Philosophy'

the mysterious
at beyond any
nd almost any
Unity of the
emotional, and
ways together
ment, is imma-
elt consciously
s the relation

Dusness of our
s what seems
an absolutely
te only in our
limitable and
nly define by
tle gradations
ter, soul and
closely influ-
theart as
nd cottages-
Iwith human
perfect work,
ove with the

mighty proheart of the esent,

lation, without explaining, resolves many such contradic-
tions by referring them to a future and transcendental
experience, or by uniting under a higher law of celestial
Love-in other words, affirms the mysteries and leaves
them; gives a method of thought, not results; law, not
' much information'. Many will say here, It is enough; we
ask no more. But believers and disbelievers alike, by many
thousand volumes, have attested that man's nature impe-
riously urges the attempt to find some satisfying answer
within the sphere of reason for perplexities so vital; have
borne witness to the necessity, the obligation, the joy of
elevated thoughts on these arduous and supersensual
inquiries. True, they are unanswerable; true, that to
justify, in the strict sense, God's ways to man in the
material or the spiritual world lies beyond even a Milton's
impassioned logic; yet it is a real gain, if first we recog-
nize the all-pervading contradictions of existence, and then
are able, in some degree, to bring them beneath the idea
of a larger and comprehensive unity. Nor does this philo-
sophy, I would a second time remind the reader, belong to a
remote or an ideal realm. The subtleties of transcendental
thought are, by transmutation, the commonplaces of the
market-the Gods never far from human struggles.
During how many whole centuries, for instance, have
'Freedom' and 'Necessity' been battle-cries, raised suc-
cessively in perhaps every European nation! Men felt the
opposition involved in these correlative conceptions
imagined such contradictions must each exclude the other
-ranged themselves under this banner or that; and, by
one-sidedness, fell into excesses of belief and action fatally
affecting the course of life, and filling them with mad pre-
sumptions on the life to follow. Wearied at last and shame-
hearted at the results, men have perhaps let the combat

1

1

rest; have said with partial truth, These are verba versies: Nature is reality-Man, her minister a preter. And then the strife has renewed itse spiritual perplexity we had thought exiled, like th which, turn what way he would, terrified the H chief on the eve of mortal conflict, reappears; a schools resound, and the subtle intellect exhaus between the ideal contradictions of Thought and Reality and Phenomenon, Law and Individual; no ing one extreme into exaggeration, now partializ philosopher's whole science of Nature by setting a problem altogether. Treat them as we choose,aware that men of might, radically opposed as M Ruskin, agree in the sentence of proscription (a dently and unwillingly do I dissent from them) difficulties are no mere freaks of fancy, neither wi unreal. Each fundamental conception, like the forces of magnetism, has its hostile correlative; s once to be and not to be; exists only to human when we recognize the possibility of its antagon yet, by the very recognition of that antagonism, to part with existence. As the son of Blyson saw, what way we will, we stand between contradictions.

XXIII Such, or somewhat such, for on matters quisitely enigmatical I cannot hope to have spoke force or clearness, was the predominant sense of N which now fell on me. In truth, perhaps no clearer ment is ever possible: the higher philosophy is an i sion, not a formal system-a method (I repeat it for he who grasps this, grasps Science), not a result at the risk of weariness I have ventured on some thinking that the difficulties involved are at once co and dismissed often with vague words, from the

-verbal contro-
ster and inter-
d itself-the

like the wraith
the Highland
ars; again the

exhausts years nt and Matter, al; now drawartializing the ting aside the Choose,-I am as Mill and on (and diffithem)-these her wilful nor the bipolar

ve; seems at man thought tagonist, and ism, appears saw,-turn

6

ficial fancy that they are opposed to action; or the fancy,
almost equally superficial (though Carlyle's), that action.
solves them; from cowardly acquiescence in seeming expla-
nations; or, finally, from a very weak and worldly contempt
for man's high privilege of Imaginative Reason, because,
perplexed in the labyrinth of our own existence, our last
word in Philosophy can be only the calm confession of
wise ignorance, or ignorant wisdom. Yet, to return to
self, I could not reach at once that humble and enhumili-
ating result of inquiry. In Plato, soon studied in chrono-
logical order, I found a far wider exposition of doctrines.
fundamentally akin to the hints of Heracleitus, set forth
in language so exquisite in its perfection that in our whole.
European prose literature I know none that can approach
it for a moment's rivalry, and adorned by a more than
poet's poetry of imagination. But the trenchant severity
of logic in Parmenides', the grace and infinite suggestive-
ness of 'Phaedrus', although this exemplified the method
of Theoretic argument (I use the adjective in the noble
sense which is one of the many gifts our language has
received from Ruskin) which Plato in Parmenides' system-
atized with force and subtlety unequalled by any other
among the sons of men, left the riddle of our own expe-
rience totally unanswered. The Sphynx transmutes herself
into the spirit of every age; no previous answer, if given,
solves the enigma succeeding :-Plato's problems, though
analogous, are not ours. And, meanwhile, the avenues to
speculative thought once opened, as new contrasting diffi-
culties arose within and without, the whole framework of
previous supposed sure convictions seemed to break up
amidst heart-rending pangs, supplications for light, and
pride-humiliating confessions. It is due to Truth, my only
aim, to repeat that the mastery of conscience, the sense

8

of right and wrong, and that which handles daily li in no degree confused or impaired by that great s bewilderment. Yet scarcely less was it hard, u dictates of this new proclamation of inexplicable my part with so much of childly belief as appeared in moments of revolution an inevitable sacrifice, so m deared at once from present association, and from during the days unvexed by Knowledge. I had -and books and preachers lent strenuous confirma that belief-every absolute difficulty resolved, do swered, all things in the moral and intellectual secure; and now, as Wordsworth tells of himself, have grasped the hedgerow trees when I walked for ance that, here at least, a something real existed.

XXIV When nations are convulsed by cha menaced war, every star in the sky appears a porte prophetic of evil. It is the same in the revolution soul. As, in due course of academical studies, I rea high achievements, the heroic virtues (superficially o Christian Apologists accounted for as exceptional pure morality and healthy perfect conceptions of c duty held and practised in Athens or in Rome, and ing, by the clearest rational analogy, the contempor existence of a vast substratum of virtuous household I was perplexed to reconcile with what appear requisitions of the faith of the day, with the procla of our immeasurable superiority to paganism, resistible sense which study gave, of a great comper running through the ages. How could both be tr both together? Yet again, if there were not thi pensation, how should a man with common human f bear to think of the millions' gone over to the ma without the pale of Christendom? If such conclus

2,

daily life, were
great shock of
hard, under the

-able mystery to
ared in the first
ce, so much en-
nd from origin
I had believed
confirmation to
ved, doubt an-
ctual universe
imself, I could
ked for assur-
sted.
y change or
2 portent and
lutions of the
S, I read of the
ially often by
tional',) the
s of common

, and imply-
emporaneous
ehold life,—
ppeared the
proclamation
sm, the ir-
ompensation

De true, and
this com-
nan feelings
e majority'
nclusion be

refused, could we look on them (to take a picture from the
studies of the moment) without a sadness deeper far than
that told in Hellenic story, when Xerxes the king (whose
existence was at this time strangely realized to me by the
discovery of his own solemn sayings inscribed on the rocks
of Irak-Ajemi), from his white throne set beneath Abydos
wept for the inevitable death of the many myriads he saw
drawn out before him, the ten thousand crowned Persians,
Arians, Assyrians, Bactrians, Indians, and others innumer-
able, crossing Hellespont to Sala and Doriscus ?- This
problem is one of the many which the Past originates; but
the Present reproduced it, when, through Prichard's great
work on Ethnology, a vision of the multitudes of our race and
of the differences which appear to interalienate the human
family by limits original and impassable, was impressed
upon my mind with all the force and conviction of Science.
What, I asked, was this restless and distracted Christen-
dom, that we should presume-and it is the presumption of
every preacher-to foresee the ultimate destiny, to unriddle
the fate of life for Berbers, Senegambians, Euskaldunes,
Tungusians, the Aino and the mysterious population of
Dai Nippon, Vazimbas of central Madagascar, Guarani and
Lenguas of the world beyond Atlantic, (I give the names,
for names realize),-men indeed, but men between whom and
our own race, with its specifically peculiar religion, Science
could detect no sign of more than generic consanguinity?
As the tribes of mankind from this 'mount of speculation'
passed before me, I felt as the passionate poet when he
looked up to the heavenly temples of the great universe
' and aether studded with white stars', asking the whence
and whither of such august creations: or again as another
subtle spirit, who henceforth held me by the spell of heart