Turn where we will, and as far backward as we will, we ever find the spirit of the Diogenic philosophy; and clothed, too, in much the same garb and unseemly disorder as that in vogue among the dog-baptized. Ancient East gives us many parallels; and to this day, dirty, lazy fakirs of Hindostan assault the olfactories, and call for curses on the effeminacy of the cleanly and the sane. Sometimes, though, the Diogenites assume the scrupulosity of the Pharisee, and then they retain only the crimes of the Inquisition, not the habits and apparel of the Bosjesmen. Take the sincere Pharisee, for instance; regard his holy horror of the Samaritan (the Independent of his day) for failing in the strict letter of the law; hear his stern denunciations against all sinners, be they moral or be they doctrinal, mark the unpitying "Crucify him! crucify him!" against Him who taught novel doctrines of equality and brotherhood, and the nullity of form; see the purity of his own Pharisaic life, and grant him his proud curse on all that are not like unto him. He is a Cynic in his heart, one who judges of universal humanity by the individualism of one. Then, the hoary, hairy, dog-baptized, who scoffed at all the decencies of life, not to speak of its amenities, and had no gentle Plato's pride of refinement, with all the brutal pride of coarseness—did Diogenes worthily represent the best functions of manhood? Again, the monks and friars of the dark ages, and the hermits of old, they who left the world of man "made in the image of God," because they were holier than their brethren, and might have naught in common with the likeness of the Elohim; they who gave up the deeds of charity for the endless repetition of masses and vespers, and who thought to do God better service by mumbling masses in a cowl, than by living among their fellows, loving, aiding, and improving—were not all these followers in the train of Diogenes?—if not in the dirt, then in the bile; if not in the garb, then in the heart. Denouncers, condemners; narrowing, not enlarging; hating, not loving; they were traitors to the virtue of life, while dreaming that they alone held it sacred.
And now, have we no snarling Cynics, no Pharisee, no Inquisitor? Have we taken to good heart the divine record of love, of faith, which an æsthetic age has sublimated into credos, and left actions as a caput mortuum? Have we looked into the meaning of the practical lesson which the Master taught when he forgave the adulteress, and sat at meat with the sinners? or have we not rather cherished the spiritual pride which shapes out bitter words of censure for our fellows, and lays such stress on likeness that it overlooks unity? The question is worthy of an answer.
The world is wide. Beasts and fishes, birds and reptiles, weeds and flowers—which here are weeds, and there are flowers, according to local fancy—the dwarfed shrub of the Alpine steeps, and the monster palm of the tropical plains; the world is wide enough to contain them all, and man is wise enough to love them all, each in its sphere, and its degree. But what we do for Nature, we refuse to Humanity. To her we allow diversity; to him we prescribe sameness; in her we see the loveliness of unlikeness, the symmetry of variation; in him we must have multitudes shaped by one universal rule; and what we do not look for in the senseless tree, we attempt on the immortal soul. Religion, philosophy, and social politics, must be of the same form with all men, else woe to the wight who thinks out of the straight line! Diagonal minds are never popular, and the hand which draws one radius smites him who lines another equal to it in all its parts, and from the same centre-point. The Catholic denies the Protestant; the Episcopalian contemns the Presbyterian; the Free Kirk is shed like a branching horn; the Independent denounces the Swedenborgian; the Mormonite is persecuted by the Unitarian. It is one unvarying round; the same thing called by different names. Now all this is the very soul of Diogenism. Cowl, mitre, or band—distinctive signs to each party—all are lost in the shadow of the tub, and jumbled up into a strange form, which hath the name of Him of Sinope engraved on its forehead. Separatism and denunciation against him who is not with thee in all matters of faith, make thee, my friend, a Cynic in thy heart; and, though thou mayst wear Nicoll's paletots and Medwin's boots, and mayst prank thyself in all imaginable coxcombries, thou art still but a Diogenite, a Cynic, and a Pharisee; washing the outside of the platter, but leaving the inside encrusted still, believing falsely, that thou hast naught to do with a cause, because thou hast not worn its cockade.
Yet, are we going past the Tub School, though it lingers still in high places. We see it in party squabbles, not so much of politics to-day, as of the most esoteric doctrines of faith. We hear great men discussing the question of "prevenient grace," as they would discuss the composition of milk punch, and we hear them mutually anathematize each other on this plain and demonstrable proposition. We call this Diogenism, and of a virulent sort, too. We know that certain men are tabooed by certain other men; that a churchman refuses communion with him who is of no church, or of a different church; and that one Arian thinks dreadful things of another Arian. We call these men Pharisees, who deny kindred with the Samaritans—but we remember who it was that befriended the Samaritans. We know that monks still exist, whose duty to man consists in endless prayers to God (in using vain repetitions as the Heathens do); who open their mouths wide, and expect that Heaven will fill them; who hold the active duties of life in no esteem; and separate themselves from their fellows in all the grandeur of religious superiority. We can not see much difference between these men, the Hindoo fakirs, and the unsavory gentlemen of the Grecian tub. They are all of the same genus; but, Heaven be praised! they are dying out from the world of man, as leprosy, and the black plague, and other evils are dying out. True enlightenment will extirpate them, as well as other malaria. If Sanitary Commissions sweep out the cholera, acknowledged Love will sweep out all this idleness and solitary hatred, and make men at last confess that Love and Recognition are grander things than contempt and intolerance; in a word, that real Christianity is better than any form whatsoever of the Diogenic philosophy of hatred.
GOLD—WHAT IT IS AND WHERE IT COMES FROM.
Road-mending is pretty general at this time of the year, and upon roads now being newly macadamized we may pick up a good many differing specimens of granite. On the newly-broken surface of one of them, four substances of which it is composed can be perceived with great distinctness. The more earthy-looking rock, in which the others seem to be embedded, is called felspar; the little hard white stones are bits of quartz; the dark specks are specks of hornblende, and the shining scales are mica. Felspar, quartz, hornblende, and mica are the four constituents of granite. These are among the rocks of the most ancient times, which form a complete barrier to the power of the geologist in turning back the pages which relate the story of our globe. Layer under layer—leaf behind leaf—we find printed the characters of life in all past ages, till at last we come to rocks—greenstone, porphyry, quartz, granite, and others—which contain no trace of life; which do not show, as rocks above them do, that they have been deposited by water; but which have a crystalline form, and set our minds to think of heat and pressure. These lowest rocks are frequently called "igneous," in contradistinction to the stratified rocks nearer the surface, which have been obviously deposited under water. Between the two there is not an abrupt transition; for above the igneous, and below the aqueous, are rocks which belong to the set above them, insomuch as they are stratified; while they belong to the set below them—insomuch as they are crystalline, contain no traces of life, and lead us by their characters to think of heat and pressure. These rocks, on account of their equivocal position, are called metamorphic.
Under the influence of air, combined with that of water—water potent in streams, lakes, and seas, but not less potent as a vapor in our atmosphere, when aided by alternations in the temperature—granite decomposes. We noticed that one of the constituents of granite—felspar—was a comparatively earthy-looking mass, in which the other matters seemed to be embedded. In the decomposition of granite, this felspar is the first thing to give way; it becomes friable, and rains or rivers wash it down. Capital soil it makes. When the constituents of granite part in this way, quartz is the heaviest, and settles. Felspar and the others may run with the stream, more or less; quartz is not moved so easily. Now, as our neighbors in America would put it, "that's a fact;" and it concerns our gossip about gold.
Below the oldest rocks there lie hidden the sources of that volcanic action which is not yet very correctly understood. Fortunately, we are not now called upon for any explanation of it: it is enough for us that such a force exists; and thrusting below, forces granite and such rocks (which ought to lie quite at the bottom), through a rent made in the upper layers, and still up into the air, until, in some places, they form the summit of considerable mountains. Such changes are not often, if ever, the results of a single, mighty heave, which generates a great catastrophe upon the surface of the earth; they are the products of a force constantly applied through ages in a given manner. In all geologic reasoning we are apt to err grossly when we leave out of our calculation the important element of time. These lower rocks, then—these greenstones, porphyries and granites, sienites and serpentines—thrust themselves in many places through the upper strata of the earth's crust, in such a way as to form mountain ranges. Now, it is a fact, that wherever the oldest of the aqueous deposits—such as those called clay-slates, limestones, and greywacke sandstones—happen to be superficial, so as to be broken through by pressure from below, and intruded upon by the igneous rocks (especially if the said igneous rocks form ranges tending at all from north to south), there gold may be looked for. Gold, it is true, may be found combined with much newer formations; but it is under the peculiar circumstances just now mentioned that gold may be expected to be found in any great and valuable store.
In Australia, the gold discoveries, so new and surprising to the public, are not new to the scientific world. More than two years ago, in an "Essay on the Distribution of Gold Ore," read before the British Association, to which our readers will be indebted for some of the facts contained in the present gossip, Sir Roderick Murchison "reminded his geological auditors that, in considering the composition of the chief, or eastern ridge of Australia, and its direction from north to south, he had foretold (as well as Colonel Helmersen, of the Russian Imperial Mines) that gold would be found in it; and he stated that, in the last year, one gentleman resident in Sydney, who had read what he had written and spoken on this point, had sent him specimens of gold ore found in the Blue Mountains; while, from another source, he had learnt that the parallel north and south ridge in the Adelaide region, which had yielded so much copper, had also given undoubted signs of gold ore. The operation of English laws, by which noble metals lapse to the crown, had induced Sir Roderick Murchison to represent to Her Majesty's Secretary of State that no colonists would bestir themselves in gold-mining, if some clear declaration on the subject were not made; but, as no measures on this head seemed to be in contemplation, he inferred that the government may be of opinion, that the discovery of any notable quantity of gold might derange the stability and regular industry of a great colony, which eventually must depend upon its agricultural products." That was the language used by Sir Roderick Murchison in September, 1849; and in September, 1851, we are all startled by the fact which brings emphatic confirmation of his prophecy.