and the inner laws of power as thought, on the one side, and of the outer world, the external order of providence, or fate, on the other side; within which arise and exist all the external and foreign limiting determinators of the selfdirecting power, the inner metaphysical and necessary, the external physical, whether fixed, or variable, the judicial, the moral, the æsthetical, and the religious; and the range of liberty is given in the whole sphere thus constituted. Will, measuring the total amount of power, the inner limit of freedom on that side, expresses the fact of its existence and the necessity of some action and some direction, if there be a living soul; even though it should be no more than is necessary in order to maintain a stationary equilibrium of bare existence as an active power. This necessary some direction is given with the power itself, at the same time and from the same source: it is a part of the ultimate fact of existence. As self-directing cause, this soul may give direction, that is, choose, within the given range of liberty, or it may not: if it do not so act and choose, then the direction of the power must be determined by necessity; and the soul will act in the direction taken by the choice, if any be so taken, or if not, then by mere necessity and blind chance; or it will move by virtue of that more inward and original direction, which it has received and possesses with its primal existence: wherein may consist that guiding and controlling guardianship, or 66 secret will and grace" of the Greater Providence, which may sometimes determine the direction and the choice, when the self-directing specialty, as such, is unable to decide and determine for itself, being for the time in a certain unresolvable quandary; which guardianship, again, may be that which is sometimes called Luck, and sometimes Destiny, being that same

"destiny

(That hath to instrument this lower world,

And what is in 't"): - Temp., Act III. Sc. 3.

or, as Holinshed wrote, "the divine providence and appointment of God, as St. Augustine saith; for of other destiny, it is impossible to dream." 1 In like manner writes Hooker, about 1594, in the "Ecclesiastical Polity" (which this author may have read), "that the natural generation and process of all things receiveth order of proceeding from the settled stability of the divine understanding. This appointeth unto them their kinds of working; the disposition whereof in the purity of God's own knowledge and will is rightly termed by the name of Providence. The same being referred unto the things themselves here disposed by it, was wont by the ancient to be called natural Destiny. . . . . Nature therefore is nothing else but God's instrument.” ' And Hamlet was not far from this same doctrine, when he said:

"Ham. Sir, in my heart there was a kind of fighting, That would not let me sleep: methought, I lay

Worse than the mutines in the bilboes. Rashly,

And prais'd be rashness for it, let us know,

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well

When our deep plots do pall; and that should teach us
There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

Hor.

That is most certain."

Act V. Sc. 2.

....

And so, this soul must act upon something out of the whole range and field of view, and either remain fixed in stupid equilibrium in one direction and upon the same thing, or it must shift upon the chosen things, or upon the destined things; as when a child first opens its eyes to the light, then needing much guidance and guardianship; and it will perceive, conceive, or act and do, something, or remain in stationary equilibrium; and that, too, by the determination of voluntary choice, sheer necessity, blind chance, or the all-seeing Destiny, out of the whole possi

1 Chron. of Eng., I. 49.

2 Hooker's Works (Oxford, 1850,) I. 158.

bility of thinking and doing, even downward in the scale to the low grade of a mere instinctive consciousness of bare existence, and down to that narrow sphere of liberty, which is given, say, to the crinoid star-fish, fixed by his stem to the bottom of the ocean. Growth and development of body and increase of the power of the soul in the ascending scale of types of organization, experience, discipline, practical skill, knowledge, wisdom, culture, insight, may follow, in their degrees, even up to the highest human wisdom and intelligence, wherein is the divine light of the soul. But the thought, which this special soul will have, must depend upon what it acts against and perceives, or what it acts upon and creates within itself as conceptions of its own; and its acts and doings will depend upon the thought and the direction taken by the power of the soul; and all its knowledge, wisdom, and culture must be acquired. But the fundamental power to perceive, conceive, think, understand, judge, and know, and do, is given, in whatever swelling measure, and is not acquired; though acquired skill, in many things, may be equivalent in practical effect to an increase of power. We have, in the "Cymbeline," some illustration of this kind of power and the degree of faculty and difference of quality, which Nature may give, with the birth of the individual. The two sons of the king are stolen from their cradle by Belarius, and brought up in a forest cave that was "a cell of ignorance" as hunters, knowing nothing of their origin. And when Imogen appears at the cave in the disguise of an unknown boy, the brothers conceive a greater liking for him than they have for their supposed father, Belarius :

"Bel. [Aside.]

:

O noble strain!

O worthiness of nature! breed of greatness!
Cowards father cowards, and base things sire base:
Nature hath meal and bran; contempt and grace.
I am not their father; yet who this should be,

Doth miracle itself, lov'd before me.

O thou goddess,

Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st
In these two princely boys! They are as gentle
As zephyrs, blowing below the violet,

Not wagging his sweet head; and yet as rough,
Their royal blood enchaf'd, as the rud'st wind,
That by the top doth take the mountain pine,
And make him stoop to th' vale. 'T is wonder
That an invisible instinct should frame them
To royalty unlearn'd, honor untaught,
Civility not seen from other, valour

That wildly grows in them, but yields a crop
As if it had been sow'd!"

Act IV. Sc. 2.

Thus is the soul constituted a special thinker and creator by itself, under a special consciousness of its own; and all its perceptions, conceptions, thought, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, culture, and insight, even to a knowledge of God and the universe and the order of his providence in it, must be exclusively its own, and arise out of its own special activity as such given power of thought, with whatever helps it may have. All the while, man must remember, that he lives in a world-prison as close as that in which the fallen King Richard meditated:

"K. Rich. I have been studying how I may compare
This prison, where I live, unto the world:
And, for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it; yet still I'll hammer 't out.
My brain I'll prove the female to my soul;
My soul, the father; and these two beget
A generation of still breeding thoughts,
And these same thoughts people this little world;
In humours like the people of this world,
For no thought is contented. The better sort,
As thoughts of things divine, are intermix'd
With scruples, and do set the Word itself
Against the Word:

As thus, Come little ones'; and then again, —
'It is as hard to come, as for a camel

To thread the postern of a needle's eye.'

Thoughts tending to ambition, they do plot
Unlikely wonders: how these vain weak nails
May tear a passage through the flinty ribs

Nor I, nor any man, that but man is,

With nothing shall be pleas'd till he be eas'd

With being nothing." - Rich. II., Act V. Sc. 5..

What is given, here, from the original fountain of all existence being a thinking power, all its thinking, its special consciousness, its identity and personality, its ideas, thoughts, knowledge, wisdom, and culture, and all its acts and doings, must necessarily be the effect, work, and result of the activity of the power as original cause, under the whole special constitution of the soul as such. In like manner, the thought of God must be the work and effect of the activity of the divine power of thought in its whole unity and totality; and his thought, knowledge, and purposes must exist under the divine consciousness alone, being as boundless as the universe and himself. His thought and action, being the actual universe, is presented as such effect and as reality directly to the fore-front view of this special thinker, seer, knower, and doer, whether he shall see much or little of it, whether he shall heed, or not, its laws, facts, and lessons. But, to suppose the thought, ideas, knowledge, or purposes of the divine mind, could be directly made known, immediately imparted, to this special thinker from behind, underneath, and beyond the origin and source of the soul itself, as so constituted, by any conceivable sort of direct illumination, inspiration, or other kind of spiritual communication, angelic, dæmoniac, or super-telegraphic, would be in effect, either to imagine an inconceivable and absurd impossibility, or to suppose the soul to lose its specializa