A man who, at the end of his career, could make such a profession as this —who felt the need of no further self-vindication than this—such a man, whatever may have been his accountability to the muse of Fiction, is a credit to England and to human nature, and deserves to be numbered among the darlings of mankind. It was an honor to be called his friend; and what his idea of friendship was, may be learned from the passage in which he speaks of his friend Millais—with the quotation of which this paper may fitly be concluded:—

"To see him has always been a pleasure; his voice has always been a sweet sound in my ears. Behind his back I have never heard him praised without joining the eulogist; I have never heard a word spoken against him without opposing the censurer. These words, should he ever see them, will come to him from the grave, and will tell him of my regard—as one living man never tells another."



CHAPTER VII.

MR. MALLOCK'S MISSING SCIENCE.

Before criticising Mr. Mallock's little essay, let us summarize its contents. The author begins with an analysis of the aims, the principles, and the "pseudo-science" of modern Democracy. Having established the evil and destructive character of these things, he sets himself to show by logical argument that the present state of social inequality, which Democrats wish to disturb, is a natural and wholesome state; that the continuance of civilization is dependent upon it; and that it could only be overturned by effecting a radical change—not in human institutions, but in human character. The desire for inequality is inherent in the human character; and in order to prove this statement, Mr. Mallock proceeds to affirm that there is such a thing as a science of human character; that of this science he is the discoverer; and that the application of this science to the question at issue will demonstrate the integrity of Mr. Mallock's views, and the infirmity of all others. In the ensuing chapters the application is made, and at the end the truth of the proposition is declared established.

This is the outline; but let us note some of the details. Mr. Mallock asserts (Chap. I.) that the aim of modern Democracy is to overturn "all that has hitherto been connected with high-breeding or with personal culture"; and that "to call the Democrats a set of thieves and confiscators is merely to apply names to them which they have no wish to repudiate." He maintains (Chap. II.) that the first and foremost of the Democratic principles is "that the perfection of society involves social equality"; and that "the luxury of one man means the deprivation of another." He credits the Democrats with arguing that "the means of producing equality are a series of changes in existing institutions"; that "by changing the institutions of a society we are able to change its structure"; that "the cause of the distribution of wealth" is "laws and forms of government"; and that "the wealthy classes, as such, are connected with wealth in no other way but as the accidental appropriators of it." In his third chapter he tells us that "the entire theory of modern Democracy ... depends on the doctrine that the cause of wealth is labor"; that Democrats believe we "may count on a man to labor, just as surely as we may count on a man to eat"; that "the man who does not labor is supported by the man who does"; and that the pseudo-science of modern Democracy "starts with the conception of man as containing in himself a natural tendency to labor." And here Mr. Mallock's statement of his opponent's position ends.

In the fourth chapter we are brought within sight of "The Missing Substitute." "A man's character," we are told, "divides into his desires on the one hand, and his capacities on the other"; and it is observed that "various as are men's desires and capacities, yet if talent and ambition commanded no more than idleness and stupidity, all men practically would be idle and stupid." "Men's capacities," we are reminded, "are practically unequal, because they develop their own potential inequalities; they do this because they desire to place themselves in unequal external circumstances,—which result the condition of society renders possible."

Coming now to the Science of Human Character itself, we find that it "asserts a permanent relationship to exist between human character and social inequality"; and the author then proceeds at some length to show how near Herbert Spencer, Buckle, and other social and economic philosophers, came to stumbling over his missing science, and yet avoided doing so. Nevertheless, argues Mr. Mallock, "if there be such a thing as a social science, or a science of history, there must be also a science of biography"; and this science, though it "cannot show us how any special man will act in the future," yet, if "any special action be given us, it can show us that it was produced by a special motive; and conversely, that if the special motive be wanting, the special action is sure to be wanting also." As an example how to distinguish between those traits of human character which are available for scientific purposes, and those which are not, Mr. Mallock instances a mob, which temporarily acts together for some given purpose: the individual differences of character then "cancel out," and only points of agreement are left. Proceeding to the sixth chapter, he applies himself to setting to rest the scruples of those who find something cynical in the idea that the desire for Inequality is compatible with a respectable form of human character. It is true, he says, that man does not live by bread alone; but he denies that he means to say "that all human activity is motived by the desire for inequality"; he would assert that only "of all productive labor, except the lowest." The only actions independent of the desire for inequality, however, are those performed in the name of art, science, philanthropy, and religion; and even in these cases, so far as the actions are not motived by a desire for inequality, they are not of productive use; and vice versa. In the remaining chapters, which we must dismiss briefly, we meet with such statements as "labor has been produced by an artificial creation of want of food, and by then supplying the want on certain conditions"; that "civilization has always been begun by an oppressive minority"; that "progress depends on certain gifted individuals," and therefore social equality would destroy progress; that inequality influences production by existing as an object of desire and as a means of pressure; that the evils of poverty are caused by want, not by inequality; and that, finally, equality is not the goal of progress, but of retrogression; that inequality is not an accidental evil of civilization, but the cause of its development; the distance of the poor from the rich is not the cause of the former's poverty as distinct from riches, but of their civilized competence as distinct from barbarism; and that the apparent changes in the direction of equality recorded in history, have been, in reality, none other than "a more efficient arrangement of inequalities."

* * * * *

Now, let us inquire what all this ingenious prattle about Inequality and the Science of Human Character amounts to. What does Mr. Mallock expect? His book has been out six months, and still Democracy exists. But does any such Democracy as he combats exist, or could it conceivably exist? Have his investigations of the human character failed to inform him that one of the strongest natural instincts of man's nature is immovably opposed to anything like an equal distribution of existing wealth?—because whoever owns anything, if it be only a coat, wishes to keep it; and that wish makes him aware that his fellow-man will wish to keep, and will keep at all hazards, whatever things belong to him. What Democrats really desire is to enable all men to have an equal chance to obtain wealth, instead of being, as is largely the case now, hampered and kept down by all manner of legal and arbitrary restrictions. As for the "desire for Inequality," it seems to exist chiefly in Mr. Mallock's imagination. Who does desire it? Does the man who "strikes" for higher wages desire it? Let us see. A strike, to be successful, must be not an individual act, but the act of a large body of men, all demanding the same thing—an increase in wages. If they gain their end, no difference has taken place in their mutual position; and their position in regard to their employers is altered only in that an approach has been made toward greater equality with the latter. And so in other departments of human effort: the aim, which the man who wishes to better his position sets before himself, is not to rise head and shoulders above his equals, but to equal his superiors. And as to the Socialist schemes for the reorganization of society, they imply, at most, a wish to see all men start fair in the race of life, the only advantages allowed being not those of rank or station, but solely of innate capacity. And the reason the Socialist desires this is, because he believes, rightly or wrongly, that many inefficient men are, at present, only artificially protected from betraying their inefficiency; and that many efficient men are only artificially prevented from showing their efficiency; and that the fair start he proposes would not result in keeping all men on a dead level, but would simply put those in command who had a genuine right to be there.

* * * * *

But this is taxing Mr. Mallock too seriously: he has not written in earnest. But, as his uncle, Mr. Froude, said, when reading "The New Republic,"—"The rogue is clever!" He has read a good deal, he has an active mind, a smooth redundancy of expression, a talent for caricature, a fondness for epigram and paradox, a useful shallowness, and an amusing impudence. He has no practical knowledge of mankind, no experience of life, no commanding point of view, and no depth of insight. He has no conception of the meaning and quality of the problems with whose exterior aspects he so prettily trifles. He has constructed a Science of Human Character without for one moment being aware that, for instance, human character and human nature are two distinct things; and that, furthermore, the one is everything that the other is not. As little is he conscious of the significance of the words "society" and "civilization"; nor can he explain whether, or why, either of them is desirable or undesirable, good or bad. He has never done, and (judging from his published works) we do not believe him capable of doing, any analytical or constructive thinking; at most, as in the present volume, he turns a few familiar objects upside down, and airily invites his audience to believe that he has thereby earned the name of Discoverer, if not of Creator.



CHAPTER VIII.

THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.

On an accessible book-shelf in my library, stand side by side four volumes whose contents I once knew by heart, and which, after the lapse of twenty years, are yet tolerably distinct in my memory. These are stoutly bound in purple muslin, with a stamp, of Persian design apparently, on the centre of each cover. They are stained and worn, and the backs have faded to a brownish hue, from exposure to the light, and a leaf in one of the volumes has been torn across; but the paper and the sewing and the clear bold type are still as serviceable as ever. The books seem to have been made to last,—to stand a great deal of reading. Contrasted with the aesthetically designed covers one sees nowadays, they would be considered inexcusably ugly, and the least popular novelist of our time would protest against having his lucubrations presented to the public in such plain attire. Nevertheless, on turning to the title-pages, you may see imprinted, on the first, "Fourteenth Edition"; on the second, "Twelfth Edition"; and on the others, indications somewhat less magnificent, but still evidence of very exceptional circulation. The date they bear is that of the first years of our civil war; and the first published of them is prefaced by a biographical memoir of the author, written by his friend George William Curtis. This memoir was originally printed in the Atlantic Monthly, two or three months after the death of its subject, Theodore Winthrop.

For these books,—three novels, and one volume of records of travel,—came from his hand, though they did not see the light until after he had passed beyond the sphere of authors and publishers. At that time, the country was in an exalted and heroic mood, and the men who went to fight its battles were regarded with a personal affection by no means restricted to their personal acquaintances. Their names were on all lips, and those of them who fell were mourned by multitudes instead of by individuals. Winthrop's historic name, and the influential position of some of his nearest friends, would have sufficed to bring into unusual prominence his brief career and his fate as a soldier, even had his intrinsic qualities and character been less honorable and winning than they were. But he was a type of a young American such as America is proud to own. He was high- minded, refined, gifted, handsome. I recollect a portrait of him published soon after his death,—a photograph, I think, from a crayon drawing; an eloquent, sensitive, rather melancholy, but manly and courageous face, with grave eyes, the mouth veiled by a long moustache. It was the kind of countenance one would wish our young heroes to have. When, after the catastrophe at Great Bethel, it became known that Winthrop had left writings behind him, it would have been strange indeed had not every one felt a desire to read them.

Moreover, he had already begun to be known as a writer. It was during 1860, I believe, that a story of his, in two instalments, entitled "Love on Skates," appeared in the "Atlantic." It was a brilliant and graphic celebration of the art of skating, engrafted on a love-tale as full of romance and movement as could be desired. Admirably told it was, as I recollect it; crisp with the healthy vigor of American wintry atmosphere, with bright touches of humor, and, here and there, passages of sentiment, half tender, half playful. It was something new in our literature, and gave promise of valuable work to come. But the writer was not destined to fulfil the promise. In the next year, from the camp of his regiment, he wrote one or two admirable descriptive sketches, touching upon the characteristic points of the campaigning life which had just begun; but, before the last of these had become familiar to the "Atlantic's" readers, it was known that it would be the last. Theodore Winthrop had been killed.

He was only in his thirty-third year. He was born in New Haven, and had entered Yale College with the class of '48. The Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity was, I believe, founded in the year of his admission, and he must, therefore, have been among its earliest members. He was distinguished as a scholar, and the traces of his classic and philosophical acquirements are everywhere visible in his books. During the five or six years following his graduation, he travelled abroad, and in the South and West; a wild frontier life had great attractions for him, as he who reads "John Brent" and "The Canoe and the Saddle" need not be told. He tried his hand at various things, but could settle himself to no profession,—an inability which would have excited no remark in England, which has had time to recognize the value of men of leisure, as such; but which seems to have perplexed some of his friends in this country. Be that as it may, no one had reason to complain of lack of energy and promptness on his part when patriotism revealed a path to Winthrop. He knew that the time for him had come; but he had also known that the world is not yet so large that all men, at all times, can lay their hands upon the work that is suitable for them to do.

Let us, however, return to the novels. They appear to have been written about 1856 and 1857, when their author was twenty-eight or nine years old. Of the order in which they were composed I have no record; but, judging from internal evidence, I should say that "Edwin Brothertoft" came first, then "Cecil Dreeme," and then "John Brent." The style, and the quality of thought, in the latter is more mature than in the others, and its tone is more fresh and wholesome. In the order of publication, "Cecil Dreeme" was first, and seems also to have been most widely read; then "John Brent," and then "Edwin Brothertoft," the scene of which was laid in the last century. I remember seeing, at the house of James T. Fields, their publisher, the manuscripts of these books, carefully bound and preserved. They were written on large ruled letter-paper, and the handwriting was very large, and had a considerable slope. There were scarcely any corrections or erasures; but it is possible that Winthrop made clean copies of his stories after composing them. Much of the dialogue, especially, bears evidence of having been revised, and of the author's having perhaps sacrificed ease and naturalness, here and there, to the craving for conciseness which has been one of the chief stumbling-blocks in the way of our young writers. He wished to avoid heaviness and "padding," and went to the other extreme. He wanted to cut loose from the old, stale traditions of composition, and to produce something which should be new, not only in character and significance, but in manner of presentation. He had the ambition of the young Hafiz, who professed a longing to "tear down this tiresome old sky." But the old sky has good reasons for being what and where it is, and young radicals finally come to perceive that, regarded from the proper point of view, and in the right spirit, it is not so tiresome after all. Divine Revelation itself can be expressed in very moderate and commonplace language; and if one's thoughts are worth thinking, they are worth clothing in adequate and serene attire.

But "culture," and literature with it, have made such surprising advances of late, that we are apt to forget how really primitive and unenlightened the generation was in which Winthrop wrote. Imagine a time when Mr. Henry James, Jr., and Mr. W. D. Howells had not been heard of; when Bret Harte was still hidden below the horizon of the far West; when no one suspected that a poet named Aldrich would ever write a story called "Marjorie Daw"; when, in England, "Adam Bede" and his successors were unborn;—a time of antiquity so remote, in short, that the mere possibility of a discussion upon the relative merit of the ideal and the realistic methods of fiction was undreamt of! What had an unfortunate novelist of those days to fall back upon? Unless he wished to expatriate himself, and follow submissively in the well worn steps of Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope, the only models he could look to were Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Foe, James Fenimore Cooper, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. "Elsie Venner" had scarcely made its appearance at that date. Irving and Cooper were, on the other hand, somewhat antiquated. Poe and Hawthorne were men of very peculiar genius, and, however deep the impression they have produced on our literature, they have never had, because they never can have, imitators. As for the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," she was a woman in the first place, and, in the second place, she sufficiently filled the field she had selected. A would-be novelist, therefore, possessed of ambition, and conscious of not being his own father or grandfather, saw an untrodden space before him, into which he must plunge without support and without guide. No wonder if, at the outset, he was a trifle awkward and ill-at-ease, and, like a raw recruit under fire, appeared affected from the very desire he felt to look unconcerned. It is much to his credit that he essayed the venture at all; and it is plain to be seen that, with each forward step he took, his self- possession and simplicity increased. If time had been given him, there is no reason to doubt that he might have been standing at the head of our champions of fiction to-day.

But time was not given him, and his work, like all other work, if it is to be judged at all, must be judged on its merits. He excelled most in passages descriptive of action; and the more vigorous and momentous the action, the better, invariably, was the description; he rose to the occasion, and was not defeated by it. Partly for this reason, "Cecil Dreeme," the most popular of his books, seems to me the least meritorious of them all. The story has little movement; it stagnates round Chrysalis College. The love intrigue is morbid and unwholesome, and the characters (which are seldom Winthrop's strong point) are more than usually artificial and unnatural. The dramatis personae are, indeed, little more than moral or immoral principles incarnate. There is no growth in them, no human variableness or complexity; it is "Every Man in his Humor" over again, with the humor left out. Densdeth is an impossible rascal; Churm, a scarcely more possible Rhadamanthine saint. Cecil Dreeme herself never fully recovers from the ambiguity forced upon her by her masculine attire; and Emma Denman could never have been both what we are told she was, and what she is described as being. As for Robert Byng, the supposed narrator of the tale, his name seems to have been given him in order wantonly to increase the confusion caused by the contradictory traits with which he is accredited. The whole atmosphere of the story is unreal, fantastic, obscure. An attempt is made to endow our poor, raw New York with something of the stormy and ominous mystery of the immemorial cities of Europe. The best feature of the book (morbidness aside) is the construction of the plot, which shows ingenuity and an artistic perception of the value of mystery and moral compensation. It recalls, in some respects, the design of Hawthorne's "Blithedale Romance,"—that is, had the latter never been written, the former would probably have been written differently. In spite of its faults, it is an interesting book, and, to the critical eye, there are in almost every chapter signs that indicate the possession of no ordinary gifts on the author's part. But it may be doubted whether the special circumstances under which it was published had not something to do with its wide popularity. I imagine "John Brent" to have been really much more popular, in the better sense; it was read and liked by a higher class of readers. It is young ladies and school-girls who swell the numbers of an "edition," and hence the difficulty in arguing from this as to the literary merit of the book itself.

"Edwin Brothertoft," though somewhat disjointed in construction, and jerky in style, is yet a picturesque and striking story; and the gallop of the hero across country and through the night to rescue from the burning house the woman who had been false to him, is vigorously described, and gives us some foretaste of the thrill of suspense and excitement we feel in reading the story of the famous "Gallop of three" in "John Brent." The writer's acquaintance with the history of the period is adequate, and a romantic and chivalrous tone is preserved throughout the volume. It is worth noting that, in all three of Winthrop's novels, a horse bears a part in the crisis of the tale. In "Cecil Dreeme" it is Churm's pair of trotters that convey the party of rescuers to the private Insane Asylum in which Densdeth had confined the heroine. In "Edwin Brothertoft," it is one of Edwin's renowned breed of white horses that carries him through almost insuperable obstacles to his goal. In "John Brent," the black stallion, Don Fulano, who is throughout the chief figure in the book, reaches his apogee in the tremendous race across the plains and down the rocky gorge of the mountains, to where the abductors of the heroine are just about to pitch their camp at the end of their day's journey. The motive is fine and artistic, and, in each of the books, these incidents are as good as, or better then, anything else in the narrative.

"John Brent" is, in fact, full enough of merit to more than redeem its defects. The self-consciousness of the writer is less noticeable than in the other works, and the effort to be epigrammatic, short, sharp, and "telling" in style, is considerably modified. The interest is lively, continuous, and cumulative; and there is just enough tragedy in the story to make the happy ending all the happier. It was a novel and adventurous idea to make a horse the hero of a tale, and the manner in which the idea is carried out more than justifies the hazard. Winthrop, as we know, was an ideal horseman, and knows what he is writing about. He contrives to realize Don Fulano for us, in spite of the almost supernatural powers and intelligence that he ascribes to the gallant animal. One is willing to stretch a point of probability when such a dashing and inspiring end is in view. In the present day we are getting a little tired of being brought to account, at every turn, by Old Prob., who tyrannizes over literature quite as much as over the weather. Theodore Winthrop's inspiration, in this instance at least, was strong and genuine enough to enable him to feel what he was telling as the truth, and therefore it produces an effect of truth upon the reader. How distinctly every incident of that ride remains stamped on the memory, even after so long an interval as has elapsed since it was written! And I recollect that one of the youthful devourers of this book, who was of an artistic turn, was moved to paint three little water- color pictures of the Gallop; the first showing the three horses,—the White, the Gray, and the Black, scouring across the prairie, towards the barrier of mountains behind which the sun was setting; the second depicting Don Fulano, with Dick Wade and John Brent on his back, plunging down the gorge upon the abductors, one of whom had just pulled the trigger of his rifle; while the third gives the scene in which the heroic horse receives his death-wound in carrying the fugitive across the creek away from his pursuers. At this distance of time, I am unable to bear any testimony as to the technical value of the little pictures; I am inclined to fancy that they would have to be taken cum grano amoris, as they certainly were executed con amore. But, however that may be, the instance (which was doubtless only one of many analogous to it) shows that Winthrop possessed the faculty of stimulating and electrifying the imagination of his readers, which all our recent improvements in the art and artifice of composition have not made too common, and for which, if for nothing else, we might well feel indebted to him.



CHAPTER IX.

EMERSON AS AN AMERICAN.

It is not with Americans as with other peoples. Our position is more vague and difficult, because it is not primarily related to the senses. I can easily find out where England or Prussia is, and recognize an Englishman or German when we meet; but we Americans are not, to the same extent as these, limited by geographical and physical boundaries. The origin of America was not like that of the European nations; the latter were born after the flesh, but we after the spirit. It is of the first consequence to them that their frontiers should be defended, and their nationality kept distinct. But, though I esteem highly all our innumerable square miles of East and West, North and South, and our Pacific and Atlantic coasts, I cannot help deeming them quite a secondary consideration. If America is not a great deal more than these United States, then the United States are no better than a penal colony. It is convenient, no doubt, for a great idea to find a great embodiment—a suitable incarnation and stage; but the idea does not depend upon these things. It is an accidental—or, I would rather say, a Providential—matter that the Puritans came to New England, or that Columbus discovered the continent in time for them; but it has always happened that when a soul is born it finds a body ready fitted to it. The body, however, is an instrument merely; it enables the spirit to take hold of its mortal life, just as the hilt enables us to grasp the sword. If the Puritans had not come to New England, still the spirit that animated them would have lived, and made itself a place somehow. And, in fact, how many Puritans, for how many ages previous, had been trying to find standing-room in the world, and failed! They called themselves by many names; their voices were heard in many countries; the time had not yet come for them to be born—to touch their earthly inheritance; but, meantime, the latent impetus was accumulating, and the Mayflower was driven across the Atlantic by it at last. Nor is this all— the Mayflower is sailing still between the old world and the new. Every day it brings new settlers, if not to our material harbors—to our Boston Bay, our Castle Garden, our Golden Gate—at any rate, to our mental ports and wharves. We cannot take up a European newspaper without finding an American idea in it. It is said that a great many of our countrymen take the steamer to England every summer. But they come back again; and they bring with them many who come to stay. I do not refer specially to the occupants of the steerage—the literal emigrants. One cannot say much about them—they may be Americans or not, as it turns out. But England and the continent are full of Americans who were born there, and many of whom will die there. Sometimes they are better Americans than the New Yorker or the Bostonian who lives in Beacon Street or the Bowery and votes in the elections. They may be born and reside where they please, but they belong to us, and, in the better sense, they are among us. Broadway and Washington Street, Vermont and Colorado extend all over Europe. Russia is covered with them; she tries to shove them away to Siberia, but in vain. We call mountains and prairies solid facts; but the geography of the mind is infinitely more stubborn. I dare say there are a great many oblique- eyed, pig-tailed New Englanders in the Celestial Empire. They may never have visited these shores, or even heard of them; but what of that? They think our thought—they have apprehended our idea, and, by and by, they or their heirs will cause it to prevail.

It is useless for us to hide our heads in the grass and refuse to rise to the height of our occasion. We are here as the realization of a truth—the fulfilment of a prophecy; we must attest a new departure in the moral and intellectual development of the human race; for whichever of us does not, must suffer annihilation. If I deny my birthright as an American, I shall disappear and not be missed, for an American will take my place. It is not altogether a luxurious position to find yourself in. You cannot sit still and hold your hands. All manner of hard and unpleasant things are expected of you, which you neglect at your peril. It is like the old fable of the mermaid. She loved a mortal youth, and, in order that she might win his affection, she prayed that she might have the limbs and feet of a human maiden. Her prayer was answered, and she met her prince; but every step she took was as if she trod on razors. It is a fine thing to sit in your chair and reflect on being an American; but when you have to rise up and do an American's duty before the world—how sharp the razors are!

Of course, we do not always endure the test; the flesh and blood on this side of the planet is not, so far as I have observed, of a quality essentially different from that on the other. Possibly our population is too many for us. Out of fifty million people it would be strange if here and there one appeared who was not at all points a hero. Indeed, I am sometimes tempted to think that that little band of original Mayflower Pilgrims has not greatly multiplied since their disembarkation. However it may be with their bodily offspring, their spiritual progeny are not invariably found in the chair of the Governor or on the floor of the Senate. What are these Irish fellow-creatures doing here? Well, Bridget serves us in the kitchen; but Patrick is more helpful yet; he goes to the legislature, and is the servant of the people at large. It is very obliging of him; but turn and turn about is fair play; and it would be no more than justice were we, once in a while, to take off our coat and serve Patrick in the same way.

When we get into a tight place we are apt to try to slip out of it under some plea of a European precedent. But it used to be supposed that it was precisely European precedents that we came over here to avoid. I am not profoundly versed in political economy, nor is this the time or place to discuss its principles; but, as regards protection, for example, I can conceive that there may be arguments against it as well as for it. Emerson used to say that the way to conquer the foreign artisan was not to kill him but to beat his work. He also pointed out that the money we made out of the European wars, at the beginning of this century, had the result of bringing the impoverished population of those countries down upon us in the shape of emigrants. They shared our crops and went on the poor-rates, and so we did not gain so much after all. One cannot help wishing that America would assume the loftiest possible ground in her political and commercial relations. With all due respect to the sagacity and ability of our ruling demagogues, I should not wish them to be quoted as typical Americans. The domination of such persons has an effect which is by no means measurable by their personal acts. What they can do is of infinitesimal importance. But the mischief is that they incline every one of us to believe, as Emerson puts it, in two gods. They make the morality of Wall Street and the White House seem to be a different thing from that of our parlors and nurseries. "He may be a little shady on 'change," we say, "but he is a capital fellow when you know him." But if he is a capital fellow when I know him, then I shall never find much fault with his professional operations, and shall end, perhaps, by allowing him to make some investments for me. Why should not I be a capital fellow too— and a fellow of capital, to boot! I can endure public opprobrium with tolerable equanimity so long as it remains public. It is the private cold looks that trouble me.

In short, we may speak of America in two senses—either meaning the America that actually meets us at the street corners and in the newspapers, or the ideal America—America as it ought to be. They are not the same thing; and, at present, there seems to be a good deal more of the former than of the latter. And yet, there is a connection between them; the latter has made the former possible. We sometimes see a great crowd drawn together by proclamation, for some noble purpose—to decide upon a righteous war, or to pass a just decree. But the people on the outskirts of the crowd, finding themselves unable to hear the orators, and their time hanging idle on their hands, take to throwing stones, knocking off hats, or, perhaps, picking pockets. They may have come to the meeting with as patriotic or virtuous intentions as the promoters themselves; nay, under more favorable circumstances, they might themselves have become promoters. Virtue and patriotism are not private property; at certain times any one may possess them. And, on the other hand, we have seen examples enough, of late, of persons of the highest respectability and trust turning out, all at once, to be very sorry scoundrels. A man changes according to the person with whom he converses; and though the outlook is rather sordid to-day, we have not forgotten that during the Civil War the air seemed full of heroism. So that these two Americas—the real and the ideal—far apart though they may be in one sense, may, in another sense, be as near together as our right hand to our left. In a greater or less degree, they exist side by side in each one of us. But civil wars do not come every day; nor can we wish them to, even to show us once more that we are worthy of our destiny. We must find some less expensive and quieter method of reminding ourselves of that. And of such methods, none, perhaps, is better than to review the lives of Americans who were truly great; to ask what their country meant to them; what they wished her to become; what virtues and what vices they detected in her. Passion may be generous, but passion cannot last; and when it is over, we are cold and indifferent again. But reason and example reach us when we are calm and passive; and what they inculcate is more likely to abide. At least, it will be only evil passion that can cast it out.

I have said that many a true American is doubtless born, and lives, abroad; but that does not prevent Emerson from having been born here. So far as the outward accidents of generation and descent go, he could not have been more American than he was. Of course, one prefers that it should be so. A rare gem should be fitly set. A noble poem should be printed with the fairest type of the Riverside Press, and upon fine paper with wide margins. It helps us to believe in ourselves to be told that Emerson's ancestry was not only Puritan, but clerical; that the central and vital thread of the idea that created us, ran through his heart. The nation, and even New England, Massachusetts, Boston, have many traits that are not found in him; but there is nothing in him that is not a refinement, a sublimation and concentration of what is good in them; and the selection and grouping of the elements are such that he is a typical figure. Indeed, he is all type; which is the same as saying that there is nobody like him. And, mentally, he produces the impression of being all force; in his writings, his mind seems to have acted immediately, without natural impediment or friction; as if a machine should be run that was not hindered by the contact of its parts. As he was physically lean and narrow of figure, and his face nothing but so many features welded together, so there was no adipose tissue in his thought. It is pure, clear, and accurate, and has the fault of dryness; but often moves in forms of exquisite beauty. It is not adhesive; it sticks to nothing, nor anything to it; after ranging through all the various philosophies of the world, it comes out as clean and characteristic as ever. It has numberless affinities, but no adhesion; it does not even adhere to itself. There are many separate statements in any one of his essays which present no logical continuity; but although this fact has caused great anxiety to many disciples of Emerson, it never troubled him. It was the inevitable result of his method of thought. Wandering at will in the flower-garden of religious and moral philosophy, it was his part to pluck such blossoms as he saw were beautiful; not to find out their botanical interconnection. He would afterward arrange them, for art or harmony's sake, according to their color or their fragrance; but it was not his affair to go any farther in their classification.

This intuitive method of his, however little it may satisfy those who wish to have all their thinking done for them, who desire not only to have given to them all the cities of the earth, but also to have straight roads built for them from one to the other, carries with it its own justification. "There is but one reason," is Emerson's saying; and again and again does he prove without proving it. We confess, over and over, that the truth which he asserts is indeed a truth. Even his own variations from the truth, when he is betrayed into them, serve to confirm the rule. For these are seldom or never intuitions at first hand—pure intuitions; but, as it were, intuitions from previous intuitions—deductions. The form of statement is the same, but the source is different; they are from Emerson, instead of from the Absolute; tinted, not colorless. They show a mental bias, very slight, but redeeming him back to humanity. We love him the more for them, because they indicate that for him, too, there was a choice of ways, and that he must struggle and watch to choose the right.

We are so much wedded to systems, and so accustomed to connect a system with a man, that the absence of system, either explicit or implicit, in Emerson, strikes us as a defect. And yet truth has no system, nor the human mind. This philosopher maintains one, that another thesis. Both are true essentially, and yet there seems a contradiction between them. We cannot bear to be illogical, and so we enlist some under this banner, some under that. By so doing we sacrifice to consistency at least the half of truth. Thence we come to examine our intuitions, and ask them, not whether they are true in themselves, but what are their tendencies. If it turn out that they will lead us to stultify some past conclusion to which we stand committed, we drop them like hot coals. To Emerson, this behavior appeared the nakedest personal vanity. Recognizing that he was finite, he could not desire to be consistent. If he saw to-day that one thing was true, and to- morrow that its opposite was true, was it for him to elect which of the two truths should have his preference? No; to reject either would be to reject all; it belonged to God alone to reconcile these contradictious. Between infinite and finite can be no ratio; and the consistency of the Creator implies the inconsistency of the creature.

Emerson's Americanism, therefore, was Americanism in its last and purest analysis, which is giving him high praise, and to America great hope. But I do not mean to pay him, who was so full of modesty and humility, the ungrateful compliment of holding him up as the permanent American ideal. It is his tendencies, his quality, that are valuable, and only in a minor, incipient degree his actual results. All human results must be strictly limited, and according to the epoch and outlook. Emerson does not solve for all time the problem of the universe; he solves nothing; but he does what is far more useful—he gives a direction and an impetus to lofty human endeavor. He does not anticipate the lessons and the discipline of the ages, but he shows us how to deal with circumstances in such a manner as to secure the good instead of the evil influence. New conditions, fresh discoveries, unexpected horizons opening before us, will, no doubt, soon carry us beyond the scope of Emerson's surmise; but we shall not so easily improve upon his aim and attitude. In the spaces beyond the stars there may be marvels such as it has not entered into the mind of man to conceive; but there, as here, the right way to look will still be upward, and the right aspiration be still toward humbleness and charity. I have just spoken of Emerson's absence of system; but his writings have nevertheless a singular coherence, by virtue of the single-hearted motive that has inspired them. Many will, doubtless, have noticed, as I have done, how the whole of Emerson illustrates every aspect of him.

Whether your discourse be of his religion, of his ethics, of his relation to society, or what not, the picture that you draw will have gained color and form from every page that he has written. He does not lie in strata; all that he is permeates all that he has done. His books cannot be indexed, unless you would refer every subject to each paragraph. And so he cannot treat, no matter what subject, without incorporating in his statement the germs at least of all that he has thought and believed. In this respect he is like light—the presence of the general at the particular. And, to confess the truth, I find myself somewhat loath to diffract this pure ray to the arbitrary end of my special topic. Why should I speak of him as an American? That is not his definition. He was an American because he was himself. America, however, gives less limitation than any other nationality to a generous and serene personality.

I am sometimes disposed to think that Emerson's "English Traits" reveal his American traits more than anything else he has written. We are described by our own criticisms of others, and especially by our criticisms of another nation; the exceptions we take are the mould of our own figures. So we have valuable glimpses of Emerson's contours throughout this volume. And it is in all respects a fortunate work; as remarkable a one almost for him to write as a volume of his essays for any one else. Comparatively to his other books, it is as flesh and blood to spirit; Emersonian flesh and blood, it is true, and semi-translucent; but still it completes the man for us: he would have remained too problematical without it. Those who have never personally known him may finish and solidify their impressions of him here. He likes England and the English, too; and that sympathy is beyond our expectation of the mind that evolved "Nature" and "The Over-Soul." The grasp of his hand, I remember, was firm and stout, and we perceive those qualities in the descriptions and cordiality of "English Traits." Then, it is an objective book; the eye looks outward, not inward; these pages afford a basis not elsewhere obtainable of comparing his general human faculty with that of other men. Here he descends from the airy heights he treads so easily and, standing foot to foot with his peers, measures himself against them. He intends only to report their stature, and to leave himself out of the story; but their answers to his questions show what the questions were, and what the questioner. And we cannot help suspecting, though he did not, that the Englishmen were not a little put to it to keep pace with their clear- faced, penetrating, attentive visitor.

He has never said of his own countrymen the comfortable things that he tells of the English; but we need not grumble at that. The father who is severe with his own children will freely admire those of others, for whom he is not responsible. Emerson is stern toward what we are, and arduous indeed in his estimate of what we ought to be. He intimates that we are not quite worthy of our continent; that we have not as yet lived up to our blue china. "In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not." And he adds that even our more presentable public acts are due to a money- making spirit: "The benefaction derived in Illinois and the great West from railroads is inestimable, and vastly exceeding any intentional philanthropy on record." He does not think very respectfully of the designs or the doings of the people who went to California in 1849, though he admits that "California gets civilized in this immoral way," and is fain to suppose that, "as there is use in the world for poisons, so the world cannot move without rogues," and that, in respect of America, "the huge animals nourish huge parasites, and the rancor of the disease attests the strength of the constitution." He ridicules our unsuspecting provincialism: "Have you seen the dozen great men of New York and Boston? Then you may as well die!" He does not spare our tendency to spread- eagleism and declamation, and having quoted a shrewd foreigner as saying of Americans that, "Whatever they say has a little the air of a speech," he proceeds to speculate whether "the American forest has refreshed some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just ready to die out?" He finds the foible especially of American youth to be—pretension; and remarks, suggestively, that we talk much about the key of the age, but "the key to all ages is imbecility!" He cannot reconcile himself to the mania for going abroad. "There is a restlessness in our people that argues want of character.... Can we never extract this tapeworm of Europe from the brain of our countrymen?" He finds, however, this involuntary compensation in the practice—that, practically "we go to Europe to be Americanized," and has faith that "one day we shall cast out the passion for Europe by the passion for America." As to our political doings, he can never regard them with complacency. "Politics is an afterword," he declares—"a poor patching. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education." He sympathizes with Lovelace's theory as to iron bars and stone walls, and holds that freedom and slavery are inward, not outward conditions. Slavery is not in circumstance, but in feeling; you cannot eradicate the irons by external restrictions; and the truest way to emancipate the slave would be to educate him to a comprehension of his inviolable dignity and freedom as a human being. Amelioration of outward circumstances will be the effect, but can never be the means of mental and moral improvement. "Nothing is more disgusting," he affirms, generalizing the theme, "than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a 'Declaration of Independence' or the statute right to vote." But, "Our America has a bad name for superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terrors of life, and have nerved themselves to face it." He will not be deceived by the clamor of blatant reformers. "If an angry bigot assumes the bountiful cause of abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him: 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest; have that grace, and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off!'"

He does not shrink from questioning the validity of some of our pet institutions, as, for instance, universal suffrage. He reminds us that in old Egypt the vote of a prophet was reckoned equal to one hundred hands, and records his opinion that it was much underestimated. "Shall we, then," he asks, "judge a country by the majority or by the minority? By the minority, surely! 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time." The majority are unripe, and do not yet know their own opinion. He would not, however, counsel an organic alteration in this respect, believing that, with the progress of enlightenment, such coarse constructions of human rights will adjust themselves. He concedes the sagacity of the Fultons and Watts of politics, who, noticing that the opinion of the million was the terror of the world, grouped it on a level, instead of piling it into a mountain, and so contrived to make of this terror the most harmless and energetic form of a State. But, again, he would not have us regard the State as a finality, or as relieving any man of his individual responsibility for his actions and purposes. We are to confide in God—and not in our money, and in the State because it is guard of it. The Union itself has no basis but the good pleasure of the majority to be united. The wise and just men impart strength to the State, not receive it; and, if all went down, they and their like would soon combine in a new and better constitution. Yet he will not have us forget that only by the supernatural is a man strong; nothing so weak as an egotist. We are mighty only as vehicles of a truth before which State and individual are alike ephemeral. In this sense we, like other nations, shall have our kings and nobles—the leading and inspiration of the best; and he who would become a member of that nobility must obey his heart.

Government, he observes, has been a fossil—it should be a plant; statute law should express, not impede, the mind of mankind. In tracing the course of human political institutions, he finds feudalism succeeding monarchy, and this again followed by trade, the good and evil of which is that it would put everything in the market, talent, beauty, virtue, and man himself. By this means it has done its work; it has faults and will end as the others. Its aristocracy need not be feared, for it can have no permanence, it is not entailed. In the time to come, he hopes to see us less anxious to be governed, in the technical sense; each man shall govern himself in the interests of all; government without any governor will be, for the first time, adamantine. Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious; conservatism stands on man's limitations, reform on his infinitude. The age of the quadruped is to go out; the age of the brain and the heart is to come in. We are too pettifogging and imitative in our legislative conceptions; the Legislature of this country should become more catholic and cosmopolitan than any other. Let us be brave and strong enough to trust in humanity; strong natures are inevitable patriots. The time, the age, what is that, but a few prominent persons and a few active persons who epitomize the times? There is a bribe possible for any finite will; but the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite force, and cannot be bribed or bent. The world wants saviors and religions; society is servile from want of will; but there is a Destiny by which the human race is guided, the race never dying, the individual never spared; its law is, you shall have everything as a member, nothing to yourself. Referring to the communities of various kinds, which were so much in vogue some years ago, he holds such to be valuable, not for what they have done, but for the indication they give of the revolution that is on the way. They place great faith in mutual support, but it is only as a man puts off from himself all external support and stands alone, that he is strong and will prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. A man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or a mountain. He must not shun whatever comes to him in the way of duty; the only path of escape is—performance. He must rely on Providence, but not in a timid or ecclesiastical spirit; it is no use to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student of divinity. We shall come out well, whatever personal or political disasters may intervene. For here in America is the home of man. After deducting our pitiful politics—shall John or Jonathan sit in the chair and hold the purse?—and making due allowance for our frivolities and insanities, there still remains an organic simplicity and liberty, which, when it loses its balance, redresses itself presently, and which offers to the human mind opportunities not known elsewhere.

Whenever he touches upon the fundamental elements of social and rational life, it is always to enlarge and illuminate our conception of them. We are not wont to question the propriety of the sentiment of patriotism, for instance. We are to swear by our own lares and penates, and stand up for the American eagle, right or wrong. But Emerson instantly goes beneath this interpretation and exposes its crudity. The true sense of patriotism, according to him, is almost the reverse of its popular sense. He has no sympathy with that boyish egotism, hoarse with cheering for our side, for our State, for our town; the right patriotism consists in the delight which springs from contributing our peculiar and legitimate advantages to the benefit of humanity. Every foot of soil has its proper quality; the grape on two sides of the fence has new flavors; and so every acre on the globe, every family of men, every point of climate, has its distinguishing virtues. This being admitted, however, Emerson will yield in patriotism to no one; his only concern is that the advantages we contribute shall be the most instead of the least possible. "This country," he says, "does not lie here in the sun causeless, and though it may not be easy to define its influence, men feel already its emancipating quality in the careless self- reliance of the manners, in the freedom of thought, in the direct roads by which grievances are reached and redressed, and even in the reckless and sinister politics, not less than in purer expressions. Bad as it is, this freedom leads onward and upward to a Columbia of thought and art, which is the last and endless end of Columbus's adventure." Nor is this poet of virtue and philosophy ever more truly patriotic, from his spiritual standpoint, than when he throws scorn and indignation upon his country's sins and frailties. "But who is he that prates of the culture of mankind, of better arts and life? Go, blind worm, go—behold the famous States harrying Mexico with rifle and with knife! Or who, with accent bolder, dare praise the freedom-loving mountaineer? I found by thee, O rushing Contoocook! and in thy valleys, Agiochook! the jackals of the negro- holder.... What boots thy zeal, O glowing friend, that would indignant rend the northland from the South? Wherefore? To what good end? Boston Bay and Bunker Hill would serve things still—things are of the snake. The horseman serves the horse, the neat-herd serves the neat, the merchant serves the purse, the eater serves his meat; 'tis the day of the chattel, web to weave, and corn to grind; things are in the saddle, and ride mankind!"

But I must not begin to quote Emerson's poetry; only it is worth noting that he, whose verse is uniformly so abstractly and intellectually beautiful, kindles to passion whenever his theme is of America. The loftiest patriotism never found more ardent and eloquent expression than in the hymn sung at the completion of the Concord monument, on the 19th of April, 1836. There is no rancor in it; no taunt of triumph; "the foe long since in silence slept"; but throughout there resounds a note of pure and deep rejoicing at the victory of justice over oppression, which Concord fight so aptly symbolized. In "Hamatreya" and "The Earth Song," another chord is struck, of calm, laconic irony. Shall we too, he asks, we Yankee farmers, descendants of the men who gave up all for freedom, go back to the creed outworn of medieval feudalism and aristocracy, and say, of the land that yields us its produce, "'Tis mine, my children's, and my name's"? Earth laughs in flowers at our boyish boastfulness, and asks "How am I theirs if they cannot hold me, but I hold them?" "When I heard 'The Earth Song,' I was no longer brave; my avarice cooled, like lust in the child of the grave" Or read "Monadnoc," and mark the insight and the power with which the significance and worth of the great facts of nature are interpreted and stated. "Complement of human kind, having us at vantage still, our sumptuous indigence, oh, barren mound, thy plenties fill! We fool and prate; thou art silent and sedate. To myriad kinds and times one sense the constant mountain doth dispense; shedding on all its snows and leaves, one joy it joys, one grief it grieves. Thou seest, oh, watchman tall, our towns and races grow and fall, and imagest the stable good for which we all our lifetime grope; and though the substance us elude, we in thee the shadow find." ... "Thou dost supply the shortness of our days, and promise, on thy Founder's truth, long morrow to this mortal youth!" I have ignored the versified form in these extracts, in order to bring them into more direct contrast with the writer's prose, and show that the poetry is inherent. No other poet, with whom I am acquainted, has caused the very spirit of a land, the mother of men, to express itself so adequately as Emerson has done in these pieces. Whitman falls short of them, it seems to me, though his effort is greater.

Emerson is continually urging us to give heed to this grand voice of hills and streams, and to mould ourselves upon its suggestions. The difficulty and the anomaly are that we are not native; that England is our mother, quite as much as Monadnoc; that we are heirs of memories and traditions reaching far beyond the times and the confines of the Republic. We cannot assume the splendid childlikeness of the great primitive races, and exhibit the hairy strength and unconscious genius that the poet longs to find in us. He remarks somewhere that the culminating period of good in nature and the world is in just that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astringency or acidity is got out by ethics and humanity.

It was at such a period that Greece attained her apogee; but our experience, it seems to me, must needs be different. Our story is not of birth, but of regeneration, a far more subtle and less obvious transaction. The Homeric California of which Bret Harte is the reporter does not seem to me in the closest sense American. It is a comparatively superficial matter—this savage freedom and raw poetry; it belongs to all pioneering life, where every man must stand for himself, and Judge Lynch strings up the defaulter to the nearest tree. But we are only incidentally pioneers in this sense; and the characteristics thus impressed upon us will leave no traces in the completed American. "A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont," says Emerson, "who in turn tries all the professions—who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet—is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not studying a 'profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already." That is stirringly said: but, as a matter of fact, most of the Americans whom we recognize as great did not have such a history; nor, if they had it, would they be on that account more American. On the other hand, the careers of men like Jim Fiske and Commodore Vanderbilt might serve very well as illustrations of the above sketch. If we must wait for our character until our geographical advantages and the absence of social distinctions manufacture it for us, we are likely to remain a long while in suspense. When our foreign visitors begin to evince a more poignant interest in Concord and Fifth Avenue than in the Mississippi and the Yellowstone, it may be an indication to us that we are assuming our proper position relative to our physical environment. "The land," says Emerson, "is a sanative and Americanizing influence which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come." Well, when we are virtuous, we may, perhaps, spare our own blushes by allowing our topography, symbolically, to celebrate us, and when our admirers would worship the purity of our intentions, refer them to Walden Pond; or to Mount Shasta, when they would expatiate upon our lofty generosity. It is, perhaps, true, meanwhile, that the chances of a man's leading a decent life are greater in a palace than in a pigsty.

But this is holding our author too strictly to the letter of his message. And, at any rate, the Americanism of Emerson is better than anything that he has said in vindication of it. He is the champion of this commonwealth; he is our future, living in our present, and showing the world, by anticipation, as it were, what sort of excellence we are capable of attaining. A nation that has produced Emerson, and can recognize in him bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh—and, still more, spirit of her spirit—that nation may look toward the coming age with security. But he has done more than thus to prophesy of his country; he is electric and stimulates us to fulfil our destiny. To use a phrase of his own, we "cannot hear of personal vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution." Emerson, helps us most in provoking us to help ourselves. The pleasantest revenge is that which we can sometimes take upon our great men in quoting of themselves what they have said of others.

It is easy to be so revenged upon Emerson, because he, more than most persons of such eminence, has been generous and cordial in his appreciation of all human worth. "If there should appear in the company," he observes, "some gentle soul who knows little of persons and parties, of Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that man liberates me.... I am made immortal by apprehending my possession of incorruptible goods." Who can state the mission and effect of Emerson more tersely and aptly than those words do it?

But, once more, he does not desire eulogiums, and it seems half ungenerous to force them upon him now that he can no longer defend himself. I prefer to conclude by repeating a passage characteristic of him both as a man and as an American, and which, perhaps, conveys a sounder and healthier criticism, both for us and for him, than any mere abject and nerveless admiration; for great men are great only in so far as they liberate us, and we undo their work in courting their tyranny. The passage runs thus:—

"Let me remind the reader that I am only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts to me are sacred; none are profane. I simply experiment—an endless seeker, with no Past at my back!"



CHAPTER X.

MODERN MAGIC.

Human nature enjoys nothing better than to wonder—to be mystified; and it thanks and remembers those who have the skill to gratify this craving. The magicians of old knew that truth and conducted themselves accordingly. But our modern wonder-workers fail of their due influence, because, not content to perform their marvels, they go on to explain them. Merlin and Roger Bacon were greater public benefactors than Morse and Edison. Man is —and he always has been and will be—something else besides a pure intelligence: and science, in order to become really popular, must contrive to touch man somewhere else besides on the purely intellectual side: it must remember that man is all heart, all hope, all fear, and all foolishness, quite as much as he is all brains. Otherwise, science can never expect to take the place of superstition, much less of religion, in mankind's affection. In order to be a really successful man of science, it is first of all indispensable to make one's self master of everything in nature and in human nature that science is not.

What must one do, in short, in order to become a magician? I use the term, here, in its weightiest sense. How to make myself visible and invisible at will? How to present myself in two or more places at once? How answer your question before you ask it, and describe to you your most secret thoughts and actions? How shall I call spirits from the vasty deep, and make you see and hear and feel them? How paralyze your strength with a look, heal your wound with a touch, or cause your bullet to rebound harmless from my unprotected flesh? How shall I walk on the air, sink through the earth, pass through stone walls, or walk, dry-shod, on the floor of the ocean? How shall I visit the other side of the moon, jump through the ring of Saturn, and gather sunflowers in Sirius? There are persons now living who profess to do no less remarkable feats, and to regard them as incidental merely to achievements far more important. A school of hierophants or adepts is said to exist in Tibet, who, as a matter of daily routine, quite transcend everything that we have been accustomed to consider natural possibility. What is the course of study, what are the ways and means whereby such persons accomplish such results?

The conventional attitude towards such matters is, of course, that of unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I must confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural. The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: they cannot really exist or take place. Let us be sure, however, that we are agreed as to what supernatural means. If a magician, before my eyes, transformed an old man into a little girl, I should call that supernatural; and nothing should convince me that my senses had not been grossly deceived. But were the magician to leave the room by passing through the solid wall, or "go out" like an exploding soap-bubble,—I might think what I please, but I should not venture to dogmatically pronounce the thing supernatural; because the phenomenon known as "matter" is scientifically unknown, and therefore no one can tell what modifications it may not be susceptible of:—no one, that is to say, except the person who, like the magician of our illustration, professes to possess, and (for aught I can affirm to the contrary) may actually possess a knowledge unshared by the bulk of mankind. The transformation of an old man into a little girl, on the other hand, would be a transaction involving the immaterial soul as well as the material body; and if I do not know that that cannot take place, I am forever incapable of knowing anything. These are extreme examples, but they serve to emphasize an important distinction.

The whole domain of magic, in short, occupies that anomalous neutral ground that intervenes between the facts of our senses and the truths of our intuitions. Fact and truth are not convertible terms; they abide in two distinct planes, like thought and speech, or soul and body; one may imply or involve the other, but can never demonstrate it. Experience and intuition together comprehend the entire realm of actual and conceivable knowledge. Whatever contradicts both experience and intuition may, therefore, be pronounced illusion. But this neutral ground is the home of phenomena which intuition does not deny, and which experience has not confirmed. It is still a wide zone, though not so wide as it was a hundred years ago, or fifty, or even ten. It narrows every day, as science, or the classification of experience, expands. Are we, then, to look for a time when the zone shall have dwindled to a mathematical line, and magic confess itself to have been nothing but the science of an advanced school of investigators? Will the human intellect acquire a power before which all mysteries shall become transparent? Let us dwell upon this question a little longer.

A mystery that is a mystery can never, humanly speaking, become anything else. Instances of such mysteries can readily be adduced. The universe itself is built upon them and is the greatest of them. They lie before the threshold and at the basis of all existence. For example:—here is a lump of compact, whitish, cheese-like substance, about as much as would go into a thimble. From this I profess to be able to produce a gigantic, intricate structure, sixty feet in height and diameter, hard, solid, and enduring, which shall furthermore possess the power of extending and multiplying itself until it covers the whole earth, and even all the earths in the universe, if it could reach them. Is such a profession as this credible? It is entirely credible, as soon as I paraphrase it by saying that I propose to plant an acorn. And yet all magic has no mystery which is so wonderful as this universal mystery of growth: and the only reason we are not lost in amazement at it is that it goes quietly on all the time, and perfects itself under uniform conditions. But let me eliminate from the phenomenon the one element of time—which is logically the least essential factor in the product, unreal and arbitrary, based on the revolution of the earth, and conceivably variable to any extent—grant me this, and the world would come to see me do the miracle. But, with time or without it, the mystery is just as mysterious.

Natural mysteries, then,—the mysteries of life, death, creation, growth, —do not fall under our present consideration: they are beyond the legitimate domain of magic: and no intellectual development to which we may hereafter attain will bring us a step nearer their solution. But with the problems proper to magic, the case is different. Magic is distinctively not Divine, but human: a finite conundrum, not an Infinite enigma. If there has ever been a magician since the world began, then all mankind may become magicians, if they will give the necessary time and trouble. And yet, magic is not simply an advanced region of the path which science is pursuing. Science is concerned with results,—with material phenomena; whereas magic is, primarily, the study of causes, or of spiritual phenomena; or, to use another definition,—of phenomena which the senses perceive, not in themselves, but only in their results. So long as we restrict ourselves to results, our activity is confined to analysis; but when we begin to investigate causes, we are on the road not only to comprehend results, but (within limits) to modify or produce them.

Science, however, blocks our advance in this direction by denying, or at least refusing to admit, the existence of the spiritual world, or world of causes: because, being spiritual, it is not sensible, or cognizable in sense. Science admits only material causes, or the changes wrought in matter by itself. If we ask what is the cause of a material cause, we are answered that it is a supposed entity called Force, concerning which there is nothing further to be known.

At this point, then, argument (on the material plane) comes to an end, and speculation or assumption begins. Science answers its own questions, but neither can nor will answer any others. And upon what pretence do we ask any others? We ask them upon two grounds. The first is that some people,— we might even say, most people,—would be glad to believe in supersensuous existence, and are always on the alert to examine any plausible hypothesis pointing in that direction: and secondly, there exists a vast amount of testimony (we need not call it evidence) tending to show that the supersensuous world has been discovered, and that it endows its discoverers with sundry notable advantages. Of course, we are not obliged to credit this testimony, unless we want to: and—for some reason, never fully explained—a great many people who accept natural mysteries quite amiably become indignant when requested to examine mysteries of a much milder order. But it is not my intention to discuss the limits of the probable; but to swallow as much as possible first, and endeavor to account for it afterwards.

There is, as every reader knows, a class of phenomena—such as hypnotism, trance, animal magnetism, and so forth—the occurrence of which science has conceded, though failing as yet to offer any intelligent explanation of them. It is suggested that they are peculiar states of the brain and nerve-centres, physical in their nature and origin, though evading our present physical tests. Be that as it may, they afford a capital introduction to the study of magic; if, indeed, they, and a few allied phenomena, do not comprise the germs of the whole matter. Apropos of this subject, a society has lately been organized in London, with branches on the Continent and in this country, composed of scientific men, Fellows of the Royal Society, members of Parliament, professors, and literary men, calling themselves the "Psychical Research Society," and making it their business to test and investigate these very marvels, under the most stringent scientific conditions. But the capacity to be deceived of the bodily senses is almost unlimited; in fact, we know that they are incapable of telling us the ultimate truth on any subject; and we are able to get along with them only because we have found their misinformation to be sufficiently uniform for most practical purposes. But once admit that the origin of these phenomena is not on the physical plane, and then, if we are to give any weight at all to them, it can be only from a spiritual standpoint. In other words, unless we can approach such questions by an a priori route, we might as well let them alone. We can reason from spirit to body—from mind to matter—but we can never reverse that process, and from matter evolve mind. The reason is that matter is not found to contain mind, but is only acted upon by it, as inferior by superior; and we cannot get out of the bag more than has been put into it. The acorn (to use our former figure) can never explain the oak; but the oak readily accounts for the acorn. It may be doubted, therefore, whether the Psychical Research Society can succeed in doing more than to give a respectable endorsement to a perplexing possibility,—so long as they adhere to the inductive method. Should they, however, abandon the inductive method for the deductive, they will forfeit the allegiance of all consistently scientific minds; and they may, perhaps, make some curious contributions to philosophy. At present, they appear to be astride the fence between philosophy and science, as if they hoped in some way to make the former satisfy the latter's demands. But the difference between the evidence that demonstrates a fact and the evidence that confirms a truth is, once more, a difference less of degree than of kind. We can never obtain sensible verification of a proposition that transcends sense. We must accept it without material proof, or not at all. We may believe, for instance, that Creation is the work of an intelligent Divine Being; or we may disbelieve it; but we can never prove it. If we do believe it, innumerable confirmations of it meet us at every turn: but no such confirmations, and no multiplication of them, can persuade a disbeliever. For belief is ever incommunicable from without; it can be generated only from within. The term "belief" cannot be applied to our recognition of a physical fact: we do not believe in that—we are only sensible of it.

In this connection, a few words will be in order concerning what is called Spiritism,—a subject which has of late years been exciting a good deal of remark. Its disciples claim for it the dignity of a new and positive revelation,—a revelation to sense of spiritual being. Now, the entire universe may be described as a revelation to sense of spiritual being—for those who happen to believe a priori, or from spontaneous inward conviction, in spiritual being. We may believe a man's body, for example, to be the effect of which his soul is the cause; but no one can reach that conviction by the most refined dissection of the bodily tissues. How, then, does the spiritists' Positive Revelation help the matter? Their answer is that the physical universe is a permanent and orderly phenomenon which (setting aside the problem of its First Cause) fully accounts for itself; whereas the phenomena of Spiritism, such as rapping, table- tipping, materializing, and so forth, are, if not supernatural, at any rate extra-natural. They occur in consequence of a conscious effort to bring them about; they cease when that effort is discontinued; they abound in indications of being produced by independent intelligencies; they are inexplicable upon any recognized theory of physics; and, therefore, there is nothing for it but to regard them as spiritual. And what then? Then, of course, there must be spirits, and a life after the death of the body; and the great question of Immortality is answered in the affirmative!

Let us, for the sake of argument, concede that the manifestations upon which the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or can be produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect our means for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first place we find that all the manifestations—be their cause what it may—can occur only on the physical plane. However much the origin of the phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena themselves must be purely material, in so far as they are perceptible at all. "Raps" are audible according to the same laws of vibration as other sounds: the tilting table is simply a material body displaced by an adequate agency; the materialized hand or face is nothing but physical substance assuming form. Plainly, therefore, we have as much right to ascribe a spiritual source to such phenomena as we have to ascribe a spiritual source to the ordinary phenomena of nature, such as a tree or a man's body,—just as much right—and no more! Consequently, we are no nearer converting our sceptic than we were at the outset. He admits the physical manifestation: there is no intrinsic novelty about that: but when we proceed to argue that the manifestations are wrought by spirits, he points out to us that this is sheer assumption on our part. "I have not seen a spirit," he says: "I have not heard one; I have not felt one; nor is it possible that my bodily senses should perceive anything that is not at least as physical as they are. I have witnessed certain transactions effected by means unknown to me—possibly by the action of a natural law not yet fully expounded by science. If there was anything spiritual in the affair, it has not been manifest to my apprehension: and I must decline to lend my countenance to any such pretensions."

That would be the reply of the sceptic who was equal to the emergency. But let us suppose that he is not equal to it: that he is a weak-kneed, impressionable person, with a tendency to jump at conclusions; and that he is scared or mystified into believing that "spirits" may be at the bottom of it. What, then, will be the character of the faith which the Positive Revelation has furnished him? He has discovered that existence continues, in some fashion, after the death of the body. He has learned that there may be such a thing as—not immortality exactly, but—postmortem consciousness. He has been saddled with the conviction that the other world is full of restless ghosts, who come shuddering back from their cold emptiness, and try to warm themselves in the borrowed flesh and blood, and with the purblind selfishness and curiosity of us who still remain here. "Have faith: be not impatient: the conditions are unfavorable: but we are working for you!"—such is the constant burden of the communications. But, if there be a God, why must our relations with him be complicated by the interference of such forlorn prevaricators and amateur Paracletes as these? we do not wish to be "worked for,"—to be carried heavenward on some one else's shoulders: but to climb thither by God's help and our own will, or to stay where we are. Moreover, by what touchstone shall we test the veracity of the self-appointed purveyors of this Positive Revelation? Are we to believe what they say, because they have lost their bodies? If life teaches us anything, it is that God does above all things respect the spiritual freedom of his creatures. He does not terrify and bully us into acknowledging Him by ghostly juggleries in darkened rooms, and by vapid exhibitions addressed to our outward senses. He approaches each man in the innermost sacred audience-chamber of his heart, and there shows him good and evil, truth and falsehood, and bids him choose. And that choice, if made aright, becomes a genuine and undying belief, because it was made in freedom, unbiassed by external threats and cajoleries.

Such belief is, itself, immortality,—something as distinct from post- mortem consciousness as wisdom is distinct from mere animal intelligence. On the whole, therefore, there seems to be little real worth in Spiritism, even accepting it at its own valuation. The nourishment it yields the soul is too meagre; and—save on that one bare point of life beyond the grave, which might just as easily prove an infinite curse as an infinite blessing—it affords no trustworthy news whatever.

But these objections do not apply to magic proper. Magic seems to consist mainly in the control which mind may exceptionally exercise over matter. In hypnotism, the subject abjectly believes and obeys the operator. If he be told that he cannot step across a chalk mark on the floor, he cannot step across it. He dissolves in tears or explodes with laughter, according as the operator tells him he has cause for merriment or tears: and if he be assured that the water he drinks is Madeira wine or Java coffee, he has no misgiving that such is not the case.

To say that this state of things is brought about by the exercise of the operator's will, is not to explain the phenomenon, but to put it in different terms. What is the will, and how does it produce such a result? Here is a man who believes, at the word of command, that the thing which all the rest of the world calls a chair is a horse. How is such misapprehension on his part possible? our senses are our sole means of knowing external objects: and this man's senses seem to confirm—at least they by no means correct—his persuasion that a given object is something very different. Could we solve this puzzle, we should have done something towards gaining an insight into the philosophy of magic.

We observe, in the first place, that the rationale of hypnotism, and of trance in general, is distinct from that of memory and of imagination, and even from that of dreams. It resembles these only in so far as it involves a quasi-perception of something not actually present or existent. But memory and imagination never mislead us into mistaking their suggestions for realities: while in dreams, the dreamer's fancy alone is active; the bodily faculties are not in action. In trance, however, the subject may appear to be, to all intents and purposes, awake. Yet this state, unlike the others, is abnormal. The brain seems to be in a passive, or, at any rate, in a detached condition; it cannot carry out or originate ideas, nor can it examine an idea as to its truth or falsehood. Furthermore, it cannot receive or interpret the reports of its own bodily senses. In short, its relations with the external world are suspended: and since the body is a part of the external world, the brain can no longer control the body's movements.

Bodily movements are, however, to some extent, automatic. Given a certain stimulus in the brain or nerve-centres, and certain corresponding muscular contractions follow: and this whether or not the stimulus be applied in a normal manner. Although, therefore, the entranced brain cannot spontaneously control the body, yet if we can apply an independent stimulus to it, the body will make a fitting and apparently intelligent response. The reader has doubtless seen those ingenious pieces of mechanism which are set in motion by dropping into an orifice a coin or pellet. Now, could we drop into the passive brain of an entranced person the idea that a chair is a horse, for instance,—the person would give every sensible indication of having adopted that figment as a fact.

But how (since he can no longer communicate with the world by means of his senses) is this idea to be insinuated? The man is magnetized—that is to say, insulated; how can we have intercourse with him?

Experiments show that this can be effected only through the magnetizer. Asleep towards the rest of the world, towards him the entranced person is awake. Not awake, however, as to the bodily senses; neither the magnetizer nor any one else can approach by that route. It is true that, if the magnetizer speaks to him, he knows what is said: but he does not hear physically; because he perceives the unspoken thought just as readily. But since whatever does not belong to his body must belong to his soul (or mind, if that term be preferable), it follows that the magnetizer must communicate with the magnetized on the mental or spiritual plane; that is, immediately, or without the intervention of the body.

Let us review the position we have reached:—We have an entranced or magnetized person,—a person whose mind, or spirit, has, by a certain process, been so far withdrawn from conscious communion with his own bodily senses as to disable him from receiving through them any tidings from the external world. He is not, however, wholly withdrawn from his body, for, in that case, the body would be dead; whereas, in fact, its organic or animal life continues almost unimpaired. He is therefore neither out of the body nor in it, but in an anomalous region midway between the two,—a state in which he can receive no sensuous impressions from the physical world, nor be put in conscious communication with the spiritual world through any channel—save one.

This one exception is, as we have seen, the person who magnetized him. The magnetizer is, then, the one and only medium through which the person magnetized can obtain impressions: and these impressions are conveyed directly from the mind, or spirit, of the magnetizer to that of the magnetized. Let us note, further, that the former is not, like the latter, in a semi-disembodied state, but is in the normal exercise of his bodily functions and faculties. He possesses, consequently, his normal ability to originate ideas and to impart them: and whatever ideas he chooses to impart to the magnetized person, the latter is fain passively and implicitly to accept. And having so received them, they descend naturally into the automatic mechanism of the body, and are by it mechanically interpreted or enacted.

So far, the theory is good: but something seems amiss in the working. We find that a certain process frequently issues in a certain effect: but we do not yet know why this should be the case. Some fundamental link is wanting; and this link is manifestly a knowledge of the true relations between mind and matter: of the laws to which the mental or spiritual world is subject: of what nature itself is: and of what Creation means. Let us cast a glance at these fundamental subjects; for they are the key without which the secrets of magic must remain locked and hidden.

In common speech we call the realm of the material universe, Creation; but philosophy denies its claim to that title. Man alone is Creation: everything else is appearance. The universe appears, because man exists: he implies the universe, but is not implied by it. We may assist our metaphysics, here, by a physical illustration. Take a glass prism and hold in the sunlight before a white surface. Let the prism represent man: the sun, man's Creator: and the seven-hued ray cast by the prism, nature, or the material universe. Now, if we remove the light, the ray vanishes: it vanishes, also, if we take away the prism: but so long as the sun and the prism—God and man—remain in their mutual relation, so long must the rainbow nature appear. Nature, in short, is not God; neither is it man; but it is the inevitable concomitant or expression of the creative attitude of God towards man. It is the shadow of the elements of which humanity or human nature is composed: or, shall we say, it is the apparition in sense of the spiritual being of mankind,—not, be it observed, of the being of any individual or of any aggregation of individuals; but of humanity as a whole. For this reason, also, is nature orderly, complete, and permanent,—that it is conditioned not upon our frail and faulty personalities, but upon our impersonal, universal human nature, in which is transacted the miracle of God's incarnation, and through which He forever shines.

Besides Creator and creature, nothing else can be; and whatever else seems to be, must be only a seeming. Nature, therefore, is the shadow of a shade, but it serves an indispensable use. For since there can be no direct communication between finite and Infinite—God and man—a medium or common ground is needed, where they may meet; and nature, the shadow which the Infinite causes the finite to project, is just that medium. Man, looking upon this shadow, mistakes it for real substance, serving him for foothold and background, and assisting him to attain self-consciousness. God, on the other hand, finds in nature the means of revealing Himself to His creature without compromising the creature's freedom. Man supposes the universe to be a physical structure made by God in space and time, and in some region of which He resides, at a safe distance from us His creatures: whereas, in truth, God is distant from us only so far as we remove ourselves from our own inmost intuitions of truth and good.

But what is that substance or quality which underlies and gives homogeneity to the varying forms of nature, so that they seem to us to own a common origin?—what is that logical abstraction upon which we have bestowed the name of matter? scientific analysis finds matter only as forms, never as itself: until, in despair, it invents an atomic theory, and lets it go at that. But if, discarding the scientific method, we question matter from the philosophical standpoint, we shall find it less obdurate.

Man, considered as a mind or spirit, consists of volition and intelligence; or, what is the same, of emotion or affection, and of the thoughts which are created by this affection. Nothing can be affirmed of man as a spirit which does not fall under one or other of these two parts. Now, a creature consisting solely of affections and thoughts must, of course, have something to love and to think about. Man's final destiny is no doubt to love and consider his Creator; but that can only be after a reactionary or regenerative process has begun in him. Meanwhile, he must love and consider the only other available object—that is, himself. Manifestly, however, in order to bestow this attention upon himself, he must first be made aware of his own existence. In order to effect this, something must be added to man as spirit, enabling him to discriminate between the subject thinking and loving, and the object loved and thought of. This additional something, again, in order to fulfill its purpose, must be so devised as not to appear an addition: it must seem even more truly the man than the man himself. It must, therefore, perfectly represent or correspond to the spiritual form and constitution; so that the thoughts and affections of the spirit may enter into it as into their natural home and continent.

This continent or vehicle of the mind is the human body. The body has two aspects,—substance and form, answering to the two aspects of the mind,— affection and thought: and affection finds its incarnation or correspondence in substance; and thought, in form. The mind, in short, realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the body, much as the body realizes itself in terms of its reflection in the looking-glass: but it does more than this, for it identifies itself with this its image. And how is this identification made possible?

It is brought about by the deception of sense, which is the medium of communication between the spiritual and the material man. Until this miraculous medium is put in action, there can be no conscious relation between these two planes, admirably as they are adapted to each other. Sense is spiritual on one side and material on the other: but it is only on the material side that it gathers its reports: on the spiritual side it only delivers them. Every one of the five messengers whereby we are apprised of external existence brings us an earthly message only. And since these messengers act spontaneously, and since the mind's only other source of knowledge is intuition, which cannot be sensuously confirmed,— it is little wonder if man has inclined to the persuasion that what is highest in him is but an attribute of what is lowest, and that when the body dies, the soul must follow it into nothingness.

Creative energy, being infinite, passes through the world of causes to the world of effects—through the spiritual to the physical plane. Matter is therefore the symbol of the ultimate of creative activity; it is the negative of God. As God is infinite, matter is finite; as He is life, it is death; as He is real, it is unreal; as He reveals, matter veils. And as the relation of God to man's spirit is constant and eternal, so is the physical quality of matter fixed and permanent. Now, in order to arrive at a comprehension of what matter is in itself, let us descend from the general to the specific, and investigate the philosophical elements of a pebble, for instance. A pebble is two things: it is a mineral: and it is a particular concrete example of mineral. In its mineral aspect, it is out of space and time, and is—not a fact, but—a truth; a perception of the mind. In so far as it is mineral, therefore, it has no relation to sense, but only to thought: and on the other hand, in so far as it is a particular concrete pebble, it is cognizable by sense but not by thought; for what is in sense is out of thought: the one supersedes the other. But if sense thus absorbs matter, so as to be philosophically indistinguishable from it, we are constrained to identify matter with our sensuous perception of it: and if our exemplary pebble had nothing but its material quality to depend upon, it would cease to exist not only to thought, but to sense likewise. Its metaphysical aspect, in short, is the only reality appertaining to it. Matter, then, may be defined as the impact upon sense of that prismatic ray which we have called nature.

To apply this discussion to the subject in hand: Magic is a sort of parody of reality. And when we recognize that Creation proceeds from within outwards, or endogenously; and that matter is not the objective but the subjective side of the universe, we are in a position to perceive that in order magically to control matter, we must apply our efforts not to matter itself, but to our own minds. The natural world affects us from without inwards: the magical world affects us from within outwards: instead of objects suggesting ideas, ideas are made to suggest objects. And as, in the former case, when the object is removed the idea vanishes; so in the latter case, when the idea is removed, the object vanishes. Both objects are illusions; but the illusion in the first instance is the normal illusion of sense, whereas in the second instance it is the abnormal illusion of mind.