the foriner has not fallen. He who is tempted
has sinned ; temptation is impossible to the holy.
XIII.
CHOICE.
Choice implies apostacy. The pure, unfallen soul is
above choice. Her life is unbroken, synthetic; she is a
law to herself, and finds no lusts in her members warring
against the instincts of conscience. Sinners choose ; saints
act from instinct and intuition: there is no parley of alien
forces in their being.
XIV. INSTINCT AND REASON.
Innocent, the soul is quick with instincts of unerring
aim; then she knows by intuition what lapsed reason de-
fines by laborious inference; her appetites and affections
are direct and trust-worthy. Reason is the left hand of
instinct; it is tardy, awkward, but the right is ready and
dextrous. By reasoning the soul strives to recover her lost
intuitions; groping amidst the obscure darkness of sense,
by means of the fingers of logic, for treasures present al-
way and available to the eye of conscience. Sinners must
needs reason ; saints behold.
xv. IDENTITY AND DIVERSITY.
It is the perpetual effort of conscience to divorce the
soul from the dominion of sense; to nullify the dualities
of the apparent, and restore the intuition of the real. The
soul makes a double statement of all her facts ; to con-
science and sense ; reason mediates between the two. Yet
though double to sense, she remains single and one in her-
self; one in conscience, many in understanding; one in
liſe, diverse in function and number. Sense, in its infir-
mity, breaks this unity to apprehend in part what it cannot
grasp at once. Understanding notes diversity; conscience
alone divines unity, and integrates all experience in iden-
tity of spirit. Number is predicable of body alone; not
of spirit.


1840.)
89
Orphic Sayings.
XVI. CONSCIENCE.
Ever present, potent, vigilant, in the breast of man, there
is that which never became a party in his guilt, never con-
sented to a wrong deed, nor performed one, but holds
itself above all sin, impeccable, immaculate, immutable,
the deity of the heart, the conscience of the soul, the
oracle and interpreter, the judge and executor of the di-
vine law.
XVII. THEOCRACY.
In the theocracy of the soul majorities do not rule. God
and the saints; against them the rabble of sinners, with
clamorous voices and uplifted hand, striving to silence the
oracle of the private heart. Beelzebub marshals majorities.
Prophets and reformers are alway special enemies of his
and his minions. Multitudes ever lie. Every age is a
Judas, and betrays its Messiahs into the hands of the mul-
titude. The voice of the private, not popular heart, is
alone authentic.
XVIII.
SPEECH.
There is a magic in free speaking, especially on sacred
themes, most potent and resistless. It is refreshing, amidst
the inane common-places bandied in pulpits and parlors, to
hear a hopeful word from an earnest, upright soul. Men
rally around it as to the lattice in summer heats, to inhale
the breeze that flows cool and refreshing from the moun-
tains, and invigorates their languid frames. Once heard,
they feel a buoyant sense of health and hopefulness, and
wonder that they should have lain sick, supine so long,
when a word has power to raise them from their couch,
and restore them to soundness. And once spoken, it shall
never be forgotten; it charms, exalts; it visits them in
dreams, and haunts them during all their wakeful hours.
Great, indeed, is the delight of speech; sweet the sound
of one's bosom thought, as it returns laden with the fra-
grance of a brother's approval.
XIX. THOUGHT AND ACTION.
Great thoughts exalt and deify the thinker; still more
ennobling is the effect of great deeds on the actor. The
VOL. 1. — NO. 1.
12


90
[July,
Orphic Sayings.
dilation and joy of the soul at these visitations of God is'
like that of the invalid, again inhaling the mountain breeze
after long confinement in chambers: she feels herself a
noble bird, whose eyrie is in the empyrean ; that she is
made to bathe her bosom and plume herself in the ether
of thought; to soar and sing amidst the seraphim, behold-
ing the faces of Apollo and Jove.
XX. ACTION.
Action translates death into life ; fable into verity; specu-
lation into experience; freeing man from the sorceries of
tradition and the torpor of habit. The eternal Scripture is
thus expurgated of the falsehoods interpolated into it by
the supineness of the ages. Action mediates between con-
science and sense: it is the gospel of the understanding.
XXI. ORIGINALITY.
Most men are on the ebb; but now and then a man
comes riding down sublimely in high hope from God on
the flood tide of the soul, as she sets into the coasts of
time, submerging old landmarks, and laying waste the la-
bors of centuries. A new man wears channels broad and
deep into the banks of the ages; he washes away ancient
boundaries, and sets afloat institutions, creeds, usages,
which clog the ever flowing Present, stranding them on the
shores of the Past. Such deluge is the harbinger of a
new world, a renovated age. Hope builds an ark; the
dove broods over the assuaged waters; the bow of promise
gilds the east; the world is again repeopled and replanted.
Yet the sons of genius alone venture into the ark: while
most pass the rather down the sluggish stream of usage
into the turbid pool of oblivion. Thitherward the retreat-
ing tide rolls, and wafted by the gales of inglorious ease,
or urged by the winds of passion, they glide down the
Lethean waters, and are not. Only the noble and heroic
outlive in time their exit from it.
XXII. VALOR.
The world, the state, the church, stand in awe of a man
of probity and valor. He threatens their order and per-
petuity : an unknown might slumbers in him; he is an
augury of revolutions. Out of the invisible God, he comes


1840.)
91
Orphic Sayings.
to abide awhile amongst men; yet neither men nor time
shall remain as at his advent. He is a creative element,
and revises men, times, life itself. A new world pre-
exists in his ideal. He overlives, outlives, eternizes the
ages, and reports to all men the will of the divinity whom
he serves.
XXIII.
HARACTER.
Character is the only legitimate institution; the only
regal influence. Its power is infinite. Safe in the citadel
of his own integrity, principalities, powers, hierarchies,
states, capitulate to the man of character at last. It is
the temple which the soul builds to herself, within whose
fanes genius and sanctity worship, while the kneeling ages
bend around them in admiration and love.
XXIV. BREAD.
The hunger of an age is alike a presentiment and pledge
of its own supply. Instinct is not only prophetic but provi-
dent. When there is a general craving for bread, that
shall assuredly be satisfied; bread is even then growing in
the fields. Now, men are lean and famishing; but, behold,
the divine Husbandman has driven his share through the
age, and sown us bread that we may not perish; yea,
the reapers even are going forth, a blithe and hopeful
company, while yet the fields weep with the dews of the
morning, and the harvests wave in yellow ripeness. Soon
shall a table be spread, and the age rejoice in the fulness
of plenty
XXV. PROPHET.
The prophet, by disciplines of meditation and valor,
faithful to the spirit of the heart, his eye purified of the
motes of tradition, his life of the vestiges of usage, ascends
to the heights of immediate intuition : he rends the veil of
sense ; he bridges the distance between faith and sight,
and beholds spiritual verities without scripture or mediator.
In the presence of God, he communes with him face to
face.
XXVI. METHOD.
To benefit another, either by word or deed, you must


92
[July,
Orphic Sayings.
have passed from the state in which he is, to a higher.
Experience is both law and method of all tuition, all influ-
ence. This holds alike of physical as of spiritual truths;
the demonstration must be epical; the method living, not
empirical.
XXVII. BALANCE S.
I am not partial to your man who always holds his bal-
ance in hand, and must weigh forthwith whatsoever of
physical or metaphysical haberdashery chances to be laid
on his counter. I have observed that he thinks more of
the accuracy and polish of his scales, than of the quality of
the wares in which he deals. He never questions his own
levity. But yet these balance-men are useful : it is con-
venient to have standards of market values. These are the
public's approved sealers of weights and measures, who
determine the worth of popular wares by their favorite
weights, lucre and usage. It is well for the ages, that
Genius rectifies both scales and men by a truer standard,
quite wide of marts or markets.
XXVIII. PRUDENCE.
Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.
XXIX. REVELATION.
The standing problem of Genius is to divine the essential
verity intimated in the life and literature of the Past, di-
vesting it of historical interpolations; separating the foreign
from the indigenous, and translating the letter of the uni-
versal scripture into the spirit of contemporaneous life and
letters.
XXX.
CRITICISM.
To just criticism unity of mind is essential. The critic
must not esteem difference as real as sameness, and as
permanent in the facts of nature. This tendency is fatal
to all sound and final thinking: it never penetrates to the
roots of things. All creative minds have been inspired
and guided by the law of unity : their problem is ever to
pierce the coarse and superficial rind of diversity, and
discover the unity in whose core is the heart and seed of
all things.


1840.]
Orphic Sayings.
XXXI. CALCULUS.
We need, what Genius is unconsciously seeking, and,
by some daring generalization of the universe, shall as-
suredly discover, a spiritual calculus, a novum organon,
whereby nature shall be divined in the soul, the soul in
God, matter in spirit, polarity resolved into unity; and
that power which pulsates in all life, animates and builds
all organizations, shall manifest itself as one universal deific
energy, present alike at the outskirts and centre of the
universe, whose centre and circumference are one; omnis-
cient, omnipotent, self-subsisting, uncontained, yet con-
taining all things in the unbroken synthesis of its being.
XXXII. GENERATION AND CORRUPTION.
The soul decomposes the substances of nature in the
reverse order of their composition: read this backward for
the natural history of their genesis and growth. Genera-
tion and corruption are polar or adverse facts. The tree
first dies at the top: to raze the house we first remove the
tiling. The decomposition and analysis are from without,
according to the order of sense, not of the soul. All in-
vestigations of nature must be analytic through the order
of decay. Science begins and ends in death; poesy in
life; philosophy in organization ; art in creation.
XXX111. EACH AND ALL.
Life eludes all scientific analysis. Each organ and func-
tion is modified in substance and varied in effect, by the
subtile energy which pulsates throughout the whole econo-
my of things, spiritual and corporeal. The each is instinct
with the all; the all unfolds and reappears in each. Spirit
is all in all. God, man, nature, are a divine synthesis,
whose parts it is impiety to sunder. Genius must preside
devoutly over all investigations, or analysis, with her mur-
derous knife, will seek impiously to probe the vitals of
being.
XXXIV. GOD.
God organizes never his attributes fully in single struc-
tures. He is instant, but never extant wholly, in his works.
Nature does not contain, but is contained in him ; she is the


Orphic Sayings.
[July,
memoir of his life ; man is a nobler scripture, yet fails to
outwrite the godhead. The universe does not reveal, eter-
nities do not publish the mysteries of his being. He sub-
jects his noblest works to minute and constant revision ;
his idea ever transcends its form ; he moulds anew his
own idols; both nature and man are ever making, never
made.
XXXV. NATURE.
Nature seems remote and detached, because the soul
surveys her by means of the extremest senses, imposing on
herself the notion of difference and remoteness through
their predominance, and thereby losing that of her own
oneness with it. Yet nature is not separate from me;
she is mine alike with my body; and in moments of true
life, I feel my identity with her; I breathe, pulsate, feel,
think, will, through her members, and know of no duality
of being. It is in such moods of soul that prophetic
visions are beheld, and evangeles published for the joy and
hope of mankind.
XXXV
XXXVI. FLUX.
Solidity is an illusion of the senses. To faith, nothing
is solid : the nature of the soul renders such fact impos-
sible. Modern chemistry demonstrates that nine tenths of
the human body are fluid, and substances of inferior order
in lesser proportion. Matter is ever pervaded and agi-
tated by the omnipresent soul. All things are instinct with
spirit.
XXXVII. SEPULTURE AND RESURRECTION.
That which is visible is dead: the apparent is the corpse
of the real; and undergoes successive sepultures and resur-
rections. The soul dies out of organs; the tombs cannot
confine her; she eludes the grasp of decay; she builds and
unseals the sepulchres. Her bodies are fleeting, historical.
Whatsoever she sees when awake is death; when asleep
dream.
XXXVIII. TIME.
Organizations are mortal; the seal of death is fixed on
them even at birth. The young Future is nurtured by the


1840.]
95
Orphic Sayings.
Past, yet aspires to a nobler life, and revises, in his matu-
rity, the traditions and usages of his day, to be supplanted
by the sons and daughters whom he begets and ennobles.
Time, like fabled Saturn, now generates, and, ere even
their sutures be closed, devours his own offspring. Only
the children of the soul are immortal; the births of time
are premature and perishable.
XXXIX. EMBRYON.
Man is a rudiment and embryon of God: eternity shall
develop in him the divine image.
XL. ORGANIZATION.
Possibly organization is no necessary function or mode
of spiritual being. The time may come, in the endless
career of the soul, when the facts of incarnation, birth,
death, descent into matter and ascension from it, shall
comprise no part of her history; when she herself shall
survey this human life with emotions akin to those of
the naturalist, on examining the relics of extinct races of
beings; when mounds, sepulchres, monuments, epitaphs,
shall serve but as memoirs of a past state of existence; a
reminiscence of one metempsychosis of her life in time.
XLI. SPIRIT AND MATTER.
Divined aright, there is nothing purely organic; all
things are vital and inorganic. The microscope is devel-
oping this sublime fact. Sense looking at the historic sur-
face beholds what it deems matter, yet is but spirit in
fusion, fluent, pervaded by her own immanent vitality and
trembling to organize itself. Neither matter nor death are
possible : what seem matter and death are sensuous impres-
sions, which, in our sanest moments, the authentic instincts
contradict. The sensible world is spirit in magnitude, out-
spread before the senses for their analysis, but whose syn-
thesis is the soul herself, whose prothesis is God. Matter
is but the confine of spirit limning her to sense.
XLII. ORDER.
The soul works from centre to periphery, veiling her
labors from the ken of the senses. Her works are invisible
till she has rounded herself in surface, where she completes


96
(July,
Orphic Sayings.
her organizations. Appearance, though first to sense, is
last in the order of generation : she recoils on herself at
the acme of sense, revealing herself in reversed order.
Historical is the sequel of genetic life.
XLIII. GENESIS.
The popular genesis is historical. It is written to sense
not to the soul. Two principles, diverse and alien, inter-
change the Godhead and sway the world by turns. God
is dual. Spirit is derivative. Identity halts in diver-
sity. Unity is actual merely. The poles of things are not
integrated : creation globed and orbed. Yet in the true
genesis, nature is globed in the material, souls orbed in the
spiritual firmament. Love globes, wisdom orbs, all things.
As magnet the steel, so spirit attracts matter, which trem-
bles to traverse the poles of diversity, and rest in the bosom
of unity. All genesis is of love. Wisdom is her form:
beauty her costume.
XLIV. GRAVITATION.
Love and gravity are a twofold action of one life, whose
conservative instincts in man and nature preserve inviolate
the harmony of the immutable and eternal law of spirit.
Man and nature alike tend toward the Godhead. All
seeming divergence is overruled by this omnipotent force,
whose retributions restore universal order.
XLV. LOVE.
Love designs, thought sketches, action sculptures the
works of spirit. Love is divine, conceiving, creating, com-
pleting, all things. Love is the Genius of Spirit.
XLVI. LIFE.
Life, in its initial state, is synthetic; then feeling, thought,
action are one and indivisible: love is its manifestation.
Childhood and woman are samples and instances. But
thought disintegrates and breaks this unity of soul: action
alone restores it. Action is composition; thought decom-
position. Deeds executed in love are graceful, harmonious,
entire ; enacted from thought merely, they are awkward,
dissonant, incomplete : a manufacture, not creations, not
works of genius.


1840.]
97
Orphic Sayings.
XLVII. ACTUAL AND IDEAL.
The actual and ideal are twins of one mother, Reality,
who failing to incarnate her conceptions in time, meanwhile
contents herself with admiring in each the complement of
the other, herself integrant of both. Alway are the divine
Gemini intertwined; Pan and Psyche, man and woman,
the soul and nature.
XLVII. BEAUTY.
All departures from perfect beauty are degradations of
the divine image. God is the one type, which the soul
strives to incarnate in all organizations. Varieties are
historical: the one form embosoms all forms; all having a
common likeness at the base of difference. Human heads
are images, more or less perfect, of the soul's or God's head.
But the divine features do not fix in flesh; in the coarse
and brittle clay. Beauty is fluent; art of highest order
represents her always in flux, giving fluency and motion to
bodies solid and immovable to sense. The line of beauty
symbolizes motion.
XLIX. TRANSFIGURATION.
Never have we beheld a purely human face; as yet, the
beast, demon, rather than the man or God, predominate in
its expression. The face of the soul is not extant in flesh.
Yet she has a face, and virtue and genius shall one day
reveal her celestial lineaments: a beauty, a majesty, shall
then radiate from her that shall transcend the rapt ideal of
love and hope. So have I seen glimpses of this spiritual
glory, when, inspired by some thought or sentiment, she
was transfigured from the image of the earthly to that of the
heavenly, the ignoble melting out of her features, lost in
the supersensual life.
• PROMETHEUS.
Know, O man, that your soul is the Prometheus, who,
receiving the divine fires, builds up this majestic statue of
clay, and moulds it in the deific image, the pride of gods,
the model and analogon of all forms. He chiselled that
godlike brow, arched those mystic temples from whose
fanes she herself looks forth, formed that miraculous globe
VOL. 1. — NO. 1.
13


98
Stanzas.
(July,
above, and planted that sylvan grove below; graved those
massive blades yoked in armed powers; carved that heaven-
containing bosom, wreathed those puissant thighs, and hew-
ed those stable columns, diffusing over all the grandeur, the
grace of his own divine lineaments, and delighting in this
cunning work of his hand. Mar not its beauty, spoil
not its symmetry, by the deforming lines of lust and sin :
dethroning the divinity incarnated therein, and transform-
ing yourself into the satyr and the beast.
STANZAS.
Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought:
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught
We are spirits clad in veils :
Man by man was never seen:
All our deep communing fails
To remove the shadowy screen.
Heart to heart was never known:
Mind with mind did never meet:
We are columns left alone
Of a temple once complete.
Like the stars that gem the sky,
Far apart though seeming near,
In our light we scattered lie;
All is thus but starlight here.
What is social company
But a babbling summer stream ?
What our wise philosophy
But the glancing of a dream?
Only when the Sun of Love
Melts the scattered stars of thought,
Only when we live above
What the dim-eyed world hath taught,
Only when our souls are fed
By the Fount which gave them birth,
And by inspiration led
Which they never drew from earth,
We, like parted drops of rain,
Swelling till they meet and run,
Shall be all absorbed again,
Melting, flowing into one.


1840.)
99
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
CHANNING’S TRANSLATION OF JOUFFROY.*
These are the fifth and sixth volumes of Mr. Ripley's
series of Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature. It
is saying much in their praise to say, that they are worthy
of a place in that series. M. Jouffroy has been for some
time very favorably known to our public. Few if any
living writers upon Ethical Philosophy stand so high in the
estimation of those, who have made this science a study, as
he does. We cannot doubt that all who feel any interest
in the subject will thank Mr. Channing for having given
us so good a translation of this, which is perhaps the best
work the author has yet published. Such a work was
greatly needed, and, as is often the case, the need was
greater than it was felt to be.
There is no such thing as having no philosophy of mor-
als and religion, though we often hear “ practical men,” as
they like to be called, express their aversion, if not their
contempt, for philosophy. It has been sneeringly asked
in a public meeting, "if philosophy ever baked a single
loaf of bread," and that too by one who is recognised as
a public teacher of morals and religion. We would an-
swer him — no, my brother; but then “ It is written, 'man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that pro-
ceedeth out of the mouth of God.'
There is no one that speaks or acts, who has not a phi-
losophy of morals, — of his actions, — though he may be
unconscious of it. No one acts or speaks without mo-
tives and principles of some kind or other; and it can be
shown what those motives and principles are, and when
they are reduced to a system, they constitute the philoso-
phy of that man's morals — his moral philosophy. This
philosophy he may have learned from his father and
mother, though they never called their precepts and in-
structions by the name of philosophy; he may have learned
* Introduction to Ethics; including a Critical Survey of Moral Sys-
tems. Translated from the French of Jouffroy, by WILLIAM H. Chan.
NING. Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company. Two vole. 12mo.
pp. 324, 358.


100
(July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
it from the wants and necessities of his condition, or from
the impulses of his warm and generous, or cold and selfish
heart, as the case may be. It is most likely that he re-
ceived some part of it from each of these sources. But a
philosophy he has, though he may never have reflected
upon the motives and principles of his actions enough to
have given them a name, much less, to have reduced them
to a system. '
Since this is so, the importance of making moral phi-
losophy a matter of reading and study is obvious. The
morals of a community will be low and selfish unless they
do so. But alas for them, when the philosophy that is
received and taught is itself low and selfish, and, instead
of raising the character, would persuade men that there is
no need of anything higher ; that in fact there is no height
above them, and that those generous and enthusiastic
souls, who reject its clear, judicious, and prudent precepts,
are fanatical and righteous overmuch. We are no advo-
cates for fanaticism or mysticism; but we would assert
with all possible distinctness, that there is something to
live for that the eye cannot see and the hands cannot
touch ; that there is a wisdom which Experience cannot
teach, that there is a way that is right which Prudence
cannot find. If then we must have a philosophy of mor-
als, — and we have seen that we must, if not voluntarily
then in spite of ourselves, - how unspeakably impor-
tant is it that we have one that will elevate and purify
rather than debase and sensualize our souls !
The system, which has been most commonly taught in
our community hitherto is Paley's, though we hope, for the
good of our countrymen, that few if any of them have
received that system entirely. It is a systematic embody-
ment of selfishness, which everybody knows does not need
to be taught.* This is precisely the system of Ethics
* Lest it may seem that we are too severe upon the Archdeacon, we
quote the following passage. And from this account of obligation, it
follows, that we are obliged to nothing but we ourselves are to gain or
lose something by; for nothing else can be a violent motive to us. As
we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate, unless re-
wards or punishments, pleasure or pain somehow or other depended
upon our obedience, so neither should we, without the same reason, be
obliged to do what is right, to practice virtue, or to obey the commands
of God." - Mor. and Polit. Philos. B. II. c. 2.


1840.] Channing's Translation of Jouffroy. 101
which the worldly, selfish, unregenerate heart teaches.
This system came from and tends to worldliness and
selfishness. It is congenial to every soul, in which the con-
science and the spiritual faculties are not sufficiently de-
veloped to counteract its influence and force its' way up
to a higher view of things. But it is not every soul that
has spontaneity and force enough to do this. There are
many persons also, whose thoughts are too much occupied
with the business of their calling in life to allow them to
give so much attention to the subject, as to discover the
inadequacy and debasing tendency of Paley's system.
These men would fulfil the moral law; but they are too
busy to give much time to a study into its nature and re-
quirements. They therefore take the most commonly
received exposition of that law, as a standard of duty,
trusting that those who make it their business to study into
these matters would never approve and recommend a
faulty or inadequate system. If this system happen to
be a low one, the characters which they form upon it will
be low too. The Ethical System of any age is the ex-
ponent of the state of morals in that age. If the morals
were better than the system, the people would repudiate
the system; and if the system were much better than the
morals, it would be regarded as extravagant, over scrupulous,
and be modified or laid aside for another. Hence he that
would labor most effectually for the improvement of a
people's morals must also labor to introduce a more per-
fect theory of morals. But as it is with a people so it is
with individuals, - every man's theory is the exponent of
himself. A man may borrow a theory that is higher or
lower than himself, but the dress never suits him; it can
never be his. It is too small for him and he bursts it, or
it is too large for him, and he is a David in Saul's armor.
Paley's system is psychologically wrong, in that it does
not recognise all the facts of man's moral nature. The
facts that Paley has omitted either were not in bis con-
sciousness, or else they formed so insignificant a part of it,
that they never attracted his attention. Therefore he omitted
them. A man differently constituted could not have done
this. It would be interesting to show, if we had room,
how this system grew out of the time and place in which
it appeared, how Paley looked upon the outside of ac-


102
[July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
tions, and saw them as they appear to the observer, and
not as they appear to the doer of them; and then from
the facts thus collected he inferred by the Inductive Meth-
od, then so busily applied to the natural sciences, the law
from the facts, just as he would have done in the natural
sciences. Assuming that whatever is, is right,' he pro-
ceeded to deduce the law of actions, the moral law, like
the laws of motion, from what was, and not from what
ought to be. He could therefore get to no law that
should lead us to higher attainments. The idea of pro-
gress is thus precluded. Because bodies left unsupported
fall to the ground, it is inferred that gravitation is a law
ordained of God, and therefore right. Because men are,
or appeared to Paley, to act only from a regard to “re-
ward or punishment, pleasure or pain," he inferred that it
is a law ordained of God, “it is their nature," that they
should do so. So throughout his system. It is no wonder
that his system seemed clear, judicious, and sound; for it
was proving to them not that they ought to become more
disinterested, more magnanimous, and more holy, but it was
proving to them that what they were doing was right. It
flattered their vanity, while it encouraged and gave them
confidence in the sensual and selfish course they were pur-
suing, and which they were determined, if public opinion
were not too strong against them, to pursue. They felt
exceedingly obliged to any one who would prove to them,
that this, which they were so much inclined to, was right -
was the law of the Gospel and of God. It would not
be difficult to show, that there is not a profligate or crimi-
nal in our country or any other, that cannot justify his
course to himself by the principles of Paley's Philosophy,
as he would honestly understand it. We emphasize the
last clause of the foregoing sentence because it deserves
particular attention. Expediency and Right, Prudence and
Conscience unite in Omniscience. If one could know all
things, his course would be the same whether he were
guided by Expediency or by Right. Although the motives
and character of the individual might be different in the
one case from what they would be in the other, the course
pursued would be the same in both cases. But from this
point Expediency and Right, Prudence and Conscience di-
verge, and the farther any individual is from it, the more


1840.]
103
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
diverse the two rules of action will be for him. Hence the
course which Expediency points out to any one will be on
a level with his character. We can conceive how one may
be so short-sighted and have so strong and ungovernable
passions, as to justify to himself, by the principles of Paley's
system, any course of action that he may be strongly in-
clined to. The pleasure and profit that will come from it
far outweigh all the evil consequences that he can foresee
will happen to himself. There is too a chance of escaping
these evil consequences. And, as by this system he is not
bound to take anything else into consideration, he will enter
without hesitation upon his desired course of action.
Thus much will not have been said in vain, if it serve to
show the need of some work upon Ethics that shall take
higher and more spiritual views than are presented in the
popular treatises. It seems to us, that M. Jouffroy could not
have taken a better method to communicate his views to the
world than the one he has actually taken. He begins by
reviewing the false systems and showing wherein they are
faulty. He would thus prepare the way for the true sys-
tem.
We shall be obliged to be very brief in our analysis of
the book. Our object in making the analysis is twofold —
to recommend the book to our readers and show them
what a rich treasure it is -- and to afford an opportunity
for sundry remarks of our own upon the same topics.
In his first Lecture, M. Jouffroy speaks of the different
relations which a man sustains. 1. His relation to God.
2. His relation to himself. 3. His relation to things.
4. His relation to his kind. A knowledge of what is im-
plied in and required by these four relations constitutes
the whole of his Ethical Philosophy. The volumes before
us are only an introduction to the great subject. They
consist mainly in a review of the systems of Philosophy,
which make a system of Ethics impossible, and a criticism
of the faulty and defective systems of Ethics that have
been taught.
I. The first system that M. Jouffroy reviews is that of
Necessity. By denying that we can choose what we will
do, it precludes the possibility of a law which shall ex-
pound to us what we ought to do. One might as well
speak of a moral law for the planets. The great argu-


104
[July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
ment for the doctrine of Necessity is the Prescience of
God. To foreknow a thing implies that that thing is cer-
tain, else it could not be foreknown. But freedom of will
implies that the thing about which the freedom is to be
exercised is contingent. Foreknowledge, then, requires
that all things be certain and necessary — freedom of will,
on the other hand, requires that they be contingent. The
problem is to reconcile the two. If God foreknows events,
then he has made them certain, or there is a fate behind
him that has made them so, and they are no longer con-
tingent upon the election of the will. It seems impossible
to solve this problem without greatly modifying our view
of God. Many do not feel its difficulty ; but of those
that do feel it, some adopt the doctrine of Foreknowledge
and Necessity, others get what they consider a solution,
while others, like M. Jouffroy, say that they prefer to give
up the Foreknowledge of God, if either must be given up.
They think they feel more sure of the Freedom of their
Will than of the Foreknowledge of God. Our only hope
of a solution to this problem is by eliminating the foreign
and contradictory element. Philosophy has now recog-
nised the fact, that time and space are only forms or modes
of understanding things, and not qualities of things them-
selves. Hence things only appear to us to sustain a rela-
tion to time and space. The time element must therefore
be eliminated from this problem as foreign and extraneous
to it. We should not then say that God foreknows, but
simply that he knows. Then there will appear to be no
contradiction between God's knowledge and man's free-
dom.
II. The next false system which M. Jouffroy takes up
is Mysticism. The objection to Mysticism is, that it ab-
solves one from all his obligations to men and things, and
leaves only the relation of man to God and himself, and
not even these unimpaired. He says that Mysticism rests
upon two facts. “ With all our efforts we cannot attain
to more than a very small part of the good which our na-
ture craves, or accomplish, except in an imperfect degree,
our destiny." "We cannot in this life secure even that
measure of good which is actually within our reach, except
on condition of substituting for the natural action of our
faculties another mode of action, whose characteristic is


1840.)
105
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
concentration and whose consequence is fatigue." We do
not believe that the mystics will acknowledge that these
facts are the basis of their system. Actions, like the walls
of our houses, have two faces which are totally unlike,
an outside face seen by the observer, and an inside one
seen by the doer of the actions only. M. Jouffroy, not
being himself a mystic, and of course not having seen the
inside of mysticism, cannot represent it to their satisfac-
tion. He, like everybody else, must interpret others by
himself. It is very likely that a perception of these
two facts would make M. Jouffroy a mystic, if anything
would. Therefore he infers that it is the cause of Mys-
ticism wherever it appears. We suspect that there must
be some facts in the consciousness of a mystic, which
owing to a constitutional difference, are not to be found,
or at least have not been found in Jouffroy's. M. Jouf-
froy, however, aims at nothing farther than to give an ac-
count of Mysticism in so far as it influences Ethics. In
so far as it proceeds from the facts to which he refers its
origin, and leads to the consequences that he points out,
his remarks are quite satisfactory.
We should give another account of Mysticism. We
should say, that it originated in a great predominance of
the Reason, the faculty of insight, over the Understand-
ing, the faculty for explaining, unfolding, and illustrating
things. This constitution of mind is also usually accom-
panied with a large development of the Imagination.
The mystic jumps up so high, as though to God face to
face, that his feet cannot touch the ground. By so doing
he sees truths, or what he calls truths, which his feeble
understanding cannot systematize and adequately state.
He can only suggest his impressions. His imagination
immediately presents some image, or series of images, by
which his thought can be suggested, and he writes a met-
aphor, a parable, or an allegory, which taken literally, that
is, interpreted by the understanding, would give nonsense,
or at least bad sense. One must put himself into the sub-
jective condition of the speaker or writer before he can
understand him. It would be unjust to these men and
untrue to history, not to acknowledge that the men, who
have been in advance of their age in spiritual matters,
have always been considered by their cotemporaries more
VOL. I. -- NO, I.


106
[July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
or less inclined to Mysticism. They are the prophets of
the age. They are made to utter what they cannot thor-
oughly understand and logically state to themselves. We
are like men entering a cavern by its only mouth. We
obstruct the light by our own bodies, so that it is dark be-
fore us, and it is only when we turn round and look back
and reflect upon what is behind us, that all is light and
clear. All is darkness and mystery before us, and therefore
the foremost must be mystical.
III. The third system that M. Jouffroy reviews is Pan-
theism. He takes this system as developed by Spinoza.
The two lectures on this subject we presume will be found
less satisfactory than any others in the book. He confesses
that he does not fully understand Spinoza. As we shall
be obliged to omit some things that we would gladly say, if
we could without transgressing our proper limits, we will
pass this account of Pantheism, with merely remarking
upon its defects as the foundation of an Ethical System.
Pantheism, laying down the principle that there can be
substantially but one being and one cause, necessarily
concentrates all causality, and thus all liberty, in one
being, and necessarily denies liberty to all but this One
Being, even if it ascribes liberty to Him, as in some cases
it does not. Hence Pantheism annihilates man, so far as
moral obligation is concerned. Man's desires, thoughts,
and volitions, good and bad, are manifestations of God;
and if so they must be good, and are bad only in ap-
pearance, if at all. Hence the tendency of Pantheism is
to remove the moral restraints from all our propensities to
licentiousness and sensuality.
IV. The other false system of Philosophy, which makes
a system of Ethics impossible, is Skepticism. This con-
sists in denying that there is any such thing as absolute
truth, or in maintaining that if there is, the human faculties
are inadequate to its discovery. With the skeptic there is
no Truth, all is mere Opinion. If there is no Truth, or
if we cannot know the truth, there can be no system of
Ethics which we shall feel obliged to obey. We shall not
know that that thing which is commanded is right and true,
and if it be not, we are under no obligation to it. The
refutation of this system is a statement of the fact, that
we do know some things to be absolutely true in ethics as
well as in mathematics.


1840.] Channing's Translation of Jouffroy. 107
In the next Lecture M. Jouffroy speaks of the Skepti-
cism of the Present Age. This is a most admirable Lec-
ture. We will not attempt to give an outline of it, for
every word of it is too precious to be omitted, and we
hope that all who read our article will read this one Lec-
ture, if they cannot be induced or cannot find time to read
the whole of the two volumes. The reader will bear in mind
that the author was a Frenchman, and is speaking more
particularly of France, but the most of what he says is as
applicable to other nations as to his own.
We have departed somewhat from the author's method
of taking up his subjects. Before reviewing these four sys-
tems of Philosophy, which make a system of ethics impos-
sible, he has two Lectures upon the Facts of Man's
Moral Nature. These are two excellent chapters, and con-
tain the basis of Jouffroy's system. Their contents can-
not be too deeply impressed upon the memory
There are three successive developinents in the soul,
each bringing new psychological facts, new motives, and a
new law of action. The first is impulse — then the intellect
- and after that the spiritual faculties.
The first development is that of impulse. Thus hunger
and impulses of the like kind which arise from the very
constitution of our natures, are of this class. They com-
pel us to action. These motives do not always have self,
but often the good of another person for their object.
Thus the mother's care of her child is of this kind.
Undoubtedly it makes her happy to take care of her child.
It is no less clear, that it is, in the highest sense of the
word, right and duty that she should ; but we suspect she
does it not so much because of the happiness it will afford
her, or because she thinks it is right and a duty to do it,
as because she loves the child. Here then is the first class
of facts in a man's moral nature. We call them im-
pulses because they impel — because they arise in the soul,
sometimes uncalled by any outward object whatever, and
sometimes excited by some outward object, and impel a
man from within to action.
But when the intellect comes into activity, we recollect
that the gratification of our appetites gave us pleasure.
Hence a desire to reproduce this pleasure or gratification
becomes a motive to action. This is self love. We seek


108
(July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
to surround ourselves with those things that will minister
to our enjoyment. We seek to know and do what will
conduce to our happiness. If we are assured that the
obedience to a certain law, or the compliance with certain
conditions, will secure our happiness here and hereafter,
we comply and think it right to do so.
The development, or rather the manifestation of thought,
does something for the benevolent impulses similar to what
it does for the selfish ones. The individual is conscious
that he has promoted the happiness of one whom he loves.
Intellect becomes a functionary of his generous impulses,
and he contrives means to do good to others.
While in this state we are, to use the expression of
St. Paul, under the law. We must go to the written law
to know what is right. We then obey it from a desire to
escape the consequences of wrong-doing, or at best from
a sense of duty and not from love. As it is with religion
so it is with other things. If one would write a poem or
oration, he must study the authors that have written upon
these subjects, that he may know what are the laws of this
class of compositions, and what is good taste. He is not
a law unto himself but is under the law. He does not
know that the Soul never violates the laws of art or offends
good taste. We offend and mar only when we are stupid,
affected, or seek to do mechanically what can be properly
done by inspiration only. The Soul is always a poet and
an artist. It is a law unto itself in these matters. True
feeling and glowing thought will do more to give one a
good style and manner than all outward appliances.
But there is another law and other facts that are devel-
oped in the consciousness. It is the idea of order, of ab-
solute good, of right, and a love of this becomes a motive
to action. We see something that is good and true in
itself, and therefore ought to be. We feel it our duty to
pursue it. This motive is not impulse, it is not a con-
sideration of personal good, whether it be the good of our-
selves or of others, – it is a love of what is good and
right and true in itself, and for its own sake, irrespective
of any other considerations or motives whatever.
M. Jouffroy treats this development of the soul only in
relation to his subject, as introducing new facts into a
man's moral nature, and furnishing a new motive and law


1840.)
109
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
of action. This development, if we mistake not, deserves
a more distinct recognition, and a more full and scientific
treatment than it has yet received. We can of course
pretend to give nothing more than an outline of it in the
present article. We shall speak of this development only
in its relation to the thought of the individual.
In the earliest part of their lives, persons are under the
tutelage of their parents. They can understand and re-
ceive before they can examine and originate for them-
selves. They imbibe not only their parents' views, but
also the common sentiment and belief of the community
in which they live. In politics they are of the same party,
in religion they are of the same sect, and of the same
school in philosophy with their parents and the friends by
whom they have been surrounded. Of course they must
have received all these views upon some outward authority,
for as yet their minds are not sufficiently developed to
examine them thoroughly and perceive their fundamental
truth. This authority may be parents, friends, public sen-
timent, usage, or anything out of themselves. With these
views, resting upon such grounds, they are satisfied and
content for a while. They are content to take these things
upon outward, foreign authority, because as yet they know
of no other. They are under the law; this law may be
usage, fashion, public opinion, the opinion of friends or of
men of high reputation, or the Scriptures. They are con-
tent to rest upon these outward foundations, because, as
we have just said, they know as yet of no other. But
with the development of the spiritual sense, they have
another foundation whereon to build. A window is thus
opened, through which the mind can see, or rather an eye
is given by which to look into the nature of things. We
thus come to have an intuition of what must be, of the
absolute and necessary. It is seen to be as eternally
and absolutely necessary, that love and not hate should be
the law and condition of happiness among moral beings,
as that all the angles around any given point should be
equal to four right angles. It is seen that humility and
self-renunciation have a foundation and necessity in the
nature of things, as much as that two and two should be
four. When one begins to see that truth and right are abso-
lute, and founded on the nature of things, into which he


110
(July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
is now able to see for himself, he asks why may not these
intuitions become the basis upon which to build all that I
receive? Is not this the rock upon which if one build he
shall never be moved ? All other foundations are sandy.
Do the best that I can, they will often admit of a doubt, a
suspicion. Suppose I could prove that God had sent a man
into the world to reveal all the truth that we need to know,
(a thing which it would be very difficult if not impossible to
prove beyond the possibility of a doubt,) I should still be left
to doubt in many cases if I understood him aright. But if I
build upon the soul there can be no doubt. Here then I
empty myself of all that I have been taught, of all that I have
received dogmatically, and will henceforth receive nothing
whose foundation in the soul I cannot see. He thus passes
from dogmatism into skepticism, from which he will grad-
ually emerge into a faith that cannot be shaken.
By this method he discovers the ideal or perfect state,
and thus can understand the imperfections and wrongs of the
actual one. His tendency is to become a radical, to tear
down all things that do not square with the ideal. Every-
thing that is wrong or imperfect he would have done away.
If he be of a bold ambitious temperament, he commences
by declaring war against all existing institutions and cus-
toms. His tendency is to overlook the stubborn fact, that
the gross, intractable, actual, can never be brought up to
the ideal. If he be timid, and care more for the kingdoms
of this world and the glory of them than for the kingdom
of Heaven, he will renounce his visionary impracticable
fancies, and fall down and worship.
In ardent and susceptible temperaments, the period of
this change is one of great suffering. The sufferer will go
to friends for sympathy, to the wise for counsel, to books
for instruction. They can at best afford but temporary
relief, and very likely will make him worse. He must
tread the wine-press all alone. He can have no more rest
until he have a faith built upon the soul. If he will have
patience, perseverance, and integrity, — stern integrity,
a cheerful faith will come in due time. But he must make
no compromise, no shift, if he would not sacrifice his pros-
pect of a serene and tranquil life. He must await the
Lord's time. This change is sudden and violent in ardent
and enthusiastic natures, slow and gradual in phlegmatic


1840.]
111
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
ones. Persons in whom sentiment and feeling greatly
exceed thought and reflection, and who therefore rest upon
sentiment rather than upon thought, may not be conscious
of any change like what we have described. They are
more poetic than philosophic.
Such is a very hasty and imperfect outline of the tran-
sition from dogmatism to faith. M. Jouffroy, after having
reviewed the four systems of Philosophy, which in one
way or another make Ethics impossible, proceeds to ex-
amine the various false and imperfect systems of Ethics
which have been taught. He first reviews the selfish sys-
tem. He takes it as developed and taught by Hobbes
and Bentham. This system is psychologically wrong,
inasmuch as it fails to recognise the generous and be-
nevolent impulses, and any of the facts of the spiritual
development. So radical a defect must of course spoil
the system, even if it do not make it positively mischiev-
ous. These teachers recognise no higher motive than self-
love, and no higher law than self-interest well understood.
This is the very lowest view that any one, who had any
portion, however small, of human nature within him could
possibly take.
Our author then passes to a consideration of those sys-
tems which recognise disinterested motives, -motives that
are distinct from self-love, — and of these he first consid-
ers the sentimental system. This system was developed
and taught by Adam Smith. It is usually called the
system of sympathy. Smith taught that the essence of
morality could consist only in such actions, as could be
generally approved of. By sympathy we put ourselves in
the condition of others, and judge impartially of the pro-
priety of their actions. From this impartial judgment we
infer the general rule of action. Hence the rule of this
system would be, act so as that others will sympathize with
you, and approve of what you do. In other words, it
would say, “ All things whatsoever ye would that others
should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.” A great
advance was herein made upon the selfish system. The
fact of disinterestedness had been recognised. But we
easily see the defects of this system. Its psychological de-
fect is, that it does not recognise all of the impulses as
motives to action, and they are certainly right and proper


112
[July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
in certain cases, as hunger, for instance,) neither does
it recognise at all the love of the true and the beautiful,
the good and the right irrespective of personal considera-
tions. Its practical defect is, that it does not give a stand-
ard or idea of duty that is sufficiently elevated. I am to
do what I would have another do unto me: what if I am
not good and wise enough to wish to have another do the
thing that is right and best for me? I am my own standard,
and in that case I should do what is not right and best for
another. I am to act so that others will sympathize with and
approve of what I do. This is appealing to public opinion
for a standard. But what if others are not wise and good
enough to appreciate and approve of the highest and best
things that one can do? According to this theory he must
not do them.
The next system that M. Jouffroy reviews was taught
by Shaftesbury, Butler, and Hutchison. The former was a
statesman and man of the world; the second was a divine;
and Hutchison was a metaphysician by profession. They
saw the inadequacy of Smith's system, and sought to intro-
duce a better one. “ Shaftesbury held with Plato," says
Tennemann, “ that the Good and the Beautiful are identi-
cal.” Philosophers of this class hold that good is a quality
of actions, and is to be seen by a special and appropriate
sense, called the moral sense, just as color is seen by the
eye. What we thus see to be good, we feel that we ought
to do. But this system is psychologically defective in not
recognising all of the motives to action that we are con-
scious of. The practical defect is, that it does not re-
cognise the use of the understanding in determining
what is our duty. It teaches that all duty is perceived
by a direct vision of the Moral Sense, or Conscience, as
color is perceived by a direct vision of the eye. Now
in most cases this may appear to be true, if we do not
analyze the action of the mind too closely. But in diffi-
cult cases we know that we do not see at once what is our
duty. We often hesitate long before we can form an
opinion, and then frequently change it after it is once
formed. But if this system were true, there could be no
deliberation, no altering of opinion as to right and duty,
any more than there could as to the color of an object,
whether it were black or white.


1840.]
113
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
None of the false systems of Ethics, that we have thus
far spoken of, recognise innate ideas as a part of the facts
of consciousness. The next step towards the true theory
was the recognition of these innate ideas." The systems
that do this are called Rational systems. M. Jouffroy takes
the one developed by Richard Price. The views of Price are
essentially the same as those taught by Dr. Cudworth, and
the Platonists of his time. This system agreed with the sys-
tem of Moral Sense in teaching that good is only a quality of
actions. It considers good as a simple indefinable quality
recognised at first sight. But the Rational System differs
from that of the Moral Sense, in teaching that this quality
is perceived not by a peculiar and appropriate sense for
it, but by the a priori intuitions of the pure Reason. This
change may seemn unimportant at first thought. But it is
in reality a great change. Price was undoubtedly led to it
by perceiving the psychological defects of Hutcheson's the-
ory. By acknowledging that we have a priori conceptions,
Price taught that we can have an acquaintance with
absolute and necessary truths ; with truths that are above
us and independent of our will and the activity of our
minds. We receive the mind of God into our minds, and
these a priori conceptions are the direct inspiration and
gift of God. A communication is thus opened between
us and the Infinite, the Eternal, and the Absolute. These
conceptions or intuitions of the pure Reason inust be in,
and the same in all minds, for they are the mind of God.
Hence the principles of morality and right are eternal and
unchangeable. They are founded in the nature of things,
and are as necessary as the truths of mathematics.
This system is obnoxious to the same practical objections
that were brought against the system of the Moral Sense.
It leaves no room for the exercise of the understanding in
determining what is duty.. This is contrary to fact and
experience. It moreover leads to rashness and headlong
precipitation in persons, who have more activity than
thought, and to bigotry and uncharitableness in the self-
confident. Their theory of morals does not teach them,
as it should, that the quickness with which they arrive at
their conclusions is only a result of their superficiality.
They consider the delay and deliberation of differently
constituted minds as a moral obliquity. They feel that
VOL. I. — NO. I.
15


114
(July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy
they are not called upon to exercise charity towards those,
who think differently upon matters of right and duty, any
more than they are towards those that assert that gold is
white and coal yellow.
But it always implies a high culture -a much higher
moral than intellectual culture — to adopt the Rational Sys-
tem. We would therefore deal gently with it, and treat
those who receive it with great respect. We are nevertheless
compelled, if we would do justice to every part of human
nature, to point out its defects. These defects will be felt
by those only, who have a metaphysical turn of mind. By
attending to the operations of their own minds, they will find
that they do not and cannot judge of a thing, whether it be
right and obligatory or not, merely by knowing what the
thing is. In other words, they will find that good and right
is not a quality of actions, but rather the relation of actions
to some ultimate good, which relation can be determined
only by an exercise of the understanding.
M. Jouffroy has not attempted to develop his own sys-
tem in the work before us; yet we think that it would not
be difficult to foresee, from what has been said, what its es-
sential features would be. He must recognise every motive
that we are conscious of, — the unreflecting impulses, self-
love, the love of others, and the love of the right and true
and beautiful in and for itself. He would deny that good
and right are qualities of actions to be directly perceived
by a special and appropriate sense. He would maintain
that there is an absolute good, order, right, or beauty, the
ideas of which are furnished by the Reason prior to any
judgment of the understanding, and before we can say of any
act or thing, this is good or right or beautiful. All things,
he would teach, whether actions or institutions, are judged
of by comparing them with the ideas of absolute good and
beauty furnished to the mind by the Reason, and approved
or condemned accordingly. Whatever tends to bring about
this absolute good is right and obligatory, whatever does
not is wrong, and should be avoided. Duty is only a
means to the absolute good.
The difference between this and the Rational System
consists principally in the result of the analysis of that ac-
tion of the mind, by which we come to know what is right.
Jouffroy would say that duty is but a means to the abso-


1840.)
115
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy.
lute good, and that we have no way of knowing what is
duty, of knowing what things are a means to this absolute
good, except by comparing them with it. Price and those
who hold the Sentimental System would say, that we have
a faculty for knowing these means by some quality inherent
in them, and that too without knowing the end until one
has arrived at it.
It would not be safe or fair to proceed to examine Jouf-
froy's system, until he has developed it himself. Yet we
will venture a few remarks upon it. When, according to
this system, one has formed an idea of the absolute good,
the means by which it is brought about are left to be de-
termined by prudence, by expediency. So far as this
feature of his system is concerned, Jouffroy would disagree
with the systems of Paley and others only in the end for
which one is to labor. Both systems recognise expediency
and prudence as the method of determining what is our duty.
The difference consists mainly in the different ends propos-
ed. In the system of Paley and the selfish systems generally,
the end is the good of self, and morality is self-interest
well understood. With Jouffroy the end is the absolute
good. By the former system we are taught to consult pru-
dence and expediency, to ascertain what will be most con-
ducive to self-interest; by the latter we are to consult the
same guides to ascertain what will be most conducive to
the absolute good. M. Jouffroy would say, that having
fixed upon the absolute good as the end, we are left to
prudence to choose the means. We should think, from
the Lectures before us, that M. Jouffroy's system would
overlook what seems to be true in Price's method of
deciding upon duty. Is it not a matter of consciousness
that we do decide concerning some things in and for them-
selves, without any regard to their consequences, that they
are right, and must never be omitted, or that they are
wrong, and ought never to be done? Have we not certain
instinctive impressions, that make us feel that certain things
are right and others are wrong, without any regard to con-
sequences, or to absolute good? Or in other words, is not
this part of Price's system true, though not the whole truth?
If so, Jouffroy's System is true, but not the whole truth.
He takes the matter where Price leaves it. If M. Jouffroy
incorporates this part of Price's system into his own, and


116
(July,
Channing's Translation of Jouffroy
then extends his system over the ground that is not
covered by Price's, (and we will not prejudge that he will
not,) we think that he will leave but very little, if anything,
for those who come after him to do, except to carry out
his system into its almost infinite ramifications and ap-
plications.
In the last Lecture M. Jouffroy passes in hasty review
the Rational systems of Wollaston, Clarke, Montesquieu,
Malebranche, and Wolf. We cannot here notice their
systems.
We cannot conceive of a better Introduction to the true
system of Ethics, than one upon M. Jouffroy's plan, and
his work is on the whole as satisfactory as we have a right
to expect from any man. It evinces great clearness, patient
industry, and impartiality. His soul, however, is not one
of the colures which contains within itself all other pos-
sible souls. His heart is not ardent, passionate, and en-
thusiastic enough to have felt all that has been felt by the
human heart; his intellect is not comprehensive enough to
have thought all that has been thought, and therefore he
does not comprehend all humanity within himself. He
cannot take all the points of view from which things hu-
man and divine may be considered. He cannot be purely
enough an intellect, and have that intellect large enough
to comprehend Spinoza and his system. He cannot put
himself into a condition where Reason and the Imagina-
tion are sufficiently predominant over the understanding to
fully comprehend the mystics. Yet the value of the book
before us as an Introduction to Ethics is but slightly if at
all diminished on this account.
· But there is an essential imperfection in Ethics at best.
Their problem is to find a law of duty that shall apply to all
cases, a law which one person can determine for another —
a law to which every one has a right, if not to enforce,
yet to expect and demand obedience. But Christ is the
end of the law to every one that believes. The high-
est statement of Ethics is Justice ; but there is a higher
than Justice, even Love, which is the fulfilling of the law.
Many things there are which ought to be done,- many
things there are which the generous heart will feel inclined
to do, — but which no system of Ethics can prove that he
ought to do. The highest thing that Justice can say is, -


1840.)
117
Aulus Persius Flaccus.
an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; but Love says,
resist not evil; love your enemies ; bless them that curse
you; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that
despitefully use you and persecute you. But the law is a
schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, who is the end of
the law. It is therefore of great importance that we under-
stand this law, and to this end we commend the work of
Jouffroy that we have been reviewing as one of the best
helps that can be found.
W.
AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS.
If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out
for the poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of
finding the field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly
dissent from the words of the prologue, .
“Ipse semipaganus
Ad sacra Vatum carmen affero nostrum.”
Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the
elegance and fire of Horace, nor will any Sybil be needed
to remind you, that from those older Greek poets, there is
a sad descent to Persius. Scarcely can you distinguish
one harmonious sound, amid this unmusical bickering with
the follies of men.
One sees bow music has its place in thought, but hardly
as yet in language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for
her to remould language, and impart to it her own rhythm.
Hitherto the verse groans and labors with its load, but goes
not forward blithely, singing by the way. The best ode
may be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor
and trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a
ladder. Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Marvel,
and Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves and crack-
ling of twigs in the forest, and not yet the sound of any
bird. The Muse has never lified up her voice to sing.
Most of all satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius
do not marry music to their verse, but are measured fault-
finders at best; stand but just outside the faults they


118
[July,
Aulus Persius Flaccus.
condemn, and so are concerned rather about the mon-
ster they have escaped, than the fair prospect before
them. Let them live on an age, not a secular one, and
they will have travelled out of his shadow and harm's way,
and found other objects to ponder.
As long as there is nature, the poet is, as it were, par-
ticeps criminis. One sees not but he had best let bad
take care of itself, and have to do only with what is be-
yond suspicion. If you light on the least vestige of truth,
and it is the weight of the whole body still which stamps
the faintest trace, an eternity will not suffice to extol it,
while no evil is so huge, but you grudge to bestow on it a
moment of hate. Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood;
her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.
Horace would not have written satire so well, if he had
not been inspired by it, as by a passion, and fondly cher-
ished his vein. In his odes, the love always exceeds the
hate, so that the severest satire still sings itself, and the
poet is satisfied, though the folly be not corrected.
A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius
is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third, Love. Com-
plaint, which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the
province of poetry. Ere long the enjoyment of a superior
good would have changed his disgust into regret. We can
never have much sympathy with the complainer; for after
searching nature through, we conclude he must be both
plaintiff and defendant too, and so had best come to a
settlement without a hearing.
I know not but it would be truer to say, that the highest
strain of the muse is essentially plaintive. The saint's are
still tears of joy.
But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the
severest satire; as impersonal as nature herself, and like
the sighs of her winds in the woods, which convey ever a
slight reproof to the hearer. The greater the genius, the
keener the edge of the satire.
Hence have we to do only with the rare and fragmen-
tary traits, which least belong to Persius, or, rather, are the
properest utterance of his muse; since that which he says
best at any time is what he can best say at all times. The
Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to cull some
quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it


1840.]
F19
Aulus Persius Flaccus.
to meet even the most familiar truths in a new dress, when,
if our neighbor had said it, we should have passed it by as
hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps
select some twenty lines, which fit so well as many
thoughts, that they will recur to the scholar almost as
readily as a natural image ; though when translated into
familiar language, they lose that insular emphasis, which
fitted them for quotation. Such lines as the following no
translation can render commonplace. Contrasting the man
of true religion with those, that, with jealous privacy,
would fain carry on a secret commerce with the gods, he
says, —
“ Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque
Tollere susurros de templis; et aperto vivere voto.”
To the virtuous man, the universe is the only sanctum
sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad
noon of his existence. Why should he betake himself to
a subterranean crypt, as if it were the only holy ground in
all the world he had left unprofaned? The obedient soul
would only the more discover and familiarize things, and
escape more and more into light and air, as having hence-
forth done with secrecy, so that the universe shall not seem
open enough for it. At length, is it neglectful even of
that silence which is consistent with true modesty, but by its
independence of all confidence in its disclosures, makes
that which it imparts so private to the hearer, that it be-
comes the care of the whole world that modesty be not
infringed.
To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there
is a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent
acts may be matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with
the utmost truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pure-
ness, must be transparent as light.
In the third satire he asks,
« Est aliquid quò tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum ?
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove,
Securus quò per ferat, atque ex tempore vivis ? "
Language seems to have justice done it, but is obviously
cramped and narrowed in its significance, when any mean-
ness is described. The truest construction is not put upon
it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom,
is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes


120
(July,
Aulus Persius Flaccus.
the front of his offence. Universally, the innocent man
will come forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturings,
the combined din of reproof and commendation, with a
faint sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices lie ever in
the direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but
plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never attains
to the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior
sort of truth; if it were more thoroughly false, it would
incur danger of becoming true.
“Securus quò pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivit,
is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle dis-
cernment of the language would have taught us, with all
his negligence he is still secure ; but the sluggard, notwith-
standing bis heedlessness, is insecure.
The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous,
for he lives out of an eternity that includes all time. He
is a child each moment, and reflects wisdom. The far
darting thought of the child's mind tarries not for the
development of manhood; it lightens itself, and needs
not draw down lightning from the clouds. When we bask
in a single ray from the mind of Zoroaster, we see how all
subsequent time has been an idler, and has no apology for
itself. But the cunning mind travels farther back than
Zoroaster each instant, and comes quite down to the pres-
ent with its revelation. All the thrift and industry of
thinking give no man any stock in life; his credit with the
inner world is no better, his capital no larger. He must
try bis fortune again to-day as yesterday. All questions
rely on the present for their solution. Time measures
nothing but itself. The word that is written may be post-
poned, but not that on the life. If this is what the occa-
sion says, let the occasion say it. From a real sympathy,
all the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to live
without his creed in his pocket.
In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find,
“ Stat contrà ratio, et recretam garrit in aurem.
Ne liceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo."
Only they who do not see how anything might be better
done are forward to try their hand on it. Even the master
workman must be encouraged by the reflection, that his
awkwardness will be incompetent to do that harm, to which


1840.1
121
The Shield.
his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no apology for
neglecting to do many things from a sense of our inca-
pacity, — for what deed does not fall maimed and imper-
fect from our hands ? — but only a warning to bungle less.
The satires of Persius are the farthest possible from in-
spired; evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps
I have given him credit for more earnestness than is ap-
parent; but certain it is, that that which alone we can call
Persius, which is forever independent and consistent, was
in earnest, and so sanctions the sober consideration of all.
The artist and his work are not to be separated. The
most wilfully foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly,
but the deed and the doer together make ever one sober fact.
The buffoon may not bribe you to laugh always at his grima-
ces; they shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, to
stand heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character.
T
THE SHIELD.
The old man said, “ Take thou this shield, my son,
Long tried in battle, and long tried by age,
Guarded by this thy fathers did engage,
Trusting to this the victory they have won.”
Forth from the tower Hope and Desire had built,
In youth's bright morn I gazed upon the plain,
There struggled countless hosts, while many a stain
Marked where the blood of brave men had been spilt.
With spirit strong I buckled to the fight,
What sudden chill rushes through every vein ?
Those fatal arms oppress me - all in vain
My fainting limbs seek their accustomed might.
Forged were those arms for men of other mould,
Our hands they fetter, cramp our spirits free,
I throw them on the ground and suddenly
Comes back my strength -- returns my spirit bold.
I stand alone, unarmed, — yet not alone,
Who heeds no law but what within he finds,
Trusts his own vision, not to other minds,
He fights with thee — Father, aid thou thy son.
VOL. I. —NO. 1.
16


122
(July,
The Problem.
THE PROBLEM.
I LIKE a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure ?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle ;
Out from the heart of nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,-
The canticles of love and wo.
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know'st thou what wove yon wood-bird's nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads ?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O’er England's Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.


1840.)
123
Come Morir ?
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o'er him planned,
And the same power that reared the shrine,
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentecost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting quires,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken,
Was writ on tables.yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost.
I know what say the Fathers wise, –
The Book itself before me lies,
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger Golden Lips or mines,
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines ;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear,
And yet for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
COME MORIR?
He leaves the earth, and says, enough and more
Unto thee have I given, oh Earth. — For all
With hand free and ungrudging gave I up, —
But now I leave thy pale hopes and dear pains,
The rude fields where so many years I've tilled,
And where no other feeling gave me strength,
Save that from them my home was aye in view,
For only transient clouds could hide from me
My spirit's home, whence it came, where should go;-
Enough, more than enough, now let me rest.
I SLEPT, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, sad heart, courageously,
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A noonday light and truth to thee.


124
(July,
Concerts of the Past Winter.
THE CONCERTS OF THE PAST WINTER.
• Music has made a decided progress in our city this last
winter. This has appeared in the popularity of the con-
certs, compared with other amusements, and in the un-
usual amount of good music, which has not been wholly
thrown away upon us. Of course many a lover of the art
could not but look skeptically upon all this; could not
fail to see that people were determined to this or that
concert by fashion rather than by taste, and that the cheap
contrivances of Russell always carried away the crowd,
while the artist sang or played to the few. We cannot
flatter ourselves for a moment that we of Boston are, or
shall be for years to come, a musical people. The devoted
lover of the art is only beginning to be countenanced and
recognised as one better than an idler. He must still
keep apologizing to his incredulous, practical neighbors
for the heavenly influence which haunts him. He does
not live in a genial atmosphere of music, but in the cold
east wind of utility; and meets few who will acknowledge
that what he loves has anything to do with life. Still we are
confident we feel a progress. There is a musical element
in the people; for there is certainly a religious sentiment,
a restlessness, which craves more than the actual affords,
an aspiration and yearning of the heart for communion,
which cannot take place through words and thoughts, but
only through some subtler medium, like music. It is not
nature's fault, if we want the musical sense or organ.
Slow, but sure development, under proper culture, will
prove this. Singing is taught in schools embracing thou-
sands, without much consciousness, to be sure, of the
higher meaning of music, but with great success in pro.
ducing quick and correct ears, and pure, flexible voices,
and in making the number of those who can sing and
read music, and of those who can enjoy and appreciate it,
vastly greater than it was. This creates audiences for the
oratorios and concerts; there is a looking that way; and
the art bids fair sooner or later to have justice done it.
Next to thorough drilling in the rudiments, we want
inspiring models. We want to hear good music. In the


1840.)
125
Concerts of the Past Winter.
schools the surface of the soil is loosened: it is time that
good seeds should be dropped into it. The Psalmody of
the country choir and the dancing master's fiddle, the
waltzes and variations of the music-shop, Russell's songs,
and “ Jim Crow,” and “Harrison Melodies," are not apt
to visit the popular mind with the deep emotions of true
music. Handel should be heard more, and Haydn, and
Mozart, and Beethoven. The works of true genius, which
cannot be too familiar, since they are always new like
nature, should salute our ears until the nobler chords with-
in our souls respond. We should be taught the same
reverence for Bach and Handel as for Homer; and, having
felt the spell of their harmonies upon us, should glow at
the mention of their names. Every opportunity of hearing
good music is to be hailed as an angel's visit in our com-
munity. It is in this view that we look back with pleasure
upon the concerts of the past season.
That music of any kind draws crowds, is encouraging.
But we have been more than encouraged, on looking over
our old concert bills, which we have kept through the
winter as a record of pleasant hours, to see how much
genuine classic music has been brought out, with more or
less success, at the various concerts : — music, which the
few devoutly musical had heard of, and longed to hear,
with but a faint hope that they should soon be so blest ;-
music, which introduces us within the charmed precincts
of genius, like Beethoven's. In attempting to single out
the most significant from such a multitude of performances,
we shall of course omit much that was praiseworthy; for
our opportunity of hearing was limited, nor is our memory
sure, nor our space sufficient.
Most worthy of mention were the Oratorios of the Han-
del and Haydn Society. We had “ The Messiah” twice,
and “ The Creation" several times. Neukomm's “ David”
had the greatest run, as usual. It is brilliant and variegated,
and had been more thoroughly practised and learned than
the other pieces. But as a composition it should not be
mentioned with them. Its interest fades away, when it is
repeated beyond a certain point, while that of “ The Mes-
siah” steadily increases. To the former we owe some bright
hours, to the latter an influence for life. We feel tempted
to call “ The Messiah” the only Oratorio, and to doubt if


126
[July,
Concerts of the Past Winter.
there will ever be another. “ David” is something half-
way between the Oratorio and the Opera ; it is too dra-
matic, too individual and personal, too circumstantial to be
sublime. “The Messiah” was brought out this winter
for the first time in a manner which made it felt, and con-
veyed some idea or presentiment of its true grandeur,
depth, and beauty. Many hearers then, for the first time,
discovered what a treasure the world contained, and were
moved to try to appreciate it. This effect was owing in
great part to the Society's new hall, the Melodéon, which
gives ample scope to the great choruses. The orchestra,
though small, was uncommonly good. Much as we loved
this music before, we were not properly aware until now
of the surpassing beauty of the accompaniments. They were
sketched by Handel, when instrumentation was limited,
and filled out with a glorious warmth of coloring by Mozart.
To have done it so well his soul must have become impreg-
nated with the very spirit of the original. Handel seems
to have monopolized the one subject for an Oratorio, Hu-
manity's anticipation of its Messiah. This properly is
the one theme of all pure music; this is the mysterious
promise which it whispers; this is the hope with which it
fills us as its tones seem to fall from the blue sky, or to
exhale through the earth's pores from its secret divine
fountains. Music is the aspiration, the yearnings of the
heart to the Infinite. It is the prayer of faith, which has
no fear, no weakness in it. It delivers us from our actual
bondage; it buoys us up above our accidents, and wafts
us on waves of melody to the heart's ideal home. This
longing of the heart, which is a permanent fact of human
life, and with which all know how to sympathize, has re-
ceived its most perfect historical form in the Jewish expec-
tation of a Messiah. The prediction and coming of Jesus
stand as a type forever of the divine restlessness, the pro-
phetic yearning of the heart of humanity. Has any poet
found words for this feeling to match with those of the
Psalmist and the Prophets of old ? With wonderful judg-
ment Handel called out the noblest of those grand sen-
tences, and constructed them into a complete and epic
unity. They are almost the only words we know, which
do not limit the free, world-permeating, ever-shifting, Pro-
tean genius of music. Words, the language of thoughts,


1840.]
127
Concerts of the Past Winter.
are too definite, and clip the wings and clog the graceful
movements of this unresting spirit: she chants forgetful-
ness of limits, and charms us along with her to the Infinite;
she loves to wander through the vague immense, and seems
everywhere at once; then only is she beautiful. With
the growth of the musical taste, therefore, one acquires a
more and more decided preference for instrumental music
rather than song; music pure, rather than music wedded
with another art, which never can be quite congenial. We
prefer a Beethoven's Symphony to anything ever sung,
with the single exception of Handel's Messiah. In that
the words seem one with the music, — as eternal, as sub-
lime, as universal and impersonal. They set no limit to
the music, but contain in themselves seeds of inexhaustible
harmonies and melodies. We could not spare a word, or
suffer any change. “ The Messiah" always must have
meaning to all men, it is so impersonal. Its choruses are
the voice of all humanity. Its songs are the communion
of the solitary soul with the Infinite. But there is no
Duet or Trio in it, no talking of individual with individual.
Either it is the sublime of the soul merged in the multi-
tude, or it is the sublime of the soul alone with God.
And then its depths of sadness! — from such depths alone
could roll those mighty ocean-choruses of triumph, the
“ Hallelujah" chorus, the “ Wonderful". chorus, and
6 Worthy the Lamb." " The Messiah" will always stand,
in its stern simplicity, as one of the adopted of Nature.
How different “ The Creation”! We are in another
element, with another man, with Haydn, that sunny, genial,
busy nature. If with Handel all is unity, grandeur, bold
simplicity, universality; here all is variety, individuality,
profusion of detail. İf with Handel it is aspiration to the
Unknown, here it is description of the Known. If one
forebodes another world, the other lovingly reflects the
hues of this world. Handel with bold hand sketches gi-
gantic shadows, which lose themselves in infinite space.
With Haydn everything is happily planned within the
limits of certainty, and conscientiously and gracefully fin-
ished. It is the perfection of art. A work of Haydn's
is a Grecian temple: there it stands complete in itself and
fully executed, and suggests no more. A work of Han-
del's, (still more of Beethoven's,) is a Gothic cathedral,


128
[July,
Concerts of the Past Winter.
which seems never finished, but becoming, growing,
yearning and striving upwards, the beginning only of a
boundless plan, whose consummation is in another world.
We enjoy with Haydn the serene pleasure of doing things,
the ever fresh surprise of accomplishment. With him we
round off and finish one thing after another, and look
upon it and pronounce it good ; but we do not liſt our
eyes away and yearn for what is beyond. Constant, cheer-
ful activity was the element of Haydn. Hence the Crea-
tion was the very subject for the man ; his whole nature
chose it for him. In “ The Creation” the instrumental
accompaniments are prominent, and the voices secondary.
The orchestra weaves the picture; the voices but hint its
meaning. Literal description of nature is carried even too
far in it. Beautiful and surprising as those imitations are,
of Chaos, and the birth of Light, and rolling ocean, and
smooth meadows, and brooks, and birds, and breezes,
monsters of the deep and of the forest, and insects spark-
ling like gold dust in the sunny air, — yet often they seem
too mechanical and curious, and out of the province of
Art, which should breathe the pervading spirit of Nature,
as a whole, and not copy too carefully the things that are
in it. Whoever has studied the Pastoral Symphony, or
the Pastoral Sonata of Beethoven, will feel the difference
between music which flows from an inward feeling of na-
ture, from a common consciousness (as it were) with na-
ture, and the music which only copies, from without, her
single features. These pieces bring all summer sensations
over you, but they do not let you identify a note or a pas-
sage as standing for a stream, or a bird. They do not
say; look at this or that, now imagine nightingales, now
thunder, now mountains, and now sunspots chasing shad-
ows; but they make you feel as you would if you were
lying on a grassy slope in a summer's afternoon, with the
melancholy leisure of a shepherd swain, and these things
all around you without your noticing them. Haydn paints
you this or that by means of various qualities and com-
binations of tone, and various movements; with wonder-
ful success he calls up images ; you admire the ingenuity
and the beauty, but are not inspired. We were glad to
hear the opening symphony, representing chaos, performed
by the orchestra so as to give us some dim conception of


1840.]
129
Concerts of the Past IVinter.
what it might be when given by a great and practised
orchestra abroad. Ilere, of course, these things are done
upon a small scale. Still they afford the lover of music
an opportunity to study the great works, of which he has
heard, and thus prepare himself to hear them understand-
ingly whenever he shall be blessed with a hearing of them
in their full proportions. We do feel that we grow famil-
iar with “ The Messiah," though we have only heard it
here. The characteristic and eternal features of the com-
position as it was in the mind of Handel, scem to come
out more and more clearly as we think it over, and remain
in our mind long after the accidents of an inadequate per-
formance are forgotten. An ideal of what “ The Messiah”
in itself must be is nourished in us by “ The Messiah," as
we have heard it under such comparatively poor advanta-
ges. For this we thank the Handel and Haydn Society.
We congratulate them on the success of their last per-
formances; and think the interest with which a crowded
audience listened, a sign of some significance in a com-
munity only beginning to be musical. Would it not have
been better to have repeated “ The Messiah” again and
again, and then “ The Creation,” as long as audiences
would come, that so our people might study and get to
appreciate this grand music? They require to be heard
many times, until their melodies wander through our va-
cant minds unconsciously as we walk and as we work.
A repeated performance of “ The Messiah," as good as the
two given last winter, would do more to bring out the
latent musical taste of the people, than anything else,
unless it were a very perfect opera, which we cannot have.
Next to the oratorios, we rememher with most pleasure
the two concerts of Mr. Rackemann, and the two of Mr.
Kossowski, the distinguished pianists. These gentlemen
are both artists; the former superior in chaste elegance
and finish of execution, the latter in fire and energy. The
former seems to have accomplished most; the latter prom-
ises most, — there is inspiration, as well as skill in his
performance. They have introduced us to the new school
of Piano Forte playing, and have let us hear some of the
wonderful feats of Thalberg, Dohler, Chopin, Henselt, and
Listz. These masters have given a new meaning to the
Piano Forte, having, by indefatigable practice superadded
VOL. 1.- NO. I.
17


130 Concerts of the Past Winter. [July,
It was a satisf character, an what they are. They are
to more or less of genius, attained to a mastery of its
powers, and bringing out the peculiar soul (as it were) of
the instrument, in a way unknown before. Their compo-
sitions are peculiarly Piano Forte compositions, and adapt-
ed to the display of their new arts of astonishing execu-
tion. It was a satisfaction to hear them. They certainly
have a great deal of character, and are interesting in their
kind. We can enjoy them for what they are, without
complaining that they are not something else. They are
rich, brilliant, wild, astonishing. They revel in insatiable
rapture and rage of all fantastic motions. They are the
heaving of the billowy deep, now dark, now lit by gleams
of lightning; they are the sweeping breeze of the forest;
they are the flickering aurora ; they are the cool flow of
the summer evening zephyr; they are the dance of the
elves by moonlight; they are everything marvellous and
exquisite. There is marked individuality, too, in the
works of each. There is sweet pathos in the Notturnes
of Chopin. There is a fond, dreamy home-sickness in the
6 Souvenir de Varsovie," by Henselt; and in his “ If I
were a bird I'd fly to thee,” how the soul dissolves and
floats away! — the instrument becomes fluid. The “ Gal-
ope Chromatique” of Listz, was altogether the wildest
and most original thing of all, and displayed a genius
which we might expect from this devout admirer of Bee-
thoven. We can admire too, though without much lasting
soul-satisfaction, the massive, gorgeous constructiveness of
Thalberg. One of the novelties of this style of playing,
which is highly expressive, consists in carrying on an air
in the middle of the instrument, with a florid accompani-
ment playing around it, above and below. The story
seems transacted betwixt earth and sky. In this way the
whole length of the Piano Forte speaks at once, and it
becomes quite an orchestra in itself. It is with pleasure
that we record these things, and we hope to have an op-
portunity to appreciate them better, that we may judge
them more discriminatingly. But we should have been
much more pleased to have heard the Sonatas of Beetho-
ven, the “ Concert-Stück" of Weber, and such true clas-
sic works, not written for the sake of displaying the Piano
Forte, but for the sake of music. The pianists of the day
show too much of ambition, too little of inspiration, of


1840.)
131
Concerts of the Past Winter.
true art-feeling, in their playing and their choice of sub-
jects. These performances were varied by two Trios of
Beethoven, for Piano, Violin, &c., given in the best style of
our young German professors, who always play as if they
breathed an element which we do not. These were rare
sounds in our concert rooms. The few artists who culti-
vate this diviner music, seem to keep it to themselves, and
to feel that it would be casting pearls before swine to pro-
duce it before audiences, which can be enraptured about
Russell. But was not the result in these trials encouraging ?
There was profound silence in the room, followed by a
gleam of pure satisfaction on most faces as we looked
round; — or was it only the fancied reflection of our own
mood? We think not. Let us have more of this. How
can we ever have taste enough to keep musicians warm, if
they will risk nothing upon us, and never give us a chance
to hear the best ?
Mr. Knight's last concert deserves particular notice as
being the first and the only promiscuous concert in this
place, composed entirely of classic pieces from great mas-
ters. It was music for the few, who, we trust, are gradu-
ally becoming more; and we were surprised that all the
lovers of good music did not come out. Here we had
Beethoven's “ Adeläide ;” which, however, we were sorry
to hear transposed into an English song, “ Rosalie,"
which is not nearly so beautiful, and is moreover an entire
change of subject, not the theme which first inspired the
music. Mr. Knight sang it in his usual chaste and true
style; though with hardly enough of feeling. The second
movement, too, was sung much too rapidly; it did not
give the ear time to dwell upon those magnificent chords
of the accompaniment, which is as wonderful as the part
for the voice. But for a just criticism of this and of the
whole concert we would refer to the excellent “ Musical
Magazine” of Mr. Hach,—a work which we are glad to no-
tice in passing; for, next to good music itself, good musical
criticism should be hailed as among the encouraging signs.
Mr. Knight also sang with great effect - The Grave-
digger," by Kalliwoda, and “ The Erl-King," by Schubert,
two genuine flowers of German song. Then there was a
Canzonet of Haydn, a “ Gratias Agimus," by Guglielmi,
a Septuor of Haydn's, and another of Mozart's, and several


132
(July,
Concerts of the Past Winter.
more pieces of that order. Mr. Knight is perhaps the
most accomplished musician of all the singers who have
visited us. Some of his own compositions are original
and highly intellectual. His skill in accompaniment is re-
markable. For a promiscuous audience his singing of a
common sentimental song is too cold, and fails to move;
but his singing of such music as the songs in “ The Cre-
ation," is more than faultless. If he remains with us, we
trust he will continue to presume upon the growing taste
of the public, and to labor for Art more than popularity.
Such efforts will in time be rewarded by the formation of
a sure and appreciating audience.
The “ Amateur Orchestra” have cultivated the higher
classic music with encouraging success, and by the concerts
to which they invite their friends occasionally, do much to
create a taste for the best Symphonies and Overtures.
On the last occasion they were assisted by the “ Social
Glee Club.” The performances of both were excellent,
and the selection of pieces such as would interest an au-
dience of musicians. The house was crowded. The grand
and dark Overtures of Kalliwoda, another by Romberg,
that of Tancredi, and a Symphony by Ries, the pupil of
Beethoven, were given with much effect, and evidently felt
by the crowd. Of a similar character, though more miscella-
neous, was the complimentary concert got up by the mem-
bers of the musical corps for Mr. Asa Warren, the modest
and deserving leader for many years of the Handel and
Haydn Orchestra. Enthusiasm for the man brought to-
gether the largest orchestra, which has yet appeared in our
city. The Overture to “ La Gazza Ladza” was admi-
rably executed; it is worth noticing, that this was the first
instance we remember of an Overture's being repeated at
the call of an audience. This promises something. We
could not but feel that the materials, that evening collected,
might, if they could be kept together through the year, and
induced to practise, form an Orchestra worthy to execute
the grand works of Haydn and Mozart. Orchestra and
audience would improve together, and we might even hope
to hear one day the “ Sinfonia Eroica,” and the “ Pas-
torale” of Beethoven.
The Boston Academy have been very lately giving a
short series of public performances, which should be among


1840.]
133
Concerts of the Past Winter.
the most attractive and popular, if there is any charm in
the names of Haydn, Sebastian Bach, Fesca, Pasiello,
&c. But the audience was not worthy of the occasion.
The general public, those who go to concerts for amuse-
ment or from the fashion of the thing, had doubtless been
wearied out with concerts long before. Still worse, those
who went seemed not to be mainly of the musical class ;
and a magnificent Organ Fugue of Bach, performed by
Mr. Müller, the most accomplished organist who has been
among us, was thrown away upon a yawning, talking as-
sembly. The “ Spring,” from Haydn's “ Seasons," was
better appreciated because of its sprightliness. The Acad-
emy want Solo singers. Moreover, their style of singing
seems too merely mechanically precise, without glow, and
a common consciousness blending instruments and voices
into one. Our people are not yet so musical that they
can be attracted by a piece without regard to the perform-
er. They will go to hear Caradori, Rackemann, &c. sooner
than they will to hear Mozart or Haydn. But we hope
the Academy will persevere in producing what they can of
the great music. The audience one day will come round.
Much more might be mentioned. But we have not
space. And it was our purpose only to mention what stood
out in our memory most prominently as signs of real pro-
gress. Looking back over this wide field of concerts, we
note the few sunny spots. Our “ Dial” does not tell the
time of day, except the sun shine. It ignores what is dull
and merely of course, and proclaims the signs of hope.
Were this the proper place, we might say much of what
has been done in a quieter way in private musical circles.
Much of the choicest music, of what the English call
“Chamber music," has been heard and enjoyed in various
houses by the few. Were all these little circles brought
together it would form a musical public, which no artist
need despise. This leads us to make a few suggestions
in view of a coming concert season.
We want two things. Frequent public performances of
the best music, and a constant audience, of which the two
or three hundred most musical persons in the community
shall be the nucleus. Good music has been so rare, that
when it comes, those, who know how to enjoy such, do
not trust it, and do not go.


134
[July,
A Dialogue.
To secure these ends, might not a plan of this kind be
realized. Let a few of our most accomplished and refined
musicians institute a series of cheap instrumental concerts,
like the Quartette Concerts, or the “Classic Concerts” of
Moscheles in England. Let them engage to perform Quar-
tettes, &c., with occasionally a Symphony, by the best
masters and no other. Let them repeat the best and most
characteristic pieces enough to make them a study to the
audience. To ensure a proper audience there should be
subscribers to the course. The two or three hundred, who
are scattered about and really long to hear and make ac-
quaintance with Beethoven and Haydn, could easily be
brought together by such an attraction, and would form a
nucleus to whatever, audience might be collected, and
would give a tone to the whole, and secure attention.
Why will not our friends, Messrs. Schmidt, Hach, Isen-
bech, &c. undertake this? It might be but a labor of love
at the outset; but it would create in time the taste which
would patronize it and reward it.
Might not a series of lectures too, on the different styles
and composers be instituted under the auspices of the
Academy, or some other association, parallel with the musi-
cal performances. A biography and critical analysis of
the musical genius of Handel, for instance, would add in-
terest to the performance of “ The Messiah."
A DIALOGUE.
DAHLIA.
My cup already doth with light o'errun.
Descend, fair sun;
I am all crimsoned for the bridal hour,
Come to thy flower.
THE SUN.
Ah, if I pause, my work will not be done,
On I must run,
The mountains wait. - I love thee, lustrous flower,
But give to love no hour.


1840.)
135
Richter. - The Morning Breeze.
RICHTER.
Poet of Nature! Gentlest of the Wise !
Most airy of the fanciful, most keen
Of satirists, thy thoughts, like butterflies,
Still near the sweetest-scented flowers have been;
With Titian's colors thou canst sunset paint,
With Raphael's dignity, celestial love;
With Hogarth's pencil, each deceit and feint
Of meanness and hypocrisy reprove;
Canst to Devotion's highest flight sublime
Exalt the mind, by tenderest pathos' art,
Dissolve in purifying tears the heart,
Or bid it, shuddering, recoil at crime;
The fond illusions of the youth and maid,
At which so many world-formed sages sneer,
When by thy altar-lighted torch displayed,
Our natural religion can appear.
All things in thee tend to one polar star,
Magnetic all thy influences are !
Some murmur at the “ want of system” in Richter's writings.
A LABYRINTH! a flowery wilderness!
Some in thy “Slip-boxes” and “Honey-moons"
Complain of — want of order, I confess,
But not of system, in its highest sense.
Who asks a guiding clue through this wide mind,
In love of Nature, such will surely find;
In tropic climes, live like the tropic bird,
Whene'er a spice-fraught grove may tempt thy stay,
Nor be by cares of colder climes disturbed, -
No frost the Summer's bloom shall drive away.
Nature's wide temple, and the azure dome,
Have plan enough for the free spirit's home!
THE MORNING BREEZE.
OCEAN, that lay
Like a sick child, spiritless, well nigh death,
Now curls and ripples in eternal play
Beneath thy breath.


136
(July, 1840.
Dante. — Sketches.
DANTE
But who the Alpine monarch reigns ?
Who like Mont Blanc inay soar?
Who clothes his thought in robes of snow,
Severely chaste and hoar?
Who, but my Dante? — Morning breaks. —
The inaccessible sun,
With rays of light the singer crowns,
Whose thought and word are one.
Similian
A SKETCH.
BESIDE me sat one of the few, one gifted
To draw some keen rays from the sun of Truth,
And guide them to the freezing hearts of men,
Whose mind, full, ardent, to his race o'erflowing,
And by vocation given to heavenly themes,
Asked but one genial touch to wake to music,
And sing, like Memnon, of a fairer morning,
Which knows no cloud nor leads to sultry noon.
A SKETCH.
She is a thing, all grace, all loveliness,
A fragrant flower nursed in an arid waste,
A many-toned and ever-winning melody,
A fine-wrought vase, filled with enchanted wine,
A living, speaking book of Poesy,
The shape revealed to Wordsworth in a dream
From our lost star the only gladdening beam.
Did you never admire anything your friend did merely because he
did it? Never ! — you always had a better reason. Wise man, you
never knew what it is to love.


THE DIAL.
Vol. I.
OCTOBER, 1840.
No. II.
THOUGHTS ON MODERN LITERATURE.
There is no better illustration of the laws by which the
world is governed than Literature. There is no luck in it.
It proceeds by Fate. Every scripture is given by the in-
spiration of God. Every composition proceeds out of a
greater or less depth of thought, and this is the measure of
its effect. The highest class of books are those which ex-
press the moral element; the next, works of imagination ;
and the next, works of science; - all dealing in realities,
what ought to be, what is, and what appears. These, in
proportion to the truth and beauty they involve, remain ;
the rest perish. They proceed out of the silent living
inind to be heard again by the living mind. Of the best
books it is hardest to write the history. Those books which
are for all time are written indifferently at any time. For
high genius is a day without night, a Caspian Ocean which
hath no tides. And yet is literature in some sort a creature
of time. Always the oracular soul is the source of thought,
but always the occasion is administered by the low media-
tions of circumstance. Religion, Love, Ambition, War,
some fierce antagonism, or it may be, some petty annoy-
ance must break the round of perfect circulation, or no
spark, no joy, no event can be. The poet rambling through
the fields or the forest, absorbed in contemplation to that
degree, that his walk is but a pretty dream, would never
awake to precise thought, if the scream of an eagle, the
cries of a crow or curlew near his head did not break the
VOL. I. — NO. II.
18


138
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
sweet continuity. Nay the finest lyrics of the poet come
of this unequal parentage; the imps of matter beget such
child on the soul, fair daughter of God. Nature mixes
facts with thoughts to yield a poem. But the gift of im-
mortality is of the mother's side. In the spirit in which
they are written is the date of their duration, and never in
the magnitude of the facts. Everything lasts in proportion
to its beauty. In proportion as it was not polluted by any
wilfulness of the writer, but flowed from his mind after
the divine order of cause and effect, it was not his but na-
ture's, and shared the sublimity of the sea and sky. That
which is truly told, nature herself takes in charge against the
whims and injustice of men. For ages, Herodotus was rec-
koned a credulous gossip in his descriptions of Africa, and
now the sublime silent desert testifies through the mouths of
Bruce, Lyon, Caillaud, Burckhardt, Belzoni, to the truth of
the calumniated historian.
And yet men imagine that books are dice, and have no
merit in their fortune; that the trade and the favor of a
few critics can get one book into circulation, and defeat
another; and that in the production of these things the
author has chosen and may choose to do thus and so. So-
ciety also wishes to assign subjects and methods to its
writers. But neither reader nor author may intermeddle.
You cannot reason at will in this and that other vein, but
only as you must. You cannot make quaint combinations,
and bring to the crucible and alembic of truth things far
fetched or fantastic or popular, but your method and your
subject are foreordained in all your nature, and in all nature,
or ever the earth was, or it has no worth. All that gives
currency still to any book, advertised in the morning's
newspaper in London or Boston, is the remains of faith in
the breast of men that not adroit book makers, but the
inextinguishable soul of the universe reports of itself in
articulate discourse to-day as of old. The ancients strongly
expressed their sense of the unmanageableness of these
words of the spirit by saying, that the God made his priest
insane, took him hither and thither as leaves are whirled
by the tempest. But we sing as we are bid. Our inspira-
tions are very manageable and tame. Death and sin have
whispered in the ear of the wild horse of Heaven, and he
has become a dray and a hack. And step by step with


1840.]
139
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
the entrance of this era of ease and convenience, the be-
lief in the proper Inspiration of man has departed.
Literary accomplishments, skill in grammar and rhetoric,
knowledge of books, can never atone for the want of things
which demand voice. Literature is a poor trick when it
busies itself to make words pass for things. The most
original book in the world is the Bible. This old collection
of the ejaculations of love and dread, of the supreme de-
sires and contritions of men proceeding out of the region
of the grand and eternal, by whatsoever different mouths
spoken, and through a wide extent of times and coun-
tries, seems, especially if you add to our canon the kindred
sacred writings of the Hindoos, Persians, and Greeks, the
alphabet of the nations, — and all posterior literature either
the chronicle of facts under very inferior ideas, or, when
it rises to sentiment, the combinations, analogies, or degra-
dations of this. The elevation of this book may be meas-
ured by observing, how certainly all elevation of thought
clothes itself in the words and forms of speech of that
book. For the human mind is not now sufficiently erect
to judge and correct that scripture. Whatever is majesti-
cally thought in a great moral element, instantly approaches
this old Sanscrit. It is in the nature of things that the
highest originality must be moral. The only person, who
can be entirely independent of this fountain of literature
and equal to it, must be a prophet in his own proper per-
son. Shakspeare, the first literary genius of the world,
the highest in whom the moral is not the predominating
element, leans on the Bible : his poetry supposes it. If we
examine this brilliant influence — Shakspeare - as it lies
in our minds, we shall find it reverent not only of the letter
of this book, but of the whole frame of society which stood
in Europe upon it, deeply indebted to the traditional mo-
rality, in short, compared with the tone of the Prophets,
secondary. On the other hand, the Prophets do not imply
the existence of Shakspeare or Homer,— advert to no
books or arts, only to dread ideas and emotions. People
imagine that the place, which the Bible holds in the world,
it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the fact that it
came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other
book, and the effect must be precisely proportionate. Gib-
bon fancied that it was combinations of circumstances that


140
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
gave Christianity its place in history. But in nature it
takes an ounce to balance an ounce.
All just criticism will not only behold in literature the
action of necessary laws, but must also oversee literature
itself. The erect mind disparages all books. What are
books ? it saith : they can have no permanent value. How
obviously initial they are to their authors. The books of
the nations, the universal books, are long ago forgotten
by those who wrote them, and one day we shall forget this
primer learning. Literature is made up of a few ideas
and a few fables. It is a heap of nouns and verbs enclos-
ing an intuition or two. We must learn to judge books
by absolute standards. When we are aroused to a life in
ourselves, these traditional splendors of letters grow very
pale and cold. Men seem to forget that all literature is
ephemeral, and unwillingly entertain the supposition of its
utter disappearance. They deem not only letters in general,
but the best books in particular, parts of a preëstablished
harmony, fatal, unalterable, and do not go behind Vir-
gil and Dante, much less behind Moses, Ezekiel, and
St. John. But no man can be a good critic of any book,
who does not read it in a wisdom which transcends the in-
structions of any book, and treats the whole extant product
of the human intellect as only one age revisable and rever-
sible by him.
In our fidelity to the higher truth, we need not disown
our debt in our actual state of culture, in the twilights of
experience, to these rude helpers. They keep alive the
memory and the hope of a better day. When we flout
all particular books as initial merely, we truly express the
privilege of spiritual nature ; but, alas, not the fact and
fortune of this low Massachusetts and Boston, of these
humble Junes and Decembers of mortal life. Our souls
are not self-fed, but do eat and drink of chemical water
and wheat. Let us not forget the genial miraculous force
we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing
into the vault of day and night; no constellation shines, no
muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-
colored leaves, and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons
creak along the road. We return to the house and take
up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or
pages, and lo! the air swarms with life; the front of


1840.]
141
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
very true pole genius and analyze the
heaven is full of fiery shapes; secrets of magnanimity and
grandeur invite us on every hand; life is made up of them.
Such is our debt to a book. Observe, moreover, that we
ought to credit literature with much more than the bare
word it gives us. I have just been reading poems which
now in my memory shine with a certain steady, warm, au-
tumnal light. That is not in their grammatical construction
which they give me. If I analyze the sentences, it eludes
me, but is the genius and suggestion of the whole. Over
every true poem lingers a certain wild beauty, immeasur-
able; a happiness lightsome and delicious fills the heart
and brain, -as they say, every man walks environed by
his proper atmosphere, extending to some distance around
him. This beautiful result must be credited to literature
also in casting its account.
In looking at the library of the Present Age we are first
struck with the fact of the immense miscellany. It can
hardly be characterized by any species of book, for every
opinion old and new, every hope and fear, every whim and
folly has an organ. It prints a vast carcass of tradition
every year, with as much solemnity as a new revelation.
Along with these, it vents books that breathe of new morn-
ing, that seem to heave with the life of millions, books for
which men and women peak and pine; books which take
the rose out of the cheek of him that wrote them, and
give him to the midnight a sad, solitary, diseased man;
which leave no man where they found him, but make him
better or worse ; and which work dubiously on society,
and seem to inoculate it with a venom before any healthy
result appears.
In order to any complete view of the literature of the
present age, an inquiry should include what it quotes, what
it writes, and what it wishes to write. In our present at-
tempt to enumerate some traits of the recent literature, we
shall have somewhat to offer on each of these topics, but
we cannot promise to set in very exact order what we have
to say.
In the first place, it has all books. It reprints the wis-
dom of the world. How can the age be a bad one, which
gives me Plato and Paul and Plutarch, St. Augustine,
Spinoza, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher, Donne and
Sir Thomas Browne, beside its own riches ? Our presses


142
TOct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
groan every year with new editions of all the select pieces
of the first of mankind,- meditations, history, classifica-
tions, opinions, epics, lyrics, which the age adopts by
quoting them. If we should designate favorite studies in
which the age delights more than in the rest of this great
mass of the permanent literature of the human race, one
or two instances would be conspicuous. First ; the pro-
digious growth and influence of the genius of Shakspeare,
in the last one hundred and fifty years, is itself a fact of
the first importance. It almost alone has called out the ge-
nius of the German nation into an activity, which spreading
from the poetic into the scientific, religious, and philosophi-
cal domains, has made theirs now at last the paramount
intellectual influence of the world, reacting with great
energy on England and America. And thus, and not by
mechanical diffusion, does an original genius work and
spread himself. Society becomes an immense Shakspeare.
Not otherwise could the poet be admired, nay, not even
seen ;- not until his living, conversing, and writing had
diffused his spirit into the young and acquiring class, so
that he had multiplied himself into a thousand sons, a
thousand Shakspeares, and so understands himself.
Secondly; the history of freedom it studies with eager-
ness in civil, in religious, in philosophic history. It has
explored every monument of Anglo-Saxon history and law,
and mainly every scrap of printed or written paper remain-
ing from the period of the English Commonwealth. It has,
out of England, devoted much thought and pains to the
history of philosophy. It has groped in all nations where
was any literature for the early poetry, not only the dramatic,
but the rudest lyric; for songs and ballads, the Nibelungen
Lied, the poems of Hans Sachs and Henry of Alckmaer in
Germany, for the Cid in Spain, for the rough-cast verse of
the interior nations of Europe, and in Britain for the ballads
of Scotland and of Robinhood.
In its own books also, our age celebrates its wants,
achievements, and hopes. A wide superficial cultivation,
often a mere clearing and whitewashing, indicate the new
taste in the hitherto neglected savage, whether of the cities
or the fields, to know the arts and share the spiritual efforts of
the refined. The time is marked by the multitude of writers.
Soldiers, sailors, servants, nobles, princes, women, write


1840.
143
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
books. The progress of trade and the facilities for locomo-
tion have made the world nomadic again. Of course it is well
informed. All facts are exposed. The age is not to be trifled
with: it wishes to know who is who, and what is what. Let
there be no ghost stories more. Send Humboldt and Bon-
pland to explore Mexico, Guiana, and the Cordilleras. Let
Captain Parry learn if there be a northwest passage to Ame-
rica, and Mr. Lander learn the true course of the Niger.
Pückler Muskau will go to Algiers, and Sir Francis Head
to the Pampas, to the Brünnens of Nassau, and to Canada.
Then let us have charts true and Gazetteers correct. We
will know where Babylon stood, and settle the topography
of the Roman Forum. We will know whatever is to be
known of Australasia, of Japan, of Persia, of Egypt, of
Timbuctoo, of Palestine.
Thus Christendom has become a great reading-room;
and its books have the convenient merits of the newspaper,
its eminent propriety, and its superficial exactness of in-
formation. The age is well bred, knows the world, has no
nonsense, and herein is well distinguished from the learned
ages that preceded ours. That there is no fool like your
learned fool, is a proverb plentifully illustrated in the his-
tory and writings of the English and European scholars for
the half millennium that preceded the beginning of the
eighteenth century. The best heads of their time build or
occupy such card-house theories of religion, politics, and
natural science, as a clever boy would now blow away.
What stuff in Kepler, in Cardan, in Lord Bacon. Montaigne,
with all his French wit and downright sense, is little better;
a sophomore would wind him round his finger. Some of
the Medical Remains of Lord Bacon in the book for his
own use, “ Of the Prolongation of Life,” will move a smile
in the unpoetical practitioner of the Medical College. They
remind us of the drugs and practice of the leeches and
enchanters of Eastern romance. Thus we find in his
whimsical collection of astringents:
“ A stomacher of scarlet cloth; whelps or young healthy
boys applied to the stomach; hippocratic wines, so they
be made of austere materials.
68. To remember masticatories for the mouth.
“ 9. And orange flower water to be smelled or snuffed up.
“ 10. In the third hour after the sun is risen to take in


144
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
air from some high and open place with a ventilation of
rosa moschate and fresh violets, and to stir the earth with
infusion of wine and mint.
“ 17. To use once during supper time wine in which
gold is quenched.
“ 26. Heroic desires.
“ 28. To provide always an apt breakfast.
“ 29. To do nothing against a man's genius."
To the substance of some of these specifics we have no
objection. We think we should get no better at the
Medical College to-day: and of all stringents we should
reckon the best, “ heroic desires,” and “doing nothing
against one's genius.”. Yet the principle of modern clas-
sification is different. In the same place, it is curious to
find a good deal of pretty nonsense concerning the virtues
of the ashes of a hedgehog, the heart of an ape, the moss
that groweth upon the skull of a. dead man unburied, and
the comfort that proceeds to the system from wearing
beads of amber, coral, and hartshorn ; — or from rings of
sea horse teeth worn for cramp; - to find all these masses
of moonshine side by side with the gravest and most valu-
able observations.
The good Sir Thomas Browne recommends as empirical
cures for the gout:
“ To wear shoes made of a lion's skin.
“ Try transplantation : Give poultices taken from the
part to dogs.
“ Try the magnified amulet of Muffetus, of spiders' legs
worn in a deer's skin, or of tortoises' legs cut off from the
living tortoise and wrapped up in the skin of a kid.”
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy is an encyclopædia of
authors and of opinions, where one who should forage
for exploded theories might easily load his panniers. In
dæmonology, for example; “ The air,” he says, “is not
so full of flies in summer as it is at all times of invisible
devils. They counterfeit suns and moons, and sit on ships'
masts. They cause whirlwinds on a sudden and tempes-
tuous storms, which though our meteorologists generally
refer to natural causes, yet I am of Bodine's mind, they
are more often caused by those aerial devils in their several
quarters. Cardan gives much information concerning them.
His father had one of them, an aerial devil, bound to him


1840.)
145
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
for eight and twenty years; as Agrippa's dog had a devil
tied to his collar. Some think that Paracelsus had one
confined in his sword pommel. Others wear them in rings.
At Hammel in Saxony, the devil in the likeness of a pied
piper carried away 130 children that were never after
seen."
All this sky-full of cobwebs is now forever swept clean
away. Another race is born. Humboldt and Herschel,
Davy and Arago, Malthus and Bentham have arrived. If
Robert Burton should be quoted to represent the army of
scholars, who have furnished a contribution to his moody
pages, Horace Walpole, whose letters circulate in the
libraries, might be taken with some fitness to represent the
spirit of much recent literature. He has taste, common
sense, love of facts, impatience of humbug, love of history,
love of splendor, love of justice, and the sentiment of
honor among gentlemen ; but no life whatever of the
higher faculties, no faith, no hope, no aspiration, no ques-
tion touching the secret of nature.
The favorable side of this research and love of facts is
the bold and systematic criticism, which has appeared in
every department of literature. From Wolf's attack upon
the authenticity of the Homeric Poems, dates a new epoch
in learning. Ancient history has been found to be not yet
settled. It is to be subjected to common sense. It is to
be cross examined. It is to be seen, whether its traditions
will consist not with universal belief, but with universal
experience. Niebuhr has sifted Roman history by the like
methods. Heeren has made good essays towards ascer-
taining the necessary facts in the Grecian, Persian, Assyrian,
Egyptian, Ethiopic, Carthaginian nations. English history
has been analyzed by Turner, Hallam, Brodie, Lingard,
Palgrave. Goethe has gone the circuit of human know-
ledge, as Lord Bacon did before him, writing True or False
on every article. Bentham has attempted the same scru-
tiny in reference to Civil Law. Pestalozzi out of a deep
love undertook the reform of education. The ambition of
Coleridge in England embraced the whole problem of phi-
losophy; to find, that is, a foundation in thought for every-
thing that existed in fact. The German philosophers,
Schelling, Kant, Fichte, have applied their analysis to na-
ture and thought with an antique boldness. There can be
VOL. I. — NO. II.
19


146
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
no honest inquiry, which is not better than acquiescence.
Inquiries, which once looked grave and vital no doubt,
change their appearance very fast, and come to look frivo-
lous beside the later queries to which they gave occasion.
This skeptical activity, at first directed on circumstances
and historical views deemed of great importance, soon
penetrated deeper than Rome or Egypt, than history or
institutions, or the vocabulary of metaphysics, namely, into
the thinker himself, and into every function he exercises.
The poetry and the speculation of the age are marked by
a certain philosophic turn, which discriminates them from
the works of earlier times. The poet is not content to
see how “fair hangs the apple from the rock," " what
music a sunbeam awoke in the groves,” nor of Hardiknute,
how “ stately steppes he east the way, and stately steppes
he west," but he now revolves, What is the apple to me?
and what the birds to me? and what is Hardiknute to me?
and what am I? And this is called subjectiveness, as the
eye is withdrawn from the object and fixed on the subject
or mind.
We can easily concede that a steadfast tendency of this
sort appears in modern literature. It is the new con-
sciousness of the one mind which predominates in criticism.
It is the uprise of the soul and not the decline. It is found-
ed on that insatiable demand for unity — the need to recog-
nise one nature in all the variety of objects, which always
characterizes a genius of the first order. Accustomed alway
to behold the presence of the universe in every part, the
soul will not condescend to look at any new part as a
stranger, but saith, “I know all already, and what art
thou ? Show me thy relations to me, to all, and I will
entertain thee also.”
There is a pernicious ambiguity in the use of the term
subjective. We say, in accordance with the general view
I have stated, that the single soul feels its right to be no
longer confounded with numbers, but itself to sit in judg-
ment on history and literature, and to summon all facts
and parties before its tribunal. And in this sense the age
is subjective.
But, in all ages, and now more, the narrow-minded have
no interest in anything but its relation to their personality.
What will help them to be delivered from some burden,


1840.]
147
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
eased in some circumstance, flattered, or pardoned, or en-
riched, what will help to marry or to divorce them, to pro-
long or to sweeten life, is sure of their interest, and nothing
else. Every form under the whole heaven they behold
in this most partial light or darkness of intense selfishness,
until we hate their being. And this habit of intellectual
selfishness has acquired in our day the fine name of sub-
jectiveness.
Nor is the distinction between these two habits to be
found in the circumstance of using the first person singular,
or reciting facts and feelings of personal history. A man
may say I, and never refer to himself as an individual ;
and a man may recite passages of his life with no feeling
of egotism. Nor need a man have a vicious subjectiveness
because he deals in abstract propositions.
But the criterion, which discriminates these two habits
in the poet's mind, is the tendency of his composition ;
namely, whether it leads us to nature, or to the person of
the writer. The great always introduce us to facts; small
men introduce us always to themselves. The great man,
even whilst he relates a private fact personal to him, is really
leading us away from him to an universal experience. His
own affection is in nature, in What is, and, of course, all
his communication leads outward to it, starting from what-
soever point. The great never with their own consent
become a load on the minds they instruct. The more they
draw us to them, the farther from them or more independ-
ent of them we are, because they have brought us to the
knowledge of somewhat deeper than both them and us.
The great never hinder us ; for, as the Jews had a custom of
laying their beds north and south, founded on an opinion
that the path of God was east and west, and they would
not desecrate by the infirmities of sleep the Divine circuits,
so the activity of the good is coincident with the axle of
the world, with the sun and moon, with the course of the
rivers and of the winds, with the stream of laborers in the
street, and with all the activity and well being of the race.
The great lead us to nature, and, in our age, to metaphysi-
cal nature, to the invisible awful facts, to moral abstrac-
tions, which are not less nature than is a river or a coal
mine; nay, they are far more nature, but its essence and
soul.


148
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
But the weak and evil, led also to analyze, saw nothing in
thought but luxury. Thought for the selfish became selfish.
They invited us to contemplate nature, and showed us an
abominable self. Would you know the genius of the
writer? Do not enumerate his talents or his feats, but ask
thyself, What spirit is he of? Do gladness and hope and
fortitude flow from his page into thy heart? Has he led
thee to nature because his own soul was too happy in be.
holding her power and love; or is his passion for the wil-
derness only the sensibility of the sick, the exhibition of a
talent, which only shines whilst you praise it; which has
no root in the character, and can thus minister to the
vanity but not to the happiness of the possessor ; and
which derives all its eclat from our conventional education,
but would not make itself intelligible to the wise man of
another age or country? The water we wash with never
speaks of itself, nor does fire, or wind, or tree. Neither
does the noble natural man: he yields himself to your
occasion and use; but his act expresses a reference to
universal good.
Another element of the modern poetry akin to this sub-
jective tendency, or rather the direction of that same on
the question of resources, is, the Feeling of the Infinite.
Of the perception now fast becoming a conscious fact, —
that there is One Mind, and that all the powers and privi-
leges which lie in any, lie in all; that I as a man may
claim and appropriate whatever of true or fair or good or
strong has anywhere been exhibited; that Moses and Con-
fucius, Montaigne and Leibnitz are not so much individuals
as they are parts of man and parts of me, and my intelli-
gence proves them my own, - literature is far the best exo'
pression. It is true, this is not the only nor the obvious
lesson it teaches. A selfish commerce and government
have caught the eye and usurped the hand of the masses.
It is not to be contested that selfishness and the senses
write the laws under which we live, and that the street
seems to be built, and the men and women in it moving
not in reference to pure and grand ends, but rather to very
short and sordid ones. Perhaps no considerable minority,
perhaps no one man leads a quite clean and lofty life.
What then? We concede in sadness the fact. But we
say that these low customary ways are not all that survives


1840.]
149
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
in human beings. There is that in us which mutters, and
that which groans, and that which triumphs, and that which
aspires. There are facts on which men of the world su-
perciliously smile, which are worth all their trade and poli-
tics, the impulses, namely, which drive young men into
gardens and solitary places, and cause extravagant gestures,
starts, distortions of the countenance, and passionate ex-
clamations ; sentiments, which find no aliment or language
for themselves on the wharves, in court, or market, but
which are soothed by silence, by darkness, by the pale
stars, and the presence of nature. All over the modern
world the educated and susceptible have betrayed their
discontent with the limits of our municipal life, and with
the poverty of our dogmas of religion and philosophy.
They betray this impatience by fleeing for resource to a
conversation with nature — which is courted in a certain
moody and exploring spirit, as if they anticipated a more
intimate union of man with the world than has been known
in recent ages. Those who cannot tell what they desire
or expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts
and vast wishes. The very child in the nursery prattles
mysticism, and doubts and philosophizes. A wild striving
to express a more inward and infinite sense characterizes
the works of every art. The music of Beethoven is said
by those who understand it, to labor with vaster concep-
tions and aspirations than music has attempted before.
This Feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored the poetry
of the period. This new love of the vast, always native
in Germany, was imported into France by De Staël, ap-
peared in England in Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shel-
ley, Felicia Hemans, and finds a most genial climate in the
American mind. Scott and Crabbe, who formed them-
selves on the past, had none of this tendency; their poetry
is objective. In Byron, on the other hand, it predominates;
but in Byron it is blind, it sees not its true end — an infi-
nite good, alive and beautiful, a life nourished on absolute
beatitudes, descending into nature to behold itself reflected
there. His will is perverted, he worships the accidents of
society, and his praise of nature is thieving and selfish.
Nothing certifies the prevalence of this taste in the peo-
ple more than the circulation of the poems, – one would
say, most incongruously united by some bookseller, - of


150
Thoughts on Modern Literature. [Oct.
Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. The only unity is in the
subjectiveness and the aspiration common to the three
writers. Shelley, though a poetic mind, is never a poet.
His muse is uniformly imitative ; all his poems composite.
A good English scholar he is, with ear, taste, and memory,
much more, he is a character full of noble and prophetic
traits ; but imagination, the original, authentic fire of the
bard, he has not. He is clearly modern, and shares with
Richter, Chateaubriand, Manzoni, and Wordsworth, the
feeling of the infinite, which so labors for expression in
their different genius. But all his lines are arbitrary, not
necessary. When we read poetry, the mind asks, — Was
this verse one of twenty which the author might have
written as well; or is this what that man was created to
say? But, whilst every line of the true poet will be
genuine, he is in a boundless power and freedom to say a
million things. And the reason why he can say one thing
well, is because his vision extends to the sight of all things,
and so he describes each as one who knows many and all.
The fame of Wordsworth is a leading fact in modern
literature, when it is considered how hostile his genius at
first seemed to the reigning taste, and with what feeble
poetic talents his great and steadily growing dominion has
been established. More than any poet his success has
been not his own, but that of the idea which he shared
with his coevals, and which he has rarely succeeded in
adequately expressing. The Excursion awakened in every
lover of nature the right feeling. We saw stars shine, we
felt the awe of mountains, we heard the rustle of the wind
in the grass, and knew again the ineffable secret of soli-
tude. It was a great joy. It was nearer to nature than
anything we had before. But the interest of the poem
ended almost with the narrative of the influences of nature
on the mind of the Boy, in the first book. Obviously for that
passage the poem was written, and with the exception of this
and of a few strains of the like character in the sequel, the
whole poem was dull. Here was no poem, but here was
poetry, and a sure index where the subtle muse was about
to pitch her tent and find the argument of her song. It
was the human soul in these last ages striving for a just
publication of itself. Add to this, however, the great praise
of Wordsworth, that more than any other contemporary


1840.)
151
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
bard he is pervaded with a reverence of somewhat higher
than (conscious) thought. There is in him that property
common to all great poets, a wisdom of humanity, which
is superior to any talents which they exert. It is the wisest
part of Shakspeare and of Milton. For they are poets by
the free course which they allow to the informing soul,
which through their eyes beholdeth again and blesseth the
things which it hath made. The soul is superior to its
knowledge, wiser than any of its works.
With the name of Wordsworth rises to our recollection
the name of his contemporary and friend, Walter Savage
Landor — a man working in a very different and peculiar
spirit, yet one whose genius and accomplishments deserve
a wiser criticism than we have yet seen applied to them,
and the rather that his name does not readily associate it-
self with any school of writers. Of Thomas Carlyle, also,
we shall say nothing at this time, since the quality and the
energy of his influence on the youth of this country will
require at our hands ere long a distinct and faithful ac-
knowledgment.
But of all men he, who has united in himself and that
in the most extraordinary degree the tendencies of the era,
is the German poet, naturalist, and philosopher, Goethe.
Whatever the age inherited or invented, he made his own.
He has owed to Commerce and to the victories of the
Understanding, all their spoils. Such was his capacity,
that the magazines of the world's ancient or modern
wealth, which arts and intercourse and skepticism could
command — he wanted them all. Had there been twice
so much, he could have used it as well. Geologist, me-
chanic, merchant, chemist, king, radical, painter, composer,
- all worked for him, and a thousand men seemed to look
through his eyes. He learned as readily as other men
breathe. Of all the men of this time, not one has seemed
so much at home in it as he. He was not afraid to live.
And in him this encyclopædia of facts, which it has been
the boast of the age to compile, wrought an equal effect.
He was knowing; he was brave; he was clean from all
narrowness; he has a perfect propriety and taste, - a
quality by no means common to the German writers. Nay,
since the earth, as we said, had become a reading-room,
the new opportunities seem to have aided him to be that


152
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
cause an apo more down
resolute realist he is, and seconded his sturdy determina-
tion to see things for what they are. To look at him, one
would say, there was never an observer before. What
sagacity, what industry of observation ! to read his record
is a frugality of time, for you shall find no word that does
not stand for a thing, and he is of that comprehension,
which can see the value of truth. His love of nature has
seemed to give a new meaning to that word. There was
never man more domesticated in this world than he. And
he is an apology for the analytic spirit of the period, be-
cause, of his analysis, always wholes were the result. All
conventions, all traditions he rejected. And yet he felt
his entire right and duty to stand before and try and judge
every fact in nature. He thought it necessary to dot round
with his own pen the entire sphere of knowables; and for
many of his stories, this seems the only reason: Here is a
piece of humanity I had hitherto omitted to sketch ; —
take this. He does not say so in syllables, — yet a sort of
conscientious feeling he had to be up to the universe, is
the best account and apology for many of them. He
shared also the subjectiveness of the age, and that too
in both the senses I have discriminated. With the sharp-
est eye for form, color, botany, engraving, medals, persons,
and manners, he never stopped at surface, but pierced the
purpose of a thing, and studied to reconcile that purpose
with his own being. What he could so reconcile was
good; what he could not, was false. Hence a certain
greatness encircles every fact he treats; for to him it has
a soul, an eternal reason why it was so, and not otherwise.
This is the secret of that deep realism, which went about
among all objects he beheld, to find the cause why they
must be what they are. It was with him a favorite task to
find a theory of every institution, custom, art, work of art,
which he observes. Witness his explanation of the Italian
mode of reckoning the hours of the day, as growing out
of the Italian climate; of the obelisk of Egypt, as grow-
ing out of a common natural fracture in the granite paral-
lelopiped in Upper Egypt; of the Doric architecture, and
the Gothic; of the Venetian music of the gondolier origi-
nating in the habit of the fishers' wives of the Lido singing
to their husbands on the sea; of the Amphitheatre, which
is the enclosure of the natural cup of heads that arranges


1840.]
153
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
itself round every spectacle in the street; of the coloring
of Titian and Paul Veronese, which one may verify in the
common daylight in Venice every afternoon; of the Car-
nival at Rome; of the domestic rural architecture in Italy;
and many the like examples.
But also that other vicious subjectiveness, that vice of
the time, infected him also. We are provoked with his
Olympian self-complacency, the patronizing air with which
he vouchsafes to tolerate the genius and performances of
other mortals, “the good Hiller," " our excellent Kant," the
friendly Wieland," &c. &c. There is a good letter from
Wieland to Merck, in which Wieland relates that Goethe
read to a select party his journal of a tour in Switzerland
with the Grand Duke, and their passage through Valois
and over the St. Gothard. "It was," says Wieland, “ as
good as Xenophon's Anabasis. The piece is one of his
most masterly productions, and is thought and written with
the greatness peculiar to him. The fair hearers were en-
thusiastic at the nature in this piece; I liked the sly art in
the composition, whereof they saw nothing, still better.
It is a true poem, so concealed is the art too. But what
most remarkably in this as in all his other works distin-
guishes him from Homer and Shakspeare, is, that the Me,
the Ille ego, everywhere glimmers through, although without
any boasting and with an infinite fineness.” This subtle
element of egotism in Goethe certainly does not seem to
deform his compositions, but to lower the moral influence
of the man. He differs from all the great in the total want
of frankness. Whoso saw Milton, whoso saw Shakspeare,
saw them do their best, and utter their whole heart manlike
among their brethren. No man was permitted to call
Goethe brother. He hid himself, and worked always to
astonish, which is an egotism, and therefore little.
If we try Goethe by the ordinary canons of criticism,
we should say that his thinking is of great altitude, and all
level;— not a succession of summits, but a high Asiatic
table land. Dramatic power, the rarest talent in literature,
he has very little. He has an eye constant to the fact of
life, and that never pauses in its advance. But the great
felicities, the miracles of poetry, he has never. It is all
design with him, just thought and instructed expression,
analogies, allusion, illustration, which knowledge and cor-
VOL. I. —NO. II.
20


154
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
rect thinking supply; but of Shakspeare and the transcen-
dant muse, no syllable. Yet in the court and law to which
we ordinarily speak, and without adverting to absolute
standards, we claim for him the praise of truth, of fidelity
to his intellectual nature. He is the king of all scholars.
In these days and in this country, where the scholars are
few and idle, where men read easy books and sleep after
dinner, it seems as if no book could so safely be put in
the hands of young men as the letters of Goethe, which
attest the incessant activity of this man to eighty years, in
an endless variety of studies with uniform cheerfulness and
greatness of mind. They cannot be read without shaming
us into an emulating industry. Let him have the praise
of the love of truth. We think, when we contemplate the
stupendous glory of the world, that it were life enough for
one man merely to lift his hands and cry with St. Augus-
tine, “ Wrangle who pleases, I will wonder.” Well, this
he did. Here was a man, who, in the feeling that the
thing itself was so admirable as to leave all comment
behind, went up and down from object to object, lift-
ing the veil from every one, and did no more. What
he said of Lavater, may truelier be said of him, that “it
was fearful to stand in the presence of one, before whom
all the boundaries within which nature has circumscribed
our being were laid flat." His are the bright and terrible
eyes, which meet the modern student in every sacred
chapel of thought, in every public enclosure.
But now, that we may not seem to dodge the question
which all men ask, nor pay a great man so ill a compliment
as to praise him only in the conventional and comparative
speech, let us honestly record our thought upon the total
worth and influence of this genius. Does he represent not
only the achievement of that age in which he lived, but that
which it would be and is now becoming? And what shall we
think of that absence of the moral sentiment, that singular
equivalence to him of good and evil in action, which dis-
credits his compositions to the pure ? The spirit of his
biography, of his poems, of his tales, is identical, and we
may here set down by way of comment on his genius the
impressions recently awakened in us by the story of Wil-
helm Meister.
All great men have written proudly, nor cared to explain.


1840.)
155
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
They knew that the intelligent reader would come at last,
and would thank them. So did Dante, so did Machiavel.
Goethe has done this in Meister. We can fancy him
saying to himself; — There are poets enough of the Ideal;
let me paint the Actual, as, after years of dreams, it will
still appear and reappear to wise men. That all shall
right itself in the long Morrow, I may well allow, and my
novel may easily wait for the same regeneration. The age,
that can damn it as false and falsifying, will see that it is
deeply one with the genius and history of all the centuries.
I have given my characters a bias to error. Men have
the same. I have let mischances befall instead of good
fortune. They do so daily. And out of many vices and
misfortunes, I have let a great success grow, as I had
known in my own and many other examples. Fierce
churchmen and effeminate aspirants will chide and hate my
name, but every keen beholder of life will justify my truth,
and will acquit me of prejudging the cause of humanity
by painting it with this morose fidelity. To a profound
soul is not austere truth the sweetest flattery?
Yes, O Goethe! but the ideal is truer than the actual.
That is ephemeral, but this changes not. Moreover, be-
cause nature is moral, that mind only can see, in which
the same order entirely obtains. An interchangeable Truth,
Beauty, and Goodness, each wholly interfused in the other,
must make the humors of that eye, which would see causes
reaching to their last effect and reproducing the world for-
ever. The least inequality of mixture, the excess of one
element over the other, in that degree diminishes the
transparency of things, makes the world opaque to the ob-
server, and destroys so far the value of his experience.
No particular gifts can countervail this defect. In reading
Meister, I am charmed with the insight; to use a phrase
of Ben Jonson's, “it is rammed with life." I find there
actual men and women even too faithfully painted. I am,
moreover, instructed in the possibility of a highly accom-
plished society, and taught to look for great talent and
culture under a grey coat. But this is all. The limits of
artificial society are never quite out of sight. The vicious
conventions, which hem us in like prison walls, and which
the poet should explode at his touch, stand for all they are
worth in the newspaper. I am never lifted above myself.


156
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
I am not transported out of the dominion of the senses, or
cheered with an infinite tenderness, or armed with a grand
trust.
Goethe, then, must be set down as the poet of the Ac-
tual, not of the Ideal; the poet of limitation, not of possi-
bility; of this world, and not of religion and hope ; in
short, if I may say so, the poet of prose, and not of poetry.
He accepts the base doctrine of Fate, and gleans what
straggling joys may yet remain out of its ban. He is like
a banker or a weaver with a passion for the country, he
steals out of the hot streets before sunrise, or after sunset,
or on a rare holiday, to get a draught of sweet air, and a
gaze at the magnificence of summer, but dares not break
from his slavery and lead a man's life in a man's relation
to nature. In that which should be his own place, he
feels like a truant, and is scourged back presently to his
task and his cell. Poetry is with Goethe thus exter-
nal, the gilding of the chain, the mitigation of his fate;
but the Muse never assays those thunder-tones, which
cause to vibrate the sun and the moon, which dissipate by
dreadful melody all this iron network of circumstance, and
abolish the old heavens and the old earth before the free-
will or Godhead of man. That Goethe had not a moral
perception proportionate to his other powers, is not then
merely a circumstance, as we might relate of a man that
he had or had not the sense of tune or an eye for colors;
but it is the cardinal fact of health or disease; since, lack-
ing this, he failed in the high sense to be a creator, and
with divine endowments drops by irreversible decree into
the common history of genius. He was content to fall
into the track of vulgar poets, and spend on common aims
his splendid endowments, and has declined the office prof-
fered to now and then a man in many centuries in the
power of his genius - of a Redeemer of the human mind.
He has written better than other poets, only as his tal-
ent was subtler, but the ambition of creation he refused.
Life for him is prettier, easier, wiser, decenter, has a gem
or two more on its robe, but its old eternal burden is not
relieved; no drop of healthier blood flows yet in its veins.
Let him pass. Humanity must wait for its physician still
at the side of the road, and confess as this man goes out,
that they have served it better, who assured it out of the


1840.
157
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
innocent hope in their hearts that a Physician will come,
than this majestic Artist, with all the treasuries of wit, of
science, and of power at his command.
The criticism, which is not so much spoken as felt in
reference to Goethe, instructs us directly in the hope of
literature. We feel that a man gifted like him should not
leave the world as he found it. It is true, though some-
what sad, that every fine genius teaches us how to blame
himself. Being so much, we cannot forgive him for not
being more. When one of these grand monads is incar-
nated, whom nature seems to design for eternal men and
draw to her bosom, we think that the old wearinesses of
Europe and Asia, the trivial forms of daily life will now
end, and a new morning break on us all. What is Austria ?
What is England ? What is our graduated and petrified
social scale of ranks and employments ? Shall not a poet
redeem us from these idolatries, and pale their legendary
lustre before the fires of the Divine Wisdom which burn
in his heart? All that in our sovereign moments each of
us has divined of the powers of thought, all the hints of
omnipresence and energy which we have caught, this man
should unfold and constitute facts.
And this is the insatiable craving which alternately sad-
dens and gladdens men at this day. The Doctrine of the
Life of Man established after the truth through all his
faculties ; - this is the thought which the literature of this
hour meditates and labors to say. This is that which tunes
the tongue and fires the eye and sits in the silence of the
youth. Verily it will not long want articulate and melo-
dious expression. There is nothing in the heart but comes
presently to the lips. The very depth of the sentiment,
which is the author of all the cutaneous life we see, is
guarantee for the riches of science and of song in the age
to come. He, who doubts whether this age or this country
can yield any contribution to the literature of the world,
only betrays his own blindness to the necessities of the
human soul. Has the power of poetry ceased, or the
need? Have the eyes ceased to see that which they would
have, and which they have not? Have they ceased to see
other eyes ? Are there no lonely, anxious, wondering
children, who must tell their tale? Are we not evermore
whipped by thoughts ;


158
[Oct.
Thoughts on Modern Literature.
« In sorrow steeped and steeped in love
Of thoughts not yet incarnated ?"
The heart beats in this age as of old, and the passions are
busy as ever. Nature has not lost one ringlet of her
beauty, one impulse of resistance and valor. From the
necessity of loving none are exempt, and he that loves
must utter his desires. A charm as radiant as beauty ever
beamed, a love that fainteth at the sight of its object, is
new to-day.
* The world does not run smoother than of old,
There are sad haps that must be told.”
Man is not so far lost but that he suffers ever the great
Discontent, which is the elegy of his loss and the prediction
of his recovery. In the gay saloon he laments that these
figures are not what Raphael and Guercino painted. With-
ered though he stand, and trifler though he be, the august
spirit of the world looks out from his eyes. In his heart he
knows the ache of spiritual pain, and his thought can ani-
mate the sea and land. What then shall hinder the Genius
of the time from speaking its thought? It cannot be silent,
if it would. It will write in a higher spirit, and a wider
knowledge, and with a grander practical aim, than ever
yet guided the pen of poet. It will write the annals of a
changed world, and record the descent of principles into
practice, of love into Government, of love into Trade.
It will describe the new heroic life of man, the now un.
believed possibility of simple living and of clean and noble
relations with men. Religion will bind again these that
were sometime frivolous, customary, enemies, skeptics, self-
seekers, into a joyful reverence for the circumambient
Whole, and that which was ecstasy shall become daily
bread.
E.
SILENCE.
They put their finger on their lip, —
The Powers above;
The seas their islands clip,
The moons in Ocean dip, —
They love but name not love.


1840.]
159
Crossing the Alleghanies.
FIRST CROSSING THE ALLEGHANIES.
" What— are you stepping Westward? Yea.” — WORDSWORTH.
UPWARD along the vast mountain, crushing the withering oak-leaves
Often beneath his foot, strolling the traveller goes ;
Toiling slowly behind him follows the stage, heavy-laden,
Sometimes lost in the trees, frequently seen far below.
On the summit he lingers, gathers the grape's purple clusters,
Picks the chestnut, new dropped, out of its thorn-guarded nest; *
Wherefore now gazes he, musing, steadfastly down the long valley?
Wherefore wander his eyes toward the horizon afar?
Say! is he waiting, impatient, to see when, straining and smoking,
The heads of the horses may come winding up the white road?
Or watching the rainbow glories which deck the opposite mountain,
Where Autumn, of myriad dyes, gives each tree a hue of its own?
Perchance he looks at the river which winds far below, vexed and
foaming,
Childishly fretting round rocks which it cannot remove.
Ah! that river runs Westward, for from this summit the waters
Part like brothers who roam far from the family home,
Some to the mighty Atlantic, some to the far Mississippi.
On this dividing ridge turning he looks toward the land
Where is the home of his fathers, where are the graves of those dear
ones
Whom Death has already snatched out of his circle of Love.
And oh!- forgive ye Penates ! forgive him that loved household circle,
If with his mother's form, if with his sister, he sees
Another and dearer shape, gliding softly between them,
Gliding gracefully up, fixing his heart and his eye.
Ah! how lovely the picture, how forever attractive the image
Which floats up from the past, like to a beautiful dream :
Yet not a dream was it, but one of the picturesque moments,
Sent to adorn our life, cheering its gloomiest years.
Real was the heavy disease which fastened his head to his pillow,
Real the burning heat in every feverish limb,
Real the pains which tormented every delicate fibre,
Rousing his drowsy soul to a half conscious life,
And so, waking, one night, out of a long stupefaction,
Vague and feverish thoughts haunted as spectres his brain.
All around was familiar, it was his own little chamber,
But all seemed to him strange, nothing would come to him right.
Ghostly shadows were stretching their arms on the wall and the cieling,
Round and round within circled a whirlpool of thoughts,
Round and round they went, bis will had no power to restrain them,
Round and ever around some insignificant thing!
It was as if on his brain a fiend with a hammer was beating,
And each blow as it fell was to be counted by him;
Moments spun out to years, so long the torture continued,
Wearied out at last, he moved and uttered a groan.
Then was the gloom dispersed. For from the shadows a figure
Arose, and lightly stepped to the side of the bed,


160
Oct.
Crossing the Alleghanies.
Bent down gently and kissed his brow, while her beautiful ringlets
Lay on his burning cheek — cooling and soft was the touch.
“Dearest,” she softly said — and every fiend which distressed him
Darted off at the word as if from Ithuriel's spear,
Tenderly from her eye, moist with gentle affection,
Into his very soul entered her sisterly look..
She was his cousin and friend, playmates they were from their childhood,
Therefore hers was the right in his sick chamber to watch,
Cousin, sister, and friend - many the titles he gave her,
Now in each beating heart closer the union was knit,
Softly pressing her hand to his lips, he sank into slumber.
Great, O Love, is thy skill, quite a physician art thou;
Instead of the gold-headed cane, instead of the wig and the snuff-box,
Give me the Archer-boy, him for a Doctor I'll take.
Such was the picture which came before the mind of the stripling,
This the image which rose, constantly floating around.
Such a beautiful moment haunts the soul with its spectre,
Who can tell it to sleep shut in the tomb of the past?
But see, the carriage is near! Flee, ye sweet recollections !
Now must we seem a man, easy and strong as the rest,
Ready in word and act — this alone will protect us;
Just as this thorny bur guards the young fruit from its foes.
Thus then he mounts the carriage, sitting aloft with the driver,
Wider the eye can range, freer the heart can beat here.
Now we have climbed to the summit, now there open before us,
Stretching far to the West, valleys and rivers and woods,
Downward by gentle degrees, along the side of the mountain
Winds our Simplon road, close to precipitous gulphs ;
Shooting up from below, spread the tops of the pine trees,
Here a single misstep rolls us a thousand feet down,
But, courage! trust to the driver, trust to the sure-footed horses,
Trust to that mighty Power who holds us all in his hand.
Merrily tramples the team, of the well-filled manger desirous,
Where below, like a map, lie many houses and farms,
Over them all we look, over cornfields and meadows,
Over the winding streams, shrouded with mantles of mist,
Over an ocean of forest, up to the distant horizon,
Many a mile beyond, stretches our lengthening road.
Nature, vast as thou art, we can unshrinkingly face thee!
Look on thy giant forms with an unfaltering eye;
He who carries within him a spirit conscious and active,
Treasures of well-arranged thought, gathered from action and life,
Has striven, believed, and loved — who knows all the worth of the mo-
ment
When soul stimulates soul, pulses together beat.
He has a world within to match thine, beautiful mother!
He can give to thee more than he can take from thy hand.
Wanderer, tremble not before this grand Panorama,
Let not this mighty scene weary thine heart or thine eye.
Bring the Romance of Life to balance the Romance of Nature,
The spirit has hopes as vast, the heart has its pictures as fair.
F. C.


1840.)
161
A Sign from the West.
A SIGN FROM THE WEST.*
The pamphlet here noticed is by Andrew Wylie, Presi-
dent of Bloomington College, Indiana. When we remem-
ber that its author is, and has for years been an eminent
Calvinistic divine, we cannot but regard this word of his
as one of the most noteworthy and encouraging signs of
the times. We hail with joy this free utterance from the
West. We do not know indeed, if even from this com-
paratively enlightened and liberal section of the country,
and from the bosom of the most progressive body of
Christian believers, any freer and bolder word has been
spoken than this. It cannot fail, we think, to spread
panic through the ranks of the custom-fettered sectari-
ans. It cannot fail to be welcomed by every unshackled
seeker for Truth.
Without attempting a complete review of the work be-
fore us, we would sketch roughly its main features, give a
few extracts, and perhaps add some reflections of our own.
It appears from the Author's preface, that he has been
for a long time in a progressive state. “ The thoughts,"
he says, "contained in the following pages were gradually
suggested to the mind of the writer, during the last twen-
ty-five years.” Of course then, he has been more or less
suspected of heresy. But the heresy, he maintains, is on
the part of his brother Calvinists, and not to be charged
upon him. For heresy, he says, is departure from faith in
Christ as the chief corner stone, and building with the
gold, silver, wood, hay, or stubble of human speculations.
He will by no means take the Confession of Faith as an
infallible rule of belief, for this very Confession says itself,
that the Bible only is such a Rule. He will not suffer
himself to be chained down to a sect; he will be his own
master, and reverence his own soul. “ The claims of
Truth," he says, “are sacred and awful. A mind fettered
by authority is unfaithful to the God of Truth, who made
it free.”
* Sectarianism is Heresy, in Three Parts, in which are shown its Na.
ture, Evils, and Remedy. By A. WYLIE. Bloomington, Ia. 1840. pp.
132.
VOL. I. — NO. 11.
21


162
[Oct.
A Sign from the West.
The work is in the form of Trialogue, and consists of
eight Conversations between the author and two sectarian
friends, a Calvinist and a Methodist. The significant
names of these interlocutors are Timothy, Gardezfoi, and
Democop. The conversation moves onward very pleasantly
and naturally, and without diffuseness. The discourses of
Timothy, who is the Socrates in the debate, are enriched
with fine thoughts, tending towards if not reaching the
plane of the highest spiritual, — with sound and elevated
criticism on those lofty words which are " spirit and life"
— with specimens of acute reasoning — with the genial
outbreathings of a warm, liberal heart.
The position which Dr. Wylie takes with regard to the
great question which this age is to agitate, namely, what
constitutes Christianity, will be considered an elevated one;
for a Calvinist, a new, or very strange and unusual one.
If not the highest view which the full truth warrants, it
approximates to it, and relatively to the popular belief of
the church, is a mighty stride onwards. Though he clings
to the authority of the written word as infallible, he con-
tends against modern creeds. Though he accepts even
the doctrines of the Calvinistic church, he protests against
working them into a system. To him they stand as truths
for the Reason, not for the Understanding. The Infinite
cannot be contained in creeds and systems. Most ear-
nestly does he urge this truth ; and even if we think him to
err in the application, yet he has strong hold of the truth
itself. He has a perception of the difference between
Comprehension and Apprehension. He believes in such a
thing as Intuition. He will not measure the firmament of
stars above him as he does the field of flowers at his feet.
He is strong too, as well as clear-sighted. Thus he will
not grind logic always in the prisonhouse of the Philis-
tines, but has power to pull down on them the pillars
in which they most trusted.
And down the pillars must come, if many such Sam-
sons are suffered to go loose among us. We can well
imagine that the Doctor would now be looked at by most
of bis Calvinistic brethren, as one of those bright-eyed,
venomous serpents, who are now-a-days said to be crawl-
ing about, blasting their wholesome brothers, sibilant and
insinuating, their crests bristling with the pride of “new


1840.]
163
A Sign from the West.
views," — one who, if he lived here, 'would go about
branded with the nickname " Transcendentalist," a terror
to women and children — the more so as having crept out
of an unlooked-for quarter.
Dr. Wylie takes his stand apart from creeds and con-
fessions of faith, and solely upon what Reason teaches as
the fundamental truths of Scripture. All sects and secta-
rianisms are heresy. The original meaning of the word
hairesis is sect. Heresy consists in confounding faith with
opinion. To make opinion the test of faith is departure
from Christ. Faith is trust in God. It is a moral, not an
intellectual element. We extract a portion of what Timo-
thy says on this point.
“ A mind conscious of guilt cannot trust in God, without a just sense
of his goodness and mercy. Hence, when we closely examine the
matter, we find that the element of faith is a moral element — not any
notion in the intellect. For as faith is trust in God, who is only and
supremely good, it is the same with trust in goodness. But it is good-
ness that trusts in goodness : and I know, on the contrary, of no surer
criterion of a character radically and essentially vicious, than suspi-
cion and distrust. Once or twice, through life, I have seen persons
take up and prosecute enmity against another on mere suspicion, for
which there was not only no ground at all, but which was cherished in
opposition to demonstrations, on the part of the person suspected, of
the utmost kindness, forbearance, and good will towards the suspicious
person. The enmity entertained against Joseph, whose character was
remarkable for simple honesty and affectionate confidence, proceeded
manifestly on the part of his brothers from their want of these qual-
ities; in other words, they were destitute of faith in moral goodness.
But the greatest and most striking demonstration that the world ever
saw of both parts of this truth, I mean the direct and the converse of
it, we have in the character and the conduct of the Son of God, and
his treatment by the leaders of religion among the Jews, and the great
body of the nation. On the part of the Saviour, what unshaken faith
in the Father, whose will he came on earth to execute, and, as the
fruit of this faith, or confidence, what steady and active perseverance
in that course of unexampled and perfect goodness which he accom-
plished! And, on the part of the Jews, what obstinate distrust in the
god-like character, presented in all its commanding dignity and attrac-
tive loveliness before their eyes! And why this distrust? this in-
fidelity? Because they themselves were destitute of goodness. They
were supremely selfish, themselves; and they could form no conception
of that disinterested love of Christ, which induced him to bear the
contradiction of these sinners against himself, and even to lay down
his life for their sakes." — pp. 18, 19.
In the first two conversations it is established that it is
heresy to confound opinion with faith. Timothy then goes
on “ to develope another element of heresy, sect; that,


164
[Oct.
A Sign from the West.
namely, which violates or sets aside the unity of the spirit
for a unity of science.” After speaking of the love of theo-
logical and metaphysical system, which was early prevalent
in the church, and spread over Christianity, and of the
barren results thereof, as seen in the Catholic church, the
author proceeds ;
6 Thus the matter stood at the commencement of the Reformation.
The Protestants, so called because they solemnly protested against
the usurped authority of the so called Universal Church, exercised by
the clergy with the pope at their head, in determining the creed, that
is to say, deciding by a simple decree what was truth and what error,
rejected the established system or creed:- but they did not perceive
the folly of creed-making. They too must have a system. They too
viewed religion as a science, and the Bible as containing the scattered
truths of that science; which, therefore, it was their duty, like honest
philosophers, to pick out, gather together, and arrange into a system.
And to the work they went, with all the talents and learning and
industry they possessed. And that was not a little. But, considering
the work they were at, it was certainly not enough. For what was it
they were about? Making a system. Of what? Of the conceptions
of the Eternal mind. Respecting what? The Infinite, the boundless,
the unknown! Their projected system was to be a tower, whose top
should pierce the skies, and overlook the universe and eternity. They
failed, of course, as did their prototypes on the plains of Shinar; for
the enterprise was too great for mortals; their language was confounded;
they divided into companies ; and each company built a system: so
that the whole face of Christendom has become dotted over with the
structures of these puny builders — ant-hills, rather than towers; the
abodes of angry insects, ever ready to bite and sting each other,
except when they make a truce, for the purpose of annoying a com-
mon enemy. A set of opinions are extracted from the Bible, and put
into the form of a system, and this system is held more sacred than
the Bible itself; insomuch that many make a religion of their ortho-
doxy, which consists in a steady, not to say obstinate adherence to
these opinions. They are viewed as a sacred and precious deposit to
be kept, explained, guarded, and defended with the most vigilant jeal-
ousy and the most ardent zeal. They are called God's truth. His
honor is supposed to be concerned in their preservation. And men
feel as if to surrender one of thein would be to put their salvation
itself in jeopardy.” — pp. 41, 42.
On the next page he says,
“The truths of divine revelation, supposing those of his system to
be identical with the truths of divine revelation, were never proposed
by their author as matters of science, truths to serve as subjects on
which to exercise the powers of contemplation and ratiocination, but
as great moral principles to move and purify the heart, and to govern
the life: as presenting motives to the will, sentiments and views to the
spirit, light to the conscience, models of moral beauty to exalt and
exercise the spiritual desires and affections. Their use is, as intimated
before, to produce not orthodoxy, or a set of sound opinions, but ortho-
praxy, or a course of right conduct." -- p. 43.


1840.]
165
A Sign from the West.
.
This great truth, the impossibility of making a science,
a system, of Theology, is well developed and illustrated in
the third and fourth Conversations. The doctrine, that
spiritual things are only spiritually discerned, is advocated
in opposition to that which intimates that a man's specu-
lative creed is his religion.
We feel compelled to give our readers a rather long
passage at the end of the fourth Conversation, in which
the author exhibits his views with regard to spiritual intui-
tion and the evidence of miracles.
" About the year 1820, the celebrated Dr. Chalmers published a work
on the Evidences of Christianity, in which he rejecied the internal
evidences entirely. His reason for so doing is reniarkable. I shall
state it in his own words : -We have,' says he, experience of man;
but we have no experience of God. We can reason upon the prudence
of man in given circumstances, because this is an accessible sub-
ject, and comes under the cognizance of observation. But we can-
not reason on the prudence of the Almighty in given circumstances.
This is an inaccessible subject, and comes not within the limits of
direct and personal observation. Again, he says, 'there can be noth-
ing so completely above us and beyond us, as the plans of the Infinite
Mind, which extend to all time and embrace all worlds. There is no
subject to which the cautious and humble spirit of Lord Bacon's phi-
losophy is more applicable, nor can we conceive a more glaring rebel-
lion against the authority of its maxims, than for beings of a day to sit
in judgment upon the Eternal, and apply their paltry experience to the
councils of his high and unfathomable wisdomn.
* There is, doubtless, some truth in these remarks; but taken
together as advanced by their author for the purpose of invalidating
the argument drawn from the internal evidences,' by showing that it
is not a legitimate argument, because pertaining to a subject inaccessi-
ble and beyond our reach, they have filled me with no little surprise,
aud especially as coming from a Christian divine of such distinguished
abilities. How could it have escaped the penetration of such a mind
as his, that the objection he raises against the legitimacy of the argu-
ment from the internal evidence must recoil, with all its force, upon
the argument from the external evidences of miracle and prophecy, on
which he is anxious to rest the whole weight of the question ? Were
the Deity to me an inaccessible subject, — had I no knowledge of him
previous to the revelation proposed to ine in the sacred scriptures, of
what use, I ask, would a miracle be to me? Suppose I saw, for
instance, Lazarus raised from the dead, how would this convince me
that the effect produced was produced by the power of God, if I knew
nothing previously about the power of God? Were I entirely ignorant
of the power of God, I could not without presumption think or say any-
thing whatever respecting it, what it could, or could not effect. The
raising of a dead man to life might be beyond his power, for anything I
could tell. And, if interrogated on the subject, I ought to reply, God
is an inaccessible subject; I have no experience of him; I dare not sit
in judgment in a case where I know nothing. It would be an act of


166
[Oct.
A Sign from the West.
rebellion against the humble and cautious spirit of Bacon's philoso-
phy.'
Besides, suppose I were somehow convinced that the resurrection of
Lazarus was indeed effected by the power of God, still that would
afford me no good reason why I should rely on any statement made me
by his cominissioned messenger, were I not previously acquainted with
other attributes of his nature, or were his character, as to other traits
of it, an inaccessible subject. God, I might say, has, by his power,
restored this dead man to life before my eyes. For what? To gain
my confidence in the truth of certain statements, that are made, or to
be made, in his name. But, power and truth have no necessary con-
nexion. God may be a deceiver. I have no experience of his char-
acter; nor can I have. It is an inaccessible subject. He may be a
selfish and malignant being; and this very miracle may have been
wrought to win and mislead my confidence. The truth is, the very
appeal made by miracles themselves, on which Dr. Chalmers is willing
to rest the whole weight of the argument in favor of Christianity, is a
useless and idle appeal, if made to a man in any age of the world and
in any circumstances, were man such a being as the Dr.'s argument
supposes. But he is not. There is in his nature, wrapped up in the
depths of his spirit, a revelation of God, prior, of course, to all external
revelation, and but for this an external revelation were as useless as
it would be impossible, and at the same time, as impossible as it
would be to the beasts that perish. Where did we get our moral
perceptions and their corresponding sentiments — our sense of the
True, the Right, the Just, the Beautiful, the Fair — the To Kalon,
as the Greeks called it ? Not from the Bible surely, any more than
we got our eyes from the Bible. We use the latter in perusing its
sacred pages, but we are not indebted to these pages for our eyes,
neither are we for the seeing spirit — the living faith in Moral Good-
ness, — which the Spirit of the Eternal breathed into us, in light-
ing up within us the principle of an immortal life, in virtue of which
we can see God and commune with Him — trace the impressions left
by his plastic hand on the face of external nature — and hear the
sweet tones of his voice, as they sound through all her lovely palaces
- and echo in the recesses of the temple in our own bosoms. No!
God is not an inaccessible subject. He is nearer us than any other
subject. Our spirit touches His! What am I saying ? His spirit
pervades ours! In him we live, and move, and have our being. We
are his offspring. And how could it be thought, by a Christian divine
and philosopher, that HE had made himself inaccessible to his children
- hidden himself from the view of all of them, except a favored few
to whom a special revelation was to be made! The Apostle Paul
thought differently, for he says that ‘His eternal power and Godhead
are clearly seen’in the visible creation. St. John thought differently,
for he writes, 'In him was light, and the light was the life of men –
the light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world.'
The Royal Psalmist thought differently, for he says; The heavens
declare the glory of the Lord; the firmament showeth his handy work.
Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night teacheth knowl-
cdge. There is no speech, no language — their voice is not heard.
Their sound is gone out into all the earth; their instruction to the end
of the world.'
"No; God is not an inaccessible subject. If he were, no miracle,


1840.)
167
A Sign from the West.
no prophecy, no words nor art of man, could bring him within the reach
of our thoughts. We should want an interpreter within, to teach us
the import of whatever impression from without might be made upon
our senses. Were man made destitute of spirit, how could he scale,
by the help of any outward revelation, the lofy heights by which the
moral is raised above the physical ? Pleasure he might understand
through the soul, as affected by impressions made on the bodily senses
and appetites; but without spirit, a moral nature, how could he form a
conception of moral goodness and beauty? And without a conception
of this, how could he, by miracle or any other means, be made to
apprehend God ? Power he might discover, but power is not God.
The skill of contrivance he might discover in the structure of nature;
but an Almighty architect of boundless skill is not God. God is a
spirit; God is love; God is Wisdom and Goodness accomplishing
their ends. These things he could not understand, from anything
without. He must draw then up from the depths of his own spirit,
where God reveals himself first to man, and where every man finds in
himself those moral ideas which he puts together, and out of these
frames the Grand Idea of which God is the Archetype. There is a
faith which cometh by hearing: but before this, in order and impor-
tance, there is a faith which the word of revelation presupposes,
and which, therefore, this word does not produce. According to
the representation of the matter, in the parable of the sower,
there is required a goodness in the soil, which the seed that is sowa
upon it has no agency in producing. This is the faith in ques
tion. It is what may be called faith in moral goodness. To this the
Apostle refers when he says that the word of the gospel was revealed
from faith to faith, meaning from the faith, that is, faithfulness of God,
its author, to the faith, or trust in Him, existing in those who were to
receive it.
* When the government of ancient Greece sent abroad a public
servant, with whom a correspondence was to be carried on, the matter
of which required secrecy, they adopted the following expedient.
Two staves were formed exactly of the same dimensions, one of which
the officer took with him, the other remained at home with the govern-
ment. And should occasion require a communication to be sent, they
took a narrow slip of parchment, and rolled it round the staff, begin-
ning at one end and proceeding to the other, till the whole was com-
pletely covered. On this they wrote their communication. It was
ihen taken off, and sent to the officer. Should it, by any mischance,
fall into the hands of an enemy, he could make nothing of it. If it
arrived safe, the officer receiving it, enwrapped his staff with it, and
thus it became legible. Such a letter they called skytale.
* The Father of our spirits, when he sent them from heaven into
these bodies, gave to each one of them such a skytale, conscience, a
moral nature, corresponding to the moral nature of God himself.
This is a divine light in the spirit, the oracle which Penn, and Socra-
tes, and indeed all good men of every age and country venerated, and
consulted with so much care. In the proper use of this, we are able
to hold correspondence with our Father in heaven, read his mind and
will in the skytale, he has sent us. Those among the Jews, who pos-
sessed this in the days when God, by his Own Son and his forerunner,
sent his message among them, received it at their hands, read it,


168
[Oct.
A Sign from the West.
obeyed, and were saved; and thus, in the language of Christ, Wis-
dom was justified of all her children. Those who possessed it not, -
for it may through carelessness be lost, - rejected the counsel of
God against themselves ' — or, as the passage should be rendered,
frustrated the counsel of God, as it respected themselves,' by reject-
ing the message, and maltreating those that bore it - and so perished.
“Now, that, in order to set aside the internal evidences of Chris-
tianity, that is, the evidences arising from its spirit - the moral nature
in it which addresses itself to our moral nature — Dr. Chalmers should
have overlooked the fact, that we have a moral nature, owing to which
God is to us an accessible subject, is truly surprising, and to be
accounted for no otherwise, than from the spirit-quenching influence
which the practice of system-making had on his mind. And if it had
such an influence on his mind, what may we suppose to have been, and
still to be the state of the general mind? We view Christianity as a
science; we work it up into a system ; the system we erect into a creed;
the creed becomes the standard of faith – the orthodox faith - the
watchman-cry, “ All's well!' — but the glory has departed, the spirit is
gone ; a form of dead orthodoxy is all that remains ! But, here I must
drop the subject; will you meet, and resume it with me at my house,
this day week, at the usual hour ?
“ G. & D. Yes." — pp. 59 - 63.
In the remaining Conversations the author enters fully
into the nature, evils, and remedy of sectarianism. We
might give many rich extracts, but forbear; and in taking
leave of the little work, would express our cordial sympa-
• thy with that free but humble spirit which here has thrown
off the ice-fetters of a sect, and is leaping out into the
genial atmosphere of a truer, purer Christianity.
Far in advance as this writer is of the sect of believers
to' which he has been attached, he has not, as we think,
taken the highest view of Christianity. There is a higher
view, as we before intimated. We do not find fault with
Dr. Wylie, or anybody else, for not pressing on towards
that view; our feeling towards him is that of gratitude for
having done so much towards bringing back the alınost
buried and defaced ideal of the Christianity of Christ -
“ the truth as it was in Jesus." Yet admitting the princi-
ples advanced in this pamphlet, we see not how a free
mind can limit the Christian name to those alone, who hold
a speculative faith in him as an inspired messenger from
God. We would have that hallowed name cover all
Christlike souls. The saints of the earth, no matter what
their opinions may be, should be in the inner circle, where
Christ stands with his flock of blessed souls around
him, all transfigured with him. The name of Jesus


1840.)
169
A Sign from the West.
should stamp not the outward but the invisible church.
For the Christianity of Christ is not a creed, and has noth-
ing to do with creeds, but is a Life. This has been
somewhat said among us, but not enough. The idea in
vogue is, that Christ taught a system of speculative doc-
trines as his peculiar religion, and intended that a belief
in these should distinguish his followers from the world.
We see nothing in the records of his life to warrant this
view. The mission of Jesus was to the Heart and Con-
science of man, and not to his Intellect. He was a spirit-
ual Reformer, not a Philosopher. His purpose was to
bring men nearer to God, make them one with Him — not
to set their minds at work upon hard and knotty problems.
He came to make men holy, not with enticing words of
man's wisdom, not by maxims, wise sayings, high oracles,
books, churches, or creeds, but by stamping his character
on their hearts, and winning them by love to the heart of
God. The essence of true Christianity is neither in his-
torical facts, nor in an intellectual belief, but in the Princi-
ples which Christ lived and taught. To be penetrated
with a conviction of the truth and divinity of Christianity,
is to be filled with an inner sense of those eternal princi-
ples of holiness which stand back of Christianity, of which
Christianity has been the great outlet. To know Christ is
to know holiness and love. It is not to subscribe to a
creed, to join a church, to form an opinion by balancing
arguments and accumulating evidence, but it is to have the
spirit of Christ — to be Christ-like. In the light of this
truth all opinions and creeds become invisible, as the stars
do at sunrise. We care not what our neighbor's creed is,
if he only has the great principles of purity, justice, truth,
and love enshrined in his soul, and manifested in his life.
He may be no believer in Christ as supernaturally com-
missioned, - he may reject the authority of the Scriptures
as ultimate, — he may call himself a skeptic ; but if he is
Christ-like, he is entitled to be of Christ's flock. His
speculative opinions are but dust in the balance, when
viewed beside those divine principles of Duty, which we
see shining in his soul. Let him doubt, and deny - but if
he be a good man, the skepticism of his understanding
hardly weighs a feather with us. We see him based on a
rock. We see him grounded upon a foundation not laid
VOL. I. —NO. II.
22


170
[Oct.
A Sign from the li est.
by human hands, but in spite of human hands, laid in the
soul by God himself. We see that though his understand-
ing is in emptiness and in isolation from divine truths, yet
his heart and moral instincts are linked to God.
But most persons persist in confounding opinions with
principles, nay, even in exalting opinions above principles ;
whereas man and God are not more distinct from each
other. A man, they say, must have fully made up his
mind on certain doctrines. He must believe in some
Trinity or atonement, in some prophetor miracle, or he
must have faithfully and scholar-like studied and mastered
some volume of Christian evidences, or if not able to do
this, he must have taken the testimony of those wiser and
more learned than he, that Christianity is true ; or he
must have stifled thought by the now lifeless theology of
a past age, and sold away his freedom by signing certain
articles of human invention, or he is no Christian. But if
this be the road to Christianity, give us some other. If this
be the true knowledge of Christ, give us infidelity — let
us not be numbered with those learned sectarians, who
would climb to heaven by books and creeds and dogmas.
And yet when this mighty distinction between Heart
and Head is presented to such persons by an illustration,
they cannot screen their bald inconsistency, by withholding
an acknowledgment of the truth of the principles we
have urged. Bring them to the test, present to them
plainly the contrast between the theologian, the scholar,
the creed-worshipper on the one hand, and the man of
unwavering principle on the other, and their prejudices are
put to shame - they find it impossible not to see the chasm
between the two.
For the dwellers in Truth are like the inhabitants of this
earth. As, wherever we go, and whatever city or house
we dwell in, we are still at home on God's earth, the firm
ground never leaves us, but stands built down under us,
thousands of miles thick, so wherever we live in the world
of eternal verities, no matter what creed we house our
heads under, we ever touch the firm land of Truth. We
may call ourselves Bostonians or Athenians, and our habi-
tation a city or a house, or an apartment in a house, but
we are not the less for that reason citizens of the earth,
nay, of the whole universe. So we may call ourselves


1840.]
171
A Sign from the West.
Catholic or Baptist, Jew or Mahometan, so far as we dwell
in the light of the principles of truth and goodness, so far,
and so far only, we are members of the true church. Our
home is the whole moral universe shone upon by the light
of divine truth. But if the name Christian is to be nar-
rowed down to a sect, which takes its stand upon specula-
tive doctrines, in the name of all that is true, let us take
some other appellation, and leave this, however cherished
it may be, to the wrangling disputers who are fighting for
it.
People talk of different Religions. There is and can be
but one Religion. All else is but diversity of form. The
eternal principles, which lie at the bottom of all religious
systems, are the same. Religious truth is universal, un-
contradictable. The religions of Adam, of Moses, of Ma-
homet, and of Christ, are grounded on the same great
principles of man's relation to God. The difference lies in
the degree in which the truth is promulgated through these
persons, and not in the kind of truth presented. One
system has greater fulness of truth than another. We
speak of the fundamental ideas of such systems, and not
of their subordinate parts.
Revealed Religion does not differ in its nature from
Natural Religion. They are only different flowers from
the same root. Natural Religion is the half-opened bud,
Revealed Religion the glorious flower in full bloom, and
fragrant with the perfume of its heavenly origin. The
characteristic of Revelation is that it is the shining of a
brighter light, — like the sun rising upon a world which
has been sleeping in the cold, dim starlight of the dawn.
The light is the same light there cannot be two kinds of
light, nor can there be two kinds of truth. Christianity is
a broader and more emphatic declaration of the eternal
law of God, and only so far as we see it to be an expres-
sion of God's law is it authoritative.
How futile then, and perplexing, to take up such specu-
lations as we meet with all around us, as if such things
were essential to our salvation. Shall we not rather say,
“ Give me thy word, O Father, thy word written not with
fading ink, not in perishing forms, not in the subtile dis-
tinctions of metaphysical dogmas, but on the tables of the
heart, by thine own hand-writing. Give me that ingrafted


172
[Oct.
A Sign from the West.
word, which doubt and change cannot pluck up. Let me
reverence my spiritual nature — I have no sure light but
this — 0, may I keep it undimmed, unquenched, and may
its flame point upward ever unto Thee.”
Such was the Idea which inspired the mind of Jesus,
and which he was continually uttering. And yet, in spite
of this, the church has always thwarted his purpose, and
insisted upon a creed. It has always and does now every-
where demand what a man believes, not how he lives. Of
this error the Church will do well to get rid, as soon as
possible. Did our Saviour ever ask a man his creed, be-
fore he gave him his benediction, and suffered him to fol.
low him ?
The Christianity of Christ then is not a sound Theology,
but a Holy Life. The poor, uneducated day-laborer may
know far more of Christ than the philosopher in his rich
library, surrounded by all the learning of the world.
Christian Truth is universal truth — the light which lighten-
eth every one who cometh into the world. It is no man's
exclusive property. It is common, free, and unpurchased
as the light, the air, and the water. There can be no
monopoly here. The invitation is to all. “Ho every one
who thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” “Whosoever be-
lieveth on me shall never thirst.” Sin alone keeps us from
the fountain. Unless we resemble Jesus, “our eyes will
be holden that we shall not know him," his character will
seem too lofty for our imitation, and his words too mystical
for our comprehension. We may profess to follow him,
but it will be but a phantom, not the real Christ. But let
us be true to the Highest within us, as he was, and our
hearts will burn within us as we commune with him, till
enamored of that uncontained Beauty of Holiness, of
which he was so large a partaker, we become at length
worthy of his holy name.
loc.
ANGELICA SLEEPS. - BERNI.
SLEEPING with such an air of grace I found her,
As my transported fancy pictured oft;
Proud at her gentle touch, fresh flowers sprang round her,
Love's breath the rivulet fanned to murmurs soft.


1840.) Nature and Art, or the three Landscapes.
173
NATURE AND ART, OR THE THREE LANDSCAPES.
“Art is called Art, because it is not Nature.” – GOETHE.
GASPAR POUSSIN.
Why, dearest, why
Dost thou so fondly linger, gazing long
Upon that fleecy sky
And gentle brook, rippling the rocks among?
Is it the bright warm air, the sunny green;
The cheerful golden light, pervading all;
The waving trees above, the dark ravine
Below, where the cool waters softly fall;
Or that blue valley, sweeping far away,
Into the opening day?
Tell me, my love, of this bright scene what part
Entrances thus thy sense with magic art ?
It is not, love, a part — though every part
Touches the soul —
But to the brooding mind and wakeful heart
Appeals the whole!
Rocking the senses in a dream of youth,
Calling up early memories buried long;
Its nature, life, and truth
Ring through my heart like my own childhood's song.
Thus once where'er I turned my eye
Earth joyous smiled
Upon her joyful child;
No heavy shadow darkened land or sky,
No jarring discord broke with grating sound
The Harmony profound.
DOMINICHINO.
But what a dark, unnatural gloom,
What stifled air, like vapors in a tomb,
Rests on this saddened earth!
How motionless the trees are drooping,
As by a weight bent low,
And heavy clouds are downward stooping,
Presaging coming woe!
The stagnant waters hardly go,
Šlothful and slow!
No sight of mirth,
No flitting bird, nor lamb with happy bound,
Disturbs the icy chill which hangs around.


174
[Oct.
Nature and Art, or the three Landscapes.
And yet the picture moves the inmost mind,
Faithful to gloomier epochs of our life;
Moves it more deeply, printing with such power
A dark and painful hour
Of inward solitude, of mental strife. ,
O God on bigh! thy love, thy grace alone
Can cheer that disial day
With heaven-descended ray.
Its desperate doubts and torturing thoughts dispel,
The Skeptic's bitter Hell!
He who to tell such inward agony
This frowning picture planned,
Must have possessed a spirit deep and high
Joined to a master's hand.
ALLSTON'S ITALIAN LANDSCAPE.
Look forth, my love, once more
Upon a fairer scene,
Than Grecia's heights, than Pausilippo's shore,
Or Vallapibrosa's shadows thick and green.
See that half-hidden castle sleeping
Mid leafy, bowery groves,
A soft effulgence all around it creeping,
Like that which glances from the wings of doves
In light, uncertain motion.
And on the blue horizon stretching far,
Amid the wide spread ocean, -
Rises a mountain pure and pale as evening's earliest star.
This ever-smiling sea
Rough with no frowning storm;
This tranquil land which no rude shapes deform,
From all harsh contrasts free;
This grace, this peace, this calm unchanging life
Belong not to our world of sin and strife.
No! not to outward earth
Belongs such peace as this;
Yet to the heart of man, an inward birth
Gives equal bliss.
When childhood's happy day
Of faith and hope is over,
And those sharp pangs have passed away,
When the cold ray
of knowledge undeceives the heart round which fair visions hover,
Then, then may come a calmer, better hour,
A deeper Peace descend,
Which lifts our spirit to the loftiest Power
And makes our God our friend.


1840)
175
The Art of Life.
175
Then Nature sings again a hymn of joy,
And, like a merry boy,
Laughs out each hill, each valley, rock, and tree,
Laughs out the mighty sea,
Broad earth and hollow Heaven partake the
Spirit's ecstasy.
O, happy artist! whose God-guided hand
This second Eden planned,
Happy to execute this scene thou art,
Happier to find its image in thy heart.
!.F.C.
THE ART OF LIFE, – THE SCHOLAR’S CALLING.
Life is an art. When we consider what life may be to
all, and what it is to most, we shall see how little this art is
yet understood. What life may be to all is shown us in
the lives of the honored few, whom we have learned to
distinguish from the rest of mankind, and to worship as the
heroes and saints of the world. What life is to most is
seen wherever we turn our eyes. To all, life may be free-
dom, progress, success. To most men it is bondage, fail-
ure, defeat. Some have declared all life to be a tragedy.
The life of most men is rightly so termed. What can be
more tragical, than after long years of weary watching and
ceaseless toil, in which all the joy and strength of our days
have been wasted in pursuit of some distant good, to find,
at last, that the good thus sought was a shadow, a sham,
that the sum total of our endeavor, with no positive in-
crease has left us minus our youth, our faculty, our hope,
and that the threescore years have been a livelong illusion.
This is the great ground-tragedy, in which all other trage-
dies and sorrows and defeats of man's life are comprised.
Such is the actual condition of mankind. Look at our
educated men. Of the hundreds, whom every year sends
forth to wander in the various paths of active life, how
many are there who find or even seek the bread that alone
can satisfy the hungering, dreaming heart of man? How
many sell their strength and waste their days and “ file
their minds” for some paltry clerkship or judgeship or


176
[Oct.
The Art of Life.
senatorship; or some phantom which they term a compe-
tence; or at the best some dream of Fame—“ingens gloriæ
cupido quæ etiam sapientibus novissima exuitur” — and
find, when the race is done and the heat is won, that they
are no nearer than before the true end of their being, and
that the great work of life is still to do.
The work of life, so far as the individual is concerned,
and that to which the scholar is particularly called, is self-
culture,— the perfect unfolding of our individual nature.
To this end above all others the art, of which I speak, di-
rects our attention and points our endeavor. There is no
man, it is presumed, to whom this object is wholly indiffer-
ent,— who would not willingly possess this too, along with
other prizes, provided the attainment of it were compatible
with personal ease and worldly good. But the business of
self-culture admits of no compromise. Either it must be
made a distinct aim, or wholly abandoned.
“I respect the man,” says Goethe, “ who knows distinct-
ly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in
the world arises from the fact, that men do not sufficiently
understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build
a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than
would be necessary to erect a hut.” Is not this an exact
description of most men's strivings ? Every man under-
takes to build his tower, and no one counts the cost. In all
things the times are marked by a want of steady aim and
patient industry. There is scheming and plotting in abun-
dance, but no considerate, persevering effort. The young
man launches into life with no definite course in view. If
he goes into trade he has perhaps a general desire to be
rich, but he has at the same time an equally strong desire
for present gratification and luxurious living. He is un-
willing to pay the price of his ambition. He endeavors to
secure the present, and lets go the future. He turns seed-
time into harvest, eats the corn which he ought to plant. If
he goes into professional life, he sets out with a general de-
sire to be eminent, but without considering in what par-
ticular he wishes to excel, and what is the price of that
excellence. So he divides his time and talents among a
great variety of pursuits; endeavoring to be all things, he
becomes superficial in proportion as he is universal, and
having acquired a brief reputation as worthless as it is short-
lived, sinks down into hopeless insignificance.


1840.]
177
The Art of Life.
Everything that man desires may be had for a price.
The world is truer to us than we are to ourselves. In the
great bargain of life no one is duped but by his own miscal-
culations, or baffled but by his own unstable will. If any
man fail in the thing which he desires, it is because he is not
true to himself, he has no sufficient inclination to the object
in question. He is unwilling to pay the price which it costs.
Of self-culture, as of all other things worth seeking,
the price is a single devotion to that object, - a devotion
which shall exclude all aims and ends, that do not di-
rectly or indirectly tend to promote it. In this service let
no man flatter himself with the hope of light work and
ready wages. The work is hard and the wages are slow.
Better pay in money or in fame may be found in any other
path than in this. The only motive to engage in this work
is its own inherent worth, and the sure satisfaction which
accompanies the consciousness of progress, in the true direc-
tion towards the stature of a perfect man. Let him who
would build this tower consider well the cost, whether in
energy and endurance he have sufficient to finish it. Much,
that he has been accustomed to consider as most desirable,
he will have to renounce. Much, that other men esteem as
highest and follow after as the grand reality, he will have
to forego. No emoluments must seduce him from the rigor
of his devotion. No engagements beyond the merest neces-
sities of life must interfere with his pursuit. A meagre
economy must be his income. “Spare fast that oſt with
gods doth diet " must be his fare. The rusty coat must be
his badge. Obscurity must be his distinction. He must con-
sent to see younger and smaller men take their places above
him in Church and State. He must become a living sacri-
fice, and dare to lose his life in order that he may find it.
The scholar of these days has no encouragement from
without. A cold and timid policy everywhere rebukes his
aspirations. Everywhere "advice with scrupulous head”
seeks to dehort and deter. Society has no rewards for him.
Society rewards none but those who will do its work,
which if the scholar undertake, he must straightway ne-
glect his own. The business of society is not the advance-
ment of the mind, but the care of the body. It is not the
highest culture, but the greatest comfort. Accordingly, an
endless multiplication of physical conveniences — an infinite
VOL. 1. —NO. II.
23


178
(Oct.
The Art of Life.
economy has become the cultus, the worship of the age.
Religion itself has been forced to minister in this service.
No longer a divine liſe an end in itself, it has become a
mere instrument and condition of comfortable living, either
in this earth or in some transmundane state. A more re-
fined species of sensual enjoyment is the uttermost it holds
out.
On all hands man's existence is converted into a prepara-
tion for existence. We do not properly live in these days,
but, everywhere, with patent inventions and complex ar-
rangements, are getting ready to live ; like that King of
Epirus, who was all his lifetime preparing to take his
ease, but must first conquer the world. The end is lost
in the means. Life is smothered in appliances. We can-
not get to ourselves, there are so many external comforts to
wade through. Consciousness stops half way. Reflection
is dissipated in the circumstances of our environment.
Goodness is exhausted in aids to goodness, and all the vigor
and health of the soul is expended in quack contrivances
to build it up. O! for some moral Alaric, one is tempted
to exclaim, who should sweep away, with one fell swoop,
all that has been in this kind, — all the manuals and false
pretensions of modern culture, and place man once more
on the eternal basis of original Nature. We are paying
dearer than we imagine for our boasted improvements.
The highest life, - The highest enjoyment, the point at
which, after all our wanderings, we mean to land, is the life
of the mind — the enjoyment of thought. Between this
life and any point of outward existence, there is never but
one step, and that step is an act of the will, which no aids
from without can supercede or even facilitate. We travel
round and round in a circle of facilities, and come at last to
the point from which we set out. The mortal leap remains
still to be made.
With these objects and tendencies the business of self-
culture has nothing to do. Its objects are immediate and
ultimate. Its aim is to live now, to live in the present, to
live in the highest. The process here is one with