loves mixtures, and that nothing grows well on the crab-stock, but the blood of two trees being mixed a new and excellent fruit is produced. And not less in human history aboriginal races are incapable of improvement; the dull, melan- choly Pelasgi arrive at no civility until the Pheenicians and Ionians come in. The Briton, the Pict, is nothing until the Roman, the Saxon, the Norman, arrives.’
It is observed that our mental processes go forward even when they seem suspended. Scholars say that if they return to the study of a new language after some intermission, the intelligence of it is more and not less. A subject of thought to which we return from month to month, from year to year, has always some ripe- ness of which we can give no account. We say the book grew in the author’s mind.
In unfit company the finest powers are para- lyzed. No ambition, no opposition, no friendly attention and fostering kindness, no wine, music or exhilarating aids, neither warm fireside nor fresh air, walking or riding, avail at all to resist the palsy of mis-association. Genius is mute, is dull; there is no genius. Ask of your flowers to open when you have let in on them a freez- ing wind.
POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 27 The mechanical laws might as easily be shown pervading the kingdom of mind as the vege- tative. A man has been in Spain. The facts and thoughts which the traveller has found in that country gradually settle themselves into a de- terminate heap of one size and form and not another. That is what he knows and has to say of Spain; hecannot say it truly until a sufficient time for the arrangement of the particles has elapsed.
These views of the source of thought and the mode of its communication lead us to a whole system of ethics, strict as any department of human duty, and open to us the tendencies and duties of men of thought in the present time.
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no per- manent wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company or other favorable conditions, become wise, as glasses rubbed acquire power for a time.
An individual body is the momentary arrest or fixation of certain atoms, which, after per- forming compulsory duty to this enchanted statue, are released again to flow in the currents of the world. An individual mind in like man- ner is a fixation or momentary eddy in which 28 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT certain services and powers are taken up and minister in petty niches and localities, and then, being released, return to the unbounded soul of the world. | In this eternal resurrection and rehabilitation of transitory persons, who and what are they? ’Tis only the source that we can see;— the eternal mind, careless of its channels, omni- potent in itself, and continually ejaculating its torrent into every artery and vein and veinlet of humanity. Wherever there is health, that is, consent to the cause and constitution of the universe, there is perception and power."
Each man is a new power in Nature. He holds the keys of the world in his hands. No quality in Nature’s vast magazines he cannot touch, no truth he cannot see. Silent, passive, even sulkily, Nature offers every morning her wealth to man. She is immensely rich; he is welcome to her entire goods, but she speaks no word, will not so much as beckon or cough; only this, she is careful to leave all her doors ajar, — towers, hall, storeroom and cellar. If he takes her hint and uses her goods she speaks no word; if he blunders and starves she says nothing. To the idle blockhead Nature is poor, sterile, inhospitable. T’o the gardener her loam POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 29 is all strawberries, pears, pineapples. To the miller her rivers whirl the wheel and weave car- pets and broadcloth. To the sculptor her stone is soft; to the painter her plumbago and marl are pencils and chromes. To the poet all sounds and words are melodies and rhythms. In her hundred-gated Thebes every chamber is a new door."
But he enters the world by one key. Herein is the wealth of each. His equipment, though new, is complete; his prudence is his own; his courage, his charity, are his own. He has his own defences and his own fangs; his perception and his own mode of reply to sophistries. Whilst he draws on his own he cannot be over- shadowed or supplanted.
There are two mischievous superstitions, I know not which does the most harm, one, that “‘T am wiser than you,” and the other that ‘Sou! areewiser than)-1.°*. «The: truth,..is\that every man is furnished, if he will heed it, with wisdom necessary to steer his own boat, — if he will not look away from his own to see how his neighbor steers his.
Every man is a new method and distributes things anew. If he could attain full size he would takeup, first or last, atom by atom, all 30 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT the world into a new form. And our deep con- viction of the riches proper to every mind does not allow us to admit of much looking over into one another’s virtues. Let me whisper a secret; nobody ever forgives any admiration in you of them, any overestimate of what they do or have. I acquiesce to be that I am, but I wish no one to be civil to me.
Strong men understand this very well. Power fraternizes with power, and wishes you not to be like him but like yourself. Echo the leaders and they will fast enough see that you have nothing for them. They came to you for something they had not.
There is always a loss of truth and power when a man leaves working for himself to work for another. Absolutely speaking, I can only work for myself. All my good is magnetic, and I educate not by lessons but by going about my business. When, moved by love, a man teaches his child or joins with his neighbor in any act of common benefit, or spends himself for his friend, or rushes at immense personal sacrifice on some public, self-immolating act, it is not done for others, but to fulfil a high necessity of his proper character. The benefit to others is con- tingent and not contemplated by the doer.’
POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 31 The one thing not to be forgiven to intellec- tual persons is that they believe in the ideas of others. From this deference comes the imbecility and fatigue of their society, for of course they cannot afhrm these from the deep life; they say what they would have you believe, but what they do not quite know. Profound sincerity is the only basis of talent as of character. The temptation is to patronize Providence, to fall into the accepted ways of talking and acting of the good sort of people.
Fach has a certain aptitude for knowing or doing somewhat which, when it appears, is so adapted and aimed on that, that it seems a sort of obtuseness to everything else. Well, this aptitude, if he would obey it, would prove a telescope to bring under his clear vision what was blur to everybody else. "I is a wonderful instrument, an organic sympathy with the whole frame of things. There is no property or rela- tion in that immense arsenal of forces which the earth is, but some man is at last found who affects this, delights to unfold and work it, as if he were the born publisher and demonstrator of it.
As a.dog has a sense that you have not, to find the track of his master or of a fox, and as 32 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT each tree can secrete from the soil the elements that form a peach, a lemon, or a cocoa-nut, according to its kind, so individual men have secret senses, each some incommunicable sagac- ity. And men are primary or secondary as their opinions and actions are organic or not.
I know well what a sieve every ear is. Teach me never so much and I hear or retain only that which I wish to hear, what comports with my experienceand my desire. Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers. A hunter finds plenty of game on the ground you have sauntered over with idle gun. White huckle- berries are so rare that in miles of pasture you shall not find a dozen. But a girl who under- stands it will find you a pint in a quarter of an hour.
Though the world is full of food we can take only the crumbs fit for us. The air rings with sounds, but only a few vibrations can reach our tympanum. Perhaps creatures live with us which we never see, because their motion is too swift for our vision. The sun may shine, or a galaxy of suns; you will get no more light than your eye will hold. What can Plato or Newton teach, if you are deaf or incapable? A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 33 put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is nolonger food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumu- lation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin, — con- gestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.
III. In reckoning the sources of our mental power it were fatal to omit that one which pours all the others into its mould; — that unknown country in which all the rivers of our knowledge have their fountains, and which, by its qualities and structure, determines both the nature of the waters and the direction in which they flow.
The healthy mind lies parallel to the currents of Nature and sees things in place, or makes discoveries. Newton did not exercise more in- genuity but less than another to see the world. Right thought comes spontaneously, comes like the morning wind; comes daily, like our daily bread, to humble service; comes duly to those who look for it. It does not need to pump your brains and force thought to think rightly. Oh no, the ingenious person is warped by his ingenuity and mis-sees.
XII 34 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT Instinct is our name for the potential wit. Each man has a feeling that what is done any- where is done by the same wit as his. All men are his representatives, and he is glad to see that his wit can work at this or that problem as it ought to be done, and better than he could do it. We feel as if one man wrote all the books, painted, built, in dark ages; and we are sure that it can do more than ever was done. It was the same mind that built the world. That is Instinct.’
Ask what the Instinct declares, and we have little to say. He-is no newsmonger, no dis- putant, no talker. *IT is a taper, a spark in the great night. Yet a spark at which all the illu- minations of human arts and sciences were kindled. This is that glimpse of inextinguish- able light by which men are guided; though it does not show objects, yet it shows the way. This is that sense by which men feel when they are wronged, though they do not see how. This is that source of thought and feeling which acts on masses of men, on all men at certain times with resistless power. Ever at intervals leaps a word or fact to light which is no man’s invention, but the common instinct, making the revolutions that never go back.
POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 35 This is Instinct, and Inspiration is only this power excited, breaking its silence; the spark bursting into flame. Instinct is a shapeless giant in the cave, massive, without hands or fingers or articulating lips or teeth or tongue; Behemoth, disdaining speech, disdaining particulars, lurk- ing, surly, invincible, disdaining thoughts, always whole, never distributed, aboriginal, old as Nature, and saying, like poor Topsy, “ never was born; growed.” Indifferent to the dignity of its function, it plays the god in animal nature as in human or as in the angelic, and spends its omniscience on the lowest wants.. The old Hindoo Gautama says, “ Like the approach of the iron to the loadstone is the approach of the new-born child to the breast.”’ There is somewhat awful in that first approach.
The Instinct begins at this low point, at the surface of the earth, and works for the necessities of the human being; then ascends step by step to suggestions which are when expressed the intellectual and moral laws.’
The mythology cleaves close to Nature; and what else was it they represented in Pan, god of shepherds, who was not yet completely finished in godlike form, blocked rather, and wanting ‘the extremities; had emblematic horns and 36 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT feet? Pan, that is, All. His habit was to dwell in mountains, lying on the ground, tooting like a cricket in the sun, refusing to speak, clinging to his behemoth ways. He could intoxicate by the strain of his shepherd’s pipe,— silent yet to most, for his pipes make the music of the spheres, which, because it sounds eternally, is not heard at all by the dull, but only by the mind. He wears a coat of leopard spots or stars. He could terrify by earth-born fears called panics. Yet was he in the secret of Nature and could look both before and after. He was only seen under disguises, and was not represented by any outward image; a terror sometimes, at others a placid omnipotence.’
Such homage did the Greek — delighting in accurate form, not fond of the extravagant and unbounded — pay to the unscrutable force we call Instinct, or Nature when it first becomes intelligent.
The action of the Instinct is for the most part negative, regulative, rather than initiative or impulsive. But it has a range as wide as human nature, running over all the ground of morals, of intellect and of sense. In its lower function, when it deals with the apparent world, it is common sense. It requires the performance of € € POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 37 all that is needful to the animal life and health. Then it requires a proportion between a man’s acts and his condition, requires all that is called humanity; that symmetry and connection which is imperative in all healthily constituted men, and the want of which the rare and brilliant sallies of irregular genius cannot excuse.
If we could retain our early innocence, we might trust our feet uncommanded to take the right path to our friend in the woods. But we have interfered too often; the feet have lost, by our distrust, their proper virtue, and we take the wrong path and miss him. ’T is the barbarian instinct within us which culture deadens.
We find ourselves expressed in Nature, but we cannot translate it into words. But Percep- tion isthe armed eye. A civilization has tamed and ripened this savage wit, and he is a Greek. His Aye and No have become nouns and verbs and adverbs. Perception differs from Instinct by adding the Will. Simple percipiency is the virtue of space, not of man.
The senses minister to a mind they do not know. Ata moment in our history the mind’s eye opens and we become aware of spiritual facts, of rights, of duties, of thoughts, — a thousand % 38 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT faces of one essence. We call the essence Truth; the particular aspects of it we call thoughts. These facts, this essence, are not new; they are old and eternal, but our seeing of them is new. Having seen them we are no longer brute lumps whirled by Fate, but we pass into the council- chamber and government of Nature. In so far as we see them we share their life and sover- elgnty.
The point of interest is here, that these gates, once opened, never swing back. The observers may come at their leisure, and do at last satisfy themselves of the fact. The thought, the doc- trine, the right hitherto not affirmed is published in set propositions, in conversation of scholars and philosophers, of men of the world, and at last in the very choruses of songs. The young hear it, and as they have never fought it, never known it otherwise, they accept it, vote for it at the polls, embody it in the laws. And the perception thus satisfied reacts on the senses, to clarify them, so that it becomes more indis- putable.
This is the first property of the Intellect I am to point out; the mind detaches. A man is intellectual in proportion as he can make an POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 39 object of every sensation, perception and intui- tion; so long as he has no engagement in any thought or feeling which can hinder him from looking at it as somewhat foreign.
A man of talent has only to name any form or fact with which we are most familiar, and the strong light which he throws on it enhances it to all eyes. People wonder they never saw it before. The detachment consists in seeing it under a new order, not under a personal but under a universal light. To us it had economic, but to the universe it has poetic relations, and it is as good as sun and star now. Indeed, this is the measure of all intellectual power among men, the power to complete this detachment, the power of genius to hurl a new individual into the world.'
An intellectual man has the power to go out of himself and see himself as an object; there- fore his defects and delusions interest him as much as his successes. He not only wishes to succeed in life, but he wishes in thought to know the history and destiny of a man; whilst the cloud of egotists drifting about are only inter- ested in a success to their egotism.
The senses report the new fact or change; the mind discovers some essential copula bind- 40 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT ing this fact or change to a class of facts or changes, and enjoys the discovery as if coming to its own again. A perception is always a gen- eralization. It lifts the object, whether in mate- rial or moral nature, into a type. The animal, the low degrees of intellect, know only individ- uals. The philosopher knows only laws. That is, he considers a purely mental fact, part of the soul itself. We say with Kenelm Digby, “ All things that she knoweth are herself, and she is all that she knoweth.” Insight assimilates the thing seen. Is it only another way of affirming and illustrating this to say that it sees nothing alone, but sees each particular object in just con- nections, — sees all in God? In all healthy souls is an inborn necessity of presupposing for each particular fact a prior Being which compels it to a harmony with all other natures. The game of Intellect is the perception that whatever befalls or can be stated is a universal proposition; and -contrariwise, that every general statement is poetical again by being particularized or imper- sonated. A single thought has no limit to its value; a thought, properly speaking, — that is a truth held not from any man’s saying so, or any acci- dental benefit or recommendation it has in our POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 41 trade or circumstance, but because we have perceived it is a fact in the nature of things, and in all times and places will and must be the same thing,—1is of inestimable value. Every new impression on the mind is not to be derided, but is to be accounted for, and, until accounted for, registered as an indisputable addition to our catalogue of natural facts.
The first fact is the fate in every mental per- ception, — that my seeing this or that, and that I see it so or so, is as much a fact in the natu- ral history of the world as is the freezing of water at thirty-two degrees of Fahrenheit. My percipiency affirms the presence and perfection of law, as much as all the martyrs. A percep- tion, it is of a necessity older than the sun and moon, and the Father of the Gods. It is there with all its destinies. It is its nature to rush to expression, to rush to embody itself. It is im- patient to put on its sandals and be gone on its errand, which is to lead to a larger perception, and so to new action. For thought exists to be expressed. That which cannot externize itself is not thought.’
Do not trifle with your perceptions, or hold them cheap. They are your door to the seven heavens, and if you pass it by you will miss your 42 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT way. Say, what impresses me ought to impress me. I am bewildered by the immense variety of attractions and cannot take a step; but this one thread, fine as gossamer, is yet real; and I hear a whisper, which I dare trust, that it is the thread on which the earth and the heaven of heavens are strung.
The universe 1s traversed by paths or bridges or stepping-stones across the gulfs of space in every direction. To every soul that is created is its path, invisible to all but itself. Each soul, therefore, walking in its own path walks firmly; and to the astonishment of all other souls, who see not its path, it goes as softly and playfully on its way as if, instead of being a line, narrow as the edge of a sword, over terrific pits right and left, it were a wide prairie.
Genius is a delicate sensibility to the laws of the world, adding the power to express them again in some new form. The highest measure of poetic power is such insight and faculty to fuse the circumstances of to-day as shall make transparent the whole web of circumstance and opinion in which the man finds himself, so that he releases himself from the traditions in which he grew, — no longer looks back to Hebrew or Greek or English use or tradition in religion, POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 43 laws or life, but sees so truly the omnipresence of eternal cause that he can convert the daily and hourly event of New York, of Boston, into universal symbols. I owe to genius always the same debt, of lifting the curtain from the common and showing me that gods are sitting disguised in every company.
The conduct of Intellect must respect nothing so much as preserving the sensibility. My mea- sure for all subjects of science as of events is their impression on the soul. That mind is best which is most impressionable.’ There are times when the cawing of a crow, a weed, a snow-flake, a boy’s willow whistle, or a farmer planting in his field is more suggestive to the mind than the Yosemite gorge or the Vatican would be in another hour. In like mood an old verse, or certain words, gleam with rare significance.
But sensibility does not exhaust our idea of it. That is only half. Gentus is not a lazy angel contemplating itself and things. It is insatiable for expression. Thought must take the stupen- dous step of passing into realization. A master can formulate his thought. Our thoughts at first possess us. Later, if we have good heads, we come to possess them. We believe that certain persons add to the common vision a certain 44 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT degree of control over these states of mind; that the true scholar is one who has the power to stand beside his thoughts or to hold off his thoughts at arm’s length and give them per- spective.
It is not to be concealed that the gods have guarded this privilege with costly penalty. This slight discontinuity which perception effects between the mind and the object paralyzes the will. If you cut or break in two a block or stone and press the two parts closely together, you can indeed bring the particles very near, but never again so near that they shall attract each other so that you can take up the block as one. That indescribably small interval is as good as a thou- sand miles, and has forever severed the practical unity. Such is the immense deduction from power by discontinuity.’
The intellect that sees the interval partakes of it, and the fact of intellectual perception severs once for all the man from the things with which he converses. Affection blends, intellect disjoins subject and object. For weal or woe we clear ourselves from the thing we contemplate. We grieve but are not the grief; we love but are not love. If we converse with low things, with POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 45 crimes, with mischances, we are not compro- mised. And if with high things, with heroic actions, with virtues, the interval becomes a gulf and we cannot enter into the highest good. Artist natures do not weep. Goethe, the sur- passing intellect of modern times, apprehends the spiritual but is not spiritual.’
Thereis indeed this viceabout men of thought, that you cannot quite trust them; not as much as other men of the same natural probity, with- out intellect; because they have a hankering to play Providence and make a distinction in favor of themselves from the rules they apply to the human race.’
The primary rule for the conduct of Intellect is to have control of the thoughts without losing their natural attitudes and action. They are the oracle; we are not to poke and drill and force, but to follow them.’ Yet the spirits of the pro- phets are subject to the prophets. You must formulate your thought or ’t is all sky and no stars. There are men of great apprehension, discursive minds, who easily entertain ideas, but are not exact, severe with themselves, can- not connect or arrange their thoughts so as effectively to report them. A blending of these 46 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT two —the intellectual perception of truth and the moral sentiment of right —is wisdom. All thought is practical. Wishing is one thing; will another. Wishing is castle-building; the dream- ing about things agreeable to the senses, but to which we have no right. Will is the advance to that which rightly belongs to us, to which the inward magnet ever points, and which we dare to make ours. The revelation of thought takes us out of servitude into freedom. So does the sense of right.
Will is the measure of power. To a great genius there must be agreat will. If the thought is not a lamp to the will, does not proceed to an act, the wise are imbecile. He alone is strong and happy who has a will. The rest are herds. He uses; they are used. He is of the Maker; they are of the Made.’
Will is always miraculous, being the presence of God tomen. When it appears in a man heis a hero, and all metaphysics are at fault. Heaven is the exercise of the faculties, the added sense of power.
All men know the truth, but what of that? It is rare to find one who knows how to speak it. A man tries to speak it and his voice is like the hiss of asnake, or rude and chiding. The truth is not POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 47 spoken but injured. The same thing happens in power to do the right. His rectitude is ridicu- lous. His organs do not play him true.
There is a meter which determines the con- structive power of man,—this, namely, the question whether the mind possesses the con- trol of its thoughts, or they of it. The new sect stands for certain thoughts. We go to individ- ual members for an exposition of them. Vain expectation. They are possessed by the ideas but do not possess them. One meets contem- plative men who dwell in a certain feeling and delight which are intellectual but wholly above their expression. They cannot formulate. They impress those who know them by their loyalty to the truth they worship but cannot impart. Sometimes the patience and love are rewarded by the chamber of power being at last opened; but sometimes they pass away dumb, to find it where all obstruction is removed.
By and by comes a facility; some one that can move the mountain and build of it a causeway through the Dismal Swamp, as easily as he carries the hair on his head. Talent is habitual facility of execution. We like peoplewho can do things. The various talents are organic, or each related to that part of nature it 1s to explore and utilize.
48 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT Somewhat is to come to the light, and one was created to fetch it, —a vessel of honor or of dishonor. ’T is of instant use in the economy of the Cosmos, and the more armed and biassed for the work the better.
Each of these talents is born to be unfolded and set at work for the use and delight of men, and, in the last results, the man with the talent is the need of mankind; the whole ponderous machinery of the state has really for its aim just to place this skill of each.
But idea and execution are not often intrusted to the same head. There is some incompatibility of good speculation and practice, for example, the failure of monasteries and Brook Farms. To hammer out phalanxes must be done by smiths; as soon as the scholar attempts it, he is half a charlatan.
The grasp is the main thing. Most men’s minds do not grasp anything. All slips through their fingers, like the paltry brass grooves that in most country houses are used to raise or drop the curtain, but are made to sell, and will not hold any curtain but cobwebs. I have heard that idiot children are known from their birth by the circumstance that their hands do not close round anything. Webster naturally and always grasps, POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 49 and therefore retains something from every com- pany and circumstance.
Asa talent Dante’s imagination is the nearest to hands and feet that we have seen. He clasps the thought as if it were a tree or a stone, and describes as mathematically. I once found Page the painter modelling his figures in clay, Ruth and Naomi, before he painted them on canvas. Dante, one would say, did the same thing before he wrote the verses.
I have spoken of Intellect constructive.* But it isin degrees. How it moves when its pace is accelerated! The pace of Nature is soslow. Why not from strength to strength, from miracle to miracle, and not as now with this retardation — as if Nature had sprained her foot — and plen- teous stopping at little stations?
The difference is obvious enough in Talent between the speed of one man’s action above another’s. In debate, in legislature, not less in action; in war or in affairs, alike daring and effective. But I speak of it in quite another sense, namely, in the habitual speed of combina- tion of thought.
The same functions which are perfect in our quadrupeds are seen slower performed in pa- XII 50 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT leontology. Many races it cost them to achieve the completion that is now in the life of one. Life had not yet so fierce a glow.’
Shakspeare astonishes by his equality in every play, act, scene or line. One would say he must have been a thousand years old when he wrote his first line, so thoroughly is his thought familiar to him, and has such scope and so sol- idly worded, as if it were already a proverb and not hereafter to become one. Well, that millen- nium in effect is really only a little acceleration in his process of thought.
But each power is commonly at the expense of some other. When pace is increased it will hap- pen that the control is in a degree lost. Reason does not keep her firm seat. The Delphian prophetess, when the spirit possesses her, is herself a victim. The excess of individualism, when it is not corrected or subordinated to the Supreme Reason, makes that vice which we stigmatize as monotones, men of one idea, or, as the French say, enfant perdu d’une convic- tion isolée, which give such a comic tinge to all society. Every man has his theory, true, but ridiculously overstated. Weare forced to treat a great part of mankind as if they were a little deranged. We detect their mania and humor it, POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 51 so that conversation soon becomes a tiresome effort.
You laugh at the monotones, at the men of one idea, but if we look nearly at heroes we may find the same poverty; and perhaps it is not poverty, but power. The secret of power, in- tellectual or physical, is concentration, and all concentration involves of necessity a certain narrowness. It is a law of Nature that he who looks at one thing must turn his eyes from every other thing in the universe. The horse goes better with blinders, and the man for dedication to his task. If you ask what compensation is made for the inevitable narrowness, why, this, that in learning one thing well you learn all things.’ | Immense is the patience of Nature. You say thought is a penurious rill. Well, we can wait. Nature is immortal, and can wait. Nature having for capital this rill, drop by drop, as it trickles from the rock of ages, — this rill and her patience, — she husbands and hives, she forms reservoirs, were it only a phial or a hair-tube that will hold as it were a drop of attar. Not having enough to support all the powers of a race, she thins all her stock and raises a few individuals, or only a pair. Not sufficing to 52 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT feed all the faculties synchronously, she feeds one faculty and starves all the rest. I am familiar with cases, we meet them daily, wherein the vital force being insufficient for the constitu- tion, everything is neglected that can be spared; some one power fed, all the rest pine. ’T is like a withered hand or leg on a Hercules. It makes inconvenience in society, for we presume symmetry, and because they know one thing, we defer to them in another, and find them really contemptible. We can’t make a half bow and say, I honor and despise you. But Nature can; she whistles with all her winds, and does as she pleases.’
It is much to write sentences; it is more to add method and write out the spirit of your life symmetrically. But to arrange general reflec- tions in their natural order, so that I shall have one homogeneous piece, — a Lycidas, an Alle- gro, a Hamlet, a Midsummer Night’s Dream, — this continuity is for the great. The wonder- ful men are wonderful hereby. Such concentra~ - tion of experiences is in every great work, which, though successive in the mind of the master, were primarily combined in his piece.
But what we want is consecutiveness. ’T is POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 53 with us a flash of light, then a long darkness, then a flash again. Ah! could we turn these fugitive sparkles into an astronomy of Coper- nican worlds."
I must think this keen sympathy, this thrill of awe with which we watch the performance of genius, a sign of our own readiness to exert the like power. I must think we are entitled to powers far transcending any that we possess; that we have in the race the sketch of a man which no individual comes up to.
Every sincere man is right, or, to make him right, only needs a little larger dose of his own personality. Excellent in his own way by means of not apprehending the gift of another. When he speaks out of another’s mind, we detect it. He can’t make any paint stick but his own. No man passes for that with another which he passes for with himself. The respect and the censure of his brother are alike injurious and irrelevant. We see ourselves; we lack organs to see others, and only squint at them.
Don’t fear to push these individualities to their farthest divergence. Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the 54 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT peculiarities are pressed, the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and with- out the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency.
The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist’s point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becom- ing sense, and we must flee again into the dis- tance if we would laugh.
What strength belongs to every plant and animal in Nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judg- ments; his genius leads him one way, but ’t is likely his trade or politics in quite another. He rows with one hand and with the other backs water, and does not give to any manner of life the strength of his constitution. Hence the perpetual loss of power and waste of human life.
POWERS AND LAWS OF THOUGHT 55 The natural remedy against this miscellany of knowledge and aim, this desultory universality of ours, this immense ground-juniper falling abroad and not gathered up into any columnar tree, is to substitute realism for sentimentalism; a certain recognition of the simple and terrible laws which, seen or unseen, pervade and govern.
You will say this is quite axiomatic and a little too true. I do not find it an agreed point. Literary men for the most part havea settled despair as to the realization of ideas in their own time. There is in all students a distrust of truth, a timidity about affirming it; a wish to patron- ize Providence.
We disown our debt to moral evil. To science there is no poison; to botany no weed; to chemistry no dirt. The curses of malignity and despair are important criticism, which must be heeded until he can explain and rightly silence them.
“ Croyez moi, Verreur aussi a son mérite,” said Voltaire. We see those who surmount by dint of egotism or infatuation obstacles from which the prudent recoil. The right partisan 1s a heady man, who, because he does not see many things, sees some one thing with heat and exaggeration; and if he falls among other narrow men, or 56 NATURAL HISTORY OF INTELLECT