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.
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TRACHSELL'S DRAWING MODELS, consist-
ing of Rectilinear Figures, Polygonal and Mixtilinear
Models, Models chiefly for Shading, and Models for
Application and further Practice. Price of the complete
Set 10/. Any Figure may be purchased separately.
The whole Collection, with the exception of the houses,
is painted white, to resemble plaster.
A complete collection on a larger scale, such as that used in
the Mechanics' Institution, Liverpool, 151.
* % * A detailed Prospectus may be had on application.
DRAWING MATERIALS.
A Quarto Copy Book of 24 leaves, common paper, 6d.
Ditto. . . ditto . paper of superior
quality, Is. 3d.
Pencils with very thick lead, B.B.B. 2s. per half dozen.
Ditto . . . ditto . . F. at Is. 6d.
per half-dozen.
Drawing Chalk, 9d. per dozen Sticks, in a Box.
Port-crayons for holding the Chalk, id. each.
EDUCATIONAL MODELS.
For the use of Schools, Mechanics Institutions,
and for Private Instruction.
A SET OF APPARATUS FOR HYDROSTA-
TICS, HYDRAULICS, AND PNEUMATICS:
with a Pamphlet containing full Descriptions and Direc-
tions for performing many Experiments. Price 6/. (is. in
a Box.
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