THE LORD HELPETH MAN AND BEAST. During his march to conquer the world, Alexander the Macedonian, came to a people in Africa, who dwelt in a remote and secluded corner in peaceful huts, and knew neither war nor conqueror. They led him to the hut of their Chief, who received him hospitably and placed before him golden dates, golden figs, and bread of gold. Do you eat gold in this country? said Alexander. I take it for granted (replied the Chief) that thou wert able to find eatable food in thine own country. For what reason then art thou come among us? Your gold has not tempted me hither, said Alexander, but I would willingly become acquainted with your manners and customs. So be it, rejoined the other, sojourn among us as long as it pleaseth thee. At the close of this conversation two citizens entered as into their Court of Justice. The plaintiff said, I bought of this man a piece of land, and as I was making a deep drain through it I found a treasure. This is not mine, for I only bargained for the land, and not for any treasure that might be concealed beneath it: and yet the former owner of the land will not receive it. The defendant answered: I hope I have a conscience as well as my fellow-citizen. I sold him the land with all its contingent, as well as existing advantages, and consequently the treasure inclusively. The Chief, who was at the same time their supreme judge, recapitulated their words, in order that the parties might see whether or no he understood them aright. Then after some reflection said: Thou hast a Son, Friend, I believe? Yes! and thou (addressing the other) a Daughter? Yes!-Well then, let thy Son marry thy Daughter, and bestow the treasure on the young couple for their marriage portion. Alexander seemed surprised and perplexed. Think you my sentence unjust? the Chief asked him -Ono, replied Alexander, but it astonishes me. And how, then rejoined the Chief, would the case have been decided in your country?-To confess the truth, said Alexander, we should have taken both parties into custody and have seized the treasure for the king's use. For the king's use! exclaimed the Chief, now in his turn astonished. Does the sun shine on that country?-O yes! Does it rain there?-Assuredly. Wonderful! but are there tame Animals in the country that live on the grass and green herbs? Very many, and of many kinds.-Ay, that must be the cause, said the Chief: for the sake of those innocent Animals the All-gracious Being continues to let the sun shine and the rain drop down on your country. WHOSO HATH FOUND A VIRTUOUS WIFE HATH A Such a treasure had the celebrated Teacher RABBI MEIR found. He sat during the whole of one sabbath day in the public school, and instructed the people. During his absence from his house his two sons died, both of them of uncommon beauty and enlightened in the law. His wife bore them to her bedchamber, laid them upon the marriage-bed, and spread a white covering over their bodies. In the CONVERSATION OF A PHILOSOPHER WITH A RABBI. Your God in his Book calls himself a jealous God, who can endure no other God beside himself, and on all occasions makes manifest his abhorrence of idolatry. How comes it then that he threatens and seems to hate the worshippers of false Gods more than the Gods themselves. A certain king, replied the Rabbi, had a disobedient Son. Among other worthless tricks of various kinds, he had the baseness to give his Dogs his Father's names and titles. Should the King show his anger on the Prince or the Dogs?— Well turned, rejoined the Philosopher: but if your God destroyed the objects of idolatry, he would take away the temptation to it. Yea, retorted the Rabbi, if the Fools worshipped such things only as were of no further use than that to which their Folly applied them, if the Idol were always as worthless as the Idolatry is contemptible. But they worship the Sun, Moon, the Host of Heaven, the Rivers, the Sea, Fire Air, and what not? Would you that the Creator, for 491 the sake of these Fools, should ruin his own Works, and disturb the laws appointed to Nature by his own Wisdom? If a man steals grain and sows it, should the seed not shoot up out of the earth, because it was stolen? Ono! the wise Creator lets Nature run her own course; for her course is his own appointment. And what if the children of folly abuse it to evil? The day of reckoning is not far off, and men will then learn that human actions likewise re-appear in their consequences by as certain a law as the green blade rises up out of the buried corn-seed. INTRODUCTION.* Translation.--From Sextus, and from the contemplation of great minds whose works have been moulded by the from spirit of nature: who, therefore, when they pass the seclusion and constraint of early study, bring with them into the new scene of the world, much of the pure sensibility which is the spring of all that is greatly good in thought and action. To such the season of that entrance into the world is a season of fearful importance; not for the seduction of its pas sions, but of its opinions. Whatever be their intel lectual powers, unless extraordinary circumstances in their lives, have been so favorable to the growth of meditative genius, that their speculative opinions must spring out of their early feelings, their minds are still at the mercy of fortune; they have no inward impulse steadily to propel them: and mast trust to the chances of the world for a guide. And such is our present moral and intellectual state, that Παρὰ Σέξτου τὴν ἔννοιαν του κατὰ φύσιν ζῆν, καὶ τὸ these chances are little else than variety of danger. σέμνον ἀπλάςως, ὥςε κολακείας μὲν πάσης προσενεςέραν There will be a thousand causes conspiring to co εἶναι τὴν ὁμιλίαν αυτου, ἀιδεσιμώτατον δὲ παρ' αυτὸν plete the work of a false education, and by enclosing ἐκεῖνον τὸν κάιρον εἶναι· καὶ ἅμα μὲν ἀπαθέςατον εἶναι, the mind on every side from the influences of natural ἅμα δὲ φιλοςοργότατον· καὶ τὸ ἰδεῖν ἄνθρωπον σαφῶς feeling, to degrade its inborn dignity, and finally bring ἐλάχιςον τῶν ἑαυτῶν καλῶν ἡγουμενον τὴν ἀυτὸν | the heart itself under subjection to a corrupted under πολυμαθίην. Μ. ΑΝΤΩΝ. βιβ. α. standing. I am anxious to describe to you what I have experienced or seen of the dispositions and feelings that will aid every other cause of danger, and tend to lay the mind open to the infection of all those falsehoods in opinion and sentiment, which constitute the degeneracy of the age. Though it would not be difficult to prove, that the mind of the country is much enervated since the days of her strength, and brought down from its moral dignity, it is not yet so forlorn of all good,-there is nothing in the face of the times so dark and saddening, and repulsive—as to shock the first feelings of a generous spirit, and drive it at once to seek refuge in the elder ages of our greatness. There yet survives so much of the character bred up through long years of liberty, danger, and glory, that even what this age produces bears traces of those that are past, and it still yields enough of beautiful, and splendid, and bold, to captivate an ardent but untutored imagination. And in this real excellence is the beginning of danger: for it is the first spring of that excessive admiration of the age which at last brings down to its own level a mind born above it. If there existed only the general disposition of all who are formed with a high capacity for good, to be rather credulous of excellence than suspiciously and severely just, the error would not be carried far:-but there are to a young mind, in this country and at this time, numerous powerful causes concurring to inflame this disposition, till the excess of the affection above the worth of its object, is beyond all computation. To trace these canses it will be necessary to follow the history of a pure and noble mind from the first moment of that critical passage from seclusion to the world, which changes all the circumstances of its intellectual existence, shows it for the first time the real scene of living men, and calls up the new feeling of numerous relations by which it is to be connected with them. TO THE EDITOR OF THE FRIEND. SIR, I HOPE you will not ascribe to presumption, the liberty I take in addressing you, on the subject of your Work. I feel deeply interested in the cause you have undertaken to support; and my object in writing this letter is to describe to you, in part from my own feelings, what I conceive to be the state of many minds, which may derive important advantage from your instructions. I speak, sir, of those who, though bred up under our unfavorable system of education, have yet held at times some intercourse with nature, and with those With this introduction commences the third volume of the English edition of The Friend; to which volume the Now for the writing of this werke, After the world, that whilome took The world which neweth every day-- And long have had, yet would I fain To the young adventurer in life, who enters upon GOWER, Pro. to the Confess. Amantis. his course with such a mind, everything seems made those men on splendor, the leaders of mankind - for delusion. He comes with a spirit whose dearest feelings and highest thoughts have sprung up under the influences of nature. He transfers to the realities of life the high wild fancies of visionary boy-people-or those, in no inferior "pride of place," hood: he brings with him into the world the passions of solitary and untamed imagination, and hopes which he has learned from dreams. Those dreams have been of the great and wonderful, and lovely, of all which in these has yet been disclosed to him: his thoughts have dwelt among the wonders of nature, among the loftiest spirits of men-heroes, and sages, and saints;-those whose deeds, and thoughts, and hopes, were high above ordinary mortality, have been the familiar companions of his soul. To love and to admire has been the joy of his existence. Love and admiration are the pleasures he will demand of the world. For these he has searched eagerly into the ages that are gone but with more ardent and peremptory expectation he requires them of that in which his own lot is cast: for to look on life with hopes of happiness is a necessity of his nature, and to him there is no happiness but such as is surrounded with excellence. See first how this spirit will affect his judgment of moral character, in those with whom chance may connect him in the common relations of life. It is of those with whom he is to live, that his soul first demands this food of her desires. From their conversation, their looks, their actions, their lives, she asks for excellence. To aşk from all and to ask in vain, would be too dismal to bear: it would disturb him too deeply with doubt and perplexity and fear. In this hope, and in the revolting of his thoughts from the possibility of disappointment, there is a preparation for self-delusion: there is an unconscious determination that his soul shall be satisfied; an obstinate will to find good every where. And thus his first study of mankind is a continued effort to read in them the expression of his own feelings. He catches at every uncertain show and shadowy resemblance of what he seeks; and unsuspicious in innocence, he is first won with those appearances of good which are in fact only false pretensions. But this error is not carried far; for there is a sort of instinct of rectitude, which like the pressure of a talisman given to baffle the illusions of enchantment, warns a pure mind against hypocrisy.-There is another delusion more difficult to resist and more slowly dissipated. It is when he finds, as he often will, some of the real features of excellence in the purity of their native form. For then his rapid imagination will gather round them all the kindred features that are wanting to perfect beauty; and make for him, where he could not find, the moral creature of his expectation:-peopling, even from this human world, his little circle of affection, with forms as fair as his heart desired for its love. But when, from the eminence of life which he has reached, he lifts up his eyes, and sends out his spirit to range over the great scene that is opening before him and around him,-the whole prospect of civilized life-so wide and so magnificent-when he begins to contemplate, in their various stations of power or whose sway is over the mind of society,-chiefs in the realm of imagination,-interpreters of the secrets of nature,-rulers of human opinion-what wonder, when he looks on all this living scene, that his heart should burn with strong affection, that he should feel that his own happiness will be for ever interwoven with the interests of mankind?—Here then the sanguine hope with which he looks on life, will again be blended with his passionate desire of excellence; and he will still be impelled to single out some, on whom his imagination and his hopes may repose. To whatever department of human thought or action his mind is turned with interest, either by the sway of public passion or by its own impulse, among statesmen, and warriors, and philosophers, and poets, he will distinguish some favored names on which he may satisfy his admiration. And there, just as in the little circle of his own acquaintance, seizing eagerly on every merit they possess, he will supply more from his own credulous hope, completing real with imagined excellence, till living men, with all their imperfections, become to him the representatives of his perfect ideal creation :-Till, multiplying his objects of reverence, as he enlarges his prospect of life, he will have surrounded himself with idols of his own hands, and his imagination will seem to discern a glory in the countenance of the age, which is but the reflection of its own effulgence. He will possess, therefore, in the creative power of generous hope, a preparation for illusory and exaggerated admiration of the age in which he lives: and his pre-disposition will meet with many favoring circumstances, when he has grown up under a system of education like ours, which (as perhaps all education must that is placed in the hands of a distinct and embodied class, who therefore bring to it the peculiar and hereditary prejudices of their order) has controlled his imagination to a reverence of former times, with an unjust contempt of his own.For no sooner does he break loose from this control, and begin to feel, as he contemplates the world for himself, how much there is surrounding him on all sides, that gratifies his noblest desires, than there springs up in him an indignant sense of injustice, both to the age and to his own mind: and he is impelled warmly and eagerly to give loose to the feelings that have been held in bondage, to seek out and to delight in finding excellence that will vindicate the insulted world, while it justifies too, his resentment of his own undue subjection, and exalts the value of his new-found liberty. Add to this, that secluded as he has been from knowledge, and, in the imprisoning circle of one system of ideas, cut off from his share in the thoughts and feelings that are stirring among men, he finds himself, at the first steps of his liberty, in a new intellectual world. Passions and powers which he knew not of, start up in his soul. The human mind, which he had seen but under one aspect, now presents to him a thousand unknown and beautiful forms. He sees it, in its varying powers, glancing over nature with restless curiosity, and with impetuous energy striving for ever against the barriers which she has placed around it; sees it with divine power creating from dark materials living beauty, and fixing all its high and transported fancies in imperishable forms.In the world of knowledge, and science, and art, and genius, he treads as a stranger:-in the confusion of new sensations, bewildered in delights, all seems beautiful; all seems admirable. And therefore he engages eagerly in the pursuit of false or insufficient philosophy; he is won by the allurements of licentious art; he follows with wonder the irregular transports of undisciplined imagination.-Nor where the objects of his admiration are worthy, is he yet skilful to distinguish between the acquisitions which the age has made for itself, and that large proportion of its wealth which it has only inherited; but in his delight of discovery and growing knowledge, all that is new to his own mind seems to him new-born to the world.-To himself every fresh idea appears instruction: every new exertion, acquisition of power: he seems just called to the consciousness of himself, and to his true place in the intellectual world; and gratitude and reverence towards those to whom he owes this recovery of his dignity, tend much to subject him to the dominion of minds that were not formed by nature to be the leaders of opinion. All the tumult and glow of thought and imagination, which seizes on a mind of power in such a scene, tends irresistibly to bind it by stronger attachment of love and admiration to its own age. And there is one among the new emotions which belong to its entrance on the world-one-almost the noblest of all -in which this exaltation of the age is essentially mingled. The faith in the perpetual progression of human nature towards perfection, gives birth to such lofty dreams, as secure to it the devout assent of imagination; and it will be yet more grateful to a heart just opening to hope, flushed with the consciousness of new strength, and exulting in the prospect of destined achievements. There is, therefore, almost a compulsion on generous and enthusiastic spirits, as they trust that the future shall transcend the present, to believe that the present transcends the past. It is only on an undue love and admiration of their own age, that they can build their confidence in the amelioration of the human race. Nor is this faith,-which in some shape, will always be the creed of virtue, without apparent reason, even in the erroneous form in which the young adopt it. For there is a perpetual acquisition of knowledge and art,-an unceasing process in many of the modes of exertion of the human mind, a perpetual unfolding of virtues with the changing manners of society :-and it is not for a young mind to compare what is gained with what has passed away; to discern that amidst the incessant intellectual activity of the race, the intellectual power of individual minds may be falling off; and that amidst accumulating knowledge lofty science may disappear; and still less, to judge, in the more compli cated moral character of a people, what is progression. and what is decline. Into a mind possessed with this persuasion of the perpetual progress of man, there may even impercep tibly steal both from the belief itself, and from many of the views on which it rests-something like a distrust of the wisdom of great men of former ages, and with the reverence-which no delusion will ever overpower in a pure mind-for their greatness, a fancied discernment of imperfection;—of incomplete excellence, which wanted for its accomplishment the advantages of later improvements: there will be a surprise, that so much should have been possible in times so ill-prepared; and even the study of their works may be sometimes rather the curious research of a speculative inquirer, than the devout contemplation of an enthusiast; the watchful and obedient heart of a disciple listening to the inspiration of his master. Here then is the power of delusion that will gather round the first steps of a youthful spirit, and throw enchantment over the world in which it is to dwell. Hope realizing its own dreams:-Ignorance dazzled and ravished with sudden sunshine:-Power awakened and rejoicing in its own consciousness:-Enthusasm kindling among multiplying images of greatness and beauty; and enamoured, above all, of one splendid error: and, springing from all these, such a rapture of life and hope, and joy, that the soul, in the power of its happiness, transmutes things essentially repugnant to it, into the excellence of its own nature: these are the spells that cheat the eye of the mind with illusion. It is under these influences that young man of ardent spirit gives all his love, and rev erence, and zeal, to productions of art, to theories of science, to opinions, to systems of feeling, and to cha racters distinguished in the world, that are far be neath his own original dignity. Now as this delusion springs not from his worse but his better nature, it seems as if there could be no warning to him from within of his danger: for even the impassioned joy which he draws at times from the works of Nature, and from those of her mightier sons, and which would startle him from a dream of unworthy passion, serves only to fix the infatuation: for those deep emotions, proving to him that his heart is uncorrupted, justify to him all its workings, and his mind confiding and delighting in itself, yields to the guidance of its own blind impulses of pleasure. His chance, therefore, of security, is the chance that the greater number of objects occurring to attract his honorable passions, may be worthy of them. But we have seen that the whole power of circumstances is collected to gather round him such objects and influences as will bend his high passions to unworthy enjoyment. He engages in it with a heart and understanding unspoiled; but they cannot long be misapplied with impunity. They are drawn gradually into closer sympathy with the falsehoods they have adopted, till, his very nature seeming to change under the corruption, there disappears from it the capacity of those higher perceptions and pleasures to which he was born: and he is cast off from the communion of exalted minds, to live and to perish with the age to which he has surrendered himself. If minds under these circumstances of danger are preserved from decay and overthrow, it can seldom, I think, be to themselves that they owe their deliverance. It must be a fortunate chance which places them under the influence of some more enlightened mind, from which they may first gain suspicion and afterwards wisdom. There is a philosophy, which, leading them by the light of their best emotions to the principles which should give life to thought and law to genius, will discover to them in clear and perfect evidence, the falsehood of the errors that have misled them: and restore them to themselves. And this philosophy they will be willing to hear and wise to understand; but they must be led into its mysteries by some guiding hand; for they want the impulse or the power to penetrate of themselves the recesses. If a superior mind should assume the protection of others just beginning to move among the dangers I have described, it would probably be found, that delusions springing from their own virtuous activity, were not the only difficulties to be encountered. Even after suspicion is awakened, the subjection to falsehood may be prolonged and deepened by many weaknesses both of the intellectual and moral nature; weaknesses that will sometimes shake the authority af acknowledged truth. There may be intellectual indolence; an indisposition in the mind to the effort of combining the ideas it actually possesses, and bringing into distinct form the knowledge, which in its elements is already its own:-there may be, where the heart resists the sway of opinion, misgivings and modest self-mistrust, in him who sees, that if he trusts his heart, he must slight the judgment of all around him :-there may be too habitual yielding to authority, consisting, more than in indolence or diffidence, in a conscious helplessness, and incapacity of the mind to maintain itself in its own place against the weight of general opinion;—and there may be too indiscriminate, too undisciplined a sympathy with others, which by the mere infection of feeling will subdue the reason.-There must be a weakness in dejection to him who thinks, with sadness, if his faith be pure, how gross is the error of the multitude, and that multitude how vast:-a reluctance to embrace a creed that excludes so many whom he loves, so many whom his youth has revered: -a difficulty to his understanding to believe that those whom he knows to be, in much that is good and honorable, his superiors, can be beneath him in this which is the most important of all:-a sympathy pleading importunately at his heart to descend to the fellowship of his brothers, and to take their faith and wisdom for his own.-How often, when under the impulses of those solemn hours, in which he has felt with clearer insight and deeper faith his sacred truths, he labors to win to his own belief those whom he loves, will he be checked by their indifference or their laughter! and will he not bear back to his meditations a painful and disheartening sorrow,—a gloomy discontent in that faith which takes in but a portion of those whom he wishes to include in all his blessings? Will he not be enfeebled by a distraction of inconsistent desires, when he feels so strongly that the faith which fills his heart, the circle within which he would embrace all he loveswould repose all his wishes and hopes, and enjoyments, is yet incommensurate with his affections? Even when the mind, strong in reason and just feeling united, and relying on its strength, has attached itself to Truth, how much is there in the course and accidents of life that is for ever silently at work for its degradation. There are pleasures deemed harmless, that lay asleep the recollections of innocence:-there are pursuits held honorable, or imposed by duty, that oppress the moral spirit ;—above all there is that perpetual connection with ordinary minds in the common intercourse of society;—that restless activity of frivolous conversation, where men of all characters and all pursuits mixing together, nothing may be talked of that is not of common inte. rest to all-nothing, therefore, but those obvious thoughts and feelings that float over the surface of things:-and all which is drawn from the depth of Nature, all which impassioned feeling has made original in thought, would be misplaced and obtrusive. The talent that is allowed to show itself is that which can repay admiration by furnishing entertainment :and the display to which it is invited is that which flatters the vulgar pride of society, by abasing what is too high in excellence for its sympathy. A dangerous seduction to talents—which would make language-that was given to exalt the soul by the fervid expression of its pure emotions-the instrument of its degradation. And even when there is, as in the instance I have supposed, too much uprightness to choose so dishonorable a triumph, there is a necessity of manners, by which every one must be controlled who mixes much in society, not to offend those with whom he converses by his superiority; and whatever be the native spirit of a mind, it is evident that this perpetual adaptation of itself to others—this watchfulness against its own rising feelings, this studied sympathy with mediocrity-must pollute and impoverish the sources of its strength. From much of its own weakness, and from all the errors of its misleading activities, may generous youth be rescued by the interposition of an enlightened mind; and in some degree it may be guarded by instruction against the injuries to which it is exposed in the world. His lot is happy who owes this protection to friendship: who has found in a friend the watchful guardian of his mind. He will not be deluded, having that light to guide: he will not slumber with that voice to inspire; he will not be desponding or dejected, with that bosom to lean on.— But how many must there be whom Heaven has left unprovided, except in their own strength; who must maintain themselves, unassisted and solitary, against their own infirmities and the opposition of the world! For such there may be yet a protector. If a teacher should stand up in their generation, conspicuous |