Selfishness is common to all ages and countries. In all ages
Self-seeking is the Rule, and Self-sacrifice the Exception. But if to
seek our private advantage in harmony with, and by the furtherance of,
the public prosperity, and to derive a portion of our happiness from
sympathy with the prosperity of our fellow-men--if this be Public
Spirit, it would be morose and querulous to pretend that there is any
want of it in this country and at the present time. On the contrary,
the number of "public souls" and the general readiness to contribute
to the public good, in science and in religion, in patriotism and in
philanthropy, stand prominent[70] among the characteristics of this
and the preceding generation. The habit of referring actions and
opinions to fixed laws; convictions rooted in principles; thought,
insight, system;--these, had the good Bishop lived in our times, would
have been his _desiderata_, and the theme of his complaints.--"We want
_thinking_ Souls, we _want them_."
This and the three preceding extracts will suffice as precautionary
Aphorisms. And here again, the reader may exemplify the great
advantages to be obtained from the habit of tracing the _proper_
meaning and history of words. We need only recollect the common and
idiomatic phrases in which the word "spirit" occurs in a physical or
material sense (as, fruit has lost its _spirit_ and flavour), to be
convinced that its property is to improve, enliven, actuate some other
thing, not to constitute a thing in its own name. The enthusiast may
find one exception to this where the material itself is called
_Spirit_. And when he calls to mind, how _this_ spirit acts when taken
_alone_ by the unhappy persons who in their first exultation will
boast that it is meat, drink, fire, and clothing to them, all in
one--when he reflects, that its properties are to inflame, intoxicate,
madden, with exhaustion, lethargy, and atrophy for the sequels--well
for him, if in some lucid interval he should fairly put the question
to his own mind, how far this is _analogous_ to his own case, and
whether the exception does not confirm the rule. The _Letter_ without
the Spirit killeth; but does it follow, that the Spirit is to kill the
Letter? To kill that which it is its appropriate office to enliven?
However, where the Ministry is not invaded, and the plain sense of the
Scriptures is left undisturbed, and the Believer looks for the
suggestions of the Spirit only or chiefly in applying particular
passages to his own individual case and exigences; though in this
there may be much weakness, some delusion and imminent danger of more,
I cannot but join with Henry More in avowing, that I feel knit to such
a man in the bonds of a common faith far more closely, than to those
who receive neither the Letter nor the Spirit, turning the one into
metaphor, and oriental hyperbole, in order to explain away the other
into the influence of motives suggested by their own understandings,
and realized by their own strength.
[69] Hacket's Sermons, p. 449.--ED.
[70] The very marked _positive_ as well as comparative, magnitude and
prominence of the bump, entitled BENEVOLENCE (_see Spurzheim's Map of
the Human Skull_) on the head of the late Mr. John Thurtel, has
woefully unsettled the faith of many ardent Phrenologists, and
strengthened the previous doubts of a still greater number into utter
disbelief. On MY mind this fact (for a _fact_ it is) produced the
directly contrary effect; and inclined me to suspect, for the first
time, that there may be some truth in the Spurzheimian Scheme. Whether
future Craniologists may not see cause to _new-name_ this and one or
two other of these convex gnomons, is quite a different question. At
present, and according to the present use of words, any such change
would be premature; and we must be content to say, that Mr. Thurtel's
Benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and
unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and
common-sense. The organ of Destructiveness was indirectly
_potentiated_ by the absence or imperfect development of the glands of
Reason and Conscience in this, "_unfortunate Gentleman_!"