"Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance: yet God has made them part of the oak. In so doing, he has given us a lesson not to deny the stout-heartedness within, because we see the lightsomeness without."
The following truism we should have hardly thought deserving of a place amidst Guesses at Truth; but, being admitted, the section devoted to it might surely have been preserved from obscurity to the close:—
"Time is no agent, as some people appear to think, that it should accomplish any thing of itself. Looking at a heap of stones for a thousand years will do no more toward building a house of them, than looking at them for a moment. For time, when applied to works of any kind, being only a succession of relevant acts, each furthering the work, it is clear that even an infinite succession of irrelevant and therefore inefficient acts would no more achieve or forward the completion, than an infinite number of jumps on the same spot would advance a man toward his journey's end. There is a motion, without progress in time as well as in space; where a thing often remains stationary, which appears to us to recede, while we are leaving it behind."
Plain sailing enough till we come to the last sentence. We dare not say that "we do not understand this"—these writers tell us so often that the critic fails in understanding simply from his own want of apprehension—but we may venture to hint that whatever meaning it contains might have been more clearly expressed. The hapless critic, by the way, is severely dealt with by this school of philosophers. He is told that "Coleridge's golden rule—Until you understand an author's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding—should be borne in mind by all writers who feel an itching in their forefinger and thumb to be carping at their wisers and betters." (P. 161) Our wisers should have informed the critic how he is to fathom an author's ignorance except by examining the accuracy and intelligibility of the positive statements he makes. "A Reviewer's business," we are assured in another part, "is to have positive opinions upon all subjects, without need of steadfast principles or thoroughgoing knowledge upon any: and he belongs to the hornet class, unproductive of any thing useful or sweet, but ever ready to sally forth and sting." Hard measure this. But we must not be judges in our own cause.
Meanwhile nothing pleases our amiable writers so much as to gird at the times in which they live, and find error in every general belief.
"Another form of the same materialism, which cannot comprehend or conceive any thing, except as the product of some external cause, is the spirit so general in these times, which attaches an inordinate importance to mechanical inventions, and accounts them the great agents in the history of mankind. It is a common opinion with these exoteric philosophers that the invention of printing was the chief cause of the Reformation—that the invention of the compass brought about the discovery of America—and that the vast changes in the military and political state of Europe since the middle ages have been wrought by the invention of gunpowder. It would be almost as rational to say that the cock's crowing, makes the sun rise. U." (P. 85.)
Now it is not the common opinion that the invention of printing was the chief cause of the Reformation, but that it afforded to the reformers a great and very opportune assistance. It is not the common opinion that the invention of the compass brought about of itself the discovery of America, but it is a very general belief that Columbus would have hardly sailed due west over the broad ocean without a compass. It is not the common opinion that the vast changes, meaning thereby all the changes that have taken place in the military and political affairs of Europe since the middle ages, have been the result of the invention of gunpowder; but it is a conviction generally entertained that the use of fire-arms has had something more to do with certain changes in our military and political condition than the crowing of the cock with the rising of the sun.
Having in this candid manner exposed the popular errors upon this subject, he substitutes in their stead this very luminous proposition, that "the utility of an invention depends upon our making use of it!"
"These very inventions had existed, the greatest of them for many centuries, in China, without producing any result. For why? Because the utility of an invention depends on our making use of it. There is no power, none at least for good [why this qualification?] in any instrument or weapon, except so far as there is power in him who wields it: nor does the sword guide or move the hand, but the hand the sword. Nay," he adds in a tone of triumphant discovery, "it is the hand that fashions the sword."
"Or," continues the writer, starting afresh, "we may look at the matter in another light. We may conceive that, whenever any of the great changes ordained by God's providence in the destinies of mankind are about to take place, the means requisite for the effecting of those changes are likewise prepared by the same Providence."
What is this but the general opinion of mankind? which, however, as entertained in the minds of others, is a vulgar materialism. What are all the world saying, but simply this, that the inventions of the printing press, of the compass, and of gunpowder, are great means ordained by God's providence for the advancement of human affairs?