METAPHYSICAL AID.
'I do not like the fashion of your garments. You will say they
are _Persian_ attire; but let them be changed.'--
_The King to Tom o' Bedlam._
'Would you proceed especially against _Caius Marcius_?
Against him _first_.'
It is the cure of the Common-weal which this author has undertaken,
for he found himself pre-elected to the care of the people and to the
world's tribuneship. But he handles his subject in the natural,
historical order, in the chronological order,--and not here only, but
in that play of which this is a part,--of which this is the play
within the Play,--in that grand, historical proceeding on the world's
theatre, which it was given to the author of this play to institute.
He begins with the physical wants of men. The hunger, and cold, and
weariness, and all the physical suffering and destitution of that
human condition which is the condition of the many, has arrested his
human eye, with its dumb, patient eloquence, and it is _that_ which
makes the starting point of his revolution. He translates its mute
language, he anticipates its word. He is setting in movement
operations that are intended to make 'coals cheap'; he proposes to
have corn at his own price. He has so much confidence in what his
tongue can do in the way of flattery, that he expects to come back
beloved of all the trades in Rome. He will 'cog their hearts from
them,' and get elected _consul_ yet, with all their voices.
'Scribbling seems to be the sign of a disordered age,' says the
philosopher, who finds so much occasion for the use of that art about
these days. 'It seems as if it were the season for vain things when
the hurtful oppress us; in a time when doing ill is common, to do
nothing but what signifies nothing is a kind of commendation. 'Tis my
comfort that I shall be one of the last that are called in question;
and, whilst the greater offenders are calling to account, I shall have
leisure to amend; for it would be unreasonable to punish _the less
troublesome_, whilst we are infested with _the greater_. As the
physician said to one who presented him his finger to dress, and who,
he perceived, had an ulcer in his lungs, "Friend," said he, "it is not
now time to concern yourself about your fingers-ends". And
_yet_--[_and yet_]--I saw, some years ago, a person whose name and
memory I have in very great esteem, in the very height of our great
disorders, when there was neither law nor justice put in execution,
_nor magistrate_ that performed _his office--no more than there is
now_--publish, I know not what pitiful _reformations_, about _clothes,
cookery, and law chicanery_. These are amusements wherewith to feed a
people that are ill-used, _to show that they are not totally
forgotten_.'
That is the account of it. That is the history of this innovation,
beginning with books, proposing pitiful reformations in clothes, and
cookery, and law chicanery. That would serve to show an ill-used
people that there was some care for them stirring, some tribuneship at
work already. '_What I say of physic generally_, may serve AS AN
EXAMPLE OF ALL OTHER SCIENCES,' says _this same_ scribbler, under his
scribbling cognomen. 'We certainly _intend_ to comprehend them _all_,'
says the graver authority, 'such as Ethics, Politics, and Logic.'
That is, where we are exactly in this so entertaining performance,
which was also designed for the benefit of an ill-used people; for
this candidate for the chief magistracy is the _Aedile_ also, and
while he stands for his place these spectacles will continue.
It is that physical suffering of 'the poor citizens' that he begins
with here. It is the question of the price of corn with which he opens
his argument. The dumb and patient people are on his stage already;
dumb and patient no longer, but clamoring against the surfeiting and
wild wanton waste of the few; clamoring for their share in God's
common gifts to men, and refusing to take any longer the portion which
a diseased state puts down for them. But he tells us from the outset,
that _this_ claim will be prosecuted in such a manner as to 'throw
forth greater themes for insurrection's arguing.'
Though all the wretched poor were clothed and fed with imperial
treasure, with imperial luxury and splendour--though all the arts
which are based on the knowledge of physical causes should be put in
requisition to relieve their need--though the scientific discoveries
and inventions which are pouring in upon human life from that field of
scientific inquiry which our men of science have already cultivated
their golden harvests, should reach at last poor Tom himself--though
that scientific movement now in progress should proceed till it has
reached the humblest of our human kin, and surrounded him with all the
goods of the private and particular nature, with the sensuous luxuries
and artistic elegancies and refinements of the lordliest home--that
good which is the distinctive human good, that good which is the
constitutional human _end_, that good, that formal and essential good,
which it is the end of this philosophy to bring to man, would not
necessarily be realised.
For _that_, and nothing short of that, the '_advancement_' of the
species to that which it is blindly reaching for, painfully groping
for--its form in nature, its ideal perfection--the advancement of it
to something more noble than the nobility of a nobler kind of
vermin--a state which involves another kind of individual growth and
greatness, one which involves a different, a distinctively 'human
principle' and tie of congregation, is that which makes the ultimate
intention of this philosophy.
The organization of that large, complex, difficult form in nature, in
which the many are united in 'the greater congregation'; that more
extensive whole, of which the units are each, not simple forms, but
the complicated, most highly complex, and not yet subdued complexity,
which the individual form of man in itself constitutes; this so
difficult result of nature's combinations and her laws of combination,
labouring, struggling towards its consummation, but disordered,
threatened, convulsed, asking aid of _art_, is the subject; the cure
of it, the cure and healthful regimen of it, the problem.
And it is a born doctor who has taken it in hand this time; one of
your natural geniuses, with an inward vocation for the art of
_healing_, instructed of nature beforehand in that mystery and
profession, and appointed of her to that ministry. Wherever you find
him, under whatever disguise, you will find that his mind is running
on the structure of _bodies_, the means of their conservation and
growth, and the remedies for their disorders, and decays, and
antagonisms, without and within. He has a most extraordinary and
incurable natural bent and determination towards medicine and cures in
general; he is always inquiring into the anatomy of things and the
qualities of drugs, analysing them and mixing them, finding the art of
their compounds, and modifying them to suit his purposes, or inventing
new ones; for, like Aristotle, to whom he refers for a precedent, he
wishes 'to have a hand in everything.'
But he is not a quack. He has no respect for the old authoritative
prescriptions, if they fail in practice, whether they come in Galen's
name, or another's; but he is just as severe upon 'the empiricutics,'
on the other hand, and he objects to 'a horse-drench' for the human
constitution in the greater congregation, as much as he does in that
distinctively complex delicate structure which the single individual
human frame in itself constitutes.
Menenius [speaking of the letter which Volumnia has told him of, and
putting in a word on this Doctor's behalf, for it is not very much to
the purpose on his own] says, 'It gives me an estate of _seven years'_
health, _during which time I will make a lip at the physician_.' A
lip--_a lip_--and 'what a deal of scorn looks beautiful on it,' when
once you get to see it. But this is the play of 'conservation with
advancement.' It is the cure and preservation of the common-weal, to
which all lines are tending, to which all points and parentheses are
pointing; and thus he continues: 'The _most sovereign prescription_ in
_Galen_ is but empiricutic, and to _this_ preservative of no better
report than a horse-drench.' So we shall find, when we come to try
it--_this_ preservative,--this conservation.
This Doctor has a great opinion of nature. He thinks that 'the
physician must rely on her powers for his cures in the last resort,
and be able to make prescriptions of _them_, instead of making them
out of his own pre-conceits, if he would not have of his cure a
_conceit_ also.' His opinion is, that 'nature is made better by no
mean, but she herself hath made that mean;'--
'So o'er that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes...
...This is an art
Which does _mend nature_, _change_ it rather: but
_The art itself_ is nature.'
That is the Poet's view, but the Philosopher is of the same opinion.
'Man while _operating_ can only _apply or withdraw_ natural bodies,
nature internally _performs_ the rest.' Those who become _practically_
versed in nature are the mechanic, the mathematician, the alchemist,
and _the magician_, but _all_, as matters now stand with faint efforts
and meagre success.'... 'The syllogism forces _assent_ and not
_things_.'
'_The subtlety of nature is far beyond that of sense or of the
understanding._ The syllogism consists of propositions, these of
words, words are the signs of notions, notions represent things. If
our notions are fantastical, the whole structure falls to the ground;
but they are for the most part improperly abstracted and deduced from
_things_.'
There is the whole of it; there it is in a nut-shell. As we are very
apt to find it in this method of delivery by aphorisms; there is the
shell of it at least. And considering 'the torture and press of the
method,' and the instruments of torture then in use for correcting the
press, on these precise questions, there is as much of the kernel,
perhaps, as could reasonably be looked for, in those particular
aphorisms; and 'aphorisms representing a _knowledge broken_, do
_invite_ men to inquire further;' so _this_ writer of them tells us.
With all his reliance on nature then, and with all his scorn of the
impracticable and arrogant conceits of learning as he finds it, and of
the quackeries that are practised in its name, this is no empiric. He
will not approach that large, complex, elaborate combination of
nature, that laboured fruit of time,--her most subtle and efficacious
agent, so prolific in results that amaze and confound our art,
--he will not approach this great structure with all its unperceived
interior adaptations,--with so much of nature's own work in it,
--hehas too much respect for her own 'cunning hand,' to approach it
without learning,--to undertake its cure with blind ignorant
experiments. He will not go to work in the dark on this structure,
with drug or surgery. This is going to be a scientific cure. 'Before
we proceed any further, _hear me speak_.' He will inquire beforehand
the nature of this particular structure that he proposes to meddle
with, and get its normal state defined at the outset. But that will
take him into the question of structures in general, as they appear in
nature, and the intention of nature in them. He will have a
comparative anatomy to help him. This analysis will not stop with the
social unit, he will analyze him. It will not stop with him. It will
comprehend the principles of all combinations. He will not stop in his
analysis of _this_ complexity till he comes to that which precedes all
combination, and survives it--the original simplicity of nature. He
will come to this cure armed with the universal 'simples;' he will
have all the original powers of nature, 'which are not many,' in his
hands, to begin with; and he will have more than that. He will have
the doctrine of their combinations, not in man only, but _in all the
kinds_;--those despised kinds, that claim such close relationship--
such wondrous relationship with man; and he will not go to the
primitive instinctive nature only for his knowledge on this point. He
will inquire of art,--the empiric art,--and rude accident, what latent
efficacies they have detected in her, what churlish secrets of hers
they have wrung from her. You will find the gardener's and the
farmer's reports, and not the physician's and the surgeon's only,
inserted in his books of policy and ethics. The 'nettles' theory of
the rights of private life, and his policy of foreign relationships,
appears to this learned politician to strengthen his case a little,
and the pertinacious refusal of the 'old crab trees' to lend their
organizations, such as they are, to the fructification of a bud of
nobler kind, is quoted with respect as a decision of nature in another
court, on this same question, which is one of the questions here. For
the principle of conservation as well as the other principles of the
human conduct, appears to this philosopher to require a larger
treatment than our men of learning have given it hitherto.
And this is the man of science who takes so much pains to acknowledge
his preference for 'good _compositions_'--who thinks so much of good
_natural _compositions and their virtues, who is always expressing or
betraying his respect for the happy combinations, the sound results,
the luxuriant and beautiful varieties with which nature herself
illustrates the secret of her fertility, and publishes her own great
volume of examples in the Arts.
First it is the knowledge of the simple forms into which all the
variety of nature is convertible, the definitions which account for
all--that which is always the same in all the difference, that which
is always permanent in all the change; first it is the doctrine of
'those simple original forms, or differences of things, which like the
alphabet are not many, _the degrees and co-ordinations_ whereof make
all this variety,' and then it is the doctrine of _their
combinations_,--the combinations which nature has herself
accomplished, those which the arts have accomplished, and those which
are possible, which have _not_ been accomplished,--those which the
universal nature working in the human, working in each, from the
platform of the human, from that height in her ascending scale of
species, dictates now, demands,--divinely orders,--divinely instructs
us in.
This, and nothing short of this,--this so radical knowledge, reaching
from the summit of the human complexity, to the primaeval depths of
nature,--to the simplicity of the nature that is one in all,--to the
indissoluble laws of being,--the laws of being in the species,--the
law with which the specific law is convertible,--the law which cannot
be broken in the species, which involves loss of species,--loss of
being in the species,--this so large and rich and various knowledge,
comprehending all the varieties of nature in its fields, putting all
nature under contribution for its results, this--this is the knowledge
with which the man of science approaches now, this grand particular.
The reader who begins to examine for himself, for the first time, in
the original books of it, this great system of the Modern Science,
impressed with the received notions in regard to its scope and
intentions, will be, perhaps, not a little surprised and puzzled, to
find that the thing which is, of all others, most strenuously insisted
on by this author, in his own person, next to the worthlessness of the
conceits which have no correspondence with things, is the fact that
the knowledge of the physical causes is altogether inadequate to that
relief of the condition of man, which he finds to be the immediate end
of science; and that it is a system of metaphysics, a new metaphysics,
which he is everywhere propounding to that end,--openly, and with all
the latent force of his new rhetoric.
It is 'metaphysical aid' that he offers us; it is magic, but, 'magic
lawful as eating'; it is a priestly aid that he offers us, the aid of
one who has penetrated to the inner sanctuary of the law,--the priest
of nature, newly instructed in her mind and will, who comes forth from
his long communing with her, with her own 'great seal' in his
hands--with the rod of her enchantments, that old magicians desired to
pluck from her, and did not--with the gift of the new and nobler
miracles of science as the witness of his anointing--with the reading
of 'God's book of power'--with the alphabet of its mystery, as the
proof of his ordaining--with the key of it, hid from the foundation of
the world until now.
The first difference between this metaphysics, and all the metaphysics
that ever went before it or came after it, is, that it is practical.
It carries in its hand, gathered into the simplicity of the causes
that are not many, the secret of all motivity, the secret of all
practice. It tells you so; over and over again, in so many words, it
dares to tell you so. It opens that closed palm a little, and shows
you what is there; it bids you look on while it stirs those lines but
a little, and new ages have begun.
It is a practical metaphysics, and the first word of its speech is to
forbid abstractions--your abstractions. It sets out from that which is
'constant, eternal, and universal'; but from that which is 'constant,
eternal, and universal in nature.' It sets out from that which is
fixed; but it is from the fixed and constant causes: '_forms_' not
'_ideas_.' The simplicity which it seeks is the simplicity into which
the historical phenomena are resolvable; the terms which it seeks are
the terms which do not come within the range of the unscientific
experience; they are the unknown terms of the unlearned; they are the
causes 'which, like the alphabet, are not many'; they are the terms
which the understanding knows, which the reason grasps, and
comprehends in its unity; but they are the convertible terms of all
the multiplicity and variety of the senses, they are the convertible
terms--the _practically_ convertible terms of the known--practically
--that is the difference.
In that pyramid of knowledges which the science of things constitutes;
in that converging ascent to the original simplicity and identity of
nature, beginning at that broad science which makes its base--the
science of Natural History--beginning with the basis of the historical
complexity and difference; in that pyramid of science, that new and
solid pyramid, which the Inductive science--which the inquiry into
causes that are operant in nature builds, this author will not stop,
either on that broad field of the universal history of nature, which
is the base of it, or on that first stage of the ascent which the
platform of 'the physical causes' makes. The causes which lie next to
our experience--the causes, which are variable and many, do not
satisfy him. He gains that platform, and looks about him. He finds
that even a diligent inquiry and observation _there_ would result in
many new inventions beneficial to men; but the knowledge of these
causes 'takes men in narrow and restrained paths'; he wants for the
founding of his rule of art the cause which, under all conditions,
secures the result, which gives the widest possible command of means.
He refuses to accept of the physical causes as the bourne of his
philosophy, in theory or practice. He looks with a great human scorn
on all the possible arts and solutions which lie on _that_ platform,
when the proposal is to stop his philosophy of speculation and
practice _there_. It is not for the scientific arts, which that field
of observation yields, that he begs leave to revive and _re-integrate_
the misapplied and abused name of _natural magic_, which, in the true
sense, is but natural wisdom, or 'PRUDENCE.'
He can hardly stop to indicate the results which the culture of that
field _does_ yield for the relief of the human estate. His eye is
uplifted to that new platform of a solid metaphysics, an historical
metaphysics, which the inductive method builds. His eye is intent
always on that higher stage of knowledge where that which is common to
the sciences is found. He takes the other in passing only. Beginning
with the basis of a new observation and history of nature, he will
found a new metaphysics--an _objective_ metaphysics--the metaphysics
of induction. His logic is but a preparation for _that_. He is going
to collect, by his inductive method, from all nature, from all
species, the principles that are in _all things_; and he is going to
build, on the basis of those _inducted_ principles,--on the sure basis
of that which is constant, and eternal, and universal in nature, the
sure foundations of his universal practice; for, like common logic,
the inductive method comprehends '_all_.' That same simplicity, which
the abstract speculations of men aspire to, and create, _it_ aspires
to and _attains_, by the rough roads, by the laboured stages of
observation and experiment.
He is, indeed, compelled to involve his phraseology here in a most
studious haze of scholasticism. Perspicuity is by no means the quality
of style most in request, when we come to these higher stages of
sciences. Impenetrable mists, clouds, and darkness, impenetrable to
any but the eye that seeks also the whole, involve the heaven-piercing
peak of this new height of learning, this new summit of a scientific
divinity, frowning off--warding off, as with the sword of the
cherubim, the unbidden invaders of this new Olympus, where sit the
gods, restored again,--the simple powers of nature, recovered from the
Greek abstractions,--not 'the idols'--not the impersonated
abstractions, the false images of the mind of man--not the logical
forms of those spontaneous abstractions, emptied of their poetic
content--but the strong gods that make our history, that compose our
epics, that conspire for our tragedies, whether we own them and build
altars to them or not. This is that summit of the _prima philosophia_
where the axioms that command all are found--where the observations
that are common to the sciences, and the precepts that are based on
these, grow. This is that height where the _same_ footsteps of nature,
treading in different substances or matters, lost in the difference
below, are all cleared and identified. This is the height of the forms
of the understanding, of the unity of the reason; not as it is in man
only, but as it is in all matters or substances.
He does not care to tell us,--he _could not_ well tell us, in
_popular_ language, what the true name of that height of learning is:
he could not well name without circumlocution, that height which a
scientific abstraction makes,--an abstraction that attains simplicity
without destroying the concrete reality, an abstraction that attains
as its result only a higher history,--a new and more intelligible
reading of it,--a solution of it--that which is fixed and constant and
accounts for it,--an abstraction whose apex of unity is the highest,
the universal history, that which accounts for all,--the
equivalent,--the scientific equivalent of it.
But whatever it be, it is something that is going to take the place of
the unscientific abstractions, both in theory and practice; it is
something that is going to supplant ultimately the vain indolent
speculation, the inert because unscientific speculation, that seeks to
bind the human life in the misery of an enforced and sanctioned
ignorance, sealing up with its dogmas to an eternal collision with the
universal laws of God and nature,--laws that no dogma or conceit can
alter,--all the unreckoned generations of the life of man. Whatever it
be, it is going to strike with its primeval rock, through all the air
palace of the vain conceits of men;--it is going straight up, through
that old conglomeration of dogmas, that the ages of the human
ignorance have built and left to us. The unity to which all things in
nature, inspired with her universal instinct tend,--the unity of which
the mind and heart of man in its sympathy with the universal whole is
but an expression, that unity of its own which the mind is always
seeking to impart to the diversities which the unreconciled experience
offers it, which it must have in its objective reality, which it will
make for itself if it cannot find it, which it _does_ make in ignorant
ages, by falling back upon its own form and ignoring the historic
reality,--which it builds up without any solid objective basis, by
ignoring the nature of things, or founds on one-sided partial views of
their nature, that unity is going to have its place in the new
learning also--but it is going to be henceforth the unity of
knowledge--not of dogmas, not of belief merely, for knowledge, and not
belief merely,--knowledge, and not opinion, is _power_.
That man is not the only creature in nature, was the discovery of this
philosophy. The founders of it observed that there were a number of
species, which appeared to be maintaining a certain sort of existence
of their own, without being dependent for it on the movements within
the human brain. To abate the arrogance of the species,--to show the
absurdity and ignorance of the attempt to constitute the universe
beforehand within that little sphere, the human skull, ignoring the
reports of the intelligencers from the universal whole, with which
great nature has herself supplied us,--to correct the arrogance and
specific bias of the human learning,--was the first attempt of the new
logic. It is the house of the Universal Father that we dwell in, and
it has 'many mansions,' and 'man is not the best lodged in it.' Noble,
indeed, is his form in nature, inspired with the spirit of the
universal whole, able in his littleness to comprehend and embrace the
whole, made in the image of the universal Primal Cause, whose voice
for us is _human_; but there are other dialects of the divine
also,--there are nobler creatures lodged with us, placed above us;
with larger gifts, with their ten talents ruling over our cities.
There is no speech or language where _their_ voice is not heard. Their
line is gone out through all the earth also, and their words unto the
end of the world; and the poor beetle that we tread on, and the daisy
and the lily in all its glory, and the sparrows that are going 'two
for a farthing,' come in for their place also in this philosophy--the
philosophy of science--the philosophy of the kinds, the philosophy of
the nature that is one in them,--the metaphysics of history.
'Although there exists nothing IN NATURE except individual bodies,
exhibiting distinct individual _effects, according to individual_
LAWS, yet in each branch of LEARNING that very LAW,--_its
investigation, discovery and development_--are the foundation _both of
theory and practice_; this law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each
_science_, is what we understand by the term, FORM.'
That is a sentence to crack the heads of the old abstractionists.
Before that can be read, the new logic will have to be put in
requisition; the idols of the tribe will have to be dismissed first.
The inveterate and 'pernicious habit of abstraction,'--that so
pernicious habit of the men of learning must be overawed first.
'There exists nothing in nature except _individual_ bodies, exhibiting
distinct _individual_ effects, according to _individual laws_.' The
concrete is very carefully guarded there against that 'pernicious
habit'; it is saved at the expense of the human species, at the
expense of its arrogance. Nobody need undertake to abstract _those_
laws, whatever they may be, for this master has turned his key on
them. They are in their proper place; they are in the things
themselves, and cannot be taken out of them. The utmost that you can
do is to attain to a scientific knowledge of them, one that exactly
corresponds with them. That _correspondence_ is the point in the new
metaphysics, and in the new logic;--_that_ was what was wanting in the
old. 'The investigation, discovery, and development of this law, in
_every branch of learning_, are the foundation both of theory and
practice. This law, therefore, and its _parallel_ in each science, is
what _we_ understand by the term FORM.' The distinction is very
carefully made between the 'cause in nature,' and that which
_corresponds_ to it, in the human mind, the _parallel_ to it in the
sciences; for the notions of men and the notions of nature are
extremely apt to differ when the mind is left to form its notions
without any scientific rule or instrument; and these ill-made
abstractions, which do not correspond with the cause in nature, are of
no efficacy in the arts, for nature takes no notice of them whatever.
There is one term in use here which represents at the same time the
cause in nature, and that which corresponds to it in the mind of
man--the parallel to it in the sciences. When these _exactly
correspond_, one term suffices. The term 'FORM' is preferred for that
purpose in this school. The term which was applied to the abstractions
of the old philosophy, with a little modification, is made to
signalise the difference between the old and the new. The 'IDEAS' of
the old philosophy, the hasty abstractions of it, are '_the idols_' of
the new--the false deceiving images--which must be destroyed ere that
which is fixed and constant _in nature_ can establish its own
parallels in our learning. 'Too untimely a departure, and too remote a
recess from particulars,' is the cause briefly assigned in this
criticism for this want of correspondence hitherto. 'But it is
manifest that Plato, in his opinion of _ideas_, as one that had a wit
of elevation situate as upon a cliff, did descry that forms were the
true object of knowledge, but lost the real fruit of that opinion by
considering of forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not
_confined_ and _determined_ by matter.' 'Lost the fruit of that
opinion'--this is the author who talks so 'pressly.' Two thousand
years of human history are summed up in that so brief chronicle. Two
thousand years of barren science, of wordy speculation, of vain
theory; two thousand years of blind, empirical, _unsuccessful_ groping
in all the fields of human practice. 'And so,' he continues,
concluding that summary criticism with a little further development of
the subject, 'and _so_, turning _his opinion_ upon theology, wherewith
all his natural philosophy is infected.' Natural philosophy infected
with 'opinion,'--no matter whose opinion it is, or under what name it
comes to us, whatever else it is good for, is not good for practice.
And this is the philosophy which includes both theory and practice.
'That which in speculative philosophy corresponds to the cause, in
practical philosophy becomes the rule.'
But that which distinguishes this from all others is, that it is the
philosophy of 'HOPE'; and that is the name for it in both its fields,
in speculation _and_ practice. The black intolerable wall, which those
who stopped us on the lower platform of this pyramid of true knowledge
brought us up with so soon--that blank wall with which the inquiry for
the physical causes in nature limits and insults our speculation--has
no place here, no place at all on this higher ground of science, which
the knowledge of true forms creates--this true ground of _the
understanding_, the understanding of nature, and the universal reason
of things. 'He who is acquainted with forms, comprehends the unity of
nature in substances apparently most distinct from each other.'
Neither is that base and sordid limit, with which the philosophy of
physical causes shuts in the scientific arts and their power for human
relief, found here. For this is the _prima philosophia_, where the
universal axioms, the axioms that command all, are found: and the
precepts of the universal practice are formed on them. 'Even the
philosopher himself--openly speaking from this summit--will venture to
intimate briefly to men of understanding' the comprehension of its
base, and the field of practice which it commands. 'Is not the
ground,' he inquires, modestly, 'is not the ground which Machiavel
wisely and largely discourseth concerning governments, that the way to
establish and _preserve_ them is to reduce them _ad principia_, a rule
in _religion_ and _nature, as well as in civil administration_?' There
is the 'administrative reform' that will not need reforming, that
waits for the science of _forms_ and constructions. But he proceeds:
'Was not the _Persian_ magic' [and that is the term which he proposes
to restore for '_the part operative_' of this knowledge of forms],
'was not the Persian magic a _reduction_ or correspondence of _the
principles_ and _architecture_ of _nature_ to the _rules_ and _policy_
of _governments_?' There is no harm, of course, in that timid inquiry;
but the student of the _Zenda-vesta_ will be able to get, perhaps,
some intimation of the designs that are lurking here, and will
understand the revived and reintegrated sense with which the term
_magic_ is employed to indicate the part operative of this new ground
of _science_. 'Neither are these only similitudes,' he adds, after
extending these significant inquiries into other departments of
practice, and demonstrating that this is the universality from which
all other professions are nourished: 'Neither are these only
_similitudes_, as men of narrow observation may conceive them to be,
but _the same_ footsteps of nature, treading or printing upon several
subjects or matters.'
'It must, however, be observed, that this method of operating' [which
considers nature as SIMPLE, though in a concrete body] ['I the first
of any, by my _universal being_.' _Michael de Montaigne_.] 'sets out
from what is constant, eternal, and universal _in nature_; and opens
such _broad_ paths to human _power_, as the thought of man can in the
present state of things scarcely comprehend or figure to itself,'
Yes, it is the Philosophy of Hope. The perfection of the human form,
the limit of the human want, is the limit of its practice; the limit
of the human inquiry and demand is the limit of its speculation.
The control of effects which this higher knowledge of nature offers
us--this knowledge of what she is beforehand--the practical certainty
which this _interior_ acquaintance with her, this acquaintance that
identifies her under all the variety of her manifestations, is able to
command--that _comprehensive_ command of results which the knowledge
of _the true causes_ involves--the causes which are always present in
all effects, which are constant under all fluctuations, the same under
all the difference--the '_power_' of _this knowledge_, its power to
relieve human suffering, is that which the discoverer of it insists on
most in propounding it to men; but the mind in which that
'wonder'--that is, 'the seed of knowledge'--brought forth _this_
plant, was _not_ one to overlook or make light of that want in the
human soul, which only knowledge can appease--that love which leads it
to the truth, not for the sake of a secondary good, but because it is
her life.
'Although there is a most intimate connection, and almost an identity
between the ways of human power and human knowledge, yet on account of
the pernicious and inveterate habit of _dwelling_ upon abstractions,
it is by far _the safest_ method to commence and build up sciences
from those foundations which bear a relation to the practical
division, _and to let them mark out and limit the theoretical_.'
Something like that the Poet must have been thinking of, when he spoke
of making 'the art and practic part of life, _the mistress_ to its
theoric;'--'let _that_ mark out and limit the theoretical.'
That inveterate and pernicious habit, which makes this course the
safest one, is one that he speaks of in the Advancement of Learning,
as that which has been of 'such ill desert towards learning,' as 'to
reduce it to certain _empty_ and barren generalities, the mere husks
and shells of sciences,' good for nothing at the very best, unless
they serve to guide us to the kernels that have been forced out of
them, by the torture and _press_ of the method,--the mere outlines and
skeletons of knowledges, 'that do but offer knowledge to scorn of
practical men, and are no more aiding to practice,' as the author of
this universal skeleton confesses, 'than an Ortelius's universal map
is, to direct the way between London and York.'
The way to steer clear of those empty and barren generalities, which
do but offer learning to the scorn of the men of practice is, he says,
to begin on the practical side, and that is just what we are doing
here now in this question of the consulship,--that so practical and
immediately urgent question which was, threatening then to drive out
every other from the human consideration. If learning _had_ anything
to offer on that subject, which would _not_ excite the scorn of
practical men, then certainly was the time to produce it.
We begin on the practical side here, and as to theory, we are rigidly
limited to that which the question of the play requires,--the
practical question marks it out,--we have just as much as is required
for the solution of that, and not so much as a 'jot' more. But mark
the expression:--'it is by far the safest method to commence and build
up sciences'--the particular sciences,--the branches of science--from
_those foundations which bear a relation_ to the practical division.
We begin with a great practical question, and though the treatise is
in a form which seems to offer it for amusement, rather than
instruction, it has at least this advantage, that it does not offer it
in the suspicious form of a theory, or in the distasteful form of a
learned treatise,--a tissue of barren and empty generalities. The
scorn of practical men is avoided, if it were only by its want of
pretension; and the fact that it does not offer itself as a guide to
practice, but rather insinuates itself into that position. We begin
with the practical question, with its most sharply practical details,
we begin with particulars, but that which is to be noted is, 'the
foundations' of the universal philosophy are under our feet to begin
with. At the first step we are on the platform of the prima
philosophia; the last conclusions of the inductive science, the
knowledge of the nature of things, is the ground,--the solid
continuity--that we proceed on. That is the ground on which we build
this practice. That is the trunk from which this branch of sciences is
continued:--that trunk of universality which we are forbidden
henceforth to _scorn_, because all the professions are nourished from
it. That universality which the men of practice scorn no more, since
they have tasted of its proofs, since they have reached that single
bough of it, which stooped so low, to bring its magic clusters within
their reach. Fed with their own chosen delights, with the proof of the
divinity of science, on their sensuous lips, they cry, 'Thou hast kept
the good wine until now.' Clasping on the _magic_ robes for which they
have not toiled or spun, sitting down by companies,--not of
fifties,--not of hundreds,--not of thousands--sitting down by myriads,
to this great feast, that the man of science spreads for them, in
whose eye, the eye of a divine pity looked forth again, and saw them
faint and weary still, and without a shepherd,--sitting down to this
feast, for which there is no sweat or blood on their brows, revived,
rejoicing, gazing on the bewildering basketfuls that are pouring in,
they cry, answering after so long a time, for their part Pilate's
question: _This_, so far as it goes at least, this is _truth_. And the
rod of that enchantment was _plucked_ here. It is but a branch from
this same trunk--this trunk of 'universality,' which the men of
practice _will_ scorn no more, when once they reach the multitudinous
boughs of this great tree of miracles, where the nobler fruits, the
more chosen fruits of the new science, are hidden still.
Continued from that 'trunk,' heavy with its juices, stoops now _this_
branch; its golden 'hangings' mellowed,--time mellowed,--ready to fall
unshaken. Built on _that_ 'foundation,' rises now this fair structure,
the doctrine of _the state_. That knowledge of nature in general, that
_interior_ knowledge of her, that loving insight, which is not baffled
with her most foreign aspects; but detects her, and speaks her word,
as from within, in all, is that which meets us here, that which meets
us at the threshold. Our guide is veiled, but his raiment is priestly.
It is great nature's stole that he wears; he will alter
our--_Persian_. We are walking on the pavements of Art; but it is
Nature's temple still; it is her 'pyramid,' and we are _within_, and
the light from the apex is kindling all; and the dust 'that the rude
wind blows in our face,' and 'the poor beetle that we tread on,' and
the poor 'madman and beggar too,' are glorious in it, and of our
'kin.' Those universal forms which the book of science in the abstract
has laid bare already, are running through all; the cord of them is
visible in all the detail. Their foot-prints, which have been tracked
to the height where nature is one, are seen for the first time
cleared, uncovered here, in all the difference. This many-voiced
speech, that sounds so deep from every point, deep as from the heart
of nature, is _not_ the ventriloquist's artifice, is _not_ a poor
showman's trick. It is great nature's voice--her own; and the magician
who has untied her spell, who knows the cipher of 'the one in all' the
priest who has unlocked her inmost shrine, and plucked out the heart
of her mystery--is 'the Interpreter.'