Shall we be content to accept as a science any longer, a science that leaves human life and its actualities and particulars, unsearched, uncollected, unreduced to scientific nomenclature and axiom? Shall we be content any longer with a knowledge that is power,—shall we boast ourselves any longer of a scientific art that leaves human nature,—that makes over human nature to the tampering of an unwatched, unchecked empiricism, that leaves our own souls it may be, and the souls in which ours are garnered up, all wild and hidden, and gnarled within with nature's crudities and spontaneities, or choked and bitter with artificial, but unscientific, unartistic repression?
Will you have of that divinely appointed and beautiful 'handmaid,' that was brought in on to this Globe Theatre, with that upward look,—with eyes turned to that celestial sovereignty for her direction, with the sum of good in her intention, with the universal doctrine of practice in her programme, with the relief 'of man's estate and the Creator's glory' put down in her role,—with her new song—with her song of man's nature and life as it is, on her lips—will you have of her, only the minister to your physical luxuries and baser wants? Be it so: but in the name of that truth which is able to survive ages of misunderstanding and detraction, in the name of that honor which is armed with arts of self-delivery and tradition, that will enable it to live again, 'though all the earth o'erwhelm it to men's eyes,' while this Book of the Advancemement of Learning stands, do not charge on this man henceforth, that election.
The times of that ignorance in which it could be thus accredited, are past; for the leader of this Advancement is already unfolding his tradition, and opening his books; and he bids us debase his name no longer, into a name for these sordid fatuities. The Leader of ages that are yet to be,—ages whose nobler advancements, whose rational and scientific advancements to the dignity and perfection of the human form, it was given to him and to his company to plan and initiate,—he declines to be held any longer responsible for the blind, demoniacal, irrational spirit, that would seize on his great instrument of science, and wrest it from its nobler object and intent, and debase it into the mere tool of the senses; the tool of a materialism more base and sordid than any that the world has ever known; more sordid, a thousand-fold, than the materialism of ages, when there was yet a god in the wood and the stone, when there was yet a god in the brick and the mortar. This 'broken science' that has no end of ends, this godless science, this railway learning that travels with restless, ever quickening speed, no whither,—these dead, rattling 'branches' and slivers of arts and sciences, these modern arts and sciences, hacked and cut away from that tree of sciences, from which they sprang, whereon they grew, are his no longer. He declines to be held any longer responsible for a materialism that shelters itself under the name of philosophy, and identifies his own name with it. Call it science, if you will, though science be the name for unity and comprehension, and the spirit of life, the spirit of the largest whole; call it philosophy if you will, if you think philosophy is capable of being severed from that common trunk, in which this philosopher found its pith and heart,—call it science,—call it philosophy,—but call it not, he says,—call it not henceforth 'Baconian.'
For his labor is to collect into an art or science the doctrine of human life. He, too, has propounded that problem,—he has translated into the modern speech, that problem, which the inspired Leader of men, of old propounded. 'What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul; or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?' He, too, has recognized that ideal type of human excellence, which the Great Teacher of old revealed and exemplified; he has found scientifically,—he has found in the universal law,—that divine dogma, which was taught of old by One who spake as having authority—One who also had looked on nature with a loving and observant eye, and found in its source, the Inspirer of his doctrine. In his study of that old book of divinity which he calls the book of God's Power this Modern Innovator has found the scientific version of that inspired command 'Be ye therefore perfect.' This new science of morality, which is 'moral knowledge,' is able to recognise the inspiration and divinity of that received platform and exemplar of good, and pours in on it the light of a universal illustration. And in his new scientific policy, in his scientific doctrine of success, in his doctrine of the particular and private good, when he brings out at last the rule which shall secure it from all the blows of fortune, what is it but that same old 'Primum quærite' which he produces,—clothing it with the authority and severe exaction of a scientific rule in art,—that same 'Primum quærite' which was published of old as a doctrine of faith only. 'But let men rather build,' he says, 'upon that foundation, which is as a corner-stone of divinity and philosophy, wherein they join close; namely, that same 'Primum quærite.' For divinity saith, 'Seek first the kingdom of God, and all other things shall be added to you'; and philosophy saith, 'Primum quærite bona animi cætera aut aderunt, aut non oberunt.'
And who will now undertake to say that it is, indeed, written in the Book of God,—in the Book of the Providential Design, and Creative Law, or that it is written in the Revelation of a divine good will to men; that those who cultivate and cure the soul—who have a divine appointment to the office of its cure—shall thereby be qualified to ignore its actual laws, or that they shall find in the scientific investigation of its actual history, or in this new—so new, this so wondrous and beautiful science, which is here laid out in all its parts and points on the basis of a universal science of practice,—no 'ministry' to their end? Who shall say that the Regimen of the mind, that its Education and healthful culture, as well as its cure, shall be able to accept of no instrumentalities from the advancement of learning? Who shall say that this department of the human life—this alone, is going to be held back to the past, with bonds and cramps of iron, while all else is advancing; that this is going to be held forever as a place where the old Aristotelian logic, which we have driven out of every other field, can keep its hold unchallenged still,—as a place for the metaphysics of the school-men, the empty conceits, the old exploded inanities of the Dark Ages, to breed and nestle in undisturbed?
Who shall claim that this department is the only one, which that gift, that is the last gift of Creation and Providence to man is forbidden to enter?
Surely it is the authorised doctrine of a supernatural aid, that it is never brought in to sanction indolence and the neglect of means and instruments already in our power; and in that book of these new ages in which the doctrine of a successful human practice was promulgated, is it not written that in no department of the human want, 'can those noble effects, which God hath set forth to be bought as the price of labour, be obtained as the price of a few easy and slothful observances?'
And who that looks on the world as it is at this hour, with all our boasted aids and instrumentalities,—who that hears that cry of sorrow which goes up from it day and night,—who that looks at these masses of men as they are,—who that dares to look at all this vice and ignorance and suffering which no instrumentality, mighty to relieve, has yet reached, shall think to put back,—as if we had no need of it,—this great gift of light and healing,—this gift of power, which the scientific ages are bringing in; this gift which the ages of 'anticipation,' the ages of inspiration and spontaneous affirmation, could only divinely—diviningly—foresee and promise;—this gift which the knowledge of the creative laws, the historic laws, the laws of kind, as they are actual in the human nature and the human life, puts into our hands? Who shall think himself competent to oppose this benefaction? Alas for such an one! let us take up a lamentation for him. He has stayed too long. The constitution of things, the universal laws of being, and the Providence of this world are against him. The track of the advancing ages goes over him. He is at variance with that which was and shall be. The world's wheel goes over him. And whosoever falls on that stone shall be broken, but on whomsoever it falls it shall grind him to powder.
It is by means of the scientific Art of Delivery and Tradition, that this doctrine of the scientific Culture and Cure of the Mind, which is the doctrine of the scientific ages, has been made over to us in the abstract; and it is by means of the rule of interpretation, which this Art of Delivery prescribes, it is by means of the secret of an Illustrated Tradition, or Poetic Tradition of this science, that we are now enabled to unlock at last those magnificent collections in it—those inexhaustible treasures and mines of it—which the Discoverer, in spite of the time, has contrived to leave us, in that form of Fable and Parable in which the advancing truth has always been left,—in that form of Poesy in which the highest truth has, from of old, been uttered. For over all this ground lay extended, then, in watchful strength all safe and unespied, the basilisk of whom the Fable goes, if he sees you first, you die for it,—but if YOU SEE HIM FIRST, HE DIES. And this is the Bishop who fought with a mace, because he would kill his enemy and not wound him.