CHAPTER XI.

NEW CONSTRUCTIONS

THE INITIATIVE.

Pyramus.- Write me a prologue, and let the prologue seem to say, we will do no harm with our swords [spears] . . . and for the more better assurance, tell them that I, Pyramus, am not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver. This will put them out of fear.'-Shake-spear.

'Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spoke them first, than his who spoke them after. Who follows another follows nothing, finds nothing, seeks nothing.

'Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark. I, the first of any, by my universal being. Every man carries with him the entire form of human condition.

And besides, though I had a particular distinction by myself, what can it distinguish when I am no more? Can it point out and favor inanity?

'But will thy manes such a gift bestow
As to make violets from thy ashes grow?'

Hamlet.-To thine own self be true,

Michael de Montaigne.

And it doth follow as the night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man.'

'To know a man well, were to know him-self.'

THE complaint of the practical men against the philosophers who make such an outcry upon the uses and customs of the world as they find it, that they do not undertake to give us anything better in the place of them; or if they do, with their terrible experiments they leave us worse than they find us, does not apply in this case. Because this is science, and not philosophy in the sense which that word still conveys, when applied to subjects of this nature. We all know that the scientific man is a safe and brilliant practitioner. The most unspeculative men of practice have learned to prefer him and his arts to the best empiricism. It is the philosophers we have had in this field, with their rash anticipations, with their unscientific pre-conceptions, with a pre-conception, instead of a fore-knowledge of the power they deal with, com

manding results which do not, there is the point,

do not follow.

Let no one say that this reformer is one of those who expose our miserable condition, without offering to improve it; or that he is one of those who take away our gold and jewels with their tests, and leave us no equivalent. This is no destroyer. He will help us to save all that we have. He is guarding us from the error of those who would let it alone till the masses have taken the work in hand for themselves, without science. That is the way to lay all flat.'

He is not one of those, who to make clean, efface, and who cure diseases by death.' To found so great a thing as the state anew; to dissolve that so old and solid structure, and undertake to recompose it as a whole on the spot, is a piece of work which this chemist, after a survey of his apparatus, declines to take in; though he fairly admits, that if the ques tion were of 'a new world,' and not 'a world already formed to certain customs,' science might have, perhaps, some important suggestions to make as to the original structure. And yet for all that, it is a scientific practice that is propounded here. It is a scientific innovation and renovation, that is propounded; the greatest that was ever propounded, — total, absolute, but not sudden. It is a remedy for the world as it is, that this reformer is propounding.

New constructions according to true definitions, scientific institutions, institutions of culture and regimen and cure, based on the recognition of the actual human constitution and laws,- based on an observation as diligent and subtle, and precepts as severe as those which we apply to the culture of any other form in nature,- that is the proposition. 'It were a strange speech which, spoken or spoken oft, should reclaim a man from a vice to which he is by nature subject.' 'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' This plan of culture and cure involves not the knowledge of that nature which is in all men only, but a science, enriched with most careful collections of all the specific varieties of that nature. The fullest natural history of those forces that are operant in the hourly life of man, the

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most profound and subtle observation of the facts of this history, the most thoroughly scientific collection of them, make the beginning of this enterprise. The propounder of this cure will have to begin with the secret disposition of every man laid open, and the possibilities of human character exhausted, by means of a dissection of the entire form of that human nature, which every man carries with him, and a solar-miscroscopic exhibition of the several dispositions and tempers of men, in grand ideal portraits, conspicuous instances of them, where the particular disposition and temper is 'predominant,' as in the characterisation of Hamlet, where it takes all the persons of the drama to exhibit characteristics which are more or less developed in all men. Those natural peculiarities of disposition that work so incessantly and potently in this human business, those 'points of nature,' those predetermining forces of the human life, must come under observation here, and the whole nature of the passions also, and a science of 'the will,' very different from that philosophy of it which our metaphysicians have entertained us with so long. He will have all the light of science, all the power of the new method brought to bear on this study. And he will have a similar collection, not less scientific, of the history of the human fortunes and their necessary effects on character; for these are the points that we must deal with' by way of application, and to these all our labour is limited and tied; for we cannot fit a garment except we take a measure of the form we would fit it to.' Nothing short of this can serve as the basis of a scientific system of human education.

But this is not all. It is the human nobility and greatness that is the end, and that 'craves,' as the noble who is found wanting in it tells us, 'a noble cunning.' It is no single instrumentality that makes the apparatus of this culture and cure. Skilful combinations of appliances based on the history of those forces which are within our power, which 'we can deal with by way of alteration,' forces from which the mind suffereth,' which have operation on it, so potent that 'they can almost change the stamp of nature,' that they can make

indeed, another nature,'- these are the engines, this is the machinery which the scientific state will employ for its ends. These are the engines, this is the machinery that is going to take the place of that apparatus which the state, as it is, finds such need of. This is the machinery to prevent the fiend,' which the scientific statesman is propounding.

'I would we were all of ONE MIND, and one mind good,' says our Poet. O there were desolation of gallowses and gaolers. I speak against my present profit,' [he adds,- he was speaking not as a judge or a lawyer, but as a gaoler,] 'I speak against my present profit, but my wish hath a preferment in it.'

(A preferment ?)—That is the solution propounded by science, of the problem that is pressing on us, and urging on us with such violent appeals, its solution. I would we were all of one mind, and one mind good. My wish hath a preferment in it.'

'Folly is not to be cured by bare admonition.' 'It were a strange speech which, spoken, or spoken oft, should cure a man of a vice to which he is by nature subject,'-subject by nature. That is the Philosopher. What he cannot help in his nature you account a vice in him,' says the poor citizen, putting in a word on the Poet's behalf for Coriolanus whose education, whatever Volumnia may think about it, was not scientific, or calculated to reduce that 'partliness,' that disorganizing social principle, whose subsequent demonstrations gave her so much offence. Not admonition, not preaching and scolding, and not books only, but institutions, laws, customs, habit, education in its more limited sense, 'association, emulation, praise, blame,' all the agencies' from which the mind suffereth,'which have power to change it, in skilfully compounded recipes and regimen scientifically adapted to cases, and not prescribed only, but enforced, these make the state machinery these are the engines that are going to 'prevent the fiend,' and educate the one mind,' the one mind good, which is the sovereign of the common-WEAL, -'my wish hath a preferment in it,'- the one only man who, will make when he is crowned, not Rome, but room enough for us all, who will make when he is crowned such desola

tion of gallowses and gaolers. These are the remedies for the diseases of the state, when the scientific practitioner is called in at last, and permitted to undertake his cure. But he will not wait for that. He will not wait to be asked. He has no delicacy about pushing himself forward in this business. The concentration of genius and science on it, henceforth,— the gradual adaptation of all these grand remedial agencies to this common end,- this end which all truly enlightened minds will conspire for,- find to be their own,- this is the plan;- this is the sober day-dream of the Elizabethan Reformer; this is the plot of the Elizabethan Revolutionist. This is the radicalism that he is setting on foot. This is the cure of the state which he is undertaking.

We want to command effects, and the way to do that is to find causes; and we must find them according to the new method, and not by reasoning it thus and thus, for the result is just the same, this philosopher observes, as if we had not reasoned it thus and thus, but some other way. That is the difficulty with that method, which is in use here at present, which this philosopher calls 'common logic.' Life goes on, life as it is and was, in the face of our reasonings; but it goes on in the dark; the phenomena are on the surface in the form of EFFECTS, and all our weal and woe is in them; but the CAUSES are beneath unexplored. They are able to give us certain impressions of their natures; they strike us, and blast us, it may be, by way of teaching us something of their powers; but we do not know them; they are within our own souls and lives, and we do not know them; not because they lie without the range of a scientific enquiry, but because we will not apply to them the scientific method; because the old method of 'preconception' here is still considered the true one.

The plan of this great scientific enterprise was one which embraced, from the first, the whole body of the common-weal. It concerned itself immediately and directly with all the parts and members of the social state, from the king on his throne. to the beggar in his straw. Its aim was to disclose ultimately, and educate in every member of society that entire and noble