the few men of a 
 finer and more genial intellect during that dreary 
 period, repeatedly speaks of the world as hasten- 
 ing to its end, and as doomed to perish on ac- 
 count of its excessive corruption ; and he enume- 
 rates six causes, " which seem more especially to 
 threaten ruin and dissolution to the present states 
 of Christendom." " Christendom (thus he closes 
 his work) seems ready to assume the place and lot 
 of the Jews, after they had rejected their Messiah, 
 the Saviour of the world. Let no one decrivi' 
 himself or others. The present circumstances of
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 53 
 
 the world are extraordinary and critical beyond 
 what has ever yet happened. If we refuse to 
 let Christ reign over us as our Redeemer and 
 Saviour, we must be slain before his face as 
 enemies, at his second coming." Hartley does 
 indeed look forward to " the restoration of the 
 Jews, and the universal establishment of Chris- 
 tianity, as the causes of great happiness, which 
 will change the face of this world much for the 
 better" (Prop. 85) : but this is a change to be 
 wrought by a superhuman power, though not 
 without human means (Prop. 84), and so does 
 not lie within the range of our present inquiry; 
 any more than Henry More's beautiful visions, or 
 those of others, concerning the millennium. 
 
 Hume, than whom few men have been more 
 poorly endowed with the historical spirit, or less 
 capable of understanding or sympathizing with any 
 unseen form of human nature, lays down in his 
 Essay on the Rise and Prop-ess of the Arts and 
 Sciences, " that, when the arts and sciences come 
 to perfection in any state, from that moment they 
 naturally, or rather necessarily decline, and seldom 
 or never revive ;" a proposition which implies a 
 sheer confusion of thought, as though the course 
 and term of the arts and sciences were the same, 
 and which he tries to support by the feeblest and 
 shallowest arguments. In his Essay on Refine- 
 ment in the Arts, he declares that "such a trans- 
 formation of mankind, as would endow them with 
 every virtue, and free them from every vice,"
 
 54 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 being impossible, " concerns not the magistrate, 
 who very often can only core one vice by another." 
 Such is the paltry morality, the miserable self- 
 abandonment, to which utilitarianism leads. Re- 
 cognizing nothing as good or evil in itself, it will 
 foster one vice, to counteract what it deems a more 
 hurtful one. He too has what he calls an Idea 
 of a perfect Commonwealth : but it deals merely 
 with the form of the government, being drawn 
 up with the purpose of avoiding the errours into 
 which Plato and Sir Thomas More, he says, fell, 
 in making an improvement in the moral character 
 of the people an essential part of their Utopias. 
 Yet what would be the worth of a perfect com- 
 monwealth without such an improvement ? or what 
 its stability ? Hume's name still excites so much 
 terrour, that it might be well if some able thinker 
 and reasoner were to collect a century of blunders 
 from his Essays : nor would it be difficult to do so, 
 even without touching upon those which refer to 
 questions of taste. 
 
 The belief in perfectibility would indeed have 
 chimed in with many of the prevailing opinions 
 on other subjects ; with that, for instance, which 
 stript the idea of God of his moral attributes, or 
 resolved them into partial expressions of infinite 
 benevolence ; as well as with the correspond [ng 
 opinion which regards evil as a mere defect, and 
 entirely discards the sinfulness of sin. For, were 
 evil nothing but an accident in our nature, re- 
 movable by human means, it would argue a
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 55 
 
 cowardly distrust, not to believe that the mind, 
 which is achieving such wonders in spreading man's 
 empire, intellectual and material, over the out- 
 ward world, will be able to devise some plan for 
 subduing his inward foe. Yet the Essay on Poli- 
 tical Justice does not seem to have produced much 
 effect even at the time, in the way of conviction, 
 except on a few youthful enthusiasts.; though it 
 added no little to the consternation among the 
 retainers of the existing order of things. So de- 
 plorable however was the dearth of thought in 
 England after the death of Burke, that, while 
 Godwin's deeper fallacies were scarcely toucht by 
 his opponents, they buoyed themselves up with 
 the notion that he had been overthrown by the 
 bulkiest instance of an ignoratio elenchi in the 
 whole history of pseudo-philosophy, — the Essay on 
 Population ; a work which may have merits in 
 other respects, but which, with reference to its pri- 
 mary object, the refutation of Condorcet and God- 
 win, is utterly impotent ; all its arguments pro- 
 ceeding on a hypothesis totally different from that 
 which it undertakes to impugn ; as has been con- 
 vincingly shewn by the great logician of our times 
 in one of the Notes from the Pocketbook of an 
 English Opium-eater. Indeed I hardly know 
 whether the success of the Essay on Population, 
 in dispelling the bright visions of a better Btate 
 of things, be not a stronger argument against 
 the perfectibility of man, than any contained in 
 its pages; evincing as that success (Iks such ;i
 
 56 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 readiness to adopt any fallacy which flatters 
 our prejudices, and bolsters up our imaginary 
 interests. 
 
 It was in Germany that the idea of the pro- 
 gressiveness of mankind first revealed itself under 
 a form more nearly approaching to the truth : 
 which indeed might have been expected from the 
 peculiar character of the nation. As the Germans 
 surpass other nations in the power of discerning 
 and understanding the spirits of other climes and 
 times, they have been the first to perceive the 
 true idea of the history of the world in its living 
 fulness and richness : and here, as in other depart- 
 ments of knowledge, it is only by meditating on 
 the laws observable in the past, that we can at all 
 prognosticate the future. 
 
 What then is the true idea of the history of 
 the world ? That question may now be answered 
 briefly and plainly. For though it may take 
 thousands of years to catch sight of an idea, yet, 
 when it has once been clearly apprehended, it is 
 wont to manifest itself by its own light. The gene- 
 ric distinction between man and the lower orders 
 of animals, if we look at them historically, — the 
 distinction out of which it arises that mankind 
 alone have, properly speaking, a history, or become 
 the agents and subjects in a series of diverse 
 events, — is, that, while each individual animal 
 in a manner fulfills the whole purpose of its ex- 
 istence, nothing of the sort can be predicated of 
 any man that ever lived, but only of the race.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 57 
 
 All the organs and faculties with which the 
 animal is endowed, are called into action : all the 
 tendencies discoverable in its nature are realized. 
 Whereas every man has a number of dormant 
 powers, a number of latent tendencies, the pur- 
 pose of which can never be accomplish!, except 
 in the historical development of the race ; not 
 in the race as existing at any one time, nor even 
 in the whole of time past, but of the race as 
 diffused through the whole period of time allotted 
 to it, past, present, and to come. For thus much 
 we can easily see, that there are many purposes 
 of man's being, many tendencies in his nature, 
 which have never yet been adequately fulfilled ; 
 though we are quite unable to make out when 
 that fulfilment will take place, or whither it will 
 lead us. Moreover there is a universal law, of 
 which we have a twofold assurance, — both from 
 observation of all the works of nature, and from 
 the wisdom of their author, — that no tendency 
 has been implanted in any created thing, but 
 sooner or later shall receive its accomplishment, 
 — that God's purposes cannot be baffled, and that 
 his word can never return to him empty. Hence 
 it follows that all those tendencies in man's 
 nature, which cannot be fulfilled immediately and 
 contemporaneously, will be fulfilled gradually and 
 successively in the course which mankind are to 
 run. Accordingly the philosophical idea of the 
 history of the world will be, that it is to exhibit 
 the gradual unfolding of all the faculties of man's
 
 58 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 intellectual and moral being, — those which he 
 has in common with the brute animals, may be 
 brought to perfection at once in him, as they are 
 in them, — under every shade of circumstance, and 
 in every variety of combination. This develop- 
 ment in the species will proceed in the same order 
 as it is wont to follow in those individuals whose 
 souls have been drawn out into the light of con- 
 sciousness. In its earlier stages the lower faculties 
 will exercise a sway only disturbed now and then 
 by the awakening of some moral instinct; and 
 then by degrees will be superseded and brought 
 into subjection by those of a higher order, coming 
 forward first singly, and then conjointly ; with a 
 perpetual striving after the period when the whole 
 man shall be called forth in perfect harmony and 
 symmetry, according to Aristotle's definition of 
 happiness, as irvxijs ivepyeia kot aperrjv reXeiav. In 
 
 a word, the purpose and end of the history of 
 the world is to realize the idea of humanity. All 
 the while too, as in the outward world there is 
 a mutual adaptation and correspondence between 
 the course of the seasons, and the fruits they are 
 to mature, so may we feel assured that, at every 
 stage in the progress of history, such light and 
 warmth will be vouchsafed to mankind from 
 above, as they may be able to bear, and as their 
 temporary needs may require. 
 
 I know not whether this idea was ever fully 
 and explicitly enunciated by any writer anterior to 
 Hegel. Indeed it presupposes a complete delineation
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 59 
 
 of the process by which the human mind itself 
 is developt, such as is hardly to be found prior 
 to his Phenomenology. Even by Hegel the histo- 
 rical process is regarded too much as a mere 
 natural evolution, without due account of that 
 fostering superintendence by which alone any real 
 good is elicited. But the idea was already rising 
 into the sphere of vision above half a century ago, 
 and has been contemplated since then under a 
 variety of particular aspects. Lessing, in one of 
 his latest, most precious, and profoundest works, — 
 a little treatise written in 1780, in which, after 
 having with much labour purged himself from the 
 naturalism and empiricism of his contemporaries, 
 he reaches the very borders of a Christian philo- 
 sophy, — speaks of revelation in its several stages as 
 the gradual education of the human race. His pro- 
 phecy, that the time of a new everlasting Gospel 
 will come, may indeed startle those who are un- 
 acquainted with the deplorably effete decrepit state 
 of the German church in his days : and had he 
 not lived in an unbelieving age, he would have 
 recognized, like Luther, that the Gospel which 
 we have already, is at once everlasting and 
 ever-new : else the spirit of his prophecy has 
 been in great measure accomplisht of late years. 
 by the revival of religion, and the restoration of 
 the old Gospel to much of its former power and 
 majesty. 
 
 Herder, who treats! the philosophy of history in 
 his greatest work, and who made it the central
 
 60 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 object of all his studies, yet, owing to the super- 
 ficialness of his metaphysical knowledge, had but 
 vague conceptions with regard to the progress 
 of mankind. He had discerned no principle of 
 unity determining its course and its end. His 
 genius was much happier in seizing and describing 
 the peculiarities of the various tribes of mankind, 
 more especially in their less cultivated state, when 
 almost entirely dependent on the circumstances of 
 time and place : and such contemplations were 
 better suited to the sentimental pantheism, into 
 which the spirit of the eighteenth century recoiled 
 from the formal monotheism it had inherited, 
 which had found its main utterance in Rousseau, 
 and with which Herder was much tainted, like 
 many of the more genial minds of his age, and of 
 those since. 
 
 Kant on the other hand, looking at history 
 in its ordinary political sense, lays down, in a 
 brief but masterly essay publisht in 1784, that 
 the history of the human race, as a whole, may 
 be regarded as the fulfilling of a secret purpose 
 of nature to work out a perfect constitution; this 
 being the only condition in which all the ten- 
 dencies implanted in man can be brought to per- 
 fection. In a later essay, in 1798, he remarks, 
 with his characteristic subtilty, that, even if we 
 assume the human race to have been constantly 
 advancing or receding hitherto, this will not warrant 
 a conclusion that it must necessarily continue to 
 move in the same direction hereafter ; for thai il
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 61 
 
 may have just reacht a tropical point, and may 
 be verging on its perihelion, or its aphelion, from 
 which its course would be reverst. Hence he 
 looks about for some fact, which may afford him 
 a surer ground to argue on : and such a fact he 
 finds in the enthusiastic sympathy excited through- 
 out Europe by the outbreak of the French Revo- 
 lution. This gives him a satisfactory assurance 
 that the human race will not only be progressive 
 hereafter, but has always been so hitherto. Per- 
 haps a subtilty far inferior to Kant's might shew 
 that this argument is not so very much sounder 
 than every other which may be drawn from the 
 history of the world. But his writings in his 
 later years betray that the vigour of his faculties 
 was declining : and one of the ways in which the 
 great destroyer was at times pleased to display his 
 power, was by building a house on the sand, after 
 razing that on the rock. It was thus that, havim; 
 swept away every antecedent system of ethics, 
 he spun a new one out of his categorical im- 
 perative. 
 
 During the last fifty years, the idea of history 
 as an organic whole, regulated by certain laws 
 inherent in the constitution of man, — as a ma- 
 crocosm analogous to the microcosm contained in 
 every breast, — has been a favorite Bubject of 
 speculation with the Germans. There are f. m 
 among their eminent writers who haw not occa- 
 sionally thrown out thoughts on the subject : 
 many have treated it, either partially or in it.
 
 62 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 totality, in distinct works : and it has been 
 applied with more or less ability and intelligence 
 to the history of religion, of philosophy, of poetry, 
 and of the arts. In each it has been attempted 
 to arrange and exhibit the various phenomena 
 which are the subjects of history, not in a mere 
 accidental sequence, after the practice of former 
 times and of other countries, but as connected parts 
 of a great whole, — to trace what may be called 
 the metamorphoses of history, in their genesis and 
 orderly succession. Of late too these theories have 
 been imported into France, especially by the Saint- 
 Simonians, but have mostly been frenchified during 
 the journey, and turned into stiff coarse abstrac- 
 tions : added to which the national incapacity to 
 contemplate an idea, makes the French always im- 
 patient to realize it under some determinate form ; 
 instead of acknowledging that it can only be 
 realized, when it realizes itself, and that it 
 may do this under any form, if it be duly 
 instilled into the mind as a living principle of 
 thought. 
 
 From what has been said, we may perceive 
 that the progress of mankind is not in a 
 straight line, uniform and unbroken. On the 
 contrary it is subject to manifold vicissitudes, 
 interruptions, and delays ; ever advancing on the 
 whole indeed, but often receding in one quarter, 
 while it pushes forward in another; and some- 
 times even retreating altogether for a while, thai 
 it may start afresh witli greater and more
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 63 
 
 irresistible force. Wordsworth compares it to " the 
 progress of a river, which both in its smaller 
 reaches and larger turnings is frequently forced 
 back toward its fountains by objects which cannot 
 otherwise be eluded or overcome : yet with an 
 accompanying impulse, that will ensure its ad- 
 vancement hereafter, it is either gaining strength 
 every hour, or secretly conquering some difficulty, 
 by a labour that contributes as effectually to 
 further it in its course, as when it moves forward 
 uninterrupted in a direct line." It is like the 
 motion of the earth, which, beside its yearly 
 course round the sun, has a daily revolution 
 through successive periods of light and darkness. 
 It is like the progress of the year, in which, after 
 the blossoms of spring have dropt off, a long inter- 
 val elapses before the autumnal fruits come for- 
 ward conspicuously in their stead : and these 
 too anon decay ; and the foliage and herbage of 
 one year mixes up with the mould for the enrich- 
 ing of another. It is like the life of an indivi- 
 dual, in which every day adds something, and 
 every day takes away something: but it by no 
 means follows that what is added must be more 
 valuable than what is taken away. r. 
 
 When coupled with a right understanding 
 of its object, tin- belief in the progivs>i\eness 
 of mankind has no tendency to foster pre- 
 sumption ; which in its ordinary acceptation 
 it is apt to do. For the narrowrninded and
 
 64 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 ignorant, being unable to project their thoughts 
 beyond their own immediate circle, or to dis- 
 criminate between what is really essential and 
 valuable in any state of society, and what is 
 accidental and derives its importance solely from 
 habit, are prone to assume that no condition can 
 well be endurable except their own, and to despise 
 those who are unfortunate enough to differ from 
 them, even in the cut of their coats, as so many 
 Goths or Hottentots. In fact, this is the usual, as 
 well as the original, meaning of the word barbarian : 
 a barbarian is a person who does not talk as we 
 talk, or dress as we dress, or eat as we eat ; 
 in short, who is so audacious as not to follow 
 our practice in all the trivialities of manners. 
 No doubt too there are people to whom it is 
 quite incomprehensible, how all the world did 
 not die of weariness and intellectual starvation 
 in the days when there were no newspapers, 
 or stagecoaches, or circulating libraries, or penny 
 encyclopedias. Now such persons grow very 
 proud and loud, when they fancy they have 
 a philosophical proposition to back their preten- 
 sions : forthwith they enlist as drummers, to 
 beat the march of mind. And beat it they 
 do deafeningly, at every corner of a street, in 
 an age of a superficial character, like the pre- 
 sent , the advantages of which strike every eye, 
 while they keep us from looking at anything 
 beyond, — from observing the poisonous vermin 
 that swarm amid the luxuriant rank vegetation,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 65 
 
 the morass it grows out of, and the malaria it 
 breeds. 
 
 It is true, this results in part from that instinc- 
 tive power by which habit attaches us to whatever 
 we are accustomed to ; thus, by a wise and bene- 
 ficent ordinance, adapting our nature to the endless 
 varieties of our condition and circumstances, and 
 enabling us to find happiness wheresoever we may 
 be placed. Here, as in so many other cases, it is 
 by " overleaping itself, and falling on the other 
 side," by passing out of its own positive region into 
 that of negativeness, that a feeling, in itself sound 
 and wholesome, becomes erroneous and mischie- 
 vous. At the same time, in so doing it perverts 
 and belies itself. For it is no way necessary that 
 a fondness for any one object should so turn the 
 current of our affections, as to draw them away 
 from all others ; still less that it should sour them ■ 
 against others. On the contrary, love, when true 
 and deep, opens and expands the heart, and fills it 
 with universal goodwill. Whereas exclusiveness, 
 of whatsoever kind, arises from the monopolizing 
 spirit of selfishness. They who look contemptu- 
 ously upon other things, in comparison with the 
 chosen objects of their regard, do so not from any 
 transcendent affection for those objects in tin ni- 
 sei ves, but merely as the objects which they 
 vouchsafe to honour ; and because they think it 
 ministers to their glory to sip the cream of the 
 whole earth, while the rest of mankind are fain to 
 swallow the skim-milk. In such a temper of mind 
 
 VOL. II. p
 
 66 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 there is no pure hearty satisfaction, no pure hearty 
 delight even in the very objects thus extolled. If 
 a person is really at ease, and thoroughly contented 
 with his own state, he will be glad that his neigh- 
 bours should feel a like contentment in theirs. 
 Thus patriotism becomes the ground, and, indeed, 
 is the only sure ground, of cosmopolitism. 
 
 When we call to remembrance, however, that the 
 course of time is markt, not by the rectilinear 
 flight, but by the oscillations and pulsations of 
 life, — that life does not flow in a straight con- 
 spicuous stream into its ocean-home, but sinks 
 sooner or later into the subterraneous caverns of 
 death, — that light does not keep on brightening 
 into a more intense effulgence, but, in compassion 
 to the infirmity of our organs, allows them to 
 bathe ever and anon and seek refreshment in 
 darkness, — that the moral year, like the natural, 
 is not one continued spring and summer, but lias 
 its seasons of decay, during which new growths 
 are prepaiing, — that the ways of Providence in 
 this world, as crost and interrupted by the self- 
 will of man, are not solely from good to better, 
 but often, in a merciful condescension to our 
 frailty, through evil to good, — we shall under- 
 stand that a more advanced stage of civilization 
 does not necessarily imply a better state of 
 society, least of all in any one particular coun- 
 try ; which, it is possible, may already have 
 played out its part, and be doomed to fall, 
 while others rise up in its stead, [ndeed so tar
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 67 
 
 is our superiority to our ancestors from being a 
 self-evident notorious truth, the best of all proofs 
 of our being superior to them would be our not 
 thinking ourselves so. 
 
 Nay, even if the progress were uniform and 
 continuous, what plea should we have for boast- 
 ing? or how can we dare pride ourselves on a 
 superiority to our ancestors, which we owe, not to 
 our own exertions, but to theirs ? how can we allow 
 that superiority to awaken any feeling, except of 
 the awful responsibility it imposes on us, and of 
 reverent gratitude to those through whose labours 
 and endurance we have been raised to our pre- 
 sent elevation ? 
 
 That an acknowledgement of the inferiority of 
 our own times is no way inconsistent with the 
 firmest assurance as to the general progressive- 
 ness of mankind, may be seen in the Lectures 
 on the Character of the Age delivered by Fichte 
 at Berlin in 1804. After laying down as the 
 scheme of the history of our world, that man- 
 kind are to be trained to render that entire 
 obedience to the law of reason as a freewill- 
 offering, which in their primitive state they ren- 
 dered unconsciously to the instinct of reason, — 
 he divides the life of the human race into five 
 distinct periods, and describes the present or 
 third period, as " the epoch of man's emancipa- 
 tion immediately from all binding authority, and 
 mediately from all subjection to the rational 
 instinct, and to reason altogether under every
 
 63 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 shape, — the age of absolute indifference to all 
 truth, and of utter unrestraint without any guid- 
 ance, — the state of complete sinfulness." At 
 the same time he declared that this dismal 
 transition-period, — for drawing the features of 
 which he found abundant materials in the poli- 
 tical, moral, and religious debasement of Germany 
 at the close of the last and the beginning of the 
 present century, — was verging on its close; and 
 that mankind would shortly emerge from this 
 lowest deep into the state of incipient justification. 
 With all his perversities he was a noble heroic 
 patriot, great as a philosopher, and still greater 
 as a man : and one rejoices that he lived long 
 enough to see what he would deem a sign that 
 his hopes were about to be fulfilled, the enthu- 
 siastic spirit which animated regenerate Germany 
 in 1813. 
 
 Thus, while a right understanding of the course 
 and purpose of history must needs check our 
 bragging of the advantages of our own age, neither 
 will it allow us to murmur on account of its 
 defects. What though the blossoms have dropt 
 off ? the fruit will not ripen without. What 
 though the fruit have fallen or been consumed ? 
 so it must, — seeing that it cannot keep its 
 freshness and flavour for ever, — in order that a 
 new crop may be produced. Surely it is idle to 
 repine that a tree does not stand through the 
 year with a load of rotten apples. Precious as 
 may have been the qualities or the institutions
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 69 
 
 which have past away, we shall recognize that 
 their subsistence was incompatible with the new 
 order of things ; that the locks which curl so 
 gracefully round the downy glowing cheeks of the 
 child, would ill become the man's furrowed brow, 
 and must grow white in time ; but that then too 
 they will have a beauty of their own, if the face 
 express that sobriety and calmness and purity 
 which accord with them ; and that every age in 
 the life of a nation, as of an individual, has its 
 advantages and its benefits, if we call them forth, 
 and make a right use of them. For here too, 
 unless we thwart or pervert the order of nature, 
 a principle of compensation is ever working. It is 
 in this thought that Tacitus finds consolation 
 (Annal. in. 55): Xt 'si forte rebus cunctis inest 
 quidam velut orbis, ut quemadmodum temporum 
 vices, ita morum vertantur : nee omnia apud 
 p>-iores meliora ; sed nostra quoque aetas multa 
 laudis et artium imitanda posteris tulit. 
 
 Above all, he who has observed how throughout 
 history, while man is continually misusing good, 
 and turning it into evil, the overruling sway of 
 God's Providence out of evil is ever bringing forth 
 good, will never be cast down, or tempted to 
 despond, or to slacken his efforts, however un- 
 toward the immediate aspect of things may appear. 
 For he will know that, whenever he is labouring 
 in the cause of heaven, the powers of heaven are 
 working with him ; that, though the good he is 
 aiming at may not be attainable in the very form
 
 70 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 he has in view, the ultimate result will assuredly 
 be good ; that, were man diligent in fulfilling his 
 part, this result would be immediate ; and that no 
 one, who is thus diligent, shall lose his precious 
 reward, of seeing that every good deed is a part 
 of the life of the world. u. 
 
 Another advantage attending the true idea of 
 the progress of mankind is, that it alone enables 
 us to estimate former ages justly. In looking 
 back on the past, we are apt to fall into one 
 of two errours. One class of historians treat the 
 several moments of history as distinct insulated 
 wholes, existing solely by themselves and for 
 themselves, apart from all connexion with the 
 general destinies of mankind. Another class re- 
 gard them as so many steps in the ladder by 
 which man had to mount to his present station. 
 Now both these views are fallacious, the last the 
 most so. For the former may coexist with a lively 
 conception of individual reality, and contains 
 nothing necessarily disparaging to the men of 
 bygone generations ; though it will not aid us to 
 discern their relative bearings and purposes. 
 Whereas, in ascending a ladder, we think the 
 steps were merely made to get up by, not to 
 rest on ; we seldom pause to contemplate the 
 varying prospects which spread out successively 
 before each ; and by a scarcely avoidable delu- 
 sion, everything above us being hidden in mist, 
 \w mistake our own landingplace for the summit,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 71 
 
 and fancy the ladder was set up mainly for 
 us, in order that we might climb it. Yet our 
 post may easily be less commanding than seve- 
 ral lower ones : some fresh obstacle may have 
 come across us, to narrow our field of view: or 
 our highth itself may render the objects indistinct. 
 At all events, when we are looking down on them, 
 we are unable to make out their proportions, and 
 only perceive how they are connected with each 
 other, not what they are in themselves. Indeed 
 the other unphilosophical class of historians are 
 also liable to a similar mistake. Not having 
 a right insight into the necessary distinctions of 
 ages and nations, they too measure others by their 
 own standard, and so misunderstand and misjudge 
 them. 
 
 In this, as in every idea, there is a union of 
 opposites. Man, whether in his individual or in 
 his corporate capacity, is neither to be regarded 
 solely as the end of his own being, nor solely 
 as a mean and instrument employed for the well- 
 being of others, — nor again as partly one and 
 partly the other, — but as both at once, and each 
 wholly. Nay, so inseparable is this twofold office, 
 and indivisible, that he cannot rightly fulfill either, 
 except by fulfilling the other. He has a positive 
 and significant part to act in the great drama of 
 the world's life: and lliat part derives a double 
 importance from not being designed to pass away 
 like a dream, but to leave a lasting impres- 
 sion on the destinies and character of the race.
 
 72 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Moreover it is by diligently performing the part 
 assigned to him, by topping it, as the phrase is, 
 that he does his utmost to forward the general 
 action of the drama. So that, to understand any 
 past age, we should consider it in a twofold 
 light ; first gain the fullest and most definite con- 
 ception of its peculiar features and character ; and 
 then contemplate it with reference to the place it 
 holds in the history of the world. What was 
 it ? and what did it accomplish ? These are the 
 first questions : but others follow them. How 
 came it to be what it was ? how did it arise out of 
 what went before ? and what did it leave to that 
 which came after ? What phase of human nature 
 did it express ? what distinctive idea did it em- 
 body ? what power did it realize ? of what truths 
 was it the exponent ? and what portion of these 
 its attributes has past away with it ? what portion 
 has been taken up and incorporated with the living 
 spirit of the race ? 
 
 Let me exemplify these remarks by the manner 
 in which the history of philosophy has been 
 treated. A number of writers, of whom Ikucker 
 may stand as the representative, have aimed at 
 little else than giving a naked abstract or sum- 
 mary of the successive systems which have pre- 
 vailed ; translating the terminology into that of 
 their own days; but with scarcely a conception 
 that every system of philosophy, deserving the 
 name, has an organic inward, as well as a logical 
 and outward unity, and springs from a seminal
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 73 
 
 idea ; or that there is an orderly genesis by which 
 one system issues from another. Yet, seeing that 
 philosophy is the reflexion of the human mind 
 upon itself, on its own nature and faculties, and on 
 those supersensuous ideas and forms which it dis- 
 covers within itself, the laws and mould of its 
 being, the history of philosophy, it is plain, must 
 be the history of the human mind, must follow 
 the same regular progression, and go through the 
 same transmigrations. Viewed in this light, 
 the history of philosophy has a pervading unity, 
 and a deep interest, and is intimately connected 
 with the life of the race. But in its usual form 
 it merely exhibits a series of logical diagrams, 
 which seem to be no way concerned with the 
 travails and throes of human nature, — which are 
 nothing more than the images of Xarcissus looking 
 dotingly at himself ever and anon in the stream 
 of Time, — and which " come like shadows, so 
 depart," until we are wearied by the dull ghastly 
 procession, and cry, with Macbeth, We'll see no 
 more. 
 
 Inadequate however and tantalizing as such a 
 history is, it does at least furnish an outline of 
 the forms under which philosophy has manifested 
 itself: it shews us how multifarious those forms 
 are, and supplies us with some of the materials for 
 discerning the law of their succession. We per- 
 ceive in it how the appetite of unity has ever been 
 the great characteristic of the philosophical mind, 
 and how that mind has ever been drawn by an
 
 74 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 irrepressible instinct to bring all things to one, 
 and to seek the central One in all. Hence these 
 histories are of greater value, or at least come 
 nearer to fulfilling the idea of a history, than such 
 detacht observations as Dugald Stewart has strung 
 together for the sake of exhibiting a view of the 
 progress of metaphysical philosophy. From the 
 latter no one would be able to frame any con- 
 ception of the systems enumerated, unless he were 
 already acquainted with them. Indeed one should 
 hardly make out, except from the objections urged 
 every now and then against the love of system, 
 that there is anything like a desire of unity in 
 the philosophical spirit, any aim beyond certain 
 more or less wide generalizations from the pheno- 
 mena of the intellectual and material world. In- 
 stead of trying to give a faithful representation 
 of former systems in their individuality, and their 
 reciprocal connexion, pointing out the wants they 
 were successively designed to satisfy, shewing how 
 those wants arose, and how they could not but 
 arise, and then tracing the evolution of each per- 
 vading idea, he has mostly contented himself witb 
 picking out a few incidental remarks, and these 
 often no way pertaining to the general scbeme of 
 systematic thought, but such reflexions as arc 
 suggested to an acute and intelligent mind by ob- 
 servation of the world. The object which guides 
 him in the selection of these remarks, is, to shew 
 how the philosophers of former times caught 
 glimpses of certain propositions, which he deems
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 75 
 
 to be the great truths of his own age : and he 
 almost seems to have fancied that the human 
 mind had been heaving and panting and toiling 
 from the beginning, and ransacking the quarries of 
 nature, and building up the mighty pyramid of 
 thought, in order that Reid should lay on the 
 headstone, and take his stand on the summit. 
 Hereby a method, which is solely applicable to 
 the history of science, is transferred to that of phi- 
 losophy. Whereas the worth of a philosophical 
 system is only to be appreciated in its unity and 
 integrity, not from two or tl ree casual remarks ; 
 which are a still more fallac'ous criterion, than 
 detacht passages are of the merit of a poem. For 
 the power of drawing inferences from observation 
 is totally distinct from that of discerning elemen- 
 tary ideas, and is often found without a particle 
 of it ; for instance in those who by way of 
 eminence are termed men of practical minds. u. 
 
 I have been trying to shew that the belief in 
 the perfectibility, or even in the progressiveness of 
 mankind, is a late growth in the world of thought, 
 — to explain how and under what form it origi- 
 nated, and how much of errour has been mixt up 
 with it. Are we then to cast away the idea of 
 perfectibility, as an idle, baseless, delusive, vain- 
 glorious phantom ? God forbid ! And in truth 
 he has forbidden it. He forbad it, when he set 
 his own absolute perfection as the aim of our 
 endeavour before us, by that blessed command.
 
 76 fiUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 — Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is 
 perfect. 
 
 To deny the perfectibility of mankind is to 
 charge these words with pompous inanity. They 
 declare that the perfect renewal of God's image in 
 man is not a presumptuous vision, not like a mad- 
 man's attempt to clutch a handful of stars, but an 
 object of righteous enterprise, which we may and 
 ought to long for and to strive after. And as 
 God's commands always imply the possibility of 
 their fulfilment, and impart the power of fulfilling 
 them to those who seek it, this, which was 
 designed for all mankind, was accompanied by 
 another, providing that all mankind should be 
 called to aspire to that sublime perfection, should 
 be taught by what steps they are to mount to 
 it, and should receive help mighty enough to nerve 
 their souls for the work. A body of men was 
 instituted for the express purpose of teaching all 
 nations to do all the things that Christ had com- 
 manded, and of baptizing them in the name of 
 Him who alone can give man the power of sub- 
 duing whatever there is of evil in his nature, 
 and of maturing whatever there is of good. 
 
 Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven it 
 perfect. This is the angel-trumpet which sum- 
 mons man to the warfare of duty. This, and 
 nothing less than this, is the glorious prize set 
 before him. Do our hearts swell with pride at 
 the thought that this is what we ought to be, 
 what we might be ? A single glance at the state
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 77 
 
 of the world, at what we ourselves are, must 
 quench that pride, and turn it into shame. u. 
 
 When quoting Dryden's epigram on Milton, 
 some pages back, I called it stupid. Is this an 
 indecorous expression to apply to anything that 
 comes from so renowned a writer ? I would not 
 willingly fail in due respect to any man of genius, 
 who has exercised his genius worthily : but I can- 
 not feel much respect for the author of Limberkam, 
 who turned Milton's Eve into a vulgar coquette, 
 and who defiled Shakspeare's State of Innocence 
 by introducing the rottenhearted carnalities of 
 Charles the Second's age into the Tempest. As 
 to his epigram on Milton, it seems to me nearly 
 impossible to pack a greater number of blundering 
 thoughts into so small a space, than are crowded 
 into its last four lines. Does the' reader remem- 
 ber it ? 
 
 Three poets, in three distant ages born, 
 Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
 The first in loftiness of thought surpast ; 
 The next in majesty ; in both the last. 
 The force of Nature could no further go : 
 To make a third, she joined the former two. 
 As these lines are on the author of Paradise 
 Lost, we know who must be the other poets spoken 
 of: else we should hardly divine it from the 
 descriptions given of them ; which would fit any 
 other writers nearly as well. For what feature of 
 the Homeric poems is designated by " loftiness of 
 thought*"' what feature of Virgi] by "majesty,"
 
 78 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 — majesty contradistinguisht from loftiness of 
 thought ? What is loftiness of thought in a poet, 
 as existing without majesty ? what majesty, with- 
 out loftiness of thought ? unless it be the majesty of 
 Lewis the Fourteenth's full-bottomed wig, or of 
 one of Dry den's own stage-kings. For, if there be 
 not something incongruous in these two qualities, 
 if they had already coexisted in Homer and Virgil, 
 what is the prodigy of their union in Milton ? 
 How totally are the characters of the two poets 
 mist in these words ! They give no notion, or 
 a most erroneous one, of Homer ; and a very 
 inadequate one of Virgil. Milton however is so 
 highly favoured, that he unites both qualities. 
 His "majesty" is not, like Virgil's, without "lofti- 
 ness of thought ;" nor his " loftiness of thought," 
 like Homer's, without " majesty." 
 
 And the combination of these two elements, 
 which are almost identical, exhausts the powers of 
 Nature ! This is one of the blustering pieces of 
 bombast thrown out by those who neither know 
 nor think what they are talking of. Eschylus, 
 and Sophocles, and Pindar, and Aristophanes, and 
 1 >ante, and Cervantes, and Shakspeare had lived, 
 
 — every one of them having more in common witli 
 Homer, than Milton had : yet a man dares say, 
 that the power of God has been worn out by 
 (•mating Homer and Virgil! and that he could 
 do nothing after, except by strapping them to- 
 gether. 
 
 Nor can there well be more complete ignorance
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 79 
 
 of the characteristics of genius. Secondary men, 
 men of talents, may be mixt up, like an apothe- 
 cary's prescription, of so many grains of one 
 quality, and so many of another. But genius is 
 one, individual, indivisible : like a star, it dwells 
 alone. That which is essential in a man of 
 genius, his central spirit, shews itself once, and 
 passes away, never to return : and in few men is 
 this more conspicuous than in Milton, in whom 
 there is nothing Homeric, and hardly anything 
 Virgilian. In sooth, one might as accurately de- 
 scribe the elephant, as being made up of the force 
 of the lion, and the strength of the tiger. 
 
 A like inauspicious star has presided at the 
 birth of many of the epigrams on great men. The 
 authors of them, in their desire to say something 
 very grand and striking, have been regardless of 
 truth and propriety. What can be more turgid 
 and extravagant than Pope's celebrated epitaph on 
 Newton ? in which he audaciously blots out all 
 the knowledge of former ages, that he may give his 
 hero a dark ground to stand out from ; forgetting 
 that in the intellectual world also the process of 
 Nature is not by fits and starts, but gradually, — 
 that the highest mountains do not spring up out 
 of the plain, but are approacht by lower ranges, — 
 and that no sun ever rises without a preluding 
 twilight. 
 
 The best parallel to Pope's couplet, — for it is 
 scarcely a parody, — is Nicolai's silly one on 
 .Mendelsohn :
 
 80 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Es ist ein Gott : so sagte Moses schon : 
 Doch den Beweis gab Moses Mendelsohn. 
 Which may be Englisht without much disparage- 
 ment by the following doggerel : 
 
 There is a God, said Moses long ago : 
 
 But Moses Mendelsohn first proved 'twas so. 
 
 Far more ingenious than any of the preceding 
 epigrams, — because it contains a thought, though 
 a false one, — is Bembo's on Raphael : 
 
 llle hie est Raphael, timuit quo sospite vinci 
 llerum magna parens, et moiiente mori. 
 Yet, neat and clever as this may be, a true 
 imagination would revolt from charging Nature 
 cither with jealousy or with despondency. She 
 may be endowed with the purer elementary feel- 
 ings of humanity. She may be represented as 
 sympathizing with man, as rejoicing with him or 
 at him, as mourning with him or over him. But 
 surely it is absurd that she, who is here called 
 rerum magna parens, she who brings forth all the 
 beauty and glory of mountains and vallies, of lakes 
 and rivers and seas, of winter and spring and 
 .summer, — she who every evening showers thou- 
 sands of stars over the sky, who calls the sun out 
 of his eastern chamber, and welcomes him with 
 bridal blushes, and leads him across the heavens, 
 — she who has gone on for thousands of years 
 pouring forth bright and graceful forma with inex- 
 haustible variety and prodigality, — she who fills 
 the immensity of space with beauty, and is ever 
 renewing it through the immensity of time, — 
 should be ruffled by a petty feeling of rivalry for
 
 Gl'ESSES AT TRUTH. 81 
 
 one of her children ; or should fear that the power 
 which had seen countless generations and nations, 
 and even worlds, rise and set, was about to expire, 
 because one of her blossoms, although it was one 
 of the loveliest, had dropt off from the tree of 
 humanity. 
 
 In all these eulogies we find the same trick. 
 The authors think they cannot sufficiently exalt 
 the persons they want to praise, except by speak- 
 ing derogatorily and slightingly of some other 
 power. Nature is vilified, to magnify Milton and 
 Raphael ; all the science from Archimedes down to 
 Kepler and Galileo, for the sake of glorifying New- 
 ton. In the same style is Johnson's couplet on 
 Shakspeare : 
 
 Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign ; 
 And panting Time toiled after him in vain. 
 
 What the latter of these two monstrous lines was 
 intended to mean, it is difficult to guess. For 
 surely even Johnson's grandiloquence could hardly 
 have taken this mode of expressing that Shak- 
 speare violated the unities. The former line is one 
 of the most infelicitous ever written. Not to 
 speak of that uncouth abstraction, Existence, 
 which is here turned into a person, and deckt 
 out with eyes ; what distinguishes Shakspeare 
 above all other poets, is, that he did oot "spurn 
 Existence's bounded reign." ll>' was too wise to 
 dream that it was bounded, too wise to fancy that 
 he could overleap its bounds, too wise to be am- 
 bitious of taking a salto mortaie into Chaos. His 
 
 VOL. II.
 
 82 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 excellence is that he never " spurns" anything. 
 More than any other writer, he realizes his own 
 conception of the philosophic life, — 
 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 
 
 People are fond of talking about the extrava- 
 gances of genius, the exaggerations of the imagina- 
 tion ; and when they meet with something very 
 extravagant and exaggerated, they regard this as 
 a proof that the writer's imagination was so 
 violent and uncontrollable, it quite ran away with 
 him. One might as well deem gouty legs sympto- 
 matic of strength and agility. Exaggerations 
 mostly arise from feebleness and torpour of imagi- 
 nation. It is because we feel ourselves unable to 
 vivify an object in its full calm reality, that 
 we mouthe and sputter. When Caligula was 
 making preparations for a triumph over an enemy 
 he had never seen, Gattiarum proceriaeimum 
 quemque, et, ut ipse dicebat, dgiodpidfiPevTov legit, 
 ac seposuit ad pompam (Suetonius, c. 47) : and 
 so it is with big words that authors have been 
 wont to celebrate their factitious triumphs. Of 
 the writers I have been citing nunc was re- 
 markable for imaginative power : even Dryden 
 was not so : in Johnson the active productive 
 imagination was inert, the passive or receptive, 
 sluggish and obtuse. His strength lay in his 
 understanding, which was shrewd and vigorous, 
 and at times sagacious. Yet no poet of tin 
 rankest most ill-regulated imagination ever wrote
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 83 
 
 anything more tumid than this couplet on Shak- 
 speare. 
 
 To shew how a poet of true and mighty imagi- 
 nation will praise, let me wind up these remarks 
 by quoting Milton's noble epitaph. 
 
 What needs my Shakspeare for his honoured bones 
 
 The labour of an age in piled stones ? 
 
 Or that his hallowed relics should be hid 
 
 Under a star-ypointing pyramid ? 
 
 Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 
 
 What needst thou such weak witness of thy name 1 
 
 Thou in our wonder and astonishment 
 
 Hast built thyself a live-long monument ; 
 
 And so sepulcred in such pomp dost lie, 
 
 That kings for such a tomb would wish to die. 
 
 The reader may perhaps remind me, that this 
 epitaph, as written by Milton, contained six more 
 lines ; and that these are quite unworthy of the 
 others, and prove that the greatest poets may at 
 times write in very bad taste. True ! the epitaph 
 was composed in Milton's youth ; and a young 
 poet of genius is always liable, — the more so on 
 account of that lively susceptibility which is among 
 the chief elements of all genius, — to be carried 
 away by the vicious taste of his age. lie must 
 receive the impressions of the world around him, 
 before he can mould them into a world of his 
 own. In omitting the six lines in question, I 
 have followed the example set by Wordsworth in 
 his Kssa// o)t Epitaph*. Bad however as the con- 
 ceit in them may be, the fault is nol one of vapid 
 bombast, but of an unripe genius, "fan over-active
 
 84 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 ingenuity. The words are not big unmeaning 
 sounds, as in the lines quoted from Dryden, 
 Pope, and Johnson. Milton's epitaph, though it 
 has a flaw in it, is a genuine diamond, and, when 
 that flaw is cut out, shines in lasting brilliancy : 
 while the others are bits of painted glass, gaudy 
 and glaring, but which, if you handle them rudely, 
 split into worthless fragments. Or rather they 
 are swollen bladders : only prick them, and they 
 collapse, and cannot be puf't out again. u. 
 
 When searching into the hidden things of God, 
 we are for ever forgetting that we only know in 
 part. a. 
 
 Christianity has carried civilization along with 
 it, whithersoever it has gone : and as if to shew 
 that the latter does not depend on physical causes, 
 some of the countries the most civilized in the 
 days of Augustus are now in a state of hopeless 
 barbarism. 
 
 Something like Judaism or Platonism, I should 
 think, must always precede Christianity; except 
 in those who have really received Christianity as 
 a living power in their childhood. 
 
 The catholic religion is the whole Bible : sects 
 pick out a part of it. But what whole ? The 
 living whole, to be sure . . not the dead whole : 
 the spirit, not the letter. a.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 85 
 
 Mere art perverts taste ; just as mere theology- 
 depraves religion. 
 
 It is a lesson which Genius too, and Wisdom of 
 every kind must learn, that its kingdom is not 
 of this world. It must learn to know this, and 
 to be content that this should be so, to be content 
 with the thought of a kingdom in a higher less 
 transitory region. Then peradventure may the 
 saying be fulfilled with regard to it, that he who 
 is ready to lose his life shall save it. The wisdom 
 which aims at something nobler and more lasting 
 than the kingdom of this world, may now and 
 then find that the kingdom of this world will also 
 fall into its lap. How much longer and more 
 widely has Aristotle reigned than Alexander ! 
 with how much more power and glory Luther than 
 Charles the Fifth ! His breath still works miracles 
 at this day. u. 
 
 Unless a tree has borne blossoms in spring, 
 you will vainly look for fruit on it in au- 
 tumn, r. 
 
 In character, in affection, the ideal is the only 
 real. 
 
 There is but one power to winch all are 
 eager to bow down, to which all take pride in 
 paying homage ; and that is the power of 
 Beauty. u .
 
 86 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Science sees signs ; Poetry the thing signi- 
 fied. u- 
 
 If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be 
 a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock 
 of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of 
 horsemen with drawn sabres and white-plumed 
 helmets. J » 
 
 A work of genius is something like the pie in 
 
 the nursery song, in which the four and twenty 
 
 blackbirds are baked. When the pie is opened, 
 
 the birds begin to sing. Hereupon three fourths 
 
 of the company run away in a fright ; and then 
 
 after a time, feeling ashamed, they would fain 
 
 excuse themselves by declaring, the pie stank so, 
 
 they could not srt near it. Those who stay 
 
 behind, the men of taste and epicures, say one to 
 
 another, We came here to eat. What business have 
 
 birds, lifter the// hare been baked, to be alive and 
 
 singing ? This /rill never do. We must put a 
 
 atop to so dangerous an innovation : for who icill 
 
 send a pie to an oven, if the birds come to life 
 
 there ? We must stand up to defend the rights of 
 
 all the ovens in England. Let us have dead birds 
 
 . . dead birds for our money. So each sticks his 
 
 fork into a bird, and hacks and mangles it a 
 
 while, and then holds it up and cries, Who 
 
 will dare assert that there is any music in this 
 
 bird's song ? u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 87 
 
 Let your humour always be good humour, in 
 both senses. If it comes of a bad humour, it is 
 pretty sure not to belie its parentage. u. 
 
 Shakspeare's genius could adapt itself with such 
 nicety to all the varieties of ever-varying man, 
 that in his Titus Andronicus he has portrayed the 
 very dress of mind which the people of the de- 
 clining empire must have worn. I can conceive 
 that the degenerate Romans would clothe their 
 thoughts in just such words. The sayings of the 
 free-garmented folks in Julius Cesar could not 
 have come from the close-buttoned generation in 
 Othello. Though human passions are the same in 
 all ages, there are modifications of them dependent 
 on the circumstances of time and place, which 
 Shakspeare has always caught and exprest. He 
 has thus given such a national tinge and epochal 
 propriety to his characters, that, even when one 
 sees Jaques in a bag-wig and sword, one may 
 exclaim, on being told that he is a French noble- 
 man, This man must have lived at the time when 
 the Italian taste was prevalent in France. How 
 differently does he moralize from King Henry 
 or Hamlet ! although their morality, like all 
 morality, comes to pretty nearly the same con- 
 clusion, i. 
 
 He who is imprest with the truth of the fore- 
 going remark, must needs feel somewhat perplext, 
 when reading Troilits and Cressida, at the
 
 88 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 language which is there put into the mouths of the 
 Greek chiefs : so utterly unlike is it to the winged 
 words of the Iliad. Hence some of the critics 
 have had recourse to the usual makeshift, by 
 which they try to shirk difficulties, when they can- 
 not get over them, and have conjectured that the 
 play was interpolated by some other poet of the 
 age. But what other poet could have furnisht the 
 wisdom contained in those very speeches, the 
 style of which appears the most objectionable ? 
 And what would the play be without them ? 
 Indeed the language in question is not confined 
 to a few speeches, but runs through almost all the 
 graver scenes. Still it is strange that Shakspeare, 
 who, with a humble and magnanimous trust in 
 truth, represented everything just as it was or 
 had been, merely bringing out the spirit which in 
 real life had been checkt or latent, should in this 
 instance have departed so far from his original, 
 that he is scarcely ever so unlike Homer, as here 
 where he comes in contact with him. To describe 
 the style of the Greek debates by one of his own 
 illustrations : 
 
 Knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, 
 Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain 
 Tortive and errant from his course of growth. 
 
 It looks just as if Shakspeare had chosen for once 
 to let his thoughts travel by his friend Chapman's 
 heavy wagon : such is the similarity between the 
 language of the Greet scenes and that of JJi/ssg 
 d'Amboia and Chapman's other serious writings.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 89 
 
 And doubtless this furnishes the key to the diffi- 
 culty. Shakspeare's acquaintance with Homer 
 was through Chapman's translation ; a considera- 
 ble part of which was publisht some years before 
 Troilus and Cressida. Hence Agamemnon and 
 Ulysses talk with him just as Chapman had made 
 them talk, and just as Shakspeare would naturally 
 suppose that they had talkt in Greek. 
 
 Perhaps this may help us toward the solution of 
 another difficulty in this perplexing play. Cole- 
 ridge, who confesses that he scarcely knows what 
 to say of it, and that " there is no one of Shak- 
 speare's plays harder to characterize," has seldom 
 been less happy in his criticisms than in his re- 
 marks on the Greek chiefs. Nor is Hazlitt less 
 wide of the mark, when he observes that " Shak- 
 speare seems to have known them as well as if 
 he had been a spy sent into their camp." At 
 least his representation of them is totally different 
 in tone and spirit from Homer's ; as indeed must 
 needs follow from the difference in their language : 
 for Shakspeare was always alive, in a higher 
 degree than any other poet, to the truth of the 
 maxim, le style est Vhomme mime. Yet I cannot 
 think that the difference has been correctly appre- 
 hended by Coleridge, when he says that " Shak- 
 speare's main object was to substantiate the distinct 
 and graceful profiles or outlines of the Homeric 
 epic into the flesh and blood of the romantic 
 drama." Assuredly the Homeric heroes are not 
 mere graceful outlines : they are every whit as
 
 90 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 substantial living flesh and blood as Shakspeare's : 
 only their moral nature is simpler, and flows more 
 uniformly and continuously, without such a whirl 
 and eddy of thoughts and feelings. Tieck, who, 
 in a note to his edition of the German Shakspeare, 
 also observes that among all the plays Troilus and 
 Cressida is unquestionably the most singular, calls 
 it " a heroic comedy, a tragic parody, written with 
 the set purpose of parodying the age of chivalry, 
 the profound political wisdom Which overleaps 
 itself, the shows of love, and even misfortune." 
 These words seem to express the real character of 
 the play. But still the question recurs : how 
 came Shakspeare thus to parody the Homeric 
 heroes ? how came he to conceive and represent 
 them with all this ostentation and hollowness, 
 ever trying to cheat and outwit each other, yet 
 only successful in cheating and outwitting them- 
 selves ? Now this, it seems to me, may not 
 improbably be owing in great measure to the 
 medium through which lie saw them, and by 
 which they were so much swelled out and dis- 
 torted, that his exquisite taste might well take 
 offense at such pompous phraseology in the mouth 
 of simple warriors : while the combination of great 
 political sagacity, and shrewdness and depth, more 
 especially in general reflexions, with hollowness of 
 heart, and weakness of purpose, was what he saw 
 frequently exemplified among the statesmen of his 
 own age. Though Agamemnon and his peers 
 were certainly not meant as a satire on James
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 91 
 
 and his court, yet they have sundry features in 
 common. u. 
 
 A poet, to be popular, ought not to be too 
 purely and intensely poetical. He should have 
 plenty of ordinary poetry for the multitude of 
 ordinary readers : and perhaps it may be well that 
 he should have some poetry better than ordinary, 
 lest the multitude should be daunted by finding 
 themselves entirely at variance with the intelligent 
 few. This however is by no means clear. He 
 who calls to mind the popularity of the Pleasures 
 of Hope, may remark that the artificial flowers in 
 a milliner's window do not want any natural ones 
 to set them off; and that a star looks very pale 
 and dull, when squibs and rockets are shining it 
 out of countenance. In truth this has just been 
 the case with Gertrude of Wyoming, which has 
 been quite thrown into the shade by its gaudier 
 flimsier neighbour. 
 
 I have known several persons, to whom no 
 poem of Wordsworth's gave so much pleasure as 
 the Lines written while sailing in a boat at even- 
 ing ; which were composed, as he has told me, 
 on the Cam, while he was at college. 0, if he had 
 but gone on writing in that style! many will say, 
 what a charming poet he would have been ! For 
 these are among the very few verses of Words- 
 worth's, which any other person might have writ- 
 ten; that is, bating the purity ami delicacy of the 
 language, and the sweetness of the versification.
 
 92 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 The sentiment and the exercise of fancy are just 
 raised so much above the temperature of common 
 life, as to produce a pleasant glow : and there is 
 nothing calling for any stretch of imagination or 
 of thought ; nothing like what we so often find in 
 his poems, when out of Nature's heart a voice 
 " appears to issue, startling The blank air." 
 
 In like manner I have been told that, among 
 Landor's Conversations, the most general favorite 
 is that between General Kleber and some French 
 officers. If it be so, one may easily see why. 
 Beautiful as some touches in it are, it is not so 
 far removed, as most of its companions, from what 
 other men have written and can write. 
 
 No doubt there is also another reason, — that 
 this Conversation has something of a story con- 
 nected with it. For in mere incidents all take 
 an interest, through the universal fellowfeeling 
 which binds man to man ; as is proved by the 
 fondness for gossiping, from which so few are 
 exempt. Above all is such an interest excited 
 by everything connected, however remotely, with 
 the two great powers which come across the path 
 of life, — death, which terminates it, — and love, 
 which, to the imagination even of the least ima- 
 ginative; seems to cany it for a while out of the 
 highway dust, into the midst of green fields and 
 flowers. Hence it is that all tatlers delight in 
 getting hold of anything akin to a love-story ; not 
 merely from a fondness for scandal, but because 
 the most powerful and pleasurable of human
 
 CUESSES AT TRUTH. 93 
 
 feelings is in some measure awakened and excited 
 thereby. 
 
 Nor is it at all requisite to the excitement of 
 interest by incidents, that the persons they befall 
 should have any depth of character or passion. 
 On the contrary, such a surplusage often makes 
 them less generally interesting. Leave out the 
 thoughts and the characters in Hamlet, Lear, and 
 Macbeth : as pantomimic melodrames they might 
 perchance run against Pizarro and the Forest of 
 Bondy. Hence the popularity of novels ; the 
 name of which implies some novel incident ; and 
 the interest of which mostly arises from the 
 entangling and disentangling of a love-story. 
 Indeed this is all that the bulk of novel-readers 
 care about ; — who loves whom ? and by what 
 difficulties their loves are crost ? and how those 
 difficulties are surmounted ? and how the loveknot, 
 after the tying and untying of sundry other knots, 
 twists about at length into a marriageknot ? 
 
 This too is perhaps one of the reasons why the 
 heroes and heroines of novels have so little cha- 
 racter. They are to be just such persons as the 
 readers can wish and believe themselves to be, 
 trickt out with all manner of insipid virtues, un- 
 encumbered by anything distinctive and individual. 
 Then we may float along in a daydream, with 
 a half-conscious persuasion that all the occurrences 
 related are happening to ourselves. Hereby 
 Poetry, instead of lifting us out of ourselves into 
 an ideal world, brings down its world to us, and
 
 94 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 peoples the real world with phantoms. These 
 delusions would be disperst by any powerful 
 delineation of individual character. We cannot 
 fancy ourselves Lear, or Macbeth, or Hamlet ; 
 although on deeper reflexion we perceive that we 
 are heirs of a common nature. 
 
 In this sense it is very true, that, as one of 
 our greatest modern writers once said, incident 
 and interest are the bane of poetry. For the main 
 subject matter of poetry being man, — the various 
 modifications and combinations of human character 
 and feelings, — the facts it treats of will be pri- 
 marily actions, or what men do, exhibiting and 
 fulfilling the inward impulses of their nature, — 
 and secondarily events, which follow one another 
 according to an apparent law, and which shew how 
 the outward world runs parallel or counter to the 
 characters, calling forth their dormant energies, 
 unfolding them, shaping them, perfecting them. 
 Whereas incidents are mere creatures of chance, 
 unconnected, insulated, and interesting solely from 
 themselves, from their strangeness, not from their 
 moral influence. Such an interest being excited 
 with far more ease, both by the writer, and in the 
 reader, the love of incidents has commonly been 
 among the symptoms of a declining age in poetry; 
 as for instance in Euripides, compared with 
 Eschylus and Sophocles, — in Fletcher, compared 
 with Shakspeare. 
 
 And this is the interest which is injurious to 
 poetry, the interest excited by strange incidents,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 95 
 
 and by keeping curiosity on the stretch. Not 
 that good poetry is to be uninteresting : but the 
 sources of its interest lie deeper, in our inmost 
 consciousness and primary sympathies. Hence 
 it is permanent. While the interest awakened 
 by curiosity fades away when the curiosity has 
 once been gratified;, true poetical interest, the 
 interest excited by the throes and conflicts of 
 human passion, is wont to increase as we become 
 familiar with its object. Every time I read 
 King Edipus, the interest seems to become more 
 intense : the knowledge of the result does not 
 prevent my sympathizing anew with the terrific 
 struggle. So is it in Othello. Whereas that ex- 
 cited by the Castle of Otrauto, or the Mysteries of 
 Udolpho, is nearly extinct after the first reading. 
 In truth a mystery is unworthy of the name, 
 unless it becomes more mysterious when we have 
 been initiated into it, than it was before. u. 
 
 Man cannot live without a shadow, even in 
 poetry. Poetical dreamers forget this. They try 
 to represent perfect characters, characters which 
 shall be quite transparent : and so their heroes 
 have no flesh and blood, no nerves or muscles, 
 nothing to touch our sympathy, nothing for our 
 affections to cling to. v. 
 
 People stare much more at a paper kite, than at 
 a real one. u.
 
 96 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Brilliant speakers and writers should remember 
 that coach-wheels are better than Catherine wheels 
 to travel on. 
 
 Many are ambitious of saying grand things, 
 
 that is, of being grandiloquent. Eloquence is 
 
 speaking out . . a qualify few esteem, and fewer 
 aim at. 
 
 One's first business in writing is to say what 
 one has to say. 
 
 Is it ? Dear me ! I never knew that. Yet 
 I have written ever so many articles in the 
 Hypo-critical Review, laying down the law how 
 everybody ought to write, and scolding everybody 
 for not writing accordingly. Surely too my arti- 
 cles must have been admirable : for somebody told 
 me he admired them. u. 
 
 The best training for style is speech ; not mono- 
 logues, or lectures ex cathedra, like those of the 
 German professors, of whose uninterrupted didac- 
 ticity their literature bears too many marks; but 
 conversation, whence the French, and women 
 generally, derive the graces of their style ; dialectic 
 discussion, by which Plato braced and polisht his ; 
 and the agonistic oratory of the bar, the senate, 
 and the forum, which makes people speak home, 
 popularly, and to the point, as we see in our own 
 writers, as well as in those of Greece and 
 Home. For when such a practice is national, its
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 97 
 
 influence extends to those who do not come into 
 immediate contact with it. The pulpit too would 
 be a like discipline, if they who mount it would 
 oftener think as much of the persons they are 
 preaching to, as of the preacher. u. 
 
 An epithet is an addition : but an addition may 
 easily be an incumbrance ; as even a dog finds out, 
 when a kettle is tied to his tail. Stuff a man into 
 a featherbed ; and he will not move so lightly or 
 nimbly. The very instruments of flying weigh us 
 down, if not rightly adjusted, if out of place, or 
 overthick. Yet many writers cram their thoughts 
 into what might not inappropriately be called a 
 featherbed of words. They accumulate epithets, 
 which weaken oftener than they strengthen ; 
 throwing a haze over the objects, instead of 
 bringing out their features more distinctly. For 
 authors too, like all the rest of mankind, take 
 their seats among Hesiod's vqinoi, ov8e "cracriv oa-co 
 irkeov r)ixi<TV ttovtos. 
 
 As a general maxim, no epithet should be used, 
 which does not express something not exprest in 
 the context, nor so implied in it as to be imme- 
 diately deducible. Above all, slum abusive epi- 
 thets. Leave it to those who can wield nothing 
 more powerful, to throw offensive words. Be- 
 fore the fire burns strongly, it smoulders and 
 smokes : when mightiest and most consuming, 
 it is also brightest and clearest, A modern histo- 
 rian of the Cesars would hardly bridle his tongue 
 
 VOL. II. n
 
 98 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 for five lines together. In every page we should 
 be called upon to abhor the perfidious Tiberius, 
 the ferocious Caligula, the bloody Nero, the cruel 
 Domitian, the tyrant, the monster, the fiend. 
 Tacitus, although not feeble in indignation, either 
 in feeling or expressing it, knew that no gentleman 
 ever pelts eggshells, even at those who are set up 
 in the pillory : nor would he have done so at him 
 who was pilloried in St Helena. 
 
 If the narrative warrant a sentence of repro- 
 bation, the reader will not be slow in pronouncing 
 it : by taking it out of his mouth you affront him. 
 A great master and critic in style observes, that 
 " Thucydides and Demosthenes lay it down as 
 a rule, never to say what they have reason to 
 suppose would occur to the auditor and reader, in 
 consequence of anything said before ; knowing 
 that every one is more pleased, and more easily 
 led by us, when we bring forward his thoughts 
 indirectly and imperceptibly, than when we elbow 
 them and outstrip them with our own :" {Imagin. 
 Convert, i. 129). Perhaps, as is often the case 
 in criticism, a practice resulting from an instinctive 
 sense of beauty and fitness may here be spoken of 
 as a rule, the subject of a conscious purpose : and 
 when it becomes such, and is made a matter of ela- 
 borate study, the practice itself is apt to be earned 
 too far, and to produce a zigzag style, instead of 
 a smooth winding flow. For the old saying, that 
 an est celare artem, is not only applicable to 
 works, but in a still more important sense to
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 99 
 
 authors ; whose nature will never be bettered by 
 any art, until that art becomes nature. Still, so 
 far as such a rule tended to make our language 
 more temperate, it could hardly be otherwise than 
 beneficial. This temperance too, like all tempe- 
 rance, would greatly foster strength. For we are 
 ever disposed to sympathize with those who re- 
 press their passions ; we even spur them on ; 
 while we pull in those who are run away with by 
 theirs : and something like pity rises up toward the 
 veriest criminal, when we see him meet with hard 
 words, as well as hanging. 
 
 There is a difference however, as to the use 
 of epithets, between poetry and prose. The for- 
 mer is allowed to dwell longer on that which 
 is circumstantial and accessory. Ornaments may 
 become a ball-dress, which would be unseasonable 
 of a morning. The walk of Prose is a walk of 
 business, along a road, with an end to reach, and 
 without leisure to do more than take a glance at 
 the prospect : Poetry's on the other hand is a walk 
 of pleasure, among fields and groves, where she 
 may often loiter and gaze her fill, and even stoop 
 now and then to cull a flower. Yet ornamental 
 epithets are not essential to poetry : should you 
 fancy they are, read Sophocles, and read Dante. 
 Or if you would see how the purest and noblest 
 poetry may be painted and rouged out of its 
 grandeur by them, compare Pope's translations of 
 Homer with the original, or Tate and Brady's 
 of the Psalms with the prose version. u.
 
 100 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 It has been urged in behalf of the octosyllabic 
 metre, of which modern writers are so fond, that 
 much of our heroic verse would be improved, if you 
 were to leave out a couple of syllables in each line. 
 Such an argument may not betoken much logical 
 precision ; seeing that idle words may find a way 
 into lines of eight syllables, as well as into those 
 of ten : nor is there any peculiar pliancy in the 
 former, which should render them the one regi- 
 mental dimension, exclusively fitted to express 
 all manner of thoughts. Moreover such omissions 
 must alter the character of a poem, the two 
 metres being in totally different keys ; wherefore 
 a change in the metre of a poem should super- 
 induce a proportionate change in its whole struc- 
 ture and composition. Sorry too must be the 
 verses, which could benefit by such an amputa- 
 tion. In Chaucer, Spenser, Sliakspeare, Milton, 
 it would be like improving a hand by chopping off 
 a finger. If you try the experiment on Pope 
 however, especially on his translation, you will 
 find that line after line is the better for being thus 
 curtailed. For you will get rid of many of the 
 epithets, with which he was wont to eke out his 
 couplets ; and which, as he seldom exerted his 
 imagination to reproduce the conceptions presented 
 by his original, were mostly selected for little else 
 than their sound, and their convenience in filling 
 up the vacant space. 
 
 There is indeed a tendency in our heroic 
 couplet, as it is very unaptly called, to collect
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 101 
 
 idle words ; that is to say, according to the mode 
 of constructing it which has prevailed since the 
 middle of the seventeenth century. Gibbon, in 
 some observations on Ovid's Fasti, remarks that, 
 in the elegiac metre, the necessity that " the sense 
 must always be included in a couplet, causes the 
 introduction of many useless words merely for the 
 sake of the measure." The same has naturally 
 been the case in our verse, ever since it was laid 
 down as a rule that there must be a pause at 
 the end of every other line. u. 
 
 Coleridge, in his Biographic/, Liter aria (i. 20), 
 suggests that our vicious poetic diction "has been 
 kept up by, if it did not wholly arise from, the 
 custom of writing Latin verses, and the great im- 
 portance attacht to these exercises, in our public 
 schools." In this remark, too much efficacy is 
 ascribed to what at the utmost can only have 
 been a subordinate and secondary cause. For the 
 very same vices of style have prevailed in other 
 countries, where there was no such practice to 
 generate and foster them. Nor in England have 
 they been confined to persons educated at our 
 public schools, but have been general among 
 those who have set themselves to write poetry, 
 whether for the sake of distinction, or to while 
 away idle hours, or to gratify a literary taste, 
 without any strong natural bent. Indeed the 
 one great source of what is vicious in literature is 
 the want of truth, under all its forma : while the
 
 102 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 main source of what is excellent, in style as well 
 as in matter, is the pure love and desire of truth, 
 whether as the object of the reason and under- 
 standing, or of the imagination. He who writes 
 with any other aim than that of giving full utter- 
 ance to the truth which is teeming within him, — be 
 it with the wish of writing finely, of gaining fame, 
 or of gaining money, — is sure to write ill. He 
 who is ambitious of becoming a poet, when Nature 
 never meant him to be so, is sure to deck himself 
 out with counterfeit ornaments. 
 
 Hence it is that translations are often injuri- 
 ous to literature. They may indeed be highly 
 beneficial, by promoting that commerce of thought, 
 which is the great end of the intercourse among 
 nations, and of which the lower mercantile com- 
 merce should be the symbol and the instrument. 
 Very often however a translator goes through his 
 work as a job : and even when he has entered 
 upon it spontaneously, he will mostly grow weary 
 after a while, and continue it merely as taskwork. 
 Whether from natural inaptitude, or from ex- 
 hausted interest, he makes, no steady strenuous 
 endeavour to realize the conceptions of his author, 
 and to bring them out vividly and distinctly, even 
 before his own mind. But he lias put on harness, 
 and must go on. So he writes vaguely and hazily, 
 tries to make up for the feebleness and incorrect- 
 ness of his outlines, by daubing the picture over 
 with gaudy colours ; and getting no distinct percep- 
 tion of his author's meaning, nor having any distinct
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 103 
 
 meaning of his own, he falls into a noxious habit of 
 using words without meaning. 
 
 For the same reason will the practice of writing 
 in a forein language be mischievous, and to the same 
 extent ; so far namely as it leads us to use words 
 without a distinct living meaning, and to have 
 some other object paramount to that of saying 
 what we have to say, in the plainest, most forci- 
 ble manner. An author may indeed exercise him- 
 self not without profit in writing Latin ; and as 
 people learn to walk with more grace and ease, by 
 learning to dance, he may return to his own lan- 
 guage with his perceptions of beauty and fitness 
 in style sharpened by the necessity of attending to 
 the niceties of a forein tongue, in which all com- 
 position must needs be the work of art. Our 
 principal Latin poets have been among the best 
 and most elegant English writers of their time, — 
 Cowley, Addison, Sir William Jones, Cowper, 
 Landor : and though Milton was over-ambitious of 
 emulating powers and beauties scarcely compatible 
 with the genius of our language, his scholarship 
 led him to that learned mastery over it, in which 
 he stands almost alone. 
 
 But when Latin verses are to be written as 
 a prescribed task, — when, according to the custom 
 of many schools, boys are prepared for this accom- 
 plishment by being set in the first instance to 
 write what are professedly nonsense verses, as 
 though the stringing long and short syllables toge- 
 ther after a certain fashion had a positive value,
 
 104 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 independent of the subject matter, — when they are 
 trained for years to write compulsorily on a theme 
 imposed by a master, — it is not easy to imagine 
 any method better calculated to deaden every 
 spark of genuine poetical feeling. In its stead 
 boys of quickness acquire a fondness for mere 
 diction : this is the object aimed at, the prize set 
 before them. They ransack Virgil and Horace 
 and Ovid for pretty expressions, and bind up as 
 many as they can in a posy : so that a copy of 
 some fifty lines will often be a cento of such 
 phrases, and contain a greater number of orna- 
 mental epithets than a couple of books of the 
 Eneid. 
 
 To exemplify this poetical ferrumination, as he 
 calls it, Coleridge cites a line from a prize-poem, 
 — Lactea purpureos interstrepit unda lapillos, — 
 which, he says, is taken from a line of Politian's, 
 — Pura color atos interstrepit unda lapillos; adding 
 that, if you look out purus in the Gradus, you 
 find lacteus as its first synonym; and that pur- 
 pureas is the first synonym for coloratus. They 
 who know how little Coleridge is to be relied on 
 for a mere matter of fact, will not be surprised 
 to learn, that lacteus does not occur among the 
 synonyms for purus in the Gradus, as indeed it 
 scarcely could, nor purpureus among those for 
 coloratus. It is worth noticing however, as illus- 
 trating the effects of such a process, that the 
 two epithets substituted for the original ones are 
 both untrue. The original line is a very pretty
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 105 
 
 one, even in rhythm superior to the copy : but the 
 water, though pwra } is not lactea ; nor, if it were, 
 could the pebbles be seen through it : and these 
 pebbles are colorati, of various colours, not, or at 
 least only a few of them, purpurei. u. 
 
 Most people seem to think the coat makes the 
 gentleman ; almost all fancy the diction makes the 
 poet. This is one of the reasons why Paradise 
 Regained has been so generally slighted. In like 
 manner many readers are unable to discover that 
 there is any poetry in Samson Agonistes ; and 
 very few have any notion that there is more, and 
 of a higher kind, than in Comics. Johnson for 
 instance, while he says, that " a work more truly 
 poetical (than Comus) is rarely found; allusions, 
 images, and descriptive epithets embellish almost 
 every period with lavish decoration," — as though 
 these things were the essence of poetry, — 
 complains in the Rambler (No 140), that it is 
 difficult to display the excellencies of Samson, 
 owing to its " having none of those descriptions, 
 similies, or splendid sentences, with which other 
 tragedies are so lavishly adorned." So that John- 
 son's taste was of that savage cast, which thinks 
 that a woman's beauty consists in her being 
 studded with jewels, if confluent, so much the 
 better; that she can have no beauty at all, un- 
 less she has a necklace and frontlet and ear-rings ; 
 and that, if she had a nose-ring, and lip-rings, and 
 cheek-rings, and chin-rings, she would be all the
 
 106 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 more beautiful. Even allowing that jewelry may 
 not be always hurtful to female beauty, especially 
 where there is little or none for it to hurt, yet 
 there is a masculine beauty, as well as a femi- 
 nine ; and the former at least does not need to 
 be trickt out with tinsel. The oak has a beauty 
 of its own, a beauty which would not be improved 
 by being spangled over with blossoms. We may 
 remark too that it is only about the horizon that 
 the sky arrays itself in the gorgeous pageantry of 
 sunset. The upper heavens remain pure, or at 
 most are tinged with a slight blush. 
 
 The whole of Johnson's elaborate criticism on 
 Samson Agonistes is a specimen of his manner 
 of taking up a flower with the tongs, and then 
 protesting that he cannot feel any softness in it, — 
 of his giving it a stroke with his sledge-hammer, 
 and then crying, Look! where is its beauty f 
 " This is the tragedy (he has the audacity to 
 say), which ignorance has admired, and bigotry 
 applauded." u. 
 
 Perhaps it is when the Imagination flies the 
 lowest, that we see the hues of her plumage. In 
 Coleridge's Tabletalk (i. 160), it is stated that, 
 having remarkt how the Pilgrim's Progress " is 
 composed in the lowest style of English," he 
 added : " if you were to polish it, you would 
 destroy 'the reality of the vision: for works of 
 Imagination should be written in very plain lan- 
 guage : the more purely imaginative they are, the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 107 
 
 more necessary it is to be plain." I know no 
 better illustration of this, than the exquisite sim- 
 plicity of the tales in Tieck's Phantasm ; the 
 style of which produces a persuasion of their com- 
 plete reality, as though the author were born and 
 bred in fairy-land, talking of matters with which 
 he was thoroughly familiar, so that the wonder- 
 ful events related seem to be actually going on 
 before our eyes. This was probably the reason 
 why Coleridge, as he once said to me, considered 
 Tieck to be the poet of the purest imagination, 
 according to his own definition of the imagination, 
 who had ever lived. 
 
 That the loftiest aspirations of the feelings find 
 their appropriate utterance in a like plainness of 
 speech, is proved by the Psalms : that it is equally 
 fitted to express the deepest mysteries of thought, 
 by those who have received the highest initiation 
 into them, we see in the writings of St John. 
 On the other hand fine diction is wont to bring the 
 author into view. We perceive the conjuration 
 going on, and the vapours rising ; which subside 
 when the form evoked comes forth into distinct 
 vision. u. 
 
 The beauty of a pale face is no beauty to the 
 vulgar eye. u. 
 
 Too much is seldom enough. Pumping after 
 your bucket is full prevents its keeping so. u.
 
 108 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Do, and have done. The former is far the 
 easiest. u. 
 
 How many faithful sentences are written now ? 
 that is, sentences dictated by a pure love of truth, 
 without any wish save that of expressing the truth 
 fully and clearly, — sentences in which there is 
 neither a spark of light too much, nor a shade of 
 darkness. u. 
 
 The great misfortune of the present age is, 
 that one can't stand on one's feet, without calling 
 to mind that one is not standing on one's 
 head. u. 
 
 The swan on still St Mary's Lake 
 Floats double, swan and shadow. 
 
 A similar duplicity is perpetually found in modern 
 
 poetry ; though it is seldom characterized by a 
 
 stillness like that of St Mary's Lake. Even in 
 
 Wordsworth himself we too often see the reflexion, 
 
 along with the object. Look for instance at 
 
 those fine lines on the first aspect of the French 
 
 Revolution : 
 
 Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth 
 
 The beauty wore of promise, — that which sets 
 (To take an image which was felt no doubt 
 Among the bowers of Paradise itself) 
 The budding rose above the rose full-blown. 
 When reading these lines, 1 have always wisht 
 that the third ami fourth were omitted ; or rather 
 that the whole passage were constructed anew.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 109 
 
 For there is much beauty in the thought. There 
 is an imaginative harmony between the budding 
 rose and the time when the world was in the bud : 
 although the rosebud was not yet invested with 
 that secondary interest which it derives from con- 
 trast, that interest through which the aged feel 
 the beauty of childhood far more deeply than 
 children can ; and although the beauty of fulfil- 
 ment, the beauty of the full-blown rose, is that 
 which shines the most radiantly in the hopeful 
 eyes of youth. Such as it is however, the thought 
 is not duly woven into the context : we seem to 
 be looking at the reverse side of the tapestry, with 
 the rough ends of thread sticking out. It is 
 brought in reflectively, rather than imaginatively. 
 A parenthesis, where it interrupts the continuity 
 of a single thought, unless there be a coincident 
 interruption of feeling, is illsuited to poetry. You 
 will hardly improve your pearl by splitting it in 
 two, and sticking a pebble between the halves. 
 The very expression, to take an image, is prosaic. 
 The imagination does not take images. It discerns 
 the harmonies of things, the more latent as well as 
 the more apparent : the truths which it wishes to 
 utter, it sees written in manifold forms by the 
 finger of God on the mystic scroll of the universe : 
 and what it sees it speaks of, not taking, but 
 receiving, not feigning that which is not, but 
 representing that which is. Nor is it quite comet 
 to say that an />//«</<■ was felt, least of all in Para- 
 dise. The inhabitants of Paradise did not feel
 
 1 ] GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 images, but realities : it is since our expulsion 
 from Paradise, that we have been doomed to 
 take up our home in a world of shadows. And 
 though the beauty of promise may have been felt 
 there, the imagination was not yet so enslaved by 
 the understanding, as to depreciate one kind of 
 beauty for the sake of exalting another. 
 
 But if Wordsworth at times has this blemish in 
 common with his contemporaries, he has excel- 
 lences peculiarly his own. If in his pages we 
 see both swan and shadow, in them at least the 
 
 waters are still ; 
 
 And through her depths St Mary's Lake 
 
 Is visibly delighted ; 
 For not a feature of the hills 
 
 Is in the mirror slighted. u. 
 
 In the two editions of Wordsworth's poems pub- 
 lisht since the former one of this little book, the 
 lines just objected to have been altered ; and the 
 passage now stands thus : 
 
 Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth, 
 The beauty wore of promise, — that which sets 
 (As at some moment might not be unfelt 
 Among the bowers of Paradise itself) 
 The budding rose above the rose full-blown. 
 By this change a part of the foregoing remarks 
 has been obviated : still I have not thought 
 it necessary to cancel them. For their justice, so 
 far at least, is confirmed by the great poet's com- 
 pliance with them : and of esthetics] criticism 
 that portion is the most beneficial practically, 
 which discusses details with precision. General
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 1 1 1 
 
 views of literature, whether theoretical or histo- 
 rical, are valuable, as enlarging the mind, and 
 giving it a clew to the labyrinth, which since 
 the invention of printing has been becoming more 
 and more complicated every year. To authors 
 however they have mostly done harm, seducing 
 them to write from abstract notions, or after the 
 fashion of bygone ages, instead of from the 
 promptings of their own genius, and of the living 
 world around them ; as has been exemplified 
 above all by numberless abortions in the recent 
 literature of that country where such speculations 
 have had the greatest vogue. Minuter criticism 
 on the other hand, which was the kind most culti- 
 vated by the ancients, and which contributed to 
 the exquisite polish of their style, has few votaries 
 in England, except Landor, whose style bears a like 
 witness to its advantages. Hence, by a twofold 
 inversion of the right order, that which ought to be 
 ideal and genial, is in modern works often merely 
 technical ; while in the objective technical parts 
 blind caprice disports itself. 
 
 Besides it is pleasant to find a great writer 
 shewing deference to one of low degree ; not brist- 
 ling up and stiffening, as men are apt to do, when 
 any one presumes to hint the possibility of their 
 not being infallible; but listening patiently to ob- 
 jections, and ready to allow them their weight* 
 Perhaps however Wordsworth may at times 
 allow them even more than their due weight : 
 and this may have been the origin of many of
 
 112 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the alterations, which readers familiar with the 
 earlier editions of his poems have to regret in 
 the later. Thus for instance it is " in deference to 
 the opinion of a friend/' that, in the beautiful ballad 
 on the Blind Highland Boy, he has substituted the 
 turtle-shell for the tub in which the boy actually 
 did float down Loch Leven. Yet, though the 
 description of the household tub in the original 
 poem Avas perhaps needlessly minute, and too 
 broad a defiance of the conventional decorums of 
 poetry, the change seems to introduce an incongru- 
 ous feature into the story, and to detract from its 
 reality and probability, giving it the air of a fiction. 
 It militates against the great original principle 
 of Wordsworth's poetry; which was, to shew how 
 the germs of poetical feeling and interest are not 
 confined to certain privileged classes and conditions 
 of society, but are spread through every region of 
 life; and that, where the feeling is genuine and 
 strong, it will invest what might otherwise be 
 deemed mean with a moral dignity and beauty. 
 "Were the incident an invention, there might be 
 some plea for deriding the poet, whose imagination 
 dwelt among such homely utensils : but the fact 
 having been such as it was, the alteration is too 
 much after the fashion of those with which the 
 French translators of Shakspeare have thought it be- 
 came them to ennoble their original; too much as if 
 one were to change Desdemona's handkerchief into 
 a shawl. A jester would recommend that Peter 
 Bell's ass should in like manner he metamorphosed
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 113 
 
 into a camel. Yet surely the vessel in which 
 Diogenes lived, and Regulus died, and on which 
 Wesley preacht, might be mentioned even in this 
 treble-refined age, without exciting a hysterical 
 nausea, or setting people's ears on edge. Elce the 
 poet, who has not been wont to shew much fear 
 of his critics, might be content to throw it out as 
 a tub for the whale. 
 
 Even in such matters the beginning of change is 
 as when one letteth out water : none knows where 
 it will stop. The description of the turtle-shell, 
 which at first was in the same tone with the rest 
 of the poem, was not held to be sufficiently ornate. 
 Coleridge objected to it (Biog. Lit. ii. 136) ; very 
 unreasonably, as it seems to me, considering that 
 the ballad is professedly a fireside tale told to 
 children, and that this its character was studiously 
 preserved throughout. Indeed exquisite skill was 
 shewn in the manner in which the story was 
 carried into the higher regions of poetry, yet with- 
 out ever deviating from the most childlike simpli- 
 city and familiarity of expression. Coleridge's 
 objections however led the author to bring in five 
 new lines, more after the manner of ordinary 
 poetical diction ; but which are out of keep- 
 ing with the rest of the poem, and would be 
 unintelligible to its supposed audience. When 
 the turtle-shell was first introduced, they were 
 told that sundry curiosities had b^en brought by 
 mariners to the coast : 
 
 VOL. II. i
 
 114 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 And one, the rarest, was a shell, 
 Which he, poor child, had studied well ; 
 The shell of a green turtle, thin 
 And hollow ; you might sit therein ; 
 It was so wide and deep. 
 
 Twas e'en the largest of its kind, 
 
 Large, thin, and light as birchtree-rind ; 
 
 So light a shell, that it would swim, 
 
 And gaily lift its fearless rim 
 Above the tossing waves. 
 These lines set the shell before the children's eyes, 
 place them in it, and give life and spirit to the story. 
 But now their childly brains are bewildered, by 
 hearing that, among the rarities from far countries, 
 
 The rarest was a turtle-shell ; 
 
 Which he, poor child, had studied well. 
 
 A shell of ample size, and light 
 
 As the pearly car of Amphitrite, 
 That sportive dolphins draw. 
 
 And, as a coracle that braves 
 On Vagu's breast the fretful uttves, 
 This shell upon the deep would swim, 
 And gaily lift its fearless brim 
 Above the tossing surge. 
 
 Alas ! we too often find those who have to 
 teach children, explaining itinotiun per iffnotitis ; 
 and at times one is much puzzled to do otherwise. 
 But is this a thing desirable in itself? and can it 
 be a judicious improvement, to give up a clear, 
 simple, lively description, for the sake of a few 
 fine words, which leave the hearers in a mist ? u. 
 
 In the former volume I made some remarks on 
 the inexpediency of substituting any other word
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 115 
 
 for the first that comes into our head. The main 
 reason for this is, that the word which comes first 
 is likely to be the simplest, most natural expres- 
 sion of the thought. Where, from artificial habits 
 of mind, this is not so, a less plain word may be 
 made to give place to a plainer one with advan- 
 tage. But there is a further consideration. The 
 first word will often be connected with its neigh- 
 bours by certain dim associations, by which, though 
 they may never have been brought into distinct 
 consciousness, it was in fact suggested in the 
 secondsighted travail of writing. These associa- 
 tions are afterward lost thought of. In reading 
 over the passage, it strikes us that some other word 
 would look better in its place, would be more 
 forcible, more precise, more elegant, more harmo- 
 nious. Now there is always something tempt- 
 ing in a change, as in every exercise of power 
 and will : it flatters us to display any kind of 
 superiority, even over our own former selves : we 
 are glad to believe that we are more intelligent 
 than we were : and through the influence of these 
 motives we readily assume that the change is an 
 improvement, without considering whether the new 
 word is really better, not merely in itself, but 
 also relatively to the context. They who are nice 
 in the use of words, and who take pains in correct- 
 ing their writings!, must often have found after- 
 ward that many of their corrections were for the 
 worse ; and I think it must have surprised them 
 to observe how much further and more clearly
 
 116 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 they saw during the fervour of composition, than 
 afterward when they were looking over what they 
 had written, and examining it critically and reflec- 
 tively. Hence Wordsworth in his last editions 
 has often restored the old readings, in passages 
 which in some of the intervening ones he had been 
 induced to alter. For instance, the beautiful 
 little poem on the Nightingale and the Stockdove 
 began originally, 
 
 O nightingale ! thou surely art 
 A creature of ajiry heart. 
 
 This expression, as one might have expected, 
 offended the prosaic mind of the Edinburgh 
 Reviewer ; and though the poet was not wont to 
 hold Scotch criticism in much honour, he complied 
 with it so far as to alter the second line, in 
 the edition of 1815, into A creature of ebuUit'itt 
 heart. The new epithet however, though not 
 without beauty, does not introduce the following 
 lines so appropriately, or bring out the contrast 
 with the stockdove's song so strongly, as its prede- 
 cessor ; which accordingly in the recent editions 
 has resumed its place. 
 
 That an author, when revising his works some 
 years after, will be much more liable to such 
 forgetfulness of the thoughts and feelings which 
 prompted the original composition, is plain ; above 
 all, if he be a poet, whose works must needs have 
 a number of unseen threads running through them, 
 and holding them together. " In truly great, 
 poets (as Coleridge tells us he was taught by his
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 1 1 7 
 
 schoolmaster), there is a reason, not only for every 
 word, but for the position of every word." Not 
 that the poet is distinctly conscious of all these 
 reasons : still less has he elaborately calculated and 
 weighed them. But when he has acquired that 
 genial mastery of language, which is one of the 
 poet's most important attributes, his thoughts 
 clothe themselves spontaneously in the fittest 
 words. So too, when the mind is fully possest 
 with the idea of a work, it will carry out that 
 idea in all its details, preserving a unity of tone 
 and character throughout. In such a state it is 
 scarcely less impossible for a true poet to say any- 
 thing at variance with that idea, than it would be 
 for an elm to bear apples, or for a rosebush to bring 
 forth tulips. Whereas, when we look at the lines 
 just cited, it seems clear that the author must 
 have quite forgotten the scheme of his poem, and 
 his purpose of telling it in language adapted to 
 the understandings of children ; or he could hardly 
 have compared his turtle-shell to " the pearly 
 car of Amphitrite," and " the coracle on Vaga's 
 breast." 
 
 Besides a poet's opinions both with regard to 
 style and to things, his views as to the principles 
 and forms and purposes of poetry and of life, will 
 naturally undergo material changes in the course 
 of years; the more so the more genial and pro- 
 gressive his mind is. Hence, in looking back on 
 a work of former days, he will often find much 
 that will not be in unison with his present notions,
 
 118 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 much that he would not say, at least just in the 
 same manner, now. The truth is, the whole poem 
 would be differently constructed, were he to write 
 it now. And this, if it appear worth the while, 
 is the best plan to adopt, — to rewrite the whole. 
 Thus Shakspeare, if the first King John and 
 hear are youthful works of his, as there is strong 
 reason for believing, rewrote them throughout in 
 the maturity of his life, when, being possest with 
 new ideas of the two works, he gave them a new 
 and higher and mightier unity. Whereas a partial 
 change will merely introduce that disharmony and 
 jarring into the poem, which the author finds in 
 his own mind. How would Comus have been 
 frostbitten, had Milton set himself to correct it in 
 his old age after the type of Samson Agonistes ! 
 The inferiority of the Gerusalemme Conquistata 
 to the Liberata may indeed be attributable in 
 great measure to the disease thai was preying on 
 Tasso's mind. But Schiller too, and even Goethe, 
 when correcting their youthful works, have done 
 little but enfeeble them. In learning and science 
 subsequent researehes may expand or rectify our 
 views : but where a work has an ideal imaginative 
 unity, that unity must not be infringed : and the 
 very fact of an author's finding a repugnance 
 between his present self and the offspring of his 
 former self, proves that the idea of the latter has 
 pa t away from him, and thai he is no Longer in 
 a fit state to meddle with it. Even supposing, 
 what must always be questionable, thai the changes
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 119 
 
 in his own mind are all for the better, the old 
 maxim, Denique sit quod vis, simplex duntaxat et 
 unum, which even in morals is of such deep im- 
 port, in esthetics is almost absolute. 
 
 Of incongruities introduced into a work by a 
 departure from its original idea, there is an in- 
 stance in Wordsworth's poem on a party of 
 Gypsies, — a poem containing several majestic 
 lines, but in which from the first the tone, as 
 Coleridge observed, was elevated out of all pro- 
 portion to the subject. Nor has this dispropor- 
 tionateness been lessened, but rather rendered 
 more prominent, by the alteration it has under- 
 gone. The objections made in several quarters 
 to the feeling exprest in this poem led the 
 author to add four lines to it, protesting that he 
 did not mean to speak in scorn of the gypsies ; 
 for that " they are what their birth And breeding 
 suffers them to be, — Wild outcasts of humanity." 
 Now this may be very true ; and a new poem 
 might have been written, giving utterance to this 
 milder feeling. But it looks like a taint from 
 the grandiloquence of the former lines, when " all 
 that stirs in heaven and earth" is called to witness 
 this protestation. Nor can one well see why a 
 poem needing it should be retained and recognized. 
 Above all, there is an abrupl sinking, when the 
 gorgeous lines which go before arc followed by this 
 apology. It' the gypsies arc merely " what their 
 birth And breeding suffers them to be, Wild out- 
 casts of humanity," how can it be said that " wrong
 
 120 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and strife, By nature transient, are better than 
 such torpid life ?" And though the words, by 
 nature transient, as applied to wrong and strife, 
 express a deep and grand truth, alas ! they are 
 not so transient as the stationariness of the poor 
 vagrants. Why again do the stars reprove such 
 a life ? Surely the lordly powers of nature have 
 something wiser and juster to do, than to shame 
 a knot of outcasts, who are " what their birth 
 and breeding surfers them to be." If they needs 
 must reprove, though they hardly look as if they 
 could, they might find many things on earth less 
 congenial and more offensive to their heavenly 
 peace. It might afford a wholesome warning to 
 reformers, to observe how, in a poem of less than 
 thirty lines, the author himself by innovating has 
 shaken the whole structure. 
 
 Another poem, which seems to me to have been 
 sadly impaired by alteration, is one of the author's 
 most beautiful works, his Laodamia. When it 
 was originally publisht in 1815, the penultimate 
 stanza, which follows the account of her death, 
 ran thus : 
 
 Ah, judge her gently, who so deeply loved ! 
 Her, who in reason's spite, yet without crime, 
 Was in a trance of passion thus removed ; 
 Delivered from the galling yoke of time, 
 And these fiail elements, — to gather flowers 
 Of blissful (|uiet mid unfading bowers. 
 In the edition of 1827 this stanza was com- 
 pletely remoulded, and appeared in the following 
 shape :
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 121 
 
 By no weak pity might the gods be moved. 
 She who thus perisht, not without the crime 
 Of lovers that in reason's spite have loved, 
 Was doomed to wander in a grosser clime, 
 Apart from happy ghosts, — that gather flowers 
 Of blissful quiet mid unfading bowers. 
 Here one cannot help noticing the ingenuity 
 with which the words are twisted about, to mean 
 the very opposite of their original meaning. 
 Yet even in such things it is better not to put- 
 new wine into old bottles. When a totally 
 different idea is to be exprest, it is far likelier 
 to be exprest appropriately in words of its own, 
 than in a set of cast-off words, which had pre- 
 viously served to clothe some other form of 
 thought. What chiefly strikes us however in 
 the new stanza, is the arbitrariness with which 
 the poet's judgement has veered round ; so that, 
 after having raised Laodamia to the joys of Ely- 
 sium, he suddenly condemns her to endless sorrow. 
 In the later editions indeed, the fourth line has 
 been altered into " Was < loomed to wear out her 
 appointed time ;" whereby she is elevated from 
 the lower regions into purgatory, and allowed to 
 look for a term to her woes. Yet still the 
 sentence first past on her is completely rcvcrst. 
 The change too is one contrary to the whole 
 order of things, both human and divine. They 
 who have been condemned, may be pardoned : 
 but they who have already been pardoned, must 
 not be condemned. This is the course even 
 of earthly judicatures. .Man has an instinct in
 
 122 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the depths of his consciousness, which teaches 
 him that the throne of Mercy is above that of 
 Justice, that wrath is by nature transient, and 
 that a sentence of condemnation may be re- 
 voked, but that the voice of Love is eternal, and 
 that, when it has once gone forth, the gates of 
 hell shall not prevail against it. 
 
 On first perceiving this change, one naturally 
 supposes that some new light must have broken 
 upon the poet, or rather some new darkness ; that 
 he must at least have discovered some fresh marks 
 of guilt in Laodamia, of which before he was not 
 aware. But it is not so. Her words, her actions, 
 her feelings are just what they were. The two 
 or three slight alterations in the former part of the 
 poem are merely verbal, and no way affect her 
 character. If she was "without crime" before, 
 she must be so still : if she is " not without 
 crime" now, so must she have been from the first. 
 The change is solely in the author's mind, with- 
 out the slightest outward warrant for it: not a 
 straw is thrown into the scale : his absolute 
 nod alone makes it rise or sink. The onlv 
 difference is, that lie quotes the passage of Virgil, 
 where the shade of Laodamia "" is placed in a 
 mournful region, among unhappy lovers." But 
 surely Virgil's judgement in Buch a matter is not 
 to overrule thai of a Christian poet. Although 
 the wisdom of the heathens was in certain respects 
 more spiritual than that which has been currenl 
 of late years, this is not one of the points in
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 123 
 
 which we should appeal to their decision. The 
 eternal law, hy which the happiness and misery 
 of man are bound up with his moral and spiri- 
 tual condition, was but dimly recognized in the 
 popular traditions of the ancients. The inmates 
 of Tartarus were rather the vanquisht enemies 
 of the gods ; and being so regarded, the con- 
 templation was not so painful to the moral 
 sense : nor did it imply the same presumption in 
 the judgement which cast them there. No one 
 would now take Virgil as an authority for placing 
 the winning souls of infants, wailing over the 
 shortness of their lives, and those who had been 
 condemned by unjust sentences, along with sui- 
 cides, in the same mournful region. Nor would 
 all who have perisht through love, whether with 
 or without crime, be consigned to the same doom ; 
 so as to make Phedra, Procris, Eriphyle, and 
 Pasiphae, the companions of Evadne and Lao- 
 damia. The introduction of Evadne, so renowned 
 for her heroic selfdevotement, proves that Virgil 
 was guided in his selection more by the similarity 
 of earthly destiny, than by any moral rule : and 
 every one may perceive the poetical reason for 
 enumerating the martyrs, as well as the guiltier 
 victims, of passionate love ; inasmuch as it is 
 among these shades thai Eneas is to find Dido. 
 
 My reason however for referring to the /.<<<<- 
 damia was, that it is a remarkable instance 
 how the imaginative ideal unity of a work may 
 be violated by an alteration. It is said that
 
 124 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Windham, when he came to the end of a speech, 
 often found himself so perplext hy his own 
 subtilty, that lie hardly knew which way he 
 was going to give his vote. This is a good 
 illustration of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and 
 of the uncertainties which attend its practical 
 application. Ever since the time of the sophists, 
 Logic has been too ready to maintain either side 
 of a question ; and that, not merely in arguing 
 with others, but even within our own bosoms. 
 The workings of the Imagination however are far 
 less capricious. When a poet comes to the end 
 of his work, it does not rest with him to wind it 
 up in this way or that. 
 
 What ! may he not do as he pleases with the 
 creatures of his own fancy ? 
 
 A true poet would almost as soon think of doing 
 as he pleased with his children. He feels that the 
 creations of his imagination have an existence and 
 a reality independent of his will ; and he therefore 
 regards them with reverence. The close of their 
 lives, he feels, must be determined by what has 
 gone before. The botchers of Shakspeare indeed 
 have fancied they might remodel the catastro- 
 phies of his tragedies. One man would keep 
 Hamlet alive, — another, Romeo, — a third, Lear. 
 Yet even these changes are less violent, and more 
 easily excusable, than the entire reversal of Lao- 
 damia's sentence. For in every earthly outward 
 event there is something the ground of which we 
 cannot discern, and which we therefore ascribe to-
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 125 
 
 chance : and though in poetry the necessary con- 
 catenation of events ought to be more apparent, 
 the unity of a character may still be preserved 
 under every vicissitude of fortune. But the ulti- 
 mate doom, which must needs be determined by 
 the essence of the character itself, cannot be 
 changed without a corresponding change in the 
 character. 
 
 Horace has warned painters against combining 
 a man's head with a horse's neck, or making a 
 beautiful woman terminate in the tail of a fish. 
 Yet in both these cases we know, from the re- 
 presentations of centaurs and mermaids, the com- 
 bination is not incompatible with a certain kind 
 of beauty. Indeed there is something pleas- 
 ing and interesting in the sight of the animal 
 nature rising into the human. The reverse, which 
 we sometimes see in Egyptian idols, the human 
 form topt by the animal, — a man for instance 
 with a horse's head, or a woman with a fishes, — 
 would on the other hand be purely painful and 
 monstrous ; unless where, as in the case of 
 Bottom, we look on the transformation as tem- 
 porary, and as a piece of grotesque humour. But 
 far more revolting would it be to see a living 
 head upon a skeleton, or a death's head upon 
 a living body. In moral combinations the 
 contrast may not be so glaring : yet surely in 
 them also is a harmony which ought not to 
 be violated. The idea of the Laodamia, when 
 we view it apart from the questionable
 
 126 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 stanza, is clearly enunciated in those fine 
 
 lines : 
 
 Love was given, 
 Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for this end, — 
 For this the passion to excess was driven, — 
 That self might be annulled, her bondage prove 
 The fetters of a dream, opposed to love. 
 
 But as the poem ends now, it directly falsifies 
 this assertion. It shews that the excess of love 
 cannot annull self; that, — so far is the bondage 
 of self from being the fetters of a dream, opposed 
 to love, — the intensest love, even when blest with 
 the special favour of the gods, is powerless against 
 the bondage of self. Protesilaus seems to be 
 sent to the prayers of his wife for no purpose,, 
 except of proving that they who hear not Moses 
 and the prophets, will not be persuaded even when 
 one rises from the dead. Had the poet's original 
 intention been to consign Laodamia to Erebus, 
 the whole scheme of the poem must have been 
 different. Her weakness would have been brought 
 out more prominently ; and the spirit of Pro- 
 tesilaus would hardly have been charged with 
 the utterance of so many divine truths, when his 
 sermon was to be as unavailing as if he had 
 been preaching to the winds- The impotence of 
 truth is not one of the aspects of human life 
 which a poet may well choose as the central idea 
 of a grave work. u. 
 
 The reflective spirit is so dominant in the lite- 
 rature of the age, and it is so injurious to all
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 127 
 
 pure beauty in composition, that perhaps it will 
 not be deemed idle trifling, if I point out one 
 or two more instances in which 'it seems to me 
 too obtrusive. And I will select them from the 
 same great master of modern poetry ; not only 
 because his works stand criticism, and reward it, 
 better than most others, so that even when tracking 
 a fault, one is sure to light upon sundry beauties ; 
 but also because he is eminently the poet of his 
 age, the poet in whom the best and highest 
 tendencies of his contemporaries have found their 
 fullest utterance. 
 
 There are few lovers of poetry but will remem- 
 ber the admirable account of the sailor in the 
 Brothers ; who 
 
 in his heart 
 
 Was half a shepherd in the stormy seas. 
 
 Oft in the piping shrouds had Leonard heard 
 
 The tones of waterfalls, and inland sounds 
 
 Of caves and trees ; and when the regular wind 
 
 Between the tropics filled the steady sail, 
 
 And blew with the same breath through days and weeks, 
 
 Lengthening invisibly its weary line 
 
 Along the cloudless main, he, in those hours 
 
 Of tiresome indolence, would often hano- 
 
 Over the vessel's side, and gaze, and gaze ; 
 
 And, while the broad green wave and sparkling foam 
 
 Flasht round him images and hues that wrou 
 
 In union with the employment of his heart, 
 
 lie, thus by feverish passion overcome, 
 
 I ven with the organs ofhU bodily cue 
 
 Below him, in the bosom of the deep, 
 
 Saw mountains, saw the forms of sheep that grazed
 
 128 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 On verdant hills, with dwellings among trees, 
 And shepherds clad in the same country gray, 
 Which he himself had worn. 
 
 Beautiful as this passage is, it would be all 
 the better, I think, if the first of the two lines 
 printed in italics were omitted, and the emphasis 
 of the second diminisht. At present they rather 
 belong to a psychological analysis, than to a 
 poetical representation, of feelings. It is true, 
 the vision would be the effect of " feverish 
 passion :" it would be visible " even to the 
 organs of the bodily eye." So it is true, that 
 a blush is caused by a sudden suffusion of 
 blood to the cheek. But, though it might be 
 physiologically correct to say, that, in conse- 
 quence of the accelerated beating of the heart, 
 there was such a determination of blood to the 
 face, — the part of the body most apparent to 
 him by whom the blush was occasioned, — that 
 the veins became full, and the skin was tinged by 
 it ; yet no poet would write thus. The poet's 
 business is to represent the effect, not the cause ; 
 the stem and leaves and blossoms, not the root ; 
 that which is visible to the imagination, not that 
 which is discerned by tire understanding : although 
 by bringing out the important moment, which he 
 selects for representation, and by insulating it 
 from the extraneous circumstances, which in ordi- 
 nary life surround and conceal it, he enables us to 
 discern the causes more immediately, than we
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 129 
 
 should do when our thoughts are bewildered in 
 the maze of outward realities. 
 Or look at this little poem : 
 
 Let other bards of angels sing, 
 
 Bright suns without a spot : 
 But thou art no such perfect thing ; 
 
 Rejoice that thou art not. 
 
 Such if thou wert in all men's view, 
 
 A universal show, 
 What would mi] fancy have to do? 
 
 My feelings to bestow ? 
 
 Heed not, though none should call thee fair : 
 
 So, Mary, let it be ! 
 If nought in loveliness compare 
 
 With what thou art to me. 
 
 True beauty dwells in deep retreats, 
 
 Whose veil is unremoved, 
 Till heart with heart in concord beats, 
 
 And the lover is beloved. 
 
 This poem again, it seems to me, would be ex- 
 ceedingly improved by the expulsion of the second 
 stanza. The other three have a sweet, harmonious 
 unity, and express a truth, which if any one has 
 not felt, he is greatly to be pitied. But the 
 second stanza jars quite painfully with the others. 
 Even if the thought conveyed in it were accurately 
 true, it would be bringing forward the internal 
 process, which in poetry ought to be latent. It is 
 only a partial truth however, which, being Btated 
 by itself, as though it were the whole truth, be- 
 comes false. Beauty is represented, according to 
 the notions of the egoistical idealists, as pundy 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 130 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 subjective, as a mere creation of the beholder : 
 whereas it arises from the conjoint and reciprocal 
 action of the beholder and the object, as is so 
 exquisitely exprest in the last stanza. Beauty 
 is indeed in the mind, in the feelings : were there 
 not the idea of Beauty in the beholder, associated 
 with the feeling of pleasure, nothing would be 
 beautiful or lovely to him. But it is also in 
 the object : and the union and communion of the 
 two is requisite to its full perception. According 
 to the second stanza, the uglier a woman was, 
 the more beautiful would she be : for the more 
 would our fancy have to do, our feelings to bestow. 
 And conversely, the more beautiful she was, the 
 more destitute would she be of beauty. 
 
 Besides there is an unpoetical exclusiveness and 
 isolation in grudging that what we deem beautiful 
 should be beautiful " in all men's view," and in 
 speaking scornfully of what is so as "a universal 
 show." The poet will indeed perceive deeper and 
 more spiritual beauties than other men; and he 
 will discern hidden springs and sources of Beauty, 
 where others see nothing of the sort : but he will 
 also acknowledge with thankfulness, that Beauty 
 is spread abroad through earth and sea and sky, 
 and dwells on the face and limn, and in the heart 
 of man : and lie will shrink from the thought of 
 its being a thing which he, or any one else, could 
 monopolize. He will deem that the bighesl and 
 most blessed privilege of his genius is, thai it 
 enables him to cherish the widest and fullest
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 131 
 
 sympathy with the hearts and thoughts of his 
 brethren. u. 
 
 " There is one class of minds (says Schelling, 
 Pkilosop/tische Schriften, i. 388), who think about 
 things, another, who strive to understand them in 
 themselves, according to the essential properties of 
 their nature." This is one of the momentous 
 distinctions between men of productive genius, 
 and men of reflective talents. In the history of 
 literature we find examples without number, how, 
 on eating of the Tree of Knowledge, we are banisht 
 from the Tree of Life. Poets, it is plain from the 
 very meaning of the word poetry, if they have any 
 claim to their title, must belong to the class whose 
 aim is to think and know the things themselves. 
 Nor poets only : all that is best and truly living 
 in history, in philosophy, and even in science, 
 must have its root in the same essential know- 
 ledge, as distinguisht from that which is merely 
 circumstantial. 
 
 Here we have the reason why Poetry has been 
 wont to flourish most in the earlier ages of a 
 nation's intellectual life ; because essential know- 
 ledge is not so apt then to be overrun, and stunt id 
 or driven awry, by circumstantial, production by 
 reflexion. In all poetry that is really such, if 
 it pretend to more than an ephemeral existence, 
 as in all life, there must be a mysterious 1 ;im<. 
 which is and ever must be incomprehensible to 
 the reflective understanding. There must be
 
 132 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 something in it which can only be apprehended 
 by a corresponding act of the imagination, dis- 
 cerning and reproducing the incarnate idea. Now 
 that which cannot be comprehended by the re- 
 flective understanding of others, can still less have 
 been produced by an act of the poet's own re- 
 flective understanding. Its source must lie deep 
 within him, below the surface of his consciousness. 
 The waters which are spread out above that 
 surface, and which are not fed by an unseen 
 fountain, are sure to dry up, and will never form 
 a living, perennial stream. Indeed, if we look 
 through the history of poetry, we find, in the 
 case of all the greatest and most genial works, 
 that, though their beauty may have manifested 
 itself immediately to the simple instinctive feelings 
 of mankind, ages have past away before the re- 
 flective understanding has attained anything like 
 a correct estimate and analysis of their merits. 
 For they have been truly mysterious, and have 
 indeed posscst a hidden life. But of most modern 
 works it may be said, that they have been brought 
 down to the level of the meanest capacities. That 
 which is designed to be most mysterious in them, 
 is thrust the most conspicuously into view. They 
 need no time, no study, to detect their beauties. 
 Knowing from their own consciousness how un- 
 imaginative men are wont to be, the authors 
 interline their works with a commentary on their 
 merits, and act as guides through their own 
 estate's. It is much as if all the leaves and
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 133 
 
 flowers in a garden were to be suddenly gifted 
 with voices, and to begin crying out in clamorous 
 consort, Come and look at me, how beautiful I 
 am ! What could a lover of Nature do amid 
 such a hubbub, but seek out a tuft of violets, 
 which could not but still be silent, and bury his 
 face in it, and weep ? 
 
 The examples hitherto cited, of the harm done 
 to poetry by the intrusion of reflexion, have 
 referred merely to lesser points of detail, and 
 have been taken from the works of one who is 
 indeed a poet of great imaginative power ; al- 
 though he too, as all men must, bears the marks 
 of his age, of its weakness, as well as of its 
 strength. There have been writers however, in 
 whom the shadow has almost supplanted the sub- 
 stance, who give us the ghosts of things, instead 
 of the realities, and who, having been taught to 
 observe the ideas impersonated in the master- 
 pieces of former ages, think they too may start 
 up and claim rank among the priests of the Muses, 
 if they set about giving utterance to the same 
 ideas loudly and sonorously. They forget that 
 roots should lie hid, that the heart and lungs and 
 all the vital processes are out of sight, and that, 
 if they are laid bare to the light, death ensues : 
 and they would fain stick their roots atop of their 
 heads, and carry their hearts in their hands. 
 Instead of representing persons, we are apt to 
 describe them. Nay, to shorten the labour, as 
 others cannot look into them, and see all the
 
 134 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 inward movements of their feelings, they are made 
 to describe themselves. 
 
 Some dramatic writers have been wont to pre- 
 face their plays with descriptive accounts of the 
 characters they are about to bring on the stage. 
 Shadwell, for instance, did so : the list of the 
 dramatis personae in the Squire of Alsatia fills 
 three pages : and a like practice is found in 
 Wycherly, Congrevc, and other writers of their 
 times. Indeed it accords with the nature of their 
 works, which are chiefly remarkable for wit, — a 
 quality dealing in contrasts, and therefore implying 
 the distinct consciousness necessarily brought out 
 thereby, — and for acuteness of observation, where 
 the observer feels himself set over against the 
 objects he is observing : so that they are rather 
 the offspring of the reflective understanding, work- 
 ing consciously in selecting, arranging, and com- 
 bining the materials supplied to it from without, 
 than of any genial, spontaneous, imaginative throes. 
 Jonson too prefixt an elaborate catalogue of the 
 same sort to his Every Man out of kis Humov/r : 
 and in him again we see a like predominance of 
 reflexion, though in a mind of a higher and 
 nil, uster order: nor are his characters the crea- 
 tions of a plastic imagination, blending the various 
 elements of humanity indistinguishably into a 
 living whole ; but mosaic constructions, designed 
 tn exhibit the enormities and extravagances of 
 Bome peculiar humour. All such li.^is are merely 
 eluni. x devices for furnishing the reader with
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 135 
 
 what he ought to deduce from the works them- 
 selves. It is offensively obtrusive to tell us before- 
 hand what judgement Ave are to form on the 
 persons we read of. It prevents our regarding 
 them as living men, whom we are to study, and 
 to compare with our idea of human nature. In- 
 stead of this we view them as fictions for an 
 express purpose, and compare them therewith. 
 We think, not what they are, but how they ex- 
 emplify the proposition which the writer designed 
 to enforce : and wherever the author's purpose is 
 prominent, art degenerates into artifice. In logic 
 indeed the enunciation rightly precedes the proof. 
 But the workings of poetry are more subtile and 
 complicated and indirect : nor are our feelings so 
 readily toucht by what a man intends to say or 
 to do or to be, as by what he says and does and 
 is without intending it. Thus we involuntarily 
 recognise the hollowness of all that man does, 
 when cut off from that spring of life, which, 
 though in him, is not of him. Moreover to the 
 author himself it must needs be hurtful, when he 
 sets to work with a definite purpose of exhibiting 
 such and such qualities, instead of living, concrete 
 men. It leads him to consider, not how such a 
 man would speak and act, but how on every occa- 
 sion he may display his besetting humour ; which 
 yet in real life he would mostly conceal, and which 
 would scarcely vent itself, except under some 
 special excitement, when he was thrown off his 
 balance, and made forgetful of self-restraint.
 
 136 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Still the humours and peculiar aspects of human 
 nature thus portrayed by the second-rate poets of 
 former times are those which do actually rise the 
 most conspicuously and obtrusively above the com- 
 mon surface of life, and which not seldom betray 
 themselves by certain fixt habits of speech, gesture, 
 and manner; so that there is less inappropriateness 
 in their being made thus prominent. But the psy- 
 chological analysis of criticism has enabled us to 
 discern deeper and more latent springs, and more 
 delicate shades, of feeling in the masters of poetry : 
 and those feelings, which are only genuine and 
 powerful when latent, are now drawn forward into 
 view, whereupon they splash and vanish. 
 
 For example, no sooner had attention been 
 called, some fifty years ago, to the powerful influence 
 exercised by Fate, as the dark ground of the Greek 
 tragedies, than poet after poet in Germany, from 
 Schiller downward, set about composing tragedies 
 on the principle of fatality ; each insisting that his 
 own was the true Fate, and that all others were 
 spurious and fictitious. And so in fact they were : 
 only his was no less so. Nor could it well be 
 otherwise. When the Greek tragedians wrote, the 
 overruling power of Fate was a living article of faith, 
 both with them and with the people; as every- 
 thing ought to be, which is made the leading idea 
 in a tragedy. Since a drama, by the conditions of 
 its representation, addresses itself to the assembled 
 people, if it is to act strongly upon them, it must 
 appeal to those feelings and thoughts which actually
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 137 
 
 hold sway over them. Tragic poetry is indeed 
 fond of drawing its plots and personages from the 
 stores of ancient history or fable ; partly because 
 the immediate present is too full of petty details to 
 coalesce into a grand imaginative unity, whereas 
 antiquity even of itself is majestic ; partly be- 
 cause it stirs so many personal feelings and inter- 
 ests, which sort ill with dignity and with solemn 
 contemplation ; and partly because a tragic cata- 
 strophe befalling a contemporary would have too 
 much of painful horrour. Yet, though the person- 
 ages of tragedy may rightly be taken from former 
 ages, or from forein countries, — remoteness in 
 space being a sort of equivalent for remoteness in 
 time, — still a true dramatic poet will always make 
 the universal human element in his characters pre- 
 dominate over the accidental costume of age and 
 country. Nor will he bring forward any mode of 
 faith or superstition as a prominent agent in his 
 tragedy, except such as will meet with something 
 responsive in the popular belief of his age. When 
 Shakspeare wrote, almost everybody believed in 
 ghosts and witches. Hence it is difficult for us to 
 conceive the impression which must have been 
 made on such an audience by Hamlet and Macbetk : 
 whereas the witches in the latter play now, on the 
 stage, produce the effect of broad, fantastical carica- 
 tures ; and so far are we from comprehending the 
 power which the demoniacal apparitions exercised 
 over Macbeth's mind, that they arc seldom seen 
 without peals of hoarse, dissonant laughter. In like
 
 138 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 manner Fate, in the modern German tragedies, 
 instead of being awful, is either ludicrous or re- 
 volting. As it is not an object of faith, either 
 with the poet or his hearers, so that they 
 would hardly observe its latent working, he brings 
 it forth into broad daylight ; and his whole re- 
 presentation is cold, artificial, pompous, and untrue. 
 While in Greek tragedy Fate stalks in silence 
 among the generations of mankind, visiting the 
 sins of the fathers upon the children and grand- 
 children, — Tr/s pev #' c'nraXol Trades' ov yap eV ovbei 
 UiXvarat, u\\' cipa rjye kcit avfipwv Kpaara /ScuWt, — 
 
 on the modern German stage it clatters in wooden 
 shoes, and springs its rattle, and clutches its victim 
 by the throat. u. 
 
 Your good sayings would be far better, if 
 you did not think them so good. He who is 
 in a hurry to laugh at his own jests, is apt to 
 make a false start, and then has to return with 
 downcast head to his place. u. 
 
 Many nowadays write what may be called a 
 dashing style. Unable to put much meaning into 
 their words, they try to eke it out by certain 
 marks which they attach to them, something like 
 pigtails sticking out at right angles to the body. 
 The finest models of this style are in the articles 
 by the original editor of the Kdinburgh Review, 
 and in Lord Byron's poems, above all, in the Cor- 
 BOir, his most popular work, as one might have
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 139 
 
 expected that it would be, seeing that his faults 
 came to a head in it. A couplet from the Bride 
 of Abyrfos may instance my meaning. 
 
 A thousand swords — thy Selim's heart and hand — 
 Wait — ware — defend — destroy — at thy command. 
 
 How much grander is this, than if there had been 
 nothing between the lines but commas ! even as a 
 pigtail is grander than a curl, or at least has been 
 deemed so by many a German prince. Tacitus 
 himself, though his words are already as solid and 
 substantial as one can wish, yet, when translated, 
 is drest after the same fashion, with a skewer jut- 
 ting out here and there. The celebrated sentence 
 of Galgacus is turned into He makes a solitude — 
 and calls it — peace. The noble poet places a 
 flourish after every second word, like a vulgar 
 writing-master. Or perhaps they are rather marks 
 of admiration, standing prostrate, as Lord Castle- 
 reagh would have exprest it. Nor are upright 
 ones spared. u. 
 
 Are you quite sure that Pygmalion is the 
 only person wlio ever fell in love with his own 
 handiwork ? u. 
 
 " In good prose (says Frederic Schlegel) every 
 word should be underlined." That is, every word 
 should be the right word ; and then no word would 
 be lighter than another. There are no italics in 
 Plato.
 
 140 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 What ! asks Holofernes ; did Plato print his 
 books all in romans ? 
 
 In mentioning Plato, I mentioned him whose 
 style seems to be the summit of perfection. But if 
 it be objected that the purpose of italics is to give 
 force to style, which Plato, from the character of 
 his subjects, was not solicitous about, I would 
 reply, that there are no italics in Demosthenes. 
 Nor are there in any of the Greek or Roman 
 writers, though some of them were adepts in the 
 art of putting as much meaning into words, as 
 words are well fitted to bear. 
 
 Among the odd combinations which Chance is 
 ever and anon turning up, few are more whimsical 
 than the notion that one is to gain strength by 
 substituting italics for romans. In Italy one 
 should not be surprised, if for the converse change a 
 man were to incur a grave suspicion of designing 
 to revive the projects of llienzi, to be expiated by 
 half a dozen years of carcere duro. Nay, the very 
 shape of the letters would rather lead to the oppo- 
 site conclusion, that morbidezza was the quality 
 aimed at. 
 
 Two large classes of persons in these days are 
 fond of underlining their words. 
 
 It is a favorite practice with a number of 
 female letter-writers, — those, I mean, who have 
 not yet crost over the river of self-conscious- 
 ness into the region of quiet, unobtrusive grace, 
 and whose intellectual pulses are always in a 
 flutter, at one moment thumping, the next scarcely
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 141 
 
 perceptible. Their consciousness of no-meaning 
 worries them so, that the meaning, which, they 
 are aware, is not in any words they can use, they 
 try to put into them by scoring them, like a leg 
 of pork, which their letters now and then much 
 resemble. 
 
 On the other hand some men of vigorous minds, 
 but more conversant with things than with words, 
 and who, having never studied composition as an 
 art, have not learnt that the real force of style 
 must be effortless, and consists mainly in its sim- 
 plicity and appropriateness, fancy that common 
 words are not half strong enough to say what they 
 want to say ; and so they try to strengthen them 
 by writing them in a different character. Men of 
 science do this : for words with them are signs, 
 which must stand out to be conspicuous. Soldiers 
 often do this : for, though a few of them are among 
 the most skilful in the drilling and manouvring of 
 words, the chief part have no notion that a word 
 may be louder than a cannon-ball, and sharper 
 than a sword. Cobbett again is profuse of italics. 
 This instance may be supposed to refute the asser- 
 tion, that the writers who use them are not verst 
 in the art of composition. But, though Cobbett 
 was a wonderful master of plain speech, all his 
 writings betray his want of logical and literary 
 culture. He had never sacrificed to the Graces ; 
 who cannot be won without many sacrifices. 
 He cared only for strength ; and, as his own 
 bodily frame was of the Herculean, rather than the
 
 142 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Apollinean cast, he thought that a man could not 
 be very strong, unless he displayed his thews. 
 Besides a Damascus blade would not have gasht 
 his enemies enough for his taste : he liked to have 
 a few notches on his sword. 
 
 To a refined taste a parti-lettered page is much 
 as if a musician were to strike a note every now 
 and then in a wrong key, for the sake of startling 
 attention. The proper use of italics seems to be, 
 when the word italicized is not meant to be a 
 mere part of the flowing medium of thought, but is 
 singled out to be made a special object of notice, 
 whether on account of its etymology, or of some- 
 thing peculiar in its form or meaning. As the 
 word is employed in a different mode, there is 
 a sort of reason for marking that difference by a 
 difference of character. On like grounds words in 
 a forein language, speeches introduced, whether in 
 a narrative or a didactic work, quotations from 
 Scripture, and those words in other quotations to 
 which attention is especially called, as bearing im- 
 mediately on the point under discussion, may ap- 
 propriately lie printed in italics. This rule seems 
 to agree with the practice of the best French 
 writers, as well as of our own, and is confirmed by 
 the best editions of the Latin classics, in which 
 orthography, punctuation, and the like minuter 
 matters, are treated far more carefully than in 
 modern works. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 143 
 
 What a dull, stupid lake ! It makes no noise : 
 one can't hear it flowing : it is as still as a sheet 
 of glass. It rolls no mud along, and no soapsuds. 
 It lets you see into it, and through it, and does 
 nothing all day but look at the sky, and shew you 
 pictures of everything round about, which are just 
 as like as if they were the very things themselves. 
 And if you go to drink, it shews you your own 
 face. Hang it ! I wish it would give us some- 
 thing of its own. I wish it would roar a little. 
 
 Such is the substance of Bottom's criticisms on 
 Goethe, which in one or other of his shapes he has 
 brayed out in many an English Review. Some- 
 times one might fancy he must have seen the 
 vision which scared Peter Bell. 
 
 Nor is Goethe the only writer who has to stand 
 reproved, because he does not pamper the love of 
 noise and dust. Nor is it in books alone that our 
 morbid restlessness desires to find a response. The 
 howling wind lashes the waves, and makes them 
 roar in symphony. This is a type of the spirit 
 which revels in revolutions. u. 
 
 Why do you drug your wine 1 a merchant was 
 askt by one of his customers. 
 
 Because nobody would drink it >>■/'//„,/'(. 
 
 Is it not just so with Truth? Bacon at least 
 has declared that it is: and how many writers 
 have lived in the course of three thousand years, 
 who have not acted on this persuasion, more or 
 less distinctly ? nay, how many men who have not
 
 144 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 dealt in like manner even with their own hearts 
 and minds ? u. 
 
 We have earnt to exclaim against the yew- 
 trees which are cut out into such fantastical shapes 
 in Dutch gardens, and to recognise that a yew-tree 
 ought to be a yew-tree, and not a peacock or a 
 swan. This may seem a trivial truism ; and yet 
 it is an important truth, of very wide and manifold 
 application; though it does not involve that we 
 are to let children run wild, and that all Education 
 is a violation of Nature. But it does involve the 
 true principle of Education, and may teach us that 
 its business is to educe, or bring out, that which 
 is within, not merely, or mainly, to instruct, 
 or impose a form from without. Only we are not 
 framed to be self-sufficient, but to derive our 
 nourishment, intellectual and spiritual, as well as 
 bodily, from without, through the ministration of 
 others ; and hence Instruction must ever be a chief 
 element of Education. Hence too we obtain a 
 criterion to determine what sort of Instruction is 
 right and beneficial, — that which ministers to 
 Education, which tends to bring out, to nourish and 
 cultivate the faculties of the mind, not that which 
 merely piles a mass of information upon them. 
 Moreover since Nature, if left to herself, is ever 
 prone to run wild, and since there are hurtful and 
 pernicious elements around us, as well as nourish- 
 ing and salutary, pruning and sheltering, correcting
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 145 
 
 and protecting are also among the principal offices 
 of Education. 
 
 But the love of artificiality is not restricted to 
 the Dutch, in whom it may find much excuse from 
 the meagre poverty of the forms of Nature around 
 them, and whose country itself thus in a manner 
 prepared them for becoming the Chinese of Europe. 
 There are still many modes in which few can be 
 brought to acknowledge that a yew-tree ought to 
 be a yew-tree : and when we think how beauti- 
 ful a yew-tree is, left to itself, and crowned with the 
 solemn grandeur of a thousand years, we need not 
 marvel that people should be slower to admit this 
 proposition as to things less majestic and more 
 fleeting. Indeed I hardly know who ever lived, 
 except perhaps Shakspeare, who did acknowledge it 
 in its fulness and variety : and even he doubtless 
 can only have done so in the mirror of his world- 
 reflecting imagination. At all events very many 
 are most reluctant to acknowledge it, and that too 
 under the impulse of totally opposite feelings, not 
 merely with regard to persons whom they dislike, 
 and whom they paint, like Bolognese pictures, on a 
 dark ground, but even with regard to their friends, 
 whom they ought to love for what they are. Yet 
 they will not let their friends be such as they are, 
 or such as they were meant to be, but pare and 
 twist them into imaginary shapes, as though they 
 could not love them until they had made dolls of 
 them, until they saw the impress of their own 
 hands upon them. So too is it with most writers 
 
 VOL. II. L
 
 146 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of fiction, and even of history. They do not give 
 us living men, but either puppets, or skeletons, or, 
 it may be, shadows : and these puppets may at 
 times be giants, as though a Lilliputian were 
 dandling a Brobdignagian. For bigness with the 
 bulk of mankind is the nearest synonym for 
 greatness. u. 
 
 A celebrated preacher is in the habit of saying, 
 that, in preaching, the thing of least consequence 
 is the Sermon : and they who remember the 
 singular popularity of the late Dean Andrewes, or 
 who turn from the other records of Bishop Wilson's 
 life to his writings, will feel that there is more in 
 this saying than its strangeness. The latter 
 instance shews that the most effective of all 
 sermons, and that which gives the greatest efficacy 
 to every other, is the sermon of a Christian life. 
 
 But, apart from this consideration, the saying 
 just cited coincides in great measure with the 
 declaration of Demosthenes, that, in speaking, 
 Delivery is the first thing, and the second, and 
 the third. For this reason oratorical excellence is 
 rightly called Eloquence. 
 
 Commonly indeed the apophthegm of Demo- 
 sthenes has been understood in a narrower sense, as 
 limited to Action, whereby it becomes a startling 
 paradox. Even Landor has adopted this version 
 of it, and makes Eschines attack Demosthenes on 
 account of this absurdity, in his Conversation with 
 Phocion ; while Demosthenes, in that with
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 147 
 
 Eubulides, adduces this as a main distinction 
 between himself and Pericles, expressing it with 
 characteristic majesty : " I have been studious 
 to bring the powers of Action into play, that great 
 instrument in exciting the affections, which Pericles 
 disdained. He and Jupiter could strike any head 
 with their thunderbolts, and stand serene and im- 
 movable : I could not." And again a little after : 
 " Pericles, you have heard, used none, but kept his 
 arm wrapt up within his vest. Pericles was in 
 the enjoyment of that power, which his virtues 
 and his abilities well deserved. If he had carried 
 in his bosom the fire that burns in mine, he would 
 have kept his hand outside." 
 
 Still this interpretation seems to have no better 
 origin than the passages in which Cicero, when 
 alluding to the anecdote of Demosthenes (De Orut. 
 iii. 56. De Clar. Orat. 38. Orat. 17), uses the 
 word Actio. Many errours have arisen from the 
 confounding of special significations of words, 
 which are akin, both etymologically and in their 
 primary meaning, like Actio and Action. But I 
 believe, the Latin Actio, in its rhetorical appli- 
 cation, was never restricted within our narrow 
 bounds : indeed we ourselves reject this restric- 
 tion in the dramatic use of acting and actor. The 
 vivid senses of the Romans felt that the more 
 spiritual members of the body can act, as well 
 as the grosser and more massive ; and they who 
 have lived in southern climes know that this attri- 
 bute of savage life has not been extinguish! there
 
 148 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 by civilization. Indeed the context in the three 
 passages of Cicero ought to have prevented the 
 blunder : his principal agents are the voice and the 
 eyes : u animi est enim omnis actio, et imago 
 animi vultus, indices oculi : " and he defines Actio 
 to be " corporis quaedam eloquentia, cum constet e 
 voce atque motu." Even after the mistake had 
 been made, it ought to have been corrected, by the 
 observation that Quintilian (xi. 3) has substituted 
 Pronunciatio for Actio. But the whole story is 
 plain, and the exaggeration accounted for, when 
 we read it in the Lives of the Ten Orators ascribed 
 to Plutarch. Every one has heard of the bodily 
 disadvantages which Demosthenes had to contend 
 with. No man has more triumphantly demon- 
 strated the dominion of the mind over the body ; 
 for few speakers have had graver natural disquali- 
 fications for oratory, than he whose name in the 
 history of oratory stands beyond competition the 
 foremost. Having been cought down, as we term 
 it. one day, he was walking home despondently. 
 But Eunomus the Thriasian, who was already an 
 old man, met him and encouraged him : so too did 
 the actor Andronicus still more, telling him that 
 bis speeches were well, but that he failed in action 
 and delivery (Xeinoi c>i ra rz/c vivoK^iatwr). He 
 then reminded him of what he had spoken in the 
 assembly; whereupon J K'inosthenes, believing him, 
 gave himself up to the instruction of Andronicus. 
 Hence, when some one askt him what is the first 
 thing in oratory, he said vnuKpioic, Manner, or
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 149 
 
 Delivery ; what the second ? Delivery ; what the 
 third 1 Delivery. In this story there may perhaps 
 be some slight inaccuracies ; hut in substance it 
 agrees with Plutarch's account in his Life of 
 Demosthenes, § viii. 
 
 We may deem it an essential character of 
 Genius, to be unconscious of its own excellence. 
 If a man of genius is a vain man, he will be vain 
 of what is not his genius. But we are very apt 
 to overrate a talent, which has been laboriously 
 trained and cultivated. Thus Petrarch lookt to 
 his Africa for immortality, and Shakspeare to his 
 Sonnets, more, it would seem, than to his Plays. 
 Thus too Bacon "conceived that the Latine volume 
 of his Essayes, being in the universal language, 
 might last as long as bookes last;" though other 
 considerations are also to be taken into account 
 here. No wonder then that Demosthenes some- 
 what overvalued an attainment, which had 
 cost him so much trouble, and in which the 
 speech of Eschines, — What would you have 
 said, if you had heard the beast himself? — 
 proves that he had achieved so much in over- 
 coming the disabilities of his nature; so much 
 indeed, that Dionysius (irtpi rr/e Xemrijc ±7)- 
 fioatieyovQ eeiyurrjroc, § xxii) says, that he was 
 acknowledged by all to be the most consummate 
 master of inroK-pimc. His own experience had 
 taught him how the effect of a speech depended 
 almost entirely upon its delivery, by the defects of 
 which his earlier orations had been marred ; as
 
 150 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Bacon, in his Essay on Boldness, after giving the 
 erroneous version of our anecdote, remarks : " He 
 said it, that knew it best, and had by nature 
 himself no advantage in that he commended." The 
 objections which are subjoined to this remark, are 
 founded mainly on the misunderstanding of what 
 Demosthenes had said. 
 
 Still, though there is a considerable analogy 
 between the importance of manner or delivery in 
 speaking and in preaching, it should be borne in 
 mind that nothing is more injurious to the effect 
 of the latter, than whatever is artificial, studied, 
 theatrical. Besides, while, as a friend observes, 
 vvoKpiaiQ has often been a main ingredient in 
 oratory under more senses than one, when it enters 
 into preaching under the sense denounced in the 
 New Testament, it is the poison, a drop of which 
 shivers the glass to atoms. In fact the reason 
 why delivery is of such force, is that, unless a man 
 appears by his outward look and gesture to bo 
 himself animated by the truths he is uttering, 
 he will not animate his hearers. It is the live 
 coal that kindles others, not the dead. Nay. the 
 same principle applies to all oratory ; and what 
 made Demosthenes the greatest of orators, w;is 
 that he appeared the most entirely possest by the 
 feelings he wisht to inspire. The main use of his 
 vTroi;pimr was, that it enabled him to remove the 
 natural hindrances which checkt and clogged the 
 stream of those feelings, and to pour them forth 
 with a free and mighty torrent that swept his
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 151 
 
 audience along. The effect produced by Charles 
 Fox, who by the exaggerations of party-spirit was 
 often compared to Demosthenes, seems to have 
 arisen wholly from this earnestness, which made 
 up for the want of almost every grace, both of 
 manner and style. u. 
 
 Most people, I should think, must have been 
 visited at times by those moods of waywardness, 
 in which a feeling adopts the language usually 
 significant of its opposite. Oppressive joy finds 
 vent in tears ; frantic grief laughs. So inadequate 
 are the outward exponents of our feelings, that, 
 when a feeling swells beyond its wont, it bursts 
 through its ordinary face, and lays bare the reverse 
 of it. Something of the sort may be discerned in 
 the exclamation of Eschines just quoted. No lauda- 
 tory term could have exprest his admiration so 
 forcibly as the single word dt)piov. u. 
 
 The proposition asserted a couple of pages back, 
 that genius is unconscious of its own excellence, 
 has been contested by my dear friend, Sterling, in 
 his Essay on Carlyle. In his argument on this 
 point there is some truth, which required perhaps 
 to be stated, for the sake of limiting the too exclu- 
 sive enforcement of the opposite truth : but there 
 is no sufficient recognition of that opposite truth, 
 which is of far greater moment in the present stage 
 of the human mind, and which Mr Carlyle had
 
 152 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 been proclaiming with much power, though not 
 without his favorite exaggerations. I will not take 
 upon me to arbitrate between the combatants, by 
 trying to shew how far each is in the right, and 
 where each runs into excess : but, as Sterling 
 adduces some passages from Sliakspeare's Sonnets, 
 in proof that he was not so unconscious of his 
 own greatness, as he has commonly been deemed, 
 I will rejoin, that the distinction pointed out above 
 seems to remove this objection. If Shakspeare 
 speaks somewhat boastfully of his Sonnets, we are 
 to remember that they were not, like his Plays, 
 the spontaneous utterances and creations of his 
 Genius, but artificial compositions, artificial even 
 in their structure, and alien in their origin, hardly 
 yet naturalized. Besides there is a sort of con- 
 ventional phraseology, handed down from the age 
 of Horace, and which he had inherited from that 
 of Pindar, whereby poets magnify their art, de- 
 claring that, while all other memorials of greatness 
 perish, those committed to immortal verse will 
 endure. In speaking thus the poet is magnifying 
 his art, rather than himself. But of the wonder- 
 ful excellence of his Plays, we have no reason for 
 believing that Shakspeare was at all aware ; 
 though Sterling docs not go beyond the mark, 
 when he says, that, "if in the wreck of Britain, 
 and all she has produced, one creation of her spirit 
 could be saved by an interposing Genius, to be the 
 endowment of a new world," it would be the 
 voluin< Unit contains them. Yet Shakspeare
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 153 
 
 himself did not take the trouble of publishing 
 that volume ; and even the single Plays printed 
 during his life seem to have been intended for 
 playgoers, rather than to gain fame for their 
 author. 
 
 I grant that, in this world of ours, in which the 
 actual is ever diverging from or falling short of its 
 idea, the unconsciousness, which belongs to Genius 
 in its purity, cannot be preserved undented, any 
 more than that which belongs to Goodness in its 
 purity. Miserable experience must have taught 
 us that it is impossible not to let the left hand 
 know what the right hand is doing ; and yet this 
 is the aim set before us, not merely the lower ex- 
 cellence of not letting others know, but the Divine 
 Perfection of not knowing it ourselves. The same 
 thing holds with regard to Genius. There are 
 numbers of alarums on all sides to arouse our self- 
 consciousness, should it ever flag or lag, from our 
 cradle upward. Whithersoever we go, we have 
 bells on our toes to regale our carnal hearts with 
 their music : and bellmen meet us in every street 
 to sound their chimes in our ears. Others tell us 
 how clever we are ; and we repeat the sweet strains 
 with ceaseless iteration, magnifying them at every 
 i-epetition. Hence it is next to a marvel if Genius 
 can ever preserve any of that unconsciousness 
 which belongs to its essence ; and this is why, 
 when all talents are multiplying, Genius becomes 
 rarer and rarer with the increase of civilization, 
 as is also the fate of its moral analogon, Heroism.
 
 154 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Narcissus-like it wastes away in gazing on its own 
 loved image. 
 
 Yet still Nature is mighty, in spite of all that 
 man does to weaken and pervert her. Samsons 
 are still born ; and though to the fulness and 
 glory of their strength it is requisite that the razor 
 should not trim their exuberant locks into forms 
 which they may regard with complacency in the 
 nattering mirror of self-consciousness, the hair, 
 after it has been cut off, may still grow again, 
 and they may recover some of their pristine vigour. 
 But in such cases, as has been instanced in so 
 many of the most genial minds during the last 
 hundred years, the energies, which had been cropt 
 and checkt by the perversities of the social system, 
 are apter, when they burst out afresh, for the 
 work of destruction, than of production, even at 
 the cost of perishing among the ruins, which they 
 drag down on the objects of their hatred. 
 
 Of the poets of recent times, the one who has 
 achieved the greatest victory over the obstructions 
 presented to the pure exercise of the Imagination 
 by the reflective spirit and the restless selfcon- 
 sciousness of modern civilization, there can be little 
 question, is Goethe : and the following remarks 
 in one of Schiller's earliest letters to him may help 
 us to understand how that victory was gained, 
 confirming and illustrating much of what has just 
 been said. " Your attentive observation, which 
 rests upon objects with such calmness and sim- 
 plicity, preserves you from the risk of wandering
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 155 
 
 into those by-paths, into which both Speculation 
 and the Imagination, when following its own 
 arbitrary impulses, are so apt to stray. Your 
 unerring intuitions embrace everything in far more 
 completeness, which Analysis laboriously hunts 
 out ; and solely because it lies thus as a whole in 
 you, are you unaware of your own riches : for 
 unhappily we only know what we separate. Minds 
 of your class therefore seldom know how far they 
 have penetrated, and how little reason they have 
 to borrow from Philosophy, which has only to 
 learn from them. Philosophy can merely resolve 
 what is given to her : giving is not the act of 
 Analysis, but of Genius, which carries on its 
 combinations according to objective laws, under 
 the dim but sure guidance of the pure Reason. — 
 You seek for what is essential in Nature ; but 
 you seek it by the most difficult path, from which 
 a weaker intellect would shrink. You take the 
 whole of Nature together, in order to gain light on 
 its particular members : in the totality of its 
 phenomena you search after the explanation of 
 individual objects. From the simplest forms of 
 organization, you mount step by step to the more 
 complex, so as at length to construct the most 
 complex of all, man, genetically out of the materials 
 of the whole edifice of Nature. By reproducing 
 him, so to say, in conformity to the processes of 
 Nature, you try to pierce into his hidden struc- 
 ture. A great and truly heroic idea ! which 
 sufficiently shews how your mind combines the
 
 156 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 rich aggregate of your conceptions into a beautiful 
 unity. You can never have hoped that your life 
 would be adequate for such a purpose ; but the 
 mere entering on such a course is of higher value 
 than the completion of any other ; and you have 
 chosen like Achilles between Phthia and immor- 
 tality. Had you been born a Greek, or even an 
 Italian, and been surrounded from your cradle by 
 exquisite forms of Nature and ideal forms of Art, 
 your journey would have been greatly shortened, 
 or perhaps rendered wholly needless. The very 
 first aspect of things would have presented them 
 in their necessary forms ; and your earliest ex- 
 perience would have led you to the grand style 
 in art. But, as you were born a German, as your 
 Greek mind was cast into our Northern world, you 
 had no other choice, except either to become a 
 Northern artist, or by the help of reflexion to gain 
 for your imagination, what the realities around 
 you denied to it, and thus by a sort of inward 
 act and intellectual process to bring forth your 
 works as though you were in Greece. At that 
 period of life, at which the soul fashions its inner 
 world from the outer, being surrounded by defec- 
 tive forms, you had received the impressions of 
 our wild, Northern Nature, when your victorious 
 Genius, being superior to its materials, became 
 inwardly conscious of this want, and was outwardly 
 confirmed in its consciousness through your ac- 
 quaintance with the Nature of Greece. Hereupon 
 you were forced to correct the old impressions
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 157 
 
 previously graven on your imagination by a meaner 
 Nature, according to the higher model which your 
 formative spirit created ; and such a work cannot 
 be carried on, except under the guidance of ideal 
 conceptions. But this logical direction, which the 
 spirit of reflexion is compelled to take, does not 
 agree well with the «sthetical processes through 
 which alone the mind can produce. Thus you 
 had' an additional labour ; for, as you had past over 
 from immediate contemplations to abstractions, you 
 had now to transform your conceptions back again 
 into intuitions, and your thoughts into feelings ; 
 because it is only by means of these that Genius 
 can bring forth. This is the notion I have formed 
 of the course of your mind; and you will know 
 best whether I am right. But what you can 
 hardly know, — because Genius is always the 
 greatest mystery to itself, — is the happy coincidence 
 of your philosophical instinct with the purest 
 results of speculative Reason. At first sight indeed 
 it would seem as though there could be no stronger 
 opposition than between the speculative spirit, 
 which starts from unity, and the intuitive, which 
 starts from multiplicity. But if the former seeks 
 after Experience with a chaste and faithful pur- 
 pose, and if the latter seeks after Law with a free, 
 energetic exercise of thought, they cannot fail of 
 meeting halfway. It is true that the intuitive 
 mind deals only with individuals, and the spe- 
 culative with classes. But if an intuitive spirit 
 is genial, and seeks for the impress of necessity in
 
 158 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the objects of experience, though it will always 
 produce individuals, they will bear the character of 
 a class : and if the speculative spirit is genial, and 
 does not lose sight of experience, while rising above 
 experience, though it will only produce classes, 
 they will be capable of life, and have a direct 
 relation to realities." 
 
 There are some questionable positions in this 
 passage, above all, the exaggerated depreciation of 
 the northern spirit, and exaltation of the classical, 
 from which misjudgement Goethe in his youth 
 was one of our first deliverers, though in after 
 years he perhaps gave it too much encouragement, 
 and which exercised a noxious influence upon 
 Schiller, as we see in his Bride of Messina, and 
 in the frantic Paganism of his ode on the Gods 
 of Greece. But the discussion of these questions 
 would require a survey of the great age of German 
 literature. My reasons for quoting the passage 
 are, that it asserts what seems to me the truth 
 with regard to the unconsciousness of Genius, 
 and that it sets forth the difficulty of preserving 
 that unconsciousness in an age of intellectual 
 cultivation, shewing at the same time how it has 
 been overcome by him who of all men has done 
 the most in the way of overcoming it. A mighty 
 Genius will transform its conceptions back into 
 intuitions, even as the technical rules of music 
 or painting are assimilated by a musician or a 
 painter, and as we speak and write according 
 to the rules of grammar, without ever thinking
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 159 
 
 about them. But it requires a potent Genius 
 to carry this assimilative power into the higher 
 regions of thought. u. 
 
 When a poetical spirit first awakens in a people, 
 and seeks utterance in song, its utterances are 
 almost entirely objective. The child's mind is 
 well nigh absorbed for a time in the objects of 
 its perceptions, and is scarcely conscious of its 
 own existence as independent and apart from 
 them ; and in like manner the poet, in the 
 childhood of a nation, — which is of far longer 
 duration than that of an individual, because the 
 latter is surrounded by persons in a more advanced 
 state, who lift and draw him up to their level, 
 whereas a people has to mount step by step, 
 without aid, and in spite of the vis inertiae of 
 the mass, — the poet, I say, in this stage, seems 
 to lose himself in the objects of his song, and 
 hardly to contemplate himself in his distinctness 
 and separation. Nor does he make those distinc- 
 tions among these objects, which the refinements 
 of more cultivated ages establish, often not without 
 arbitrary fastidiousness. All things are interesting 
 to him, if they shew forth life and power: the 
 more they have of life and power, the more in- 
 teresting they become : but even the hast things 
 are so, as they are also to a child, by a kind of 
 natural sympathy, not by an act of the will 
 fixing itself reflectively upon them, according 
 to the process so frequently exemplified in
 
 160 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Wordsworth. Thus we see next to nothing of the 
 poet in the Homeric poems, in the Niebelungen, in 
 the ballads of early ages. To represent what is 
 and has been, suffices for delight. Nothing 
 further is needed. Poetry is rather a natural 
 growth of the mind, than a work of art. The 
 umbilical chord, which connects it with its mother, 
 has not yet been severed. 
 
 In youth the objects of childish perceptions 
 become the objects of feelings, of desires, of pas- 
 sions. Self puts forth its horns. Consciousness 
 wakes up out of its dreamy slumber ; but the 
 objects of that consciousness, which stir and excite 
 it, are outward. Hence it finds vent in lyrical 
 poetry; but this lyrical poetry will be objective, 
 in that it will be the vivid utterance of actual 
 feelings, not a counterfeit, nor a meditative analysis 
 of them. 
 
 Moreover in both these forms poetry will be 
 essentially and thoroughly national. Indeed all 
 true poetry must be so, and all poetry in early 
 ages will be so of necessity. For in the early 
 ages of a people all its members have a sort of 
 generic character: the individualizing features 
 come out later, with the progress of cultivation ; 
 and still later is the introduction of forein ele- 
 ments ; which at once multiply varieties, and 
 impair distinct individuality. But a poet is the 
 child of his people, the firstborn of his age, the 
 highest representative of the national mind, which 
 in him finds an utterance for its inmost secrets.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 161 
 
 The vivid sympathies with nature and with man, 
 which constitute him a poet, must needs be excited 
 the most powerfully, from his childhood upward, 
 by those forms of outward nature and of human, 
 with which he has been the most conversant ; 
 and when he speaks, he will desire to speak so 
 as to find an answer in the hearts of his hearers. 
 In the ballad or epic he merely exhibits the objects 
 of their own faith to them, of their own love 
 and fear and hatred and desire, their own views 
 of man and of the powers above him, their 
 favorite legends, the very sights and sounds, 
 the forms and colours, the incidents and adven- 
 tures, they are most familiar with and most 
 delight in. As the German poet has said, 
 
 Think you that all would have listened to Homer, that all would 
 
 have read him, 
 Had he not smoothed his way to the heart by persuading his 
 
 reader, 
 That he is just what he wishes? and do we not high in the 
 
 palace, 
 And in the chieftain's tent see the soldier exult in the Iliad ? 
 While in the street and the market, where citizens gather 
 
 together, 
 All far gladlier hear of the craft of the vagrant Ulysses. 
 There the warrior beholdeth himself in his helmet and armour; 
 Here in Ulysses the beggar perceives how his rags ore 
 
 ennobled. 
 
 In like manner the lyrical poetry of early ages 
 is the national expression of feeling and of passion, 
 of love and of devotion, — national both in its 
 modes and in its objects. 
 
 VOL. II. M
 
 162 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 This however is little more than the blossoms 
 which are scattered, more or less abundantly, over 
 a fruit-tree in spring, and which gleam with starry- 
 brightness amid the dark network of the leafless 
 branches. As the season advances, Nature no 
 longer contents herself with these fleeting mani- 
 festations of her exuberant playfulness : the down 
 on the boyish cheek gives place to the rougher 
 manly beard, the smile of merriment to the sedate, 
 stern aspect of thought : she strips herself of the 
 bloom with which she had been toying, arrays 
 her form in motherly green ; and, though she 
 cannot repress the pleasure of still putting forth 
 flowers here and there, her main task is now, 
 not to dally with the air and sunshine, but to 
 convert them into nourishing fruit, and living, 
 generative seed. Feeling, passion, desire, kind- 
 ling often into fervid intensity, are the predominant 
 characters of youth. In manhood, when it is 
 really attained to, these are controlled and sub- 
 jugated by the will. The business of manhood is 
 to act. Thus the manhood of poetry is the drama. 
 The continuous flow of outward events, the simple 
 effusion of feelings venting themselves in song, will 
 not suffice to fill the mind of a people, when it 
 has found out that its proper calling and work- 
 is to act, to shape the world after its own forms 
 and wishes, to rule over it, and to battle inces- 
 santly with all manner of enemies, especially 
 which the will raises against itself, by 
 struggling against the moral laws of the universe.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 163 
 
 Now the whole form, and all the conditions 
 of dramatic poetry, according to its original con- 
 ception, — which is an essential part of its idea, 
 — imply that it is to be addrest, more directly 
 than any other kind of poetry, to large bodies 
 of hearers, who assemble out of all classes, and 
 may therefore be regarded as representatives of 
 the whole nation, and that it is to stir them by 
 acting immediately on their understanding and 
 their feelings. Hence the adaptation to them, which 
 is requisite in all poetry, is above all indispensable 
 to the drama ; and it belongs to the essence of 
 dramatic poetry to be national. So too it has 
 been, in the countries in which it has greatly 
 flourisht, in Greece, in Spain, in England. In 
 France also comedy has been so, the only kind 
 which has prospered there. For as to French 
 tragedy, it is a hybrid exotic, aiming mainly 
 at a classical form, yet omitting the very feature 
 which had led to the adoption of that form, the 
 chorus, and substituting a conventional artificiality 
 of sentiments and manners for the ideal simplicity 
 of the Greeks. It was designed for the court, 
 not for the people. 
 
 In these latter times a new body has sprung up, 
 to whom writers address themselves, that which 
 Coleridge jeers at under the title of the Reading 
 
 Public* Now for many modes of authorship, for 
 philosophy, for science, for philology and all other 
 ologies, indeed for prose generally, with the ex- 
 ception of the various branches of oratory, it has
 
 164 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 ever been a necessary condition that they should 
 be designed for readers. With regard to these the 
 danger is, that, in proportion as the studious 
 readers are swallowed up and vanish in the mass 
 of the unstudious, that which, from its spe- 
 culative or learned character, ought to require 
 thought and knowledge, may be debased by being 
 popularized. The true philosopher's aim must 
 ever be, Fit audience let me find, though few. But, 
 through the general diffusion of reading, a mul- 
 titude of people have become more or less con- 
 versant with books, and have attained to some 
 sort of acquaintance with literature. This is the 
 public for which our modern poets compose. They 
 no longer sing ; they are no longer doilol, bards : 
 they are mere writers of verses. Instead of sound- 
 ing a trumpet in the ears of a nation, they play on 
 the flute before a select auditory. 
 
 This is injurious to poetry in many ways. It 
 has become more artificial. It no longer aims at 
 the same broad, grand, overpowering effects. It is 
 grown elegant, ingenious, refined, delicate, senti- 
 mental, didactic. Instead of epic poems, in which 
 the heart and mind of a people roll out their 
 waves of thought and feeling, to receive them 
 back into their own bosom, we have poems con- 
 structed according to rules, which are not inherent 
 laws, hut maxims deduced by empirical abstrac- 
 tion ; and we even get at length to compositions, 
 like some of Southey's, in which materials are 
 scraped together from the four quarters of the world,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 165 
 
 and the main part of the poetry may often lie in 
 the notes, — not those of the harp awakening the 
 bard to a sympathetic flow of emotion, but of the 
 artificer exhibiting the processes of his own craft. 
 A somewhat similar change comes over lyric poetry. 
 It takes to expressing sentiment, rather than feel- 
 ing ; though here may be a grand compensation, 
 as we see eminently in Wordsworth. 
 
 But to no kind of poetry is this revolution of 
 the national mind, this migration out of the period 
 of unconscious production into that of reflective 
 composition, more hurtful than to the Drama. 
 Hence, when a nation has had a great dramatic 
 age, as it has been an age of intense national life, 
 like that which followed the Persian wars in Greece, 
 and the reign of our Elizabeth, so has it been 
 anterior to the age when reflexion became pre- 
 dominant, and has been cut short thereby. Hence 
 too in Germany, as the effect of the religious Schism, 
 in which the new spirit did not gain the same 
 political ascendency as in England, and that of the 
 Thirty Years war, — unlike that of forein wars, 
 which unite and concentrate the energies of a 
 people, — was to denationalize the nation, the periods 
 which would else have been fit for the drama, past 
 away almost barrenly ; and when poets of high 
 genius began to employ themselves upon it, in the 
 latter half of the last century, the true dramatic 
 age was gone by, so that their works mostly 
 bear the character of postumous, or postobits. In 
 Goethe's dramas indeed, as in all his works, we
 
 166 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 find the thoughts and speculations and doubts and 
 questionings, the feelings and passions, the desires and 
 aspirations and antipathies, the restless cravings, the 
 boastful weaknesses, the self-pampering diseases of 
 his own age, that is, of an age in which the ele- 
 mentary constituents of human nature have been 
 filtered through one layer of books after another : 
 but for this very reason his dramas are wanting in 
 much that is essential to a drama, — in action, the 
 proper province of which is the outward world of 
 Nature and man, — and in theatrical power, being 
 mostly better fitted for meditative reading than for 
 scenic representation. 
 
 The special difficulty which besets the poets of 
 these later days, arises from this, that they cannot 
 follow the simple impulses of their genius, but are 
 under the necessity of comparing these every mo- 
 ment with the results of reflexion and analysis. It 
 is not merely that the great poets of earlier times 
 preoccupy the chief objects and topics of poetical 
 interest, and thus, as has been argued, drive their 
 successors into the byways and the outskirts of 
 the poetical world, and compell those who would 
 !1 or emulate them, to betake themselves to 
 intellectual antics and extravagances. Whatever 
 of truth may lie in this remark, is merely super- 
 ficial. Every age has its own peculiar forms of 
 moral and intellectual life; and Goethe has fully 
 proved that an abundant store of materials for 
 the creative powers of the Imagination were to 
 be found, by those who had eyes to discern
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 167 
 
 them, in what might have been deemed an 
 utterly prosaic age. The difficulty to which I 
 am referring, is that which he himself has so hap- 
 pily exprest, when, in speaking of some comparisons 
 that had been instituted between himself and 
 Shakspeare, he said: Shalcspeare always hits the 
 right nail on the head at once ; out I have to stop 
 and think which is the right nail, before I hit. 
 
 It is true, that from the very first certain rules 
 and maxims of art, pertaining to its outward forms, 
 became gradually establisht, with which the poet is 
 in a manner bound to comply, even as he is with the 
 rules of metre. But such rules, as I have already 
 said, are readily assimilated and incorporated by 
 the Imagination, which recognises its own types 
 and processes in them, and grows in time to con- 
 form to them without thinking of them. This 
 however is far more difficult, when analysis and 
 reflexion have dug down to the deeper principles of 
 poetry, and it yet behoves us to shape our works 
 according to those principles, without any conscious 
 reference, conforming to them as it were instinc- 
 tively. That this can be done, we see in Goethe; 
 and the observations of Schiller quoted above are 
 an attempt to explain the process. An instance 
 too of the manner in which the Imagination works 
 according to secret laws, without being distinctly 
 conscious of them, is afforded by Goethe's answer, 
 when Schiller objected to the conclusion of his beautiful 
 Idyl, Alexis and Dora. After giving one reason for 
 it founded on the workings of nature, and another
 
 168 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 on the principles of art, which reasons, it is plain, 
 he had been quite unconscious of, though he had 
 acted under their influence, until he was called 
 upon for an explanation, he adds : " Thus much in 
 justification of the inexplicable instinct by which 
 such things are produced." 
 
 For an example of the opposite errour, I might 
 refer to what was said some thirty pages back 
 about the manner in which Fate has been intro- 
 duced in a number of recent German tragedies, 
 much as though, instead of the invisible laws of 
 attraction, we were called to gaze on a planetary 
 system kept in motion by myriads of ropes and 
 pullies. A like illustration might be drawn from 
 the prominency often given to the diversities of 
 national character; with regard to which point 
 reflexion of late years has attained to correcter 
 views, and, in so doing, as is for ever the 
 case, has justified the perceptions of early ages. 
 Among the results from the decay of the Imagina- 
 tion, and the exclusive predominance of the prac- 
 tical Understanding, one was the losing sight of the 
 peculiarities of individual and of national character. 
 The abstract generalization, man, compounded ac- 
 cording to prescription of such and such virtues, 
 or of such and such vices, was substituted for 
 the living person, whose features receive their 
 tone and expression from the central principle 
 of his individuality. Hence our serious poetry 
 hardly produced a character from the time of 
 Milton to that of Walter Scott. On the other
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 169 
 
 hand, among the ideas after which the foremost 
 minds of the last hundred years have been striving, 
 is that of individuality, and, as coordinate there- 
 with, of nationality, not indeed in its older forms, 
 as cut off from the grand unity of mankind, but as 
 a living component part of it. That this idea, 
 though it had not been philosophically enunciated, 
 preexisted in the poetical Imagination, we see in 
 Shakspeare, especially in his Roman plays. In 
 Shakspeare however this nationality is represented 
 rightly, as determining and moulding the character, 
 but not as talking of itself, not as being aware 
 that it is anything else than an essential part of 
 the order of Nature. Coriolanus is a Roman ; but 
 he is not for ever telling us so. Rome is in his 
 heart : if you were to anatomize him, you would 
 find it mixt with his lifeblood, and pervading every 
 vein : but it does not flit about the tip of his tongue. 
 Indeed so far is the declaration of what one is from 
 being necessary to the reality of one's being, that 
 it is more like the sting of those insects which die 
 on the wound they inflict. 
 
 To turn to an instance of an opposite kind : 
 Muellner, a German playwright, who gained great 
 celebrity in his own country about thirty years 
 ago, and some of whose works were lauded in 
 England, — who moreover really had certain talents 
 for the stage, especially that of producing thea- 
 trical effect, having himself been in the habit of 
 acting at private theatres, thereby making up in a 
 measure for the want of the advantage possest by
 
 170 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the Greek dramatists and by Shakspeare, of studying 
 their art practically, as well as theoretically, — tried 
 in like manner to make up for his want of creative 
 Imagination, by dressing his tragedies according to 
 the newest, most fashionable receits of dramatic 
 cookery. His art was ostentare artem, through 
 fear lest we might not discover it without. There 
 is no under-current in his writings, no secret work- 
 ing of passion : every vein and nerve and muscle 
 is laid bare, as in an anatomy, and accompanied 
 with a comment on its peculiar excellences. His 
 personages are never content with being what they 
 are, and acting accordingly: they are continually 
 telling you what they are ; and their morbid self- 
 consciousness preys upon them so, that they can 
 hardly talk or think of anything, except their own 
 prodigious selves. 
 
 Thus in his tragedy, called Guilt, which turns 
 in great part upon the contrast between the Nor- 
 wegian character and the Spanish, a Norwegian 
 maiden comes in, saying, / am a Norwegian mai- 
 den : and Norwegian maidens are very wonderful 
 creatures. A Spanish woman exclaims, / am a 
 Spanish woman ; and Spanish women are very 
 wonderful creatures. Even a boy is stript of his 
 blessed privilege of unconscious innocence, and tells 
 us how unconscious and innocent he is. To crown 
 the whole, the hero enters, and says : / am the most 
 won d erf v I being of all', for I am a Norwegian ; 
 and Norwegians are wonderfid brings: and I 
 am also a Spaniard; and Spaniards also are
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 171 
 
 wonderful beings. The North and the South have 
 committed adultery within me. Out on them ! there 's 
 death in their kiss. I am a riddle to myself. Pole 
 and Pole unite in me. I combine fire and water, 
 earth and heaven, God and the devil. The last 
 sentences are translated literally from the original. 
 They were meant to be very grand, and probably 
 excited shouts of applause : yet they are a piece of 
 turgid falsetto. 
 
 In a certain sense indeed there is a truth in these 
 lines, so far as they set forth the inherent discords 
 of our nature, a truth to which all history bears 
 witness, and which comes out more forcibly at 
 times and in characters of demoniacal power. But it 
 is as contrary to nature for a man to anatomize his 
 heart and soul thus, as it would be to make him 
 dissect his own body. The blunder lies in repre- 
 senting a person as speaking of himself in the same 
 way in which a dispassionate observer might speak 
 of him. It is much as if one were to versify the 
 analytical and rhetorical accounts, which critics 
 have given of Shakspeare's characters, and then to 
 put them into the mouths of Macbeth, Othello, 
 Lear, nay, of Juliet, Imogen, Ophelia, and even of 
 the child, Arthur. 
 
 Yet in Hamlet himself, that personification of 
 human nature brooding over its own weaknesses 
 and corruptions, that only philosopher, with one 
 exception, whom Poetry has been able to create, 
 how different are all the reflexions ! which moreover 
 come forward mainly in his soliloquies ; whereas
 
 172 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Muellner's hero raves out his self-analysis in the ears 
 of another, a woman, his own sister, the very sight 
 of whom should have made him fold up the poisoned 
 leaves of his heart. The individual, personal ap- 
 plication of Hamlet's reflexions is either swallowed 
 up in the general confession of the frailty of human 
 nature ; or else they are the self-reproaches and 
 self-stimulants of irresolute weakness, the foam 
 which the sea leaves behind on the sands, when it 
 sinks back into its own abysmal depths, and the 
 dissonant muttering of the waves, that have been 
 vainly lashing an immovable rock. So that they 
 arise naturally, and almost necessarily, out of his 
 situation, out of the conflict with the pressure of 
 events, which he shrinks from encountering, and 
 thus are altogether different from the practice of 
 modern writers, who make a man stand up in 
 cold blood, and recite a dissertation upon himself, 
 carried on, with the interposition of divers similar 
 dissertations recited by others, through the course 
 of five acts. 
 
 To make the difference more conspicuous, it 
 would be instructive to see a soliloquy for Hamlet 
 written by one of these modern playwrights. How 
 thickly would it be deckt out with all manner 
 of floscules ! for the same reason for which a 
 tragedy- queen wears many more diamonds than a 
 real one. The following might serve as a sample. 
 
 I am a prince. A prince a sceptre bears. 
 Sceptres are golden. Gold is flexible. 
 Therefore an 1 as flexible as gold.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 173 
 
 'Tis strange ! 'Tis passing strange ! I 'm a strange being ! 
 
 None e'er was stranger. I was born in Denmark ; 
 
 In Wittenberg I studied. Wittenberg ! 
 
 Why Wittenberg is set amid the sands 
 
 Of Northern Germany. So stood Palmyra 
 
 Amid the sands of Syria. Sand ! Sand ! Sand ! 
 
 I wonder how 'twas possible for Sand 
 
 To murder Kotzebue. Sand flies round and round ; 
 
 And every puff of wind will change its form. 
 
 Thus every puff of wind will change my mind. 
 
 Ay, that vile sand I breathed at Wittenberg 
 
 Has rusht into my soul ; and there it whirls 
 
 And whirls about, just like the foam that flies 
 
 From water-wheels. It almost chokes me up. 
 
 So did it Babylon. That baby loon ! 
 
 To build his city in the midst of sands ! 
 
 But that was in the babyhood of man. 
 
 Now we are older grown, and wiser too. 
 
 I live in Copenhagen by the sea. 
 
 That is the home of every Dane. The sea ! 
 
 But that too waves and wavers. So do I. 
 
 I am the sea. But I am golden too, 
 
 And sandy too. what a marvel 's this ! 
 
 I am a golden, sandy sea. Prodigious ! 
 
 Ay, ay ! There arc more things in heaven and earth, 
 
 Than are dreamt of in our Philosophy. 
 
 Nor are these aberrations and extravagances, 
 these preposterous inversions of the processes of 
 the Imagination, trying to educe the concrete out of 
 a medley of abstractions, confined to German)-. 
 They may be commoner there, because the Ger- 
 man mind lias been busier in philosophical 
 and esthetical speculations : and when they are 
 found in our own poetry, there may be more 
 of genuine poetical substance to sustain them.
 
 174 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 But I have cited some passages in which the 
 reflective spirit has operated injuriously on Words- 
 worth ; and, if Ave look into Lord Byron's works, 
 we shall not have to go far before we light on 
 examples of similar errours. For he is emi- 
 nently the prince of egotists ; and, instead of 
 representing characters, he describes them, by ver- 
 sifying his own reflexions and meditations about 
 them. It has been asserted indeed by a celebrated 
 critic, "that Lord Byron's genius is essentially 
 dramatic." But this assertion merely illustrates 
 the danger of meddling with hard words. For no 
 poet, not even Wordsworth or Milton, was more 
 unfitted by the character of his mind for genuine 
 dramatic composition. He can however write 
 fine, sounding lines in abundance, where self-ex- 
 altation assumes the language of self-reproach, and 
 a man magnifies himself by speaking with bitter 
 scorn of all things. Such are the following from 
 the opening soliloquy in Manfred. 
 
 Philosophy, and science, and the springs 
 Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world, 
 I have essayed; and in my mind there is 
 A power to make these subject to itself: 
 But they avail not. I have dour men good , 
 And I have met with good oven among men : 
 But this availed not 1 have had my loos ; 
 And none have baffled, many fallen before me: 
 
 Bui this availed not. (mod or evil, life, 
 
 Powers, passionB, all 1 see in other beings, 
 
 I lave been to me as rain unto the sands, 
 Since that all-nameless hour. I have no dread,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 175 
 
 And feel the curse to have no natural fear, 
 
 Nor fluttering throb, that heats with hopes or wishes, 
 
 Or lurking love of something on the earth. 
 
 Or look at this speech in Manfred's conversation 
 with the Abbot : 
 
 My nature was averse from life, 
 And yet not cruel; for I would not make, 
 But find a desolation : — like the wind, 
 The red-hot breath of the most lone simoom, 
 Which dwells but in the desert, and sweeps o'er 
 The barren sands which bear no shrubs to blast, 
 And revels o'er their wild and arid waves, 
 And seeketh not, so that it is not sought, 
 But being met is deadly ; such hath been 
 The course of my existence. 
 
 Now if in these lines he and his be substi- 
 tuted for / and my, and they be read as a 
 description of some third person, they may perhaps 
 be grand, as the author meant that they should 
 be. But at present they are altogether false, and 
 therefore impoetical. Indeed it may be laid down 
 as an axiom, that, whenever the personal pronouns 
 can be interchanged in any passage without injury 
 to the poetry, the poetry must be spurious. For 
 no human being ever thought or spoke of himself, 
 as a third person would describe him. Yet, such 
 is the intelligence shewn in our ordinary criticism, 
 these very passages have been cited as examples 
 of Lord Byron's dramatic genius. a.
 
 176 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 There is a profound knowledge of human nature 
 in those lines which Shelley puts into Orsino's 
 mouth, in the Cenci (Act n. Sc. n.). 
 
 It is a trick of this same family 
 
 To analyse their own and other minds. 
 
 Such self-anatomy shall teach the will 
 
 Dangerous secrets : for it tempts our powers, 
 
 Knowing what must be thought, and may be done, 
 
 Into the depth of darkest purposes. 
 
 This is not at variance with what has been said 
 in these last pages, but on the contrary confirms it. 
 Self-anatomy is not an impossible act. It be- 
 longs however to a morbid state. When in health, 
 we do not feel our own feelings, any more than 
 we feel our limbs, or see our eyes, but their ob- 
 jects, the objects on which they were designed to 
 act. On the other hand, when any part of the 
 body becomes disordered, we feel it, the more so, 
 the more violent the disorder is. The same thing 
 happens in an unhealthy state of heart and mind, 
 when the living communion with their objects is 
 blockt up and cut off, and the blood is thrown 
 back upon the heart, and our sight is filled with 
 delusive spectra. If the Will gives itself up to 
 work evil, the Conscience ever and anon lifts up its 
 reproachful voice, and smites with its avenging 
 sting ; whereupon the Will commands the Under- 
 standing to lull or stifle the Conscience with its 
 sophistries, and to prove that our moral nature is 
 a mere delusion. Hence Shakspeare has made his 
 worst characters, Edmund, Iago, Richard, all more
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 177 
 
 or less self-reflective. Even in such characters 
 however, it is necessary to track the footsteps of 
 Nature with the utmost care, in order to avoid sub- 
 stituting a shameless, fiendish profession of wicked- 
 ness, for the jugglings whereby the remaining 
 shreds of our moral being would fain justify or 
 palliate its aberrations. Evil, he thou my Good ! 
 is a cry that could never have come from human 
 lips. They always modify and mitigate it into 
 Evil, thou art my Good. Thus they shake off the 
 responsibility of making it so, and impute the sin 
 of their will to their nature or their circumstances. 
 Yet in nothing have the writers of spurious trage- 
 dies oftener gone wrong, than in their way of 
 making their villains proclaim and boast of their 
 villainy. Even poets of considerable dramatic 
 genius have at times erred grievously in this respect, 
 especially during the immaturity of their genius : 
 witness the soliloquies of Francis Moor in Schiller's 
 Titanic first-birth. Slow too and reluctant as I 
 am to think that anything can be erroneous in 
 Shakspeare, whom Nature had wedded, so to say, 
 for better, for worse, and whom she admitted into all 
 the hidden recesses of her heart, still I cannot help 
 thinking that even he, notwithstanding the firm 
 grasp with which he is wont to hold the reins of his 
 solar chariot, as it circles the world, beholding and 
 bringing out every form of life in it, has somewhat 
 exaggerated the diabolical element in the Boliloquiea 
 of Richard the Third. I refer especially to those ter- 
 rific lines just after the murder of Henry the Sixth. 
 
 VOL. II. N
 
 178 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Down, down, to hell, and say, I sent thee thither, 
 
 /, that have neither pity, love, nor fear. 
 
 Indeed 'tis true, that Henry told me of: 
 
 For I have often heard my mother say, 
 
 I came into the world with my legs forward. 
 
 Had I not reason, think ye, to make haste. 
 
 And seek their ruin that usurpt our right ? 
 
 The midwife wondered, and the women cried, 
 
 0, Jesus bless us ! he is born with teeth. 
 
 And so I was ; which plainly signified, 
 
 That I should snarl, and bite, and play the dog. 
 
 Then, si?iee the heavens have shaped my body so, 
 
 Let hell make crookt my mind, to answer it. 
 
 I had no father ; I am like no father : 
 
 I have no brother ; I am like no brother : 
 
 And this ward, Lore, ichieli greybeards call divine, 
 
 Be resident in men like one another. 
 
 And not in me : I am myself alone. 
 
 Of a like character are those lines in the opening 
 soliloquy of the play called by his name : 
 
 But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, 
 Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass, — 
 I that am curtailed of this fair proportion, 
 Cheated of feature bj dissembling Nature, 
 Deformed, unfinisht, sent before nay time 
 Into tips breathing world, scarce half made up, 
 And that so lamely and unfashionably, 
 Thai dogs barik al me, as ] halt by them ; — 
 Why I, in this weak piping time of peace, 
 Have no delight to pass away the time, 
 I ill' my shadow in the sun, 
 
 Ami descant on my own deformity. 
 And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover, 
 To entertain these fair, well-spoken days, 
 / am determined to prove a villain, 
 And hate the idle pleasures 6f these days.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 179 
 
 How different is this bold avowal of au- 
 dacious, reckless wickedness, from Edmund's 
 self-justification ! 
 
 'Why bastard ? wherefore base ? 
 When my dimensions are as well compact, 
 My mind as generous, and my shape as true, 
 As honest madam's issue. 
 
 How different too is Iago's speech ! 
 
 And wluiVs he then, that says, I play the villain f 
 
 When this advice is free I give, and honest, 
 
 Probable to thinking, and indeed the course 
 
 To win the Moor again. For 'tis most easy 
 
 The inclining Desdcmona to subdue 
 
 In any honest suit : she 's famed as fruitful 
 
 As the free elements. And then for her 
 
 To win the Moor, — were 't to renounce his baptism, 
 
 All seals and symbols of redeemed sin, — 
 
 His soul is so enfettered to her love, 
 
 That she may make, unmake, do what she list, 
 
 Even as her appetite shall play the god 
 
 With his weak function. How am I then a villain, 
 
 To counsel Cassio to this parallel course, 
 
 Directly to his good ? 
 
 After which inimitable bitterness of mockery at 
 all his victims, and at Reason itself, how awfully 
 does that sudden flash of conscience rend asunder 
 and consume the whole network of sophistry ! 
 
 Divinity of hell ! 
 When devils will their blackest sins put on, 
 Tlu-y do suggest at first with heavenly bIiowb, 
 As I do now. 
 
 If we compare these speeches with Richard's,
 
 180 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and in like manner if we compare the way in which 
 Iago's plot is first sown, and springs up and gra- 
 dually grows and ripens in his brain, with Richard's 
 downright enunciation of his projected series of 
 crimes from the first, we may discern the contrast 
 between the youth and the mature manhood of 
 the mightiest intellect that ever lived upon earth, 
 a contrast almost equally observable in the differ- 
 ence between the diction and metre of the two 
 plays, and not unlike that between a great river 
 rushing along turbidly in spring, bearing the freshly 
 melted snows from Alpine mountains, with flakes 
 of light scattered here and there over its surface, 
 and the same river, when its waters have subsided 
 into their autumnal tranquillity, and compose a 
 vast mirror for the whole landscape around them, 
 and for the sun and stars and sky and clouds 
 overhead. 
 
 It is true, Shakspeare's youth was Herculean, 
 was the youth of one who might have strangled 
 the serpents in his cradle. There are several things 
 in Richard's position, which justify a great difference 
 in the representation of his inward being. His 
 rank and station pampered a more audacious will. 
 The civil wars had familiarized him with crimes of 
 lawless violence, and with the wildest revolutions 
 of fortune. Ahove all, his deformity, — which 
 Shakspeare received from a tradition he did not 
 think of questioning, and which he purposely brings 
 forward so prominently in both the speeches quoted 
 ahove, — seemed to separate and cut him off from
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 181 
 
 sympathy and communion with his kind, and 
 to be a plea for thinking that, as he was a mon- 
 ster in body, he might also be a monster in heart 
 and conduct. In fact it is a common result 
 of a natural malformation to awaken and irritate 
 a morbid self-consciousness, by making a person 
 continually and painfully sensible of his inferiority 
 to his fellows : and this was doubtless a main 
 agent in perverting Lord Byron's character. Still 
 I cannot but think that Shakspeare would have 
 made a somewhat different use even of this 
 motive, if he had rewritten the play, like King 
 John, in the maturity of his intellect. Would 
 not Richard then, like Edmund and Iago, have 
 palliated and excused his crimes to himself, and 
 sophisticated and played tricks with his conscience ! 
 Would he not have denied and avowed his wick- 
 edness, almost with the same breath ? and made 
 the ever-waxing darkness of his purposes, like that 
 of night, at once conceal and betray their hideous 
 enormity ? At all events, since the justifications 
 that may be alledged for Richard's bolder avowals 
 of his wickedness, result from the peculiar idio- 
 syncrasy of his position taken along with his physical 
 frame, he is a most unsafe model for other poets to 
 follow, though a very tempting one, especially to 
 young poets, many of whom are glad to vent 
 their feelings of the discord between their ardent 
 fancies and the actual state of the world, in 
 railing at human nature, and embodying its evils 
 in some incarnate fiend. Bi sides the main
 
 182 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 difficulties of dramatic poetry are smoothed down, 
 •when a writer can make his characters tell us how 
 good and how bad he designs them to be. u. 
 
 Some readers, who might otherwise incline to 
 acknowledge the truth of the foregoing observa- 
 tions, may perhaps be perplext by the thought, 
 that the tenour of them seems scarcely consistent 
 with that Christian principle, which makes self- 
 examination a part of our duty. To this scruple 
 I might reply, that corruptio optimi Jit pessima ; 
 for this involves the true explanation of the 
 difficulty. But the solution needs to be brought 
 out more plainly. 
 
 Now it is quite true that one of the main 
 effects produced by Christianity on our nature 
 has been to call forth our conscience, and, along 
 therewith, our self-consciousness, into far greater 
 distinctness ; which has gone on increasing with 
 .the progress of Christian thought. This however 
 is only as the Law called forth the knowledge of 
 sin. The Law called forth the knowledge of the 
 sinfulness of the outward act, with the purpose 
 of making us turn away from it, even in thought, 
 to its opposite. The Gospel, completing the work 
 of the Law, has called forth the knowledge of the 
 sinfulness of our inward nature ; not however to 
 the end that we should brood over the contem- 
 plation of that sinfulness, — far less that we should 
 
 olve to abide and advance therein; but to the 
 end that we should rise out of it, and turn away
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 183 
 
 from it, to the Redemption which has been 
 wrought for us. To have aroused the consciousness 
 of sin, without assuaging it by the glad tidings of 
 Redemption, would have been to issue a sentence 
 of madness against the whole human race. One 
 cry of despair would have burst from every heart, 
 as it was lasht by the stings of the Furies : 
 wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from 
 this body of death ? And the echo from all the 
 hollow caverns of earth and heaven and hell would 
 only have answered, Who 1 
 
 In truth, even in this form of self-consciousness, 
 there is often a great deal of morbid exaggeration, 
 of unhealthy, mischievous poring over and prying 
 into the movements of our hearts and minds ; 
 which in the Romish Church has been stimulated 
 feverishly by the deleterious practices of the con- 
 fessional, and which taints many of the very best 
 Romish devotional works. A vapid counterpart 
 of this is also to be found in our modern senti- 
 mental religion. In the Apostles, on the other 
 hand, there is nothing of the sort. Their life is 
 hid with Christ in God. Their hearts and minds 
 are filled with the thought and the love of Him 
 who had redeemed them, and in whom they had 
 found their true life, and with the work which 
 they were to do in His service, for His glory, for 
 the spreading of His kingdom. This too was one 
 of the greatest and most blessed among the truths 
 which Luther was especially ordained to reproclaim, 
 — that we arc not to spend our days in watching
 
 184 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 our own vices, in gazing at our own sins, in 
 stirring and raking up all the mud of our past 
 lives ; but to lift our thoughts from our own 
 corrupt nature to Him who put on that nature in 
 order to deliver it from its corruption, and to fix 
 our contemplations and our affections on Him who 
 came to clothe us in His perfect righteousness, and 
 through whom and in whom, if we are united to 
 Him by a living faith, we too become righteous. 
 Thus, like the Apostle, are we to forget that which 
 is behind, and to keep our eyes bent on the prize 
 of our high calling, to which we are to press 
 onward, and which we may attain, in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
 I cannot enter here into the questions, how far 
 and what kinds of self-examination are necessary 
 as remedial, medicinal measures, in consequence of 
 our being already in so diseased a condition. These 
 are questions of ascetic discipline, the answers to 
 which will vary according to the exigences of each 
 particular case, even as do the remedies prescribed 
 b} r a wise physician for bodily ailments. I merely 
 wiaht to shew that, in the Christian view of man, 
 no less than in the natural, the healthy, normal 
 state is not the subjective, but the objective, that 
 in which, losing his own individual, insulated life, 
 he finds it again in Christ, that in which he does 
 not make himself the object of his contemplation 
 and action, but directs them both steadily and 
 continually toward the will and the glory of God. 
 
 Of course the actual changes which have thus
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 185 
 
 been wrought in human nature by the operation of 
 Christianity, and which are not confined to its 
 religious aspect, but pervade all its movements, will 
 justify and necessitate a corresponding difference in 
 the poetical representations of human characters. 
 Still the poet will have to keep watch against 
 excesses and aberrations in this respect ; and this 
 has not been done with sufficient vigilance, it 
 seems to me, in the passages which I have found 
 fault with. u. 
 
 The general opinion on the worth of an imagi- 
 native work may ultimately be right: immediately 
 it is likely to be wrong; and this likelihood 
 increases in proportion to the creative power 
 manifested in it. The whole history of literature 
 drives us to this conclusion. There have indeed 
 been cases in which the calm judgement of pos- 
 terity has confirmed the verdict pronounced by 
 contemporaries: but, though the results have been 
 the same, the way of arriving at them was differ- 
 ent. What Jonson said of him, in whom, above 
 all other men, the spirit of Poetry became incarnate, 
 is true of Poetry itself: "it is not of an age. 1 ait for 
 all time." In the very act of becoming an immanent 
 power in the life of the world, it advances, as our 
 common phrases imply, beyond its own age, and rises 
 above it. Now, from the nature of man, there are 
 always aspirations and yearnings in him, which soar 
 beyond the ken of his understanding, and depths of 
 thought and feeling, which strike down below it:
 
 186 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 wherefore no age has ever been able to comprehend 
 itself, even what it is, much less what it is striving 
 after and tending to. A Thucydides or a Burke may 
 discern some of the principles which are working and 
 seething, and may guess at the consequences which 
 are to be evolved out of them. But they who draw 
 the car of Destiny cannot look back upon her : they 
 are impelled onward and ever blindly onward by the 
 throng pressing at their heels. Far less can any 
 age comprehend what is beyond it and above it. 
 
 Besides much of the beauty in every great work 
 of art must be latent. Like the Argive seer, oh 
 Sotceiv apiGTOv, d\X elvai OiXei. Such a work will 
 be profound; and few can sound depth. It will be 
 sublime ; and few can scan highth. It will have a 
 soul in it; and few eyes can pierce through the 
 body. Thus the Greek epigram on the History of 
 Thucydides, — 
 
 '£2 (p{\or, el cotyuc el, \dj3e fi Iq \ipac. a of irztyvKcic 
 
 N>)<£ 'blovadwv, (ji\puv d fit) voutr. 
 Ei/xt yap ovTtdvTirrai paroQ' Truvpoi t' dydaavro, — 
 
 may be regarded as more or less appropriate to 
 every great work of art. So that Orator Puff's 
 blunder, in spending as many words on a riband as a 
 Raphael, did not lie solely in the superior merits of 
 the latter, but also in the greater facility with which 
 all the merits of the former were sure to be dis- 
 cerned. At the Exhibition of the King's pictures 
 last year (in 182G), Grenet's Church, with its mere 
 mechanical dexterity of perspective, had more
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 187 
 
 admirers, ten to one, than any of Rembrandt's 
 wonderful masterpieces, more, fifty to one, than 
 Ven ust i's picture of the Saviour at the foot of the 
 Cross: for you will find fifty who will be delighted 
 with an ingenious artifice, sooner than one who can 
 understand art. Hence there is little surprising in 
 being told that Sophocles was not so great a favorite 
 on the Athenian stage as Euripides: what sur- 
 prises me far more is, that any audience should ever 
 have been found capable of deriving pleasure from 
 the severe grandeur and chaste beauty of Sophocles. 
 Nor is it surprising that Jonson and Fletcher 
 should have been more admired than Shakspeare: 
 the contrary would be surprising. Thus too, when 
 one is told that Schiller must be a greater poet than 
 Goethe, because he is more popular in Germany, 
 one may reply, that, were he less popular, one 
 might perhaps be readier to suppose that there 
 may be something more in him, than what thrusts 
 itself so prominently on the public view. 
 
 V\ e are deaf, it is said, to the music of the 
 spheres, owing to the narrowness and dimness and 
 dulness of our auditory organs. So is it with what 
 is grandest and loveliest in poetry. Few admire 
 it, because few have perceptions capacious and 
 quick and strong enough to feel it. Lessing has 
 said (vol. xxvi. p. ;3G) : " The true judges of poe- 
 try are at all times, in all countries, quite as rare 
 as true poets themselves air." Thus among my 
 own friends, although I feel pride in reckoning up 
 many of surpassing intellectual powers, 1 can
 
 188 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 hardly bethink myself of more than one possessing 
 that calmness of contemplative thought, that in- 
 sight into the principles and laws of the Imagina- 
 tion, that familiarity with the forms under which 
 in various ages it has manifested itself, that happy 
 temperature of activity not too restless or vehe- 
 ment, with a passiveness ready to receive the 
 exact stamp and impression which the poet pur- 
 post to produce, and the other qualities requisite to 
 fit a person for pronouncing intelligently and justly 
 on questions of taste.* 
 
 How then do great works ever become popular ? 
 
 In the strict sense they very seldom do. They 
 never can be rightly appreciated by the bulk of 
 mankind, because they can never be fully under- 
 stood by them. No author, I have remarkt be- 
 fore, has been more inadequately understood than 
 Shakspeare. But who, among the authors that 
 make or mark a great epoch in the history of 
 thought, imaginative or reflective, has fared better ? 
 Has Plato ? or Sophocles ? or Dante ? or Bacon ? 
 or Behmen ? or Leibnitz ? or Kant ? Their names 
 have indeed been extolled ; but for the chief part 
 of those who have extolled them, they might as 
 well have written in an unknown tongue. Look 
 only at Homer, whom one might deem of all poets 
 the most easily intelligible. Yet how the Greek 
 
 * This was written in 1826. Since then the opinion 
 here i > '• is been justified by the Essay on the Irony <</' 
 
 '' S which h;is lieon tunned the most exquisite piece of 
 criticism in the English language.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 189 
 
 critics misunderstood him ! who found everything 
 in him except a poet. How must Virgil have 
 misunderstood him, when he conceived himself 
 to be writing a poem like the Iliad ! How must 
 those persons have misunderstood him, who have 
 pretended to draw certain irrefragable laws of epic 
 poetry from his works ! laws which are as applicable 
 to them, as the rules of carpet-making are to the 
 side of a hill in its vernal glory. How must 
 Cowper have misunderstood him, when he con- 
 gealed him ! and Pope, when he bottled up his 
 streaming waters in couplets, and coloured them 
 till they were as gaudy as a druggist's window ! 
 Here, as in numberless instances, we see how, as 
 Goethe says so truly, every reader 
 
 Reads himself out of the book that he reads, nay, has he a 
 
 strong mind, 
 Reads himself into the book, and amalgams his thoughts with 
 
 the author's. 
 
 Nevertheless in the course of time the judgement 
 of the intelligent few determines the judgement of 
 the unintelligent many. Public opinion flows 
 through the present as through a marsh, scattering 
 itself in a multitude of little brooks, taking any 
 casual direction, and often stagnating sleepily ; 
 until the more vigorous and active have gone he- 
 fore, and cut and embankt a channel, along which 
 it may follow them. Thus on the main it lias one 
 voice for the past ; and that voice is the voice of 
 the judicious : but it has an endless consort, or 
 rather dissonance of voices for the present ; and
 
 190 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 amid a mob the wisest are not likely to be the 
 loudest. For they have the happy feeling that 
 Time is their ally ; and they know that hurrying 
 impedes, oftener than it accelerates. At length 
 however, when people are persuaded that they 
 ought to like a book, they are not slow in finding 
 out something to like in it. Our perceptions are 
 tractable and ductile enough, if we earnestly desire 
 that they should be so. u. 
 
 Sophocles is the summit of Greek art. But one 
 must have scaled many a steep, before one can 
 estimate his highth. It is owing to his classical 
 perfection, that he has generally been the least 
 admired of the great ancient poets: for little of his 
 beauty is discernible by a mind that is not deeply 
 principled and imbued with the spirit of antiquity. 
 The overpowering grandeur of Eschylus has more 
 of that which bursts through every conventional 
 barrier, and rushes at once to the innermost heart 
 of man. Homer lived before the Greeks were 
 cut off so abruptly from other nations, and their 
 peculiar qualities were brought out, in part through 
 the influences of their country, which tended to 
 break them up into small states, and thus gave a 
 political importance to each individual citizen, — in 
 part through the political institutions which sprang 
 out of these causes, and naturally became more and 
 more democratical, — in part through the workings, 
 moral and intellectual, of Commerce, and of that 
 '•in which all these circumstances combined to
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 191 
 
 foster. Hence his national peculiarities are not so 
 definitely markt. In many respects he nearly 
 resembles those bards in other countries, who have 
 lived in a like state of society. Therefore, as a 
 child is always at home wherever he may chance 
 to be, so is Homer in all countries : and thus on the 
 whole he perhaps is the ancient poet who has 
 found the most favour with the moderns, grossly 
 as, we have just seen, even he has often been 
 misunderstood. Next to him in popularity, if I 
 mistake not, come Euripides and Ovid; who have 
 been fondled in consequence of their being infected 
 with several modern epidemic vices of style. They 
 have nothing spiritual, nothing ideal, nothing 
 mysterious. All that is valuable in them is spread 
 out on the surface, often thinly as gold leaf. They 
 are full of glittering points. Some of their gems are 
 true; and few persons have eyes to distinguish the 
 false. They have great rhetorical pathos; and in 
 poetry as in life clamorous importunity will awaken 
 more general sympathy than silent distress. They 
 are skilful in giving characteristic touches, rather 
 thanin representing characters; and the former please 
 everybody, while it requires a considerable reach of 
 imagination to apprehend and estimate the latter. 
 In fine they are immoral, and talk morality. i . 
 
 When a man says he sees nothing in a book; he 
 very often means thai he does not Bee himself in it: 
 which, if it is not a comedy or a satire, is likely 
 enough.
 
 1 92 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 What a person praises is perhaps a surer stand- 
 ard, even than what he condemns, of his character, 
 information, and abilities. No wonder then that 
 in this prudent country most people are so shy 
 of praising anything. 
 
 Most painters have painted themselves. So 
 have most poets; not so palpably indeed and 
 confessedly, but still more assiduously. Some have 
 done nothing else. u. 
 
 Many persons carry about their characters in 
 their hands ; not a few under their feet. u. 
 
 What a lucky fellow he would be, who could 
 invent a beautifying glass I How customers would 
 rush to him ! A royal funeral would be nothing to 
 it. Nobody would stay away, except the two 
 extremes, those who were satisfied with themselves 
 through their vanity, and those who were contented 
 in their humility. At present one is forced to take 
 up with one's eyes; and they, spiteful creatures, 
 won't always beautify quite enough. u 
 
 Everybody has his own theatre, in which he is 
 manager, actor, prompter, playwright, sceneshiftcr, 
 boxkeeper, doorkeeper, all in one, and audience into 
 the bargain. u. 
 
 A great talker ought to be affahle. Else how 
 can he look to find others so? Yet his besetting 
 temptation is to speak, rather than to hear. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 193 
 
 C'est un grand malheur qu'on ne peut se battre 
 qu'en combattant. u. 
 
 Nothing is accounted so proper in England as 
 property. 
 
 En France le propre est la proprete. u. 
 
 I have mentioned individuality of character 
 above (vol. i. p. 138) among the distinctive 
 qualities of the English. Not however that 
 it is peculiarly ours, but common to us with 
 the other nations of the Teutonic race, between 
 whom and those nations in whose character, 
 as in their language, the Latin blood is pre- 
 dominant, there is a remarkable contrast in 
 tins respect. Landor, having resided many years 
 among the latter, could not fail to notice this. " I 
 have often observed more variety (he makes 
 Puntomichino say) in a single English household, 
 than I believe to exist in all Italy." Solger 
 (Briefwechsel, p. 82) has a like remark with 
 reference to the French : " A certain general out- 
 ward culture makes them all know how to keep 
 in their station, each doing just as his neighbours do; 
 so that one seldom meets among them with that 
 interesting and instructive originality, which in other 
 nations is so often found in the lower orders. In 
 France all classes have much the same sort of educa- 
 tion, a superficial one enough, it is true; hut hence 
 even the meanest are able to hold up their heads." 
 
 Talk to a dozen Englishmen on any subject : 
 
 VOL. II. o
 
 194 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 there will be something peculiar and charac- 
 teristic in the remarks of each. Talk to a dozen 
 Frenchmen : they will all make the very same 
 remark, and almost in the same words. Nor is 
 this merely a delusive appearance, occasioned by a 
 stranger's inattention to the minuter shades of 
 difference, as in a flock of sheep an inexperienced 
 eye will not discern one from another. It is 
 that the generic and specific qualities are propor- 
 tionably stronger in them, that they all tread in 
 the same sheeptrack, that they all follow their 
 noses, and that their noses, like those of cattle 
 when a storm is coming on, all point the same way. 
 A traveler cannot go far in the country, but some- 
 thing will be said about passports. I have heard 
 scores of people talk of them at different times. 
 Of course they all thought them excellent things : 
 this belongs to their national vanity. What sur- 
 prised me was, that they every one thought them 
 excellent things for the self-same reason, — because 
 they prevent thieves and murderers from escaping 
 ... a reason learnt by rote, concerning which 
 they had never thought of asking whether such 
 was indeed the fact. 
 
 Let me relate another instance in point. I 
 happened to be in Paris at the time of the great 
 eclipse in 1820, and was watching it from the 
 gardens of the Tuileries. Several voices, out of a 
 knot of persons near me, cried out one after the 
 other, Ak, comme c'est drdle ! Rega/rdez, com me 
 cent diule- My own feelings not being exactly
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 195 
 
 in this key, I walkt away, but in vain. Go 
 whither I would, the same sounds haunted me. 
 Old men and children, young men and maidens, 
 all joined in the same cuckoo cry : C'est bleu 
 drdle ! Regardez, comme cest drole. Ah, comme 
 c'est drole. Paris had tongues enough ; for these 
 are never scarce there. But it seemed only to 
 have a single mind : and this mind, even under 
 the aspect of that portent which " perplexes 
 nations," could not contain or give utterance to 
 more than one thought or feeling, that what 
 they saw was Lieu drole. u. 
 
 The monotonousncss of French versification is 
 only a type of that which pervades the national 
 character, and herewith, of necessity, the represen- 
 tative and exponent of that character, their litera- 
 ture, since the age of Louis the Fourteenth. But 
 this ready suppression, or rather imperfect develop- 
 ment, of those features which constitute individuality 
 of character, is common, as I remarkt before, more 
 or less to all the nations of the Latin stock : and it 
 is scarcely less noticeable in the Romans, than in 
 the rest. Indeed this is one main difference) to 
 which most of the others are referable, between the 
 literature of the Greeks and that of the Romans* 
 Hence, for instance, the Greeks, like ourselves and 
 the Germans, had dramatic poetry, the essence of 
 which lies in the revelation of the inner man ; 
 whereas the Roman drama, at least in its higher 
 departments, was an alien growth. Moreover in
 
 196 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Greek literature every author is himself, and has 
 distinctive qualities whereby you may recognise 
 him. But every Roman writer, as Frederic 
 Schlegel has justly observed, "is in the first place 
 a Roman, and next a Roman of a particular age." 
 That portion of him which is peculiarly his own, 
 is ever the least. Pars minima ipse sui. You 
 may find page after page in Tacitus and Seneca 
 and the elder Pliny, which, but for the difference 
 of subject, might have been composed by any one 
 of the three : and if Lucan had not written in 
 verse, the trio might have been a quartett. u. 
 
 The Romans had no love of Beauty, like the 
 Greeks. They held no communion with Nature, 
 like the Germans. Their one idea was Rome, not 
 ancient, fabulous, poetical Rome, but Rome war- 
 ring and conquering, and orbis terrarum domino. 
 S. P. Q. R. is inscribed on almost every page of 
 their literature. With the Greeks all forein nations 
 were fidpfiapoi, outcasts from the precincts of the 
 Muses. To the Roman every stranger was a 
 hostU) until he became a slave. Only compare the 
 Olympic with the gladiatorial games. The object of 
 the former was to do homage to Nature, and to exalt 
 and glorify her excellent gifts ; that of the latter 
 to appease the thirst for blood, when it was no 
 longer quencht in the blood of foes. None but a 
 Greek was deemed worthy of being admitted to 
 the first: but a Roman would have thought him- 
 self degraded by a mimic combat, in which the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 197 
 
 victory lay rather with the animal, than with the 
 intellectual part of man. He left such sport to 
 his jesters, slaves, and wild beasts. To him a 
 triumph was the ideal and sum total of happiness : 
 and verily it was something grand. u. 
 
 Milton has been compared to Raphael. He is 
 much more like Michaelangelo. Michaelangelo is 
 the painter of the Old Testament, Raphael of the 
 New. Now Milton, as Wordsworth has said of 
 him, was a Hebrew in soul. He was grand, 
 severe, austere. He loved to deal with the pri- 
 meval, elementary forms both of inanimate nature 
 and of human, before the manifold, ever multiplying 
 combinations of thought and feeling had shaped them- 
 selves into the multifarious complexities of human 
 character. Both Samson and Comus are equally 
 remote from the realities of modern humanity. He 
 would have been a noble prophet. Among the 
 Greeks, his imagination, like that of Eschylus, 
 would have dwelt among the older gods. He 
 wants the gentleness of Christian love, of that 
 feeling to which the least thing is precious, as 
 springing from God, and claiming kindred with man. 
 
 Where to find ;i parallel fir Raphael in the 
 modem world, I know not. Sophocles, among 
 poets, most resembles him. In knowledge of the 
 diversities of human character, he comes nearer 
 than any other painter to him, who is unapproacht 
 and unapproachable, Shakspeare ; and yet two 
 worlds, that of Humour, and that of Passion,
 
 198 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 separate them. In exquisiteness of art, Goethe might 
 be compared to him. But neither he nor Shak- 
 speare has Raphael's deep Christian feeling. And 
 then there is such a peculiar glow and blush of 
 beauty in his works : whithersoever he comes, he 
 sheds beauty from his wings. 
 
 Why did he die so early? Because morning 
 cannot last till noon, nor spring through summer. 
 Early too as it was, he had lived through two 
 stages of his art, and had carried both to their 
 highest perfection. This rapid progressiveness of 
 mind he also had in common with Shakspeare and 
 Goethe, and with few others. u. 
 
 The readers of the Giaour will remember the 
 narrow arch, over which the faithful are to enter 
 into Paradise. In fact this arch was the edge 
 of the sword, or rather of the arched scimitar. 
 Hereby, if they wielded it bravely and murder- 
 ously, the Mussuhnen thought they should attain 
 to that Garden of Bliss. Hence too did they deem 
 it their duty to drive all men thither, even along 
 that narrow and perilous bridge; far more ex- 
 cusable in so doing, than those who have used like 
 murderous weapons against their Christian breth- 
 ren, in the belief that they were casting them, 
 not into heaven, but into hell. Even in minor 
 matters the sword is a perilous instrument whereby 
 to seek one's aim. Compulsion is not, and never 
 can be conviction. They exclude each other. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 199 
 
 Musicians, at least dilettanti ones, are apt to 
 complain of those who encore a tune, as having 
 no true feeling for the art. It should be remem- 
 bered however, that the peculiarity of music is, 
 that its parts can never be perceived contempo- 
 raneously, but only in succession. Yet no work 
 of art can be understood, unless we have con- 
 ceived the idea of it as a whole, and can discern 
 the relations of its parts to each other as members 
 of that whole. To judge of a picture, a statue, 
 a building, we look at it again and again, both in 
 its unity and in its details. So too do we treat a 
 poem, which combines the objective permanence of 
 the last-mentioned arts, with the successive de- 
 velopment belonging to music. But until we know 
 a piece of music, until we have heard it through 
 already, it is scarcely possible for any ear to under- 
 stand it. The sturdiest asserter of the organic 
 unity of works of art will not pretend that he 
 could construct a play of Shakspeare or of So- 
 phocles out of a single scene, or even that he could 
 construct a single speech out of the preceding ones ; 
 although, when he has read and carefully examined 
 it, he may maintain that all its parts hang to- 
 gether by a sort of inherent, inviolable necessity. 
 The habit of lavishing all one's admiration on 
 striking parts, independently of their relation to the 
 whole, does indeed betoken a want of imaginative 
 perception, and of proper esthetical culture. In 
 true works of art too the beauty of the parts is 
 raised to a higher power by the living idea which
 
 200 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 pervades the whole, as the physical beauty of 
 Raphael's Virgins is by their relation to their 
 Divine Child. But for that very reason do 
 we gaze on them with greater intentness, and 
 return to them again and again. Nay, does not 
 Nature herself teach us to encore tunes? Her 
 songsters repeat their songs over and over, with 
 endless iteration. u. 
 
 Wisdom is Alchemy. Else it could not be 
 Wisdom. This is its unfailing characteristic, that 
 it " finds good in everything," that it renders all 
 things more precious. In this respect also does it 
 renew the spirit of childhood within us : while 
 foolishness hardens our hearts, and narrows our 
 thoughts, it makes us feel a childlike curiosity 
 and a childlike interest about all things. When 
 our view is confined to ourselves, nothing is of 
 value, except what ministers in one way or other 
 to our own personal gratification : but in propor- 
 tion as it widens, our sympathies increase and 
 multiply : and when we have learnt to look on 
 all things as God's works, then, as His works, 
 they are all endeared to us. 
 
 Hence nothing can be further from true wisdom, 
 than the mask of it assumed by men of the world, 
 who affect a cold indifference about whatever 
 does not belong to their own immediate circle of 
 interests or pleasures. u. 
 
 It were much to be wisht that some philosophical
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 201 
 
 scholar would explain the practical influence of 
 religion in the ancient world. Much has been 
 done of late for ancient mythology, which itself, 
 until the time of Voss, was little better than a 
 confused, tangled mass. Greek and Roman fables 
 of all ages and sexes were jumbled together indis- 
 criminately, with an interloper here and there from 
 Egypt, or from the East ; and, whether found in 
 Homer or in Tzetzes, they were all supposed to 
 belong to the same whole. Voss, not John Gerard, 
 but John Henry, did a good service in trying to 
 bring some sort of order and distinctness into this 
 medley. But he mostly left out of sight, that one 
 of the chief elements in mythology is the reli- 
 gious. His imagination too was rather that of a 
 kitchen-garden, than either of a flower-garden, or 
 a forest : his favorite flowers were cauliflowers. 
 Since his days there have been many valuable 
 contributions toward the history and genesis of 
 mythology by Welcker, Ottfried Mueller, Butt- 
 mann, and others ; though the master mind that 
 is to discern and unfold the organic idea is still 
 wanting. 
 
 Mythology however is not Religion. It may 
 rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the 
 poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology. In 
 addition to this, we require to know what was the 
 Religion of the ancients, what influence Religion 
 exercised over their feelings, over their intellect, 
 over their will, over their views of life, and their 
 actions. Tins too must be a historical work, die-
 
 202 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 tinguisliing what belongs to different ages, giving 
 us fragmentary representations where nothing 
 more is discoverable, and carefully eschewing the 
 attempt to complete and restore the fragments of 
 one age by pieces belonging to another. Here also 
 we shall find progressive stages, faith, super- 
 stition, scepticism, secret and open unbelief, which 
 slid or rolled back into new forms of arbitrary 
 superstition. u. 
 
 Many learned men, Grotius, for instance, and 
 Wetstein, have taken pains to illustrate the New 
 Testament by quoting all the passages they could 
 collect from the writers of classical antiquity, 
 expressing sentiments in any way analogous to the 
 doctrines and precepts of the Gospel. This some 
 persons regard as a disparagement to the honour of 
 the Gospel, which they would fain suppose to have 
 come down all at once from heaven, like a meteoric 
 stone from a volcano in the moon, consisting of 
 elements wholly different from anything found upon 
 earth. But surely it is no disparagement to the 
 wisdom of God, or to the dignity of Reason, that 
 the development of Reason should be preceded by 
 corresponding instincts, and that something ana- 
 logous to it should be found even in inferior 
 animals. It is no disparagement to the sun, that 
 he should be preceded by the dawn. On the con- 
 trary this is his glory, as it was also that of the 
 Messiah, that, in the words with which IWilton 
 describee Hi- approach to battle, "far off His coming
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 203 
 
 shone." If there had been no instincts in man 
 leading him to Christianity, no yearnings and 
 cravings, no stings of conscience and aspirations, for 
 it to quiet and satisfy, it would have been no 
 religion for man. Therefore, instead of shrinking 
 from the notion that anything at all similar to 
 any of the doctrines of Christianity may be found 
 in heathen forms of religion, let us seek out all 
 such resemblances diligently, giving thanks to God 
 that He has never left Himself wholly without a 
 witness. When we have found them all, they will 
 only be single rays darting up here and there, 
 forerunners of the sunrise. Subtract the whole 
 amount of them from the Gospel, and quite enough 
 will remain to bless God for, even the whole 
 Gospel. u. 
 
 Everybody knows and loves the beautiful story 
 of the dog Argus, who just lives through the term 
 of his master's absence, and sees him return to his 
 home, and recognises him, and rejoicing in the sight 
 dies. Beautiful too as the story is in itself, it has 
 a still deeper allegorical interest. For how many 
 Arguses have there been, how many will theiv be 
 hereafter, the course of whose years has been so 
 ordered, that they will have just lived to • ■ their 
 Lord come and take possession of His home, and 
 in their joy at the blissful Bight have departed! 
 
 How many such spirits, like Simeon's, will swell 
 the praises of Him who Bpared them that lie might 
 save them.
 
 204 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 When watching by a deathbed, I have heard 
 the cock crow as a signal for the spirit to take 
 its flight from this world. This, I believe, is a 
 common hour for such a journey. It is a comfort- 
 able thought, to regard the sufferer as having past 
 through the night, and lived to see the dawn of an 
 eternal day. Perhaps some thought of this kind 
 flitted through the mind of Socrates, when he 
 directed his sacrifice to Esculapius. Mr Evans 
 has thought fit, in his life of Justin Martyr* 
 when comparing the end of Justin with that of 
 Socrates, to rebuke the latter as a " mere moralist," 
 who " exhibited in his last words a trait of gross 
 heathen superstition." Surely this is neither wise 
 nor just. It was not owing to any fault in Socrates, 
 that he was not a Christian, that he was " a mere 
 moralist." On the contrary, it is a glorious thing 
 that he should have been a moralist, and such a 
 moralist, amid the darkness of Heathenism ; and 
 his glory is increast by his having recognised the 
 duty of retaining a positive worship, while he saw 
 its abuses, by his having been a philosopher, and 
 yet not an unbeliever. I never could understand 
 how it is necessary for the exaltation of Christianity 
 to depreciate Socrates, any more than how it is 
 requisite for the exaltation of the Creator to revile 
 all the works of His Creation. u. 
 
 The Rahliis tell, that, when Moses was about to 
 lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, he 
 remembered the promise made to Joseph, that his
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 205 
 
 bones should be carried with them, and buried in 
 the Land of Promise. But not knowing how to 
 make out which were the real bones of Joseph, 
 among the many laid in the same sepulcre, he stood 
 at the entrance of the sepulcre, and cried, Bones of 
 Joseph, come forth ! Whereupon the bones rose up 
 and came toward him. With thankful rejoicing he 
 gathered them together, and bore them away to the 
 tents of Israel. 
 
 Strange as this fable may seem, it is the likeness 
 of a stranger reality, which we may see in ourselves 
 and in others. For when our spirits, being 
 awakened to the sense of their misery and slavery, 
 are roused by the voice of some great Deliverer to go 
 forth into the land of freedom and hope, do we not 
 often turn back to the sepulcres in the house of our 
 bondage, in which from time to time we have laid 
 up such parts of ourselves as seemed to belong to a 
 former stage of being, expecting to find them living, 
 and able to answer the voice which calls them to 
 go forth with us ? It is only by repeated dis- 
 appointments, that we are taught no longer to seek 
 the living among the dead, but to proceed on our 
 pilgrimage, bearing the tokens of mortality along 
 with us, in the assurance that, if we do bear them 
 patiently and faithfully, until we come to the Land 
 of Life, we may then deposit them in their true 
 home, as precious seeds of immortality, which, 
 though sown in corruption and dishonour and 
 weakness, will be raised in ^corruption and glory 
 and power. i.
 
 206 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 When will the earth again hear the glad an- 
 nouncement, that the people bring much more 
 than enough for the service of the work, which 
 the Lord commanded to make (Exod. xxxvi. 
 5) ? Yet, until we bring more than enough, at 
 least until we are kindled by a spirit which will 
 make us desire to do so, we shall never bring 
 enough. And ousdit we not ? Your economists 
 will say No. They, who would think the sun a 
 useful creature, if he would come down from the 
 sky and light their fires, will gravely reprehend 
 such wasteful extravagance. At the same time no 
 doubt they will continually be guilty of far greater 
 and more wasteful. 
 
 Among the numberless marvels, at which no- 
 body marvels, few are more marvellous than the 
 recklessness with which priceless gifts, intellectual 
 and moral, are squandered and thrown away. 
 Often have I gazed with wonder at the prodigality 
 displayed by Nature in the cistus, which unfolds 
 hundreds or thousands of its white starry blossoms 
 morning after morning, to shine in the light of the 
 sun for an hour or two, and then fall to the ground. 
 But who, among the sons and daughters of men, — 
 gifted with thoughts " which wander through 
 eternity," and with powers which have the godlike 
 privilege of working good, and giving happiness, 
 — who does not daily let thousands of these 
 thoughts drop to the ground and rot ? who does not 
 continually leave his powers to draggle in the 
 mould of their own leaves? The imagination can
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 207 
 
 hardly conceive the hights of greatness and glory to 
 which mankind would be raised, if all their 
 thoughts and energies were to be animated with a 
 living purpose, — or even those of a single people, 
 or of the educated among a single people. But 
 as in a forest of oaks, among the millions of acorns 
 that fall every autumn, there may perhaps be one 
 in a million that will grow up into a tree, some- 
 what in like manner fares it with the thoughts and 
 feelings of man. 
 
 What then must be our confusion, when we see 
 all these wasted thoughts and feelings rise up in 
 the Judgement, and bear witness against us ! 
 
 But how arc we to know whether they are 
 wasted or not ? 
 
 We have a simple, infallible test. Those which 
 are laid up in heaven, those which are laid up 
 in any heavenly work, those whereby we in any 
 way carry on the work of God upon earth, are not 
 wasted. Those which are laid up on earth, in any 
 mere earthly work, in carrying out our own ends, 
 or the ends of the Spirit of Evil, are heirs of death 
 from the first, and can only rise out of it for a 
 moment, to sink back into it for ever. u. 
 
 People seem to think thai love toward God must 
 be something totally different in kind from the love 
 which we feel toward put fellow-creatures, nay, as 
 though it might exist without any feeling at all. 
 If we believed that it ought to be the same 
 feeling, which is excited by a living friend upon
 
 208 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 earth, higher and purer, but not less real or warm, 
 and if we tried our hearts, to see whether it is in us, 
 by the same tests, there would be less self-deception 
 on this point ; and we should more easily be 
 convinced that we must be wholly destitute of 
 that, of which we can shew no lively token. a. 
 
 The difference between heathen virtue and 
 Christian goodness is the difference between oars 
 and sails, or rather between gallies and ships. 
 
 God never does things by halves. He never 
 leaves any work unfinisht : they are all wholes 
 from the first. There are no demigods in Scripture. 
 What is God is perfect God. What is man is mere 
 man. 
 
 The power of Faith will often shine forth the 
 most, where the character is naturally weak. 
 There is less to intercept and interfere with its 
 workings. a. 
 
 In the outward course of events we are often 
 ready to see the hand of God in great things, but 
 refuse to own it in small. In like manner it often 
 happens that even they, who in heavy trials look 
 wholly to God for strength and support, will in lesser 
 matters trust to themselves. This is the source of 
 the weakness and inconsistency betrayed by many, 
 who yet on great occasions will act rightly. a.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 209 
 
 A blind man lets himself be led by a child. So 
 must we be brought to feel, and to acknowledge to 
 ourselves, that we are blind ; and then the time 
 may come when a little Child shall lead us. u. 
 
 Love, it has been said, descends more abun- 
 dantly than it ascends. The love of parents for 
 their children has always been far more powerful 
 than that of children for their parents : and who 
 among the sons of men ever loved God with a 
 thousandth part of the love which God has 
 manifested to us? a 
 
 By giving the glory of good actions to man. 
 instead of to God, we weaken the power of 
 example. If such or such a grace be the growth 
 of such or such a character, our character, which 
 is different, may be quite unable to attain to 
 it. But if it be God's work in the soul, then 
 on us too may He vouchsafe to bestow the same 
 gift as on our neighbour. a. 
 
 In darkness there is no choice. It is light, 
 that enables us to see the differences between 
 things : and it is Christ, that gives us light. 
 
 What is snow ? Is it that the angelfl are 
 
 shedding their feathers on the earth? Or is the 
 sky showering its blossoms on the grave of the 
 departed year ? In it we see that, if the Earth 
 is to be arrayed in this vesture of purity, her 
 VOL. II. •'
 
 •210 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 raiment must descend on her from above. Alas 
 too ! we see in it, how soon that pure garment 
 becomes spotted and sullied, how soon it mostly 
 passes away. There is something in it singularly 
 appropriate to the season of our Lord's Nativity, 
 as Milton has so finely urged in his Hymn. 
 
 Nature in awe to Him 
 
 Had doft her gaudy trim, 
 
 With her great Master so to sympathize. 
 
 Only with speeches fair 
 
 She wooes the gentle air 
 
 To hide her guilty front with innocent snow, 
 
 And on her naked shame, 
 
 Pollute with sinful blame, 
 
 The saintly veil of maiden white to throw ; 
 
 Confounded that her Maker's eyes 
 
 Should look so near upon her foul deformities. 
 
 For this, as well as for other reasons, it 
 was happy that the Nativity was placed in 
 December. u. 
 
 Written at Cambridge, January loth, 1817. 
 
 Mighty Magician, Nature ! I have heard 
 Of rapid transformations, — in my dreams 
 Seen how with births the mind at freedom teems, - 
 Seen how the trees their gallant vestments gird 
 In Spring's all-pregnant hour. But thou excellest 
 All tabled witchery, all the mind's quick brood ; 
 Even thyself thou dost surpass. What mood 
 Of wanton power is this, in which thou wcllest
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 211 
 
 From thy impenetrable source, to pour 
 A flood of milk-white splendour o'er the earth ! 
 Shedding such tranquil joy on Winter hoar, 
 More pure than jocund Spring's exulting mirth, — 
 A joy like that sweet calmness, which is sent 
 To soothe the parting hour, where life is innocent. 
 
 Yes, lovely art thou, Nature, as the death 
 
 Of righteous spirits. Yesternight I sate, 
 
 And gazed, and all the scene was desolate. 
 
 I wake, and all is changed, — as though the breath 
 
 Of sleep had borne me to another world, 
 
 The abode of innocence. Still a few flakes 
 
 Drop, soft as falling stars. The sun now makes 
 
 The dazzling snow more dazzling. Flowers up-curled 
 
 In sleep thus swiftly scarce their bloom unfold, 
 
 As these wide plains, so lately blank, disclose 
 
 Their lilied face. The nun, whose streaming hair 
 
 Is shorn, arrayed in spotless white behold : 
 
 And Earth, when shorn of all her verdure, glows, 
 
 In her bright veil, more saintly and more fair. 
 
 An hour have I been standing, and have gazed 
 On this pure field of snow, smooth as a lake, 
 When every wind is husht; and no thought brake 
 The trance of pleasure which the vision raised. 
 Or, if a thought intruded, 'twas desire 
 To lean my fevered cheek upon that breast 
 Of virgin softness, and to taste the rest 
 Its beauty seemed to promise. But the fire 
 Would not more surely niork my erring gl 
 No faith is found, no permanence, in ft rm 
 Of loveliness, not e'en in woman'-. I 
 Must stand on some more stable base, must el 
 Round objects more enduring, lite more warm: 
 His only food the soul, his only home above.
 
 212 GUESSES AT TRITH. 
 
 • 
 And now another thought intrudes to mar 
 The quiet of my musings, like a sound 
 Of thunder groaning through Night's still profound, 
 And lures me to wage reckless, impious war 
 Against the beauty of that silver main, — 
 To violate it with my feet, to tread 
 O'er all its charms, to stain its spotless bed, — 
 As some lewd wretch would a fair virgin stain. 
 Whence this wild, wayward fantasy? My soul 
 Would shrink with horrour from such deed of shame. 
 Yet oft, amid our passions restless roll, 
 We love with wrong to dally without aim.* 
 Alas ! too soon the angel visitant 
 In Nature's course will leave our earthly haunt. v. 
 
 
 January 1 1th, 1817. 
 I said, our angel visitant would flee 
 Too soon, unknowing with what truth I spoke. 
 For he is gone, already gone, like smoke 
 Of mists dissolving o'er the morning lea. 
 The faint star melts in daylight's dawning beam ; 
 The thin cloud fades in ether's crystal sea; 
 Thoughts, feelings, words, spring forth, and cease to be : 
 And thou hast also vanisht, like a dream 
 Of Childhood come to cheer Earth's hoary age, 
 As though the aged Earth herself had dreamt, — 
 Viewless as hopes, fleeting as joys of youth ; 
 And, bright as was thine air-born equipage, 
 It only served fallaciously to tempt 
 Willi visionary bliss, and bore no heart of truth. 
 
 How like to Joy in everything thou art ! 
 
 Who earnest to smile upon our wintry way, 
 Like in thy brightness, like in thy decay, 
 A moment radiant to delude the heart. 
 
 " " To dally with wrong that does no harm." Coleridge, 
 Chritta
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 213 
 
 And what of thee remains? Nought, — save the tear 
 
 In which thou diest away ; — save that the field 
 
 Has now relaxt its bosom late congealed, 
 
 As frozen hearts will in some short career 
 
 Of gladness open, looking for the spring, 
 
 And find it not, and sink back into ice ; — 
 
 Save that the brooks rush turbidly along, 
 
 Flooding their banks: thus, after reveling 
 
 In some brief rapturous dream of Paradise, 
 
 In passionate recoil our roused affections throng. i". 
 
 The French rivers partake of the national cha- 
 racter. Many of them look broad, grand, and 
 imposing; but they have no depth. And the 
 greatest river in the country, the Rhone, loses 
 half its usefulness from the impetuosity of its 
 current. 
 
 True goodness is like the glowworm in this, that 
 it shines most when no eyes, except those of heaven, 
 are upon it. o 
 
 He who does evil that good may come, pays a 
 toll to the devil to let him into heaven. 
 
 Many Italian girls are said to profane the black 
 veil by taking it against their will; and so do many 
 English girls profane the white one. 
 
 The bulk of men, in choosing a wife, look out for 
 a Fornarina : a few in youth dream about fln<line 
 a Belle Jardiniire.
 
 214 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 We are so much the creatures of habit, that no 
 great and sudden change can at first be altogether 
 agreeable . . . unless it be here and there a 
 honeymoon. a. 
 
 Our appetites were given to us to preserve 
 and to propagate life. We abuse them for its 
 destruction. a. 
 
 The mind is like a sheet of white paper in this, 
 that the impressions it receives the oftenest, and 
 retains the longest, are black ones. 
 
 None but a fool is always right ; and his right 
 is the most unreasonable wrong. 
 
 The difference between a speech and an essay 
 should be something like that between a field of 
 battle and a parade. u. 
 
 What do our clergy lose by reading their 
 sermons ? They lose preaching, the preaching of 
 the voice in many cases, the preaching of the eye 
 almost always. 
 
 Histories used often to be stories. The fashion 
 now 18 to leave out the story. Our histories are 
 stall-fed : the facts are absorbed by the reflexions, 
 as the meat sometimes is by the fat. u. 
 
 ( " est affireux comme ilest jxile ! il devroit mettrc
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 215 
 
 wi peu de rouge : cried a woman out of the crowd, 
 as the First Consul rode by at a review in 1802. 
 She thought a general ought to shew a little blood 
 in his cheeks. One might say the same of sundry 
 modern philosophical treatises. u. 
 
 Some persons give one the notion of an abyss of 
 shallowness. These terms may seem contradictory ; 
 but, like so many other contradictions, they have 
 met and shaken hands in human nature. All such 
 a man's thoughts, all his feelings, are superficial ; 
 yet, try him where you will, you cannot get to 
 a firm footing. u. 
 
 A historian needs a peculiar discernment for 
 that which is important and essential and gener- 
 ative in human affairs. This is one of the main 
 elements of the historical genius, as it is of the 
 statesmanly. u. 
 
 A statesman should have ears to hear the distant 
 rustling of the wings of Time. Most people only 
 catch sight of it, when it is flying away. When 
 it is overhead, it darkens their view. v 
 
 La France, c' est moi, disoit Louis XIV. 
 Mais son ambition a'etoit que mediocre: car, A 
 monde, c est moi, dit tout le monde. u. 
 
 An epicure is said to have complained of a 
 haunch of venison, as being too much for one, v I
 
 216 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 not enough for two. Bonaparte thought the same 
 of the world. What a great man he must have 
 been then ! To be sure ; ambition is just as 
 valid a proof of a strong and sound mind, as 
 gormandizing is of a strong and sound body. u. 
 
 The memory ought to be a store-room. Many 
 turn theirs rather into a lumber-room. Nay, 
 even stores grow mouldy and spoil, unless aired 
 and used betimes ; and then they too become 
 lumber. u. 
 
 At Havre I saw some faces from the country , 
 which reminded me of our old monuments, and 
 shewed me what the beauties must have been, that 
 inspired the chivalry of our Henries and Edwards. 
 They were long, almost to a fault, regular, tranquil, 
 unobservant, with the clearest, freshest bloom. At 
 Rouen these faces are no longer met with ; and 
 one finds oneself quite in France, the only country 
 in civilized Europe where beauty is of the com- 
 posite order, made up of prettiness, liveliness, 
 sparkling eyes, artificial flowers, and a shawl, — 
 the only region between Lapland and Morocco, 
 where youth is without bloom, and age without 
 dignity. 
 
 Expression is action ; beauty is repose. 
 
 People say, St Peter's looks larger every time 
 they see it. It does more. It seems to grow
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 217 
 
 larger, while the eye is fixt on it, even from the 
 very door, and then expands, as you go forward, 
 almost like our idea of God. 
 
 Hie Rhodus ; hie salta. Do not wait for a 
 change of outward circumstances ; but take your 
 circumstances as they are, and make the best 
 of them. This saying, which was meant to shame 
 a braggart, will admit of a very different and 
 profounder application. Goethe has changed the 
 postulate of Archimedes, Give me a standing-place, 
 and I will move the world, into the precept, Make 
 good thy standing-place, and move the world. This 
 is what he did throughout his life. So too was it 
 that Luther moved the world, not by waiting for 
 a favorable opportunity, but by doing his daily 
 work, by doing God's will day by day, without 
 thinking of looking beyond. We ought not to linger 
 in inaction until Blucher comes up, but, the 
 moment we catch sight of him in the distance, 
 to rise and charge. Hercules must go to Atlas, 
 and take his load off his shoulders perforce. This 
 too is the meaning of the maxims in Wilhelm 
 Meister : Here, or nowhere, is Herrnhut : Here, or 
 nowhere, is America. We are not to keep on 
 looking out for the coming of the Kingdom of 
 Heaven, but to believe firmly, and to acknowledge 
 that it is come, and to live and act in that 
 knowledge and assurance. Then will it indeed be 
 come for us. u.
 
 218 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 The business of Philosophy is to circumnavigate 
 human nature. Before we start, we are told that 
 we shall find people who stand head-downwards, 
 with their feet against ours. Very many won't 
 believe this, and swear it must be all a hoax. 
 Many take fright at the thought, and resolve to 
 stay at home, where their peace will not be 
 disturbed by such preposterous visions. Of those 
 who set out, many stop half way, among the 
 antipodes, and insist that standing head-down- 
 wards is the true posture of every reasonable 
 being. It is only the favoured few, who are 
 happy enough to complete the round, and to 
 get home again ; where they find everything 
 just as they left it, save that henceforward they 
 see it in its relations to the world, of which 
 it forms a part. This too is the proof that they 
 have indeed completed the round, their getting 
 back to their home, and not feeling strange, but 
 at home in it. u. 
 
 The common notion of the Ideal, as exemplified 
 more especially in the Painting of the last century, 
 degrades it into a mere abstraction. It was as- 
 sumed that, to raise an object into an ideal, you 
 must get rid of everything individual about it. 
 Whereas the true ideal is the individual, purified 
 and potentiated, the individual freed from every- 
 thing that is not individual in it, with all its 
 pervaded and animated and harmonized by 
 the spirit of liii' which flows from the centre.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 219 
 
 This blunder however ran cheek by jowl with 
 another, much like a pair of mules dragging the 
 mind of man to the palace of the Omnipotent 
 Nonentity. For the purport of the Essay on the 
 Human Understanding, like that of its unac- 
 knowledged parent, and that of the numerous fry 
 which sprang from it, was just the same, to 
 maintain that Ave have no ideas, or, what amounts 
 to the same thing, that our ideas are nothing more 
 than abstractions, defecated by divers processes of 
 the Understanding. Thus flame, for instance, is an 
 abstraction from coal, a rose from a clod of earth, 
 life from food, thought from sense, God from the 
 world, which itself is only a prior abstraction from 
 Chaos. 
 
 There is no hope of arriving at Truth, until we 
 have learnt to acknowledge that the creatures of 
 Space and Time are, as it were, so many chambers 
 of the prisonhouse, in which the timeless, spaceless 
 Ideas of the Eternal Mind are shut up, and that 
 the utmost reach of Abstraction is, not to create, 
 but to liberate, to give freedom and conscious- 
 ness to that, which existed potentially and in 
 embryo before. v. 
 
 The word encyclopedia, which of late years has 
 emerged from the study of the philosopher, and is 
 trundled through every street and alley by Buch as 
 go about teaching the rudiments of omniscient > 
 is an example how language is often far wiser 
 than the people who make use of it. The
 
 220 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 framers of words, as has been remarkt already 
 (vol. i. p. 324), seem not seldom to have been 
 gifted with something like a spirit of divina- 
 tion, which enabled them to see more than they 
 distinctly perceived, to anticipate more than they 
 knew. The royal stamp however, which was 
 legible when the word was first issued, is often 
 rubbed off; and it is worn down until one hardly 
 knows what it was meant to be. The word 
 encyclopedia implies the unity and circularity of 
 knowledge, — that it has one common central 
 principle, which is at once constitutive and regu- 
 lative : for there can be no circle without a centre ; 
 and it is by an act emanating from the centre, that 
 the circle must be constructed. Moreover the 
 name implies that in knowledge, as in being, 
 there is not merely a progression, but a re- 
 turning upon itself, that the alpha and omega 
 coincide, and that the last and fullest truth must 
 be the selfsame with tbe first germinal truth, that 
 it must be, as it were, the full-grown oak which 
 was latent in the acorn. Whereas our encyclo- 
 pedias are neither circular, nor have they any 
 centre. If they have the slightest claim to such a 
 title, it can only be as round robins, all the 
 sciences being tost together in them just as the 
 whim of the alphabet has dictated. Indeed one 
 might almost fancy that a new interpretation 
 of the name had been devised, and that hence- 
 forward it was to mean, all knowledge in a penny 
 piece. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 221 
 
 Dugald Stewart, in trying, at the beginning of 
 his Philosophy of the Human Mind, to account 
 for the prejudice commonly entertained in Eng- 
 land against metaphysical speculations, urges " the 
 frivolous and absurd discussions which abound in 
 the writings of most metaphysical authors," as the 
 justifying cause of this prejudice. Hereby, it ap- 
 pears shortly after, he especially means " the vain 
 and unprofitable disquisitions of the Schoolmen." 
 No doubt too he would subsequently have rankt 
 " the vain and unprofitable disquisitions" of Kant 
 and his successors along with them. Here we find 
 a singular phenomenon in the history of causa- 
 tion. A cause, which acts attractively in its own 
 neighbourhood, is assumed to act repulsively at a 
 distance, both in time and in space. The Scholastic 
 Philosophy, which so fascinated the thoughtful in 
 its own age, the modern Philosophy of Germany, 
 by which almost every intellect in that country has 
 been more or less possest and inspired, are the cause 
 why we in England and in these days care so 
 little about the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 
 Conversely he may perhaps have consoled himself 
 by arguing, that, as so few people in his days cared 
 about the Philosophy of the Human Mind, mul- 
 titudes, according to the law of compensation, will 
 take the deepest interest in it hereafter; and that 
 Reid's Philosophy is like a rocket, which has 
 nothing very captivating while one holds it in one's 
 hands, yet which will spread out into a stream of 
 light, when it mounts to a distance. But no!
 
 222 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 These very speculations, which are condemned as 
 " vain and unprofitable," are the speculations which 
 come home to men's hearts and bosoms, and stir 
 and kindle them. When we are told that we are 
 bundles of habits, that our minds are sheets of 
 white paper, that our thoughts are the extract of our 
 sensations, that our conscience is a mere ledger of 
 profit and loss, we turn to the practical business of 
 life, as furnishing nobler subjects to occupy our 
 time with. When we are told of our immortal, 
 heavenborn nature, of the eternal laws of Reason, 
 of Imagination, of Conscience, we start out of our 
 torpour; and our hearts respond to the voice which 
 calls us to such contemplations. Surely the coun- 
 trymen of Locke and Hume and Hartley and Reid 
 and Priestley and Paley might have nearer reasons 
 for disregarding metaphysics, than those found in 
 the subtilties of Scotus and Aquinas, — of whom, 
 be it remembered, they knew nothing. u. 
 
 A similar habit of thought led the same writer 
 to say, in his Dissertation on the Progress of 
 Philosophy, prefixt to the Supplement to the 
 Encyclopedia Britannica (p. 25) : " In modern 
 times this influence of names is, comparatively 
 speaking, at an end. The object of a public 
 teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system 
 of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exercising 
 their own judgements, to exhibit to them an outline 
 of the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for 
 their future examination." Now what is the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 223 
 
 result of this change ? That the pupil's mind is 
 mazed and bewildered in a labyrinth of outlines, — 
 that he knows not whither to turn his steps, or 
 where to fix, — that the "future examination" 
 is postponed sine die, — and that he leaves the 
 university knowing a little about everything, but 
 knowing nothing. No good was ever effected by 
 filling a student's mind with outlines. It is to sow 
 the husk, instead of the kernel. 
 
 " It was in consequence (Mr Stewart adds in a 
 Note) of this mode of conducting education, by 
 means of oral instruction alone, that the different 
 sects of philosophy arose in ancient Greece." 
 One might have fancied that this instance would 
 have sufficed to shew what a powerful influence 
 may be exercised in this manner, by a teacher who 
 knows how to act upon the minds and the affec- 
 tions of his hearers ; wherefore the aim of a wise 
 teacher should be to make the most of so useful an 
 instrument, taking care to apply it to a right pur- 
 pose. For what example does the history of 
 literature present of a study flourishing as Philo- 
 sophy did in Greece? In fact the worst thing 
 about it was its over-luxuriance, which needed 
 pruning and repressing. But no. The oracles of 
 history, like all others, are two-edged. Let them 
 speak as loudly and distinctly as they may, tiny- 
 are not to be understood, unless the hearer is 
 willing to understand them. Where this will is 
 wanting, a person may prefer the barrenness which 
 has surrounded the Edinburgh metaphysical chair,
 
 224 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 to the rich, ever-teeming tropic landscape of Greek 
 Philosophy. 
 
 Cherish and foster that spirit of love, which lies 
 wakeful, seeking what it may feed on, in every 
 genial young mind : supply it with wholesome 
 food : place an object before it worthy of its 
 embraces : else it will try to appease its cravings 
 by lawless indulgence. What your system may 
 be, is of minor importance : in every one, as 
 Leibnitz says, there is a sufficiency of truth : the 
 tree must have life in it ; or it could not stand. 
 But you should plant the tree in the open plain, 
 before your pupil's eyes : do not leave him to find 
 out his way amid the windings of a tangled 
 forest : let him see it distinctly, by itself; and no 
 matter to what highth it may rise, his sight will 
 overtop it ; though, when it is surrounded by 
 others, he cannot scan its dimensions. Plunge as 
 deep as you will into the sea of knowledge ; and do 
 not fear his being unable or unwilling to follow 
 you. The difficulty itself acts as a spur, For in 
 this respect the mind is unlike a sword : it will be 
 sharpened more effectively by a rugged rock, than 
 by a whetstone. It springs up strongest and 
 loftiest in craggy places, where it has had to 
 commune and wage battle with the winds. 
 
 The cautious avoidance of difficult and doubtful 
 points by a teacher in a university implies an 
 ignorance of the susceptibility and subtilty of the 
 youthful mind, whenever its feelings go along with 
 its studies. He who is to win the race, must not
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 225 
 
 stop short of the goal, or go wide of it, through fear 
 of running against it : meta fervidis evitata rotis, — 
 this will be his aim. Would Columbus have 
 discovered America, if he had been merely trained 
 to fair-weather, pleasure-boat sailing ? Could 
 Shakspeare have written Lear and Hamlet, if some 
 Scotch metaphysician had " prepared him for 
 exercising his own judgement," by " exhibiting an 
 outline of the different sciences to him, and sug- 
 gesting subjects for his future examination?" 
 Concrete is said to be the best foundation for a 
 house ; and it is by the observation of the concrete, 
 that Nature trains the thinking powers of man- 
 kind. This her method then, we may be sure, 
 will also be the most efficient with individuals. 
 
 Besides, this calling upon the young, at the very 
 moment when they are first crossing the threshold 
 of the temple of Knowledge, to sit in judgement on 
 all the majestic forms that line the approach to its 
 sanctuary, tends to pamper the vice, to which the 
 young are especially prone, of an overweening, 
 presumptuous vanity. Under judicious guidance 
 they may be trained to love and reverence Truth, 
 and all her highpriests: but more easily may they 
 be led to despise the achievements of former times, 
 and to set up their own age, and more especially 
 themselves, as the highest objects of their worship. 
 This too must needs be the result, when they are 
 taught to give Bentenceon all the great nun of old, 
 to regard their own decision as supreme, and to 
 pay homage solely to themselves. What will, 
 
 VOL. II. Q
 
 226 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 what must be the produce of such a system ? 
 Will they not be like the Moralist in .Wordsworth's 
 Poet's Epitaph ? who 
 
 has neither eyes nor ears, 
 Himself his world, and his own God : 
 
 One to whose smooth-rubbed soul can cling 
 Nor form, nor feeling, great or small, 
 A reasoning, self-sufficing thing, 
 An intellectual all-in-all. 
 
 U. 
 
 A strong and vivid imagination is scarcely less 
 valuable to a philosopher, than to a poet. For the 
 philosopher also needs that the objects of his con- 
 templation should stand in their living fulness 
 before him. The first requisite for discerning the 
 relations and differences of things is to see the 
 things themselves clearly and distinctly. From a 
 want of this clear, distinct perception, the bulk of 
 those who busy themselves in the construction 
 of philosophical systems, are apt to substitute 
 abstractions for realities ; and on these abstractions 
 they build their card-houses by the aid of logical 
 toil miles. No wonder that such houses are soon 
 overthrown, nay, that they topple ere long through 
 their own insubstantiality. 
 
 Nevertheless an imaginative philosopher has 
 continual occasion for exercising a more than 
 ordinary selfdislnist. Among the manifold aspects 
 of things, there are always some which will appear 
 to accord with his prepossessions. They will seem in 
 ider tin: colouring of these prepossessions,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 227 
 
 to fit into his scheme, just as though it had been 
 made for them. But whenever this is the case, we 
 should be especially distrustful of appearances. 
 For a prima facie view of things cannot be a 
 scientifically or philosophically correct one, It will 
 have more or less of subjective, relative truth, but 
 can never be the truth itself, absolutely and 
 objectively. Whatever our position may be, it 
 cannot be the centre ; and only from the centre 
 can things be seen in their true bearings and 
 relations. Yet, by an involuntary delusion, con- 
 sequent upon our separation and estrangement 
 from the real Centre of the Universe, — the Centre 
 that does not abide in any single point, but at 
 every point finds a Universe encircling it, — we 
 cannot help assuming that we ourselves are that 
 centre, and that the sun and moon and stars are 
 merely revolving around us. u. 
 
 Prudens inquisitio dimidium scientiae. The 
 
 first step 'to self-knowledge is self-distrust. Nor 
 can we attain to any kind of knowledge, except by 
 a like process. We must fall on our knees at the 
 threshold ; or we shall not gain entrance into the 
 temple. D\ 
 
 They who are in the habit of passing sentence 
 upon books, — and what ignoramus in OUT days 
 does not deem himself fully qualified for sitting in 
 the seat of the scomer \ — are ant to think that they 
 have condemned a work irretrievably, when they
 
 228 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 have pronounced it to be unintelligible. Unintel- 
 ligible to whom 1 To themselves, the self-con- 
 stituted judges. So that their sentence presumes 
 their competency to pronounce it : and this, to 
 every one save themselves, may be exceedingly 
 questionable. 
 
 It is true, the very purpose for which a writer 
 publishes his thoughts, is, that his readers should 
 share them with him. Hence the primary requi- 
 site of a style is its intelligibleness : that is to say, 
 it must be capable of being understood. But 
 intelligibleness is a relative quality, varying with 
 the capacity of the reader. The easiest book in a 
 language is inaccessible to those who have never 
 set foot within the pale of that language. The 
 simplest elementary treatise in any science is 
 obscure and perplexing, until we become familiar 
 with the terminology of that science. Thus every 
 writer is entitled to demand a certain amount of 
 knowledge in those for whom he writes, and a 
 certain degree of dexterity in using the implements 
 of thought. In this respect too there should not 
 only be milk for babes, but also strong meat for 
 those who are of full age. It is absurd to lay 
 down a rule, that every man's thoughts should 
 move at the self-same pace, the measure of which 
 we naturally take from our own. Indeed, if it 
 fatigues us to keep up with one who walks faster, 
 and steps out more widely than we are wont 
 to do, there may also Ik: an excess on the other 
 le, which i.~ more intolerably wearisome.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 229 
 
 Of course a writer, who desires to be popular, 
 will not put on seven-league boots, with which he 
 would soon escape out of sight. Yet the highest 
 authority has told us, that " the poet's eye Doth 
 glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven," 
 taking the rapidity of vision as a type for that of 
 the Imagination, which surely ought not to lag 
 behind the fleetest of the senses. In logical pro- 
 cesses indeed transitions are less sudden. If you 
 wish to bind people with a chain of reasoning, you 
 must not skip over too many of the links ; or they 
 may fail to perceive its cogency. Still it is whole- 
 some and bracing for the mind, to have its faculties 
 kept on the stretch. It is like the effect of a walk 
 in Switzerland upon the body. Reading an Essay 
 of Bacon's for instance, or a chapter of Aristotle or 
 of Butler, if it be well and thoughtfully read, 
 is much like climbing up a hill, and may do one the 
 same sort of good. Set the tortoise to run against 
 the hare ; and, even if he does not overtake it, 
 he will do more than he ever did previously, more 
 than he would ever have thought himself capable 
 of doing. Set the hare to run with the tortoise : 
 he falls asleep. 
 
 Suppose a person to have studied Xenophon and 
 Thucydides, till he has attained to the same 
 thorough comprehension of them both ; and this is 
 so far from being an unwarrantable supposition, 
 that the very difficulties of Thucydides tempt and 
 stimulate an intelligent reader to form a more 
 intimate acquaintance with him : which of the
 
 230 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 two will have strengthened the student's mind the 
 most ? from which will he have derived the richest 
 and most lasting treasures of thought? Who, 
 that has made friends with Dante, has not had 
 his intellect nerved and expanded hy following 
 the pilgrim through his triple world ? and would 
 Tasso have done as much for him ? The labour 
 itself, which must be spent in order to un- 
 derstand Sophocles or Shakspeare, to search out 
 their hidden beauties, to trace their labyrinthine 
 movements, to dive into their bright, jeweled 
 caverns, and converse with the sea-nymphs that 
 dwell there, is its own abundant reward ; not 
 merely from the enjoyment that accompanies it, 
 but because such pleasure, indeed all pleasure that 
 is congenial to our better nature, is refreshing and 
 invigorating, like a draught of nectar from heaven. 
 In such studies we imitate the example of the 
 eagle, unsealing his eyesight by gazing at the 
 sun. 
 
 South, in his sixth Sermon, after speaking of the 
 difficulties which we have to encounter in the 
 search after truth, urges the beneficial effect of 
 those difficulties. " Truth (he says) is a great 
 stronghold, barred and fortified by God and Na- 
 ture ; and diligence is properly the Understanding's 
 laving siege to it ; so that, as in a kind of warfare, 
 it must be perpetually upon the watch, observing 
 all the avenues and passes to it, and accordingly 
 makes its approaches. Sometimes it thinks it 
 gains a point ; and presently again it finds itself
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 231 
 
 baffled and beaten off, : yet still it renews the 
 onset, attacks the difficulty afresh, plants this 
 reasoning, and that argument, this consequence, 
 and that distinction, like so many intellectual 
 batteries, till at length it forces a way and passage 
 into the obstinate enclosed truth, that so long 
 withstood and defied all its assaults. The Jesuits 
 have a saying common amongst them, touching 
 the institution of youth, (in which their chief 
 strength and talent lies,) that Vexatio dot intel- 
 lectum. As when the mind casts and turns itself 
 restlessly from one thing to another, strains this 
 power of the soul to apprehend, that to judge, 
 another to divide, a fourth to remember, — thus 
 tracing out the nice and scarce observable dif- 
 ference of some things, and the real agreement of 
 others, till at length it brings all the ends of 
 a long and various hypothesis together, sees how 
 one part coheres with and depends upon another, 
 and so clears off all the appearing contrarieties and 
 contradictions, that seemed to lie cross and un- 
 couth, and to make the whole unintelligible, — 
 this is the laborious and vexatious incmest, that 
 the soul must make after science. For Truth, 
 like a stately dame, will not be seen, nor shew 
 herself at the first visit, nor match with the 
 understanding upon an ordinary courtship or 
 address. Long and tedious attendances must be 
 given, and the hardest fatigues endured and di- 
 gested: nor did ever the most pregnant wit in the 
 world bring forth anything great, lasting, and
 
 232 GUESSES OT TRUTH. 
 
 considerable, without some pain and travail, 
 some pangs and throes before the delivery. Now 
 all this that I have said is to shew the force of 
 diligence in the investigation of truth, and par- 
 ticularly of the noblest of all truths, which is that 
 of religion." 
 
 For my own part, I have ever gained the most 
 profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books 
 which have made me think the most : and, when 
 the difficulties have once been overcome, these are 
 the books which have struck the deepest root, not 
 only in my memory and understanding, but like- 
 wise in my affections. For this point too should 
 be taken into account. We are wont to think 
 slightly of that, which it costs us a slight effort to 
 win. When a maiden is too forward, her admirer 
 deems it time to draw back. Whereas whatever 
 has associated itself with the arousal and activity 
 of our better nature, with the important and 
 memorable epochs in our lives, whether moral or 
 intellectual, is, — to cull a sprig from the beautiful 
 passage in which Wordsworth describes the growth 
 of Michael's love for his native hills, — 
 
 Our living being, even more 
 Than our own blood, and, — could it less? — retains 
 
 Strong hold ir affections, is to us 
 
 A pleasurable feeling of blind love, 
 
 The pleasure which there is in life itself. 
 
 If you would fertilize the mind, the plough 
 must be driven over and through it. The gliding 
 ol wheels is easier and rapider, but only makes it
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 233 
 
 harder and more barren. Above all, in the present 
 age of light reading, that is, of reading hastily, 
 thoughtlessly, indiscriminately, unfruitfully, when 
 most books are forgotten as soon as they are finisht, 
 and very many sooner, it is well if something 
 heavier is cast now and then into the midst of 
 the literary public. This may scare and repell the 
 weak : it will rouse and attract the stronger, and 
 increase their strength by making them exert 
 it. In the sweat of the brow is the mind as well 
 as the body to eat its bread. Nil sine magno 
 Musa labore dedit mortcdibus. 
 
 Are writers then to be studiously difficult, and to 
 tie knots for the mere purpose of compelling their 
 readers to untie them ? Not so. Let them follow 
 the bent of their own minds. Let their style be 
 the faithful mirror of their thoughts. Some minds 
 are too rapid and vehement and redundant to How 
 along in lucid transparence ; some have to break 
 over rocks, and to force a way through obstacles, 
 which would have dammed them in. Tacitus 
 could not write like Cesar. Niebuhr could not 
 write like Goldsmith. u. 
 
 Train the understanding. Take care that the 
 mind has a stout and straight stem. Leave the 
 flowers of wit and fancy to come of themselves. 
 Sticking them on will not make them grow; You 
 can only engraft them, by grafting that which will 
 produce them. 
 
 Another rule of good gardening may also be
 
 234 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 applied with advantage to the mind. Thin your 
 fruit in spring, that the tree may not be exhausted, 
 and that some of it may come to perfection. u. 
 
 There are some fine passages, I am told, in that 
 book. 
 
 Are there ? Then beware of them. Fine pas- 
 sages are mostly culs de sacs. For in books also 
 does one see 
 
 Rich windows that exclude the light, 
 
 And passages that lead to nothing. u. 
 
 A writer is the only person who can give more 
 than he has. It may be doubted however whether 
 such gifts are not mostly in bad money. u. 
 
 Fields of thought seem to need lying fallow. 
 After some powerful mind has brought a new 
 one into cultivation, the same seed is sown in it 
 over and over again, until the crop degenerates, 
 and the land is worn out. Hereupon it is left 
 alone, and gains time to recruit, before a subse- 
 quent generation is led, by the exhaustion of 
 the country round, to till it afresh. u. 
 
 The ultimate tendency of civilization is toward 
 barbarism. 
 
 The <iucsli.il) is not whether a doctrine is 
 beautiful, but whether it is true. When we want
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 235 
 
 to go to a place, we don't ask whether the road 
 leads through a pretty country, but whether it 
 is the right road, the road pointed out by authority, 
 the turnpike-road. 
 
 How poorly must he have profited by the study 
 of Plato, who said, Malo cum Platone err are, quam 
 cum istis vera sentire ! A maxim of this kind 
 may indeed serve for those who are not ordained 
 to the ministry of Truth. The great bulk of 
 mankind must in all things take much for granted, 
 as everybody must in many things, They whose 
 calling is to act, need to have certain guiding prin- 
 ciples of faith to look up to, fixt like stars high 
 above the changeful, and often storm-rent atmo- 
 sphere of their cares and doubts and passions, 
 principles which they may hold to be eternal, from 
 their fixedness, and from their light. The philo- 
 sopher too himself must perforce take many things 
 for granted, seeing that the capacities of human 
 knowledge are so limited. Only his assumptions 
 will be in lower and commoner matters, with regard 
 to which he will have to receive much on trust. 
 For his thoughts dwell among principles. He 
 mounts, like the astronomer, into the region of 
 the stars themselves, and measures their magni- 
 tudes and their distances, and calculates their 
 orbits, and distinguishes the iixt from the erring, 
 the solar sources of light from the satellites 
 which fill their urns from these everlasting 
 fountains, and distinguishes those also, which
 
 236 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 dutifully preserve their regular, beatific courses, 
 from the vagrant emissaries of destruction. He must 
 have an entire, implicit faith in the illimitable 
 beneficence, that is, in the divinity of Truth. He 
 must devoutly believe that God is Truth, and 
 that Truth therefore must ever be one with God. 
 
 Cicero, I am aware, ascribes that speech ( Tasc. 
 Quaest. i. 17) to the young man whom he is in- 
 structing ; a circumstance overlookt by those who 
 have tried to confirm themselves in their faint- 
 heartedness, by pleading his authority for believing 
 that a falsehood may be better than Truth. But 
 he immediately applauds his pupil, and makes the 
 sentiment his own : Made virtute : ego enim ipse 
 cum eodem Mo non invitus erraverim. It is plain 
 from this sentence, the evidence of which might be 
 strengthened by a number of others, that what 
 Cicero admired so much in Plato, was not his 
 philosophy. On the contrary, as he himself often 
 forgot the thinker in the talker, so, his eye for 
 words having been sharpened by continual prac- 
 tice, he was apt to look in others also at the make 
 of the garments their thoughts were arrayed in, 
 rather than at the countenance or the body of the 
 thoughts themselves. lie had told us himself a 
 little before: Hanc perfection philosophiam sempei* 
 judicavi, quae de mazimis quaestionibus copiose 
 posset orvotcijiie. dicere. Thus what he valued most 
 in Plato, was his eloquence; the true, unequaled 
 worth of which however is its perfect fitness for ex- 
 hibiting the thoughts it contains, or, so to say, its
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 237 
 
 transparency. For, while in most other writers 
 the thoughts are only seen dimly, as in water, 
 where the medium itself is visible, and more or 
 less distorts or obscures them, being often turbid, 
 often coloured, and often having no little mud in 
 it, in Plato one almost looks through the language, 
 as through air, discerning the exact form of the 
 objects which stand therein, and every part and 
 shade of which is brought out by the sunny light 
 resting upon them. Indeed, when reading Plato, 
 we hardly think about the beauty of his style, or 
 notice it except for its clearness : but, as our hav- 
 ing felt the sensations of sickness makes us feel and 
 enjoy the sensations of health, so does the ac- 
 quaintance we are forced to contract with all man- 
 ner of denser and murkier writers, render us 
 vividly sensible of the bright daylight of Plato. 
 Cicero however might almost have extracted the 
 Beauties of Plato, as somebody has extracted the 
 Beauties of Skakspeare ; which give as good a 
 notion of his unspeakable, exuberant beaut}', as a 
 pot poi/rri gives of a flower-garden, or as a lump 
 of teeth would give of a beautiful mouth. 
 
 As to Plato's pure, impartial, searching philo- 
 sophy, Cicero was too full of prejudices to sym- 
 pathize with it. Philosophy was not the bread of 
 life to him, but a medicinal cordial in his afflicl 
 He loved it, not for itself, but for certain results 
 which he desired and hoped to gain from it. In 
 philosophy he was never more than an Eclectic, 
 that is, in point of fact, no philosopher at all. For
 
 238 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the very essence of the philosophical mind lies in 
 this, that it is constrained by an irresistible im- 
 pulse to ascend to primary, necessary principles, 
 and cannot halt until it reaches the living, stream- 
 ing sources of Truth ; whereas the Eclectic will 
 stop short where he likes, at any maxim to which 
 he chooses to ascribe the authority of a principle. 
 The philosophical mind must be systematic, ever 
 seeking to behold all things in their connexion, as 
 parts or members of a great organic whole, and 
 impregnating them all with the electric spirit of 
 order ; while the Eclectic is content if he can string 
 together a number of generalizations. A Philoso- 
 pher incorporates and animates ; an Eclectic heaps 
 and ties up. The Philosopher combines multi- 
 plicity into unity; tbe Eclectic leaves unity strag- 
 gling about in multiplicity. The former opens the 
 arteries of Truth, the latter its veins. Cicero's 
 legal habits peer out from under his philosophical 
 cloak, in his constant appeal to precedent, his 
 ready deference to authority. For in law, as in 
 other things, the practitioner does not go beyond 
 maxims, that is, secondary or tertiary principles, 
 taking his stand upon the mounds which his 
 predecessors have erected. 
 
 Cicero was indeed led by his admiration of 
 Plato to adopt the form of the dialogue for his own 
 treatises, of all forms the best fitted for setting 
 forth philosophical truths in their free expansion 
 ami intercommunion, as well as in their distinct- 
 ness and precision, without chaining up Truth,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 239 
 
 and making her run round and round in the mill 
 of a partial and narrow system. But he has 
 nothing of the dialectic spirit. His collocutors do 
 not wrestle with one another, as they did in the 
 intellectual gymnasia of the Greeks. After some 
 preliminary remarks, and the interchange of a few 
 compliments characterized by that urbanity in 
 which no man surpasses him, he throws off the 
 constraint of logical analysis ; and his speakers sit 
 down by turns in the portico, and deliver their 
 didactic harangues, just as in a bad play the per- 
 sonages tell you their story at length, and of course 
 each to his own advantage. You must not in- 
 terrupt them with a question for the world ; you 
 would be sure to put them out. 
 
 But if the love of Plato is a worthless ground 
 for preferring errour to truth, still more reprehen- 
 sible is it to go wrong out of hatred or contempt 
 for any one, be he who he may. Could the Father 
 of lies speak truth, it would be our duty to believe 
 him when he did so. u. 
 
 In the Preface to Shelley's Prometheus Un- 
 bound, there is a sentence, which at first thought 
 may remind us of Cicero's saying about Plato, and 
 may seem analogous to it, but which, when more 
 closely examined, we perceive to be it* diametri- 
 cal opposite. That unhappy enthusiast, who, 
 through a calamitous combination of circumstances, 
 galling and fretting a morbidly sensitive tempt la- 
 ment, became a fanatical hater of the perversions
 
 240 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and distortions conjured up by his own feverish 
 imagination, there says : " For my part I had rather 
 be damned with Plato and Lord Bacon, than go 
 to heaven with Paley and Malthus." Here how- 
 ever, if we look away from the profaneness of the 
 expressions, the meaning is grand and noble. Such 
 is the author's faith in truth and goodness, and his 
 love for them, he would rather incur everlasting 
 misery by cleaving to them, than enjoy everlasting 
 happiness, if it could only be won by sacrificing 
 his reason and conscience to falsehood and cold- 
 hearted worldlincss. Thus this sentence at bottom 
 is only tantamount to that most magnanimous 
 saying of antiquity, Fiat justitia, ruat coelum : 
 which does not mean, that the fulfilment of Justice 
 would be the knell of the Universe, but that, even 
 though this were to be the consecmence, even 
 though the world were to go to rack, Justice must 
 and ought to be fulfilled. The mind which had 
 not been taught how Mercy and Truth, Righteous- 
 ness and Peace were to meet together and to be 
 reconciled for ever in the Divine Atonement, could 
 not mount to a sublimer anticipation of the blessed 
 declaration, thai Heaven and Earth shall pass 
 away, but the word of God shall not pass 
 away. 
 
 At the same time Shelley's words exhibit the 
 miserable delusion he was under, and shew how 
 what he hated, under the name of Christianity, 
 was not Christianity itself, but rather a medley of 
 antichristian notions, which he blindly identified
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 241 
 
 with it, from finding them associated with it in 
 vulgar opinion. u. 
 
 The name Eclectic is often misused nowadays, 
 by being applied to such as will not surrender 
 their reason and conscience to the yoke of 
 a dogmatical system, anathematizing everything 
 beyond its pale, — to those who, recognising the 
 infinite fulness and plastic life of Truth, delight to 
 trace it out under all its manifestations, and to 
 acknowledge that, amid the numberless errours 
 and perversions and exaggerations with which it 
 has been mixt up, it has still been the one source 
 of a living power in every mode of human opinion. 
 Thus I have seen the name assigned to Neander, and 
 to other writers no less alien from the Eclectic spirit. 
 This however is mere ignorance and confusion. 
 
 The Eclectic is a person who picks out certain 
 propositions, such as strike his fancy or his moral 
 sense, and seem edifying or useful, from divers 
 systems of philosophy, and strings or patches them 
 together, without troubling himself much about their 
 organic unity or coherence. When the true philo- 
 sophical spirit, which everywhere seeks after unity, 
 under the conviction that the universe must reflect 
 the oneness of the contemplating as well as of the 
 Creative Mind, wits waning away, dilettanti philo- 
 sophers, who were fond of dabbling in the records 
 of prior speculations, arose both among the I I 
 and at Rome: and of these, Diogenes Laertius tells 
 us (i. §. 21), Potamo of Alexandria introduced 
 
 VOL. II. K
 
 242 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 ixXeKTiK^v a'ipsoiv, tKAeiiayuej'oe to. dpecravra it, 
 \.Ka.rj-r]r twv a'ipiatwv. That is to say, he may 
 have been the first to assume the name ; but 
 the spirit which led him to do so was already 
 widely diffused. Indeed little else in the way of 
 philosophy gained much favour, from his days, at 
 the beginning of the Roman empire, down to the 
 first coming forward of the Schoolmen. 
 
 This procedure may best be illustrated by the 
 wellknown story of Zeuxis, who took the most 
 beautiful features and members of several beautiful 
 women to make a more beautiful one than any in 
 his Helen. In fact this story is related by Cicero 
 at the beginning of the second Book of his work 
 De Inventione, with the view of justifying his own 
 design of writing a treatise, in which, he says, 
 " Non unum aliquod proposuimus exemplum, cujus 
 onmes partes, quocumque essent in genere, expri- 
 mendae nobis necessario viderentur ; sed, omni- 
 bus unum in locum coactis scriptoribus, quod quis- 
 que commodissime praecipere videbatur, excerp- 
 simus, et ex variis ingeniis excellentissima quaoque 
 libavimus." lie adds that, if his skill were equal 
 tn that of the painter, his work ought to be still 
 better, inasmuch as he had a larger stock of 
 models to choose from : " Ille una ex urbe, et ex 
 eo numero virginum, quae turn erant, eligere 
 potuit : nobis omnium, quicumque fuerunt, ah 
 ultimo principio hujua praeceptionis usque ad hoc 
 tempuB, expositis copiis, quodcumque placeret 
 ■ ligendi potestas fuit." That such a process,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 243 
 
 though the genius of Zeuxis may have corrected its 
 evils, is not the right one for the production of a 
 great work of art, — that a statue or picture ought 
 not to be a piece of patchwork, or a posy of mul- 
 tifarious beauties, — that it must spring from an 
 idea in the mind of the artist, as is exprest by 
 Raphael in the passage quoted above (Vol. i. p. 
 382), will now be generally acknowledged by the 
 intelligent ; though it continually happens that 
 clever young men, such as Cicero then was, fancy 
 they shall dazzle the sun, by bringing together 
 a lamp from this quarter and that, with a dozen 
 candles from others. Cicero himself, in his later 
 writings on the same subject, followed a wiser 
 course, and drew from the rich stores of his 
 own experience and knowledge. But how con- 
 genial the other practice was to the age, is proved 
 by Dionysius, who sets up the same story of 
 Zeuxis, in the introduction to his Judgement on 
 Ancient Writers, as an example it behoves us to 
 follow, rate tT]o eKetvtav ^v\;//c dTrarOi^eirdai tu 
 Kpsl-Toy. 
 
 On the other hand they who are gifted with a 
 true philosophical spirit, who feel the weight of the 
 mystery of the universe, on whom it presses like 
 a burthen, and will not let them rest, who are 
 constrained by an inward necessity to solve the 
 problems it presents to their age, will naturally 
 have much sympathy with those in former ages 
 who have been impelled by the same necessity to 
 attempt the solution of similar problems. They
 
 244 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 will, or at all events ought to regard them as fellow- 
 workers, as brothers. The problems which occu- 
 pied former ages, were only different phases of the 
 same great problem, by which they themselves are 
 spell-bound. Whatever there was of truth in the 
 solutions devised of yore, must still retain its cha- 
 racter of truth, though it will have become partial, 
 and can no longer be regarded as absolute. As in 
 Science the later, more perfect systems incorporate 
 all the truths ascertained by previous discoveries, 
 nay, take these truths as the materials for further 
 researches, so must it also be, under certain modi- 
 fications, in Philosophy. Hence to call a philosopher 
 an Eclectic on this account is a mere misapprehen- 
 sion of the name, and of the laws which govern 
 the development of the human mind. It is just 
 as absurd, as it would be to call Laplace and 
 Herschel Eclectics, because their speculations re- 
 cognise and incorporate the results of the discoveries 
 of Newton and Kepler and Galileo and Copernicus, 
 nay, of Ilipparchus and Ptolemy, so far as there 
 was truth in them. 
 
 On this topic there is a remarkable passage in 
 the 12th Chapter of Coleridge's Biographia Lit<- 
 raria, where the author says that the doctrines of 
 Leibnitz, "as hitherto interpreted, have not pro- 
 duced the effect, which Leibnitz himself, in a most 
 instructive passage, describes as the criterion of 
 ;> true philosophy, namely, that it would at 
 once explain and collect the fragments of truth 
 scattered through systems apparently the most
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 245 
 
 incongruous. The truth, says he, is diffused more 
 widely than is commonly believed ; but it is often 
 painted, yet oftener maskt, and is sometimes muti- 
 lated, and sometimes, alas, in close alliance with 
 mischievous errours. The deeper however we 
 penetrate into the ground of things, the more 
 truth we discover in the doctrines of the greater 
 number of the philosophical sects. The want of 
 substantial reality in the objects of the senses, 
 according to the Sceptics, — the harmonies or num- 
 bers, the prototypes and ideas, to which the Py- 
 thagoreans and Platonists reduced all things, — the 
 ONE and ALL of Parmenides and Plotinus, with- 
 out Spinozism, — the necessary connexion of things 
 according to the Stoics, reconcilable with the spon- 
 taneity of the other schools, — the vital philosophy 
 of the Cabbalists and Hermetists, who assumed 
 the universality of sensation, — the substantial 
 forms and entclechies of Aristotle and the School- 
 men, — together with the mechanical solution of all 
 particular phenomena according to Democritus and 
 the recent philosophers, — all these we shall find 
 united in one perspective central point, which 
 shews regularity and a coincidence of all the parte 
 in the very object, which from every other point of 
 view must appear confused and distorted. The 
 spirit of sectarianism has been hitherto our fault, 
 and the cause of our failures. We have imprisoned 
 our own conceptions by the lines which we have 
 drawn in order to exclude the conceptions of others." 
 The observations of Leibnitz here referred to
 
 246 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 are so interesting, — both as an expression of his 
 own genius, which was always seeking after har- 
 mony and unity, and as the anticipation of a truth 
 which was to come out more distinctly in the 
 subsequent expansion of philosophy, but which 
 had to lie dormant for nearly a century after he 
 uttered it, and which even now is recognised by 
 few beyond the limits of the country where it was 
 uttered, — that I will quote what he says on the 
 subject. It occurs in his first letter to Remond de 
 Montmcrt, written in 1714, not long before the 
 close of his long life of meditation, and is also 
 pleasing as a record of the growth of his own 
 mind. " J'ai tache de deterrer et de reunir la 
 verite ensevelie et dissipee sous les opinions des 
 diilVrcntes sectes des Philosophes ; et je crois y 
 avoir ajoute quelque chose du mien pour faire 
 quelques pas en avant. Les occasions de mes 
 etudes des ma premiere jeunesse, m'y ont donne 
 de la facilrh'-. Etant enfant j'appris Aristote ; et 
 mome les Scholastiques ne me rebuterent point ; 
 et je n'en suis point faclie presentement. Mais 
 Platon aussi des lors, avec Plotin, me donnerent 
 quelque contentement, sans parler d'autres anciens, 
 que je consultai. Par apres etant emancipe des 
 6coles tiivialcs, je tombai but les Modcrnes ; et je 
 me souviens que je me promenai seul dans un 
 bocage aupre's de Leipsic, appelle le Rosendal, a 
 l'agc de quin/.e ans, pour dediberer si je garderois 
 les Formes substantielles. Enfin le Mecanisme 
 prevalut, et me porta a m'appliquer aux
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 247 
 
 Mathematiques. II est vrai que je n'entrai dans 
 les plus profondes, qu'apres avoir converse avec 
 M. Huygens a Paris. Mais quand je cherchai les 
 dernieres raisons du Mecanisme, et des loix meme 
 du mouvement, je fus tout surpris de voir qu'il 
 etait impossible de les trouver dans les Mathe- 
 matiques, et qu'il falloit retourner a la Meta- 
 physique. C'est ce qui me ramena aux Entelechies, 
 et du materiel au formel, et me fit enfin com- 
 prendre, apres plusieurs corrections et avancemens 
 de mes notions, que les monades, ou les substances 
 simples, sont les seules veritables substances ; et 
 que les choses materielles ne sont que des pheno- 
 menes, mais bien fondes et bien lies. C'est de 
 quoi Platon, et meme les Academiciens posterieurs, 
 et encore les Sceptiques, ont entrevu quelque chose ; 
 mais ces messieurs, apres Platon, n'en ont pas si bien 
 use que lui. J' ai trouve que le plupart des Sectes 
 ont raison dans une bonne partie de ce qu'elles avail- 
 cent, mais non pas tant en ce qu'elles nient. Les 
 Formalistes, comme les Platoniciens, et les Aristote- 
 liciens, ont raison de chercher la source des choses 
 dans les causes finales et formelles. Mais ils ont tort 
 de negliger les efficientes et les materielles, et d'en 
 inferer, comme faisait M.Henri Morusen Angleterre, 
 et quelques autres Platoniciens, qu'il y a dee 
 phenomenes qui ne peuvent etre expliqufea me- 
 caniquement. Mais de l'autre c6te lea Materia- 
 listes, ou ceux qui B'attachent uniquement a la 
 Philosophie mecanique, ont tort de rejetter les 
 considerations metapliysiques, et de vouloir tout
 
 •248 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 expliquer par ce qui depend de l'imagination. Je 
 me flatte d'avoir penetre l'Harmonie des differens 
 regnes, et d'avoir vu que les deux parties ont raison, 
 pourvu qu'ils ne se choquent point ; que tout se fait 
 mecaniquement et metaphysiquement en meme 
 temps dans les phenomenes de la nature, mais 
 que la source de la mecanique est dans la meta- 
 physique. II n'etoit pas aise de decouvrir ce 
 mystere, parce qu'il y a peu de gens qui se 
 donnent la peine do joindre ces deux sortes 
 d' etudes." Vol. v. pp. 8, 9. Ed. Dutens. 
 
 In his third Letter to Remond, Leibnitz recurs 
 to the same subject. " Si j' en avois le loisir, je 
 comparerois mes dogmes avec ceux des Anciens et 
 d' autrea habiles hommes. La verite est plus repan- 
 due qu'on ne pense ; mais elle est tres souvent far- 
 dee, ettres souvent aussi envelopee,et memeaffoiblie, 
 mutilee, corrompue par des additions qui la gatent, 
 ou la rendent moins utile. En feasant remarquer 
 ces traces de la verite dans les Anciens, ou, pour 
 parler plus generalement, dans les anterieurs, on 
 tireroit 1' or de la boue, le diamant de sa mine, et 
 la lumirre des tenebres ; et ce seroit en effet 
 perennw quaedam Philosophies On peut meme 
 dire, qu'on y remarqueroit quelque progres dans 
 les connoissances. Les Orientaux ont de belles et 
 de grandes idees de la Divinite. Les Grecs y ont 
 ajout£ le raisonnement et une forme de science. 
 Les Peres de l'Eglise ont rejette ce qu'il y avoit 
 de mauvais dans la Philosophie des Grecs ; mais les 
 Schola tiques ont tdche d'employer utilcmcnt pour
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 249 
 
 le Christianisme, ce qu'il y avoit de passable dans 
 la Philosophie des Payens. J'ai dit souvent 
 aurum latere in stevcore Mo scholastico barbariei ; 
 et je souhaiterois qu'on put trouver quelque habile 
 horame verse dans cette Philosophie Hibernoise 
 et Espagnole, qui eut de Inclination et de la 
 capacite pour en tirer le bon. Je suis sur qu'il 
 trouveroit sa peine payee par plusieurs belles et 
 irnportantes verites." p. 13. 
 
 That Philosophy, in the last sixty years, has 
 been advancing at no slow pace toward the grand 
 goal, which Leibnitz descried from afar, by a 
 Pisgah view of the land he himself was not destined 
 to enter, will not be questioned by any one ac- 
 quainted with the recent philosophers of Germany. 
 One of the clearest proofs German Philosophy has 
 exhibited of its being on the road toward the 
 truth, has lain in this very fact, that it has been 
 enabled to appreciate the philosophical systems 
 of former ages, as they had never been appreciated 
 previously. If we look, for instance, into Dugald 
 Stewart's Historical Essay, we find no attempt 
 even to do anything of the sort. As I have 
 said above (p. 74), he merely selects a few remarks 
 or maxims from the writings of preceding philo- 
 sophers, such as at all resemble the observations of 
 his own philosophy, or the received maxima of his 
 own age, am I takes no thought about anything 
 else, nor even about the coherence of these remarks 
 with the rest of the systems they belong to. On 
 the other haad, if we turn to Hitter's History of
 
 250 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Philosophy, or to Hegel's Lectures, — to mention 
 two of the chief examples of what has been 
 repeated in many others, — we see them en- 
 deavouring to estimate all prior systems according 
 to their historical position in the progressive 
 development of human thought, to shew what 
 truths it was the especial province of each to 
 bring out, and how each fulfilled its appointed work. 
 In England this method has been applied to the 
 history of Science by Dr Whewell, to that of 
 Philosophy in the History of Moral Philosophy 
 publisht in the Encyclopedia Metropolitana. 
 
 Now that this historical, genetical method of 
 viewing prior systems of philosophy is something 
 totally different from Eclecticism, nay, is the 
 direct opposite to it, will not need further proof. 
 But it is termed conceited and presumptuous, to 
 pretend to know better than all the wisest men of 
 former times, and to sit in judgement upon them. 
 This however is sheer nonsense. Conceit and 
 presumption may indeed shew themselves in this, 
 as in every other mode of uttering our thoughts : 
 but there can hardly be a better corrective for those 
 evil tendencies, than the attentive, scrutinizing con- 
 templation of the great men of former times, with 
 the view ef ascertaining the amount of the truth they 
 were allowed to discern, the power of the impulso 
 they gave to the progress of the human mind. If 
 we know more in some respects than they did, this 
 itself is a ground of gratitude to them through 
 whose labours we have gained this advantage, and
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 251 
 
 of reverence for those who with such inferior means 
 achieved so much. It is no way derogatory to 
 Newton, or Kepler, or Galileo, that Science in these 
 days should have advanced far beyond them. Rather 
 is this itself their crown of glory. Their works 
 are still bearing fruit, and will continue to do so. 
 The truths which they discovered are still living 
 in our knowledge, pregnant with infinite conse- 
 quences. Nor will any one be so ready and able 
 to do them justice, as he who has carefully 
 examined what they actually accomplisht for the 
 advancement of Science. So too will it be with 
 regard to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, to 
 Anselm and Bacon and Leibnitz. The better we 
 know and appreciate what they did, the humbler 
 it must needs make us. Nay the very process of 
 endeavouring faithfully and carefully to enter into 
 the minds of others, as it can only be effected by 
 passing out of ourselves, out of our habitual pre- 
 possessions and predilections, is a discipline both of 
 love and of humility. In this respect at all events 
 there can be no comparison between such a Philo- 
 sophy, and an exclusive dogmatical system, which 
 peremptorily condemns whatever does not coincide 
 with it. 
 
 Of course this profounder Philosophy, which aims 
 at tracing the philosophical idea through its succes- 
 sive manifestations, is not exempt from the dangers 
 which encompass every other form of Knowledge, 
 especially from that which is exprest by the 
 separation between the Tree of Knowledge and
 
 252 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the Tree of Life. My dear friend, Sterling, says, 
 in one of his letters (p. xxxviii.) : " Cousin makes 
 it the peculiar glory of our epoch, that it endeavours 
 to comprehend the mind of all other ages. But I 
 fear it must be the tendency of his philosophy, 
 while it examines what all other philosophies were, 
 to prevent us from being anything ourselves. — We 
 must live, not only for the past, but also for the 
 present. Herein is the great merit of Coleridge : 
 and I confess for myself, I would rather be a 
 believing Jew or Pagan, than a man who sees 
 through all religions, but looks not with the eyes 
 of any." How far this censure may apply to 
 Cousin, we need not enquire ; but there seems no 
 reason why it should attach to that form of 
 Philosophy, of which we have been speaking, more 
 than to any other. In all speculation, of whatsoever 
 kind, there is a centrifugal tendency, which requires 
 to be continually counteracted and kept in check. 
 This would appear to have been the peculiar work 
 of Socrates in Greek philosophy, as it had been 
 previously of Pythagoras, and as it was that of 
 Bacon in Science. But, though the Tree of Know- 
 ledge is not the Tree of Life, the Tree, or rather 
 the scrubby underwood of Ignorance is quite as 
 far removed from it : nor shall we turn the Tree 
 of Knowledge into it, by lopping off its expanding, 
 sheltering branches, which spread out on every 
 Bide, and converting it into a Maypole. u. 
 
 There are a number of points, with regard to
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 253 
 
 which we understand the ancients better than they 
 understood themselves. 
 
 Does this seem strange? Mount a hill: will 
 you not descry the outlines and bearings of the 
 vallies or plains at its feet, more clearly than they 
 who are living in the midst of them ? That which 
 was positive among the ancients, their own feelings, 
 the direct power which their religion, their political 
 and social institutions, their literature, their art 
 exercised upon them, they undoubtedly understood 
 far better than we can hope to do. But the rela- 
 tions in which they stand to other nations, and to 
 the general idea of human nature, the particular 
 phase of that idea which was manifested in them, 
 the place which they occupy in the progressive 
 history of mankind, — and in like manner the con- 
 nexion between their language, their institutions, 
 their modes of thought, their form of religion, of 
 literature, of philosophy, of art, and those of other 
 nations, anterior, contemporaneous, or subsequent, 
 — of all these things we have far better means of 
 judging, than they could possibly have. Thus 
 they were more familiar with their own country, 
 with its mountains and dells and glens, its brooks 
 and tarns, than any foreiner can be : yet we have 
 a clearer view of its geographical position with 
 reference to the rest of the earth. 
 
 Moreover such a general comparative sir 
 will enable us to adjust the proportions of man} 
 things, which, in the eyes of persons living in 
 the midst of them, would be exaggerated by
 
 254 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 propinquity, or coloured and distorted by occasional 
 feelings. In fact the postulate of Archimedes is 
 no less indispensable for knowledge. To compre- 
 hend a thing thoroughly we need a standing-place 
 out of it. 
 
 Such a ttov orw has been supplied for us all by 
 Christianity. Therefore Christian Philosophy and 
 Christian Science have an incalculable advantage 
 of position over every other form of knowledge, u. 
 
 It might be allowable for a heathen to say of 
 himself, with somewhat of selfcomplacenc}', that 
 he was Nvilius addictus jurare in verba magistri. 
 As a body, when it is losing its unity, and 
 resolving into its parts, is fast crumbling into 
 nothingness, and as an ochlocracy is no more than 
 a noisy prelude to anarchy, so is Polytheism to 
 Atheism. Whenever we find a real religious feel- 
 ing in any ancient writer, we may also discern a 
 dim, though perhaps scarcely conscious recognition 
 of Unity, of one supreme Deity, behind and above 
 all the rest, who permits the gods of Olympus to 
 play round his feet, smiling on their sports, or, if 
 they become too wanton and boisterous, checking 
 them with a frown. For any moral influence on 
 its votaries, the worship of many gods is scarcely 
 more powerful than no worship at all. 
 
 Besides it was the misfortune of Roman literature, 
 that, as in that of the French, there was in it 
 
 No single volume paramount, no code, 
 No master spirit, no determined road.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 255 
 
 Such must needs be wanting, where political or 
 social interests predominate over those which are 
 more purely intellectual. Neither Poetry, nor 
 Philosophy will thrive, when anything is standing 
 by to overshadow them. They lose their dignity, 
 and cannot walk freely as the handmaids of any 
 other queen than Religion. The Greeks, on the 
 other hand, had such a " volume paramount," a 
 volume as to which their greatest poets might 
 boast that their works were merely fragments from 
 its inexhaustible banquet. "Whereas the Romans 
 had nothing, with regard to which they could en- 
 joy the comfortable feeling, that they might cut 
 and cut and come again. Their dishes, like those 
 of our neighbours, were kickshaws, which, having 
 already been hasht up a second time, were drained 
 of their juices, and unfit for further use. If any 
 of them became a standing dish, it was only, like 
 artificial fruit, to be lookt at. 
 
 This want of a nest-egg is a calamity which no 
 people can get the better of. There is scarcely any 
 blessing so precious for the mind of a nation, as the 
 possession of such a great national heirloom, a work 
 loved by all, revered by all, familiar to all, from 
 which all classes for generation after generation 
 draw their views of Nature and of Life, which 
 thus forms a greal l.ond of intellectual and mural 
 sympathy amongst all, in which all ranks may 
 meet, as in a church, and all may feel at home. 
 How fortunate then are we in England, inasmuch 
 as, — over and above that which, wherever it 1ms
 
 256 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 not been withdrawn from the people by a short- 
 sighted, narrowminded, selfseeking policy, is the 
 " Volume Paramount," and the bond of union for 
 all Christendom, — we have also the richest Eldorado 
 of thought that man ever opened to man in the 
 gold and diamond-mines of Shakspeare! Paradise 
 Lost too may claim to be rankt as one of our 
 volumes paramount, of our truly national works, 
 which have mingled with the life-blood of the 
 people. Indeed Erskine, I have been told, used to 
 say, that, in addressing juries, he had found, there 
 were three books, and only three, which he could 
 always quote with effect, Shakspeare, Milton, and 
 the Bible. 
 
 Moreover Horace's boast was the simple, naked 
 utterance of that Eclectic spirit, which I have been 
 speaking of as characterizing his age, and which is 
 always sure to prevail among such as are especially 
 termed men of the world. Nor was it a less apt 
 expression of his own personal character. For he 
 was the prototype, and hence has ever been the 
 favorite, of wits and fine gentlemen, of those who 
 count it a point of goodbreeding to seem pleased 
 with everything, yet not to be strongly affected 
 l>y anything, nil admirari. As the chief fear of 
 such persons is, lest they should dishonour their 
 breeding by betraying too strong feelings on any 
 matter, Horace's declaration just meets their wishes. 
 The pleasantest of dilettanti, he could add, (lno me 
 CUi ii/tir riijiit fi'it/p'Klits, (lefcrur //ov/x's, without any 
 regret at the thought that everywhere he was a
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 257 
 
 hospes, that nowhere had he a home. Chance was 
 to him a more acceptable guide than any master ; 
 and he drifted along before the wind and tide, 
 rejoicing that he had no pole-star to steer by. 
 
 In him, I say, such a boast might be excusable. 
 But for a Christian moralist to take these lines as 
 his motto seems strangely inappropriate. For we 
 Christians are far happier than the poor guideless 
 Heathens. We have a Master ; and we know that 
 His words are always true, and that they will be 
 true eternally. Above all, for Johnson to make 
 such a parade of masterlessness, as he does by pre- 
 fixing these lines to the Rambler I for Johnson, 
 who, whatever want of deference he might shew 
 toward other masters, had one master ever close at 
 his elbow, to whose words he was always ready to 
 swear, a master too who never scrupled to try his 
 patience by all sorts of wayward commands, — even 
 himself, his own whims, his own caprices, his own im- 
 perious wilfulness. In fact this is usually the case 
 with those who plume themselves on their unwilling- 
 ness to bear the yoke of any authority. They are 
 mostly the slaves of a despot, and therefore spurn 
 the notion of being the subjects of a law. They 
 have a Puck within their breasts, who is ever lead- 
 ing them "up and down, up and down:" and, as 
 he is "feared in field and town," both in town ami 
 field they stand alone. Or else he " drops his 
 liquour in their eyes ;" and then the next tiling they 
 look upon, "Be it on lion, bear, or wolf, or hull. 
 Or meddling monkey, or on busy ape. They will 
 
 VOL. II. s
 
 258 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 pursue it with the soul of love." Hence, though it is 
 very true that Johnson was Nullius addictus jurare 
 in verba magistri, — except indeed to his own words, 
 — it was hardly becoming to make this state of sheer 
 negativeness a matter of boast. If one is to boast 
 at all, it should be grounded on something positive, on 
 something implying an act of tbe reasonable will, 
 not on our being carried quocunque rapit tempestas, 
 which can only land us in the Limbo of 
 Vanities. 
 
 Will it be deemed a piece of captiousness, if I go 
 on to object, as others have done before, to the title 
 of the Rambler ? But that too seems to have little 
 appropriateness for a person who seldom rambled 
 further than from one side of his arm-chair to the 
 other, from one cell in his brain to another. His 
 reading is indeed said to have been always very 
 desultory; so that one of his biographers thinks it 
 questionable, whether he ever read any book entirely 
 through, except the Bible. If this was indeed the 
 fact, it would form the best intellectual apology for 
 his criticisms. At all events his habit arose from 
 that peculiarity which marks all his writings, as 
 well as all the anecdotes of him, his incapacity for 
 going out of himself, and entering into the minds of 
 others, his inability to understand and sympathize 
 with any form of human nature except his own. 
 He only lookt into a book to contemplate his own 
 image in it; and when anything came across that 
 image, he turned to another volume. This is not 
 ram but staying at home, in a home which is
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 259 
 
 no home, inasmuch as a home must have some one 
 beside oneself to endear and consecrate it. 
 
 By some it may be thought that the misnomer of 
 the Rambler receives a kind of justification from the 
 circuitousness of the author's style. This however 
 is not rambling : it would be livelier, if it were. 
 It merely rolls round, like the sails of a mill, 
 ponderously and sonorously and monotonously, yet 
 seldom grinding any corn. In truth it would seem 
 constructed for the purpose of going round a thing, 
 and round it, and round it, without ever getting to 
 it. His sentences might be compared to the hoops 
 worn by ladies in those days, and were almost 
 equally successful in disguising and disfiguring the 
 form, as well as in keeping you at a distance from 
 it. In reading them one may often be puzzled to 
 think how they could proceed from a man whose 
 words in conversation were so close and sinewy. 
 But Johnson's strength, as well as his weakness, lay 
 in his will ; and in conversation, when an object 
 that irritated him stood before him, his words came 
 down upon it, more like blows, than words. In 
 reasoning on the other hand, in that which requires 
 meditation or imagination, the will lias little power, 
 except so far as it has been exercised continuously 
 in the formation and cultivation of the mind. A 
 man cannot by a momentary act of the will endow 
 himself with faculties and knowledge, which he 
 does not possess already ; though he can make 
 himself pour out words, the bigness of which shall 
 stand in lieu of force, and their multitude in lira of
 
 260 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 meaning. How such a style could gain the admira- 
 tion which Johnson's gained, in an age when numbers 
 of men and women wrote incomparably better, would 
 be another grave puzzle, unless one remembered 
 that it was the age when hoops and toupees were 
 thought to highten the beauty of women, and full- 
 bottomed wigs the dignity of men. He who saw in 
 his glass how his wig became his face and head, 
 might easily infer that a similar full-bottomed, well- 
 curled friz of words would be no less becoming to 
 his thoughts. Nor did he miscalculate the effect 
 upon his immediate readers. They who admired 
 the hairy wig, were in raptures with the wordy 
 one. u. 
 
 Young men are perpetually told that the first of 
 duties is to render oneself independent. But the 
 phrase, unless it mean that the first of duties is to 
 avoid hanging, is unhappily chosen; saying what it 
 ought not to say, and leaving unsaid what it ought 
 to say. 
 
 It is true, that, in a certain sense, the first of 
 duties is to become free; because Freedom is the 
 antecedent condition for the fulfilment of every other 
 duty, the only element in which a reasonable soul 
 can exist. Until the umbilical chord is severed, 
 the child can hardly be said to have a separate life. 
 So long as the heart and mind continue in slavery, 
 it is impossible for a man to offer up a voluntary 
 and reasonable sacrifice of himself. Now in slavery, 
 since the Fall, we are all born; from which slavery
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. '261 
 
 we have to emancipate ourselves by some act of our 
 own, halfconscious, it may be, or almost unconscious. 
 By some act of our own, I say ; not indeed 
 unassisted; for every parent, every fiiend, every 
 teacher is a minister ordained to help us in this act. 
 But, though we cannot by our own act lift ourselves 
 out of the pit, we must by an act of our own tak e 
 hold of the hand which offers to lift us out of it. 
 The same thing is implied in every act of duty; 
 which can only be an act of duty, so far as it is the 
 act of a free, voluntary agent. Moreover, if we 
 ascend in the scale of duties, we must also ascend in 
 the scale of freedom. A person must have cast off 
 the tyrannous yoke of the flesh, of its frailties and 
 its lusts, before he can become the faithful servant 
 of his country and his God. 
 
 Hence we perceive that the true motive for our 
 striving to set ourselves free is, to manifest our free- 
 dom by resigning it, through an act to be renewed 
 every moment, ever resuming and ever resigning it ; 
 to the end that our service may be entire, that the 
 service of the hands may likewise be the service of 
 the will; even as the Apostle, being free from all, 
 made himself servant to all. This is the accomplish- 
 ment of the great Christian paradox, Whosoever 
 will be great, let him he a minister ; and mhos 
 /rill l>e chief, let him be a sen-ant. 
 
 Nothing can be more thoroughly opposed to the 
 sublime humility of this precept, than the maxim 
 which enjoins in m e. At beat [ndepi adence 
 
 is a negative abstraction, and has merely assumed
 
 262 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the specious semblance of reality, amid the multi- 
 tude of indistinct, insubstantial words, which have 
 been driven across our language from forein regions ; 
 whereas Freedom is something positive. So far as 
 our dictionaries, which in such matters are by 
 no means safe guides, may be relied on, the word 
 independence, in its modern acceptation, can hardly 
 have come into use till after the Revolution. The 
 earliest instance of it cited is from Pope, but is such 
 as shews it must already have been a familiar 
 expression. Nor is it ill suited to that age of 
 superficial, disjointed, unconnected thought, when 
 the work of cutting off the present from the past 
 began, and people first took it into their heads, that 
 the mass of evil in the world was the result, not of 
 their own follies and vices, but of what their 
 ancestors had done and establish!. That such an 
 unscriptural word should not occur in our Bible, is 
 not surprising: for Independence, as an attribute of 
 man, if it be traced to its root, is a kind of synonym 
 for irreligion. Nor, I believe, is it to be found in 
 this sense in any writer of the ages when men 
 v.' re trained by the discipline of logic to think 
 more closely and speak more precisely. Primarily 
 however the word seems to have come from the 
 Latinity of the Schoolmen, — for the Romans never 
 acknowledged either the word or the thing 
 nified by it, — and to have been coined, like 
 other similar terms, for the sake of expressing one 
 oi thi e negations, out of which Philosophy com- 
 pounds her idea of God; hereby confessing her
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 263 
 
 inability to attain to a positive idea. Thus, in 
 Baxter's Methodus Theologiae Christianae, God is 
 said to be, with reference to causation, Non- 
 catisatus, Independent* In his Reasons of the 
 Christian Religion, he says : " The first universal 
 matter is not an uncaused, independent being. If 
 such there be, its inactivity and passiveness shew- 
 eth it to want the excellency of independency. .'' 
 Jackson (B. vi. c. 3) speaks of philosophers, who 
 " allot a kind of independent being to immaterial 
 substances." In Minshew's Guide into the Tongues 
 (1625), I ndependencie is explained by Absoluteness 
 of one's self, without dependence on another, which 
 points to a like usage as already existing. 
 
 In this sense Segneri writes: I' independence c 
 tin tesoro inalienabile di Dio solo. When thus 
 used, the word expresses an attribute which belongs 
 exclusively to the Deity, in the only way in which 
 our intellect can express it, by a negation of its 
 opposite. But, when applied to man, it directly 
 contravenes the first and supreme laws of our 
 nature, the very essence of which is universal 
 dependence upon God, and universal inter-depen- 
 dence on one another. Hence Leighton, speaking 
 of disobedience, says (Serm. xv): "This is still tin- 
 treasonable pride or independency, and wickedness of 
 our nature, rising up against (Jod who tunned us of 
 nothing." With this our rightful state Freedom is 
 not irreconcilable: indeed, if our dependence is to 
 be reasonable and voluntary, Freedom, as I have 
 already said, is indispensable to it. Accordingly
 
 264 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Shakspeare, in his Measure for Measure (Act iv. 
 sc. 3), has combined the two words: the Provost 
 there replies to the Duke, I am your free depend- 
 ent; where free signifies voluntary, willing. Now 
 in a somewhat different sense we ought all to be 
 free dependents. But nobody can be an independ- 
 ent dependent. As applied to man, independent 
 can only have a relative sense, signifying that he is 
 free from certain kinds of dependence. In this 
 sense Cudworth often speaks of the heathen belief 
 in several independent gods, that is, not absolutely, 
 in the signification exemplified above, but independ- 
 ent of each other. In this sense too the name was 
 assumed by the religious sect who intended thereby 
 both to express their rejection of all previously 
 establisht authority, and their notion that every 
 particular congregation ought to be insulated and 
 independent of all others. So again the Ame- 
 rican war was not to assert the Freedom, but the 
 I a dependence of America. Thus things came to 
 such a pass, that Smollett wrote an ode to Independ- 
 ence, calling it, or her, or him, " Lord of the lion 
 heart and eagle eye." Nay, even Wordsworth, in 
 one of his early poems, after describing the scenery 
 round the Lake of Lucerne, wrote: " Even here 
 Content has fixed her smiling reign, With Independ- 
 ence, child of high Disdain," a line scarcely less 
 objectionable in point of taste, than as glorifying 
 the child of such a parent. 
 
 Moreover Freedom is susceptible of degrees* 
 according to the capacity fur Freedom in the person
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 265 
 
 who attains to it. There is one Freedom in the 
 peasant, who is unable to read, and whose time is 
 wellnigh engrost by bodily labour, but who humbly 
 reveres the holy words proclaimed to him on his 
 one day of weekly rest ; and there is another Free- 
 dom in the poet, or philosopher, or statesman, or 
 prince, who, with a full consciousness of the sacrifice 
 he is making, well knowing what he is giving up 
 and why, and feeling the strength of the reluc- 
 tancies he has to combat and overpower, increast 
 as it is by the increast means of gratifying and 
 pampering them, still in singleness of heart devotes 
 all his faculties to the service of God in the various 
 ministries of goodwill toward men. There is one 
 Freedom in the maiden, who in her innocence 
 scarcely knows of sin, either its allurements or its 
 perils, and whose life glides along gently and 
 transparently amid flowers and beneath shade; 
 and another Freedom in the man, the stream of 
 whose life must flow through the haunts of his 
 fellow- creatures, and must receive the pollution of 
 cities into it, and must become muddy if it be 
 turbulent, and can only preserve its purity by its 
 majestic calmness and might. There was one 
 Freedom in Ismene, and a higher and nobler in 
 Antigone. There was one Freedom in Adam 
 before his Fall, ami another in St Paul after his 
 conversion. Yet, though everywhere different, it 
 is everywhere essentially the same. Although it 
 admits of innumerable gradations, in every one it 
 may be entire and perfect: and, wherever it is
 
 266 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 entire and perfect, all lesser distinctions vanish. 
 One star may indeed appear larger and brighter 
 than another: but they are all permitted to nestle 
 together on the impartial bosom of Night, and 
 journey onward for ever, one mighty inseparable 
 family. Nay, those which seem the smallest and 
 feeblest, may perchance in reality be the largest 
 and most splendid; only our accidental position 
 misleads our judgement. 
 
 Independence on the other hand neither admits 
 of degrees, nor of equality, neither of difference, 
 nor of sameness. In fact nothing in the universe 
 ever was, or ever can be, or was ever conceived to 
 be independent ; except forsooth the atoms of the 
 Corpuscular Philosophy; and even this Philosophy 
 was constrained to acknowledge, that a hubbub of 
 independent entities can produce nothing beyond 
 a hubbub of independent entities. Hence, after 
 rarity ing the contents of its logical airpump, until 
 there was no possibility for anything to exist 
 therein, it was forced to turn the cock, and let in a 
 little air, for the sake of giving its atoms a partial 
 impulse, and thus bringing them to coalesce and 
 interdepend. 
 
 Let it not be said that this is a fanciful quibble 
 about words, and that Independence and Freedom 
 mean the same tiling in the end. They never 
 did; they do not; they cannot. Independence is 
 merely relative and outward: Freedom has its 
 source within, in the depths of our spiritual life, 
 and cannot subsist unless it is fed by fresh supplies
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 267 
 
 from thence. Its essence is love; for it is love 
 that delivers us from the bondage of self. Its home 
 is peace; from which indeed it often strays far, but 
 for which it always feels a homesick longing. Its 
 lifeblood is truth, which alone can free us from the 
 delusions of the world, and of our own carnal 
 nature. Whereas the essence of Independence is 
 hatred and jealousy, its home strife and warfare; 
 it feeds upon delusions, and is itself the greatest. 
 It was not until the true idea of Freedom, as not 
 only reconcilable with Law and Order and the 
 obedience and sacrifice of the Will, but requiring 
 them imperatively to preserve it from running riot 
 and perishing in wilfulness, was fading away, that 
 the new word Independence was set up in its room. 
 Since that time the apostles of Independence in 
 political and social life, and of Atheism, that 
 kindred negation, in religion, have so bewildered 
 their hearers and themselves, that it is become 
 very difficult to revive the true idea of Freedom, 
 and to make people understand how it is no way 
 necessary, for the sake of becoming free, to pull 
 down the whole edifice of society, with all its time- 
 hallowed, majestic sanctities, and to scatter its 
 stones about in singleness and independence on the 
 ground. Yet assuredly it would not be more 
 absurd to call such a multitude of scattered, 
 independent stones a house, than to suppose that a 
 million, or twenty millions, of independent human 
 beings, each stickling fur his independence, and 
 carrying out this principle through the ramifications
 
 268 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of civil and domestic life, can coalesce into a nation 
 or a state. There is need of mortar: there is 
 need of a builder, yes, of a master builder: there 
 is need of dependence, coherence, subordination 
 of the parts to the whole and to each other. u. 
 
 A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker 
 thinks freely. u. 
 
 The most bigoted persons I have known have 
 been in some things the most sceptical. The 
 most sceptical notoriously are often the greatest 
 bigots. How account for this ? except on the 
 supposition that they are trees of the same kind> 
 accidentally planted on opposite hillocks, and 
 swayed habitually by the violence of opposite and 
 partial gusts, which have checkt their growth, 
 twisted their tops, and pointed their stag-heads 
 against each other with an aspect of hatred and 
 defiance. 
 
 The prophet who was slain by a lion, had a nobler 
 and more merciful death than Bishop Hatto, who 
 was eaten up by rats. Neither the crab, that walks 
 with its back foremost, nor the polypus, that fittest 
 emblem of a democracy, ranks so high among 
 animals, that we should be ambitious of imitating 
 them in the construction of the body politic. In- 
 deed it Beema an instinct among animals, to hang 
 down their tails; except when the peacock spreads 
 his out in the sunshine of a gala day, with its
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 269 
 
 rows of eyes tier above tier, like the vista of a 
 merry theatre. Unless Society can effect by 
 education, what Lord Monboddo holds man to have 
 done by -willing it, and can get rid of her tail, it 
 will be wisest to let the educated classes keep 
 their natural station at the head. u. 
 
 At Avignon I saw some large baths in the 
 garden by the temple of Diana, built on the foun- 
 dations of the old Roman ones. Does anybody 
 bathe here now ? we askt ; for we could see no 
 materials for the purpose. 
 
 No ; the guide answered. Before the Revolution , 
 the rick used to bathe here : but they wanted to keep 
 the baths to themselves; and the poor wanted to 
 come too ; and now nobody comes. 
 
 What an epitome of a revolution ! 
 
 Few books have more than one thought : the 
 generality indeed have not quite so many. The 
 more ingenious authors of the former seem to 
 think that, if they once get their candle lighted, it 
 will burn on for ever. Yet even a candle gives a 
 sorry, melancholy light, unless it has a brother 
 beside it, to shine on it and keep it cheerful. For 
 lights and thoughts are social and sportive: they 
 delight in playing with and into each other. One 
 can hardly conceive a duller state of existence than 
 sitting at whist with three dummies : and yet 
 many of our prime philosophers have seldom done 
 anything else. I ■
 
 270 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 To illustrate signifies to make clear. It would 
 be well if writers would keep this in mind, and 
 still better, if preachers were to do so. They would 
 then feel the necessity of suiting their illustrations 
 to their hearers. As it is, illustrations often seem 
 to be stuck in for the same reason as shrubs round 
 stables and outhouses, to keep the meaning out of 
 sight. u. 
 
 Apollo was content to utter his oracles, and left 
 the hearers to make out their interpretation and 
 meaning. So should his priests, poets. They 
 should speak intelligibly indeed, but oracularly, 
 even as all the works of Nature are oracular, 
 embodying her laws, and manifesting them, but 
 not spelling them in words, not writing notes 
 and glosses on themselves, not telling you that 
 they know the laws under which they act. They 
 are content to prove their knowledge by fashioning 
 themselves and all their courses according to it ; 
 and they leave man to decipher the laws from 
 the living hieroglyphics in which they are written. 
 
 u. 
 
 The progress of Knowledge is slow. Like the 
 sun, we cannot see it moving; but after a while 
 we perceive that it has moved, nay, that it has 
 moved onward. u. 
 
 A cobweb is soon spun, and still sooner swept 
 av ay. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 271 
 
 We all love to be in the right. Granted. We 
 like exceedingly to have right on our side, but are 
 not always particularly anxious about being on 
 the side of right. We like to be in the right, 
 when we are so; but we do not like it, when 
 we are in the wrong. At least it seldom happens 
 that anybody, after emerging from childhood, is 
 very thankful to those who are kind enough to 
 take trouble for the sake of guiding him from 
 the wrong to the right. Few in any age have 
 been able to join heartily in the magnanimous 
 declaration uttered by Socrates in the Gorgias : 
 " I am one who would gladly be refuted, if I 
 should say anything not true, — and would gladly 
 refute another, should he say anything not true, — 
 but would no less gladly be refuted than refute. 
 For I deem it a greater advantage; inasmuch 
 as it is a greater advantage to be freed from the 
 greatest of evils, than to free another ; and 
 nothing, I conceive, is so great an evil as a false 
 opinion on matters of moral concernment." 
 
 With some such persons indeed, Hermann says 
 he has met, after speaking of the prevalence of the 
 opposite spirit, in the Preface to his second Edition 
 of the Hecuba : " Turn maxime iraeci aliquem, 
 quum se jure reprehensum videat, aliorum exem- 
 plis cognovi. Nee niinun : piget enim erra 
 illud vero minim, si quos sibimet ipsia ira [uiua 
 
 erat, xram in cos effundunt, a quibus sunt repre- 
 hensi, quasi horum, non sua sit culpa, vidisseque 
 errorem gravius peccatuni sit, quam coniinisisse.
 
 272 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Sed invent tamen etiam qui veri quam suae gloriae 
 studiosiores non solum aequo animo et dissensionem 
 et reprehensionem fervent, verum etiam ingenue 
 confiterentur errorem, atque adeo gratias agerent 
 mone/tti" In act such persons, I am afraid, are 
 rare ; though in profession it is common enough to 
 find people consenting to the declaration with 
 which Sir Thomas Brown closes his Preface : " We 
 shall only take notice of such, whose experimental 
 and judicious knowledge shall solemnly look upon 
 our work, not only to destroy of ours, but to 
 establish of his own ; not to traduce or extenuate, 
 but to explain and dilucidate, to add and ampliate. 
 — Unto whom we shall not contentiously rejoin, 
 or only to justify our own, but to applaud or 
 confirm his maturer assertions; and shall confer 
 what is in us unto his name and honour, ready to 
 be swallowed in any worthy enlarger, as having 
 acquired our end, if any way, or under any name, 
 we may obtain a work so much desired, and 
 yet desiderated of truth." 
 
 But it is no way surprising that abstract truth 
 should kick the beam, when weighed against any 
 personal prejudice or predilection ; seeing that, 
 even in things of more immediate human interest, 
 we are often beguiled by our selfishness into desiring, 
 not that which is desirable in itself, hut that 
 which we have in some manner associated with 
 our vanity and our personal credit. If a mis- 
 fortune which a man has prognosticated, befalls 
 liis friend, the monitor, instead of sympathizing
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 273 
 
 and condoling with him, will often exclaim 
 with a taunting tone of triumph : Didnt I tell 
 you so ? Another time you'll take my advice... as 
 if any one would be willing to take advice from so 
 coldhearted and unfriendly a counsellor. There 
 are those too, I am afraid, who would rather see 
 their neighbours suffer, than their own forebodings 
 fail. Jonah is not the only prophet of evil, whom 
 it has displeased exceedingly, and who has been very 
 angry, because God is a gracious God, and merciful, 
 slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth 
 Him of the evil. The beautiful apologue of the 
 gourd is still, and, I fear, ever will be, applicable 
 to many. Indeed what are our most cherisht 
 pleasures, for the loss of which we are the angriest, 
 even unto death ? but commonly such gourds, for 
 which we have not laboured, nor made them grow, 
 which came up in a night, and perisht in a night. 
 On them we have pity, because they were a 
 shadow over our heads to deliver us from our 
 griefs, and because their withering exposes us to 
 the sun and wind. Yet let a man once have 
 turned his face against his brethren, — and that, 
 not for the wickedness of their hands or of their 
 hearts, but merely for their holding some opinion 
 or doctrine which he deems erroneous: it is not 
 unlikely that he will be loth to see Nineveh 
 spared, that great city, wherein are inure than 
 six-score thousand persons thai cannot discern 
 between their right hand and their left hand, and 
 also much cattle. I • 
 
 VOL. II. T
 
 274 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 The last words of the foregoing quotation re- 
 mind me, that, in estimating the motives for and 
 against any measure or measures, we rarely, if 
 ever,- look beyond the manner in which men will 
 be affected thereby. Our lordly eyes cannot stoop 
 to notice the happiness or misery of the animals 
 beneath us. Indeed no one, except God, cares for 
 more than a small particle of the universe. In 
 reckoning up the horrours of war, we never think 
 about the sufferings of the much cattle- I shall 
 not forget a deserved rebuke which I received 
 years ago from William Schlegel. He had been 
 speaking of entering Leipsic on the day after 
 the battle ; and I askt him whether it was not 
 a glorious moment, thoughtlessly, or rather think- 
 ing of the grand consequences which sprang from 
 that victory, more than of the scene itself. Glo- 
 rious ! he exclaimed: how could anybody think 
 about glory, when crossing a ]>lain covered for 
 miles with thousands of his brethren, dead and 
 dying? And what to me was still mure piteous, 
 was the sight of the ]>oor horses lying about, so 
 helplessly cud patiently, uttering deep groans of 
 agony, with no one to do anything for them. 
 
 Among the heroic features in the character of 
 our great commander, none, — except that sense of 
 duty which in him is ever foremost, and throws all 
 things else into the shade, — is grander than the 
 sorrow for his companions who have fallen, which 
 seems almost to overpower every other feeling, 
 even in the flush of a victory. The conqueror
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 275 
 
 of Bonaparte at Waterloo wrote on the day after, 
 the 19th of June, to the Duke of Beaufort: " The 
 losses we have sustained, have quite broken me 
 down ; and I have no feeling for the advantages 
 we have acquired." On the same day too he 
 wrote to Lord Aberdeen : " I cannot express to you 
 the regret and sorrow with which I look round 
 me, and contemplate the loss which I have sus- 
 tained, particularly in your brother. The glory 
 resulting from such actions, so dearly bought, is no 
 consolation to me ; and I cannot suggest it as any 
 to you and his friends : but I hope that it may be 
 expected that this last one has been so decisive, as 
 that no doubt remains that our exertions and our 
 individual losses will be rewarded by the early 
 attainment of our just object. It is then that the 
 glory of the actions in which our friends and 
 relations have fallen, will be some consolation for 
 their loss." He who could write thus, had already 
 gained a greater victory than that of Waterloo : 
 and the less naturally follows the greater. u. 
 
 Most men work for the present, a few for the 
 future. The wise work for both, for the future in 
 the present, and for the present in the future. p. 
 
 There are great men enough to incite us to aim 
 at true greatness, but not enough to make us fancy 
 that God could not execute His purposes without 
 them.
 
 276 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Man's works, even in their most perfect form, 
 always have more or less of excitement in them. 
 God's works are calm and peaceful, both in Nature, 
 and in His word. Hence Wordsworth, who is 
 above all men the poet of Nature, seldom excites 
 the feelings, because he is so true to his subject, a. 
 
 Crimes sometimes shock us too much ; vices 
 almost always too little. 
 
 As art sank at Rome, comforts increast. 
 Witness the baths of Caracalla and Diocletian. 
 
 We sever what God has joined, and so destroy 
 beauty, and lose hold of truth. a. 
 
 It is quite right there should be an Inquisition. 
 It is quite right there should be autos-da-fc. The 
 more the better, if they are but real ones. There 
 should be an Inquisition and autos-da-fc in every 
 country, yea, in every town, yea, on every 
 hearth, yea, in every heart. The evil hitherto 
 has been that they have been far too few. Every 
 man ought to be an inquisitor; every man ought 
 to perforin autos-da-fc; often accompanied by 
 death, not seldom by torture. Only his inquisition 
 should lie over himself; only his autos-da-ft 
 should consist in the slaying of his own lusts and 
 passions, in the firy sacrifice of his own stubborn, 
 unbelieving will. 
 
 These would be truly autos-da-fc. It is no act
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 277 
 
 of faith for me to offer up another as a victim. On the 
 contrary it is an act of unbelief. It shews I have 
 no faith in my brother's spiritual nature. It shews 
 I have no faith in the power of God to work upon 
 his heart and change it. It shews I have no faith 
 in the sword of the Spirit, but hold the sword of 
 the flesh to be mightier. 
 
 Nor again can Faith exist in opposition to Love. 
 Faith is the root of Love, the root without which 
 Love cannot have any being. At times the root 
 may be found, where the plant has not yet grown 
 up to perfection. But no hatred, or other evil, 
 malign passion can spring from the root of Faith. 
 Wherever they are found, they grow from unbelief, 
 from want of faith, — from want of faith in man, 
 and from want of faith in God. 
 
 Moreover such autos-da-fe would be sure of 
 effecting their purpose, which the others never can. 
 They would be acceptable to God. They would 
 destroy what ought to be destroyed. And were 
 we diligent in performing them, there would be no 
 need of any others. 
 
 This Inquisition should be set up in every soul. 
 In some indeed it may at times be in abeyance. 
 The happiest spirits are those by whom the will 
 of God is done without effort or struggle To 
 this angelic nature however humanity can only 
 approximate, and that too not at once, but by 
 divers steps and stages, at every one of which 
 new autos-da-ft arc required. or.
 
 278 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Some people seem to think that Death is the 
 only reality in Life. Others, happier and rightlier 
 minded, see and feel that Life is the true reality in 
 Death. u. 
 
 Ye cannot serve God and Mammon. Is it indeed 
 so ? Alas then for England ! For surely we 
 profess to serve both ; and few can doubt that Ave 
 do indeed serve one of the two, as zealously and 
 assiduously as he himself can wish. But how 
 must it be with our service to the other ? u. 
 
 They who boast of their tolerance, merely give 
 others leave to be as careless about religion as they 
 are themselves. A walrus might as well pride 
 itself on its endurance of cold. 
 
 Few persons have courage enough to appear as 
 good as they really are. a. 
 
 The praises of others may be of use, in teaching 
 us, not what we are, but what we ought to be. a. 
 
 Many people make their own God ; and he is 
 much what the French may mean, when they talk 
 of le bon Dieu, — very indulgent, rather weak, near 
 at hand when we want anything, but far away out 
 hi when we have a mind to do wrong. Such 
 a god is as much an idol as if he were an image of
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 279 
 
 The errours of the good are often very difficult 
 to eradicate, from being founded on mistaken views 
 of duty. a . 
 
 Truly a river is a very wilful thing, going as it 
 will, and where it will. 
 
 How should men ever change their religion ? In 
 its abasement honour prevents them, in its pros- 
 perity contempt. From their bights they cannot 
 see, because they are so high. In their low- 
 liness they dare not see, because they are too 
 lc wly. 
 
 There is no being eloquent for atheism. In 
 that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its 
 wings, — the clearest proof that it is out of its 
 element. 
 
 How different are summer storms from winter 
 ones ! In winter they rush over the earth with 
 all their violence ; and if any poor remnants of 
 foliage or flowers have lingered behind, these are 
 swept along at one gust. Nothing is left but 
 desolation ; and long after the rain ha pools 
 
 of water and mud bear token <>{' what lias been. 
 But when the clouds have poured out their tor- 
 rents in summer, when the winds have spent their 
 fury, and the sun breaks Bin in its glory, 
 
 all tlhngs seem to rise with renewed loveliness 
 from their refreshing bath. The flow< ning
 
 280 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 with raindrops smell sweeter than before; the 
 grass seems to have gained another brighter shade 
 of green; and the young plants, which had hardly 
 come into sight, have taken their place among 
 their fellows in the borders ; so quickly have they 
 sprung up under the showers. The air too, 
 which may previously have been oppressive, is 
 become clear and soft and fresh. 
 
 Such too is the difference, when the storms of 
 affliction fall on hearts unrenewed by Christian 
 faith, and on those who abide in Christ. In the 
 former thcv brine out the dreariness and desolation, 
 which may before have been unapparent. The gloom 
 is not relieved by the prospect of any cheering ray 
 to follow it, of any flowers or fruit to shew its 
 beneficence. But in the truly Christian soul, 
 though weeping endure for a night, joy comes in 
 the morning. A sweet smile of hope and lov.' 
 follows every tear; and tribulation itself is turned 
 into the chief of blessings. a. 
 
 We never know the true value of friends. While 
 they live, we are too sensitive of their faults; when 
 we have lost them, we only see their virtues. a. 
 
 So however ought it to be. When the perish- 
 ;ililc shrine has crumbled away, what can we see, 
 except that which alone is imperishable? u. 
 
 How few are our real wants! and how easy 
 is it to s.ifisly them ! Our imaginary ones arc 
 boundless and insatiable. a.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 281 
 
 The king is the least independent man in his 
 dominions, — the beggar the most so. a. 
 
 Multafiunt eadem sed aliter, Quintilian (n. 20. 
 10) has justly remarkt. I have spoken above 
 (p. ] 48) of the efficacy of manner in oratory ; and 
 every attentive observer must perpetually have 
 noticed its inestimable importance in all the occa- 
 sions and concerns of social life. So great indeed 
 is its power, and so much more do people in ge- 
 neral value what their friend feels for them, than 
 what he does for them, that there are few who 
 would not look on you more kindly, if you were 
 to meet their r< quest with an affectionate denial, 
 than with a cold compliance. 
 
 Nay, even when the materials are the very 
 same, and when they are arranged in the selfsame 
 order, much will depend on the manner in which 
 they are combined and groupt into separate units. 
 An ice-house is very different from a nice house ; 
 and a dot will turn a million into one. 
 
 A like thought is exprest in the following stanza, 
 which closes a poem prefixt by Thomas Newton to 
 the Mirror/or Magisln 
 
 Certcs tli is world a stau^ may well be called, 
 
 Whereon is plaid the part of every wight: 
 
 - ae, now aloft, anon with malice galled 
 
 Are from hi. : rought into dismal plight 
 
 Like counters are they, which stand qow in - 
 
 For thousand or ten thousand, and anon 
 
 Removed atand pei i:.; 1 - P • leBS than u.
 
 282 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 The mind is like a trunk. If well packt, it holds 
 almost everything ; if ill packt, next to nothing. 
 
 To say No with a good grace is a hard matter- 
 To say Yes with a good grace is sometimes still 
 harder, at least for men. With women perhaps 
 it may be otherwise. I wonder how many have 
 married for no other reason, than that they had 
 not the strength of mind to say No. u. 
 
 Discipline, like the bridle in the hand of a good 
 rider, should exercise its influence without ap- 
 pearing to do so, should be ever active, both as a 
 support and as a restraint, yet seem to lie easily 
 in hand. It must always be ready to check or to 
 pull up, as occasion may require ; and only when 
 the horse is a runaway, should the action of the 
 curb be perceptible. a. 
 
 Many expressions, once apt and emphatic, have 
 been so rubbed and worn away by long usage, that 
 they retain as little substance as the skeletons of 
 wheels which have made the grand tour on the 
 Continent. They glide at length like smoke 
 through a chimney, not even impinging against the 
 roof of the mouth ; and after a month's repetition 
 they leave nothing behind more solid or more 
 valuable than soot. Words gradually lose their 
 character, and, from being the tokens and exponents 
 of thoughts, become mere air-propelling sounds. 
 To counteract this disastrous tendency, Boyle, it is
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 283 
 
 said, never uttered the name of God, without 
 bowing his head. Such practices are indeed 
 liable to mischievous abuse: a superstitious value 
 will be attacht to the outward act, even when it is 
 separated from the inward and spiritual: and it is 
 too well known that the eyes have often been 
 ogling a lover, while the fingers have been telling 
 Ave-Maries on a rosary. It may be too, that, 
 among the educated, listlessness of mind is rather 
 encouraged by any recurring formal motion of the 
 body. Else there is a value in whatever may help 
 us to preserve the freshness and elasticity of our 
 feelings, and enable the heart to leap up at the 
 sight of a rainbow in manhood and in old age, as it 
 did in childhood. Even the faults of our much 
 abused climate are thus in many respects blessings. 
 They give a liveliness to our enjoyment of a fine 
 day, such as cannot be felt between the Tropics. 
 
 How then is our nature to be fitted for the joys 
 of Paradise ? IIow can we be happy unceasingly, 
 without ceasing to be happy? How is satisfaction 
 to be disentangled from satiety ? which now palls 
 upon the heart and intellect, almost as much as 
 upon the senses. A strange and potent transfor- 
 mation must be wrought in us. Our hearts must 
 no longer be capricious: our imaginations must do 
 longer be vagrant: our wills must no longer be 
 wilful. 
 
 The process by which this transformation is to 
 be brought about, is set forth by Butler in his 
 excellent chapter, the most valuable perhaps in the
 
 284 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 whole Analog?/, on a State of Moral Discipline; 
 where he shews that, while passive impressions 
 grow weaker by repetition, " practical habits are 
 formed and strengthened by repeated acts." So 
 that the true preparation for heaven is a life of 
 godliness on earth. At the same time we should 
 remember how, as Milton says with characteristic 
 grandeur in the first chapter of his Reason of 
 Church-Government, " it is not to be conceived 
 that those eternal effluences of sanctity and love in 
 the glorified saints should be confined and cloyed 
 with repetition of that which is prescribed, but 
 that our happiness may orb itself into a thousand 
 vagancies of glory and delight, and with a kind of 
 eccentrical equation be, as it were, an invariable 
 planet of joy and felicity." u. 
 
 Whatever is the object of our constant attention 
 will naturally be the chief object of our interest. 
 Even the feelings of speculative men become specu- 
 lative. They care about the notions of things, and 
 their abstractions, and their relations, far more 
 than about the realities. Tims an author's blood 
 will turn to ink. Words enter into him, and take 
 possession of him; and nothing can obtain admis- 
 sion except through the passport of words. He 
 cannot admire anything, until lie has had time to 
 reflect and throw back its cold, inanimate image 
 from the mirror of his Understanding, blind to 
 every shape but a shadow, deaf to every sound but 
 an echo. Inverting the legitimate process, he
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 285 
 
 regards things as the symbols of words, instead of 
 words as the symbols of things. u. 
 
 Literary dissipation is no less destructive of 
 sympathy with the living world, than sensual 
 dissipation. Mere intellect is as hard-hearted and 
 as heart-hardening as mere sense; and the union 
 of the two, when uncontrolled by the conscience, 
 and without the softening, purifying influences of 
 the moral affections, is all that is requisite to 
 produce the diabolical ideal of our nature. Nor is 
 there any repugnance in either to coalesce with the 
 other : witness Iago, Tiberius, Borgia. u. 
 
 The body too has its rights ; and it will have 
 them. They cannot be trampled upon or slighted 
 without peril. The body ought to be the soul's 
 best friend, and cordial, dutiful helpmate. Many of 
 the studious however have neglected to make it so ; 
 whence a large part of the miseries of authorship. 
 Some good men have treated it as an enemy ; and 
 then it has become a fiend, and has plagued them, 
 as it did Antony. u. 
 
 The balance of powers in the human constitution 
 has been subverted by that divorce between the body 
 and the mind, which has often ensued from the 
 seductive influences of Civilization. The existence 
 of one class of society has been rendered almost 
 wholly corporeal, that of the other almost solely 
 intellectual, — but intellectual in the lowest sense
 
 286 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of the word, and so that the intellect has been 
 degraded into a caterer for the wants and pleasures 
 of the body, instead of devoting itself to its rightful 
 purposes, the pursuit, the enforcement, and the 
 exhibition of Truth. Moreover the pernicious, 
 debilitating tendencies of bodily pleasure need to be 
 counteracted by the invigorating exercises of bodily 
 labour ; whereas bodily labour without bodily 
 pleasure converts the body into a mere machine, 
 and brutifies the soul. u. 
 
 What a loss is that of the village-green ! It is 
 a loss to the picturesque beauty of our English 
 landscapes. A village-green is almost always a 
 subject for a painter, who is fond of quiet home 
 scenes, with its old, knotty, wide-spreading oak or 
 elm or ash, its grey church-tower, its cottages 
 scattered in pleasing disorder around, each looking 
 out of its leafy nest, its flock of geese sailing to 
 and fro across it. Where such spots are still 
 found, they refresh the wayworn traveler, wearied 
 by the interminable hedge-walls with which 
 ownership," — to use an expression of 
 Wordsworth's, — excludes profane feet from its 
 domain consi crated to Mammon. 
 
 The mam loss however is that to the moral 
 beauty of our landscapes, that to the innocent, 
 wholesome pleasures of the poor. The village- 
 green was the scene of their sports, of their games. 
 It was the playground for their children. It 
 1 for trapball, for cricket, for manly,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 287 
 
 humanizing amusements, in which the gentry and 
 farmers might unite with the peasantry. How 
 dreary is the life of the English husbandman now I 
 " double, double toil and trouble," day after day, 
 month after month, year after year, uncheered 
 by sympathy, unenlivened by a smile, sunless, 
 moonless, starless. He has no place to be merry 
 in but the beershop, no amusements but drunken 
 brawls, nothing to bring him into innocent, cheer- 
 ful fellowship with his neighbours. The stories 
 of village sports sound like legends of a mythical 
 age, prior to the time when " Sabbathless Satan," 
 as Charles Lamb has so happily termed him, set 
 up his throne in the land. 
 
 It would be a good thing, if our landed pro- 
 prietors would try to remedy some of the evils 
 which the ravenous lust of property has wrought 
 in England during the last century. It would 
 be well, if by the side of every village two or 
 three acres were redeemed from the gripe of 
 Mammon, and thrown open to the poor, — if 
 they were taught that their betters, as we presume 
 to call ourselves, take thought about other things, 
 beside the most effectual method of draining the 
 last drop from the sweat of their brows. Some- 
 thing at least should be done to encourage and 
 foster the domestic affections among the lowei 
 orders, to make them feel that they too have 
 a homo, and that a home is the dearest spot 
 upon earth. I do not mean, by instituting prizes 
 for those whose cottages are the neatest, or by
 
 288 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 giving rewards for good behaviour to the best 
 husbands and wives, the best sons and daughters. 
 Such rewards, unless there be something of playful 
 humour connected with them, as was the case 
 with the old flitch of bacon, do far more harm than 
 good, by robbing virtuous conduct of its sweetness 
 and real worth, turning it into an instrument of 
 covetousness or of vanity. The only reward 
 which is not hurtful, is a kind word, or an ap- 
 proving smile : for this, delightful as it is, is so 
 slight and transient, it can never find place among 
 the motives to exertion. 
 
 All tbat ought to be done, all that can be done 
 beneficiallv, is to remove hindrances which obstruct 
 good, and facilities and temptations to evil, and to 
 afford opportunities and facilities for quiet, orderly, 
 decorous enjoyment. When encouragement is 
 given, it should be by immediate personal inter- 
 course. The great Christian law of reciprocation 
 extends to the affections also. Indeed with regard 
 to them it is a law of Nature. We cannot 
 gain love and respect from others, unless we treat 
 them with love and respect. 
 
 The same reason which calls for the restoration 
 of our village greens, calls no less imperatively 
 in London for the throwing "pen of the gardens 
 in all the squares. What bright refreshing spots 
 would these be in the midst of our huge brick 
 and Btone labyrinth, if we saw them crowded 
 "ii summer evenings with the tradespeople and 
 mechanics from the neighbouring streets, and if
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 289 
 
 the poor children, who now grow up amid the 
 filth and impurities of the allies and courts, were 
 allowed to run about these playgrounds, so much 
 healthier both for the body and the mind ! We 
 have them all ready : a word may open them. He 
 who looks at the good which has been effected by 
 the alterations in St James Park, he whose heart 
 has been gladdened by the happiness derived from 
 them by young and old, must surely think the 
 widest extension of similar blessings most desirable : 
 and the state of that Park shews that no mischiefs 
 are to be apprehended. 
 
 At present the gardens in our squares are pain- 
 ful mementoes of aristocratic exclusiveness. They 
 who need them the least monopolize them. All 
 the fences and walls by which this exclusiveness 
 bars itself out from the sympathies of common 
 humanity, must be cast down. If we do not 
 remove them voluntarily, and in the spirit of love, 
 they will be torn and trodden down ere long 
 perforce, in the spirit of wrath. u. 
 
 It is a blessed thing that we cannot enclose the 
 sky. But who knows ? Will not " restless own- 
 ership " long in time, like Alexander, for a new 
 world to appropriate ? and then a Joint-stock 
 Company will be establisht to send up balloons 
 for the purpose. Parliament too will doubtless 
 display its boasted omnipotence by passing an 
 Act to grant them a monopoly, commanding the 
 winds to offer them no molestation in their 
 
 VOL. II. U
 
 290 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 enterprise, and enjoining that, if any planet be 
 caught trespassing, it shall be impounded, and that 
 all comets shall be committed forthwith for 
 vagrancy. u. 
 
 (luaerenda pecunia primum est ; Virtus post 
 nummos. But that post never arrives; at least 
 it did not at Rome, whatever may be the case in 
 England. The very influx of the nummi retarded 
 it, and kept Virtus at a distance. In fact she is 
 of a jealous nature, and never comes at all, 
 unless she comes in the first place. That which is 
 a man's alpha will also be his omega; and, in 
 advancing from one to the other, his velocity is 
 mostly accelerated at every step. u. 
 
 Messieurs, Mesdames, voici la veritc. Personne 
 n'ecoute. Personne ne s'en soucit. Personne n'en 
 veut, Peut&treon ne m'a pas entendu. Essayons 
 encore une fois. Messieurs, Mesdames, voici la 
 veritable veritc Bile vient expres de l'autre 
 monde, pour *e montrer a vous. On passe en 
 avant. On s'enfuit. On ne me regarde que pour 
 se moquer de moi. Malheureux que je suis, on 
 me laissera mourir de faim. Que fairedonc? II 
 foul absolumenl changer de cri. Messieurs, Mes- 
 dames, voici It.' vrai moyen pour gagner de l'argent. 
 Mondieul Quelle foule ! Je ne puis plus. 
 i'. to 
 
 1 t une histoire qui est assez commune. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 291 
 
 One now and then meets with people on whose 
 faces, in whose manner, in whose words, one 
 may read a bill giving notice that they are to be 
 left or sold. They also profess to be furnisht : 
 but everybody knows what the furniture of a 
 ready-furnisht house usually is. u. 
 
 Nothing hides a blemish so completely as cloth 
 of gold. This is the first lesson that heirs and 
 heiresses commonly learn. Would that equal pains 
 were taken to convince them, that the having in- 
 herited a good cover for blemishes does not entail 
 any absolute necessity of providing blemishes for it 
 to cover ! 
 
 Sauve qui peut ! Bonaparte is said to have 
 exclaimed at Waterloo, along with his routed 
 army. At all events this was the rule by which 
 he regulated his actions, in prosperity as well as 
 in adversity. For what is Vole qui pent ! but the 
 counterpart of Sauve qui peut ? And who are 
 they that will cry to the mountains, Cover us, 
 and to the rocks, Fall on us, but they who have 
 acted on the double-faced rule, Vole qui peut, and 
 Sauce qui pent ? 
 
 What an awful and blessed contrast to this cry 
 presents itself, when we think of Him of whom 
 Mis enemies said, lie saved others: Himself He 
 cannot save ! They knew not how true the first 
 words were, nor how indissolubly they were
 
 292 fll'ESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 connected with the latter, how it is only by losing 
 our life that we can either save others or ourselves. 
 
 u. 
 
 Few minds are sun-like, sources of light in 
 themselves and to others. Many more are moons, 
 that shine with a derivative and reflected light. 
 Among the tests to distinguish them is this : the 
 former are always full, the latter only now and 
 then, when their suns are shining full upon 
 them. u. 
 
 Hold iky peace ! says "Wisdom to Folly. Hold 
 tky peace ! replies Folly to Wisdom. 
 
 Fly ! cries Light to Darkness : and Darkness 
 echoes back, Fly ! 
 
 The latter chase has been going on since the 
 
 beginning of the world, without an inch of ground 
 
 gained on either side. May we believe that the 
 
 H lias been different in the contest betwvn 
 
 Wisdom and Folly I U. 
 
 People have been sounding the alarm for many 
 yean past all over Europe against what they call 
 obscurantism and obscurantists; that is, against a 
 Bupposed plot to extinguish all the new lights of 
 our days, and to draw down the night of the 
 middle ages on the awakening eyes of mankind. 
 ' such plans, mad as they may appear, are not 
 too mad for those who live in a world of dreams. 
 •thai their arc human hats, who, having ventured
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 293 
 
 out into the daylight, fly back scared to their 
 dark haunts, and would have all men follow them 
 thither, — we know by sad recent examples. But, 
 even without this special cause, the alarm is 
 timely : indeed it can never be out of time. For 
 the true obscurantists are the passions, the pre- 
 judices, the blinding delusions of our nature, warpt 
 by evil habits and self-indulgence ; the real ob- 
 scurantism is bigotry, in all its forms, which are 
 many, and even opposite. There is the Pharisaic 
 obscurantism, which would put out the earthly 
 lights, and the Sadducean, which would put out 
 the heavenly: and these, in times of peril, when 
 they are trembling for their beloved darkness, com- 
 bine and conspire. Nor has any class of men been 
 busier in this way, than many of those who have 
 boasted loudly of being the enlighteners of their age. 
 In fact they who brag of their tolerance, have often 
 been among the fiercest bigots, and worse than 
 their opponents, from deeming themselves better. 
 
 u. 
 
 If your divines are not philosophers, your 
 philosophy will neither be divine, nor able to 
 divine. 
 
 No animal continues so long in a state of in- 
 fancy as man; no animal is so long before it can 
 stand. And is not this still truer of our souls 
 than of our bodies? For when are they out of 
 their infancy? when can they be said to stand I
 
 294 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Yet, till they can, how much do they need a strong 
 hand to uphold them ! 
 
 Alas for the exalted of the earth, that oversight 
 is oversight ! 
 
 Many a man has lost being a great man by 
 splitting into two middling ones. Atone yourself 
 to the best of your power ; and then Christ will 
 atone for you. 
 
 Be what you are. This is the first step toward 
 becoming better than you are. u. 
 
 Age seems to take away the power of acting a 
 character, even from those who have done so the 
 most successfully during the main part of their 
 lives. The real man will appear, at first fitfully, 
 and then predominantly. Time spares the chis- 
 seled beauty of stone and marble, but makes sad 
 havock in plaster and stucco. /u. 
 
 The truth of this remark has been especially 
 evinced in France, owing to the prevalent artificial- 
 nessofthe French character. Hence the want of 
 dignity in old age, noticed above (p. 216). Of 
 nuns.' too this deficiency has been must conspicuous 
 upon the throne of the Grand Monarque, even 
 down to the present times. In this respect at 
 Bonaparte was a thorough Frenchman. Huge 
 • i rath other in his life so rapidly,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 295 
 
 that he lived through years in months; and 
 adversity tore off the mask from him, which age 
 cracks and splits in others. 
 
 We have the heavenly assurance that the path 
 of the just is to shine more and more unto the per- 
 fect day. But this blessed truth involves its 
 opposite, that the path of the wicked must grow 
 darker and darker unto the total night . . . unless 
 he give heed to the voice which calls him out of 
 his darkness, and turn to the light which is ever 
 striving to illumine it. u. 
 
 Self-depreciation is not humility, though oftenmis- 
 taken for it. Its source is oftener mortifiedpride. a. 
 
 The corruption and perversity of the world, 
 which should be our strongest stimulants to do what 
 we can to remove and correct them, are often 
 pleaded by the religious as excuses for withdrawing 
 from the world and doing nothing. How unlike 
 is this to the example of Him, who concluded all 
 under sin, that He might have mercy upon all, 
 that He might take their sinful nature upon Him, 
 to purify it from its sinfulness ! a. 
 
 How oft the heart, when wrapt in passion's arms, 
 
 . by the tumult stunned, or conscience-wounded, 
 Or deafened with the trumpet-tongued alarms 
 The victim's selfdevotedness has Bounded I 
 
 What then remains? a gust of half •enjoyments, 
 That, twisting memory to a rail 
 Prepares for age thai Baddest of employments, 
 A desperate endeavour to forget-
 
 296 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Help, help us, Spirit of Good ! and, hither gliding, 
 
 Bring, on the wings of Jesus intercession, 
 
 The firy sword o'er Eden's tree presiding, 
 
 To guard our tempted fancies from transgression. 
 
 The devils, we are told, believe and tremble. 
 Our part is to believe and love. But it is hard to 
 convince people that nothing short of this can be 
 true Christian faith. So, because they are some- 
 times terrified by the thought of God, they fancy 
 they believe, though their hearts are far away from 
 Him. a. 
 
 At the end of a hot summer, the children in the 
 streets look almost as pale and parcht as the grass 
 in the fields : and every object one sees may sug- 
 gest profitable meditations on the incapacity of all 
 things earthly, be they human, animal, or vege- 
 table, to support unmixt, uninterrupted sunshine 
 ...a truth which the sands of Africa teach as 
 demonstratively, as the Polar ice teaches the 
 converse. u. 
 
 The story of Amphion sets forth how, whatever 
 we may have to build, be it a house, a city, or a 
 church, the most powerful of all powers that we 
 can employ in building it, is harmony and love. 
 Only tlie love must be of a genuine, lasting kind, 
 nol a spirit of weak compromise, sacrificing prin- 
 ciple to expedients, and abandoning truths for the 
 sake of tying a loveknot of errours, but strong
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 297 
 
 from being in unison with what alone is true and 
 lasting, the will and word of God. Else the 
 bricks will fall out, as quickly as they have fallen 
 in. u. 
 
 Philosophy cannot raise the bulk of mankind up 
 to her level : therefore, if she is to become popular, 
 she must descend to theirs. This she cannot do 
 without a twofold grave injury. She will debase 
 herself, and will puff up her disciples. She will 
 no longer dwell on high, beside the primal sources 
 of truth, uttering her voice from thence, pouring 
 the streams of wisdom among the masses of man- 
 kind. She will come down, and set up a company 
 to supply their houses with water at a cheap rate. 
 Whereupon ensues the blessing of competition be- 
 tween rival Philosophies, each striving to be more 
 popular, that is, more superficial than the others. 
 In such a state of things, it is almost fortunate if 
 the name of Philosophy be usurpt by Science, 
 which, as dealing with outward things, may with 
 less degradation be adapted to material w u nts, and 
 from which it is easier to draw practical results, 
 without holding deep communings with primary 
 principles. 
 
 There is only one way in which Philosophy can 
 truly become popular, that which Socrates tried, 
 and which centuries after was perfected in the 
 Gospel, — that which tells men of their divine origin 
 and destiny, of their heavenly duties and calling. 
 This comes home to men's hearts and bosoms, and,
 
 298 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 instead of puffing them up, humbles them. But 
 to be efficient, this should flow down straight from 
 a higher sphere. Even in its Socratic form, it was 
 supported by those higher principles, which we 
 find set forth with such power and beauty by 
 Plato. In Christian Philosophy on the other 
 hand, the ladder has come down from heaven, and 
 the angels are continually descending and ascend- 
 ing along it. Were this heavenly ladder with- 
 drawn or cut off, our Philosophy, — that part of 
 it which sallied beyond the pale of empirical 
 Psychology and formal Logic, — would become mere 
 vulgar gossip about Expediency, Utility, and the 
 various other nostrums for diluting and medicating 
 evil until it turns into good. u. 
 
 In the lower realms of Nature, all things are 
 subject to uniform, unvarying, calculable laws. To 
 tlK'Si.- laws they submit with unswerving obedience; 
 so that with regard to the heavenly bodies we can 
 tell what has been thousands of years ago, and 
 what will he thousands of years hence, with the 
 nicest precision. As we enter into the regions of 
 Lilt-, we seem also to enter into the regions of 
 Chance. We can no longer predicate with the 
 Bame confidence concerning individuals, but are 
 obliged to limit our conclusions to genera and 
 BpecieB. Still there is a universal order, a mani- 
 I sequence of cause and effect, a prevailing 
 congruity and harmony, until we mount up to 
 man. Bui when we make man the object of our
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 299 
 
 observations and speculations, whether as he exists 
 in the present world, or as he is set before us in 
 the records of history, inconsistencies, incongruities, 
 contradictions are so common, that we rather won- 
 der when we find an instance of strict consistency, 
 of undeviating conformity to any law or principle. 
 Disorder at first sight seems the only order, dis- 
 cord the only harmony. Yet we may not doubt 
 that here also there is an order and a harmony, 
 working itself out, although our faculties are not 
 capable of apprehending it, and though the cal- 
 culus has hitherto transcended our powers. At all 
 events, to adopt the image used by Bacon in a 
 passage quoted above (p. 39), if we hear little else 
 than a dissonant screeching of multitudinous noises 
 now, which only blend in the distance into a roar 
 like that of the raging sea, it behoves us to hold 
 fast to the assurance that this is the necessary pro- 
 cess whereby the instruments are to be tuned for 
 the heavenly consort. Though Chaos may only 
 have been driven out of a part of his empire as 
 yet, that empire is undergoing a perpetual cur- 
 tailment ; and in the end he will be cast out of the 
 intellectual and moral and spiritual world, as 
 entirely as out of the material. u. 
 
 It would be very strange, unless inconsistencies 
 and contradictions were thus common in the his- 
 tory of mankind, that the operation of Mathema- 
 tical Science, — emanating as it does wholly from 
 the Reason, and incapable of moving a step except
 
 300 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 so far as it is supported by the laws of the Rea- 
 son, — should have been, both in England and 
 France, to undermine the empire of the power from 
 which it proceeds, and which alone can render it 
 stable and certain. Such however has been the 
 fact; and it has been brought about in divers 
 ways. 
 
 Attempts were made to subject moral and spi- 
 ritual truths to the selfsame processes, which were 
 found to hold good in the material world, but 
 against which they revolted as incompatible with 
 their free nature. Then that which would not 
 submit to the same strict logical formules, was 
 treated as an outcast from the domain of Reason, 
 and handed over to the empirical Understanding, 
 which judges of expediency, and utility, and the 
 adaptation of means to ends. Sometimes too this 
 faculty, which at best is only the prime minister 
 of Reason, its Maire du Palais, was confounded 
 with and supplanted it. 
 
 Hence the name itself grew to be abused and 
 wholly misapplied. A man who fashions his con- 
 duct so as to fit all the windings of the world, and 
 who moreover has the snowball's talent of gather- 
 ing increase at every step, is called a very reason- 
 able man. He on the other hand, who devotes 
 himself to the service of some idea breathed into 
 him by the Reason, and who in his zeal for this 
 forgets to make friends with the Mammon of Un- 
 righteousness, — he who desires and demands that 
 the hearts and minds of his neighbours should be
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 301 
 
 brought into conformity to the supreme laws of the 
 Reason, and that the authority of these laws should 
 be recognised in the councils of nations, — is by all 
 accounted most unreasonable, and by many pitied 
 as half mad. 
 
 It may be that this was the natural, and for a 
 time irrepressible consecmence, when Mathematics 
 enlisted among the retainers of Commerce, and 
 when the abstractions of Geometry, being employed 
 among the principles of mechanical construction, 
 could thus be turned to account, and were there- 
 fore eagerly embraced for purposes of trade. Pro- 
 fitable Science cast unprofitable Science into the 
 background : she was ashamed of her poorer sister, 
 and denied her. The multitude, the half-thinking, 
 half-taught multitude have always been idolatrous. 
 In order to be roused out of their inert torpour, 
 they require some visible, tangible effigy of that 
 which cannot be seen or toucht. Thus the same 
 perverseness, which led men to worship the creature 
 instead of the Creator, led them also to set up 
 Utility as the foundation of Morality, and to 
 substitute the occasional rules and the variable 
 maxims of the Understanding for the eternal laws 
 and principles of the Reason. u. 
 
 We ask, what is the use of a thing? Our fore- 
 lathers askt, what is it good for? They saw far 
 beyond us. A thing may seem, and even to a 
 certain extent be useful, without being good : it
 
 302 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 cannot be good, without being useful. The two 
 qualities do indeed always coincide in the end: 
 but the worth of a criterion is to be simple, plain, 
 and as nearly certain as may be. Now that 
 which a man in a sound and calm mind sincerely 
 deems good, always is so : that which he may 
 deem useful, may often be mischievous, nay, I 
 believe, mostly will be so, unless some reference 
 to good be introduced into the solution of the 
 problem. For no mind ever sailed steadily, 
 without moral principle to ballast and right it. 
 
 Besides, when you have ascertained what is 
 good, you are already at the goal ; to which 
 Utility will only lead you by a long and devious 
 circuit, where at every step you risk losing your 
 way. You may abuse and misuse : you cannot 
 ungood. u. 
 
 So far is the calculation of consequences from 
 being an infallible, universal criterion of Duty, that 
 it never can be so in any instance. Only when 
 the voice of Duty is silent, or when it has already 
 spoken, may we allowably think of the conse- 
 quences of a particular action, and calculate how 
 far it is likely to fulfill what Duty has enjoined, 
 either by its general laws, or by a specific edict 
 on this occasion. But Duty is above all conse- 
 quences, and often, at a crisis of difficulty, com- 
 inands us to throw them overboard. Fiat Justitia ; 
 pereai Sfwidiu. It commands us to look neither 
 '" the right, nor to the left, but straight onward.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 303 
 
 Hence every signal act of Duty is altogether an 
 act of Faith. It is performed in the assurance 
 that God will take care of the consequences, and 
 will so order the course of the world, that, what- 
 ever the immediate results may be, His word 
 shall not return to him empty. u. 
 
 It is much easier to think right without doing 
 right, than to do right without thinking right. Just 
 thoughts may, and wofully often do fail of produc- 
 ing just deeds ; but just deeds are sure to beget 
 just thoughts. For, when the heart is pure and 
 straight, there is hardly anything which can mis- 
 lead the understanding in matters of immediate 
 personal concernment. But the clearest under- 
 standing can do little in purifying an impure heart, 
 the strongest little in straightening a crooked one. 
 You cannot reason or talk an Augean stable into 
 cleanliness. A single day's work would make 
 more progress in such a task than a century's 
 words. 
 
 Thus our Lord's blessing on knowledge is only 
 conditional : Jf ye know these things, happy are 
 ye if ye do them (John xiii. 17). But to action 
 His promise is full and certain : //' any man ivill 
 do His will, //' shall know of the doctrine, /'■/ni/or 
 it is of God. John vii. 17. u. 
 
 One ofthe saddest things about human nature is, 
 that a man may guide others in the path of life,
 
 304 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 without walking in it himself ; that he may be a 
 pilot, and yet a castaway. u. 
 
 The original principle of lots is a reliance on the 
 immediate, ever-present, all-ruling providence of 
 God, and on His interposition to direct man's 
 judgement, when it is at a fault. The same was 
 the principle of trials by ordeal. But here, as in 
 so many other cases, the practice long outlasted 
 the principle which had prompted it. Although 
 the soul fled ages ago, the body still cumbers the 
 ground, and poisons the air. Duels, in which a 
 point of honour is allowed to sanction revenge and 
 murder, have taken the place of the ancient judi- 
 cial combats ; and, after losing the belief which in 
 some measure justified the religious lotteries of our 
 ancestors, we betook ourselves to mercenary lot- 
 teries in their stead. The motive was no longer 
 to obtain justice, but to obtain money, — the prin- 
 ciple, confidence, not in all-seeing, all-regulating 
 Wisdom, but in blind, all-confounding Chance, u. 
 
 The greatesl truths are the simplest: and so are 
 the greatest men. u. 
 
 There are some things in which we may well 
 envy the members of the Church of Rome, — in 
 nothing mon than in the reverence which they 
 feel for whatever has been consecrated to the 
 service of their religion. It may he, that they 
 often confound tin' Bign with the thing signified,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 305 
 
 and merge the truth in the symbol. We on the 
 other hand, in our eagerness to get rid of the 
 signs, have not been careful enough to preserve 
 the things signified. We have sometimes hurt 
 the truth, in stripping off the symbols it was 
 clothed in. 
 
 For instance, they can allow their churches to 
 stand open all day long ; and the reverence felt 
 by the whole people for the house of God is 
 their pledge that nobody will dare to rob or 
 injure it. The want of such a reverence in 
 England is perhaps in the main an offset from 
 that superstitious hatred of superstition and ido- 
 latry which was so prevalent among the Puri- 
 tans, through which they would drag the Com- 
 munion-table into the middle of the nave, and 
 turn it into a seat for the lowest part of the congre- 
 gation, and would seem almost to have fancied 
 that, because God has no regard for earthly 
 beauty or splendour, He must needs look with 
 special favour on meanness and filth, — that, as 
 He does not respect what man respects, He must 
 respect what man is offended by. The multitude 
 of our sects too, which, if they agree in little else, 
 are nearly unanimous in their hostility to the 
 National Church, has done much to impair the 
 reverence for her buildings ; more especially since 
 the practical exclusion of the lower orders from 
 the ministry, while almost all the functions con- 
 nected with religion are exorcised by the clergy 
 alone, has in a manner driven those among the 
 
 VOL. II. x
 
 306 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 lower orders, who have felt a calling to labour 
 in the work of the Gospel, into societies where 
 they could find a field for their activity and zeal. 
 
 In fact this prejudice, as it is termed, has 
 shared the same fate with our other prejudices, 
 — that is, with those sentiments, whether evil 
 or good, the main source of which lies in the 
 affections, — and has been trampled under foot 
 and crusht by the tyrannous despotism of the 
 Understanding. Not that the Understanding has 
 emancipated us from prejudices. Liable as it is 
 to en 1 , even more so perhaps than any of our 
 other faculties, — or at all events more self-satisfied 
 and obstinate in its errours, — our prejudices have 
 only lost what was kindly and pleasing about 
 them, and have become more inveterate, and con- 
 sequently more hurtful ; because the bias and 
 warp which the Understanding receives, is now 
 caused solely by selfishness and self-will ; whereby 
 it Incomes more prone than ever to look askance on 
 all things connected with the ideal and imaginative, 
 the heroic and religious parts of our nature. 
 
 How fraught with errour and mischief our pre- 
 sent systems of Moral Philosophy are, may be 
 perceived from the tone of feeling prevalent with 
 regard to such matters, even among the intelligent 
 and the young. 1 was at a party the other day, 
 where the recent act of sacrilege in King's College 
 Chapel (in 181G) became the subject of conver- 
 Bation. An opinion was cxprcst, that, if a man 
 must rob, it is better he should rob a church
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 307 
 
 than a dwelling-house. I lookt on this as nothing 
 else than one of those paradoxes, which ingenious 
 men are ever starting, whether for the sake of 
 saying something strange, or to provoke a discus- 
 sion ; and for which therefore their momentariness 
 and unpremeditatedness are mostly a sufficient 
 excuse. Still, deeming it a rash and dangerous 
 intrusion on holy ground, I took up my parable 
 against it. To my astonishment I found that 
 the opinion of every person present was opposed 
 to mine. It was their deliberate conviction, rest- 
 ing, they conceived, on grounds of the soundest 
 philosophy, that to rob a church is better than 
 to rob a dwelling-house. The argument on which 
 this conviction was based, may easily be guest : 
 for of course there was but one, — on which all 
 rang the changes, — that a man who robs a dwell- 
 ing-house runs a risk of being led to commit 
 murder ; whereas robbing a church is only robbing 
 a church. Only robbing a church ! Let us look, 
 what is the real nature and tendency of the act, 
 which is thus puft aside by the help of this little 
 word, only. 
 
 In doing so I will waive all such considerations 
 as are drawn mainly from the feelings. I will 
 not insist on the cowardliness of plundering what 
 has been left without defense, or on the tivacher- 
 ousness of violating that confidence in the pr 
 of the people, which leaves our churches unguarded; 
 although both these considerations add a m 
 force to the legal enactments against horse-stealing.
 
 308 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and would justify them, if they wanted any 
 further justification than their ohvious necessity. 
 Nor will I urge the moral turpitude of being 
 utterly destitute of that reverence, which every 
 Christian, without disparagement to his intellectual 
 freedom, may reasonably be expected to entertain 
 for objects sanctified by the holy uses they are 
 devoted to. Notwithstanding my persuasion of 
 the inherent wisdom of our moral affections, I 
 will pass by all the arguments with which they 
 would furnish me, and will agree to look at the 
 question merely as a matter of policy, but of policy 
 on the highest and widest scale, in the assurance 
 that, if the affairs of men are indeed ordered and 
 directed by an All-wise Providence, the paths of 
 moral duty and of political expediency will always 
 be found to be one and the same. 
 
 If however we are to test the evil of an act, 
 not by that which lies in it, and which it essen- 
 tially involves, — by the outrage it commits against 
 our moral feelings, by its violation of the laws 
 of the Conscience, — but by its consequences ; at 
 all events w r e should look at those consequences 
 which spring from it naturally and necessarily, not 
 at those which have no necessary, though they 
 may have an accidental and occasional connexion 
 v. ith it, like that of murder with robbery in a 
 dwelling-house. Now it is an axiom of all civil 
 wisdom, which, confirmed as it is by the experience 
 of ages, and by the testimony of every sage states- 
 man and philosopher, it would be a waste of time
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 309 
 
 here to establish by argument, that, without re- 
 ligion, no civil society can subsist. That is to 
 say, unless the great mass of a nation are united 
 by some one predominant feeling, which blends 
 and harmonizes the diversities of individual cha- 
 racter, represses and combines the waywardnesses 
 of individual wills, and forms a centre, around 
 which all their deeper feelings may cluster and 
 coalesce, no nation can continue for a succession of 
 generations as one body corporate, or a single whole. 
 There may indeed be many diversities, and even 
 conflicting repugnances among sects ; but there must 
 be a religious feeling spreading through the great 
 body of the people ; and that religious feeling must 
 in the main be one and the same : it must have the 
 same groundwork of faith, the same objects of 
 reverence and fear and love : else the nation will 
 merely be a combination of discordant units, that 
 will have no hearty, lasting bond of union, and 
 may split into atoms at any chance blow. A 
 proof of this is supplied by the dismal condition 
 of Ireland : for, though the opposite forms of Chris- 
 tianity which have prevailed there, have so much 
 in common, that, notwithstanding the further in- 
 stance of Germany to the contrary, one cannot 
 pronounce it impossible for them to coalesce into 
 a national unity, the effect hitherto has only been 
 endless contention and strife. Thercfuiv whatever 
 violates or shakes the religious li 'lings of a nation, 
 is an assault on the very foundations of its exis- 
 tence. But that every act of sacrilege, unless it
 
 310 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 be visited by general abhorrence, must weaken 
 and sap these religious feelings, will hardly be 
 questioned. Wherever such feelings exist, an act 
 of sacrilege must needs be regarded as an outrage 
 against everything sacred, and must be reprobated 
 and punisht as such. Although it is not directly 
 an outrage against human life, it is one against that 
 which gives human life its highest dignity and 
 preciousness, that without which human life would 
 be worth little more than the life of other animals. 
 Hence, of all crimes, it is the most injurious to 
 the highest interests of the nation. 
 
 Besides, should sacrilege become at all common, 
 — which may God in mercy to our country avert ! 
 — it would be necessary to station a watchman 
 or sentry to guard all our churches, or else to 
 remove everything valuable contained in them, as 
 soon as the congregation disperst. And what a 
 brand of ignominy would it be to us among the 
 nations of Christendom, that we are such inborn, 
 ingrained thieves, as to be unable to restrain 
 the itching of our hands even in the holy temples 
 of our religion ! What a confession of shame 
 wou] I it be, that, in the consciousness of this in- 
 curable disease, we hud been forced to legislate 
 for the sake of checking the increase of this our 
 bosom sin, and had taken a lesson from the pot- 
 houses, to which the refuse of the people resort, 
 am] where the knives and forks arc chained to 
 the table ! that we should be unable to trust our- 
 ■ pul the slightest trust in our own
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 311 
 
 honesty, even when religion is superadded to the 
 ordinary motives for preserving it ! Yet, if we 
 have learnt any lesson from our own history, and 
 from that of the world, it should be, that the 
 most precious part of a nation's possessions, no 
 less than of an individual's, is its character: where- 
 fore he who damages that character, is guilty of 
 treason against his country. The only protection 
 which a nation, without signing its own shame- 
 warrant, can grant to the altars of its religion, 
 is by inflicting the severest punishment on those 
 who dare to violate them. They ought to be 
 their own potent safeguard. A dwelling-house 
 is protected by its inmates ; and so ought a church 
 to be protected by the indwelling of the Spirit 
 whom the eye of Faith beholds there. 
 
 Moreover burglaries naturally work out their 
 own remedy. Householders become more vigilant; 
 the police is improved ; the law is strengthened. 
 But, when Faith is shaken, no outward force can 
 setit up againas firmly as before ; and that which 
 rests on it falls to the ground. The outrages com- 
 mitted against the visible building of the church, 
 unless they are arrested, will also prove hurtful 
 to the spiritual Church of Christ, IS'im- tenths 
 in every nation are unable to distinguish between 
 an object and its attributes, between an idea and 
 the form in which it has usually been manifested, 
 and the associations with which it has ever, and 
 to all appearance indigsolubly, been connected. 
 Such abstraction, even in cultivated minds, requires
 
 312 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 much watchfulness and attention. The hulk of 
 mankind will not easily understand, how He, 
 whose house may be plundered with impunity, 
 can and ought to be the object of universal 
 reverence, how He can be the Almighty. 
 
 ] will not speak of the moral corruption which 
 is sure to ensue from the decay of religion in a 
 people. Among the higher and educated classes, 
 we may have divers specious substitutes, in the 
 cultivation of reason and the moral affections, the 
 law of honour and of opinion, which may preserve 
 a decorous exterior of life, even after the primal 
 source of all good in the heart is dried up. But 
 for the lower orders Religion is the only guardian 
 and guide, that can preserve them from being 
 swept along by blind delusions, and the cravings 
 of unsatisfied appetites and passions. If they do 
 not fear God, they will not fear King, or Parlia- 
 ment, or Laws. Whatever does not rest on a 
 heavenly foundation will be overthrown. 
 
 Thus, even if a burglary were necessarily to be 
 attended by murder, it would be a less destruc- 
 tive crime to society than sacrilege. Human life 
 Bhould indeed be sacred, on account of the divine 
 Bpirii enshrined in it. Take away that spirit; 
 ami it is worth little more than that of any other 
 animal. For the sake of any moral principle, of 
 any divine truth, it maybe sacrificed, and ought 
 t" be readily. He who dies willingly in such a 
 i nut a suicide, but a martyr. To deem 
 otherwise \& propter vitam vivendi perdere causae. 
 
 u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 313 
 
 So diseased are the appetites of those who live 
 in what is called the fashionable world, that they 
 mostly account Sunday a very dull day, which, 
 with the help of a longer morning sleep, and of an 
 evening nap, and of the Parks, and of the Zoologi- 
 cal Gardens, and of looking at their neighbours 
 dresses, and at their own, they contrive, as it only 
 comes once a week, to get through. Yet of all 
 days it is the one on which our highest faculties 
 ought to be employed the most vigorously, and 
 to find the deepest, most absorbing interest. 
 
 With somewhat of the same feeling do the 
 lovers of excitement regard a state of peace. It 
 is so stupid ; there 's no news : no towns have 
 been stormed, no battles fought. We want a little 
 bloodshed, to colour and flavour our lives and our 
 newspaper. How dull must it have been at Rome 
 when the temple of Janus was shut ! The Ro- 
 mans however Avere a lucky people ; for that 
 mishap seldom befell them. 
 
 It is sad, that, when so many wars are going on 
 unceasingly in all parts of the earth, — the war 
 waged by the mind of man against the powers 
 of Nature in the fulfilment of his mission to subdue 
 them, — the war of Light against Darkness, of Truth 
 against Ignorance and Errour, — the war of Good 
 against Evil, in all its numerous tonus, political, 
 social, and personal, — it is very sad that we should 
 feel little interest in any form, except that which to 
 the well-being of mankind i> commonly the least 
 important. r
 
 314 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 "When I hear or read the vulgar abuse, which 
 is poured out if ever a monk or a convent is 
 mentioned, I am reminded of what the Egyptian 
 king said to the Israelites : Ye are idle, ye are 
 idle : therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice 
 to the Lord. To those who know not God, the 
 worship of God is idleness. u. 
 
 Idolatry may be a child of the Imagination ; 
 but it is a child that has forgotten its parent. 
 Idolatry is the worship of the visible. It mistakes 
 forms for substances, symbols for realities. It is 
 bodily sight, and mental blindness, — a doting on 
 the outward, occasioned by the want of the poetic 
 faculty. So that Religion has suffered its most 
 grievous injury, not from too much imagination, 
 but from too little. 
 
 The bulk of mankind feel the reality of 
 this world, but have little or no feeling for the 
 reality of the next world. They who, through 
 affliction or some other special cause, have had 
 their hearts withdrawn from the world for a while, 
 and been living in closer communion with God, 
 will sometimes almost cease to feel the reality of 
 this world, and will live mainly in the next. The 
 grand difficulty is to feel the reality of both, so 
 as to give each its due place in our thoughts and 
 feelings, to keep our mind's eye and our heart's 
 vet lixt on the Land of Promise, without
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 315 
 
 looking away from the road along which we are 
 to travel toward it. a. 
 
 , To judge of Christianity from the lives of or- 
 dinary, nominal Christians is about as just as it 
 would be to judge of tropic fruits and flowers 
 from the produce which the same plants might 
 bring forth in Iceland. a. 
 
 The statue of Memnon poured out its song of 
 joy, when the rays of the morning sun fell upon 
 it : and thus, when the rays of divine Truth first 
 fall on a human soul, it is scarcely possible that 
 something like heavenly music should not issue 
 from its depths. The statue however was of 
 stone : no living voice was awakened in it : the 
 sounds melted and floated away. Alas that the 
 heavenly music drawn from the heart of man 
 should often be no less fleeting than the song of 
 Memnon's statue ! u. 
 
 Seeing is believing, says the proverb ; and most 
 thoroughly is it verified by mankind from child- 
 hood upward. Though, of all our senses, the eyes 
 are the most easily deceived, we believe them in 
 preference to any other evidence. We believe 
 them against all other testimony, and often, like 
 Thomas, will not believe without aeeing. Hence 
 the peculiar force of the blessing bestowed on those 
 who do not see, and yel believe. 
 
 Faith, the Scripture tells us, comes by hear
 
 316 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 For faith is an assurance concerning things which 
 are not seen, concerning things which are beyond 
 the power of sight, nay, in the highest sense, con- 
 cerning Him whom no man hath seen, and whom 
 His Son, having dwelt in His bosom, has declared 
 to us. Its primary condition is itself an act of 
 faith in a person, in him who speaks to us; 
 whereas seeing is a mere act of sense. u. 
 
 All knowledge, of whatsoever kind, must have 
 a twofold groundwork of faith, — one subjectively, 
 in our own faculties, and the laws which govern 
 them, — the other objectively, in the matter sub- 
 mitted to our observations. We must believe in 
 the being who knows, and in that which is known : 
 knowledge is the copula of these two acts. Even 
 Scepticism must have the former. Its misfortune 
 and blunder is, that it will keep standing on one 
 leg, and so can never get a firm footing. We 
 must stand on both, before we can walk, although 
 the former act is often the more difficult. u. 
 
 Nobody can be responsible for his faith. For 
 how can any one help believing what his 
 understanding tells him is true ? 
 
 But all teachers of Christianity have believed 
 the contrary. 
 
 Thai is, localise they were all insolent andover- 
 bearing, ami wanted to dogmatize and tyrannize 
 over mankind. Now however that people are grown 
 honester ami wiser, and love truth more, they will
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 317 
 
 no longer bow the knee to the monstrous absurd- 
 ities which priestcraft imposed on our poor blind 
 ancestors. 
 
 Bravo ! you have hit on the very way of proving 
 that a man's moral character has nothing to do 
 with his faith. Plato's of course had nothing. 
 
 "Why ! his vanity led him to indulge in all sorts 
 of visionary fancies. 
 
 Dominic's had nothing. 
 
 He was such a bloody ruffian, that he per- 
 suaded himself he might make people orthodox by 
 butchering them. 
 
 Becket's had nothing. 
 
 He believed whatever pampered his own 
 ambition, and that of the Church. 
 
 Luther's had nothing. 
 
 His temper was so uncontrolled, he believed what- 
 ever flattered his passions, especially his hatred of 
 the Pope. 
 
 Voltaire's had nothing; nor Rousseau's; nor 
 Pascal's ; nor Milton's ; nor Cowper's. All these 
 examples, — and thousands more might be added ; 
 indeed everybody whose heart we could read 
 would be a fresh one, — prove that what a man 
 believes is intimately connected with what he 
 is. His faith is shaped by his moral nature, 
 and shapes it. Pour the same liquid into a si mud 
 and a leaky vessel, into a pure and a tainted one, 
 will the contents of the vessels an hour after be 
 precisely the same ? 
 
 In fact the sophism I have been arguing against,
 
 318 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 — mere sophism in some, half sophism, half 
 blunder in others, — comes from the spawn of that 
 mother-sophism and mother-blunder, which would 
 deny man's moral responsibility altogether, on the 
 ground that his actions do not result from any 
 cause within the range of his power to determine 
 them one way or other, but are wholly the creatures 
 of the circumstances he is placed in, and follow the 
 impulses of those circumstances with the same 
 passive necessity, with which the limbs of a 
 puppet are moved by its wires. u. 
 
 The foundation of domestic happiness is faith 
 in the virtue of woman. The foundation of political 
 happiness is faith in the integrity of man. The 
 foundation of all happiness, temporal and eternal, 
 is faith in the goodness, the righteousness, the 
 mercy, and the love of God. u. 
 
 A loving spirit finds it hard to recognise the 
 duty of preferring truth to love, — or rather of 
 rising above human love, with its shortsighted 
 dread of causing present suffering, and looking 
 at tilings in God's light, who sees the end from 
 the beginning, and allows His children to suffer, 
 when it is to work out their final good. Above 
 all is the mind that has been renewed with 
 the spirit of self-sacrifice, tempted to overlook the 
 truth, when, by giving up its own ease, it can 
 for the moment lessen the sufferings of another. 
 Y't, for our friend's sake, self ought to be
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 319 
 
 renounced, in its denials as well as its indul- 
 gences. It should be altogether forgotten ; and in 
 thinking what we are to do for our friend, we are 
 not to look merely, or mainly, at the manner -in 
 which his feelings will be affected at the moment, 
 but to consider what will on the whole and ulti- 
 mately be best for him, so far as our judgement 
 can ascertain it. a. 
 
 To suppress the truth may now and then be our 
 duty to others : not to utter a falsehood must 
 always be our duty to ourselves. a. 
 
 A teacher is a kind of intellectual midwife. 
 Many of them too discharge their office after the 
 fashion enjoined on the Hebrew midwives : if they 
 have a son to bring into the world, they kill him ; 
 if a daughter, they let her live. Strength is checkt ; 
 boldness is curbed ; sharpness is blunted ; quick- 
 ness is clogged ; highth is curtailed and deprest ; 
 elasticity is dampt and trodden down ; early 
 bloom is nipt : feebleness gives little trouble, and 
 excites no fears ; so it is let alone. 
 
 How then does Genius ever contrive to escape 
 and gain ;i footingon this earth of ours. 
 
 The birth of Minerva may shew us the way : it 
 springs forth in Full armour. As the midwives 
 said to Pharaoh, // is lively, and is delivered ere 
 the midwives come in, v.
 
 320 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Homebred wits are like home-made wines, sweet, 
 luscious, spiritless, without body, and ill to keep. u. 
 
 If a boy loves reading, reward him with a play- 
 thing ; if he loves sports, with a book. You may 
 easily lead him to value a present made thus, and 
 to shew that he values it by using it. 
 
 The tasks set to children should be moderate. 
 Over-exertion is hurtful both physically and intel- 
 lectually, and even morally. But it is of the 
 utmost importance that they should be made to 
 fulfill all their tasks correctly and punctually. 
 This will train them for an exact, conscientious 
 discharge of their duties in after life. u. 
 
 A great step is gained, when a child has leamt 
 that there is no necessary connexion between 
 liking a thing and doing it. a. 
 
 By directing a child's attention to a fault, and 
 thus giving it a local habitation and a name, you 
 may often fix it in him more firmly ; when, by 
 drawing his thoughts and affections to other things, 
 and seeking to foster an opposite grace, you would 
 be much more likely to subdue it. In like manner 
 a jealous disposition is often strengthened, when 
 notice is taken of it; while the endeavour to 
 cherish ;i pint of love would do much toward 
 casting it out. a.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 321 
 
 I saw two oaks standing side by side. The 
 one was already clothed in tender green leaves ; 
 the other was still in its wintry bareness, shewing 
 few signs of reviving life. Whence arose this? 
 The influences of the sun and air and sky must 
 have been the same on both trees : their nearness 
 seemed to bespeak a like soil : no outward cause 
 was apparent to account for the difference. It 
 must therefore have been something within, some- 
 thing in their internal structure and organization. 
 But wait a while : in a month or two both the 
 trees will perhaps be equally rich in their summer 
 foliage. Nay, that which is slowest in unfolding 
 its leaves, may then be the most vigorous and 
 luxuriant. 
 
 So is it often with children in the same family, 
 brought up under the same influences : while one 
 grows and advances daily under them, another 
 may seem to stand still. But after a time there is 
 a change ; and he that was last may even become 
 first, and the first last. 
 
 So too is it with God's spiritual children. Not 
 according to outward calculations, but after the 
 working of His grace, is their inward life manifested : 
 often the hidden growth is unseen till the season 
 is far advanced ; and then it bursts forth in double 
 beauty and power. ». 
 
 You desire to educate citizens ; therefore govern 
 them by law, not by will. What is individual 
 must be reared in the quiet privacy of home. The 
 
 VOL. II. v
 
 322 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 disregard of this distinction occasions much of the 
 outcry of the pious against schools. Religion 
 must not be made an engine of discipline. 
 
 A literal translation is better than a loose one ; 
 just as a cast from a fine statue is better than an imi- 
 tation of it. For copies, whether of words or things, 
 must be valuable in proportion to their exactness. 
 In idioms alone, as a friend remarks to me, the 
 literal rendering cannot be the right one. 
 
 Hence the difficulty of translations, regarded as 
 works of art, varies in proportion as the books 
 translated are more or less idiomatic ; for in 
 rendering idioms one can seldom find an equivalent, 
 which preserves all the point and grace of the origi- 
 nal. Hence do the best French books lose so much 
 by being transfused into another language : a large 
 part of the spirit evaporates in the process. To 
 my own mind, after a good deal of experience in 
 this line, no writer of prose has seemed so untrans- 
 latable as Goethe. In dealing with others, one may 
 often fancy that one has exprest their meaning as 
 fully, as clearly, and as forcibly, as they have in 
 their own tongue. But I have hardly ever been 
 able to satisfy myself with a single sentence ren- 
 dered from Goethe. There has always seemed to 
 be some peculiar aptness in his words, which I 
 have been unable t<» represent. The same dissatis- 
 faction, I should think, must perpetually weigh 
 U] such as attempt to translate Plato; whom
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 323 
 
 Goethe also resembles in this, that the unapproach- 
 able beauty of his prose does not strike us so 
 much, until we attain to this practical conviction 
 how inimitable it is. Richter presents difficulties 
 to a translates because he exercises such a bound- 
 less liberty in coining new words, whereas we are 
 under great restraint in this respect. In attempting 
 to render the German metaphysicians, we are con- 
 tinually impeded by the want of an equivalent 
 philosophical terminology. But Goethe seldom 
 coins words ; he uses few uncommon ones : his 
 difficulties arise from his felicity in the selection 
 and combination of common words. u. 
 
 Of all books the Bible loses least of its force 
 and dignity and beauty from being translated into 
 other languages, wherever the translation is not 
 erroneous. One version may indeed excel! an- 
 other, in that its diction may be more expressive, 
 or simpler, or more majestic : but in every version 
 the Bible contains the sublimest thoughts uttered 
 in plain and fitting words. It was written for the 
 whole world, not for any single nation or age ; and 
 though its thoughts are above common thoughts, 
 they are so as coming straight from the primal 
 Fountain of Truth, not as having been elaborated 
 and piled up by the workings of Abstraction and 
 Reflexion. 
 
 One reason why the translators of the Bible 
 have been more successful than others, is that its 
 language, in the earlier and larger half, belongs to
 
 324 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 that primitive period, when the native unity of 
 human thought and feeling was only beginning 
 to branch out into diversity and multiplicity, when 
 the chief objects of language were the elementary 
 features of outward nature, and of the heart and 
 mind, and when the reflective operations of the in- 
 tellect had as yet done little in bringing out those 
 differences and distinctions, which come forward 
 more and more as we advance further from the 
 centre, thereby diverging further from each other, 
 and by the aggregate of which nations as well as 
 individuals are severed. Owing to the same cause, 
 the language of the Bible has few of those untrans- 
 latable idiomatic expressions, which grow up and 
 multiply with the advance of social life and 
 thought. In the chief part of the New Testament 
 on the other hand, a like effect is produced by the 
 position of the writers. The language is of the 
 simplest elementary kind, both in regard to its 
 nomenclature and its structure, as is ever the case 
 with that of those who have no literary culture, 
 when they understand what they are talking 
 about, and do not strain after matters beyond the 
 reach of their slender powers of expression. More- 
 over, as the Greek original belongs to a degenerate 
 age of the language, and is tainted with many 
 exoticisms and other defects, while our Version 
 exhibits our language in its highest purity and 
 majesty, in this respect it has a great advantage. 
 
 But does not the language of Homer belong 
 to b nearly similar period? and lias any
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 325 
 
 writer been more disfigured and distorted by his 
 translaters ? 
 
 True ! The ground of the difference however is 
 plain. The translaters of Homer have allowed 
 themselves all manner of liberties in trying to 
 shape and fashion and dress him out anew after 
 the pattern of their own age, and of their own 
 individual tastes ; and against this he revolted, as 
 the statue of Apollo or of Hercules would against 
 being drest out in a coat and waistcoat. Whereas 
 the translaters of the Bible were induced by their 
 reverence for the sacred text to render it with the 
 most scrupulous fidelity. They were far more 
 studious of the matter, than of the manner ; and 
 there is no surer preservative against writing ill, 
 or more potent charm for writing well. Perhaps, 
 if other translations had been undertaken on 
 the same principle, and carried on in a some- 
 what similar reverential spirit, they would not 
 have dropt so often like a sheet of lead from the 
 press. 
 
 At the same time we are bound to acknowledge 
 it as an inestimable blessing, that our translation 
 of the Bible was made, before our language under- 
 went the various refining processes, by which it 
 was held to be carried to its perfection in the 
 reign of Queen Anne. For in those days the 
 reverence for the past had faded away ; even the 
 power of understanding it seemed well-nigh extinct. 
 Tate and Brady's Psalms shew that the Bible 
 would have been almost as much defaced and
 
 326 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 corrupted as the Iliad was by Pope ; though, as a 
 translater in verse is always constrained to assume 
 a certain latitude, there would have been less of 
 tinsel when the translation was in prose. 
 
 Yet the less artificial and conventional state of 
 our language in the age of Shakspeare was far 
 more congenial to that of the Bible. Hence, when 
 the task of revising our translation, for the sake 
 of correcting its numerous inaccuracies, and of 
 removing its obscurities, so far as they can 
 be removed, is undertaken, the utmost care 
 should be used to preserve its language and 
 phraseology. u. 
 
 Philology, in its highest sense, ought to be only 
 another name for Philosophy. Its aim should be 
 to seek after wisdom in the whole series of its 
 historical manifestations. As it is, the former 
 usually mumbles the husk, the other paws the 
 kernel. u. 
 
 Chaos is crude matter, without the formative 
 action of mind upon it. Hence its limits are 
 always varying, both in every individual man, 
 and in every nation and age. u. 
 
 A truism misapplied is the worst of sophisms. 
 
 One of the wonders of the world is the quantity 
 
 of idle, purposeless untruth, the lies which nobody 
 
 yet everybody tells, as it were from the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 327 
 
 mere love of lying, — or as though the bright form 
 and features of Truth could not be duly brought 
 out, except on a dark ground of falsehood. u. 
 
 Not a few Englishmen seem to travel abroad 
 with hardly any other purpose than that of finding 
 out grievances. Surely sucli people might just 
 as well stay at home : they would find quite 
 enough here. Coelurn, non animum, mutant qui 
 trans mare currunt. u. 
 
 The most venomous animals are reptiles. The 
 most spiteful among human beings rise no higher. 
 Reviewers should bear this in mind ; for the tribe 
 are fond of thinking that their special business is 
 to be as galling and malicious as they can. u. 
 
 Some persons think to make their way through 
 the difficulties of life, as Hannibal is said to have 
 done across the Alps, by pouring vinegar upon 
 them. Or they take a lesson from their house- 
 maids, who brighten the fire-irons by rubbing them 
 with something rough. u. 
 
 Would you touch a nettle without being stung 
 by it ? take hold of it stoutly. Do the same to 
 other annoyances ; and few things will ever annoy 
 you. u. 
 
 One is much less sensible of cold on a bright
 
 328 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 day, than on a cloudy. Thus the sunshine of 
 cheerfulness and hope will lighten every trouble, u. 
 
 Sudden resolutions, like the sudden rise of the 
 mercury in the barometer, indicate little else than 
 the changeableness of the weather. u. 
 
 In a controversy both parties will commonly go 
 too far. Would you have your adversary give up 
 his errour? be beforehand with him, and give up 
 yours. He will resist your arguments more stur- 
 dily than your example. Indeed, if he is generous, 
 you may fear his overrunning on the other side : 
 for nothing provokes retaliation, more than 
 concession does. u. 
 
 We have all been amused by the fable of the 
 Sun and the Wind, and readily acknowledge the 
 truth it inculcates, at least in that instance. But 
 do we practise what it teaches. We may almost 
 daily. The true way of conquering our neighbour 
 is not by violence, but by kindness. that 
 people would set about striving to conquer one 
 another in this way ! Then would a conqueror 
 be truly the most glorious, and the most blessed, 
 because the most beneficent of mankind. v. 
 
 When you meet a countryman after dusk, he 
 greets you, and wishes you Goodnight} and you 
 return his greeting, and call him Friend. It seems 
 as though ;i feeling of something like brotherhood
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 329 
 
 rose up in every heart, at the approach of the hour 
 when we are all to be gathered together beneath 
 the wings of Sleep. In this respect also is Twi- 
 light " studious to remove from sight Day's muta- 
 ble distinctions," as Wordsworth says of her in his 
 beautiful sonnet. All those distinctions Death 
 levels ; and so does Sleep. 
 
 But why should we wait for the departure of 
 daylight, to acknowledge our brotherhood? Rather 
 is it the dimness of our sight, the mists of our 
 prejudices and delusions, that separate and estrange 
 us. The light should scatter these, as spiritual 
 light does ; and it should be manifest, even out- 
 wardly, that, if we walk in the light, we have 
 fellowship one with another. u. 
 
 Flattery and detraction or evil-speaking are, as 
 the phrase is, the Scylla and Charybdis of the 
 tongue. Only they are set side by side : and few 
 tongues are content with falling into one of them. 
 Such as have once got into the jaws of either, keep 
 on running to and fro between them. Thev who 
 are too fairspoken before you, are likely to be 
 foulspoken behind you. If you would keep clear 
 of the one extreme, keep clear of both. The rule 
 is a very simple one: never find fault with any 
 body, except to himself; never praise anybody^ 
 except to others. c. 
 
 Personalities are often regarded as the zest, 
 but mostly are the bane of conversation. For
 
 330 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 experience seems to have ascertained, or at least 
 usage has determined, that personalities are always 
 spiced with more or less of malice. Hence it must 
 evidently be our duty to refrain from them, follow- 
 ing the example set before us by our great moral 
 poet: 
 
 I am not one who much or oft delight 
 To season my fireside with personal talk, 
 Of friends who live within an easy walk, 
 Or neighbours, daily, weekly, in my sight. 
 
 But surely you would not have mixt conver- 
 sation always settle into a discussion of abstract 
 topics. Commonly speaking, you might as well 
 feast your guests with straw- chips and saw-dust. 
 Often too it happens that, in proportion as the sub- 
 ject of conversation is more abstract, its tone be- 
 comes harsher and more dogmatical. And what 
 are women to do ? they whose thoughts always cling 
 to what is personal, and seldom mount into the 
 cold, vacant air of speculation, unless they have 
 something more solid to climb round. You must 
 admit that there would be a sad dearth of enter- 
 tainment and interest and life in conversation, 
 without something of anecdote and story. 
 
 Doubtless. But this is very different from per- 
 sonality. Conversation may have all that is val- 
 uable in it, and all that is lively and pleasant, 
 without anything that comes under the head of 
 personality. The house in which, above all others 
 1 have t^vcr been an inmate in, the life and the 
 spirit and the joy of conversation have been the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 331 
 
 most intense, is a house in which I hardly ever 
 heard an evil word uttered against any one. The 
 genial heart of cordial sympathy with which its 
 illustrious master sought out the good side in every 
 person and thing, and which has found an inade- 
 quate expression in his delightful Sketches of Persia, 
 seemed to communicate itself to all the members of 
 his family, and operated as a charm even upon his 
 visiters. For this reason was the pleasure so pure 
 and healthy and unmixt ; whereas spiteful thoughts, 
 although they may stimulate and gratify our 
 sicklier and more vicious tastes, always leave a 
 bitter relish behind. 
 
 Moreover, even in conversation whatever is most 
 vivid and brightest is the produce of the Imagi- 
 nation, — now and then, on fitting occasion, mani- 
 festing some of her grander powers, as Coleridge 
 seems to have done above other men, — but usually, 
 under a feeling of the incongruities and contra- 
 dictions of human nature, putting on the comic 
 mask of Humour. Now the Imagination is full 
 of kindness. She could not be what she is, 
 except through that sympathy with Nature and 
 man, which is rooted in love. All her appetites 
 are for good; all her aspirations are upward; all 
 her visions, — unless there be something morbid in 
 the feelings, or gloomy in past experience, to over- 
 cloud them, — are fair and hopeful. This is the 
 case in poetry : the deepest tragedy ought to leave 
 the assurance on our minds that, though sorrow 
 may endure for a nvjht, even for a long, long polar
 
 332 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 night, joy coineih in the morning. Nor is her work- 
 ing different in real life. Looking at men's actions 
 in conjunction with their characters, and -with the 
 circumstances whereby their characters have been 
 modified, she can always find something to say 
 for them ; or, if she cannot, she turns away from 
 so painful a spectacle. It is through want of 
 Imagination, through the inability to view persons 
 and things in their individuality and their relations, 
 that people betake themselves to exercising their 
 Understanding, which looks at objects in their in- 
 sulation, and pries into motives, without reference 
 to character, and rebukes and abuses what it can- 
 not reconcile with its own narrow rules, and can 
 see little in man but what is bad. Hence, to keep 
 itself in spirits, it would fain be witty, and smart, 
 and would make others smart. u. 
 
 What is one to believe of people ? One hears 
 so many contradictory stories about them. 
 
 Exercise your digestive functions : assimilate 
 the nutritive ; get rid of the deleterious. Believe 
 all the good you hear of your neighbour ; and forget 
 all the bad. u. 
 
 Sense must be very good indeed, to be as good 
 as good nonsense. u. 
 
 Who docs not think himself infallible ? Who 
 
 not think himself the only infallible person in 
 
 the world? Perhaps the desire to be delivered
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 333 
 
 from the tyranny of the pope within their own 
 breasts, or at least of that within the breasts of 
 their brethren, may have combined with the desire 
 of being delivered from the responsibility of exer- 
 cising their own judgement, in making people 
 readier to recognise and submit to the Pope on the 
 Seven Hills. At all events this desire has been a 
 main impelling motive with many of the converts, 
 who in various ages have gone back to the Church 
 of Rome. Vm 
 
 All sorrow ought to be Ileimweh, homesickness. 
 But then the home should be a real one, not a 
 hole we run to on finding our home closed against 
 US. u. 
 
 Humour is perhaps a sense of the ridiculous, 
 softened and meliorated by a mixture of human 
 feelings. For there certainly are things patheti- 
 cally ridiculous ; and we are hardhearted enough 
 to smile smiles on them, much nearer to sorrow 
 than many tears. 
 
 If life were nothing more than earthly life, it 
 might be symbolized by a Janus, with a grinning 
 Democritua in front, and a wailing Heraclitus be- 
 hind. Such antitheses have not been uncommon. 
 One of the most striking is that between Johnson 
 and Voltaire. u. 
 
 The craving for sympathy is the common 
 boundary-line between joy and sorrow. u.
 
 334 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Many people hurry through life, fearful, as it 
 would seem, of looking back, lest they should be 
 turned, like Lot's wife, into pillars of salt. Alas 
 too ! if they did look back, they woidd see little 
 else than the blackened and smouldering ruins of 
 their vices, the smoking Sodom and Gomorrah 
 of the heart. u. 
 
 rVwfli atavrbv, they say, descended from hea- 
 ven. It has taken a long journey then to very 
 little purpose. 
 
 But surely people must know themselves. So 
 few ever think about anything else. 
 
 Yes, they think what they shall have, what they 
 shall get, how they shall appear, what they shall 
 do, perchance now and then what they shall be, 
 but never, or hardly ever, what they are. v. 
 
 It is a subtile and profound remark of Hegel's 
 (Vol.x. p. 465), that the riddle which the Sphinx, 
 the Egyptian symbol for the mysteriousness of Na- 
 ture, propounds to Edipus, is only another way of 
 expressing the command of the Delphic Oracle, yv&di 
 atavTov. And, when the answer is given, the Sphinx 
 casts herself down from her rock : when man does 
 know himself, the mysteriousness of Nature, and 
 her terrours, vanish also ; and she too walks in the 
 light of knowledge, of law, and of love. u. 
 
 The simplicity which pervades Nature results 
 from the exquisite nicety with which all its parts
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 335 
 
 fit into one another. Its multiplicity of wheels 
 and springs merely adds to its power; and, so perfect 
 is their mutual adaptation and agreement, the 
 effect seems inconceivable, except as the operation 
 of a single Law, and of one supreme Author of that 
 Law. u. 
 
 The exception proves the rule, says an old maxim, 
 which has often been greatly abused. As it is 
 usually brought forward, the exception in most 
 cases merely proves the rule to be a bad one, to 
 have been deduced negligently and hastily from 
 inadequate premisses, and to have overreacht itself. 
 Naturally enough then it is unable to keep hold of 
 that, on which it never laid hold. Or the excep- 
 tion may prove that the forms of the Understanding 
 are not sufficiently pliant and plastic to fit the 
 exuberant, multitudinous varieties of Nature ; who 
 does not shape her mountains by diagrams, or mark 
 out the channels of her rivers by measure and 
 line. 
 
 In a different sense however, the exception does 
 not merely prove the rule, but makes the rule. 
 The rule of human nature, the canonical idea of 
 man is not to be taken as an average from any 
 number of human beings: it must be drawn from 
 the chosen, choice few, in whom that nature has 
 come the nearest to what it ought to be. You do 
 not form your conception of a cup from a broken 
 one, nor that of a book from a torn or foxt and 
 dog's-eared volume, nor that of any animal from
 
 336 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 one that is maimed, or mutilated, or distorted, or 
 diseased. In every species the specimen is the 
 best that can be produced. So the conception of 
 man is not to be taken from stunted souls, or 
 blighted souls, or wry souls, or twisted souls, or sick 
 souls, or withered souls, but from the healthiest and 
 soundest, the most entire and flourishing, the 
 straightest, the highest, the truest, and the 
 purest. u. 
 
 Men ought to be manly: women ought to be 
 womanly or feminine. They are sometimes mas- 
 culine, which men cannot be ; but only men can 
 be effeminate. For masculineness and effeminacy 
 imply the palpable predominance in the one sex, of 
 that which is the peculiar characteristic of the 
 other. 
 
 Not that these characteristic qualities, which in 
 their proper place are graces, are at all incompati- 
 ble. The manliest heart has often had all the 
 gentleness and tenderness of womanhood, nay, is 
 far likelier than the effeminate to have it. In 
 the Life of Lessing we are told (i. p. 203,) that, 
 when Kleist, the German poet, who was a brave 
 officer, was discontented at being placed over a 
 hospital after the battle of Rossbach, Lessing used 
 to com fut him with the passage in Xenophon's 
 Cyropedia, which says that the bravest men are 
 always the most compassionate, adding that the 
 1 pilgrims from Bremen and Lubeck, who went 
 Out to war against the enemy, on their first arrival
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 337 
 
 in the Holy Land took charge of the sick and 
 wounded. On the other hand the most truly 
 feminine heart, in time of need, will manifest all 
 the strength and calm bravery of manhood. 
 Among the many instances of this, let me refer to 
 the fine stories of Chilonis, of Agesistrata, and of 
 Archidamia, in Plutarch's Life of Agis. Thus 
 too, amid the miserable spectacle just exhibited 
 by the downfall of royalty in France, it is on the 
 heroic fortitude of two illustrious women that the 
 eye reposes with comfort and thankfulness, the 
 more so because it is known that in both cases 
 the fortitude sprang from a heavenly source. 
 In the history of the former Revolution also the 
 brightest spots are the noble instances of female 
 heroism, arising mostly from the strength of the 
 affections. 
 
 That quality however in each sex, which is in 
 some measure alien to it, should commonly be kept 
 in subordination to that which is the natural in- 
 mate. The softness in the man ought to be latent, 
 as the waters lay hid within the rock in Horeb, 
 and should only issue at some heavenly call. 
 The courage in the woman should sleep, as the 
 light sleeps in the pearl. 
 
 The perception of fitness is ever a main element 
 in the perception of pleasure. What agrees with 
 the order of Nature is agreeable ; what disagrees 
 with that order is disagreeable. Hence our hearts, 
 in spite of their waywardness, and of all the tricks 
 we play with them, still on the whole keep true 
 
 VOL. II. Z
 
 338 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 to their original bent. Women admire and love 
 in men whatever is most manly. Thus Steffens, 
 in one of his Novels (Malkolm ii. p. 12), makes 
 Matilda say: "We women should be in a sad 
 case, if we could not reckon with confidence 
 on the firmness and stedfastness of men. How- 
 ever peacefully our life may revolve around the 
 quiet centre of our own family, we cannot but be 
 aware that in the wider relations of life many 
 things are tottering and insecure, and can only be 
 upheld by clearness of insight, by vigorous activity, 
 and by manly strength ; without which it would 
 fall and injure our own quiet field of action. The 
 place which in earlier times the rude or the chivalrous 
 bravery of men held in the estimation of women, 
 is now held by firmness of character, by cheerful 
 confidence in action, which does not shrink from 
 obstacles, but stands fast when others are troubled. 
 The manyheaded monsters which were to be con- 
 quered of yore, have not disappeared in consequence 
 of their bearing other weapons ; and true manly 
 boldness wins our hearts now, as it did formerly." 
 Hence it was only in a morbid, corrupt state of 
 society, that a Wertherian sentimentalism could 
 be deemed a charm for the female heart. Notwith- 
 standing too all that has been done to pamper the 
 admiration of talents into a blind idolatry, no 
 3i osible woman would not immeasurably prefer 
 steadiness and manliness of character to the utmost 
 brilliancy of intellectual gifts. Indeed she who 
 hii herself to the latter, without the former,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 339 
 
 would soon feel an aching want. Othello's wooing 
 of Desdemona is still the way to the true female 
 heart. 
 
 On the other hand that which men love and 
 admire in women, is whatever is womanly and 
 feminine, that of which we see such beautiful 
 pictures in Imogen and Cordelia and Miranda, 
 in 
 
 The gentle lady married to the Moor, 
 
 And heavenly Una with her milkwhite lamb. 
 
 Among a number of proofs of this I will only 
 mention the repugnance which all men feel at 
 the display of a pair of blue stockings. 
 
 One of the few hopeful symptoms in our recent 
 literature is, that this year (1848) has been 
 opened by two such beautiful poems as the Saint's 
 Tragedy and the Princess ; in both of which the 
 leading purpose, though very differently treated, 
 is to exhibit the true idea and dignity of woman- 
 hood. In the latter poem this idea is vindicated 
 from the perversions of modern rhetorical and sen- 
 sual sophistry ; in the former, from those of the 
 rhetorical and ascetical sophistry of the middle 
 ages, not however with the idle purpose of as- 
 sailing an exploded errour, but because this very 
 form of errour has lately been reviving, through 
 a sort of antagonism to the other. In a year 
 when so many frantic delusions have been spread- 
 ing with convulsive power, casting down thrones, 
 dissolving empires, uprooting the whole fabric 
 of society, it is a comfort to rind such noble
 
 340 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 assertions of the true everlasting ideas of 
 humanity. u. 
 
 What should women write ? 
 
 That which they can write, and not that 
 which they cannot. This is clear. They should 
 only write that which they can write well, that 
 which accords with the peculiar character of their 
 minds. For thus much I must be allowed to 
 assume, — it would take too long here to argue the 
 point, — that, as in their outward conformation, 
 and in the offices assigned to them by Nature, 
 and as in the bent and tone of their feelings, 
 so in the structure of their minds there is a sexual 
 distinction. Some persons deny this ; those, for 
 instance, who are delighted at hearing that the 
 minds of all mankind, and of all womankind too, 
 are sheets of white paper, and who think the 
 easiest way of building a house is on the sand, 
 where they shall have no obstacles to level and 
 remove in digging for the foundations ; those again 
 who are incapable of mounting to the conception 
 of an originating power, and who cannot move 
 a step, unless they can support themselves by 
 taking hold of the chain of cause and effect ; those 
 who, themselves being the creatures of circum- 
 stances, or at least being unconscious of any power 
 in lliemselves to withstand and controll and mo- 
 dify circumstances, are naturally prone to believe 
 that every one else must be a similar hodge-podge. 
 Hut as the whole history of the world is adverse
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 341 
 
 to such a notion, as under every aspect of society 
 it exhibits a difference between the sexes, varying 
 indeed, to a certain extent, according to their rela- 
 tive positions, but markt throughout by a per- 
 vading analogy, which is reflected from the face 
 of actual life by an unbroken series of images 
 in poetry from the age of Homer down to Tieck 
 and Tennyson, there is no need of combating an 
 assertion, deduced from an arbitrary hypothesis, 
 by the very persons who are loudest in proclaim- 
 ing that there is no ground of real knowledge 
 except facts. 
 
 Now to begin with poetry, — according to the 
 precedence which has always belonged to it in the 
 literature of every people, — some may incline to 
 fancy that, while prose, from its connexion with 
 speculation, and with action in the whole sphere 
 of public life, belongs especially to men, poetry 
 is rather the feminine department of literature. 
 Yet, being askt many years ago why a tragedy 
 by a lady highly admired for her various talents 
 had not succeeded, I replied, — though, I trust, 
 never wanting in due respect to that sex which 
 is hallowed by comprising the sacred names of 
 wife and sister and mother, — that there was no 
 need to seek for any further reason, beyond its 
 being written by a woman. For of all modes of 
 composition none can be less feminine than the 
 dramatic. They who are to represent the great 
 dramas of life, the strife and struggle of passions 
 in the world, should have a consciousness of the
 
 342 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 powers, which would enable them to act a part 
 in those dramas, latent within them, and should 
 have some actual experience of the conflicts of 
 those passions. They also need that judicial calm- 
 ness in giving every one his due, which we see 
 in Nature and in History, but which is utterly 
 repugnant to the strong affectionateness of woman- 
 hood. A woman may indeed write didactic dia- 
 logues on the passions, as Johanna Baillie has 
 done with much skill ; but these are not tragedies. 
 Nor is epic poetry less alien from the genius of 
 the female mind. So that, of the three main 
 branches of poetry, the only feminine one is the 
 lyrical, — not objective lyrical poetry, like that of 
 Pindar and Simonides, and the choric odes of the 
 Greek tragedians, — but that which is the expres- 
 sion of individual, personal feeling, like Sappho's. 
 Of this class we have noble examples in the songs 
 of Miriam, of Deborah, of Hannah, and of the 
 Blessed Virgin. 
 
 The same principle will apply to prose. What 
 women write best is what expresses personal, indi- 
 vidual feeling, or describes personal occurrences, 
 not objectively, as parts of history, but with 
 i-rll-rence to themselves and their own affections. 
 This is tlic charm of female letters: they alone 
 touch the matters of ordinary life with ease and 
 grace. Men's letters may be witty, or eloquent, 
 or profound ; but, when they have anything beyond 
 B nun |y practical purpose, they mostly pass out 
 of the true epistolary element, and become didactic
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 343 
 
 or satirical. Cowper alone, whose mind had much 
 of a feminine complexion, can vie with women 
 in writing such letters as flow calmly and brightly 
 along, mirroring the scenes and occupations of 
 common life. In Bettina Brentano's there is an 
 empassioned lyrical eloquence, which is often 
 worthy of Sappho, with an exquisite naivety pecu- 
 liarly her own. Rahel's, with a piercing intuitive 
 discernment of reality and truth, which is pecu- 
 liarly a female gift, have an almost painful subtilty 
 in the analysis of feelings, which was forced into 
 a morbid intensity, partly by her position as a 
 Jewess, in the midst of a community where Jews 
 were regarded with hatred and contempt, and 
 partly by the acutest nervous sensitiveness, the 
 cause of excruciating sufferings prolonged through 
 years. 
 
 Memoirs again, when they do not meddle with 
 the intrigues of politics and literature, but confine 
 themselves to a simple affectionate narrative of 
 what has befallen the authoress and those most 
 dear to her, are womanly works. Of these wo 
 have a beautiful example in those of the admirable 
 Lucy Hutchinson ; and there is a pleasing grace 
 in Lady Fanshawe's. Madame Larochejacque- 
 lein's also are delightful ; but these, I have under- 
 stood, were made up out of her materials by 
 Barante. 
 
 Moreover, as women can express earthly love, 
 60 can they express heavenly love, with an entire 
 consecration of every thought and feeling, such
 
 344 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 as men, under the necessity which presses on 
 them of being troubled about many things, can 
 hardly attain to ; as we see for instance in the 
 writings of Santa Teresa, of St Catherine of 
 Sienna, of Madame Guyon. 
 
 Books on the practical education of children 
 too, and story-books for them, such as Miss 
 Lamb's delightful Stories of Mrs Leicester's School, 
 lie within the range of female authorship. 
 
 But what say you to female novels ? 
 
 Were I Tarquin, and the Sibyl came to me 
 with nine wagonloads of them, I am afraid I 
 should allow her to burn all the nine, even though 
 she were to threaten that no others should ever 
 be forthcoming hereafter. One may indeed meet 
 now and then with happy representations of female 
 characters and of domestic manners, as in Miss 
 Austen's novels, and in Frederika Bremer's. But 
 the class is by no means a healthy one. Novels 
 which are works of poetry, — novels which trans- 
 port us out of ourselves into an ideal world, 
 another, yet still the same, — novels which repre- 
 sent the fermenting and contending elements of 
 human life and society, — novels which, seizing 
 the follies of the age, dig down to their roots, 
 — novels which portray the waywardnesses and 
 self-delusions of passion, — may hold a high rank 
 in literature. But ordinary novels, which string 
 ;i nuinher of incidents, and a few common-place 
 pasteboard characters, around a love-story, teach- 
 ing people to fancy that the main business of
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 345 
 
 life is to make love and to be made love to, and 
 that, when it is made, all is over, are almost 
 purely mischievous. When we build castles, they 
 should be in the air. When we indulge in ro- 
 mantic dreams, they should lie in the realms of 
 romance. It is most hurtful to be wishing to 
 act a novel in real life, most hurtful to fancy 
 that the interest of life resides in its pleasures 
 and passions, not in its duties ; and it mars all 
 simplicity of character to have the feelings and 
 events of common life spread out under a sort 
 of fantasmagoric illumination before us. u. 
 
 Written in the Album of a lady, who, on my 
 saying one evening, 1 was not well enough to read, 
 replied, " There/ore you will be able to write 
 something for me." 
 
 You cannot read . . therefore, I pray you, write : 
 
 The lady said. Thus female logic prances : 
 
 From twig to twig, from !>ank to bank it dances, 
 
 Heedless what unbridged gulfs may disunite 
 
 The object from the wish. In wanton might, 
 
 Spring-like, you tell the rugged skeleton, 
 
 That bares its wiry branches to the sun, 
 
 Thou hast no leaven . . therefore with flowers grow bright. 
 
 Therefore ! Fair maiden's lip> such word ill Miits. 
 
 From her it only means, / will, I wish. 
 
 She scorns her pet, — unless he put on boots, 
 
 Straight plunges through the water at the fish, 
 
 Nor lets / dare not wait upon I would . 
 
 For what 's impossible mu>t Mire be good.
 
 346 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 Therefore ! With soft, bright lips such words ill suit. 
 Man's hard, clench t mouth, whence words uneath do slip, 
 May wear out stones with its slow ceaseless drip. 
 But ye who play on Fancy's hope-strung lute, 
 Shun the dry chaff that chokes and strikes her mute. 
 Yet grieve not that ye may not cleave the ground, 
 And hunt the roots out as they stray around: 
 'Tis yours to cull the blossoms and the fruit. 
 Therefore could never yet link earth to heaven : 
 Therefore ne'er yet brought heaven down on earth. 
 Where therefore dies, Faith has its deathless birth : 
 To Hope a sphere beyond its sphere is given : 
 And Love bids therefore stand aside in awe, 
 Is its own reason, its own holy law. u. 
 
 1834. 
 
 Female education is often a gaudy and tawdry 
 setting, which cumbers and almost hides the jewel 
 it ought to bring out. a. 
 
 Politeness is the outward garment of goodwill. 
 But many are the nutshells, in which, if you 
 crack them, nothing like a kernel is to be found. 
 
 A. 
 
 Willi what different eyes do we view an action, 
 when it is our own, and when it is another's ! a. 
 
 We seldom do a kindness, which, if we consider 
 it rightly, is not abundantly repaid; and we should 
 hear little of ingratitude, unless we were so apt 
 i" exaggerate the worth of our better deeds, and 
 to look for a return in proportion to our own 
 exorbitant e itimate. a.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 347 
 
 A girl, when entering on her teens, was ob- 
 served to be very serious ; and, on her aunt's 
 asking her whether anything was the matter, she 
 said, she was afraid that reason was coming. 
 
 One might wish to know whether she ever felt 
 equally serious, after it had come. If so, she 
 differed from most of her own sex, and from a 
 large part of the other. But the shadows in the 
 morning and evening are longer than at noon. 
 
 Eloquence is speaking out... out of the abun- 
 dance of the heart, — the only source from which 
 truth can flow in a passionate, persuasive torrent. 
 Nothing can be juster than Quintilian's remark 
 (x. 7, 15), "Pectus est, quod disertos facit, et 
 vis mentis : ideoque imperitis quoque, si modo 
 sint aliquo affectu concitati, verba non desunt." 
 This is the explanation of that singular psycho- 
 logical phenomenon, Irish eloquence ; I do not 
 mean that of the orators merely, but that of the 
 whole people, men, women, and children. 
 
 It is not solely in the Gospel that people go 
 out into the desert to gape after new spiritual 
 incarnations. They have sometimes been sought 
 in moral deserts, often in intellectual. 
 
 The book which men throw at one another's 
 head the oftenest, is the Bible ; as though they 
 misread the text about the Kingdom of Heaven,
 
 348 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 and fancied it took people, instead of being taken, 
 by force. 
 
 Were we to strip our sufferings of all the 
 aggravations which our over-busy imaginations 
 heap upon them, of all that our impatience and 
 wilfulness embitters in them, of all that a morbid 
 craving for sympathy induces us to display to 
 others, they would shrink to less than half their 
 bulk; and what remained would be comparatively 
 easy to support. a. 
 
 In addition to the sacrifices prescribed by the 
 Law, every Israelite was permitted to make free- 
 will-offerings, the only limitation to which was, 
 that they were to be according as the Lord had 
 blest him. What then ought to be the measure 
 of our freewill-offerings ? ought they not to be 
 infinite ? e. 
 
 Many persons are so afraid of breaking the 
 third commandment, that they never speak of 
 God at all ; and, to make assurance doubly sure, 
 never think of Him. 
 
 Others seem to interpret it by the law of 
 contraries ; for they never take God's name except 
 in vain. So apt too are people to indulge in 
 
 H-' Illusions, that many of these have rankt 
 themselves among the stanch friends and 
 champions of the Church. u.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 349 
 
 On ne se gene pas dans cette vie: on ne se 
 presse pas pour l'autre. u. 
 
 A sudden elevation in life, like mounting: into 
 a rarer atmosphere, swells us out, and often 
 perniciously. u. 
 
 What would become of a man in a vacuum ? 
 All his members would bulge out until they 
 burst. This is the true image of anarchy, whether 
 political or moral, intellectual or spiritual. We 
 need the pressure of an atmosphere around us, 
 to keep us whole and at one. u. 
 
 Pantheism answers to ochlocracy, and leads 
 to it ; pure monotheism, to a despotic monarchy. 
 If a type of trinitarianism is to be found in 
 the political world, it must be a government by 
 three estates, triajuncta in >nio. u. 
 
 A strong repugnance is felt now-a-days to all 
 a priori reasoning ; and to call a system an a 
 priori system is deemed enough to condemn it. 
 Let the materialist then fall by his own doom. 
 For he is the most presumptuous a priori reasoner, 
 who peremptorily lays down beforehand, that 
 the solution of every intellectual and moral phe- 
 nomenon is to be sought and found in what 
 comes immediately under the cognisance of the 
 senses. u.
 
 350 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 What is sansculotterie, or the folly of the 
 deseamisados, but man's stripping himself of the 
 fig-leaf? He has forgotten that there is a God, 
 from whom he needs to hide himself; and he 
 prostitutes his nakedness in the eyes of the world. 
 Thus it is a step in the process, which is ever 
 going on, where it is not counteracted by conscience 
 and faith, of bestializing humanity. u. 
 
 It is a favorite axiom with our political eco- 
 nomists, — an axiom which has been far more 
 grossly abused by the exaggerations and misap- 
 plications of its advocates, than it ever can be 
 by the invectives of its opponents, — that the 
 want produces the supply. In other words, 
 poverty produces wealth ; a vacuum produces 
 a plenum. 
 
 Now Uepla, it is true, in the Tlatonic Fable, 
 is the mother of "Epwe. But she is not the 
 mother of Hopog. On the contrary it is, when 
 impregnated by Udpog, that she brings forth 
 "E/jwc, who then, according to the chorus of the 
 Birds, may become the parent of all things. This 
 Greek fable, which is no less superior to the 
 modern system in profound wisdom than in beauty, 
 will enable us to discern the real value of the 
 above-mentioned axiom, and the limits within 
 which it is applicable, and at the same time 
 to expose the fallacy involved in its extension 
 beyond those limits. 
 
 11'"/// is an ambiguous term. It means mere
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 351 
 
 destitution ; and it means desire : it may be 
 equivalent to Ylevla, or to "Epwc- These two 
 senses are often confounded ; or a logical trickster 
 will slip in one instead of the other. Mere 
 destitution cannot produce a supply : of itself it 
 cannot even produce a desire. There is no ne- 
 cessity by which our being without a thing con- 
 strains us to wish for it. We are without wings ; 
 but this does not make us want to have them ; 
 nor would such a want cause a pair to shoot 
 out of our shoulders. The wishing<:ap of For- 
 tunatus belongs to the cloud-land of poetical, or 
 to the smoke-land of philosophical dreamers. 
 
 The wants which tend to produce a supply, 
 are of two kinds, instinctive and artificial. The 
 former seek after that, a desire of which has been 
 implanted in us by Nature ; the latter after that, 
 which we have been taught to desire by ex- 
 perience. Thus, in order that "E^wc should spring 
 from Uevia, it is necessary that she should have 
 been overshadowed by Qopoc, either consciously 
 or unconsciously. The light must enter into the 
 darkness, ere the darkness can know that it is 
 without light, and open its heart to desire and 
 embrace it. 
 
 Even with reference to Commerce, from which 
 our axiom has been derived, we may Bee that, 
 though the want, when created, tends to produce 
 a supply, there must have been a supply in the 
 first instance to produce the want. Thus in 
 England at present lew articlea of consumption
 
 352 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 are deemed more indispensable than potatoes and 
 tea ; and vast exertions are employed in sup- 
 plying the want of them. But everybody knows 
 that these wants are entirely artificial, and that 
 they were produced gradually, and very slowly, 
 by the introduction of these articles, which 
 now rank among the prime necessaries of our 
 economical life. 
 
 If we take the principle we are speaking of 
 in this, its right sense, it has indeed been very 
 widely operative, in the moral and intellectual, 
 as well as in the physical history of man. 
 In fact it is only the witness borne by the 
 whole order of Nature to the truth of the 
 divine law, that they who seek shall find. Our 
 constitution, and that of the world around us, 
 have been so exquisitely adapted to each other, 
 that not only did they harmonize at the first, 
 but all the changes and varieties in the one have 
 called forth corresponding changes and varieties in 
 the other. It is interesting to trace the adjust- 
 ments by which accidental deficiencies are reme- 
 died, to observe how our bodily frame fits itself 
 to circumstances, and seems almost to put forth 
 new faculties, when there is need of them. The 
 blind learn, as it were, to see with their ears; 
 tin- dciit', to hear with their eyes. Let both these 
 senses lie taken away : the touch conies forward 
 and assumes their office. In like manner the 
 physical characters of men in different stages of 
 'y are modified and moulded by the wants
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 353 
 
 which act on them. Savages, for example, have 
 a strength and sharpness of perception, which 
 in civilized life, being no longer needed, wears 
 away. 
 
 Thus, if a want is of such a kind as to give 
 rise to a demand, it will produce a supply, or 
 some sort of substitute for it. In other words, 
 the nature and extent of the supply will depend 
 in great measure on the nature and extent of 
 the demand. But when the same axiom is ap- 
 plied, as it often has been, to prove the uselessness 
 of those great national institutions, which are 
 designed to elevate and to hallow our nature, — 
 when it is contended, for instance, that our Uni- 
 versities are useless, because the want of know- 
 ledge will produce the best supply, without the 
 aid of any endowments or privileges conferred or 
 sanctioned by the State, — or that the want of 
 religion will produce an adequate supply, without 
 a National Establishment, — the ground is shifted ; 
 and the argument, if pusht to an extreme, would 
 amount to this, that omnia fiunt ex nihilo. 
 
 ll<iv is a double paralogism. It is true indeed, 
 as I have admitted above, that, if a want be 
 felt, so as to excite a desire and a demand, it 
 will produce a supply of some sort or other. 
 This however is itself the main difficulty with 
 !.l to our intellectual ami moral, above all, 
 
 our spiritual wants, t<> awaken a consciousness 
 and feeling <:>{' them, and a de-ire to remove them. 
 Where a certain degree of Bupply exists, such as 
 
 Vol.. II. A A
 
 354 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 that of knowledge in the educated classes of 
 society, custom and shame and self-respect will 
 excite a general demand for a somewhat similar 
 amount of knowledge. But, if it is to go beyond 
 those limits in any department, it can only be 
 through the influence of persons who have attained 
 to a higher eminence ; so that here too the supply 
 will precede the demand. On the other hand 
 they who have had any concern with the edu- 
 cation of the lower classes, will be aware of the 
 enormous power which the vis inertiae possesses 
 in them, and what strong stimulants are recpuired 
 to counteract it. As to our spiritual wants, 
 though they exist in all, they are so feeble in 
 themselves, and so trodden under foot and crusht 
 by our carnal appetites and worldly practices, 
 you might as well expect that a field of corn, 
 over which a regiment of cavalry has been gallop- 
 ing to and fro, will rise up to meet the sun, 
 as that of ourselves we shall seek food for our 
 spiritual wants. Even when the Bread of Life 
 came down from heaven, we turned away from 
 it, and rejected it. Even when He came to His 
 own, His own received Him not. 
 
 Moreover, if we suppose a people to have be- 
 come in some measure conscious of its intellectual 
 and its spiritual wants, so that an intellectual 
 and spiritual demand shall exist among them, 
 they in whom it exists will be very ill fitted to 
 judge of the quality of the supply which they 
 want. Tlay may distinguish between good tea
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 355 
 
 and bad, between good wine and bad, though 
 even that requires some culture of the perceptive 
 faculty. But with regard to knowledge, especially 
 that of spiritual truth, they will be at the mercy 
 of every impudent quack, unless some determinate 
 provision is made by the more intelligent part 
 of the nation, whereby the people shall be supplied 
 with duly qualified guides and instructors. 
 
 That such institutions, like everything else here 
 on earth, are liable to corruption and perversion, 
 I do not deny. Even solar time is not true time. 
 But correctives may be devised ; and in all such 
 institutions there should be a power of modifying 
 and adapting themselves to new wants that may 
 spring up. This however would lead me too 
 far. I merely wisht to point out the gross fallacy 
 in the argument by which such institutions are 
 impugned. u. 
 
 The main part of the foregoing remarks was 
 written many years ago, on being told by a 
 friend, that he had heard the argument here re- 
 futed urged as quite conclusive against our Uni- 
 versities and our Church-establishment, by cer- 
 tain Scotch philosophers of repute. The fallacy 
 seemed to me so glaring, that I could hardly 
 understand how any persons, with the slightest 
 habit of close thinking, could fail to detect it. 
 Hence I was a good deal surprised at reading 
 in a newspaper several jean after, that Dr Chal- 
 mers, in the Lectures which he delivered in
 
 356 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 London in 1838, had complained at great 
 length and with bitterness, of some one who had 
 purloined this reply to the economical argument 
 from him, and who had deprived him of the 
 fame of being the discoverer. As these Lec- 
 tures are printed in the collection of his Works, 
 this complaint must have been greatly mitigated, 
 and is degraded into a note. Honour to the great 
 and good man, who, having been bred and trained 
 in an atmosphere charged with similar sophisms, 
 was the first, as it would seem, to detect this 
 mischievous one, or at least to expose it ! But 
 surely, of all things, the last in which we should 
 lay claim to a monopoly or a patent, is truth. 
 Even in regard to more recondite matters, it has 
 often been seen that great discoveries have, so 
 to say, been trembling on the tongue of several 
 persons at once ; and he who has had the pri- 
 vilege of enunciating them, has merely been the 
 Flugelman in the army of Knowledge. If others 
 utter a truth, which we fancy we have discovered, 
 at the same time with ourselves, or soon after, and 
 independently, we should not grudge them their 
 share in the honour, but rather give thanks for 
 such a token that the discovery is timely, that 
 the world was ready for it, and wanted it, and 
 that its spies were gone out to seek it. u. 
 
 A mo, or some word answering to it, is given 
 in the grammars of most languages as an example 
 of the verb ; perhaps because it expresses the
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 357 
 
 most universal feeling, the feeling which is mixt 
 up with and forms the key-note of all others. 
 The disciples of the selfish school indeed acknow- 
 ledge it only in its reflex form. If one of them 
 wrote a grammar, his instance would be : 
 
 Je m'aime. Nous nous aimons. 
 
 Tu t'aimes. Vous vous aimez. 
 
 II s'aime. lis s'aiment. 
 
 Yet the poor simple Greeks did not know 
 that (piXely would admit of a middle voice. u. 
 
 The common phrase, to be in love, well expresses 
 the immersion of the soul in love, like that of 
 the body in light. Thus South says, in his Ser- 
 mon On the Creation (vol. i. p. 44) : " Love is 
 such an affection, as cannot so properly be said 
 to be in the soul, as the soul to be in that." u. 
 
 Man cannot emancipate himself from the notion 
 that the earth and everything on it, and even 
 the sun, moon, and stars, were made almost 
 wholly and solely for his sake. Yet, if the 
 Earth and her creatures are made to supply him 
 with food, he on his part is made to till the 
 Earth, and to prepare and train her and all her 
 creatures for the fulfilment of their appointed 
 works. If he would win her favours, he must 
 woo her by faithful and diligent service. There 
 should be a perpetual reciprocation of kind offices. 
 As the Earth Bhared in his Fall, so is she to 
 share in his redemption, waiting, with all her
 
 358 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 creatures, in earnest expectation for the mani- 
 festation of the sons of God. At present, if he 
 often treats her insultingly and domineeringly, the 
 Earth in revenge has the last word, and silences 
 and swallows him up. u. 
 
 Two streams circulate through the universe, 
 the stream of Life, and the stream of Death. 
 Each feeds, and feeds upon the other. For they 
 are perpetually crossing, like the serpents round 
 Mercury's Caduceus, wherewith anhuas ille evocat 
 Oreo Pallentes, alias sub Tartara tristia mittit. 
 They began almost together; and they will ter- 
 minate together, in the same unfathomable ocean ; 
 after which they will separate, and take contrary 
 directions, and never meet again. u. 
 
 If roses have withered, buds have blown : 
 If rain has fallen, winds have dried : 
 If fields have been ravaged, seeds are sown: 
 And Wordsworth lives, if poets have died. 
 
 For all things are equal iiere upon earth : 
 'Tis the ashes of Joy that give Sorrow her birth : 
 And Sorrow's dark cloud, after louring awhile, 
 Or melts, or is brightened by Hope to a smile. 
 
 Where the death-bell tolled, the merry chime rings 
 Where waved the cypress, myrtles spread : 
 When Passion is drooping, Friendship springs. 
 And feeds the Love which Fancy bred. 
 
 The consummation of Heathen virtue was ex- 
 in the wish of the Roman, that his house
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 359 
 
 were of glass : so might all men behold every 
 action of his life. The perfection of Christian 
 goodness is defined by the simple command, which 
 however is the most arduous ever laid upon 
 man, not to let the left hand know what the 
 right hand does. For the eye which overlooks 
 the Christian, is the eye which sees in secret, 
 and which cannot be deceived, the eye which 
 does not need glass as a medium of sight, and 
 which pierces into what no glass can reveal. u. 
 
 Hardly any dram is so noxious as praise ; 
 perhaps none: for those whom praise corrupts, 
 might else have wrought good in their genera- 
 tion. Like Tarquin, it cuts off the tallest plants. 
 Be sparing of it therefore, ye parents, as ye would 
 be of some deadly drug : withhold your children 
 from it, as ye would from the flowers on the 
 brink of a precipice. Whatsoever you enjoin, enjoin 
 it as a duty ; enjoin it because it is right ; enjoin 
 it because it is the will of God; and always 
 without reference to what man may say or think 
 of it. Reference to the opinion of the world, and 
 deference to the opinion of the world, and con- 
 ference with it, and inference from it, and pre- 
 ference of it above all things, above every principle 
 and rule and law, human or divine, — all this 
 will come soon enough without your interference. 
 As easily might you stop the east wind, or cluck 
 the blight it bears along with it. Ask your 
 own conscience, reader : probe your heart ; walk
 
 360 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 through its labyrinthine chambers ; and trace the 
 evils you feel within you to their source : do 
 you not owe the first seeds of many of your 
 moral diseases, and the taint which cankers your 
 better feelings, to your having drunk too deeply 
 of this delicious poison ? 
 
 At first indeed it may seem harmless. The 
 desire of praise seems to be little else than the 
 desire of approbation : and by what lodestar is 
 a child to be guided, unless by the approving 
 judgement of its parent ? But, although their 
 languages on the confines are so similar as scarcely 
 to be distinguishable, you have only to advance 
 a few steps, and you will find that you are in 
 a forein country, happy if you discover it to be 
 an enemy's, before you become a captive. Appro- 
 bation speaks of the thing or action : That is right. 
 What you have done is right. Praise is always 
 personal. It begins indeed gently with the par- 
 ticular instance, You have done right ; but it 
 soon fixes on lasting attributes, and passes from 
 You are right, through You are a good child, 
 You are a nice child, You are a sweet child, to 
 that which is the crudest of all, You are a clever 
 child. For God in His mercy has hitherto pre- 
 served goodness from being much fly-blown and 
 desecrated by admiration. People who wish to be 
 stared at, seldom try hard to be esteemed good. 
 Vanity fakes a shorter and more congenial path: 
 and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge is still, 
 in a secondary way, one of the baits which catch
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 361 
 
 the greatest number of souls. When a child has 
 once eaten of that fruit, and been told that it 
 is worthy to eat thereof, it longs for a second 
 bite ; not however so much from any strong 
 relish for the fruit itself, as from the hope of 
 renewing the pleasing titillations by which the 
 first mouthful had been followed. This longing 
 in time becomes a craving, the craving a gnawing 
 ravenousness : nothing is palatable, save what 
 pampers it ; but there is nothing out of which 
 it cannot extract some kind of nourishment. 
 
 Yet, alas ! ; t is on this appetite that we rely, 
 on this almost alone, for success, in our modern 
 systems of Education. We excite, stimulate, 
 irritate, drug, dram the pupil, and then leave 
 him to do what he pleases, heedless how soon 
 he may break down, so he does but start at 
 a gallop. Nothing can induce a human being 
 to exert himself, except vanity or jealousy : such 
 is our primary axiom ; and our deductions are 
 worthy of it. Emulation, Emulation, is the order 
 of the day, Emulation in its own name, or under 
 an alias as Competition : and only look at the 
 wonders it has effected: it has even turned the 
 hue of the Ethiop's skin : it has set all the black- 
 ing-mongers in England emulating and competing 
 with each other in whitewashing every wall 
 throughout the country. Emulation is declared 
 to be the only principle we can trust with 
 safety: for principle it is called; although it 
 implies the rejection and denial of all principle,
 
 362 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 of its efficacy at least, if not of its existence, and 
 is a base compromise between principle and opinion, 
 in which the things of eternity are made to bow 
 down before the wayward notions and passions 
 of the day. Nay, worse, this principle, or no- 
 principle, is adopted as the main spring and 
 motive in a scheme of National, and even of 
 Religious Education, by the professing disciples of 
 the Master who declared, that, if any man desires 
 to be first, he shall be last, and Avhose Apostle has 
 numbered Emulation among the icorks of the flesh, 
 together with adultery, idolatry, hatred, strife, and 
 murder. We may clamour as we will about the 
 unchristian practices of the Jesuits : the Jesuits 
 knew too much of Christianity, ever to commit 
 such an outrage against its spirit, as to make 
 children pass through the furnace of the new 
 Moloch, Emulation.* 
 
 But let me turn from these noisy vulgar para- 
 doxes, to look at Wisdom in her quiet gentleness, 
 as in Wordsworth's sweet language she describes 
 the growth of her favorite, 
 
 A maid whom there were none to praise, 
 And very few to love. 
 
 The air of these simple words, after the hot, close 
 atmosphere I have been breathing, is as soft and 
 
 * This was written in 1826. Since then the worship of 
 Emulation has been assailed in many quarters; and the system 
 of "in National Schools lias been improved. Still the idol 
 lias not yet been cast down; and what was true in matter of 
 principle then, is just as true now.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 363 
 
 refreshing as the touch of a rose-leaf to a feverish 
 cheek. The truth however, so exquisitely exprest 
 in them, was equally present to persons far wiser 
 than our system-makers, the authors of our popu- 
 lar tales. The beautiful story of Cinderella, 
 among others, shews an insight into the elements 
 of all that is lovely in character, seldom to be 
 paralleled in these days. 
 
 Ought not parents and children then to be fond 
 of each other ? 
 
 You, who can interrupt me with such a ques- 
 tion, must have a very fond notion of fondness. 
 Whatever is peculiar in fondness, whatever dis- 
 tinguishes it from love, is faulty. Fondness may 
 dote and be foolish : Love is only another name 
 for Wisdom. It is the Wisdom of the Affections, 
 as Wisdom is the Love of the Understanding. 
 Fondness may flatter and be flattered : Love 
 shrinks from flattery, from giving or receiving it. 
 Love knows that there are things which are not 
 to be seen, that there are things which are not 
 to be talkt of; and it shrinks equally from the 
 thought of polluting what is invisible by its gaze, 
 and of profaning what is unutterable by its prattle. 
 Its origin is a mystery : its essence is a mystery : 
 every pulsation of its being is mysterious: and 
 it is aware that it cannot break the shell, and 
 penetrate the mystery, without destroying both 
 itself and its object.* For the cluud, which is 
 
 * Since the above was written, I have met with the 
 same thoughts ill a pamphlet written liy 1\i*mjw, the excellent
 
 364 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 so beautiful in the distance, when the sunbeams 
 are sleeping on its pillow, if you go too near and 
 enter it, is only dank and dun : you find nothing, 
 you learn nothing, except that you have been 
 trickt. Often have we been told that Love palls 
 after fruition ; and this is the reason. When it has 
 pluckt off its feathers for the sake of staring at 
 them, it can never sew them on again : when 
 it is swinish, it is in a double sense guilty of 
 suicide. Its dwelling is like that of the Indian 
 God on the lotus, upon the bosom of Beauty, 
 rising out from the playful waters of feelings 
 
 lexicographer, during the controversy excited by the attempt 
 to introduce gymnastic exercises as an instrument of edu- 
 cation. " If our love for our country is to be sincere, without 
 ostentation and affectation, it cannot be produced immedi- 
 ately by instruction and directions, like a branch of scien- 
 tific knowledge. It must rest, like every other kind of 
 love, on something unutterable and incomprehensible. Love 
 may be fostered : it may be influenced by a gentle guidance 
 from afar : but, if the youthful mind becomes conscious of this, 
 all the simplicity of the feeling is destroyed; its native gloss is 
 brusht oil'. Such too is the case with the love of our country. 
 Like the love for our parents, it exists in a child from the 
 beginning ; but it has no permanency, and cannot expand, if 
 the child is kept, like a stranger, at a distance from his coun- 
 try. No stories about it, no exhortations will avail, as a 
 substitut.- : we must see our country, feel it, breathe it in, as 
 we do Nature. Then history may be of use, and after a time 
 reflexion, consciousness. But cur first care ought to be for 
 institutions, in which the spirit of our country lives, without 
 being atti red ill words, and takes possession of men's minds 
 involuntarily. For a love derived from precepts is none - ." 
 / . p, I 42.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 365 
 
 which cannot be fixt : and it cannot turn up the 
 lotus to look under it, without oversetting and 
 drowning itself; it cannot tear up its root, to 
 plant it on the firm ground of scientific conviction, 
 but it withers and dies. Such as love wisely 
 therefore, cherish the mystery, and handle the 
 blossom delicately and charily ; for so only will 
 it retain its amaranthine beauty. 
 
 There is no greater necessity for a father's or 
 mother's love to vent itself in bepraising their 
 child, than for the child's love to vent itself in 
 bepraising its father and mother. The latter is 
 too pure and reverential to do so : why should 
 the former be less reverential ? Or can any object 
 be fitter to excite reverence, than the spirit of 
 a child, newly sent forth from God, in all the 
 loveliness of innocence, with all the fascination 
 of helplessness, and with the secret destinies 
 of its future being hanging like clouds around 
 its unconscious form ? On the contrary, as, the 
 less water you have in your kettle, the sooner 
 it begins to make a noise and smoke, so is it with 
 affection : the less there is, the more speedily 
 it sounds, and smokes, and evaporates, talking 
 itself at once out of breath and into it. Nay, 
 when parents are much in the habit of showering 
 praises on their children, it is in great measure 
 for the sake of the pleasing vapour which rises 
 upon themselves. For the whirlpool of Vanity 
 sucks in whatever comes near it. The vain arc 
 vain of everything that belongs to them, of their
 
 366 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 houses, their clothes, their eye-glasses, the white 
 of their nails, and, alas ! even of their children. 
 
 Equally groundless would be the notion that 
 children need to be thus made much of, in order 
 to love their parents. Such treatment rather 
 weakens and shakes affection. For there is an 
 instinct of modesty in the human soul, that in- 
 stinct which manifests itself so beautifully by 
 enabling us to blush ; and, until this instinct 
 has been made callous by the rub of life, it cannot 
 help looking distrustfully on praise. Thus Steffens, 
 in his Malholm (i. p. 379), represents a handsome, 
 manly boy, whom a number of ladies treated 
 with vociferous admiration, caressing and kissing 
 him, and calling him a lovely child, quite an angel. 
 " But he was very much annoyed at this, and 
 at length tore himself away impatiently, prest close 
 to his mother, and complained aloud and vexa- 
 tiously : Why do they hiss and caress me so? 
 I can't bear it" A beautiful contrast to this 
 is supplied by Herder's recollections of his father, 
 as related by his widow (Erinnerungen aus Her- 
 ders Leben, i. p. 17.). u When he was satisfied 
 with me, his face grew bright, and he laid his 
 hand softly on my head, and called me Gottes- 
 friede (Hod's peace: his name was Gottfried). 
 This was my greatest, sweetest reward." This 
 
 emplifiea the distinction drawn above between 
 prai e and approbation. 
 
 The very pleasure occasioned by praise is of a 
 kind which implies it to be something unexpected
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 367 
 
 and forbidden, and not more than half deserved. 
 Besides, as I have already said, the habit of 
 feeding on it breeds such an insatiable hunger, 
 that even a parent may in time grow to be 
 valued chiefly as ministering to the gratification 
 of this appetite. Hence would spring a state like 
 that described by Robert Hall in his sermon on 
 Modern Infidelity (p. 38) : " Conceive of a domestic 
 circle, in which each member is elated by a 
 most extravagant opinion of himself, and a pro- 
 portionable contempt of every other, — is full of 
 little contrivances to catch applause, and, whenever 
 he is not praised, is sullen and disappointed." 
 
 Affection, to be pure and durable, must be 
 altogether objective. It may indeed be nurst by 
 the memory of benefits received; but it has 
 nothing to do with hope, except the hope of 
 intercourse and communion, of interchanging kind 
 looks and words, and of performing kind deeds. 
 Whatever is beside this, is not love, but lust, 
 it matters not of what appetite, nor whether of 
 the body or of the mind. u. 
 
 What a type of a happy family is the family 
 of the Sun ! With what order, with what har- 
 mony, with what 1 Jessed peace, do his children 
 the planets move around him, shining with the 
 light which they drink in from their parent's fur, 
 at once on him and on one another ! u.
 
 368 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 How great is the interval between gamboling 
 and gambling. One belongs to children, the other 
 to grown up people. If an angel were looking on, 
 might he not say ? Is this what man learns from 
 life ? Was it for this that the father of a new 
 generation was preserved from the waters of the 
 Flood ? u. 
 
 that old age were truly second childhood ! 
 It is seldom more like it than the berry is to the 
 rosebud. 
 
 Few things more vividly teach us the difference 
 between the living objects of Nature and the 
 works of man's contrivance, than the impressions 
 produced, when, after a lapse of years, we for 
 the first time revisit the home of our childhood. 
 On entering the old house, how strangely changed 
 does everything appear ! We look in vain 
 for much that our fancy, uncheckt by the know- 
 ledge of any other world than that immediately 
 around, had pictured to itself; and we turn away 
 in half incredulous disappointment, as we pass 
 from room to room, and our memory calls up the 
 various events connected with them. It almost 
 
 ins to us as though, while our minds have been 
 expanding at a distance, the familiar chambers and 
 halls must have been growing narrower, and are 
 threatening, like the prison-tomb in Eastern story, 
 to cloBe upon all the joys of our childhood, and 
 to crush them for ever.
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 369 
 
 But, when we quit the house of man's building, 
 and seek for fellowship with the past among the 
 living, boundless realities of Nature, all that we 
 had lost is regained ; and we find how faithful 
 a guardian angel she has been, and how richly 
 she restores us a hundredfold the treasures we 
 had committed to her keeping. The waters of 
 the peaceful river, winding through the groves 
 where the child delighted to wander, speak to 
 us in the same voice now, in which they spoke 
 then ; and, while we listen to them, the confiding 
 lilies upborne no less lovingly on their bosom, 
 than when in early days we vainly tried to 
 tear them from it, are an emblem of the happy 
 thoughts which we had cast upon them, and 
 which they have preserved for us until we 
 come to reclaim them. The bright kingfisher 
 darting into the river recalls our earliest visions 
 of l>cauty ; and the chorus of birds in the groves 
 seem not only to welcome us back, but also 
 to reawaken the pure melodies of childhood in 
 its holiest aspirations. In like manner, as 
 we walk under the deep shade of the stately 
 avenues, the whisperings among the branches 
 seem to flow from the spirits of the place, giv- 
 ing back their portion of the record of our child- 
 ish years ; and we are reminded of the awe with 
 which that shade imprest us, and of the first 
 time we felt anything like fear, when, on a dark 
 evening, the sudden cry of the Bcreech-owl taught 
 us that those trees had other inhabitants, beside 
 
 VOL. II. B B
 
 370 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 the birds to which we listened with such delight 
 by day. 
 
 Thus the whole of Nature appears to us full 
 of living echoes, to which we uttered our hopes 
 and joys in childhood, though the sound of her 
 response only now for the first time reaches our 
 ears. Everywhere we, as it were, receive back 
 the tokens of a former love, which we had too 
 long forgotten, but which has continued faithful 
 to us. Hence we shall return to our work in 
 the world with a wiser and truer heart, having 
 learnt that this life is indeed the seed-time for 
 eternity, and that in all our acts, from the simplest 
 to the highest, we are sowing what, though it 
 may appear for a time to die, only dies to be 
 quickened and to bear fruit. e. 
 
 May we not conceive too, that, if a spirit, after 
 having past through the manifold pleasures and 
 (.arcs and anxieties and passions and feverish 
 struggles of this mortal life, and been removed 
 from them by death, were to revisit this home of 
 its antemortal existence, it would in like manner 
 shrink in amazed and sickening disappointment 
 from the narrow, petty, mean, miserable objects of 
 all its earthly aims and contentions, and would at 
 the Bame time he filled with wonder and adoration, 
 as it contemplated the infinite wisdom and love, 
 manifested both in the whole structure and order 
 of tin Divine Purposes, and in their perfect
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 371 
 
 correspondence to its own imperfectly understood 
 wants and desires ? u. 
 
 As well might you search out a vessel's path 
 
 Amid the gambols of the dancing waves, 
 
 Or track the lazy footsteps of a star 
 
 Across the blue abyss, as hope to trace 
 
 The motions of her spirit. Easier task 
 
 To clench the bodiless ray, than to arrest 
 
 Her airy thoughts. Flower after flower she sips, 
 
 And sucks their honied fragrance, nor bedims 
 
 Their brightness, nor appears to spoil their stores; 
 
 And all she lights on seems to grow more fair. 
 
 Fuller, in his Good Thoughts in Worse Times, 
 has a passage on Ejaculations, in which he intro- 
 duces the foregoing image so prettily, that I will 
 quote it. " The field wherein bees feed is no 
 whit the barer for their biting. When they have 
 taken their full repast on flowers or grass, the 
 ox may feed, the sheep fat, on their reversions. 
 The reason is, because those little chemists distill 
 only the refined part of the flower, leaving the 
 grosser substance thereof. So ejaculations bind 
 not men to any bodily observance, only busy 
 the spiritual half, which maketh them consistent 
 with the prosecution of any other employment." 
 
 u. 
 
 When we are gazing on a sweet, guileless child, 
 playing in the exuberance of its happiness, in the 
 light of its own starry eyes, we are tempted to 
 deny that anything so lovely can hav<- a corrupt
 
 372 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 nature latent within ; and we would gladly dis- 
 believe that the germs of evil are lying in these 
 beautiful blossoms. Yet, in the tender green of 
 the sprouting nightshade, we can already recognise 
 the deadly poison, that is to fill its ripened berries. 
 Were our discernment of our own nature, as clear 
 as of plants, we should probably perceive the 
 embryo evil in it no less distinctly. p. 
 
 A little child, on first seeing the Thames, and 
 being told it was a river, cried, No, it can't be a 
 river : it must be a pond. His notion of a river 
 had been formed from a little brook near his 
 home ; and the largest surface of water he was 
 familiar with was a pond. Happy will it be for 
 that child, if, when all his notions are modified 
 by long experience, he still retains such sim- 
 plicity and reverence for the past, as to main- 
 tain the claim of the little brook to the name, 
 which, he once supposed, especially belonged to 
 it. 
 
 In the infancy of our spiritual consciousness 
 how much do we resemble this child ! Every 
 thought and feeling, in the little world in which 
 our spirits move, becomes all-important : each 
 " single spot is the whole earth" to us : and 
 everything beyond is judged of by its correspon- 
 to what goes on within it. If we perceive 
 anything in others different from what we deem 
 1" be right, we are apt to exclaim, like the little 
 child, that it cannot be right or true: and thus
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 373 
 
 our minds grow narrow and exclusive, at the 
 very time when they have received the first im- 
 pulse toward their enlargement. Such a state 
 requires much gentleness and forbearance from 
 those who are more advanced in their course, 
 and have learnt to mistrust themselves more, 
 and to look with more faith for the good around 
 them, whatever its form may be. For the mind, 
 when it is first " putting forth its feelers into 
 eternity," is peculiarly sensitive, and needs to be 
 led gradually, and to be left much to the work- 
 ings of its own experience. If it is met repul- 
 sively, by an assumption of superior wisdom, it 
 may either be driven back into a mere worship 
 of self, in its various petty modes and forms ; or, 
 should the person be of a bolder temper, he will 
 cast off all faith in that, which he once accounted 
 so precious, and, instead of recognising the germ 
 of manhood in his infant state, and waiting 
 for its gradual development, will be tempted 
 to deny that there was any kind of life or 
 light in it. 
 
 If, in the birth and growth of the outward 
 man, the imperfect substance is so Bacred in 
 the eyes of Him who forma it, that all oui 
 members are written in His book, and that 
 He looks not at what it is in its imperfec- 
 tion, but al what it is to be in its perfection, 
 how infinitely more precious and sacred should 
 we esteem the development of the inner man ! 
 with what love and reverence should we regard
 
 374 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 each member, however imperfect at first, and 
 shelter it from everything that might check or 
 distort its growth ! e. 
 
 It is a scandal that the sacred name of Love 
 should be given by way of eminence to that 
 form of it, which is seldomest found pure, and 
 which very often has not a particle of real love 
 in it. u. 
 
 In those hotbeds of spurious, morbid feelings, 
 sentimental novels, we often find the lover, as 
 he is misnamed, after he has irreparably wronged 
 and ruined his mistress, pleading that he was 
 carried along irresistibly by the violence of his 
 love : and I am afraid that such pictures are only 
 representations of what occurs far more frequently 
 in actual life. Not that this absolves the writers. 
 For, instead of allaying and healing the disease, 
 they irritate and increase it. They would even 
 persuade the victim of it that it is inevitable, nay, 
 that it is an eruption and symptom of exuberant 
 health. If however there be any case, in which 
 it is plain that Violence is only Weakness grown 
 rank, the bastard brother of Weakness, it is this. 
 Such love is not the etherial, spiritual, self-con- 
 Buming, self-purifying flame, but the darkling, 
 smouldering one, that spits forth sparks of light 
 amid volumes of smoke, being crusht and almost 
 extinguisht by the damp, black, crumbling load
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 375 
 
 of the sensual appetites. So far indeed is sensual 
 love from being the same thing with spiritual 
 love, that it is the direct contrary, the hellish 
 mask in which the fiend mimics and mocks it. 
 For, while the latter enjoins the sacrifice of self 
 to its object, and finds a ready obedience, the 
 former is ravenous to sacrifice its object to self. u. 
 
 " It is strange (says Novalis) that the real 
 ground of cruelty is lust." The truth of this 
 remark flasht across me this morning, as I was 
 looking into a bookseller's window, where I saw 
 Illustrations of the Passion of Love standing be- 
 tween two volumes of a History of the French 
 Revolution. The same connexion is pointed out 
 by Baader in his Philosophical Essays (i. p. 100). 
 " This impotence of the spirit of lies, his inability 
 to realize himself or come into being, is the cause 
 of that inward fury, with which, in his bitter 
 destitution and lack of all personal existence, 
 he seizes, or tries to seize upon all outward ex- 
 istences, in order to propagate himself in and with 
 them, but with and in all, being merely a destroyer 
 and devourer, like a fierce flame, only brings forth 
 a new death and new hunger, instead of the 
 sabbatical rest of the completed, successful mani- 
 festation and incarnation. Hence the real spirit 
 and purpose of murder and lust is one and the 
 same, in every stage of being." Again, in another 
 passage, he says (p. 192) : " //< reho m not far Mi
 
 376 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 is against Me ; and where the spirit of love does 
 not dwell, there dwells the spirit of murder. This 
 is proved even by those manifestations of sin or 
 hatred, which seem the furthest removed from the 
 desire of destruction or murder; as for instance in 
 the ease with which the impulse of lust transforms 
 itself into that of murder, whether the latter dis- 
 plays itself merely physically, or psychically, in 
 what the French call perdre les femmes." The 
 same terrible affinity is exprest by Milton in his 
 catalogue of the inmates of hell. 
 
 Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's sons. — 
 
 Peor his other name, when he enticed 
 
 Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, 
 
 To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. 
 
 Vet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged 
 
 Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove 
 
 Of Moloch homicide ; lust hard by hate. 
 
 u. 
 
 What is meant by Universal Philanthropy \ 
 Love requires that its object should be something 
 real, something positive and definite ; as is proved 
 by all mythologies, in which the attributes of the 
 Deity air impersonated, to satisfy the cravings 
 of the imagination and of the heart : for the 
 abstract (Jod of philosophy can never excite any- 
 thing like- love. I can love this individual, or that 
 individual ; I can love a man in all the might 
 of his strength and of his weakness, in all the 
 blooming fulness of his heart, and all the radiant
 
 GUESSES AT TRLTH. 377 
 
 glory of his intellect : I can love every particular 
 blossom of feeling, every single ray of thought : 
 but the mere abstract, bodiless, heartless, soulless 
 notion, the logical entity, Man, '•' sans teeth, sans 
 eyes, sans taste, sans everything," affords no home 
 for my affections to abide in, no substance for them 
 to cling to. 
 
 But, although reality and personality are es- 
 sential to him whom we are to regard with affec- 
 tion, bodily presence is by no means necessary 
 to the perception of reality and personality. Vain 
 and fallacious have been the quibbles of those 
 sophists, who have contended that no action can 
 take place, unless the agent be immediately, that 
 is, as they understand it, corporeally present. 
 Homer and Shakspeare have not ceast to act, 
 and will not so long as the world endures. Nor 
 does this action at all depend on the presence of 
 their works before us. They cannot put forth all 
 the energies of their genius, until they have purged 
 themselves from this earthly dross, and become 
 spiritual presences in the spirit. For nothing can 
 act but spirit : matter is unable to effect anything, 
 save by the force it derives from something spiri- 
 tual. The golden chains, by which Anaxagoras 
 fabled that the sun was made fast in the heavens, 
 are only a type of that power of Attraction, 
 or, to speak at once more poetically and mure 
 philosophically, of that power of golden Love, 
 which is the life and the harmony of the 
 universe.
 
 .378 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 True love is not starved, but will often be 
 rather fed and fostered, by the absence of its ob- 
 ject. In Landor's majestic language, in the Con- 
 versation between Kosciusko and Poniatowski, "Ab- 
 sence is not of matter : the body does not make 
 it. Absence quickens our love and elevates our 
 affections. Absence is the invisible and incorporeal 
 mother of ideal beauty." Love too at sight, the 
 possibility of which has been disputed by men 
 of drowthy hearts and torpid imaginations, can 
 arise only from the meeting of those spirits 
 which, before they meet, have beheld each other 
 in inward vision, and are yearning to have 
 that vision realized. u. 
 
 Life has two ecstatic moments, one when the 
 spirit catches sight of Truth, the other when it 
 recognises a kindred spirit. People are for ever 
 groping and prying around Truth ; but the vision 
 is seldom vouchsafed to them. We are daily 
 handling and talking to our fellow-creatures ; but 
 rarely do we behold the revelation of a soul in 
 its naked sincerity and fervid might. Perhaps 
 also these two moments generally coincide. In 
 some churches of old, on Christmas Eve, two small 
 lights, typifying the Divine and the Human Na- 
 ture, were seen to approach one another gradually, 
 until they met and blended, and a bright flame 
 was kindled. So likewise it is when the two 
 portions of our spiritual nature meet and blend,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 379 
 
 that the brightest flame is kindled within us. 
 When our feelings are the most vivid, our 
 perceptions are the most piercing ; and when we 
 see the furthest, we also feel the most. Perhaps it 
 is only in the land of Truth, that spirits can 
 discern each other ; as it is when they are help- 
 ing each other on, that they may best hope to 
 arrive there. u. 
 
 The loss of a friend often afflicts us less by 
 the momentary shock, than when it is brought 
 back to our minds some time afterward by the 
 sight of some object associated with him in the 
 memory, of something which reminds us that we 
 have laught together, or shed tears together, that 
 our hearts have trembled beneath the same breeze 
 of gladness, or that we have bowed our heads 
 under the same stroke of sorrow. So mav one 
 
 ■I 
 
 behold the sun sink quietly below the horizon, 
 without leaving anything to betoken that he is 
 gone ; while the sky seems to stand unconscious 
 of its loss, unless its chill blueness in the East 
 be interpreted into an expression of dismay. But 
 anon rose-tinted clouds, — call them rather streaks 
 of rosy light, — come forward in the West, as 
 it were to announce the promise of a jovous 
 resurrect i. in. u. 
 
 There are days on which the sun makes the 
 clouds his chariot, and travels on curtained be- 
 hind them. Weary of shining before a drowsy
 
 380 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 thankless world, he covers the glory of his face, but 
 will not quite take away the blessing of his light ; 
 and now and then, as it were in pity, he with- 
 draws the veil for a moment, and looks forth, to 
 assure the earth that her. best friend is still watch- 
 ing over her in the heavens ; like those occasional 
 visitations by which the Lord, before the birth of 
 the Saviour, assured mankind that he was still 
 their God. u. 
 
 Nothing is further than Earth from Heaven : 
 nothing is nearer than Heaven to Earth. u. 
 
 / will close this Volume with the following Ode 
 to Italy, written by my Brother nearly thirty years 
 ago, in November 1818. What would then have 
 been deemed a very bold, rash guess, may now pw- 
 haps be regarded as a prophecy about to receive 
 its fulfilment. The interest which every scholar, 
 every lover of poetry and art, every reverent stu- 
 dent of history, must feci in the fate of Italy, 
 was deepened in my brother by his having been 
 born at l!<>me. 
 
 ITALY. 
 
 Strike the loud harp; let the prelude be, 
 
 Italy, Italy ! 
 That chord again, again that note of glee . . 
 
 Italy, Italy ! 
 Italy! O Italy! the very sound it charmeth ; 
 Italy I O Italy ! the name my bosom warmeth,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 381 
 
 High thoughts of self-devotions, 
 
 Compassionate emotions, 
 
 Soul-stirring recollections, 
 
 With hopes, their bright reflexions, 
 Rush to my troubled heart at thought of thee, 
 My own illustrious, injured Italy. 
 
 Dear queen of snowy mountains, 
 
 And consecrated fountains, 
 Within whose rocky heaven-aspiring pale 
 
 Beauty has fixt a dwelling 
 
 All others so excelling, 
 To praise it right, thine own sweet tones would fail, 
 
 Hail to thee ! Hail ! 
 How rich art thou in lakes to poet dear, 
 And those broad pines amid the sunniest glade 
 
 So reigning through the year, 
 Within the magic circle of their shade 
 
 No sunbeam may appear ! 
 
 How fair thy double sea ! 
 
 In blue celestially 
 Glittering and circling ! — but I may not dwell 
 
 On gifts, which, decking thee too well, 
 Allured the spoiler. Let me fix my ken 
 
 Rather upon thy godlike men, 
 The good, the wise, the valiant, and the free, 
 On history's pillars towering gloriously, 
 A trophy reared on high upon thv strand. 
 
 That every people, every clime 
 
 May mark and understand, 
 What memorable courses may be run. 
 What golden never-failing treasures iron, 
 From time, 
 
 Tu spite of chance, 
 
 And trorser ignorance, 
 If men be ruled by Duty's firm decree, 
 And Wisdom bold ber paramount mastery.
 
 382 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 
 
 What art thou now ? Alas ! Alas ! 
 
 W ie, woe ! 
 That strength and virtue thus should pass 
 
 From men below ! 
 That so divine, so beautiful a Maid 
 Should in the withering dust be laid, 
 As one that — Hush ! who dares with impious breath 
 
 To speak of death ? 
 The fool alone and unbeliever weepeth. 
 We know she only sleepeth ; 
 
 And from the dust, 
 At the end of her correction, 
 Truth hath decreed her joyous resurrection : 
 
 She shall arise, she must. 
 For can it be that wickedness has power 
 To undermine or topple down the tower 
 Of virtue's edifice ? 
 
 And yet that vice 
 Should be allowed on sacred ground to plant 
 A rock of adamant ? 
 It is of ice, 
 That rock, soon destined to dissolve away 
 Before the righteous sun's returning ray. 
 
 But who shall bear the dazzling radiancy. 
 
 W'lien first the royal Maid awaking 
 Darteth around her wild indignant eye, 
 
 When first her bright spear shaking, 
 Fixing her feet on earth, her looks on sky, 
 She standeth like the Archangel prompt to vanquish, 
 Yd still imploring succour from on high ! 
 O days of wearying hopes and passionate anguish, 
 
 When will ye end ! 
 Until that end lie come, until I hear 
 
 The Alps their mighty voices blend, 
 To swell and echo back the sound most dear 
 To patriot hearts, the cry of Liberty,
 
 GUESSES AT TRUTH. 383 
 
 I must live on. But when the glorious Queen 
 As erst is canopied with Freedom's sheen, 
 When I have prest, with salutation meet, 
 And reverent love to kiss her honoured feet, 
 
 I then may die, 
 Die how well satisfied ! 
 Conscious that I have watch t the second birth 
 Of her I 've loved the most upon the earth, 
 
 Conscious beside 
 That no more beauteous sight can here be given : 
 Sublimer visions are reserved for heaven.
 
 London : 
 
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 APPARATUS FOR COHESION, CAPILLARY 
 
 ATTRACTION, ELECTRIC, AND MAGNETIC 
 ATTRACTION, IMPENETRABILITY AND IN- 
 ERTIA ; with Descriptions and Diagrams. Price 21s. 
 in a Box.
 
 TAYLOR AND WALTON. 19 
 
 A MACHINE FOR ILLUSTRATING CEN- 
 TRIFUGAL MOTION ; including a Representation of 
 the Governor of a Steam Engine. In a Box, 10s. 
 
 ATTWOOD'S MACHINE FOR EXPLAINING 
 
 THE LAWS OF FALLING BODIES ; with Appa- 
 ratus attached for illustrating the Theory of the Pendulum. 
 Price of Attwood's Machine, with a "Companion," 
 21. 2s. ; additional Apparatus, for the Pendulum, 11. Is. 
 
 SETS OF MECHANICAL POWERS; contain- 
 ing the Lever — Wheel and Axle — A Series of Pulleys — 
 The Inclined Plane— Wedge — Screw ; with Examples 
 of the Parallelogram of Forces — Centre of Gravity — Fric- 
 tion — Collision of Elastic bodies — Compound Lever. 
 
 £. s. d. 
 
 1 . For large Lecture-rooms (size of the frame ; 
 
 height 3 feet 1 inch ; width 3 feet) . .880 
 
 2. For Schools and smaller Lecture-rooms (height 
 
 of the frame, 2 feet 6 inches: width 2 feet 
 
 3 inches) 5 5 
 
 3. A Smaller Set, omitting the Parallelogram of 
 
 Forces and Collision of Elastic Bodies (height 
 of the frame 2 feet 1 inch ; width 1 foot 
 1 1 4 inches) 2 12 6 
 
 4. A Commoner Set (height of the frame 2 feet ; 
 
 width 19 inches) 16 3 
 
 THE BENT LEVER. Convertible into a Bent 
 
 Lever or Toggle Joint Press. With Weights, and a De- 
 scription. Price 10*. 
 
 APPARATUS FOR MAGNETISM. Price lb. 
 
 in a Box. 
 
 A TRAIN OF SPUR WHEELS, mounted on a 
 
 Mahogany Stand, with Weights. Price 21*. in a Box. 
 
 A DOUBLE INCLINED PLANE, with an Ap- 
 
 plication of the Composition and Resolution of Forces. 
 In a Box, 10s. 
 
 A PORTABLE HYDROSTATIC BELLOWS; 
 with Description and Diaglam, including! Weight. Price 
 
 -Is. in a Box.
 
 20 EDUCATIONAL MODELS CONTINUED. 
 
 A SECTIONAL MODEL OF THE STEAM 
 
 FNGINE ; by which the Motions of the several Part,, its 
 S Structure, and the High and IjJ*^ 
 ciples, can be easily explained. Price 21. 2s. in a Box. 
 
 A PYROMETER, for showing the Expansion of 
 
 Metals. Price 15s. 
 
 DIAGRAMS IN WOOD, to illustrate Dr. Lard- 
 
 nkr's Euclid. Solid Geometry, Book I. Price 7s. 6d. 
 GEOMETRICAL SOLIDS. The Five Regular 
 
 SoUds-1. Tetrahedron; 2. Octahedron; 3. Icosahedron; 
 1 Hexahedron ; 5. Pent^n^Dode^on ; 6. JBta* 
 
 4. Hexahedron ; o. reu«g«««" - " , f; ^ Q ,L,i rnn • 8 
 boidal Dodecahedron ; 7- Bipyranndal Dod ecahedron 8. 
 Trapezohedron. PYRAMIDS.-- 9. Triangular 5 *0- <M 
 drilateral • 11. Hexagonal ; 12. Octagonal. P R1SMS - 
 H. Tnaigullr ; 14. Quadrilateral ; 15. Hexagonal ; lb. 
 
 Trapezohedron. Pyramids- 9. nanguiar ,, ^ 
 drilateral ■ 11. Hexagonal ; 12. Octagonal. P RISMS - 
 n Trml'ular • 14. Quadrilateral ; 15. Hexagonal ; 16. 
 £S3Rl7. Sphere ; 18. Cylinder ; 19. Cone. The 
 Set in a Box, 9s. 
 
 ANOTHER SET, containing the Conic Sections. 
 
 Price 16s. 
 
 A LARGER SET. Price \l. lis. Gd. 
 
 AN INSTRUMENT FOR TEACHING GEO- 
 METRY ; convertible into a Theodolite, Spirit Level 
 Hadlv's Sextant, and Wollaston's Goniometer. Price 
 •J/. 1 2s. 6d. in a Box. 
 
 A PAIR OF LARGE DIVIDERS, for making 
 
 Diagrams on a black Board. Price 4s. 
 
 MINASI'S MECHANICAL DIAGRAMS 
 
 F,, the Use of Lecturers and Schools. Complete ■ 
 p£ e Numbers, each containing Three Sheets of Diagrams, 
 
 Subiects'— 1 ,V 2 Composition of forces. — J. Lquilion 
 2K& 5 Lovers,-'!. Steelyard, Brady Balance and 
 ;,i,l Man*.- 7. Wheel ,nd Axle- 8. Inclined 
 ',„._.) 10 11, Pulleys.— 12. Hunter's Screw.-13 
 Smoothed Wheels. Combination of the Me- 
 chanical Powers. 
 
 The Diagrams are printed on large sheets of paper, mea- 
 .,„„,,■_. feet 11 inches by 2 feet. Hns sue wfllhe 
 u.l suited for large lecture rooms.
 
 < 3 1158 00650 20J 
 
 1 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 376 117 8