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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XI.

THE CURE—NEW CONSTRUCTIONS—THE INITIATIVE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here—

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'In lover's eyes.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ENIGMA OF LEONATUS POSTHUMUS.

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

THE VERULAMIAN CABINET, AND ITS WORKMANSHIP.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Isaac Gruter wisheth much health.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XII.

THE IGNORANT ELECTION REVOKED.—A WRESTLING INSTANCE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wrote this Poet's fire of old.

'Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?'

it writes again. No?

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

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

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

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

'Doctor, the Thanes fly from me.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cor. Tullus Aufidius then had made NEW HEAD.

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

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

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

* * * * *

[Enter Sicinius and Brutus.]

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

Sic. Pass no further.

Cor. Ha! what is that?

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

Cor. What makes this CHANGE?

Men. The matter?

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

Bru. Cominius.—No.

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

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

Bru. The people are incensed against him.

Sic. Stop. Or all will fall in broil.

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

Men. Be calm, be calm.

Cor. It is a purposed thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility:— Suffer it, and live with such as cannot rule, Nor ever will be ruled.

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

Cor. Why, this was known before.

Bru. Not to them all.

Cor. Have you informed them since?

Bru. How! I inform them?

Cor. You are like to do such business.

Bru. Not unlike, Each way to better yours.

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

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

Men. Let's be calm.

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

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

Men. Not now, not now.

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

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

Men. Well, no more.

First Sen. No more words, we beseech you.

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

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

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

Men. What, what? his choler.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Mark it, his popular shall].

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

[Neither able to rule].

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

Com. Well,—on to the market place.

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

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

Men. Well, well, no more of that,

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

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

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