The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded Part 49

First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for all--that which is always the same in all the difference, that which is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of 'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the alphabet are not many, _the degrees and co-ordinations_ whereof make all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of _their combinations_,--the combinations which nature has herself accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which are possible, which have _not_ been accomplished,--those which the universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of species, dictates now, demands,--divinely orders,--divinely instructs us in.

This, and nothing short of this,--this so radical knowledge, reaching from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of nature,--to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,--to the indissoluble laws of being,--the laws of being in the species,--the law with which the specific law is convertible,--the law which cannot be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,--loss of being in the species,--this so large and rich and various knowledge, comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all nature under contribution for its results, this--this is the knowledge with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.

The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science, impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics, which he is everywhere propounding to that end,--openly, and with all the latent force of his new rhetoric.

It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,--the priest of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his hands--with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to pluck from her, and did not--with the gift of the new and n.o.bler miracles of science as the witness of his anointing--with the reading of 'G.o.d's book of power'--with the alphabet of its mystery, as the proof of his ordaining--with the key of it, hid from the foundation of the world until now.

The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical.

It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but a little, and new ages have begun.

It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to forbid abstractions--your abstractions. It sets out from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant, eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: '_forms_' not '_ideas_.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible terms--the _practically_ convertible terms of the known--practically --that is the difference.

In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things const.i.tutes; in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and ident.i.ty of nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base--the science of Natural History--beginning with the basis of the historical complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and solid pyramid, which the Inductive science--which the inquiry into causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop, either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to our experience--the causes, which are variable and many, do not satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds that even a diligent inquiry and observation _there_ would result in many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions, secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means.

He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on _that_ platform, when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and practice _there_. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and _re-integrate_ the misapplied and abused name of _natural magic_, which, in the true sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'

He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that field _does_ yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to the sciences is found. He takes the other in pa.s.sing only. Beginning with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will found a new metaphysics--an _objective_ metaphysics--the metaphysics of induction. His logic is but a preparation for _that_. He is going to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all species, the principles that are in _all things_; and he is going to build, on the basis of those _inducted_ principles,--on the sure basis of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic, the inductive method comprehends '_all_.' That same simplicity, which the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, _it_ aspires to and _attains_, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of observation and experiment.

He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific divinity, frowning off--warding off, as with the sword of the cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the G.o.ds, restored again,--the simple powers of nature, recovered from the Greek abstractions,--not 'the idols'--not the impersonated abstractions, the false images of the mind of man--not the logical forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic content--but the strong G.o.ds that make our history, that compose our epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build altars to them or not. This is that summit of the _prima philosophia_ where the axioms that command all are found--where the observations that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on these, grow. This is that height where the _same_ footsteps of nature, treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man only, but as it is in all matters or substances.

He does not care to tell us,--he _could not_ well tell us, in _popular_ language, what the true name of that height of learning is: he could not well name without circ.u.mlocution, that height which a scientific abstraction makes,--an abstraction that attains simplicity without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains as its result only a higher history,--a new and more intelligible reading of it,--a solution of it--that which is fixed and constant and accounts for it,--an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest, the universal history, that which accounts for all,--the equivalent,--the scientific equivalent of it.

But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the universal laws of G.o.d and nature,--laws that no dogma or conceit can alter,--all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air palace of the vain conceits of men;--it is going straight up, through that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,--the unity of which the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will make for itself if it cannot find it, which it _does_ make in ignorant ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic reality,--which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new learning also--but it is going to be henceforth the unity of knowledge--not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not belief merely,--knowledge, and not opinion, is _power_.

That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,--to show the absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to const.i.tute the universe beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which great nature has herself supplied us,--to correct the arrogance and specific bias of the human learning,--was the first attempt of the new logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' n.o.ble, indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice for us is _human_; but there are other dialects of the divine also,--there are n.o.bler creatures lodged with us, placed above us; with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities.

There is no speech or language where _their_ voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy--the philosophy of science--the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of the nature that is one in them,--the metaphysics of history.

'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies, exhibiting distinct individual _effects, according to individual_ LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,--_its investigation, discovery and development_--are the foundation _both of theory and practice_; this law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each _science_, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'

That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists.

Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first.

The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'--that so pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.

'There exists nothing in nature except _individual_ bodies, exhibiting distinct _individual_ effects, according to _individual laws_.' The concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the expense of its arrogance. n.o.body need undertake to abstract _those_ laws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly corresponds with them. That _correspondence_ is the point in the new metaphysics, and in the new logic;--_that_ was what was wanting in the old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in _every branch of learning_, are the foundation both of theory and practice. This law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each science, is what _we_ understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which _corresponds_ to it, in the human mind, the _parallel_ to it in the sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.

There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of man--the parallel to it in the sciences. When these _exactly correspond_, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are '_the idols_' of the new--the false deceiving images--which must be destroyed ere that which is fixed and constant _in nature_ can establish its own parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly a.s.signed in this criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is manifest that Plato, in his opinion of _ideas_, as one that had a wit of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not _confined_ and _determined_ by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that opinion'--this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, _unsuccessful_ groping in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues, concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of the subject, 'and _so_, turning _his opinion_ upon theology, wherewith all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected with 'opinion,'--no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice.

And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice.

'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in practical philosophy becomes the rule.'

But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields, in speculation _and_ practice. The black intolerable wall, which those who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge brought us up with so soon--that blank wall with which the inquiry for the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation--has no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which the knowledge of true forms creates--this true ground of _the understanding_, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.'

Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human relief, found here. For this is the _prima philosophia_, where the universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the philosopher himself--openly speaking from this summit--will venture to intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to establish and _preserve_ them is to reduce them _ad principia_, a rule in _religion_ and _nature, as well as in civil administration_?' There is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that waits for the science of _forms_ and constructions. But he proceeds: 'Was not the _Persian_ magic' [and that is the term which he proposes to restore for '_the part operative_' of this knowledge of forms], 'was not the Persian magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of _the principles_ and _architecture_ of _nature_ to the _rules_ and _policy_ of _governments_?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry; but the student of the _Zenda-vesta_ will be able to get, perhaps, some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term _magic_ is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground of _science_. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after extending these significant inquiries into other departments of practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which all other professions are nourished: '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.'

'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first of any, by my _universal being_.' _Michael de Montaigne_.] 'sets out from what is constant, eternal, and universal _in nature_; and opens such _broad_ paths to human _power_, as the thought of man can in the present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'

Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form, the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.

The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers us--this knowledge of what she is beforehand--the practical certainty which this _interior_ acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to command--that _comprehensive_ command of results which the knowledge of _the true causes_ involves--the causes which are always present in all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under all the difference--the '_power_' of _this knowledge_, its power to relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that 'wonder'--that is, 'the seed of knowledge'--brought forth _this_ plant, was _not_ one to overlook or make light of that want in the human soul, which only knowledge can appease--that love which leads it to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is her life.

'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an ident.i.ty between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of _dwelling_ upon abstractions, it is by far _the safest_ method to commence and build up sciences from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical division, _and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical_.'

Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke of making 'the art and practic part of life, _the mistress_ to its theoric;'--'let _that_ mark out and limit the theoretical.'

That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning, as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to reduce it to certain _empty_ and barren generalities, the mere husks and sh.e.l.ls of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of them, by the torture and _press_ of the method,--the mere outlines and skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map is, to direct the way between London and York.'

The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says, to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing here now in this question of the consuls.h.i.+p,--that so practical and immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out every other from the human consideration. If learning _had_ anything to offer on that subject, which would _not_ excite the scorn of practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.

We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly limited to that which the question of the play requires,--the practical question marks it out,--we have just as much as is required for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark the expression:--'it is by far the safest method to commence and build up sciences'--the particular sciences,--the branches of science--from _those foundations which bear a relation_ to the practical division.

We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is in a form which seems to offer it for amus.e.m.e.nt, rather than instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a learned treatise,--a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details, we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,--the solid continuity--that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is continued:--that trunk of universality which we are forbidden henceforth to _scorn_, because all the professions are nourished from it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic cl.u.s.ters within their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.' Clasping on the _magic_ robes for which they have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,--not of fifties,--not of hundreds,--not of thousands--sitting down by myriads, to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,--sitting down to this feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived, rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in, they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's question: _This_, so far as it goes at least, this is _truth_. And the rod of that enchantment was _plucked_ here. It is but a branch from this same trunk--this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of practice _will_ scorn no more, when once they reach the mult.i.tudinous boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the n.o.bler fruits, the more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.

Continued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops now _this_ branch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,--time mellowed,--ready to fall unshaken. Built on _that_ 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure, the doctrine of _the state_. That knowledge of nature in general, that _interior_ knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word, as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly.

It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter our--_Persian_. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is Nature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we are _within_, and the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude wind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and the poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our 'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract has laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is visible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked to the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time cleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced speech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart of nature, is _not_ the ventriloquist's artifice, is _not_ a poor showman's trick. It is great nature's voice--her own; and the magician who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the priest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart of her mystery--is 'the Interpreter.'

CHAPTER 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 cl.u.s.ters of ornament and delight, with their ripe underhanging cl.u.s.ters 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,--const.i.tutionally demands and 'antic.i.p.ates.'

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 a.n.a.lysis, 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 subst.i.tutes 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 _a 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 n.o.bility, and the scientific cure of the commonweal, it is tracked openly to its most immediate, obvious, practical application. In all these great 'ill.u.s.trated' 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion, 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, princ.i.p.ally 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 s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.s'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,--quant.i.ty, _excitement, concussion_, or the a.s.sistance, 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_.'