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Part I
Part I
The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the
Physician`s Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We
may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in
merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers
of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of
their working right or working wrong.
In the Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first condition
of complete health is, that each organ perform its function, unconsciously,
unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate existence, were it even
boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain, then already has one of those
unfortunate `false centres of sensibility` established itself, already is
derangement there. The perfection of bodily well-being is that the collective
bodily activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves,
but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is
in high order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit; but the true
Peptician was that Countryman who answered that, `for his part, he had no
system.` In fact, unity, agreement is always silent, or soft-voiced; it is
only discord that loudly proclaims itself. So long as the several elements of
Life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned
strings, it is a melody and unison; Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows
out as in celestial music and diapason, - which also, like that other music of
the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption
and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus too, in some
languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term expressing unity;
when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are whole.
Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that
felicity of `having no system`; nevertheless, most of us, looking back on
young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial translucency and
elasticity and perfect freedom; the body had not yet become the prison-house
of the soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a creature of the
thought, and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs,
we only lifted, hurled and leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of
sense, came clear unimpeded tidings from without, and from within issued clear
victorious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, giving and receiving,
in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil`s Husbandmen, `too happy because we did
not know our blessedness.` In those days, health and sickness were foreign
traditions that did not concern us; our whole being was as yet One, the whole
man like an incorporated Will. Such, were Rest or ever-successful Labour the
human lot, might our life continue to be: a pure, perpetual, unregarded music;
a beam of perfect white light, rendering all things visible, but itself
unseen, even because it was of that perfect whiteness, and no irregular
obstruction had yet broken it into colours. The beginning of Inquiry is
Disease: all Science, if we consider well, as it must have originated in the
feeling of something being wrong, so it is and continues to be but Division,
Dismemberment, and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old written,
the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root of evil, and bears fruits of good
and evil. Had Adam remained in Paradise, there had been no Anatomy and no
Metaphysics.
But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, `Life itself is a disease; a
working incited by suffering`; action from passion! The memory of that first
state of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has faded away into an ideal
poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many things: with Knowledge, the
symptom of Derangement, we must even do our best to restore a little Order.
Life is, in few instances, and at rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly
melody; oftenest the fierce jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do what
we will, there is no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the wish of
Nature on our behalf; in all vital action, her manifest purpose and effort is,
that we should be unconscious of it, and like the peptic Countryman, never
know that we `have a system.` For, indeed vital action everywhere is
emphatically a means, not an end; Life is not given us for the mere sake of
Living, but always with an ulterior external Aim: neither is it on the
process, on the means, but rather on the result, that Nature, is any of her
doings, is wont to intrust us with insight and volition. Boundless as is the
domain of man, it is but a small fractional proportion of it that he rules
with Consciousness and by Forethought: what he can contrive, nay, what he can
altogether know and comprehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the
great is ever, in one sense or other, the vital; it is essentially the
mysterious, and only the surface of it can be understood. But Nature, it might
seem, strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us even this, that she is a
mystery: she will have us rest on her beautiful and awful bosom as if it were
our secure home; on the bottomless boundless Deep, whereon all human things
fearfully and wonderfully swim, she will have us walk and build, as if the
film which supported us there (which any scratch of a bare bodkin will rend
asunder, any sputter of a pistol-shot instantaneously burn up) were no film,
but a solid rock-foundation. Forever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable
Death, man can forget that he is born to die; of his Life, which, strictly
meditated, contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can conceive
lightly, as of a simple implement wherewith to do day-labour and earn wages.
So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all highest Art, which only apes her
from afar, `body forth the Finite from the Infinite`; and guide man safe on
his wondrous path, not more by endowing him with vision, than, at the right
place, with blindness! Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work,
Life, lies a basis of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life too,
the roots and inward circulations which stretch down fearfully to the regions
of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and only the fair stem
with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair sun, shall disclose itself,
and joyfully grow.
However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking Why
and How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great part, an echo
of the question, let us be content to remark farther, in the merely historical
way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physician holds good in quite other
departments. Of the Soul, with her activities, we shall find it no less true
than of the Body: nay, cry the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the
unity, Man, into a dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of disease;
as, perhaps, your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body,
and therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm which was
critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we observe, with
confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it as Intellect, as
Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its
strength; that here as before the sign of health is Unconsciousness. In our
inward, as in our outward world, what is mechanical lies open to us: not what
is dynamical and has vitality. Of our Thinking, we might say, it is but the
mere upper surface that we shape into articulate Thoughts; - underneath the
region of argument and conscious discourse, lies the region of meditation;
here, in its quiet mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here,
if aught is to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must
the work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial: Creation is great,
and cannot be understood. Thus if the Debater and Demonstrator, whom we may
rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has done, and how he did
it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest, knows not; must speak of
Inspiration, and in one or the other dialect, call his work the gift of a
divinity.
But on the whole, `genius is ever a secret to itself`; of this old truth
we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes no airs for
writing Hamlet and the Tempest, understands not that it is anything
surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his faculty, which accordingly
is an inferior one. On the other hand, what cackling and strutting must we not
often hear and see, when, in some shape of academical prolusion, maiden
speech, review article, this or the other well-fledged goose has produced its
goose-egg, of quite measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and
wonders why all mortals do not wonder!
Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor`s surprise at Walter Shandy:
how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue; and not knowing
the name of any dialectic tool, handled them all to perfection. Is it the
skilfulest anatomist that cuts the best figure at Sadler`s Wells? or does the
boxer hit better for knowing that he has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis?
But indeed, as in the higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the Speaker
and Inquirer, the true force is an unconscious one. The healthy Understanding,
we should say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the Intuitive; for the
end of Understanding is not to prove and find reasons, but to know and
believe. Of logic, and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were much to be
said and examined; one fact, however, which chiefly concerns us here, has long
been familiar: that the man of logic and the man of insight; the Reasoner and
the Discoverer, or even Knower, are quite separable, - indeed, for most part,
quite separate characters. In practical matters, for example, has it not
become almost proverbial that the man of logic cannot prosper? This is he whom
business-people call Systematic and Theoriser and Word-monger; his vital
intellectual force lies dormant or extinct, his whole force is mechanical,
conscious: of such a one it is foreseen that, when once confronted with the
infinite complexities of the real world, his little compact theorem of the
world will be found wanting; that unless he can throw it overboard and become
a new creature, he will necessarily founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself,
the most ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is your dialectic
man-at-arms; were he armed cap-a-pie in syllogistic mail of proof, and perfect
master of logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider the old
Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards Truth: the faithfulest endeavour,
incessant unwearied motion, often great natural vigour: only no progress:
nothing but antic feats of one limb poised against the other; there they
balanced, somersetted, and made postures; at best gyrated swiftly with some
pleasure, like Spinning Dervishes, and ended where they began. So is it, so
will it always be, with all System-makers and builders of logical
card-castles; of which class a certain remnant must, in every age, as they do
in our own, survive and build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The
Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries, dilemmas
and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast you a beautiful
horoscope, and speak reasonable things; nevertheless your stolen jewel, which
you wanted him to find you, is not forthcoming. Often by some winged word,
winged as the thunderbolt is, of a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see
the difficulty split asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the
Irrefragable, with all his logical tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and
finds it on all hands too hard for him.
Again, in the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed
everywhere in that superiority of what is called the Natural over the
Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades and carries
all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that he ought to
have persuaded and carried all with him: the one is in a state of healthy
unconsciousness, as if he `had no system`; the other, in virtue of regimen and
dietetic punctuality, feels at best that `his system is in high order.` So
stands it, in short, with all the forms of Intellect, whether as directed to
the finding of truth, or to the fit imparting thereof; to Poetry, to
Eloquence, to depth of Insight, which is the basis of both these; always the
characteristic of right performance is a certain spontaneity, an
unconsciousness; `the healthy know not of their health, but only the sick.` So
that the old precept of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious
disciple, might contain in it a most fundamental truth, applicable to us all,
and in much else than Literature: "Whenever you have written any sentence that
looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it out." In like manner, under
milder phraseology, and with a meaning purposely much wider, a living Thinker
has taught us: `Of the Wrong we are always conscious, of the Right never.`
But if such is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intellectual
power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and the power,
manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. `Let not thy left hand know
what thy right hand doeth`; whisper not to thy own heart, How worthy is this
action! - for then it is already becoming worthless. The good man is he who
works continually in welldoing; to whom welldoing is as his natural existence,
awakening no astonishment, requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of
course, and as if it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the other
hand, is infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not the sign of
cure. An unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in repenting
and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates itself into dropsical boastfulness
and vain-glory: either way, there is a self-seeking; an unprofitable looking
behind us to measure the way we have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk
continually forward, and make more way. If in any sphere of man`s life, then
in the Moral sphere, as the inmost and most vital of all, it is good that
there be wholeness; that there be unconsciousness, which is the evidence of
this. Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us, as in our Holy of
Holies, be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its right and its
effort: the perfect obedience will be the silent one. Such perhaps were the
sense of that maxim, enunciating, as is usual, but the half of a truth: To say
that we have a clear conscience, is to utter a solecism; had we never sinned,
we should have had no conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory
be celebrated by songs of triumph.
This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever the
goal towards which our actual state of being strives; which it is the more
perfect the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual world, where Labour
must often prove ineffectual, and thus in all senses Light alternate with
Darkness, and the nature of an ideal Morality be much modified, is the case,
thus far, materially different. It is a fact which escapes no one, that,
generally speaking, whoso is acquainted with his worth has but a little stock
to cultivate acquaintance with. Above all, the public acknowledgment of such
acquaintance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate footing, bodes
ill. Already, to the popular judgment, he who talks much about Virtue in the
abstract, begins to be suspect; it is shrewdly guessed that where there is
great preaching, there will be little alms-giving. Or again, on a wider scale,
we can remark that ages of Heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy; Virtue,
when it can be philosophised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and
beginning to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-pervading spirit of
Chivalrous Valour shrinks together, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points
of Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind dwindle into punctilious
Politeness, `avoiding meats`; `paying tithe of mint and anise, neglecting the
weightier matters of the law.` Goodness, which was a rule to itself, must now
appeal to Precept, and seek strength from Sanctions; the Freewill no longer
reigns unquestioned and by divine right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by
expediency, by Rewards and Punishments: or rather, let us say, the Freewill,
so far as may be, has abdicated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral
nightmare of a Necessity usurps its throne; for now that mysterious
Self-impulse of the whole man, heaven-inspired, and in all senses partaking of
the Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite dialect, and answering,
as it needs must, by silence, - is conceived as non-extant, and only the
outward Mechanism of it remains acknowledged: of Volition, except as the
synonym of Desire, we hear nothing; of `Motives,` without any Mover, more than
enough.
So too, when the generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic, we
have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the profitableness, at any
rate the extremely ornamental nature of high feeling, and the luxury of doing
good; charity, love, self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner of godlike
magnanimity, - are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in speech
and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim `Benevolence` to
all the four winds, and have Truth engraved on their watch-seals: unhappily
with little or no effect. Were the limbs in right walking order, why so much
demonstrating of motion? The barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist.
Granting even that he were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us, or
without first deceiving himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie there as
a perpetual lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian impotence?
His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through every fibre, conscious
of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if it were made of glass, and durst
not touch or be touched; in the shape of work, it can do nothing; at the
utmost, by incessant nursing and caudling, keep itself alive. As the last
stage of all, when Virtue, properly so called, has ceased to be practised, and
become extinct, and a mere remembrance, we have the era of Sophists,
descanting of its existence, proving it, denying it, mechanically `accounting`
for it; - as dissectors and demonstrators cannot operate till once the body be
dead.
Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, which indeed is but a
lower phasis thereof, `ever a secret to itself.` The healthy moral nature
loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it: the unhealthy makes
love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or, finding such courtship
fruitless, turns round, and not without contempt abandons it. These curious
relations of the Voluntary and Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious,
and the small proportion which, in all departments of our life, the former
bears of the latter, - might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and
Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough, if the
fact itself become apparent, that Nature so meant it with us; that in this
wise we are made. We may now say, that view man`s individual Existence under
what aspect we will, under the highest spiritual, as under the merely animal
aspect, everywhere the grand vital energy, while in its sound state, is an
unseen unconscious one; or, in the words of our old Aphorism, `the healthy
know not of their health, but only the sick.`
To understand man, however, we must look beyond the individual man and
his actions or interests, and view him in combination with his fellows. It is
in Society that man first feels what he is; first becomes what he can be. In
Society an altogether new set of spiritual activities are evolved in him, and
the old immeasurably quickened and strengthened. Society is the genial element
wherein his nature first lives and grows; the solitary man were but a small
portion of himself, and must continue forever folded in, stunted and only half
alive. `Already,` says a deep Thinker, with more meaning than will disclose
itself at once, `my opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in strength and
sureness, the moment a second mind has adopted it,` Such, even in its simplest
form, is association; so wondrous the communion of soul with soul as directed
to the mere act of Knowing! In other higher acts, the wonder is still more
manifest; as in that portion of our being which we name the Moral: for
properly, indeed, all communion is of a moral sort, whereof such intellectual
communion (in the act of knowing) is itself an example. But with regard to
Morals strictly so called, it is in Society, we might almost say, that
Morality begins; here at least it takes an altogether new form, and on every
side, as in living growth, expands itself. The Duties of Man to himself, to
what is Highest in himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to the First
Table is now super-added a Second, with the Duties of Man to his Neighbour;
whereby also the significance of the First now assumes its true importance.
Man has joined himself with man; soul acts and reacts on soul; a mystic
miraculous unfathomable Union establishes itself; Life, in all its elements,
has become intensated, consecrated. The lightning-spark of Thought, generated,
or say rather heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens its express
likeness in another mind, in a thousand other minds, and all blaze-up together
in combined fire; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with fresh fuel in
each, it acquires incalculable new light as Thought, incalculable new heat as
converted into Action. By and by, a common store of Thought can accumulate,
and be transmitted as an everlasting possession: Literature, whether as
preserved in the memory of Bards, in Runes and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone,
or in Books of written or printed paper, comes into existence, and begins to
play its wondrous part. Polities are formed; the weak submitting to the
strong; with a willing loyalty giving obedience that he may receive guidance:
or say rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant submitting to the wise;
for so it is in all even the rudest communities, man never yields himself
wholly to brute Force, but always to moral Greatness, thus the universal title
of respect, from the Original Sheik, from the Sachem of the Red Indians, down
to our English Sir, implies only that he whom we mean to honour is our senior.
Last, as the crown and all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion arises.
The devout meditation of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul,
like a transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires certainty,
continuance, when it is shared - in by his brother men. `Where two or three
are gathered together` in the name of the Highest, then first does the
Highest, as it is written, `appear among them to bless them`; then first does
an Altar and act of united Worship open a way from Earth to Heaven; whereon,
were it but a simple Jacob`s-ladder, the heavenly Messengers will travel, with
glad tidings and unspeakable gifts for men. Such is Society, the vital
articulation of many individuals into a new collective individual: greatly the
most important of man`s attainments on this earth; that in which, and by
virtue of which, all his other attainments and attempts find their arena, and
have their value. Considered well, Society is the standing wonder of our
existence; a true region of the Supernatural; as it were, a second
all-embracing Life, wherein our first individual Life becomes doubly and
trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude was in us bodies itself forth, and
becomes visible and active.
To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely a metaphor; but rather
the statement of a fact by such imperfect methods as language affords. Look at
it closely, that mystic Union, Nature`s highest work with man, wherein man`s
volition plays an indispensable yet so subordinate a part, and the small
Mechanical grows so mysteriously and indissolubly out of the infinite
Dynamical, like Body out of Spirit, - is truly enough vital, what we can call
vital, and bears the distinguishing character of life. In the same style also,
we can say that Society has its periods of sickness and vigour, of youth,
manhood, decrepitude, dissolution and new birth; in one or other of which
stages we may, in all times, and all places where men inhabit, discern it; and
do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as cooperating or as contending,
as healthy members or as diseased ones, to our joy and sorrow, form part of
it. The question, What is the actual condition of Society? has in these days
unhappily become important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in that
question; but for the majority of thinking men a true answer to it, such is
the state of matters, appears almost as the one thing needful. Meanwhile, as
the true answer, that is to say, the complete and fundamental answer and
settlement, often as it has been demanded, is nowhere forthcoming, and indeed
by its nature is impossible, any honest approximation towards such is not
without value. The feeblest light, or even so much as a more precise
recognition of the darkness, which is the first step to attainment of light,
will be welcome.
This once understood, let it not seem idle if we remark that here too our
old Aphorism holds; that again in the Body Politic, as in the animal body, the
sign of right performances in Unconsciousness. Such indeed is virtually the
meaning of that phrase, `artificial state of society,; as contrasted with the
natural state, and indicating something so inferior to it. For, in all vital
things, men distinguish an Artificial and a Natural; founding on some dim
perception or sentiment of the very truth we here insist on: the artificial is
the conscious, mechanical; the natural is the unconscious, dynamical. Thus, as
we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the natural; so likewise we have
an artificial Morality, an artificial Wisdom, an artificial Society. The
artificial Society is precisely one that knows its own structure, its own
internal functions; not in watching, not in knowing which, but in working
outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim, does the wellbeing of a Society
consist. Every Society, every Polity, has a spiritual principle; is the
embodiment, tentative and more or less complete, of an Idea: all its
tendencies of endeavour, specialties of custom, its laws, politics and whole
procedure (as the glance of some Montesquieu, across innumerable superficial
entanglements, can partly decipher), are prescribed by an Idea, and flow
naturally from it, as movements from the living source of motion. This Idea,
be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to a creed, to an institution, or
even, as in more ancient times, to a piece of land, is ever a true Loyalty;
has in it something of a religious, paramount, quite infinite character; it is
properly the Soul of the State, its Life; mysterious as other forms of Life,
and like these working secretly, and in a depth beyond that of consciousness.
Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of a Roman Republic that
Treatises of the Commonwealth are written: while the Decii are rushing with
devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need of preaching Patriotism? The
virtue of Patriotism has already sunk from its pristine all-transcendent
condition, before it has received a name. So long as the Commonwealth
continues rightly athletic, it cares not to dabble in anatomy. Why teach
obedience to the Sovereign; why so much as admire it, or separately recognise
it, while a divine idea of Obedience perennially inspires all men? Loyalty,
like Patriotism, of which it is a form, was not praised till it had begun to
decline; the Preux Chevaliers first became rightly admirable, when `dying for
their king` had ceased to be a habic with chevaliers. For if the mystic
significance of the State, let this be what it may, dwells vitally in every
heart, encircles every life as with a second higher life, how should it stand
self-questioning? It must rush outward, and express itself by works. Besides,
if perfect, it is there as by necessity, and does not excite inquiry: it is
also by nature infinite, has no limits; therefore can be circumscribed by no
conditions and definitions; cannot be reasoned of; except musically, or in the
language of Poetry, cannot yet so much as be spoken of.
In those days, Society was what we name healthy, sound at heart. Not
indeed without suffering enough; not without perplexities, difficulty on every
side: for such is the appointment of man; his highest and sole blessedness is,
that he toil, and know what to toil at; not in ease, but in united victorious
labour, which is at once evil and the victory over evil, does his Freedom lie.
Nay, often, looking no deeper than such superficial perplexities of the early
Time, historians have taught us that it was all one mass of contradiction and
disease; and in the antique Republic or feudal Monarchy have seen only the
confused chaotic quarry, not the robust labourer, or the stately edifice he
was building of it.
If Society, in such ages, had its difficulty, it had also its strength;
if sorrowful masses of rubbish so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them
aside, with indomitable heart, were not wanting. Society went along without
complaint; did not stop to scrutinize itself, to say, How well I perform! or,
Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves to be `the envy of surrounding
nations`; and were enviable on that very account. Society was what we can call
whole, in both senses of the word. The individual man was in himself a whole,
or complete union; and could combine with his fellows as the living member of
a greater whole. For all men, through their life, were animated by one great
Idea; thus all efforts pointed one way, evbrywhere there was wholeness.
Opinion and Action had not yet become disunited; but the former could still
produce the latter, or attempt to produce it; as the stamp does its impression
while the wax is not hardened. Thought and the voice of thought were also a
unison; thus, instead of Speculation, we had Poetry; Literature, in its rude
utterance, was as yet a heroic Song, perhaps too a devotional Anthem.
Religion was everywhere; Philosophy lay hid under it, peaceably included
in it. Herein, as in the life-centre of all, lay the true health and oneness.
Only at a later era must Religion split itself into Philosophies; and thereby,
the vital union of Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision in all
provinces of Speech and Action more and more prevail. For if the Poet, or
Priest, or by whatever title the inspired thinker may be named, is the sign of
vigour and well-being; so likewise is the Logician, or uninspired thinker, the
sign of disease, probably of decrepitude and decay. Thus, not to mention other
instances, one of them much nearer hand, - so soon as Prophecy among the
Hebrews had ceased, then did the reign of Argumentation begin; and the ancient
Theocracy, in its Sadduceeisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling of sects
and doctors, give token that the soul of it had fled, and that the body
itself, by natural dissolution, `with the old forces still at work, but
working in reverse order,` was on the road to final disappearance.
We might pursue this question into innumerable other ramifications; and
everywhere, under new shapes, find the same truth, which we here so
imperfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the whole world of man, in
all manifestations and performances of his nature, outward and inward,
personal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery to itself, knows not
itself; whatsoever does know itself is already little, and more or less
imperfect. Or otherwise, we may say, Unconsciousness belongs to pure unmixed
life; Consciousness to a diseased mixture and conflict of life and death:
Unconsciousness is the sign of creation; Consciousness, at best, that of
manufacture. So deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance of
Mystery. Well might the Ancients make Silence a god; for it is the element of
all godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness; at once the source and
the ocean wherein all such begins and ends. In the same sense, too, have Poets
sung `Hymns to the Night`; as if Night were nobler than Day; as if Day were
but a small motley-coloured veil spread transiently over the infinite bosom of
Night, and did but deform and hide from us its purely transparent eternal
deeps. So likewise have they spoken and sung as if Silence were the grand
epitome and complete sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what mortals call
Death, properly the beginning of Life. Under such figures, since except in
figures there is no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured to express
a great Truth; - a Truth, in our Times, as nearly as is perhaps possible,
forgotten by the most; which nevertheless continues forever true, forever
all-important, and will one day, under new figures, be again brought home to
the bosoms of all.
But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind has still some
intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery. If Silence was made a god of
by the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk among us Moderns. To
all quacks, moreover, of what sort soever, the effect of Mystery is well
known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in latter days, turns it to
notable account: the blockhead also, who is ambitious, and has no talent,
finds sometimes in `the talent of silence,` a kind of succedaneum. Or again,
looking on the opposite side of the matter, do we not see, in the common
understanding of mankind, a certain distrust, a certain contempt of what is
altogether self conscious and mechanical? As nothing that is wholly seen
through has other than a trivial character; so anything professing to be
great, and yet wholly to see through itself, is already known to be false, and
a failure. The evil repute your `theoretical men` stand in, the acknowledged
inefficiency of `paper constitutions,` and all that class of objects, are
instances of this. Experience often repeated, and perhaps a certain instinct
of something far deeper that lies under such experiences, has taught men so
much. They know beforehand, that the loud is generally the insignificant, the
empty. Whatsoever can proclaim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the
hawker, and for those multitudes that must needs buy of him; but for any
deeper use, might as well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how the converse
of the proposition holds; how the insignificant, the empty, is usually the
loud; and, after the manner of a drum, is loud even because of its emptiness.
The uses of some Patent Dinner Calefactor can be bruited abroad over the whole
world in the course of the first winter; those of the Printing Press are not
so well seen into for the first three centuries: the passing of the
Select-Vestries Bill raises more noise and hopeful expectancy among mankind
than did the promulgation of the Christian Religion. Again, and again, we say,
the great, the creative and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the
small, the barren and transient is otherwise.
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