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ple. In other words, we believe that this proceeding from the general and simple to the complex and special, is the secret of all effective organization, whether in nature, in method, in the growth of the mind, or in the movement of societies. It is a principle, too, let us here observe, which will carry Comte himself clear off the legs of his materialistic Positivism, into the profoundest depths of religion.

A complete scheme of knowledge or belief, implies three things: 1st, A region to be explored; 2d, An instrument to explore it with; and 3d, A method of working that instrument. In other words, there must be a body of sciences, a doctrine of the perceiving mind, and a method of action; and these three, if there be unity in the constitution of the scheme, must prove each other, in the last result; i. e. they must correspond with each other in the procession of their movements. Now, Comte's systemization, tested by this criterion, reveals what it has and what it has not done: it has given us a body of science, imperfect to the extent in which it has excluded a large class of our most important beliefs; it has given us a doctrine of the perceiving mind, only as a subordinate division of physiology, carried forward by sociology; while his method, admirable in many respects, we are left to learn from its practical applications, which prove, as we think, that it is incomplete. There is not, consequently, that accordance between Comte's schemes of nature, of mind, and of method, which we consider the triple test of a sound systemization, and which inevitably follows, as we wish we had space to illustrate from his own law of "decreasing generality," &c.

The narrowness of Comte's survey of the field of knowledge, we have already remarked, and must now state in what respects we think his method incomplete. He has shown, in an admirable manner, that each science has a method and spirit of its own, which is not applicable to others; that mathematical method is one thing, and physical another, and physiological another, and sociological another; that the method of one should not be allowed to encroach upon the domain of another, and that, as we ascend in the scale of the sciences, our means of exploration increase with the dignity of the pursuit; but he has nowhere, as we think, viewed method in its highest aspects.

In

particular, he has not given sufficient prominence and force to one branch of synthesis, which is of vast importance in eliciting truth. We refer to the method of analogy: knowing how scientific men are apt to deride it, and how easily it may be abused, in superficial hands, but believing, at the same time, that it is an instrument of inestimable efficacy in its sphere. No one can have studied nature with any thoroughness, without having perceived that her system is one of ascending repetitions, or of progressive orders and reduplications; that she is a process of phenomenal variations, implicated in a permanent unity; that each development of an organic form is a miniature reproduction of its whole; that every higher organism again carries forward with it its inferior organisms; in short, as Goethe expresses it:

"Wie Alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelkräfte auf und nieder steigen.
Und sich die gold'nen Eimer reichen!
Mit segendduftenden schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen."*

Goethe's own scientific labors were animated by the method of analogy, seeming in their results like poetic intuitions; and a most exquisite use is made of it in Mr. Wilkinson's book, "The Human Body, in its Connection with Man." which, we presume, no one can read without entering into a new world of the most striking and beautiful truth. It is this method which has illuminated the gigantic labors of the modern German naturalists, such as Carus, Oken, Schubert, &c., with an almost heavenly light, filling the universe of natural forms with humanitary meanings, and building up a glorious natural theology, not on the empirical basis of "contrivance proves design," which makes Deity the mere minister of finite necessities, but on the more satisfactory and scientific ground, that man, the image of God, is also, to use an expression of Novali's, the "systematic index" of the creation, which attests, by every line and movement, that he is truly the son of an infinite Father. "In man," says Profes sor Stallo, "all the powers of the universe are concentrated, all developments united, all forms associated. He is the bearer of all dignities in nature. There is no tone to which his being is not the

"How the all weaves itself into the whole, and one in the other acts and lives! How celestial forces as cend and descend, and pass each other the golden pails! With wings perfumed with blessings, they pervade the earth from heaven, all ringing harmonically through all."

response, no form, of which he is not the type;" but he does not give the reason, which furnishes the ground for natural analogies, as well as for a deeper spiritual correspondence, viz., that the author of nature is essentially a Man. He is the supreme Wisdom and Love, of which the goodness and truth of our humanity is the living, active form. The world of na

ture, therefore, whose unceasing yearnings are to minister to the spirit of man, is instinct every where with conspiring humanities.

It would be unjust to infer from what we have said, that Comte has no perception of this, and other among the higher applications of method; for, he distinctly recognizes an elementary form of analogy in the "comparisons" instituted both in his biology and his sociology. He even speaks of the comparative method, as one of the greatest of logical creations," and in another place, as "a transcendent method of logical investigation," but it is at the same time clear from the sense in which he employs it that he had not fully penetrated its more fertile uses. The inveterate hatred with which he is imbued, to every process hinting the slightest approach to theological or metaphysical conception, has blinded his eyes, not only in this respect but in many others, to the most beautiful inductions contained in his own premises. It will be the immortal honor of his system, for instance, that it has so clearly demonstrated the science of society as the culminating glory of all the sciences, without which they would have undergone their long and painful evolutions in vain, and from the reflected lustre of which they derive their brightest illustrations and surest character; but with this great truth, tingling as one might suppose in every vein, announcing, too,

that "the fundamental type of evolution is found in the increasing preponderance of our humanity over our animality,"-he has yet failed to perceive the pre-eminent mark and distinction of that humanity-he does not discover the characteristics which make man, a man. He confesses the superiority of his physical, intellectual and social attributes (though some of these he intimates are obscurely anticipated by the brutes), but he does not discern, behind these attributes, a supremer life, a life no longer held in bondage to any sensuous or finite good, no longer subject either to nature or society, but which feeds upon a perfect or infinite goodness, beauty, and truth. His loftiest conception is of the natural or scientific and social man, but of the artist, in the genuine sense, or of the truly religious man, whose fountains of aspiration are the All-Fair and the All-Good,”—a beauty and loveliness unconditioned by any evil or defect,--he seems to entertain scarcely an inkling. It is true, that he is forced, by his own logic, as we shall see hereafter in his "Positive Politics," to construct as the final and comprehensive unity of thought, a "Supreme being" and a "religion," but that "Grand-Etre" is no more than the visible and organized aggregate called Humanity,-a humanity "subject to all the fatalities, mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, and social," and that "religion" is the reflective worship of that stupendous Grand-Etre phenomenon! Strange, indeed, that one can balance so, on the brink of the very ocean of light, without tumbling in!

But a final and full estimate of Comte depends upon a consideration of his "Sociology," which we must reserve, if happily we shall be permitted, for a future opportunity.

I

DICK PASTEL'S STORY. "Wandering to holy places, and bowing down to images. Enough, enough."

WISH to set down here what Dick Pastel related to me one August night, with as little flourish as possible, for Dick is a quiet man; and, except an occasional flash of earnestness, he talked in a monotonous undertone, to which the wind in the trees near us kept up a fit mourning accompaniment-half mocking, and filling

[Chant of Converted Hindoo.

up all pauses with its eternal rustling; as if you heard a girl singing old ballads by the sea-shore when the tide is coming in.

On the summer night mentioned, I had stepped out upon the second story piazza of the C-House, to enjoy-what was impossible in the heat of the day-the solace of a choice "Noriega." If any one

House

wishes to know where the Cis, I can only oblige so far as to say, it is one of the many summer haunts where people go to get cool in the hot months, and from which they often return, I fear, warmer and in worse humor than when they went.

A grove of old forest trees comes quite up to the house, thrusting its branches through the lattice-work of the balustrade. Toward the west it slopes into a valley where patches of mist lie a little after sundown, and beyond a heavy fringe of woods prevents the meadow from running its level plane into the sky. It is a venerable place of shade, and seemed an Arcadia to me some summers ago; and that night all the old summers came back to me while the moonlight lay in the tops of the trees, dimly lighting them up-as the mellowed sunlight of many summers might lie (in the memory) upon a landscape of the past. And the stir in the leaves, that continual talking they keptcould not one hear in it the old tones and subdued laughter of belles and beaux, voices and laughter now silent, or worse than that, passé these many years?

There was the same moonlight now as then, and the same lights gleaming from the windows below, and like music swelling up the air; and I could hear the same quiet movement of changing feet-the same movement, but changed feet indeed, and always changing. And, O! Gloriana of to-night, dashing in the Polka, voluptuous in the waltz, confidential in the pauses; you but tread a beaten path, in which your grandmother has gone before. who flirted the fan and fanned the flirts as hopefully; and even now a new Gloriana comes, standing on tiptoe with eagerness at the doorway, for whom you must gather up your robes, and, with what grace you may, sail away from our sight into the darkness without; a sad thing to think of, truly, if your life lies wholly in that! But, if the best of life does not lie in the last new dance, in rouge (why will the noir come after it?), in pointed lace and pointless bagatelle? It were worth thinking of, at all events.

I thought myself alone, but at the end of the promenade Dick Pastel sat in the shade of a pillar, silent and contracted.

"Pastel, you? I thought you in the saloon with the new arrival, Miss Haut Ton-I declare, I believe you-and I am a matched brace to-night. What might be your particular consolation?"

Only the 'old story about a fool and a woman,' as Mr. Henry Esmond has it," VOL. III.-40

said Dick, without moving his position. "Sit down here."

"You see that old tree yonder where the light falls?" Dick began after a little.

"Yes, that and the green sapling by it."

The wind stirred its branches a little with a low sound, and we smoked on in silence. Mr. Pastel was neither a gloomy man, nor given to the melancholy vein, as you may think, nor, what is worse, did he feign being so. He carried in all companies a brave, frank face, and a gallant (not fast) bearing. I suppose every body, once in a lifetime, may be a trifle misanthropic, and look through the wrong end of the glass for a time. And, at times, very honest gentlemen, aye, the gayest of them, will fall into musings over a mental landscape about as cheerful as that of the Dead Sea. Dick was a painter, or trying to be one, and poor, and that's the whole truth of it.

He was an enthusiast in his art, and cared for little else. Indeed he had no turn at all for business, but was rather given to building castles in the air and living in them. I am afraid you will think him a worthless fellow, and perhaps he is. Although he never seemed to be idle, yet I often noticed something dreamy in his eye, but never any "speculation" there. Dick only made beautiful pictures. He showed me some in his studio. Half-formed faces, beginning to look at you from the canvas, and landscapes growing to completeness as real ones grow into the prime of summer. Faces, that to see once, you would be set a-longing to see for ever; and landscapes, where of all landscapes in the world you would expect to see just such faces. And Dick had a studio full of these, and how many more in his head I cannot say. But, after all, they are only pictures, and their use is very questionable; for, will they make any of us richer, I should like to know?

It was under that tree." Dick broke out in the train of his thinking, "that I first saw her. It was one evening as I drove young Spooneye's wagon home from a day's trouting. (Good fellow that Spooneye with his wagon.) She stood there, leaning lightly against the tree and looking off to the sunset. Three or four others were grouped about, chatting and loitering in the lazy air. I could hear their voices as I turned into the yard (and can now for that matter); and as the sunlight played upon the group and glorified for a moment the trees. I thought

the whole scene would be charming on

canvas.

I've seen the time since when I wished I was hanging in that old tree with a rope round my neck-yes, by Jove, swinging there like an old tavern sign. But I don't now, and I shan't run myself into that or any other noose in a hurry.

That evening I was presented in due form to KATE MONDE. If I thought her beautiful as she stood in the sunlight. I hardly knew what to think now. She had altogether an inexplicable face. There was a certain hardness in its expression as her eye first fell on me, which I have seen once since, that was any thing but beautiful. But it vanished so suddenly, I thought it must have been some stray shade or chance disposition of the light. For her tone was cordial, and her manner even kind as we moved away to take our places in the next quadrille.

"Even now I can hardly say whether she was quite beautiful. I have studied her face by the hour, but there was some strangeness about it I could never master. In form, she was a fully developed woman, and perhaps you would call her too stout. And so she was for a magazine angel. But I hate magazine angels. I want real flesh and blood women, with the pulse and plumpness of health; and I assure you I had much rather my lady should eat beefsteak, even at the risk of a full habit, than grow interesting and angelic on vinegar and poundcake and slate pencils. Plain, womanly Eve is good enough for me here, and as for the other world, why, I hope we shall all be a little glorified there."

"Yet, Dick. I fear the elegant Miss Haut Ton would think it a great scandal, if you hinted that she might be, after all, no more comely an angel than old Cloe who has a pug nose and a waist like a wash-tub in dimensions."

"Still," Dick prosed on without heeding me, "there was that grace about her every movement, if she was a trifle stout, that I never saw in any creature with wings-not even the flying angels in altar pieces." And Dick laughed quietly. "And her waltzing! She floated about the room like a dream, like part of the very music it seemed to me-if music could be addressed to the eye."

And Mr. Pastel paused for a moment, emphasizing with his head the time in some ethereal strain of Strauss, which he heard, evidently, and I did not.

"Her face, I think, had ten thousand expressions. If not always lovely, it was new, and worthy to be studied each time.

It was a face you never would tire of, and therein lay its charm for me. Most women appear (to me) like paintings-always the same. There they hang (the pictures) upon the wall, staring at you with that predetermined, set look. For my part, it matters little whether I am driven to desperation by an eternal sweetness, or a squint.

"I should say of Kate's face, that it was a Northern one, with a Southern complexion-I mean a rich complexion, ripened by sunlight. She had a heavy mass of dark hair, which would have fallen in full ringlets, had not a better taste confined it. Her lips were firm, and not too full; her forehead too high and broad for female beauty, and her nose regular. Her eyes I can tell you still less about. They were either hazel, or black, or dark gray, all, at times, I think, and sometimes neither; but I could never fathom them. There was that peculiar fulness beneath the eyebrows that produced all the effect of sadness or tearfulness in them. full of the archest laughter and mischief, one saw behind it all that old look of tearfulness, ready to be sadness. Somehow, the whole face baffled me. In the gayest times, when it was lit up as by sunlight, I have seen the old shadow come over it so suddenly, as to startle me, and retreat, as shadows will. And I could never tell whether it was a mere physical habit, or a changing temper of the soul, that flung it there.

Ever

"I tell you this now connectedly, but I didn't see it all that night, nor for many nights after that. I only had then a confused idea of grace and enchantment, and a general impression that my time had come. It was, altogether, a famous evening; and I thought, as I set my boots outside the door that night, that it had done the business for me. That was in June.

"And I fell in love in June, and fell out in October. I was in the boat even longer than our grandfathers used to be in crossing from Finisterre to the Narrows. I am aware it was a most unfashionable length of time. The thing is commonly better done now-a-days. We make both voyages (Atlantic and Pacific) in nine days and odd hours. I don't know as the voyage is any safer now than then, or pleasanter, when I think of all the green sea-sickness, the quarantine, and most lamentable shipwrecks of hope and youth. Watering-places, with all the clear water and fresh air (promised in the advertisements), are hot-houses, and intimacies ripen fast in them. But I thought it a natural garden then, and a paradise at that.

I was a confounded fool; but I claim no originality for the distinction. The summer was flush of counterparts.

"I suppose I needn't tell you how I found the queen of the evening the nymph of the morning, and how quickly a confidential intimacy sprung up between us two, who had nothing else to do.' You know, of course, the drives and rides, the walks to streams that had little islands, or to knolls where the sunset was advantageously exhibited (gratis!); and this balcony by moonlight, and we two leaning over the balustrade, and looking down (it was dark then), trying to look down into each other's thoughts. There was a great deal of whirl and glitter in that summer, as there is now: floods of sunshine and dust; somehow, a confusion and clashing of people, and every body made a resolute show of gayety and happiness, but it all seemed a dream to me. Only one thing was real and true in it all. From out the shifting, heated crowd, and the inextricable confusion of it, one figure came to meet me, calm and smiling.

"In time, every body came to look upon it as a settled thing, and it seemed a great relief to every body to think it was settled. Was a plank over a stream to be crossed in the walk? Mr. Pastel's hand offered the support. Was it time for shawling? Mr. Pastel adjusted the cashmere. Was it a horseback ride? Mr. Pastel's hand received the delicate foot (I presume she thought it on his neck), and lifted the owner of it to the saddle. And it was Mr. Pastel who didn't come out first in the race, for Miss Monde was a bold rider, and, I believe, would have ridden Bucephalus himself, if Alexander (famous whip) hadn't.

66

"If you think," Dick continued, in a ruminating manner, that I dangled upon Kate Monde's skirts without encouragement, manifested interest, without interest in return, longed to take a hand that did not beckon, to hear a voice that was not winning, or to seek an eye that turned away, you are mistaken. I sometimes think even now that she loved me. Then I think she did not, and then I thinkI don't know any thing about it, and never did.

"She was more accomplished than most women, yet I could never see that she had enriched her head at the expense of her heart, as many do. There was no lack of the feminine graces, of gentleness and refinement of feeling. I mention it, because you might have thought at times she had too much spirit and independence. Indeed, at a watering-place, it was rare to

see such freshness and purity from the worldly way of intrigue and campaigning. Remember, I am speaking of her, as I thought of her then. Nor did I ever see in her any of that rage for conquest-a desire and a display so unfeminine and abhorrent, that I am sure every pureminded woman would rather take her place among the Circassian slaves, and let another act the showman, than stand forth so brazenly in all our summer markets, crying, "Come, buy! come, buy!'

"In time, having perfect confidence in her, I came to speak of my past life-you know what it has been, a struggle, for the most part-and of my hope and dream for the future. There was no hope or aspiration I kept from her, no story of all the coming years too sacred for her ear; and I suppose I talked extravagantly and foolishly, as youth will talk. I was fresh from college then, and passionately fond of my art. I lived in a world of visions then-visions I was eager to transfer to canvas, that all the world should delight to look at them. I was poor and unknown then, but I thought it would be different some day. And there was no nobler thing under heaven, I said, than two who trusted in each other, mounting up the steeps of life together, sharing the trials and joys, kindling hopes and tempering them, sharing the defeats and disappointments, and by and by sharing the crown-if it came. And I had hoped all my life, I said, to find a face more beautiful to me than any picture, whose kind smile and encouragement should be both my incentive and reward; one who would understand my aspirations, and share my enthusiasm in them, while yet they were fresh, and so far noble; while yet life was young, and worth the living, to help me live it, before the best thoughts had grown old, the fairest fancies become chilled, and the most kind and honest feelings dead. Life is a magnificent fortune; and I think the selfishness that would spend it alone, overleaps itself, and the fortune is half wasted.

"Kate smiled half incredulously, as if she saw (with those fine eyes) far different fortunes; but she only said, archly holding up a myrtle wreath she had been twining:

"Can two wear this crown, Mr. Pastel?'

"Two can share the pleasure of its wearing,' I answered. 'As, could not two that of the laurel, if it came?' But I fear I was hardly understood.

"For music, Miss Monde had excellent taste, and an almost passionate fondness;

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