molten into it, and anew bodied forth from it, depths of Time, is a subject for prophetic con or stand unconsumed among its fiery surges. jecture, wherein brightest hope is not un Wo to him whose Edifice is not built of true mingled with fearful apprehension and awe Asbest, and on the everlasting Rock; but on at the boundless unknown. The more cheer the false sand, and of the drift-wood of Ac-ing is this one thing which we do see aud cident, and the paper and parchment of anti-know-That its tendency is to a universal quated Habit! For the power, or powers, exist European Commonweal; that the wisest in Ect on our Earth, that can say to that sea, roll all nations will communicate and co-operate; back, or bid its proud waves be still. whereby Europe will again have its true What form so omnipotent an element will Sacred College, and Council of Amphictyous; assume; how long it will welter to and fro as wars will become rarer, less inhuman, and, in a wild Democracy, a wild Anarchy; what the course of centuries, such delirious ferocity Constitution and Organization it will fashion in nations, as in individuals it already is, may for itself, and for what depends on it, in the ❘ be proscribed, and become obsolete for ever.

TRAGEDY OF THE NIGHT-MOTH.

[FRASER'S MAGAZINE, 1831.

CHARACTERISTICS.*

[EDINBURGH Review, 1831.]

THE healthy know not of their health, but, issued clear victorious force; we stood as in only the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right, or working wrong.

the centre of Nature, giving and receiving, in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil's Husbandmen, "too happy because we did not know our blessedness." In those days, health and sick ness were foreign traditions that did not concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the whole man like an incorporated Will. Such were Rest or ever-successful Labour the hu man lot, might our life continue to be: a pure In the Body, for example, as all doctors are perpetual, unregarded music; a beam of per agreed, the first condition of complete health fect white light, rendering all things visible, is, that each organ perform its function uncon- but itself unseen, even because it was of that sciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce perfect whiteness, and no irregular obstruction its separate existence, were it even boastfully, had yet broken it into colours. The beginning and for pleasure, not for pain, then already has of Inquiry is Disease: all Science, if we conone of those unfortunate false centres of sen-sider well, as it must have originated in the. sibility" established itself, already is derange-feeling of something being wrong, so it is and ment there. The perfection of bodily well-continues to be but Division, Dismemberment, being is, that the collective bodily activities and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in was of old written, the Tree of Knowledge themselves, but in the action they accomplish. springs from a root of evil, and bears fruits of If a Dr. Kitchener boast that his system is in good and evil. Had Adam remained in Parahigh order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed dise, there had been no Anatomy and no take credit; but the true Peptician was that Metaphysics. Countryman who answered that, "for his part, But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, "Life (he had no system." In fact, unity, agreement, itself is a disease; a working incited by suf is always silent, or soft-voiced; it is only dis-fering" action from passion! The memory. cord that loudly proclaims itself. So long as the several elements of Life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison; Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial music and diapason,-which also, like that other music of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus, too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are whole.,

Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that felicity of "having no system" nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial translucency and elasticity, and perfect freedom; the body had not yet secome the prison-house of the soul, but was it vehicle and implement, like a creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled, and leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings from without, and from within

of that first state of Freedom and paradisiac Unconsciousness has faded away into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement, we must ever do our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a hea venly melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disrup tions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the wish of Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, her manifest purpose and effort is, that we should be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Countryman, never know that we "have a system." For indeed vital action everywhere is emphatically a means not an end; Life is not given us for the mere sake of Living, but always with an ulterior. external Aim: neither is it on the process, on the means, but rather on the result, that Nature, in any of her doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and volition. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but a small fractional proportion of it that he rules with Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can con trive, nay, what he can altogether know and comprehend, is essentially the mechanical, the vital; it is essentially the mysterious, and small; the great is ever, in one sense or ether,

1. An Essay on the Origin and Prospects of Man. By Thomas Hope. 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1831. 2. Philosophische Vorlesungen, insbesondere über Philo-only the surface of it can be understood. Bat. sophie der sprache und des Wortes. Geschrieben und vorgetragen zu Dresden im December, 1828, und in den Nature, it might seem, strives, like a hind ersten Tagen des Januars 1829. (Philosophical Lectures, mother, to hide from us even this, that she asespecially on the Philosophy of Language and the Gift mystery: she will have us rest on her beauti of Speech. Written and delivered at Dresden in De-ful and awful bosom as if it were our secure rember, 1828, and the early days of January, 1829.) By Friedrich von Schlegel. Evo. Vienna, 1830.

home; on be bottomless, boundless Deep

whereon all human things fearfully and wonderfully swim, she will have us walk and build, as if the film which supported us there (which any scratch of a bare bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a pistol-shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a solid rock-foundation. For ever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable Death, man can forget that he is born to die; of his Life, which, strictly meditated, contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can conceive lightly, as of a simple implement wherewith to do day-labour and earn wages. So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all highest art, which only apes her from afar, "body forth the Finite from the Infinite;" and guide man safe on his wondrous path, not more by endowing him with vision, than, at the right piace, with blindness! Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life, too, the roots and inward circalations which stretch down fearfully to the regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and only the fair stem with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun, - disclose itself, and joyfully grow.

not that it is any thing surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden speech, re view article, this or the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and wonders why all mortals do not wonder!

Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's surprise at Walter Shandy; how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled them all to perfection. Is it the skilfullest Anatomist that cuts the best figure at Sadler's Wells? or does the Boxer hit bet ter for knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis? But, indeed, as in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the Speaker and Inquirer, the true force is an unconscious one. The healthy Understanding, we should say, is not the Logical, argumenta tive, but the Intuitive; for the end of Understanding is not to prove, and find reasons, but to know and believe. Of Logic, and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much to be. said and examined; one fact, however, which chiefly concerns us here, has long been familiar; that the man of logic and the man

even Knower, are quite separable,—indeed, for most part, quite separate characters. In practical matters, for example, has it not become almost proverbial that the man of logic cannot prosper? This is he whom business people call Systematic and Theorizer and Wordmonger; his vital intellectual force lies dormant or extinct, his whole force is mechanical, con. scious: of such a one it is foreseen that, when once confronted with the infinite complexities of the real world, his little compact theorem of the world will be found wanting; that unless he can throw it overboard, and become a new creature, he will necessarily founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is your dialectic man-at-arms; were he armed cap-apie in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect master of logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards Truth: the faithfullest endeavour, incessant unwearied motion, often great natural vigour; only no progress: nothing but antic feats of one limb poised against the other; there they balanced, somersetted, and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with some pleasure, like Spinning Dervishes, and

However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking Why and How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo of the question, let us be content to remark farther, in the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physi-of insight; the Reasoner and the Discoverer, or cian holds good in quite other departments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall find it no less true than of the Body: nay, cry the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the anity, Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, se the symptom of disease; as, perhaps, your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm which was critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we observe, with confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it as Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here as before the sign of health is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open to ns: not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we might say, it is but The mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts;-underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; bere, if aught is to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is great, and cannot be un-ended where they began. So it is, so will it derload Thus if the Debator and Demonstrator, whom we may rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the bighest, knows not; must speak of Inspiration, and, in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of a divinity.

But on the whole, "genius is ever a secret to itself" of this old truth we have, on all sides, ally evidence. The Shakspeare takes no airs is writing Hamlet and the Tempest, understand:

always be, with all System-makers and builders of logical card-castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own, survive and build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries dilemmas, and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful horescope, and speak reasonable things; neverthe less your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often by soma

winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is, of | never sinned, we should have had no con
a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see science." Were defeat unknown, neither
the difficulty split asunder, and its secret laid would victory be celebrated by songs of
bare; while the Irrefragable, with all his logi- triumph.
cal tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and
finds it on all hands too hard for him.

This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible
state of being; yet ever the goal towards which
Again in the difference between Oratory our actual state of being strives; which it is
and Rhetoric, as indeed everywhere in that the more perfect the nearer it can approach
superiority of what is called the Natural over Nor, in our actual world, where Labour must
the Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The often prove ineffectual, and thus in all senses
Orator persuades and carries all with him, he Light alternate with Darkness, and the nature
knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove of an ideal Morality be much modified, is the
that he ought to have persuaded and car- case, thus far, materially different. It is a
ried all with him; the one is in a state of fact, which escapes no one, that, generally
healthy unconsciousness, as if he "had no speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth
system;" the other, in virtue of regimen and has but a little stock to cultivate acquaintance
dietetic punctuality, feels at best that "his with. Above all, the public acknowledgment
system is in high order." So stands it, in of such acquaintance, indicating that it has
short, with all forms of Intellect, whether as reached quite an intimate footing, bodes ill
directed to the finding of Truth, or to the fit Already, to the popular judgment, he who
imparting thereof; to Poetry, to Eloquence, to talks much about Virtue in the abstract, begins
depth of Insight, which is the basis of both to be suspicious; it is shrewdly guessed that
these; always the characteristic of right per- where there is great preaching, there will be
formance is a certain spontaneity, an uncon- little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale,
sciousness; "the healthy know not of their we can remark that ages of Heroism are not
health, but only the sick." So that the old pre-mages of Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it
cept of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his
ambitious disciple, might contain in it a most
fundamental truth, applicable to us all, and in
much else than Literature: "Whenever you
have written any sentence that looks particu-
larly excellent, be sure to blot it out.” In like
manner, under milder phraseology, and with
a meaning purposely much wider, a living
Thinker has taught us: "Of the Wrong we
are always conscious, of the Right never."

can be philosophized of, has become aware of itself, is sickly, and beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-pervading spirit of Chivalrous Valour shrinks together, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind dwindles into punctilious Politeness, "avoiding meats;" "paying tithe of mint and anise, neglecting the weightier matters of the law." Goodness, which was a rule to itself, must appeal to Precept, and seek strength from Sanctions; the Freewill no longer reigns unques. tioned and by divine right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expediency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, let us say, the Freewill, so far as may be, has abdicated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral nightmare of a Necessity usurps its throne for now that mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man, heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of the Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dialect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence,-is conceived as non-extant, and only the outward Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of Volition, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear nothing; of Mo tives," without any Mover, more than enough.

But if such is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intellectual power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and the power, manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," whisper not to thy own heart, How worthy is this action; for then it is already becoming worthless. The good mau is he who works continually in welldoing; to whom well-doing is as his natural existence, awakening no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the other hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not the sign of cure: an unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in repentng and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates itself into dropsical boastfulness and vain glory: either way, it is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure the way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk continually forward, and make more way. If in any sphere of Man's Life, then in the moral sphere, as the inmost and most vital of all, it is good that there be wholeness; that taere be unconsciousness, which is the evidence of this. Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us, as in our Holy of Holies be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its right and its effort: the perfect obedience will be the silent one. Such perhaps were the sense of that maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of a truth: "To say that we have a clear conscience is to utter a solecism; had we

So, too, when the generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic, we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devoted. ness, and all manner of godlike magnanimity are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim" Benevo lence" to all the four winds, and have Taura engraved on their watchseals: unhappily with little or no effect. Were the Limbs in right Walking order, why so much demonstrating of Motion? The barrenest of all mortals t the Sentimentalist. Granting even thai hệ were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive as or without first deceiving himself, what gud

is in him? Does he not lie there as a perpetual Lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian impotence? His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through every bre, conscious of itself it is all sick, and feels as if it were made of glass and durst not touch or be touched in the shape of work, it can do nothing; at the utmost, by incessant nursing and candling, keep itself alive. As the last stage of all, when Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be practised, and become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we have the era of Sophists, descanting of its existence, proving it, denying it, mechanically "accounting" for it as dissectors and demonstrators cannot operate till once the body be dead.

Man to himself, to what is Highest in himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to the First Table is now superadded a Second, with the duties of Man to his Neighbour; whereby also the significance of the first now assumes its true importance. Man has joined himself with man; soul acts and reacts on soul; a mystic miraculous unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in all its elements, has be come intensated, consecrated. The lightningspark of Thought, generated, or say rather heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens its express likeness in another mind, in a thousand other minds, and all blaze up together in combined fire; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with fresh fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new Light as Thought, in calculable new Heat as converted into Action. By and by, a common store of Thought can accumulate, and be transmitted as an everlasting possession: Literature, whether as preserved in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone, or in Books of written or printed paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its wondrous part. Politics are formed; the weak submitting to the strong; with a willing loyalty, giving obedience that he may receive guidance: or say rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant submitting to the wise; for so it is in all even the rudest com

Thus is true Moral genius, like true intellectual, which indeed is but a lower phasis thereof, ever a secret to itself." The healthy moral nature loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it; the unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or, finding such courtship fruitless, turns round, and not without contempt, abandons it. These curious relations of the Voluntary and Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the small proportion which, in all departments of our life, the former bears to the latter,-might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough, if the fact itself be-munities, man never yields himself wholly to come apparent, that Nature so meant it with us; that in this wise we are made. We may now say, that view man's individual Existence under what aspect we will, under the highest Spiritual, as under the merely Animal aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy, while in its sound state, is an unseen, unconscious one; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, "the healthy know not of their health, but only the

sick."

3

To understand man, however, we must look beyond the individual man and his actions or interests, and view him in combination with is fellows. It is in Society that man first feels what he is; first becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him, and the old immeasurably quickened and strengthened. Society is the genial element wherein his nature first lives and grows; the solitary man were but a small portion of himself, and must continue for ever folded in, stunted, and only half alive. "Already," says a deep Thinker, with more meaning than will disclose itself at once, my opinion, my conviction, gains infitely in strength and sureness, the moment a second mind has adopted it." Such, even in its simplest form, is association; so wondrous me communion of soul with soul as directed to the mere act of Knowing! In other higher acts, the wonder is still more manifest; as in that portion of our being which we name the Moral: for properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral sort, whereof such intellectual communion, (in the act of knowing,) is itself an example. But with regard to Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, we might almost say, that Morality begins; here at least it takes an altogether new form, and on every side, as in Jig growth, expands itself. The Duties of

brute Force, but always to moral Greatness; thus the universal title of respect, from the Oriental Scheik, from the Sachem of the red Indians, down to our Eng..sh Sir, implies only that he whom we mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion arises. The devout meditation of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul, like a transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires certainty, continuance, when it is shared in by his brother-men. " Where two or three are gathered together" in the name of the Highest, then first does the Highest, as it is written, "appear among them to bless them;" then first does an Altar and act of united Worship open a way from Earth to Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's-ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with glad tidings, and unspeakable gifts for men. Such is SOCIETY, the vital articulation of many, individuals into a new collective individual greatly the most important of man's attainments on this earth; that in which, and by virtue of which, all His other attainments and attempts find their arena, and have their value. Considered well, Society is the standing wonder of our existence; a true region of the Supernatural; as it were, a second all-embracing Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of infinitude was in us bodies itself forth, and becomes visible and active.

To figure society as endowed with Life is scarcely a metaphor; but rather the statement of a fact by such imperfect methods as language affords. Look at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest work with man, wherein man's volition plays an indispensable yet so subordi nate a part, and the small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indissolubly out of the infinite