IX. THE CURE--PLAN OF INNOVATION--NEW DEFINITIONS…

IX. THE CURE--PLAN OF INNOVATION--NEW DEFINITIONS

'Swear by thy double self And that's an oath of credit.'

'Having thus far proceeded ... Is it not meet That I did amplify my judgment in Other conclusions?'

It is the trunk of the prima philosophia then which puts forth these new and wondrous boughs, into all the fields of human speculation and practice, filling all our outdoor, penetrating all our indoor life, with their beauty and fragrance; overhanging every roof, stooping to every door, with their rich curtains and clusters of ornament and delight, with their ripe underhanging clusters of axioms of practice--brought down to particulars, ready for use--with their dispersed directions overhanging every path,--with their aphorisms made out of the pith and heart of sciences, 'representing a broken knowledge, and, therefore, inviting the men of speculation to inquire farther.'

It is from this trunk of a scientific universality, of a useful, practical, always-at-hand, all-inclusive, historical universality, to which the tracking of the principles, operant in history, to their simple forms and 'causes in nature,' conducts the scientific experimenter,--it is from this primal living trunk and heart of sciences, to which the new method of learning conducts us, that this great branch of scientific practice comes, which this drama with its 'transitory shows' has brought safely down to us;--this two-fold branch of ethics and politics, which come to us--conjoined--as ethics and politics came in other systems then not scientific,--making in their junction, and through all their divergencies, 'the forbidden questions' of science.

The science of this essentially conjoined doctrine is that which makes, in this case, the novelty. 'The nature which is formed in everything,' and not in man only, and the faculty, in man, of comprehending that wider nature, is that which makes the higher ground, from which a science of his own specific nature, and the explanation of its phenomenon, is possible to man. Except from this height of a common nature, there is no such thing as a scientific explanation of these phenomena possible. And this explanation is what the specific nature in man, with its speculative grasp of a larger whole--with its speculative grasp of a universal whole,--with its instinctive moral reach and comprehension corresponding to that,--constitutionally demands and 'anticipates.'

And the knowledge of this nature which is formed in everything, and not in man only, is the beginning, not of a speculative science of the human nature merely,--it is the beginning,--it is the indispensable foundation of the arts in which a successful artistic advancement of that nature, or an artistic cure or culture of it is propounded. The fact that the 'human nature' is, indeed, what it is called, a 'nature,' the fact that the human species is a species,--the fact that the human kind is but a kind, neighboured with many others from which it is isolated by its native walls of ignorance,--neighboured with many others, more or less known, known and unknown, more or less kind-ly, more or less hostile,--species, kinds, whose dialects of the universal laws, man has not found,--the fact that the universal, historic principles are operant in all the specific modifications of human nature, and control and determine them, the fact that the human life admits of a scientific analysis, and that its phenomena require to be traced to their true forms,--this is the fact which is the key to the new philosophy,--the key which unlocks it,--the key to the part speculative, and the part operative of it.

And this is the secret of the difference between this philosophy and all other systems and theories of man's life on earth that had been before it, or that have come after it. For this new and so solid height of natural philosophy,--solid,--historical,--from its base in the divergency of natural history, to its utmost peak of unity,--this scientific height of a common nature, whose summit is 'prima philosophia,' with its new universal terms and axioms,--this height from which man, as a species, is also overlooked, and his spontaneous notions and theories criticised, subjected to that same criticism with which history itself is always flying in the face of them,--from which the specific bias in them is everywhere detected,--this new 'pyramid' of knowledge is the one on whose rock-hewn terraces the conflict of views, the clash of man's opinions shall not sound: this is the system which has had, and shall have, no rival.

And this is the key to this philosophy, not where it touches human nature only, but everywhere where it substitutes for abstract human notions--specific human notions that are powerless in the arts, or narrow observations that are restrained and uncertain in the rules of practice they produce,--powers, true forms, original agencies in nature, universal powers, sure as nature herself, and her universal form.

To abase the specific human arrogance, to overthrow 'the idols of the tribe,' is the ultimate condition of this learning. Man as man, is not a primal, if he be an ultimate, fact in nature. Nature is elder and greater than he, and requires him to learn of her, and makes little of his mere conceits and dogmas.

From the height of that new simplicity which this philosophy has gained--not as the elder philosophies had gained theirs, by pure contemplation, by hasty abstraction and retreat to the à priori sources of knowledge and belief in man,--which it has gained, too, by a wider induction than the facts of the human nature can supply--with the torch of these universal principles cleared of their historic complexities, with the torch of the nature that is formed in everything, it enters here this great, unenclosed field of human life and practice, this Spenserian wilderness, where those old, gnarled trunks, and tangled boughs, and wretched undergrowths of centuries, stop the way, where those old monsters, which the action of this play exposes, which this philosophy is bound to drag out to the day, are hid.

The radical universal fact--the radical universal distinction of the double nature of GOOD which is formed in everything, and not in man only, and the two universal motions which correspond to that, the one, as everything, is a total or substantive in itself, with its corresponding motion; for this is the principle of selfishness and war in nature--the principle which struggles everywhere towards decay and the dissolution of the larger wholes, and not in man only, though the foolish, unscientific man, who does not know how to track the phenomena of his own nature to their causes,--who has no bridge from the natural internal phenomena of his own consciousness into the continent of nature, may think that it is, and reason of it as if it were;--this double nature of good, 'the one, as a thing, is a total or substantive in itself, the other as it is, a part or member of a greater body, whereof the latter is in degree the greater and the worthier, as it tends to the conservation of a more general form'--this distinction, which the philosopher of this school has laid down in his work on the scientific advancement of the human species, with a recommendation that it should be strongly planted, which he has planted there, openly, as the root of a new science of ethics and policy, will be found at the heart of all this new history of the human nature; but in this play of the true nobility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'illustrated' scientific works, which this new school of learning, with the genius of science for its master, contrived to issue, all the universally actual and active principles are tracked to their proper specific modifications in man, and not to their development in his actual history merely; and the distinctive essential law of the human kind--the law whereby man is man, as distinguished from the baser kinds, is brought up, and worked out, and unfolded in all its detail, from the bosom of the universal law--is brought down from its barren height of isolation, and planted in the universal rule of being, in the universal law of kinds and essence. This double nature of good, as it is specifically developed in man, not as humanity only, for man is not limited to his kind in his intelligence, or in his will, or in his affections,--this double nature of good, as it is developed in man, with his contemplative, and moral, and religious grasp of a larger whole than his particular and private nature can comprehend--with his large discourse looking before and after, on the one hand, and his blind instincts, and his narrow isolating senses on the other--with that distinctive human nature on the one hand, whereby he does, in some sort, comprehend the world, and not intellectually only--that nature whereby 'the world is set in his heart,' and not in his mind only--that nature which by the law of advancement to the perfection of his form, he struggles to ascend to--that, on the one hand, and that whereby he is kindred with the lower natures on the other, swayed by a gosling's instinct, held down to the level of the pettiest, basest kinds, forbidden to ascend to his own distinctive excellence, allied with species who have no such intelligent outgoing from particulars, who cannot grasp the common, whose sphere nature herself has narrowed and walled in,--these two universal natures of good, and all the passion and affection which lie on that tempestuous border line where they blend in the human, and fill the earth with the tragedy of their confusion,--this two-fold nature, and its tragic blending, and its true specific human development, whereby man is man, and not degenerate, lies discriminated in all these plays, tracked through all their wealth of observation, through all their characterization, through all their mirth, through all their tempests of passion, with a line so firm, that only the instrument of the New Science could have graven it.

Of all the sciences, Policy is the most immersed in matter, and the hardliest reduced to axiom'; but setting out from that which is constant and universal in nature, this philosopher is not afraid to undertake it; and, indeed, that is what he is bent on; for unless those universal, historical principles, which he has taken so much pains to exhibit to us clearly in their abstract form, 'terminate in matter and construction according to the true definitions, they are speculative and of little use.' The termination of them in matter, and the new construction according to true definitions, is the business here. This, which is the hardliest reduced to axiom of any, is that which lies collected on the Inductive Tables here, cleared of all that interferes with the result; and the axiom of practice, which is the 'second vintage' of the New Machine, is expressed before our eyes. 'For that which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

He starts here, with this grand advantage which no other political philosopher or reformer had ever had before; he has the true definition in his hands to begin with; not the specific and futile notions with which the human mind, shut up within itself, seeks to comprehend and predict and order all, but the solid actual universals that the mind of man, by the combination and scientific balance of its faculties, is able to ascend to. He has in his hands, to begin with, the causes that are universal and constant in nature, with which all the historical phenomena are convertible,--the motives from which all movement proceeds, the true original simple powers,--the unknown, into which all the variety of the known is resolvable, or rather the known into which all the variety of the unknown is resolvable; the forms 'which are always present when the particular nature is present, and universally attest that presence; which are always absent when the particular nature is absent, and universally attest that absence; which always increase as the particular nature increases; which always decrease as the particular nature decreases;' that is the kind of definitions which this philosopher will undertake his moral reform with; that is the kind of idea which the English philosopher lays down for the basis of his politics. Nothing less solid than that will suit the turn of his genius, either in speculation or practice. He does full justice to the discoveries of the old Greek philosophers, whose speculation had controlled, not the speculation only, but all the practical doctrine of the world, from their time to his. He saw from what height of genius they achieved their command; but that was two thousand years before, and that was in the south east corner of Europe; and when the Modern Europe began to think for itself, it was found that the Greeks could not give the law any longer. It was found that the English notions at least, and the Greek notions of things in general differed very materially--essentially--when they came to be put on paper. When the 'representative men' of those two corners of Europe, and of those two so widely separated ages of the human advancement, came to discourse together from their 'cliffs' and compare notes, across that sea of lesser minds, the most remarkable differences, indeed, began to be perceptible at once, though the world has not yet begun to appreciate them. It was a difference that was expected to tell on the common mind, for a time, principally in its 'effects.' Everybody, the learned and the unlearned, understands now, that after the modern survey was taken, new practical directions were issued at once. Orders came down for an immediate suspension of those former rules of philosophy, and the ship was laid on a new course. 'Plato,' says the new philosopher, 'as one that had a wit of elevation situate upon a cliff, did descry that forms are the true object of knowledge,' that was his discovery,--'but lost the fruit of that opinion by'--shutting himself up, in short, in his own abstract contemplations, in his little world of man, and getting out his theory of the universe, before hand, from these; instead of applying himself practically and modestly to the observation of that universe, in which man's part is so humble. 'Vain man,' says our oldest Poet, 'vain man would be wise, who is born like a wild ass's colt.'

But let us take a specimen of the manner in which the propounder of the New Ideal Philosophy 'comes to particulars,' with this quite new kind of IDEAS, and we shall find that they were designed to take in some of those things in heaven and earth that were omitted, or not dreampt of in the others,--which were not included in the 'idols.' He tells us plainly that these are the ideas with which he is going to unravel the most delicate questions; but he is willing to entertain his immediate audience, and propitiate the world generally, by trying them, or rather giving orders to have them tried, on other things first. He does not pride himself very much on anything which he has done, or is able to do in these departments of inquiry from which his instances are here taken, and he says, in this connection:--'We do not, however, deny that other instances can perhaps be added.' In order to arrive at his doctrine of practice in general, he begins after the scientific method, not with the study of any one kind of actions only, he begins by collecting the rules of action in general. By observation of species he seeks to ascend to the principles common to them. And he comes to us with a carefully prepared scheme of the 'elementary motions,'--outlined, and enriched with such observations as he and his school have been able to make under the disadvantages of that beginning. 'The motions of bodies,' he observes, 'are compounded, decomposed and combined, no less than the bodies themselves,' and he directs the attention of the student, who has his eye on practice, with great emphasis, to those instances which he calls 'instances of predominance,'--'instances which point out the predominance and submission of powers, compared' [not in abstract contemplation but in action,] 'compared with each other, and which,' [not in books but in action,]--'which is the more energetic and superior, or more weak and inferior.'

'These "elementary notions" direct and are directed by each other, according to their strength,--quantity, excitement, concussion, or the assistance, or impediments they meet with. For instance, some magnets support iron sixty times their own weight; so far does the motion of lesser congregation predominate over the greater, but if the weight be increased it yields.'

[We must observe, that he is speaking here of 'the motions, tendencies, and active powers which are most universal in nature,' for the purpose of suggesting rules of practice which apply as widely; though he keeps, with the intimation above quoted, principally to this class of instances.] 'A lever of a certain strength will raise a given weight, and so far the notion of liberty predominates over that of the greater congregation; but if the weight be greater, the former motion yields. A piece of leather, stretched to a certain point, does not break, and so far the motion of continuity predominates' [for it is the question of predominance, and dominance, and domineering, and lordships, and liberties, of one kind and another, that he is handling]--'so far the motion of continuity predominates over that of tension; but if the tension be greater, the leather breaks, and the motion of continuity yields. A certain quantity of water flows through a chink, and so far the motion of greater congregation predominates over that of continuity; but if the chink be smaller, it yields. If a musket be charged with ball and powdered sulphur only, and the fire be applied, the ball is not discharged, in which case the motion of greater congregation overcomes that of matter; but when gunpowder is used, the motion of matter in the sulphur predominates, being assisted by that motion, and the motion of avoidance in the nitre; and so of the rest.'

Our more recent chemists would, of course, be inclined to criticise that explanation; but, in some respects, it is better than theirs; and it answers well enough the purpose for which it was introduced there, and for which it is introduced here also. For this is the initiative of the great inquiry into 'the WRESTLING INSTANCES,' and the 'instances of PREDOMINANCE' in general, 'such as point out the predominance of powers, compared with each other, and which of them is the more energetic and SUPERIOR, or more weak and INFERIOR'; and though this class of instances is valued chiefly for its illustration of another in this system of learning, where things are valued in proportion to their usefulness, they are not sought for as similitudes merely; they are produced by one who regards them as 'the same footsteps of nature, treading in different substances,' and leaving the foot-print of universal axioms; and this is a class of instances which he particularly recommends to inquiry. 'For wrestling instances, which show the predominance of powers, and in what manner and proportion they predominate and yield, must be searched for with active and industrious diligence.'

'The method and nature of this yielding' [of this yielding--SUBJECTION is the question] 'must also be diligently examined; as, for instance, whether the motions' ['of liberty'] 'completely cease, or exert themselves, but are constrained; for in all bodies with which we are acquainted, there is no real, but an apparent rest, either in the whole, or in the parts. This apparent rest is occasioned either by equilibrium' [as in the case of Hamlet, as well as in that of some others whose acts were suspended, and whose wills were arrested then, by considerations not less comprehensive than his]--'either by equilibrium, or by the absolute predominance of motions. By equilibrium, as in the scales of the balance, which rest if the weight be equal. By predominance, as in perforated jars, in which the water rests, and is prevented from falling by the predominance of the motion of CONNECTION.'

'It is, however, to be observed (as we have said before), how far the yielding motions exert themselves. For, if a man be held stretched out on the ground against his WILL, with arms and legs bound down, or otherwise confined'--[as the Duke of Kent's were, for instance]--'and yet strive with all his power to get up, the struggle is not the less, though ineffectual. The real state of the case' [namely, whether the yielding motion be, as it were, annihilated by the predominance, or there be rather a continued, though an invisible effort] 'will perhaps appear in the CONCURRENCE of MOTIONS, although it escape our notice in their conflict.' So delicately must philosophy needs be conveyed in a certain stage of a certain class of wrestling instances, where a combination of powers hostile to science produces an 'absolute predominance' of powers, and it is necessary that the yielding motion should at least appear to be 'as it were, annihilated'; though, of course, that need not hinder the invisible effort at all. 'For on account of the rawness and unskilfulness of the hands through which they pass,' there is no difficulty in inserting such intimations as to the latitude of the axioms which these particular instances adduced here, and 'others which might perhaps be added,' are expected to yield. This is an instance of the freedom with which philosophical views on certain subjects are continually addressed in these times, to that immediate audience of the few 'who will perhaps see farther into them than the common reader,' and to those who shall hereafter apply to the philosophy issued under such conditions--the conditions above described, that key of 'Times,' which the author of it has taken pains to leave for that purpose. But the question of 'predominance, which makes our present subject,' is not yet sufficiently indicated. There are more and less powerful motives concerned in this wrestling instance, as he goes on to demonstrate.

'THE RULES of such instances of predominance as occur should be collected, such as the following'--and the rule which he gives, by way of a specimen of these rules, is a very important one for a statesman to have, and it is one which the philosopher has himself 'collected' from such instances as occurred--'The more general the desired advantage is, the stronger will be the motive. The motion of connection, for instance, which relates to the intercourse of the parts of the universe, is more powerful than that of gravity, which relates to the intercourse of dense bodies. Again; the desire of a private good does not, in general, prevail against that of a public one, except where the quantities are small' [it is the general law he is propounding here; and the exception, the anomaly, is that which he has to note]; 'would that such were the case in civil matters.'

But that application to 'civil matters,' which the statesman, propounding in his own person this newly-collected knowledge of the actual historic forces, as a new and immeasurable source of relief to the human estate,--that application, which he could only make here in these side-long glances, is made in the Play without any difficulty at all. These instances, which he produces here in his professed work of science, are produced as illustrations of the kind of inquiry which he is going to bring to bear, with all the force and subtlety of his genius, on the powers of nature, as manifested in the individual human nature, and in those unions and aggregations to which it tends--those larger wholes and greater congregations, which parliaments, and pulpits, and play-houses, and books, were forbidden then, on pain of death and torture and ignominy, to meddle with. Here, he tells us, he finds it to the purpose to select 'suggestive instances, such as point out that which is advantageous to mankind'; 'and it is a part of science to make judicious inquiries and wishes.'

These instances, which he produces here, are searching; but they are none too searching for his purpose. They do not come any nearer to nature than those others which he is prepared to add to them. The treatment is not any more radical and subtle here than it is in those instances in which 'he comes to particulars,' under the pretence of play and pastime, in other departments,--those in which the judicious inquiry into the laws of the actual forces promises to yield rules 'the most generally useful to mankind.'

This is the philosophy precisely which underlies all this Play,--this Play, in which the great question, not yet ready for the handling of the unlearned, but ripe already for scientific treatment,--the question of the wrestling forces,--the question of the subjection and predominance of powers,--the question of the combination and opposition of forces in those arrested motions which make states, is so boldly handled. Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not real--where the 'yielding' forces are only, as it were, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute predominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,' but predominators--not as states, but revolutions. The science 'that ends in matter and new constructions'--new construction, 'according to true definitions,' is what these citizens, whom this Poet has called up from their horizontal position by way of anticipation, are already, under his instructions, boldly clamouring for. Constructions in which these very rules and axioms, these scientific certainties, are taken into the account, are what these men, whom this Magician has set upon their feet here, whose lips he has opened and whose arms he has unbound with the magic of his art, are going to have before they lie down again, or, at least, before they make a comfortable state for any one to trample on, though they may, perhaps, for a time seem, 'as it were, annihilated.'

These true forms, these real definitions, this new kind of ideas, these new motions, new in philosophy, new in human speech, old in natures,--written in her book ere man was,--these universal, elementary, original motions, which he is exhibiting here in the philosophic treatise, under cover of a certain class of instances, are the very ones which he is tracking here in the Play, into all the business of the state. This is that same new thread which we saw there in the grave philosophic warp, with here and there a little space filled in, not with the most brilliant filling; enough, however, to show that it was meant to be filled, and, to the careful eye,--how. But here it is the more chosen substance; and every point of this illustrious web is made of its involutions,--is a point of 'illustration.'

Yes, here he is again. Here he is at last, in that promised field of his labours,--that field of 'noblest subjects,' for the culture of which he will have all nature put under contribution; here he is at large, 'making what work he pleases.' He who is content to talk from his chair of professional learning of 'pieces of leather,' and their unions, and bid his pupil note and 'consider well' that mysterious, unknown, unexplored power in nature, which holds their particles together, in its wrestling with its opposite; and where it ceases, or seems to cease; where that obstinate freedom and predominance is vanquished, and by what rules and means; he who finds in 'water,' arrested 'in perforated jars,' or 'flowing through a chink,' or resisting gravity, if the chink be smaller, or in the balanced 'scales,' with their apparent rest, the wrestling forces of all nature,--the weaker enslaved, but there,--not annihilated; he who saw in the little magnet, beckoning and holding those dense palpable masses, or in the lever, assisted by human hands, vanquishing its mighty opposite, things that old philosophies had not dreamt of,--reports of mysteries,--revelations for those who have the key,--words from that book of creative power, words from that living Word, which he must study who would have his vision of God fulfilled, who would make of his 'good news' something more than a Poet's prophecy. He who found in the peaceful nitre, in the harmless sulphur, in the saltpetre, 'villanous' not yet, in the impotence of fire and sulphur, combining in vain against the motion of the resisting ball,--not less real to his eye, because not apparent,--or in the villanous compound itself, while yet the spark is wanting,--'rules' for other 'wrestling instances,' for other combinations, where the motion of inertia was also to be overcome; requiring organized movements, analyses, and combinations of forces, not less but more scientifically artistic,--rules for the enlargement of forces, waiting but their spark, then, to demonstrate, with more fearful explosions, their expansibility, threatening 'to lay all flat.'

For here, too, the mystic, unknown, occult powers, the unreported actualities, are working still, in obedience to their orders, which they had not from man, and taking no note of his. 'For man, as the interpreter of nature, does, and understands as much as his observations ON THE ORDER OF THINGS, or THE MIND, permits him, and neither knows nor is capable of more.' 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural bodies. NATURE INTERNALLY PERFORMS THE REST'; and 'the syllogism forces assent, but not things.'

Great things this Interpreter promises to man from these observations and interpretations, which he and his company are ordering; great things he promises from the application of this new method of learning to this department of man's want; because those vague popular notions--those spontaneous but deep-rooted beliefs in man--those confused, perplexed terms, with which he seeks to articulate them, and not those acts which make up his life only--are out of nature, and all resolvable into higher terms, and require to be returned into these before man can work with them to purpose.

Great news for man he brings; the powers which are working in the human life, and not those which are working without it only, are working in obedience to laws. Great things he promises, because the facts of human life are determined by forces which admit of scientific definition, and are capable of being reduced to axioms. Great things he promises, for these distinctive phenomena of human life, to their most artificial complication, are all out of the universal nature, and struggling already of themselves instinctively towards the scientific solution, already 'anticipating' science, and invoking her, and waiting and watching for her coming.

Good news the scientific reporter, in his turn, brings in also; good news for the state, good news for man; confirmations of reports indited beforehand; confirmations, from the universal scriptures, of the revelation of the divine in the human. Good news, because that law of the greater whole, which is the worthier--that law of the common-weal, which is the human law--that law which in man is reason and conscience, is in the nature of things, and not in man only--nay, not in man as yet, but prefigured only--his ideal; his true form--not in man, who 'IS' not, but 'becoming.'

But in tracking these universal laws of being, this constitution of things in general into the human constitution--in tracing these universal definitions into the specific terms of human life--the clearing up of the spontaneous notions and beliefs which the mind of man shut up to itself yields--the criticism on the terms which pre-occupy this ground is of course inevitable, whether expressed or not, and is indeed no unimportant part of the result. For this is a philosophy in which even 'the most vulgar and casual opinions are something more than nothing in nature.'

This Play of the Common-weal and its scientific cure, in which the question of the true NOBILITY is so deeply inwrought throughout, is indeed but the filling up of that sketch of the constitution of man which we find on another page--that constitution whereby man, as man, is part and member of a common-weal--that constitution whereby his relation to the common-weal is essential to the perfection of his individual nature, and that highest good of it which is conservation with advancement--that constitution whereby the highest good of the particular and private nature, that which bids defiance to the blows of fortune, comprehends necessarily the good of the whole in its intention. ('For neither can a man understand VIRTUE without relation to society, nor DUTY without an inward disposition.') And that is the reason that the question of 'the government of every man over himself,' and the predominance of powers, and the wrestling of them in 'the little state of man'--the question as to which is 'nobler'--comes to be connected with the question of civil government so closely. That is the reason that this doctrine of virtue and state comes to us conjoined; that is the reason that we find this question of the consulship, and the question of heroism and personal greatness, the question of the true nobility, forming so prominent a feature in the Play of the Common-weal, inwoven throughout with the question of its cure.

'Constructions according to true definitions' make the end here. The definition is, of course, the necessary preliminary to such constructions: it does not in itself suffice. Mere science does not avail here. Scientific ARTS, scientific INSTITUTIONS of regimen and culture and cure, make the essential conditions of success in this enterprise. But we want the light of 'the true definitions' to begin with. There is no use in revolutions till we have it; and as for empirical institutions, mankind has seen the best of them;--we are perishing in their decay, dying piecemeal, going off into a race of ostriches, or something of that nature--or threatened with becoming mere petrifactions, mineral specimens of what we have been, preserved, perhaps, to adorn the museums of some future species, gifted with better faculties for maintaining itself. It is time for a change of some sort, for the worse or the better, when we get habitually, and by a social rule, water for milk, brickdust for chocolate, silex for butter, and minerals of one kind and another for bread; when our drugs give the lie to science; when mustard refuses to 'counter-irritate,' and sugar has ceased to be sweet, and pepper, to say nothing of 'ginger' is no longer 'hot in the mouth.' The question in speculative philosophy at present is--

'Why all these things change from their ordinance, Their natures, and pre-formed faculties, To monstrous quality.'

--'There's something in this more than natural, --if philosophy could find it out!

And what we want in practical philosophy when it comes to this, is a new kind of enchantments, with capacities large enough to swallow up these, as the rod of Moses swallowed up the rods of the Egyptians. That was a good test of authority; and nothing short of that will answer our present purpose; when not that which makes life desirable only, but life itself is assailed, and in so comprehensive a manner, the revolutionary point of sufferance and stolidity is reached. We cannot stay to reason it thus and thus with 'the garotte' about our throats: the scientific enchantments will have to be tried now, tried here also. Now that we have 'found out' oxygen and hydrogen, and do not expect to alter their ways of proceeding by any epithets that we may apply to them, or any kind of hocus-pocus that we may practise on them, it is time to see what gen, or genus it is, that proceeds in these departments in so successful a manner, and with so little regard to our exorcisms; and the mere calling of names, which indicate in a general way the unquestionable fact of a degeneracy, is of no use, for that has been thoroughly tried already.

The experiment in the 'common logic,' as Lord Bacon calls it, has been a very long and patient one; the historical result is, that it forces assent, and not things.

The question here is not of divinity, as some might suppose. There is no question about that. Nobody need be troubled about that. It does not depend on this, or that man's arguments, happily. The true divinity, the true inspiration, is of that which was and shall be. Its foundations are laid,--its perennial source is found, not in the soul of man, not in the constitution of the mind of man only, but in the nature of things, and in the universal laws of being. The true divinity strikes its foundations to the universal granite; it is built on 'that rock where philosophy and divinity join close;' and heaven and earth may pass, but not that.

The question here is of logic. The question is between Lord Bacon and Aristotle, and which of these two thrones and dominions in speculation and practice the moderns are disposed on the whole to give their suffrages to, in this most vital department of human practice, in this most vital common human concern and interest. The question is of these demoniacal agencies that are at large now upon this planet--on both sides of it--going about with 'tickets of leave,' of one kind and another; for the logic that we employ in this department still, though it has been driven, with hooting, out of every other, and the rude systems of metaphysics which it sustains, do not take hold of these things. They pay no attention to our present method of reasoning about them. There is no objection to syllogisms, as Lord Bacon concedes;--they are very useful in their proper place. The difficulty is, that the subtlety of nature in general, as exhibited in that result which we call fact, far surpasses the subtlety of nature, when developed within that limited sphere, which the mind of man makes; and nature is much more than a match for him, when he throws himself upon his own internal gifts of ratiocination, and undertakes to dictate to the universe. The difficulty is just this;--here we have it in a nut-shell, as we are apt to get it in Lord Bacon's aphorisms.

'The syllogism consists of propositions; these of words. Words are the signs of notions: notions represent things:' [If these last then]--'if our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground. But [they are] they are, for the most part, improperly abstracted, and deduced from things,' and that is the difficulty which this new method of learning, propounded in connection with this so radical criticism of the old one, undertakes to remedy. For there are just two methods of learning, as he goes on to tell us, with increasing, but cautious, amplifications. The false method lays down from the very outset some abstract and useless generalities,--the other, gradually rises to those principles which are really the most common in nature. 'Axioms determined on in argument, can never assist in the discovery of new effects, for the subtlety of nature is vastly superior to that of argument. But axioms properly and regularly abstracted from particulars, easily point out and define NEW PARTICULARS, and impart activity to the sciences.'

'We are wont to call that human reasoning which we apply to nature, THE ANTICIPATION OF NATURE (as being rash and premature), and that which is properly deduced from THINGS, THE INTERPRETATION OF NATURE.'--(A radical distinction, which it is the first business of the new machine of the mind to establish). 'Anticipations are sufficiently powerful in producing unanimity; for if men were all to become even uniformly mad, they might agree tolerably well with each other,' (but not with nature; there's the trouble; that is the assent that is wanting).

'In sciences founded upon opinions and dogmas, it is right to make use of anticipations and logic, if you wish to force assent, and not things.'

The difference, then, between the first hasty conceptions and rude theories of the nature of things,--the difference between the preconceptions which make the first steps of the human mind towards the attainment of truth, and those conceptions and axioms which are properly abstracted from things, and which correspond to their natures, is the difference in which science begins.

And we shall find that the truths of science in this department of it, which makes our present subject are quite as new, quite as far out of the road of common opinion, and quite as unattainable by the old method of learning, as those truths with which science has already overpowered the popular notions and theories in those departments in which its powers have been already tested.

These rude natural products of the human understanding, while it is yet undisciplined by the knowledge of nature in general, which in their broadest range proceed from the human speciality, and are therefore liable to an exterior criticism; these first words and natural beliefs of men, through all their range, from the a priori conceptions of the schools, down to the most narrow and vulgar preconceptions and prejudices of the unlearned, the author of the 'Novum Organum,' and of the 'Advancement of Learning,' by a bold and dexterous sweep, puts quietly into one category, under the seemingly fanciful,--but, considering the time, none too fanciful,--designation of 'the Idols';--(he knew, indeed, that the original of the term would suggest to the scholar a more literal reading),--'the Idols of the Tribe, of the Den, of the Market, and of the Theatre,' as he sees reason--scientific, as well as rhetorical reason,--for dividing and distinguishing them. But under that common designation of images, and false ones too, he subjects them to a common criticism, in behalf of that mighty hitherto unknown, unsought, universality, which is all particulars--which is more universal than the notions of men, and transcends the grasp of their beliefs and pre-judgments;--that universal fact which men are brought in contact with, in all their doing, and in all their suffering, whether pleasurable or painful. That universal, actual fact, whose science philosophy has hitherto set aside, in favour of its own pre-notions, as a thing not worth taking into the account,--that mystic, occult, unfathomed fact, that is able to assert itself in the face of our most authoritative pre-notions, whose science, under the vulgar name of experience, all the learning of the world had till then made over with a scorn ineffable to the cultivation of the unlearned. Under that despised name which the old philosophy had omitted in its chart, the new perceived that the ground lay, and made all sail thither.

We cannot expect to find then any of those old terms and definitions included in the trunk of the new system, which is science. None of those airy fruits that grow on the branches which those old roots of a false metaphysics must needs nurture,--none of those apples of Sodom which these have mocked us with so long, shall the true seeker find on these boughs. The man of science does not, indeed, care to displace those terms in the popular dialect here, any more than the chemist or the botanist will insist on reforming the ordinary speech of men with their truer language in the fields they occupy. The new Logician and Metaphysician will himself, indeed, make use of these same terms, with a hint to 'men of understanding,' perhaps, as to the sense in which he uses them.

Incorporated into a system of learning on which much human labour has been bestowed, they may even serve some good practical purposes under certain conditions of social advancement. And besides, they are useful for adorning discourse, and furnish abundance of rhetorical material. Above all, they are invaluable to the scholastic controversialists, and the new philosopher will not undertake to displace them in these fields. He steadfastly refuses to come into any collision with them. He leaves them to take their way without. He makes them over to the vulgar, and to those old-fashioned schools of logic and metaphysics, whose endless web is spun out of them. But when the question is of practice, that is another thing. It is the scientific word that is wanting here. That is the word which in his school he will undertake to teach.

When it comes to practice, professional practice, like the botanist and the chemist, he will make his own terms. He has a machine expressly for that purpose, by which new terms are framed and turned out in exact accordance with the nature of things. He does not wish to quarrel with any one, but in the way of his profession, he will have none of those old confused terms thrust upon him. He will examine them, and analyze them; and all,--all that is in them,--all, and more, will be in his; but scientifically cleared, 'divided with the mind, that divine fire,' and clothed with power.

And it is just as impossible that those changes for the human relief which the propounder of the New Logic propounded as its chief end, should ever be effected by means of the popular terms which our metaphysicians are still allowed to retain in the highest fields of professional practice, as it would have been to effect those lesser reforms which this logic has already achieved, if those old elementary terms, earth, fire, air, water,--terms which antiquity thought fine enough; which passed the muster of the ancient schools without suspicion, had never to this hour been analyzed.

It is just as easy to suppose that we could have had our magnetic telegraphs, and daguerreotypes, and our new Materia Medica, and all the new inventions of modern science for man's relief, if the terms which were simple terms in the vocabulary of Aristotle and Pliny, had never been tested with the edge of the New Machine, and divided with its divine fire, if they had not ceased to be in the schools at least elementary; it is just as easy to suppose this, as it is to suppose that the true and nobler ends of science can ever be attained, so long as the powers that are actual in our human life, which are still at large in all their blind instinctive demoniacal strength there, which still go abroad free-footed, unfettered of science there, while we chain the lightning, and send it on our errands,--so long as these still slip through the ring of our airy 'words,' still riot in the freedom of our large generalizations, our sublime abstractions,-- so long as a mere human word-ology is suffered to remain here, clogging all with its deadly impotence,--keeping out the true generalizations with their grappling-hooks on the particulars, --the creative word of art which man learns from the creating wisdom, --the word to which rude nature bows anew,--the word which is Power.

But while the world is resounding with those new relations to the powers of nature which the science of nature has established in other fields, in that department of it, which its Founder tells us is 'the end and term of Natural Science in the intention of man,' in that department of it to which his labor was directed; we are still given over to the inventions of Aristotle, applied to those rude conceptions and theories of the nature of things which the unscientific ages have left to us. Here we have still the loose generalization, the untested affirmation, the arrogant pre-conception, the dogmatic assumption. Here we have the mere phenomena of the human speciality put forward as science, without any attempt to find their genera,--to trace them to that which is more known to nature, so as to connect them practically with the diversity and opposition, which the actual conditions of practice present.

We have not, in short, the scientific language here yet. The vices and the virtues do not understand the names by which we call them, and undertake to command them. Those are not the names in that 'infinite book of secrecy' which they were taught in. They find a more potent order there.

And thus it is, that the demons of human life go abroad here still, impervious alike to our banning and our blessing. The powers of nature which are included in the human nature,--the powers which in this specific form of them we are undertaking to manage with these vulgar generalizations, tacked together with the Aristotelian logic--these powers are no more amenable to any such treatment in this form, than they are in those other forms, in which we are learning to approach them with another vocabulary.

The forces which are developed in the human life will not answer to the names by which we call them here, any more than the lightning would answer to the old Magician's incantation,--any more than it would have come if the old Logician had called it by his name,--which was just as good as the name--and no better, than the name, which the priest of Baal gave it,--any more than it would have come, if the old Logician had undertaken to fetch it, with the harness of his syllogism.

But when the new Logician, who was the new Magician, came, with 'the part operative' of his speculation; with his 'New Machine,' with the rod of his new definition, with the staff of his genera and species,--when the right name was found for it, it heard, it heard afar, it heard in its heaven and came. It came fast enough then. It was 'asleep,' but it awaked. It was 'taking a journey' but it came. There was no affectation of the graces of the gods when the new interpreter and prophet of nature, who belonged to the new order of Interpreters, sent up his little messenger, without any pomp or ceremony, or 'windy suspiration of forced breath,' and fetched it.

But that was an Occidental philosopher, one of the race who like to see effects of some kind, when there is nothing in the field to forbid it. That was one of the Doctors who are called in this system 'Interpreters of nature,' to distinguish them from those who 'rashly anticipate' it. He did not make faces, and cut himself with knives and lances, after a prescribed manner, and prophesy until evening, though there was no voice, nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. He knew that that god at least would not stop on his journey; or if, peradventure, he slept, would not be wakened by any such process.

And the farther the world proceeds on that 'new road' it is travelling at present, the more the demand will be heard in this quarter, for an adaptation of instrumentalities to the advanced, and advancing ages of modern learning and civilization, and to that more severe and exacting genius of the occidental races, that keener and more subtle, and practical genius, from whose larger requisitions and powers this advancement proceeds.

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X. THE CURE--PLAN OF INNOVATION--NEW CONSTRUCTIONS

'Unless these end in matter, and constructions according to true definitions, they are speculative, and of little use.'--Novum Organum.

Difficult, then, as the problem of Civil Government appeared to the eye of the scientific philosopher, and threatening and appalling as were those immediate aspects of it which it presented at that moment, he does not despair of the State. Even on the verge of that momentous political and social crisis, 'though he does not need to go to heaven to predict great revolutions and imminent changes,' 'he thinks he sees ways to save us,' and he finds in his new science of Man the ultimate solution of that problem.

That particular and private nature which is in all men, let them re-name themselves by what names they will, that particular and private nature which intends always the individual and private good, has in itself 'an incident towards the good of society,' which it may use as means,--which it must use, if highly successful,--as means to its end. Even in this, when science has enlightened it, and it is impelled by blind and unsuccessful instinct no longer, the man of science finds a place where a pillar of the true state can be planted; even here the scientific light lays bare, in the actualities of the human constitution, a foundation-stone,--a stone that does not crumble--a stone that does not roll, which the state that shall stand must rest on.

Even that 'active good,' which impels 'the troublers of the world, such as was Lucius Sylla, and infinite others in smaller model,'--that principle which impels the particular nature to leave its signature on other things,--on the state, on the world, if it can,--though it is its own end, and though it is apt, when armed with those singular powers for 'effecting its good will,' which are represented in the hero of this action, to lead to results of the kind which this piece represents,--this is the principle in man which seeks an individual immortality, and works of immortal worth for man are its natural and selectest means.

But that is not all. The bettering of itself, the perfection of its own form, is, by the constitution of things, a force, a motive, an actual 'power in everything that moves.' This is one of the primal, universal, natural motions. It is in the universal creative stamp of things; and strong as that is, the rock on which here, too, the hope of science rests--strong as that is, the pillar of the state, which here, too, it will rear. For to man the highest 'passive good,' and this, too, is of the good which is 'private and particular,' is, constitutionally, that whereby 'the conscience of good intentions, however succeeding, is a more continual joy to his nature than all the provision--the most luxurious provision--which can be made for security and repose,--whereby the mere empirical experimenter in good will count it a higher felicity to fail in good and virtuous ends towards the public, than to attain the most envied success limited to his particular.

Thus, even in these decried 'private' motives, which actuate all men--these universal natural instincts, which impel men yet more intensely, by the concentration of the larger sensibility, and the faculty of the nobler nature of their species, to seek their own private good,--even in these forces, which, unenlightened and uncounterbalanced, tend in man to war and social dissolution, or 'monstrous' social combination,--even in these, the scientific eye perceives the basis of new structures, 'constructions according to true definitions,' in which all the ends that nature in man grasps and aspires to, shall be artistically comprehended and attained.

But this is only the beginning of the scientific politician's 'hope.' This is but a collateral aid, an incidental assistance. This is the place on his ground-plan for the buttresses of the pile he will rear. There is an unborrowed foundation, there is an internal support for the state in man. For along with that particular and private nature of good, there is another in all men;--there is another motive, which respects and beholds the good of society, not mediately, but directly as its end,--which embraces in its intention 'the form of human nature, whereof we are members and portions, and not--not--our own proper, individual form'; and this is the good 'which is in degree the greater and the worthier, because it tends to the conservation and advancement of a more general form.' And this, also, is an actual force in man, proceeding from the universal nature of things and original in that, not in him. This, also, is in the primeval creative stamp of things; and here, also, the science of the interpretation of nature finds in the constitution of man, and in the nature of things, the foundations of the true state ready to its hand; and hewn, all hewn and cut, and joined with nature's own true and cunning hand ere man was, the everlasting pillars of the common-weal.

But in man this law, also,--this law chiefly,--has its special, essentially special, development. 'It is much more impressed on man, if he de-generate not.' Great buildings have been reared on this foundation already; great buildings, old and time-honoured, stand on it. The history of human nature is glorious, even in its degeneracy, with the exhibition of this larger, nobler form of humanity asserting itself, triumphing over the intensities of the narrower motivity. It is a species in which the organic law transcends the individual, and embraces the kind; it is a constitution of nature, in which those who seek the good of the kind, and subordinate the private nature to that, are noble, and chief. It is a species in which the law of the common-weal is for ever present to the private nature, as the law of its own being, requiring, under the pains and penalties of the universal laws of being, subjection.

Science cannot originate new forces in nature. 'Man, while operating, can only apply or withdraw natural forces. Nature, internally, performs the rest.' But here are the very forces that we want. If man were, indeed, naturally and constitutionally, that mere species of 'vermin' which, under certain modes of culture, with great facility he becomes, there would be no use in spending words upon this subject. Science could not undertake the common-weal in that case. If nature's word had been here dissolution, isolation, single intention in the parts and members of that body that science sought to frame, what word of creative art could she pronounce, what bonds of life could she find, what breath of God could she boast, that she should think to frame of such material the body politic, the organic whole, the living, free, harmonious, triumphant common-weal.

But here are the very forces that we want, blindly moving, moving in the dark, left to intuition and instinct, where nature had provided reason, and required science and scientific art. That has not been tried. And that is why this question of the state, dark as it is, portentous, hopeless as its aspects are, if we limit the survey to our present aids and instrumentalities, is already, to the eye of science, kindling with the aurora of unimagined change, advancements to the heights of man's felicity, that shall dim the airy portraiture of poets' visions, that shall outgo here, too, the world's young dreams with its scientific reality.

There has been no help from science in this field hitherto. The proceeding of the world has been instinctive and empirical thus far, in the attainment of the ends which the complex nature of man requires him to seek. Men have been driven, and swayed hither and thither, by these different and apparently contradictory aims, without any science of the forces that actuated them. Those ends these forces will seek,--'it is their nature to,'--whether in man, or in any other form in which they are incorporated. There's no amount of declamation that is ever going to stop them. The power that is in everything that moves, the forces of universal nature are concerned in the acts that we deprecate and cry out upon. It is the original constitution of things, as it was settled in that House of Commons, to whose acts the memory of Man runneth not, that is concerned in these demonstrations; and philosophy requires that whatever else we do, we should avoid, by all means, coming into any collision with those statutes. 'We must so order it,' says Michael of the Mountain, quoting in this case from antiquity--'we must so order it, as by no means to contend with universal nature.' 'To attempt to kick against natural necessity,' he says in his own name, and in his own peculiar and more impressive method of philosophic instruction--'to attempt to kick against natural necessity, is to represent the folly of Ctesiphon, who undertook to outkick his mule.' We must begin by distinguishing 'what is in our power, and what not,' says the author of the Advancement of Learning, applying that universal rule of practice to our present subject.

Here, then, carefully reduced to their most comprehensive form, traced to the height of universal nature, and brought down to the specific nature in man--here, as they lie on the ground of the common nature in man, for the first time scientifically abstracted--are the powers which science has to begin with in this field. The varieties in the species, and the individual differences so remarkable in this kind, are not in this place under consideration. But here is the common nature in this kind, which must make the basis of any permanent universal social constitution for it. Different races will require that their own constitutional differences shall be respected in their social constitutions; and if they be not, for the worse or for the better, look for change. But this is the universal platform that science is clearing here. This is the WORLD that she is concerning herself with here, in the person of that High Priest of hers, who, also, took that to be his business.

Here are these powers in man, then, to begin with. Here is this universal natural predisposition in him, not to subsist, merely, and maintain his form--which is nature's first law, they tell us--but to 'better himself' in some way. As Hamlet expresses it, 'he lacks advancement'; and advancement he will have, or strive to have, if not 'formal and essential,' then 'local.' He is instinctively impelled to it; and in his ignorant attempt to compass that end which nature has prescribed to him, the 'tempest of human life' arises.

The scientific plan will be, not to quarrel with these universal forces, and undertake to found society on their annihilation. Science will count that structure unsafe which is founded on the supposed annihilation of these forces in anything that moves. The man of science knows, that though by the predominance of powers, or by the equilibrium of them, they may be for a time, 'as it were, annihilated,' they are in every creature; and nature in the instincts, though blind, is cunning, and finds ways and means of overcoming barriers, and evading restrictions, and inclines to indemnify herself when once she finds her way again. Instead of quarrelling with these forces, the scientific plan, having respect to the Creating Wisdom in the constitution of man, overlooking them from that height, will thankfully accept them, and make much of them. These are just the motive powers that science has need of; she could not compose her structure without them, which is only the perfecting of the structure which the great Creating Wisdom had already outlined and pre-ordered--not a machine, but a living organic whole.

Science takes this 'piece of work' as she finds him, ready, waiting for the hand of art--imperfect, unfinished, but with the proceeding of nature incorporated in him--with the creative, advancing, perfecting motion, incorporated in him as his essence and law;--imperfect, but with nature working within him for the rest, urging him to self-perfection. She takes him as she finds him, a creature of instinct, but with his large, rich, undeveloped, yet already active nature of reason, and conscience, and religion, already struggling for the mastery, counterbalancing his narrower motivity, holding in check, with nobler intuitions, the error of an instinct which errs in man, because eyes were included in nature's definition of him, as it was written beforehand in her book, her universal book of types and orders--eyes, and not instinct only--'that what he cannot smell out, he may spy into.' 'O'er that art, which you say adds to nature, is an art that nature makes.' The want of this pre-ordered art is the want here still. The war of the unenlightened instincts is raging here still. That is where the difficulty lies. That same patience of investigation with which science has pursued and found out nature elsewhere--that same intense, indefatigable concentration of endeavour, which has been rewarded with such 'magnitude of effects' in other fields--that same, in a higher degree, in more powerful combinations, proportioned to the magnitude and common desirableness of the object, is what is wanting here. It is the instincts that are at fault here,--'the blind instincts, that seeing reason' should 'guide.'

That is where all the jar and confusion of this great storm begins, that 'continues still,' and blasts our lives, in spite of all the spells that we mumble over it, and in spite of all the magic that all our magicians can bring to bear on it. 'Meagre success,' at least, is still the word here. No wonder that the storm continues, under such conditions. No wonder that the world is full of the uproar of this arrested work, this violated intent of nature. She will storm on till we hear her. Woe to those who put themselves in opposition to her, who think to violate her intent and prosper! 'The storm continues,' and it will continue, pronounce on it what incantations we may, so long as the elemental forces of all nature are meeting in our lives, and dashing in blind elemental strength against each other, and the brooding spirit of the social life, the composing spirit of the larger whole, cannot reconcile them, because the voices that are filling the air with the discord of their controversy, and out-toning the noise of this battle with theirs, are crying in one key, 'Let there be darkness here'; because the darkness of the ages of instinct and intuition is held back here, cowering, ashamed, but forbidden to flee away; because the night of human ignorance still covers all this battle-ground, and hides the combatants.

Science is the word here. The Man of the Modern Ages has spoken it, 'and now the times give it proof'; the times in which the methods of earlier ages, in the rapid advancement of learning in other fields, are losing their vitalities, and leaving us without those means of social combination, without those social bonds which the rudest ages of instinct and intuition, which the most barbaric peoples have been able to command. The times give it proof, fearful proof, terrific proof, when the noblest institutions of earlier ages are losing their power to conserve the larger whole; when the conserving faith of earlier ages, with its infinities of forces, is fainting in its struggles, and is not supported; and men set at nought its divine realities, because they have not been translated into their speech and language, and think there is no such thing; and under all the exterior splendours of a material civilization advanced by science, society tends to internal decay, and the primal war of atoms.

To meet the exigencies of a crisis like this, it is not enough to call these powers that are actual in the human nature, but which are not yet reconciled and reduced to their true and natural order--it is not enough at this age of the world, at this stage of human advancement in other fields--to call these forces by some general names which include their oppositions, and to require for want of skill that a part of them shall be annihilated; it is not enough to express a strong disapprobation of the result as it is, and to require, in never-so-authoritative manner, that it shall be otherwise. No matter what names we may use to make that requisition in, no matter under what pains and penalties we require it, the result--whatever we may say to the contrary--the result does not follow. That is not the way. Those who try it, and who continue to try it in the face of no matter what failures, may think it is; but there is a voice mightier than theirs, drowning all their speech, telling us in thunder-tones, that it is not; with arguments that brutes might understand, telling us that it is not!

It is, indeed, no small gain in the rude ages of warring instincts and intuitions, when there is as yet no science to define them, and compare them, and pronounce from its calm height its eternal axioms here--when the world is a camp, and hostilities are deified, and mankind is in arms when all the moral terms are still wrapped in the confusion of the first outgoing of the perplexed, unanalysed human motivity--it is no small gain to get the word of the nobler intuitions outspoken, to get the word of the divine law of man's nature, his essential law pronounced--even in rudest ages overawing, commanding with its awful divinity the intenser motivity of the lesser nature--able to summon, in rudest ages, to its ideal heights, those colossal heroic forms, that cast their long shadows over the tracts of time, to tell us what type it is that humanity aspires to. It is no small gain to get these nobler intuitions outspoken in some voice that commands with its authority the world's ear, or illustrated in some exemplar that arrests the world's eye, and draws the human heart unto it.

It is no small advance in human history, to get the divine authority of those nobler intuitions, which, in man, anticipate speculation, and their right to command the particular motives, recognised in the common speech of men, incorporated in their speculative belief, incorporated in their books of learning, and embalmed in institutions that keep the divine exemplar of the human form for ever in our eyes. It is something. The warring nations war on. The world is in arms still. The rude instincts are not stayed in their intent. They pause, it may be; 'but a roused passion sets them new a-work.' The speckled demons, that the degenerate _angelic _nature breeds, put on the new livery, and go abroad in it rejoicing. New rivers of blood, new seas of carnage, are opened in the new name of peace; new engines of torture, of fiendish wrong, are invented in the new name of love. But it is some gain. There is a new rallying-place on the earth for those who seek truly the higher good; at the foot of the new symbol they recognise each other, they join hand in hand, and the bands of those who wait and watch amid the earth's darkness for the promise, cheer us with their songs. Truths out of the Eternal Book, truths that all hearts lean on in their need, are spoken. Words that shall never pass away, sweet with the immortal hope and perennial joy of life, are always in our ears.

The nations that have contributed to this result in any degree, whether primarily or secondarily, whether they be Syrians or Assyrians, Arabs or Egyptians, wandering or settled, wild or tame; whether they belong to the inferior unanalysing Semitic races, or whether they come of the more richly endowed, but yet youthful, Indo-European stock; whether they be Hebrews or Persians, Greeks or Romans, will always have the world's gratitude. Those to whose intenser conceptions and bolder affirmations, in the rude ages of instinct and spontaneous allegation, it was given to pronounce and put on everlasting record, these primal truths of inspiration,--truths whose divinity all true hearts respond to, may be indeed by their natural intellectual characteristics,--if Semitic must be--totally disqualified by ethnological laws,--hopelessly disqualified--so hopelessly that it is to lose all to put it on them--for the task of commanding, in detail, our modern civilization;--a civilization which has made, already, the rude ethics of these youthful races, when it comes to details, so palpably and grossly inapplicable, that it is an offence to modern sensibility to name--to so much as name--decisions which stand unreversed, without comment, in our books of learning. But that is no reason why we should not take, and thankfully appropriate as the gift of God, all that it was their part to contribute to the great plot of human advancement. We cannot afford to dispense with any such gain. The movement which respects the larger whole, the divine intent incorporates it all.

'Japhet shall dwell in the tents of Shem,' for they are world wide; but woe to him if, in his day, he refuse to build the temple which, in his day, his God will also require of him. Woe to him, if he think to put upon another age and race the tasks which his Task-Master will require of him,--which, with his many gifts, with his chief gifts, with his ten talents, will surely be required of him. More than his fathers' woe upon him--more than that old-world woe, which he, too, remembers, if he think to lean on Asia, the youthful Asia, when his own great world noon-day has come.

'There was violence on the earth in those days, and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth.' 'Twill come,' says our own poet, prefacing his proposal for a scientific art in the attainment of the chief human ends, and giving his illustrated reasons for it,--

'Twill come [at this rate] Humanity must, perforce, prey on itself, Like monsters of the deep.

But what are these?--these new orders,--these new species of nature, defying nature, that we are generating with our arts here now? What are these new varieties to which our kind is tending now? Look at this kind for instance. What are these? Define them. Destroyers, not of their own image in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their kind only,--sacred by natural universal laws,--but of the chosen image of it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the natural love of their kind was by the law of nature concentred,--the wife and the mother,-- destroyed not as the wolf destroys its prey, but with ferocity, or with prolonged and studious harm, that it required the human brain to plan and perpetrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of their victims. We must look at it. It will never go by till we do. We shall have to look at it, and consider it well; it will lengthen, it will widen till we do:--ghastly, bruised, bleeding, trampled,-- trampled it may be, with nailed, booted heel, mother and child together into one grave. But these are common drunkard's wives;--we are inured to this catastrophe, and do not think much of it. But who are these, whom the grave cannot hold; that by God's edict break its bonds and come back, making day hideous, to tell us what the earth could not, would not keep,--to tell us of that other band who died and made no sign? But this is nothing. Here are more. Here are others. What are these? These are not spectres. Their cheeks are red enough. What loathsome thing is this, that we are bringing forth here now with the human face upon it, in whom the heart of the universal nature has expired. These are murderers,--count them--they are all murderers, wholesale murderers, perhaps,--but of what? Of their own helpless, tender, loving, trusting little ones. The wretched children of our time,--alone in wretchedness,--alone in the universe of nature,--who found, where nature promised them a mother's love, the knife, or the more cruel agonizing drug of death. Was there any cause in nature for it? Yes. They did it for the 'burial fee,' perhaps, or for some other cause as good. They had a reason for it. Let our naturalists throw their learning 'to the dogs,' and come this way, and tell us what this means. Nay, let them bring their books with them, and example us with its meaning if they can. Let them tell us what 'depth' in which nature hides her failures, or yet unperfected hideous germinations,--what formation in which she buries the kinds she repents that she has made upon the earth, or what 'deep'--what ocean cave of 'monsters' we shall drag to find our kindred in these species. Let our wise men tell us whether there be, or whether there ever was, any such thing as this in nature before. If 'such things are,' or have been in any other kind, let them produce the instances, and keep us in countenance and console us for our own.

Let them look at that murderer too, and interpret him for us. For he too is waiting to be interpreted, and he will wait till we understand his signs. He is speaking mute nature's language to us; we must get her key. Look at him as he stands there in the dark, subordinating that faculty which comprehends the whole, which recognises the divinity of his neighbour's right, to his fiendish end: preparing with the judgment of a man his little piece of machinery, with which he will take, as he would take a salmon, or a rat, his fellow-man. Look at him as he stands there now, listening patiently for your steps, waiting to strangle you as you go by him unarmed to-night, confiding in your fellow-man; waiting to drag you down from all the hopes and joys of life, for the sake of the loose coin, gold or silver, which he thinks he may find about you,--perhaps. 'How to KILL vermin and how to PREVENT the fiend,' was Tom's study. How to dispatch in the most agreeable and successful manner, creatures whose notions of good are constitutionally and diametrically opposed to the good of the larger whole, who have no sensibility to that, and no faculty whereby they perceive it to be the worthier; that is no doubt one part of the problem. The scientific question is, whether this creature be really what it seems, a new and more horrid kind of beast--a demoralization and deterioration of the human species into that. If it be, let our naturalists come to our aid here also, and teach us how to hunt him down and despatch him, with as much respect to the natural decencies which the fact of the external human form would seem still to exact from us, as the circumstances will admit of. Is it the beast, or is it 'the fiend?'--that is the question. The fiend which tells us that the angelic or divine nature is there--there still--overborne, trampled on, 'as it were, annihilated,' but lighting that gleam of 'wickedness,'--making of it, not instinct, but crime. Ah! we need not ask which it is. This one has told his own story, if we could but read it. He has left--he is leaving all the time, contributions, richest contributions to our natural history of man,--that history which must make the basis of our arts of cure. He was a wolf when you took him; but in his cell you found something else in him--did you not?--something that troubled and appalled you, with its kindred and likeness, and its exaction on your sympathy. When you hung him as you would not hang a dog;--when you put him to a death which you would think it indecent and inhuman to award to a creature of another species, you did not find him that. The law of the nobler nature lay in him as it were annihilated; he thought there was no such thing; but when nature's great voice was heard without also, and those 'bloody instructions he had taught returned to him'; when that voice of the people, which was the voice of God to him, echoed with its doom the voice within, and 'sweet religion,' with its divine appeals--'a rhapsody of words' no longer, came, to second that great argument,--the blind instincts were overpowered in him, the lesser usurping nature was dethroned,--the angelic nature arose, and had her hour, and shed parting gleams of glory on those fleeting days and nights; and he came forth, to die at last, not dragged like a beast--with a manly step--with heroic grandeur, vindicating the heroic type in nature, of that form he wore,--vindicating the violated law, accepting his doom, bowing to its ignominy, a man, a member of society,--a reconciled and accepted member of the commonweal.

How to prevent the fiend? is the question. Ah! what unlettered forces are these, unlearned still, with all our learning, that the dark, unaided wrestling hour 'in the little state of man,' leaves at the head of affairs there, seated in its chair of state, crowned, 'predominant,' to speak the word of doom for us all. 'He poisons him in the garden for his estate.' 'Lights, lights, lights!' is the word here. There is a cause in nature for these hard hearts, but it is not in the constitution of man. There is a cause; it is nature herself, crying out upon our learning, asking to be--interpreted.

Woe for the age whose universal learning is in forms that move and command no longer; that move and bind no longer with fear, or hope, or love, 'the common people.' Woe for the people who think that the everlasting truths of being--the eternal laws of science--are things for saints, and schoolmasters, and preachers only,--the people who carry about with them in secret, for week-day purposes, Edmund's creed, to whom nature is already 'their goddess, and their law,' ere they know her or her law--ere the appointed teacher has instructed them in it,--ere they know what divinity she, too, holds to,--ere the interpreter has translated into her speech, and evolved from her books, the old truths which shall not--though their old 'garments' should 'be changed'--which shall not pass away. Woe for the nations in whom that greater part that carries it, are godless, or whose vows are paid in secret to Edmund's goddess,--whose true faith is in appetite,--who have no secret laws imposed on that. 'Woe to the people who are in such a case,' no matter on which side of the ocean they may dwell, in the old world, or a new one; no matter under what political constitutions. No matter under what favourable external conditions, the national development that has that hollow in it, may proceed; no matter under what glorious and before unimagined conditions of a healthful, noble human development that development may proceed. Alas! for such a people. The rulers may cry 'Peace!' but there is none. And, alas! for the world in which such a power is growing up under new conditions, and waxing strong, and preparing for its leaps.

As a principle of social or political organisation, there is no religion,--there never has been any,--so fatal as none. That is a truth of which all history is an illustration. It is one which has been illustrated in the history of modern states, not less vividly than in the history of antiquity. And it will continue to be illustrated, on the same grand scale, in those terrific evils which the dissolution, or the dissoluteness of the larger whole creates, whenever the appointed teachers of a nation, the inductors of it into its highest learning, lag behind the common mind in their interpretations, and leave it to the people to construct their own rude 'tables of rejections'; whenever the practical axioms, which are the inevitable vintage of these undiscriminating and fatally false rejections, are suffered to become history.

'Woe to the land when its king is a child'; but thrice woe to it, when its teacher is a child. Alas! for the world, when the pabulum of her youthful visions and anticipations of learning have become meat for men, the prescribed provision for that nature in which man must live, or 'cease to be,' amid the sober realities of western science.

'Thou shouldst not have been OLD before thy time.'

'The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire.'

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XI. THE CURE--NEW CONSTRUCTIONS--THE INITIATIVE

Pyramus.--'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords [spears]... and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'--Shake-spear.

'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.'

'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark. I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

'And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor inanity?'

'But will thy manes such a gift bestow As to make violets from thy ashes grow?' Michael de Montaigne.

Hamlet.--'To thine own self be true, And it doth follow as the night the day Thou canst not then be false to any man.' 'To know a man well, were to know him-self.'

The complaint of the practical men against the philosophers who make such an outcry upon the uses and customs of the world as they find it, that they do not undertake to give us anything better in the place of them; or if they do, with their terrible experiments they leave us worse than they find us, does not apply in this case. Because this is science, and not philosophy in the sense which that word still conveys, when applied to subjects of this nature. We all know that the scientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most unspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and his arts to the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we have had in this field, with their rash anticipations,--with their unscientific pre-conceptions,--with a pre-conception, instead of a fore-knowledge of the power they deal with, commanding results which do not,--there is the point,--which do not follow.

Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves, without science. 'That is the way to lay all flat.'

He is not one of those, 'who to make clean, efface, and who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the question were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world already formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some important suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the greatest that was ever propounded,--total, absolute, but not sudden. It is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is propounding.

New constructions according to true definitions, scientific institutions,--institutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on the recognition of the actual human constitution and laws,--based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,--that is the proposition. 'It were a strange speech which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of culture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a solar-microscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where the particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come under observation here, and the whole nature of the passions also, and a science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought to bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with 'by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form we would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of human education.

But this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history of those forces which are within our power, which 'we can deal with by way of alteration,' forces 'from which the mind suffereth,' which have operation on it, so potent that 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,'--that they can make indeed, 'another nature,'--these are the engines,--this is the machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This is the machinery to 'prevent the fiend,' which the scientific statesman is propounding.

'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind good' says our Poet. 'O there were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds,--he was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a gaoler,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in it.'

(A preferment?)--That is the solution propounded by science, of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent appeals, its solution. 'I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. My wish hath a preferment in it.'

'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of a vice to which he is by nature subject,'--subject--by nature.--That is the Philosopher. 'What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the Poet's behalf for Coriolanus whose education, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that 'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding, and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs, habit, education in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation, praise, blame,' all the agencies 'from which the mind suffereth,'-- which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but enforced,--these make the state machinery--these are the engines that are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the 'one mind,'-- the one mind good, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL,--'my wish hath a preferment in it,'--the one only man who will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but room enough for us all,--who will make when he is crowned such desolation of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific practitioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,--the gradual adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,-- this end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,--find to be their own,--this is the plan;--this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot. This is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.

We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes; and we must find them according to the new method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life goes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of EFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of their natures; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of teaching us something of their powers; but we do not know them; they are within our own souls and lives, and we do not know them; not because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but because we will not apply to them the scientific method; because the old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true one.

The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social state, from the king on his throne to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society that entire and noble form of human nature which 'each man carries with him,' and whereby the individual man is naturally and constitutionally a member of the common-weal. Its proposition was to develop ultimately and educate--successfully educate--in each integer of the state, the integral principle--the principle whereby in man the true conservation and integrity of the part--the virtue, and felicity, and perfection, of the part, tend to the weal of the whole--tend to perfect and advance the whole.

'To thine own self be true, And it doth follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any MAN.' 'Know thy-SELF. Know thy-self.'

This enterprise was not the product of a single individual mind, and it is important that this fact should be fully and unmistakeably enunciated here; because the illustrious statesman, and man of letters, who assumed, in his own name and person, that part of it which could then be openly exhibited, the one on whom the great task of perfecting and openly propounding the new method of learning was devolved, is the one whose relation to this enterprise has been principally insisted on in this volume.

The history of this great philanthropic association--an association of genius, a combination of chief minds, from which the leadership and direction of the modern ages proceeds, the history of this 'society,' as it was called, when the term was still fresh in that special application; at least, when it was not yet qualified by its application to those very different kinds of voluntary individual combinations--'bodies of neighbourhood' within the larger whole, to which that movement has given rise; the history of this society,--this first 'Shake-spear Society'--much as it is to our purpose, and much as it is to the particular purpose of this volume, can only be incidentally treated here. But as this work was originally prepared for publication in the HISTORICAL KEY to the Elizabethan Tradition which formed the FIRST BOOK of it, it was the part of that great Political and Military Chief, and not less illustrious Man of Letters, who was recognised, in his own time, as the beginner of this movement and the founder of English philosophy, which was chiefly developed.

And it is the history of that 'great unknown'--that great Elizabethan unknown, for whose designs there was needed then a veil of a closer texture--of a more cunning pattern than any which the exigencies of modern authorship tend to fabricate, which must make the key to this tradition;--it is the history of that great unknown, whose incognito was a closed vizor,--that it was death to open,--a vizor that did open once, and--the sequel is in our history, and will leave 'a brand' upon the page which that age makes in it,--'the age that did it, and suffered it, to the end of the world.' So says the Poet of that age, ('Age, thou are shamed.' 'And peep about to find ourselves dishonourable graves'). It is the history of the Tacitus who could not wait for a better Caesar. It is the history of the man who was sent to the block, they tell us, who are able to give us those little secret historic motives that do not get woven always into the larger story; it is the history of the man who (if his family understood it) was sent to the block for the repetition, in his own name, of the words--the very words which he had written with his 'goose-pen,' as he calls it, years before--which he had written under cover of the 'spear' that was 'shaken' in sport, or that shook with fear,--under cover of 'the well turned and true filled lines in each of which he seems to shake a lance as brandished in the eyes of Ignorance,' without suspicion--without challenge, from the crowned Ignorance, or the Monster that crowned it. It is the history of this unknown, obscure, unhonoured Father of the Modern Age that unlocks this tradition.

It is the secret friend and 'brother' of the author of the Novum Organum, whose history unlocks this tradition. And when shall the friendship of such 'a twain' gladden our earth again, and build its 'eternal summer' in our common things? When shall a 'marriage of true minds' so even be celebrated on the lips and in the lives of men again? It is the friend and literary partner of our great recognised philosopher--his partner in his 'private and retired arts,' and in his cultivation of 'the principal and supreme sciences,' in whose history the key to this locked up learning is hidden.

It was an enterprise which originated in the Court of Queen Elizabeth, in that little company of wits, and poets, and philosophers, which was the first-fruit of the new development of the national genius, that followed the revival of the learning of antiquity in this island--the fruit which that old stock began manifestly to bud and blossom with, about the beginning of the latter half of that Queen's reign. For it was the old northern genius, under the influence, not of the revival of the learning of antiquity only, but of that accumulated influence which its previous revival on the Continent brought with it here; under the influence, too, of that insular nurture, which began so soon to colour and insulate English history;--'Britain is a world by itself,' says Prince Cloten, 'and we will nothing pay,' etc.--it was the old northern genius nurtured in the cradle of that 'bravery' which had written its page of fire in the Roman Caesar's story--which had arrested the old classic historian's pen, and fired it with a poet's prophecy, and taught him too how to pronounce from the old British hero's lip the burning speech of English freedom;--it was that which began to show itself here, then, in that new tongue, which we call the 'Elizabethan.' It was that which could not fit its words to its mouth as it had a mind to do under those conditions, and was glad to know that 'the audience was deferred.' That was the thing which found itself so much embarrassed by the presence of 'a man of prodigious fortune at the table,' who had leave 'to change its arguments with a magisterial authority.' It was that which was expected to produce its speech to 'serve as the base matter to illuminate'--not the Caesar--but the Tudor--the Tudor and the Stuart: the last of the Tudors and the first of the Stuarts. 'AGE, thou art shamed.' It was the true indigenous product of the English nationality under that great stimulus, which made that age; and the practical determination of the English mind, and the spirit of the ancient English liberties, the recognition of the common dignity of that form of human nature which each man carries entire with him--the sentiment of a common human family and brotherhood, which this race had brought with it from the forests of the North, and which it had conserved through ages of oppression, went at once into the new speculation, and determined its practical bent, and shaped this enterprise.

It was an enterprise which included in its plan of operations an immediate influence upon the popular mind--the most direct, immediate, and radically reforming influences which could be brought to bear, under those conditions, upon the habits and sentiments of the ignorant, custom-bound masses of men;--those masses which are, in all their ignorance and unfitness for rule, as the philosopher of this age perceived, 'that greater part which carries it'--those wretched statesmen, under whose rule we are all groaning. 'Questions about clothes, and cookery, and law chicanery,' are the questions with which the new movement begins to attract attention--a universally favourable attention--towards its beneficent purposes, and to that new command of 'effects' which arms them. But this is only 'to show an abused people that they are not wholly forgotten.' To improve the external condition of men, to 'accommodate' man to those exterior natural forces, of which he had been, till then, the 'slave,'--to minister to the need and add to the comforts of the king in his palace, and 'Tom' in his hovel,--this was the first scientific move. This was a movement which required no concealment. Its far-reaching consequences, its elevating power on the masses, its educational power, its revolutionary power, did not lie within the range of any observation which the impersonated state was able to bring to bear at that time upon the New Organum and its reaches.

But this was not the only scientifically educational agency which this great Educational Association was able to include, even then, in its scheme for the culture and instruction of the masses--for the culture and instruction of that common social unit, which makes the masses and determines political predominance. Quite the most powerful instrumentality which it is possible to conceive of, for purposes of direct effect in the way of intellectual and moral stimulus, in that stage of a popular development, was then already in process of preparation here; the 'plant' of a wondrous and inestimable machinery of popular influence stood offering itself, at that very moment, to the politicians with whom this movement originated, urging itself on their notice, begging to be purchased, soliciting their monopoly, proposing itself to their designs.

A medium of direct communication between the philosophic mind, in its more chosen and noblest field of research, and the minds of those to whom the conventional signs of learning are not yet intelligible,--one in which the language of action and dumb show was, by the condition of the representation, predominant,--that language which is, as this philosophy observed, so much more powerful in its impression than words,--not on brutes only, but on those 'whose eyes are more learned than their ears,'--a medium of communication which was one tissue of that 'mute' language, whereby the direction, 'how to sustain a tyranny newly usurped,' was conveyed once, stood prepared to their hands, waiting the dictation of the message of these new Chiefs and Teachers, who had taken their cue from Machiavel in exhibiting the arts of government, and who thought it well enough that the people should know how to preserve tyrannies newly usurped.

Those 'amusements,' with which governments that are founded and sustained, 'by cutting off and keeping low the grandees and nobility' of a nation, naturally seek to propitiate and divert the popular mind,--those amusements which the peoples who sustain tyrannies are apt to be fond of--'he loves no plays as thou dost, Antony,'--that 'pulpit,' from which the orator of Caesar stole and swayed the hearts of the people with his sugared words; and his dumb show of the stabs in Caesar's mantle became, in the hands of these new conspirators, an engine which those old experimenters lacked,--an engine which the lean and wrinkled Cassius, with his much reading and 'observation strange' and dangerous, looking through of the thoughts of men; and the grave, high-toned Brutus, with his logic and his stilted oratory, could not, on second thoughts, afford to lack. It was this which supplied the means of that 'volubility of application' which those 'Sir Oracles,' those 'grave sirs of note,' 'in observing their well-graced forms of speech,' it is intimated, 'might easily want.'

By means of that 'first use of the parable,' whereby (while for the present we drop 'the argument') it serves to illustrate, and bring first under the notice of the senses, the abstruser truths of a new learning,--truths which are as yet too far out of the road of common opinion to be conveyed in other forms,--these amusements became, in the hands of the new Teachers and Wise Men, with whom the Wisdom of the Moderns had its beginning, the means of an insidious, but most 'grave and exceedingly useful,' popular instruction.

But the immediate influence on the common mind was not the influence to which this association trusted for the fulfilment of its great plan of social renovation and advancement. That so aspiring social position, and that not less commanding position in the world of letters, built up with so much labour, with such persistent purpose, with a pertinacity which accepted of no defeat,--built up expressly to this end,--that position from which a new method of learning could be openly propounded, in the face of the schools, in the face of the Universities, in the face and eyes of all the Doctors of Learning then, was, in itself, no unimportant part of the machinery which this political association was compelled to include in the plot of its far-reaching enterprise.

That trumpet-call which rang through Europe, which summoned the scholasticism and genius of the modern ages, from the endless battles of the human dogmas and conceits, into the field of true knowledge,--that summons which recalled, and disciplined, and gave the word of command to the genius of the modern ages, that was already tumultuously rushing thither,--that call which was able to command the modern learning, and impose on it, for immediate use, the New Machine of Learning,--that Machine which, even in its employment in the humblest departments of observation, has already formed, ere we know it, the new mind, which has disciplined and trained the modern intelligence, and created insidiously new habits of judgment and belief,--created, too, a new stock of truths, which are accepted as a part of the world's creed, and from which the whole must needs be evolved in time,--this, in itself, was no small step towards securing the great ends of this enterprise. It was a step which we are hardly in a position, as yet, to estimate. We cannot see what it was till the nobler applications of this Method begin to be made. It has cost us something while we have waited for these. The letter to Sir Henry Savile, on 'the Helps to the Intellectual Powers,' which is referred to with so much more iteration and emphasis than anything which the surface of the letter exhibits would seem to bear, in its brief hints, points also this way, though the effect of mental exercises, by means of other instrumentalities, on the habits of a larger class, is also comprehended in it. But the formation of new intellectual habits in men liberally educated, appeared to promise, ultimately, those larger fruits in the advancement and culture of learning which, in 'the hour-glass' of that first movement, could be, as yet, only prophecy and anticipation. The perfection of the Human Science, then first propounded, the filling up of 'the Anticipations' of Learning, which the Philosophy of Science also included in its system,--not rash and premature, however, and not claiming the place of knowledge, but kept apart in a place by themselves,--put down as anticipations, not interpretations,--the filling up of this outline was what was expected as the ultimate result of this proceeding, in the department of speculative philosophy.

But in that great practical enterprise of a social and political renovation--that enterprise of 'constructions' according to true definitions, which this science fastens its eye on, and never ceases to contemplate--it was not the immediate effect on the popular mind, neither was it the gradual effect on the speculative habits of men of learning and men of intelligence in general, that was chiefly relied on. It was the secret tradition, the living tradition of that intention; it was the tradition whereby that association undertook to continue itself across whatever gulfs and chasms in social history 'the fortunes of our state' might make. It was that second use of the fable, which is 'to wrap up and conceal'; it was that 'enigmatic' method, which reserves the secrets of learning for those 'who by the aid of an instructor, or by their own research, are able to pierce the veil,' which was relied on for this result. It was the power of that tradition, its generative power, its power to reproduce 'in a better hour' the mind and will of that 'company'--it was its power to develop and frame that identity which was the secret of this association, and its new principle of UNION--that identity of the 'one mind, and one mind good,' which is the human principle of union--that identity which made a common name, a common personality, for those who worked together for that end, and whose WILL in it was 'one.' A name, a personality, a philosophic unity, in whose great radiance we have basked so long--a name, a personality whose secret lies heavy on all our learning--whose secret of power, whose secret of inclusiveness and inexhaustible wealth of knowledge, has paralysed all our criticism, 'made marble'--as Milton himself confesses--'made marble with too much conceiving.' 'Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say [in dumb action], we will do no harm with our swords.' 'They all flourish their swords.' 'There is but one mind in all these men, and that is bent against Caesar'--Julius Caesar.

'Even so the race Of SHAKE-SPEAR's mind and manners brightly shines, In his well turned and true filed--lines; In each of which he seems to SHAKE a LANCE, As brandished at the eyes of--Ignorance,'

[We will do no harm, with our--WORDS [it seems to say.]--Prologue.]

It was the power of the Elizabethan Art of Tradition that was relied on here, that 'living Art'; it was its power to reproduce this Institution, through whatever fatal eventualities the movement which these men were seeking then to anticipate, and organize, and control, might involve; and though the Parent Union should be overborne in those disastrous, not unforeseen, results--overborne and forgotten--and though other means employed for securing that end should fail.

It is to that posthumous effect that all the hope points here. It is the Leonatus Posthumus who must fulfil this oracle.

'Now with the drops of this most balmy time My love looks fresh, and death to me subscribes; Since, spite of him, I'LL live in this poor rhyme, While he insults o'er dull and speechless tribes; And thou in this shall find thy monument, When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass are spent.'

'Not marble, nor the gilded monuments [Elizabethan AGE.] Of Princes shall outlive this power-ful rhyme.'

[This is our unconscious Poet, who does not know that his poems are worth printing, or that they are going to get printed--who does not know or care whether they are or not.]

'But you shall shine more bright in these contents, Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time. When wasteful war shall statues overturn [iconoclasm], And broils [civil war] root out the work of masonry, Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory.'

[What is it, then, that this prophet is relying on? Is it a manuscript? Is it the recent invention of goose-quills which he is celebrating here with so much lyrical pomp, in so many, many lyrics? Here, for instance:--]

'His beauty shall in these black lines be seen, And they shall live, and he in them still green.'

And here--

'O where, alack! Shall time's best jewel from time's chest lie hid? Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back? Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? O none, unless this miracle [this miracle] have might, that in black ink--'

Is this printer's ink? Or is it the ink of the prompter's book? or the fading ink of those loose papers, so soon to be 'yellowed with age,' scattered about no one knew where, that some busy-body, who had nothing else to do, might perhaps take it into his head to save?

'O none, unless this miracle'--THIS MIRACLE, the rejoicing scholar and man of letters, who was not for an age, but for all time, cries--defying tyranny, laughing at princes' edicts, reaching into his own great assured futurity across the gulfs of civil war, planting his feet upon that sure ground, and singing songs of triumph over the spent tombs of brass and tyrants' crests; like that orator who was to make an oration in public, and found himself a little straitened in time to fit his words to his mouth as he had a mind to do, when Eros, one of his slaves, brought him word that the audience was deferred till the next day; at which he was so ravished with joy, that he enfranchised him. 'This miracle.' He knows what miracles are, for he has told us; but none other knew what miracle this was that he is celebrating here with all this wealth of symphonies.

'O none, unless this miracle have might, That in black ink my love may still shine bright.'

['My love,'--wait till you know what it is, and do not think to know with the first or second reading of poems, that are on the surface of them scholastic, academic, mystical, obtrusively enigmatical. Perhaps, after all, it is that Eros who was enfranchised, emancipated.]

'But thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest [thou owes!], Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest. So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to--thee!

But here is our prophecy, which we have undertaken to read with the aid of this collation:--

'When wasteful war shall statues overturn, And broils root out the work of masonry; Nor Mars his sword, nor war's quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory. 'Gainst death, and all oblivious enmity, Shall YOU pace forth. Your praise shall still find room, Even in the eyes [collateral sounds] of all posterity, That wear this world out to the ending doom. So, till the JUDGMENT that YOURSELF arise [till then], You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.'

See the passages at the commencement of this chapter, if there be any doubt as to this reading.

'In lover's eyes.'

Leonatus Posthumus. Shall's have a Play of this? Thou scornful Page, There lie thy part. [To Imogen disguised as Fidele.]

The consideration which qualified, in the mind of the Author of the Advancement of Learning, the great difficulty which the question of civil government presented at that time, is the key to this 'plot.' For men, and not 'Romans' only, 'are like sheep;' and if you can but get some few to go right, the rest will follow. That was the plan. To create a better leadership of men,--to form a new order and union of men,--a new nobility of men, acquainted with the doctrine of their own nature, and in league for its advancement, to seize the 'thoughts' of those whose law is the law of the larger activity, and 'inform them with nobleness,'--was the plan.

For these the inner school was opened; for these its ascending platforms were erected. For these that 'closet' and 'cabinet,' where the 'simples' of the Shake-spear philosophy are all locked and labelled, was built. For these that secret 'cabinet of the Muses,' where the Delphic motto is cut anew, throws out its secret lures,--its gay, many-coloured, deceiving lures,--its secret labyrinthine clues,--for all lines in this building meet in that centre. All clues here unwind to that. For these--for the minds on whom the continuation of this enterprise was by will devolved, the key to that cabinet--the historical key to its inmost compartment of philosophic mysteries, was carefully laboured and left,--pointed to--pointed to with immortal gesticulations, and left ('What I cannot speak, I point out with my finger'); the key to that 'Verulamian cabinet,' which we shall hear of when the fictitious correspondence in which the more secret history of this time was written, comes to be opened. That cabinet where the subtle argument that was inserted in the Poem or the Play, but buried there in its gorgeous drapery, is laid bare in prose as subtle ('I here scatter it up and down indifferently for verse'); where the new truth that was spoken in jest, as well as in parables, to those who were without, is unfolded,--that truth which moved unseen amid the gambols of the masque,--preferring to raise questions rather than objections,--which stalked in, without suspicion, in 'the hobby-horse' of the clown,--which the laugh of the groundlings was so often in requisition to cover,--that 'to beguile the time looked like the time,'--that 'looked like the flower, and was the serpent under it.'

For these that secret place of confidential communication was provided, where 'the argument' of all these Plays is opened without respect to the 'offence in it,'--to its utmost reach of abstruseness and subtlety--in its utmost reach of departure from 'the road of common opinion,'--where the Elizabethan secrets of Morality, and Policy and Religion, which made the Parables of the New Doctrine, are unrolled, at last, in all the new, artistic glories of that 'wrapped up' intention. This is the second use of the Fable in which we resume that dropped argument,--dropped for that time, while Caesar still commanded his thirty legions; and when the question, 'How long to philosophise?' being started in the schools again, the answer returned still was, 'Until our armies cease to be commanded by fools.' This is that second use of the Fable where we find the moral of it at last,--that moral which our moralists have missed in it,--that moral which is not 'vulgar and common-place,' but abstruse, and out of the road of common opinion,--that moral in which the Moral Science, which is the Wisdom of the Moderns, lurks.

It is to these that the Wise Man of our ages speaks (for we have him,--we do not wait for him), in the act of displaying a little, and folding up for the future, his plan of a Scientific Human Culture; it is to these that he speaks when he says, with a little of that obscurity which 'he mortally hates, and would avoid if he could': 'As Philocrates sported with Demosthenes,' you may not marvel, Athenians, that Demosthenes and I do differ, for he drinketh water, and I drink wine; and like as we read of an ancient parable of the two gates of sleep '... so if we put on sobriety and attention, we shall find it a sure maxim in knowledge, that the pleasant liquor of wine is the more vaporous, and the braver gate of ivory sendeth forth the falser dreams.' ['I,' says 'Michael,' who is also in favour of 'sobriety,' and critical upon excesses of all kinds, 'I have ever observed, that super-celestial theories and sub-terranean manners are in singular accordance.']

And in his general proposal to lay open 'those parts of learning which lie fresh and waste, and not improved and converted by the industry of man, to the end that such a plot, made and committed to memory, may both minister light to any public designation, and also serve to excite voluntary endeavours,' he says, 'I do foresee that of those things which I shall enter and register as deficiencies and omissions, many will conceive and censure that some of them are already done, and extant, others to be but curiosities and things of no great use' [such as the question of style, for instance, and those 'particular' arts of tradition to which this remark is afterwards applied]--and others to be of too great difficulty--and almost impossibility--to be compassed and effected; but for the two first, I refer myself to particulars; for the last,--touching impossibility,--I take it those things are to be held possible, which may be done by some person, though not by every one; and which may be done by many, though not by any one; and which may be done in succession of ages, though not within the hour-glass of one man's life; and which may be done by public designation, though not by private endeavour.

That was 'the plot'--that was the plan of the Elizabethan Innovation.

THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

'When as a lion's whelp shall, to himself unknown, without seeking find, and be embraced by a piece of tender air; and when from a stately cedar shall be lopped branches, which, being dead many years, shall after revive, be jointed to the old stock, and freshly grow; then shall Posthumus end his miseries, Britain be fortunate, and flourish in peace and plenty.'

THE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP.

Here, for instance, is a specimen of the manner in which scholars who write about these times, allude to the reserved parts of this philosophy, and to those 'richer and bolder meanings,' which could not then be inserted in the acknowledged writings of so great a person. This is a specimen of the manner in which a posthumous collection and reintegration of this philosophy, and a posthumous emancipation of it, is referred to, by scholars who write from the Continent somewhere about these days. Whether the date of the writing be a little earlier or a little later,--some fifty years or so,--it does not seem to make much difference as to the general intent and purport of it.

Here is a scholar, for instance, whose main idea of life on this planet it appears to be, to collect the philosophy, and protect the posthumous fame of the Lord Bacon. For this purpose, he has established a literary intimacy, quite the most remarkable one on record--at least, between scholars of different and remote nationalities--between himself and two English gentlemen, a Mr. Smith, and the Rev. Dr. Rawley. He writes from the Hague but he appears to have acquired in some way a most extraordinary insight into this business.

'Though I thought that I had already sufficiently showed what veneration I had for the illustrious Lord Verulam, yet I shall take such care for the future, that it may not possibly be denied, that I endeavoured most zealously to make this thing known to the learned world. But neither shall this design of setting forth in one volume all the Lord Bacon's works, proceed without consulting you'--[This letter is addressed to the Rev. Dr. Rawley, and is dated a number of years after Lord Bacon's death]--'without consulting you, and without inviting you to cast in your symbol, worthy such an excellent edition: that so the appetite of the reader'--[It was a time when symbols of various kinds--large and small--were much in use in the learned world]--'that so the appetite of the reader, provoked already by his published works, may be further gratified by the pure novelty of so considerable an appendage.

'For the French interpreter, who patched together his things I know not whence, and tacked that motley piece to him; they shall not have place in this great collection. But yet I hope to obtain your leave to publish a-part, as an appendix to the Natural History,--that exotic work,--gathered together from this and the other place (of his lordship's writings), [that is the true account of it] and by me translated into--Latin.

'For seeing the genuine pieces of the Lord Bacon are already extant, and in many hands, it is necessary that the foreign reader be given to understand of what threads the texture of that book consists, and how much of truth there is in that which that shameless person does, in his preface to the reader, so stupidly write of you.

'My brother, of blessed memory, turned his words into Latin, in the First Edition of the Natural History, having some suspicion of the fidelity of an unknown author. I will, in the Second Edition, repeat them, and with just severity animadvert upon them: that they, into whose hands that work comes, may know it to be rather patched up of many distinct pieces; how much soever the author bears himself upon the specious title of Verulam. Unless, perhaps, I should particularly suggest in your name, that these words were there inserted, by way of caution; and lest malignity and rashness should any way blemish the fame of so eminent a person.

'If my fate would permit me to live according to my wishes, I would fly over into England, that I might behold whatsoever remaineth in your Cabinet of the Verulamian workmanship, and at least make my eyes witnesses of it, if the possession of the merchandise be yet denied to the public. At present I will support the wishes of my impatient desire, with hope of seeing, one day, those (issues) which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time till they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.

'I wish, in the mean time, I could have a sight of the copy of the Epistle to Sir Henry Savil, concerning the Helps of the Intellectual Powers: for I am persuaded, as to the other Latin remains, that I shall not obtain,for present use, the removal of them from the place in which they now are.'

Extract of a letter from Mr. Isaac Gruter. Here is the beginning of it:--

'TO THE REV. WM. RAWLEY, D.D.

'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.

'Reverend Sir,--It is not just to complain of the slowness of your answer, seeing that the difficulty of the passage, in the season in which you wrote, which was towards winter, might easily cause it to come no faster; seeing likewise there is so much to be found in it which may gratify desire, and perhaps so much the more, the longer it was ere it came to my hands. And although I had little to send back, besides my thanks for the little Index, yet that seemed to me of such moment that I would no longer suppress them: especially because I accounted it a crime to have suffered Mr. Smith to have been without an answer: Mr. Smith, my most kind friend, and to whose care, in my matters, I owe all regard and affection, yet without diminution of that (part and that no small one neither) in which Dr. Rawley hath place. So that the souls of us three, so throughly agreeing, may be aptly said to have united in a triga.'

It is not necessary, of course, to deny the historical claims of the Rev. Dr. Rawley, who is sufficiently authenticated; or even of Mr. Smith himself, who would no doubt be able to substantiate himself, in case a particular inquiry were made for him; and it would involve a serious departure from the method of invention usually employed in this association, which did not deal with shadows when contemporary instrumentalities were in requisition, if the solidarity of Mr. Isaac Gruter himself should admit of a moment's question. The precautions of this secret, but so powerful league,--the skill with which its instrumentalities were selected and adapted to its ends, is characterised by that same matchless dramatic power, which betrays 'the source from which it springs' even when it 'only plays at working.'

But if any one is anxious to know who the third person of this triga really was, or is, a glance at the Directory would enable such a one to arrive at a truer conclusion than the first reading of this letter would naturally suggest. For this is none other than the person whom the principle of this triga, and its enlightened sentiment and bond of union, already symbolically comprehended, whom it was intended to comprehend ultimately in all the multiplicity and variety of his historical manifestations, though it involved a deliberate plan for reducing and suppressing his many-headedness, and restoring him to the use of his one only mind. For though the name of this person is often spelt in three letters, and oftener in one, it takes all the names in the Directory to spell it in full. For this is none other than the person that 'Michael' refers to so often and with so much emphasis, glancing always at his own private name, and the singular largeness and comprehensiveness of his particular and private constitution. 'All the world knows me in my book, and my book in me.' 'I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.'

But the name of Mr. Isaac Gruter was not less comprehensive, and could be made to represent the whole triga in an emergency, as well as another; ['I take so great pleasure in being judged and known that it is almost indifferent to me in which of the two forms I am so'] though that does not hinder him from inviting Dr. Eawley to cast in his symbol, which was 'so considerable an appendage.' For though the very smallest circle sometimes represents it, it was none other than the symbol that gave name to the theatre in which the illustrated works of this school were first exhibited; the theatre which hung out for its sign on the outer wall, 'Hercules and his load too.' At a time when 'conceits' and 'devices in letters,' when anagrams and monograms, and charades, and all kinds of 'racking of orthography' were so much in use, not as curiosities merely, but to avoid another kind of 'racking,' a cipher referred to in this philosophy as the 'wheel cipher,' which required the letters of the alphabet to be written in a circle to serve as a key to the reading, supplies a clue to some of these symbols. The first three letters of the alphabet representing the whole in the circle, formed a character or symbol which was often made to stand as a 'token' for a proper name, easily spelt in that way, when phonography and anagrams were in such lively and constant use,--while it made, at the same time, a symbolical representation of the radical doctrine of the new school in philosophy,--a school then so new, that its 'Doctors' were compelled to 'pray in the aid of simile,' even in affixing their names to their own works, in some cases. And that same letter which was capable of representing in this secret language either the microcosm, or 'the larger whole,' as the case required (either with, or without the eye or I in it, sending rays to the circumference) sufficed also to spell the name of the Grand Master of this lodge,--'who also was a man, take him for all in all,'--the man who took two hemispheres for 'his symbol.' That was the so considerable appendage which his friend alludes to,--though 'the natural gaiety of disposition,' of which we have so much experience in other places, and which the gravity of these pursuits happily does not cloud, suggests a glance in passing at another signification, which we find alluded to also in another place in Mrs. Quickly's 'Latin.' Mere frivolities as these conceits and private and retired arts seem now, the Author of the Advancement of Learning tells us, that to those who have spent their labours and studies in them, they seem great matters, referring particularly to that cipher in which it is possible to write omnia per omnia, and stopping to fasten the key of it to his 'index' of 'the principal and supreme sciences,'--those sciences 'which being committed to faithful privacy, wait the time when they may safely see the light, and not be stifled in their birth.'

New constructions, according to true definitions, was the plan,--this triga was the initiative.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XII. THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED.--A WRESTLING INSTANCE

'For as they were men of the best composition in the state of Rome, which, either being consuls, inclined to the people' ['If he would but incline to the people, there never was a worthier man'], 'or being tribunes, inclined to the senate, so, in the matter which we handle now [doctrine of Cure], they be the best physicians which, being learned, incline to the traditions of experience; or, being empirics, incline to the methods of learning.' Advancement of Learning.

But while the Man of Science was yet planning these vast scientific changes--vast, but noiseless and beautiful as the movements of God in nature--there was another kind of revolution brewing. All that time there was a cloud on his political horizon--'a huge one, a black one'--slowly and steadfastly accumulating, and rolling up from it, which he had always an eye on. He knew there was that in it which no scientific apparatus that could be put in operation then, on so short a notice, and when science was so feebly aided, would be able to divert or conduct entirely. He knew that so fearful a war-cloud would have to burst, and get overblown, before any chance for those peace operations, those operations of a solid and lasting peace, which he was bent on, could be had--before any space on the earth could be found broad enough for his Novum Organum to get to work on, before the central levers of it could begin to stir.

That revolution which 'was singing in the wind' then to his ear, was one which would have to come first in the chronological order; but it was easy enough to see that it was not going to be such a one, in all respects, as a man of his turn of genius would care to be out in with his works.

He knew well enough what there was in it. He had not been so long in such sharp daily collision with the elements of it--he had not been so long trying conclusions with them under such delicate conditions, conditions requiring so nice an observation--without arriving at some degree of assurance in regard to their main properties, without attaining, indeed, to what he calls knowledge on that subject--knowledge as distinguished from opinion--so as to be able to predict 'with a near aim' the results of the possible combinations. The conclusion of this observation was, that the revolutionary movements then at hand were not, on the whole, likely to be conducted throughout on rigidly scientific principles.

The spectacle of a people violently 'revoking their ignorant election,' and empirically seeking to better their state under such leaders as such a movement was likely to throw up, and that, too, when the old military government was still so strong in moral forces, so sure of a faction in the state--of a faction of the best, which would cleave the state to the centre, which would resist with the zealot's fire unto blood and desperation the unholy innovation--that would stand on the last plank of the wrecked order, and wade through seas of slaughter to restore it; the prospect of untried political innovation, under such circumstances, did not present itself to this Poet's imagination in a form so absolutely alluring, as it might have done to a philosopher of a less rigidly inductive, turn of mind.

His canvas, with its magic draught of the coming event, includes already some contingencies which the programme of the theoretical speculator in revolutions would have been far enough from including then, when such movements were yet untried in modern history, and the philosopher had to go back to mythical Rome to borrow an historical frame of one that would contain his piece. The conviction that the crash was, perhaps, inevitable, that the overthrow of the existing usurpation, and the restoration of the English subject to his rights,--a movement then already determined on,--would perhaps involve these so tragic consequences--the conviction that the revolution was at hand, was the conviction with which he made his arrangements for the future.

But if any one would like to see now for himself what vigorous grasp of particulars this inductive science of state involves, what a clear, comprehensive, and masterly basis of history it rests on, and how totally unlike the philosophy of prenotions it is in this respect--if one would see what breadth of revolutionary surges this Artist of the peace principles was able to span with his arches and sleepers, what upheavings from the then unsounded depths of political contingencies, what upliftings from the last depths of the revolutionary abysses, this science of stability, this science of the future STATE, is settled on,--such a one must explore this work yet further, and be able to find and unroll in it that revolutionary picture which it contains--that scientific exhibition which the Elizabethan statesman has contrived to fold in it of a state in which the elements are already cleaving and separating, one in which the historical solidities are already in solution, or struggling towards it--prematurely, perhaps, and in danger of being surprised and overtaken by new combinations, not less oppressive and unscientific than the old.

'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet, Displant a town, reverse a prince's doom, Hang up philosophy'--

wrote this Poet's fire of old.

'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?'

it writes again. No?

'Throw physic to the dogs, I'll none of it.'

'See now what learning is,' says the practical-minded nurse, quite dazzled and overawed with that exhibition of it which has just been brought within her reach, and expressing, in the readiest and largest terms which her vocabulary supplies to her, her admiration of the practical bent of Friar Laurence's genius; who seems to be doing his best to illustrate the idea which another student, who was not a Friar exactly, was undertaking to demonstrate from his cell about that time--the idea of the possibility of converging a large and studious observation of nature in general,--and it is a very large and curious one which this Friar betrays,--upon any of those ordinary questions of domestic life, which are constantly recurring for private solution. And though this knowledge might seem to be 'so variable as it falleth not under precept,' the prose philosopher is of the opinion that 'a universal insight, and a wisdom of council and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' is available for the particular instances which occur in this department. And the philosophic poet appears to be of his opinion; for there is no end to the precepts which he inducts from this 'variable knowledge' when he gets it on his table of review, in the form of natural history, in 'prerogative cases' and 'illustrious instances,' cases cleared from their accidental and extraneous adjuncts--ideal cases. And though this poor Friar does not appear to have been very successful in this particular instance; if we take into account the fact that 'the Tragedy was the thing,' and that nothing but a tragedy would serve his purpose, and that all his learning was converged on that effect; if we take into account the fact that this is a scientific experiment, and that the characters are sacrificed for the sake of the useful conclusions, the success will not perhaps appear so questionable as to throw any discredit upon this new theory of the applicability of learning to questions of this nature.

'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet.' But this is the philosophy that did that very thing, and the one that made a Hamlet also, besides 'reversing a prince's doom'; for this is the one that takes into account those very things in heaven and earth which Horatio had omitted in his abstractions; and this is the philosopher who speaks from his philosophic chair of 'men of good composition,' and who gives a recipe for composing them. 'Unless philosophy can make a Juliet,' is Romeo's word. 'See now what learning is,' is the Nurse's commentary; for that same Friar, demure as he looks now under his hood, talking of 'simples' and great nature's latent virtues, is the one that will cog the nurse's hearts from them, and come back beloved of all the trades in Rome. With his new art of 'composition' he will compose, not Juliets nor Hamlets only; mastering the radicals, he will compose, he will dissolve and recompose ultimately the greater congregation; for the powers in nature are always one, and they are not many.

Let us see now, then, what it is,--this 'universal insight in the affairs of the world,' this 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered from cases of a like nature,' with an observation that includes all natures,--let us see what this new wisdom of counsel is, when it comes to be applied to this huge growth of the state, this creature of the ages; and in its great crisis of disorder--shaken, convulsed-- wrapped in elemental horror, and threatening to dissolve into its primal warring atoms.

'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'

'If thou couldst, Doctor, cast The water of MY LAND, find her disease, And purge it to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo, That should applaud again.'

'What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, Would scour these English hence? Hear'st thou of them?'

'Cousins, I hope the days are near at hand That chambers will be safe.'

Let us see, then, what it is that this man will have, who criticises so severely the learning of other men,--who disposes so scornfully, right and left, of the physic and metaphysic of the schools as he finds them,--who daffs the learning of the world aside, and bids it pass. Let us see what the learning is that is not 'words,' as Hamlet says, complaining of the reading in his book.

This part has been taken out from its dramatic connections, and reserved for a separate exhibition, on account of a certain new and peculiar value it has acquired since it was produced in those connections. Time has changed it 'into something rich and strange,'--Time has framed it, and poured her illustration on it: it is history now. That flaming portent, this aurora that fills the seer's heaven, these fierce angry warriors, that are fighting here upon the clouds, 'in ranks, and squadrons, and right forms of war,' are but the marvels of that science that lays the future open.

'There is a history in all men's lives, Figuring the nature of the times deceased; The which observed, a man may prophesy, With a near aim, of the main chance of things As yet not come to life, which, in their seeds And weak beginnings, lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time.'

'One need not go to heaven to predict imminent changes and revolutions,' says that other philosopher, who scribbles on this same subject about these days in such an entertaining manner, and who brings so many 'buckets' from 'the headspring of sciences,' to water his plants in this field in particular. 'That which most threatens us is a divulsion of the whole mass.'

This part is produced here, then, as a specimen of that kind of prophecy which one does not need to go to heaven for. And the careful reader will observe, that notwithstanding the distinct disavowal of any supernatural gift on the part of this seer, and this frank explanation of the mystery of his Art, the prophecy appears to compare not unfavourably with others which seem to come to us with higher claims. A very useful and very remarkable kind of prophecy indeed, this inductive prophecy appears to be; and the question arises, whether a kind, endowed of God with a faculty of seeing, which commands the future in so inclusive a manner, and with so near and sufficient an aim for the most important practical purposes, ought to be besieging Heaven for a _super_natural gift, and questioning the ancient seers for some vague shadows of the coming event, instead of putting this immediate endowment--this 'godlike' endowment--under culture.

There is another reason for reserving this part. In the heat and turmoil of this great ACT, the Muse of the Inductive Science drops her mask, and she forgets to take it up again. The hand that is put forth to draw 'the next ages' into the scene, when the necessary question of the play requires it, is bare. It is the Man of Learning here everywhere, without any disguise,--the man of the new learning, openly applying his 'universal insight,' and 'wisdom of counsel and advice, gathered by general observation of cases of like nature,' to this great question of 'Policy,' which was then hurrying on, with such portentous movement, to its inevitable practical solution.

He who would see at last for himself, then, the trick of this 'Magician,' when he 'brings the rabble to his place,' the reader who would know at last why it is that these old Roman graves 'have waked their sleepers, oped, and let them forth, by his so potent art'; and why it is, that at this great crisis in English history, the noise of the old Roman battle hurtles so fiercely in the English ear, should read now--but read as a work of natural science in politics, from the scientific statesman's hands, deserves to be read--this great revolutionary scene, which the Poet, for reasons of his own, has buried in the heart of this Play, which he has subordinated with his own matchless skill to the general intention of it, but which we, for the sake of pursuing that general intention with the less interruption, now that the storm appears to be 'overblown,' may safely reserve for the conclusion of our reading of this scientific history, and criticism, and rejection of the Military Usurpation of the COMMON-WEAL.

The reading of it is very simple. One has only to observe that the Poet avails himself of the dialogue here, with even more than his usual freedom, for the purpose of disposing of the bolder passages, in the least objectionable manner,--interrupting the statement in critical points, and emphasizing it, by that interruption, to the careful reader 'of the argument,' but to the spectator, or to one who takes it as a dialogue merely, neutralizing it by that dramatic opposition. For the political criticism, which is of the boldest, passes safely enough, by being merely broken, and put into the mouths of opposing factions, who are just upon the point of coming to blows upon the stage, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of collusion.

For the popular magistracy, as it represents the ignorance, and stupidity, and capricious tyranny of the multitude, and their unfitness for rule, is subjected to the criticism of the true consulship, on the one hand, while the military usurpation of the chair of state, and the law of Conquest, is not less severely criticized by the true Tribune--the Tribune, whose Tribe is the Kind--on the other; and it was not necessary to produce, in any more prominent manner, just then, the fact, that both these offices and relations were combined in that tottering estate of the realm,--that 'old riotous form of military government,' which held then only by the virtual election of the stupidity and ignorance of the people, and which, this Poet and his friends were about to put on its trial, for its innovations in the government, and suppressions of the ancient estates of this realm,--for its suppression of the dignities and privileges of the Nobility, and its suppression of the chartered dignities and rights of the Commons.

Scene.--A Street. Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS with his two military friends, who have shared with him the conduct of the Volscian wars, and have but just returned from their campaign, COMINIUS and TITUS LARTIUS,--and with them the old civilian MENENIUS, who, patrician as he is, on account of his honesty,--a truly patrician virtue,--is in favour with the people. 'He's an honest one. Would they were all so.'

The military element predominates in this group of citizens, and of course, they are talking of the wars,--the foreign wars: but the principle of inroad and aggression on the one hand, and defence on the other, the arts of subjugation, and reconciliation, the arts of WAR and GOVERNMENT in their most general forms are always cleared and identified, and tracked, under the specifications of the scene.

Cor. Tullus Aufidius then had made NEW HEAD.

Lart. He had, my lord, and that it was, which caused Our swifter COMPOSITION.

Cor. So then, the Volsces stand but as at first, Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road Upon us again.

Com. They [Volsces?] are worn, lord consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again.

* * * * *

[Enter Sicinius and Brutus.]

Cor. Behold! these are the tribunes of the people, The tongues o' the common mouth. I do despise them; For they do prank them in authority, Against all noble sufferance.

Sic. Pass no further.

Cor. Ha! what is that?

Bru. It will be dangerous to Go on: No further.

Cor. What makes this CHANGE?

Men. The matter?

Com. Hath he not passed the NOBLES and the COMMONS?

Bru. Cominius.--No.

Cor. Have I had children's voices? [ Yes.]

Sen. Tribunes, give way:--he shall to the market-place.

Bru. The people are incensed against him.

Sic. Stop. Or all will fall in broil.

Cor. Are these your herd? Must these have voices that can yield them now, And straight disclaim their tongues? You, being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? Have you not set them on?

Men. Be calm, be calm.

Cor. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility:-- _Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Nor_ ever will be ruled.

Bru. Call't not a plot: The people cry you mocked them; and of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repined; _Scandaled the suppliants for the people; called them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness._

Cor. Why, this was known before.

Bru. Not to them all.

Cor. Have you informed them since?

Bru. How! I inform them?

Cor. You are like to do such business.

Bru. Not unlike, Each way to better yours.

Cor. Why then should I be consul? By yon clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune.

Sic. You show too much of that, For which the people stir: If you will pass To where you are bound, you must inquire your way,-- Which you are out of,--with a gentler spirit; Or never be so noble as a consul, Nor yoke with him for tribune.

Men. Let's be calm.

Com. The people are abused;--set on--this paltering Becomes not Rome: nor has Coriolanus Deserved this so dishonoured rub, laid falsely I' the plain way of his merit.

Cor. Tell me of corn: This was my speech, and I will speak't again.

Men. Not now, not now.

First Sen. Not in this heat, sir, now.

Cor. Now, as I live, I will.--My nobler friends I crave their pardons:-- For the mutable, rank scented many, let them _Regard me, as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves_: I say again, In soothing them, we nourish 'gainst our senate, The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have ploughed for, sowed and scattered, By mingling them with us, the honoured number. Who lack not virtue, no,--nor power, but that Which they have given to--BEGGARS.

Men. Well, no more.

First Sen. No more words, we beseech you.

Cor. How, no more: As for my country, I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those meazels Which we disdain, should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them.

Bru. You speak o' the people, As if you were a god to punish, not A man of their infirmity.

Sic. 'T were well We let the people know't.

Men. What, what? his choler.

Cor. Choler! Were I as patient as the _midnight sleep, By Jove,_ 't would be my mind.

Sic. It is a mind, That shall remain a poison where it is, Not poison any further.

Cor. Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? mark you His absolute SHALL?

Com. 'Twas from the canon, O good, but most unwise patricians, why You grave, but reckless senators, have you thus Given Hydra here to choose AN OFFICER, That with his _peremptory shall--being but The horn and noise o' the monster_--wants not spirit To say, he'll turn your current in a ditch, And make _your channel his? If he have power, Then_ veil your IGNORANCE:--[that let him have it.] --if none, awake Your dangerous LENITY.

[Mark it well, for it is not, as one may see who looks at it but a little, it is not the lost Roman weal and its danger that fires the passion of this speech. 'Look at this player whether he has not turned his colour, and has tears in his eyes.' 'What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? What would he do, had he the motive and the cue for passion that I have.']

--if none, awake Your dangerous lenity. If you are learned, Be not as common fools; if you are not--

What do you draw this foolish line for, that separates you from the commons? If you are not, there's no nobility. If you are not, what business have you in these chairs of state?

--if you are not, Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians, If they be senators; and they are no less, When both your voices blended, the GREATEST TASTE Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate; And such a one as he, who puts his shall,--

[Mark it, his popular shall].

His popular shall, against a graver bench Than ever frown'd in Greece! By Jove himself, It makes the consuls base: and my soul aches, To know, when two authorities are up,

[Neither able to rule].

Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter twixt the GAP of BOTH, and take The one by the other.

Com. Well,--on to the market place.

Cor. Whoever gave that counsel, to give forth The corn o' the store-house gratis, as 'twas used Sometime in Greece.

[It is not corn, but the property of the state, and its appropriation, we talk of here. Whether the absolute power be in the hands of the people or 'their officer.' There had been a speech made on that subject, which had not met with the approbation of the absolute power then conducting the affairs of this realm; and in its main principle, it is repeated here. 'That was my speech, and I will make it again.' 'Not now, not now. Not in this heat, sir, now.' 'Now, as I live, I will.']

Men. Well, well, no more of that,

Cor. Though there THE PEOPLE had more absolute power, I say they nourished disobedience, fed The ruin of the state.

Bru. Why shall the people give One that speaks thus their voice?

Cor. I'll give my reasons, More worthier than their voices. They know the corn Was not our RECOMPENSE; resting well assured They ne'er did service for it? . . . Well, what then? How shall this bosom multiplied, digest; The senate's courtesy? Let deeds express What's like to be their words. We did request it, WE are THE GREATER POLL, and in true fear They gave us our demands. Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our cares, fears: which will in time _break ope The locks o' the senate_, and _bring in the crows To peck the eagles._

Mem. Come, enough.

Bru. Enough, with over measure.

Cor. No, take more; What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship,-- Where one part does _disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason_; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude, but by the yea and no Of General Ignorance--it _must omit Real necessities_, and _give way the while To unstable slightness_. PURPOSE so barred it follows Nothing is done to purpose: Therefore beseech you,--

[Therefore beseech you].

You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state, More than you doubt the change of't--

There was but one man in England then, able to balance this revolutionary proposition so nicely--so curiously; 'that love the fundamental part of state more than you doubt the change of it'; 'You that are less fearful than discreet'--not so fearful as discreet.

that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it,--at once _pluck out The multitudinous tongue_; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison; your dishonour MANGLES true JUDGMENT, and bereaves THE STATE Of that INTEGRITY which should become it: Not having the power to do the good it would, For the ill which doth control it.

Bru. He has said enough.

[One would think so].

Sic. He has spoken like a traitor, and shall answer As traitors do.

Cor. Thou wretch! despite o'erwhelm thee! What should the people do with these bald tribunes? _On whom depending, their obedience fails To the greater bench_? In a rebellion, When what's not meet, but what must be was law Then were they chosen: in a better hour, Let what is meet, be said it must be meet, And throw their power i' the dust.

Bru. MANIFEST TREASON.

Sic. This a Consul? No.

Bru. The Aediles! ho! let him be apprehended.

Sic. Go call the people; [Exit Brutus] in whose name, myself Attach thee [thee] as a traitorous INNOVATOR, A FOE to the PUBLIC WEAL. Obey, I charge thee, And follow to thine answer.

Cor. Hence, old goat! Senators and Patricians. We'll surety him.

Cor. Hence, rotten thing, or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments.

Sic. Help, ye citizens.

[Re-enter Brutus, with the Aediles, and a rabble of citizens.]

Men. On both sides, more respect.

Sic. There's HE that would Take from you all your power.

Bru. Seize him, Aediles.

Cit. Down with him. Down with him.

[Several speak.]

Second Sen. Weapons! Weapons! Weapons!

[They all bustle about CORIOLANUS.]

Tribunes, patricians:--citizens:--what ho:-- Sicinius, Brutus:--Coriolanus:--citizens:--

Cit. Peace!--Peace!--Peace!--stay!--hold!--peace!

Men. _What is about to be? I am out of breath: Confusion's near! I cannot speak_: you tribunes To the people.--Coriolanus, patience:-- Speak, good Sicinius.

Sic. Hear me, people;--Peace.

Cit. Let's hear our tribune:--Peace,--Speak, speak, speak.

Sic. You are at point to lose your liberties, Marcius would have all from you; Marcius Whom late you have named for consul.

Men. Fye, fye, fye. That is the way to kindle, not to quench.

Sen. To unbuild the city and to lay all flat.

Sic. What is the city, but the people.

Cit. TRUE, The people are the city.

Bru. By the consent of ALL, we were established The people's magistrates.

Cit. You so remain.

Men. And so are like to do.

Cor. That is the way to lay the city flat, To bring the roof to the foundation; And bury all which yet _distinctly ranges, In heaps and piles of ruin_.

Sic. This deserves death.

Bru. Or let us stand to our authority, Or let us lose it:--

Truly, one hears the Revolutionary voices here. Observing the history which is in all men's lives, 'Figuring the nature of the times deceased, a man may prophesy,' as it would seem, 'with a near aim,'--quite near--'of the main chance of things, as yet, not come to life, which in their weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time,' this Poet says; but art, it seems, anticipates that process. There appears to be more of the future here, than of the times deceased.

Bru. We do here pronounce Upon the _part of the people, in whose power We were elected theirs, Marcius is worthy_ Of present death.

Sic. Therefore, lay hold of him; Bear him to the rook Tarpeian, and from thence Into destruction cast him.

Bru. Ædiles, seize him.

Cit. Yield, Marcius, yield.

Men. Hear me, one word. Beseech you, tribunes, hear me, but a word.

Ædiles. Peace, peace.

Men. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend, And temperately proceed to what you would Thus violently redress.

Bru. Sir, those cold ways That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous. Where the disease is violent.--Lay hands upon him, And bear him to the rock.

Cor. No: I'll die here. [Drawing his sword.] There's some among you have beheld me fighting; Come try upon yourselves, what you have seen me.

Men. DOWN with THAT SWORD; tribunes, withdraw awhile.

Bru. Lay hands upon him.

Men. Help, help, MARCIUS, help! You that be NOBLE, help him, young and old.

Cit. DOWN WITH HIM! DOWN WITH HIM!

'In this mutiny, the Tribunes, the Ædiles, and the People, are all BEAT IN,' so the stage direction informs us, which appears a little singular, considering there is but one sword drawn, and the victorious faction does not appear to have the advantage in numbers. It is, however, only a temporary success, as the victors seem to be aware.

Men. Go, get you to your houses, be gone away, All will be nought else.

Second Sen. Get you gone.

Cor. _Stand fast, We have as many friends as enemies._

Men. Shall it be put to that?

Sen. The gods forbid! I pry'thee noble friend, home to thy house; Leave us to CURE THIS CAUSE.

Men. For 'tis a sore _upon us, You cannot tent yourself. Begone, beseech you._

Com. Come, Sir, along with us.

Cor. I would they were barbarians (as they are, Though in Rome littered) not Romans, (as they are not, Though calved i' the porch o' the Capitol).

Men. Begone; Put not your worthy rage into your tongue; One time will owe another. [Hear.]

Cor. On fair ground, I could beat forty of them.

Men. I could myself Take up a brace of the best of them; yea, the two tribunes.

Com. But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic: And MANHOOD is called FOOLERY, _when it stands Against a falling fabric_.--Will you hence, Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend Like interrupted waters, and _o'erbear What they are used to bear_. [Change of 'predominance.']

Men. Pray you, begone: I'll try whether my old wit be in request With those that have but little; this must be patched With cloth of any colour.

Com. Nay, come away.

The features of that living impersonation of the heroic faults and virtues which 'the mirror,' that professed to give to 'the very body of the time, its form and pressure,' could not fail to show, are glimmering here constantly in 'this ancient piece,' and often shine out in the more critical passages, with such unmistakeable clearness, as to furnish an effectual diversion for any eye, that should undertake to fathom prematurely the player's intention. For 'the gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd's Calendar' was not the only poet of this time, as it would seem, who found the scope of a double intention, in his poetic representation, not adequate to the comprehension of his design--who laid on another and another still, and found the complexity convenient. 'The sense is the best judge,' this Poet says, in his doctrine of criticism, declining peremptorily to accept of the ancient rules in matters of taste;--a rule in art which requires, of course, a corresponding rule of interpretation. In fact, it is no bad exercise for an ordinary mind, to undertake to track the contriver of these plays, through all the latitudes which his art, as he understands it, gives him. It is as good for that purpose, as a problem in mathematics. But, 'to whom you will not give an hour, you give nothing,' he says, and 'he had as lief not be read at all, as be read by a careless reader.' So he thrusts in his meanings as thick as ever he likes, and those who don't choose to stay and pick them out, are free to lose them. They are not the ones he laid them in for,--that is all. He is not afraid, but that he will have readers enough, ere all is done; and he can afford to wait. There's time enough.

First Pat. This man has marr'd his fortune.

Men. His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for his power to thunder. His heart's his mouth; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; And being angry, does forget that _ever He heard the name of death_.

[A noise within.]

Here's goodly work!

Second Pat. I would they were a-bed!

Men. I would they were in Tyber!--_What, the vengeance, Could he_ not speak them fair?

[Re-enter Brutus and Sicinius with the Rabble.]

Sic. WHERE IS THIS VIPER, That would depopulate the city, and BE EVERY MAN HIMSELF?

Men. You worthy tribunes--

Sic. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands; he hath resisted LAW, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial.

['When could they say till now that talked of Rome that her wide walls encompassed but one man?' 'What trash is Rome, what rubbish, and what offal, when it serves for the base matter to illuminate so vile a thing as Caesar.']

Than the severity of the PUBLIC POWER, Which he so sets at nought.

First Cit. He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people's mouths, And we their hands.

[Historical _principles throughout, with much of that kind of illustration in which his works are so prolific, an illustration which is not rhetorical, but scientific, based on the COMMON PRINCIPLES IN NATURE, which it is his 'primary' business to ascend to, and which it is his 'second' business to apply to each particular branch of art. 'Neither,' as he tells us plainly, in his Book of Advancement, 'neither are these only similitudes as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be, but the same footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several subjects or matters,' and the tracking of these historical principles to their ultimate forms, is that which he recommends for the disclosing of nature and the abridging of Art.]

Sic. He's a disease, that must be cut away.

Men. O he's a limb, that has but a disease; Mortal to cut it off; to cure it, easy. What has he done to Rome, that's worthy death? Killing our enemies? The blood he hath lost, (Which, I dare vouch, is more than that he hath, By many an ounce), he dropped it for his country. And what _is left, to lose it by his country, Were to us all, that do't and suffer it, A brand to the end o' the world._

There's a piece thrust in here. This is the one of whom he says in another scene, 'I cannot speak him home.'

Bru. Merely awry: when he did love his country, It honour'd him.

Men. The service of the foot, Being once gangren'd, is not then respected For what before it was?

Bru. We'll hear no more:-- Pursue him to his house, and pluck him thence; Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further.

Men. One word more, one word. This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find The harm of unscann'd swiftness, will, too late, Tie leaden pounds to his HEELS. [Mark it, for it is a prophecy] Lest PARTIES (as he is beloved) break out, And sack great Rome with Romans.

Bru. If it were so,--

Sic. What do ye talk? Have we not had a taste of his obedience? Our Ædiles smote? Ourselves resisted?--Come:--

Men. Consider this; he has been bred i' the wars, Since he could draw a sword,--

That has been the breeding of states, and nobility, and their rule, hitherto, as this play will show you. Consider what schooling these statesmen have had, before you begin the enterprise of reforming them, and take your measures accordingly. They are not learned men, you see. How should they be? There has been no demand for learning. The law of the sword has prevailed hitherto. When what's not meet but what must be was law, then were they chosen. Proceed by process.

Consider this; he has been bred i' the WARS Since he could draw a sword, and is ill school'd In boulted language--

[That's the trouble; but there's been a little bolting going on in this play.]

--Meal and bran, together He throws without distinction. Give me leave I'll go to him, and undertake to bring him Where he shall answer by a lawful form, (In peace) to his utmost peril.

First Sen. Noble tribunes. It is the humane way: the other course Will prove too bloody; and--

[What is very much to be deprecated in such movements].

--the END of it, Unknown to the beginning.

Sic. Noble Menenius; Be you then as the People's Officer: Masters,--[and they seem to be that, truly,]--lay down your weapons.

Bru. Go not home,

Sic. MEET on the MARKET-PLACE,--

[--that is where the 'idols of the market' are--]

_We'll attend you there: Where_, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed In our first way.

Men. I'll bring him to you. Let me desire your company [To the Senators] He must come, Or what is worse will follow.

Sen. Pray you, let's to him.

SCENE--THE FORUM. Enter Sicinius and Brutus.

Bru. In this point charge him home, that he affects TYRANNICAL POWER: if he evade us there, Enforce him with his envy to the people; And that the spoil, got on the Antiates, Was ne'er distributed.--

Enter an Ædile. What, will he come?

Æd. He's coming.

Bru. How accompanied?

Æd. With old Menenius, and those senators That always favour'd him.

Sic. Have you a catalogue Of all the voices that we have procured, Set down by THE POLL?

Æd. I have; 'tis ready.

Sic. Have you collected them BY TRIBES?

Æd. I have.

Sic. Assemble presently the people hither: And when they hear me say, it shall be so I the RIGHT and STRENGTH o' the COMMONS, be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them, If I say fine, cry fine; if death, cry death; Insisting on the OLD _prerogative, And power i' THE TRUTH, o' THE CAUSE.

[There is a great difference in the delivery of the mathematics, which are the most abstracted of knowledges, and policy, which is the most immersed.--Advancement of LEARNING.]

Æd. I shall inform them.

Bru. And when such time they have begun to cry, Let them not cease, but with a din confused Enforce the present execution Of what we chance to sentence.

Æd. Very well.

Sic. Make them be strong, and ready for this hint. When we shall hap to give't them.

Bru. Go about it.

[Exit Ædile.]

Put him to choler straight. He hath been used Ever to conquer, and to have his worth Of contradiction. Being once chafed, he cannot Be rein'd again to temperance; then he speaks What's in his heart; and that is there, which looks With me to break his neck. [Prophecy--inductive.] Well, here he comes.

Enter CORIOLANUS, and his party.

Men. Calmly, I do beseech you.

Cor. Ay, as an ostler, that for the poorest piece Will bear the knave by the volume. The honour'd gods Keep Rome in safety, and the CHAIRS of JUSTICE Supplied with WORTHY MEN! plant LOVE among us. Throng OUR LARGE TEMPLES with the shows of PEACE, And not our STREETS with WAR.

First Sen. Amen, Amen! [Hear, Hear!]

Men. A NOBLE wish.

Re-enter Ædile with Citizens.

Sic. Draw near, ye people.

Cor. First hear me speak.

Ædile. List to your tribunes. Audience: Peace, I say.

Both Tri. Well, say,--Peace, ho.

Cor. Shall I be charged no further than this present? Must all determine here?

Sic. I do demand, If you submit you to the people's voices, Allow their officers, and are content To suffer _lawful censure for such faults As shall be proved upon you_?

Cor. I am content.

Men. Lo, citizens, he says he is content--

Cor. What is the matter, That being pass'd for consul, with full voice, I am so dishonour'd, that the very hour You take it off again?

Sic. Answer to us.

Cor. Say then,'tis true. I ought so.

Sic. WE CHARGE YOU, that you have contrived to take From Rome, all seasoned office, and to wind Yourself into a_ POWER TYRANNICAL; For which, you are A TRAITOR to the PEOPLE.

Cor. How! Traitor?

Men. Nay, temperately: Your promise.

Cor. The fires in the lowest hell fold in the people! Call me their traitor!

Cit. To the rock, to the rock with him.

Sic. Peace. We need not put new matter to his charge: What you have seen him do, and heard him speak, Beating your officers, cursing yourselves, Opposing laws with strokes, and here defying Those whose great power must try him; even THIS, So criminal, and in such CAPITAL kind, Deserves the extremest death.... For that he has, As much as in him lies, from time to time, Envied against the people; seeking means To pluck away their power: as now, at last, Given hostile strokes, and that, not in the presence Of dreaded justice, but on the ministers That do distribute it; in the name o' the people, And in the power of us, the tribunes, we, Even from this instant, banish him our city, In peril of precipitation From off the rock Tarpeian, never more To enter our Rome's gates. I' THE PEOPLE'S NAME I say it shall be so.

Cit. It shall be so, it shall be so: let him away, He's banish'd, and it shall be so.

Com. Hear me, MY MASTERS, and my COMMON FRIENDS.

Sic. HE'S SENTENCED: no more hearing.

Com. Let me speak:--

Bru. THERE'S NO MORE TO BE SAID, BUT HE IS BANISHED, As ENEMY to the PEOPLE, AND HIS COUNTRY: IT SHALL BE SO.

Cit. IT SHALL BE SO, IT SHALL BE SO.

And this is the story that was set before a king! One, too, who was just then bestirring himself to get the life of 'that last king of England who was his ancestor' brought out; a king who was taking so much pains to get his triple wreath of conquest brightened up, and all the lines in it laid out and distinguished--one who was taking so much pains to get the fresh red of that last 'conqueror,' who also 'came in by battle,' cleared up in his coat of arms, in case his double line of white and red from the old Norman should not prove sufficient-- sufficient to convince the English nation of his divine right, and that of his heirs for ever, to dispose of it and its weal at his and their pleasure, with or without laws, as they should see fit. A pretty scene this to amuse a king with, whose ancestor, the one from whom he directly claimed, had so lately seated himself and his line by battle- -by battle with the English people on those very questions; who had 'beaten them in' in their mutinies with his single sword, 'and taken all from them'; who had planted his chair of state on their suppressed liberties, and 'the charters that they bore in the body of the weal'-- that chair which was even then beginning to rock a little--while there was that in the mien and bearing of the royal occupant and his heir which might have looked to the prescient mind, if things went on as they were going then, not unlike to break some one's neck.

'Bid them home,'

says the Tribune, after the military hero is driven out by the uprisen people, with shouting, from the city gates for ever; charged never more to enter them, on peril of precipitation from the Tarpeian Rock.

'Bid them home: Say, their great enemy is gone, and THEY STAND in their ancient strength.'

But it is in the conquered nation that this scene of the deposing of the military power is completed. Of course one could not tell beforehand what effect that cautious, but on the whole luminous, exhibition of the recent conquest of the English PEOPLE, prepared at the suggestion and under the immediate criticism of royalty, might have with the profoundly loyal English people themselves, in the way of 'striking an awe into them,' and removing any lurking opposition they might have to the exercise of an arbitrary authority in government; but with people of the old Volscian pluck, according to this Poet's account of the matter, an allusion to a similar success on the part of the Conqueror at a critical moment, and when his special qualifications for government happened to be passing under review, was not attended with those happy results which appear to have been expected in the other instance.

'If you have writ your annals true, 't is there, That like an EAGLE in a dove-cote, I Flutter'd your Volsces in Corioli: Alone, I did it.' 'Why--

[The answer is, in this case,]

'Why, noble lords, Will you be put in mind of his blind fortune, Which was your shame, by this unholy braggart, 'Fore your own eyes and ears?

Cons. Let him die for't. [Several speak at once.]

Citizens [Speaking promiscuously]. Tear him to pieces; do it presently. He killed my son--my daughter;--he killed my cousin Marcus;--he killed my father.... O that I had him, With six Aufidiuses, or more, his tribe, To use my lawful sword. Insolent villain! ...Traitor!--how now?.... Ay, TRAITOR, Marcius. Marcius? Ay, Marcius, Caius Marcius. Dost thou think I'll grace thee with that ROBBERY--thy STOLEN NAME, Coriolanus, in CORIOLI?.... [.... Honest, my lord? 'Ay, honest.']

Cons. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill him.' 'Would you proceed especially against Caius Marcius? Against him FIRST.'

Surely, if that 'Heir apparent' to whom the History of HENRY THE SEVENTH was dedicated by the author, with an urgent recommendation of the 'rare accidents' in that reign to the royal notice and consideration; if that prince had but chanced in some thoroughly thoughtful mood to light upon this yet more 'ancient piece,' he might have found here, also, some things worthy of his notice. It cannot be denied, that the poet's mode of handling the same historical question is much more bold and clear than that of the professed philosopher. But probably this Prince was not aware that his father entertained at Whitehall then, not a literary Historian, merely--a Book-maker, able to compose narratives of the past in an orderly chronological prosaic manner, according to the received method--but a Show-man, also, an Historical Show-man, with such new gifts and arts; a true Magician, who had in his closet a mirror which possessed the property of revealing, not the past nor the present only, but the future, 'with a near aim,' an aim so near that it might well seem 'magical'; and that a cloud was flaming in it, even then, 'which drizzled blood upon the Capitol.' This Prince of Wales did not know, any more than his father did, that they had in their court then an historical scholar, with such an indomitable passion for the stage, with such a decided turn for acting--one who felt himself divinely prompted to a part in that theatre which is the Globe--one who had laid out all for his share in that. They did not either of them know, fortunately for us, that they had in their royal train such an Historic Sport-Manager, such a Prospero for Masques; that there was a true 'Phil-harmonus' there, with so clear an inspiration of scientific statesmanship. They did not know that they had in that servant of the crown, so supple, so 'patient--patient as the midnight sleep,' patient 'as the ostler that for the poorest piece will bear the knave by the volume'--such a born aspirant for rule; one who had always his eye on the throne, one who had always in mind their usurpation of it. They did not know that they had a Hamlet in their court, who never lost sight of his purpose, or faltered in his execution of it; who had found a scientific ground for his actions, an end for his ends; who only affected incoherence; and that it was he who was intriguing to such purpose with the PLAYERS.

The Elizabethan revolutionist was suppressed: then 'Fame, who is the posthumous sister of rebellion, sprang up.'

'O like a book of sports thou'lt read me o'er, But there's more in me than thou'lt understand.'

'Henceforth guard thee well, For I'll not kill thee there, nor there, nor there; But by the forge that stithied Mars his helm, I'll kill thee everywhere, yea o'er and o'er.'

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