These lines express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor. Beneath that obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of the philosophic prophet—of the man who, too much for his own quiet, anticipates reasonings, conclusions, sentiments, forms of social life yet to prevail—the man to whom not coming events, but coming ideas, cast their shadows before. If we could suppose one at the time of the crusades, educated to associate and sympathize with the choice spirits of the age, yet anticipating the sense of their age, in making the comparative estimate of chivalrous adventure, and successful cultivation of the arts of peace and industry; he must have felt somewhat like Cassandra among the less gifted. If we could look on life, as our successors will two hundred years hence, we too might complain of being "lone in the city of the blind;" unless large Hope and Benevolence enabled us to live on the future. Thus we find additional motive to desiring a united and absolute, rather than an individual and relative progress, in the consideration that knowledge most worthily so called—whoso increaseth greatly beyond the average attainment, doth so to his own sorrow.
To complete the list of false estimates of good, refuted by one test, we should allude to the frivolities of gentility and fashion-the passion for wearing badges of distinction, however impotent or unmeaning such may be. This is the very poorest form of finding delight, in what from the nature of the case can be shared by few. For its incommunicableness is its only recommendation. It is an icy repellant, freezing up the kindly flow of sympathy with universal humanity; and uncompensated loss of that best ingredient of earthly felicity—the interchange of friendly feelings and offices; that store of wealth, from which the more that take, and the fuller their share, the more they leave to be taken by others.
The foregoing may be treated as a fine and just speculation, but as what ever must remain a barren speculation; as if it were after the example of all ages, that men should mistake the material of happiness for happiness itself. So it always has been, so it always will be, that false notions of good usurp the place of the true, despite the demonstrations of moralists and divines to the contrary.
Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter. It has moved, and that in the right direction. We may note a progress from age to age, in coming to a just estimate of life. Start not at the use of terms, rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made the vehicle. But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because of the distortions and caricatures of little minds. If one idea occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair proportions, or rightly applied. So fare they, with whom the one idea is, the progress of society—the growth of thought. The Mississippi in its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous than the under-running current. So radical folly and transcendental nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds with the deeper current of thought. To gauge the progress of mind from those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the wind blows hither and thither over its surface.
"Let us go on to perfection"—"Forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before." Such language describes distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity. Only, where is perfection? What are the things before? If, as a people, we do fully take these expressions in their author's sense, we may hope there is one element of agreement, betokening good for the future.
It is encouraging, that the two rival systems, most boldly promising to lead to perfection, both had their birth under political and mental bondage. So evidently with Romanism, whether under its proper form and name, or refined and disguised after the modern fashion. And the same is true of the baptized infidelity imported from Germany. The German mind is cramped and diseased by the bands which confine it. It is not allowed to speculate freely on politics, and the many questions most nearly touching present interests. Therefore, on the records and on the doctrines which pertain to eternal interests, it falls with an insane avidity for innovation, and runs into licentiousness a liberty no where else enjoyed. Hence the levity, in dealing with things sacred, in Germany often found in minds of the first and second orders, here is taken up by those to the third and fourth—the copyists and imitators; nay, by the buffoons who figure at the farces of mock philanthropy. Now, though every folly must find minds whose caliber it fits, we may hope the genuine American mind will not be extensively beguiled by either of the misbegotten offspring of Europe's mental servitude.
But, to the point—progress made in estimating life. A few centuries ago, a torrent of enthusiasm set in the direction of bearing the cross into Asia, to fight for glory, and the propagation of Christianity, on the fields of Palestine. Already the old Roman military character was greatly improved on. Virtue, (manliness, a` vir-man) was no longer supposed to fulfil its highest office in
Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos.
A delicate sense of honor, of the courtesy due to a foe and the gallantry to the other sex, betoken a type of humanity in advance of the brute ferocity of the best days of Rome.
But, notwithstanding Mr. Burke's eloquence, and the opinion sometimes expressed, that the courtly knight of the middle age, realized the perfection of humanity; we have no reason to regret that the age of chivalry is gone by, and that the age of speculation, and money-making, and industrial enterprize has succeeded. The materialism of this age, with all its faults, is better than the chivalry of an age gone by. It tends to keep the world at peace; that tended to perpetual turmoil. The supposition all rich, according to modern ideas, is not so flat a contradiction as the supposition all glorious, in military heroism. As the past age estimated life's supreme good, the enjoyment of a few required the exclusion of the many from its benefits: as this age estimates the enjoyment of some, admits the exclusion of others. Whether the mercantile spirit thoroughly entered into makes a better man than did the spirit of chivalry, may be doubted; not so, which best comports with the welfare of society.