Introductory.

The meditation on human life—on the contrast between what is, and what might be, on supposing a general concurrence to make the best of things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;—painful for the demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress towards the remedy.

The writer is not very familiar with those authors, who have so much to say on the problem of life—the question, What is life? He supposes them to follow a train of thought, something like this: The life of a creature is that perfection and flourish of its faculties, of which its constitution is capable, and which some of the race are destined to reach. Thus, the life of the lion is realized, when the animal ranges undisputed lord of the sunny desert; finds sufficiency of prey for himself and offspring, which he raises to inherit dominion; lives the number of years he is capable of enjoying existence, and then closes it, without excessive pains, lingering regrets, or fearful anticipations.

Life differs from happiness. It is supposable, that the lion, tamed and petted, trained to feed somewhat after man's chosen manner, may be as happy as if at liberty in his native range. But such happiness is not the animal's life; since this implies the kind of happiness proper to the creature's constitution, in distinction from that induced by forced habits.

To happiness add knowledge and intellectual culture, and all together do not realize the idea of life. The tame lion may be taught many arts, assimilating him to the intelligence of man; but these remove him so much further from his appropriate life. Thus there may be a cultivated intelligence, which constitutes no part of the creature's life; and this without considering the same as a moral agent.

Macauley remarks, that the Jesuits seem to have solved the problem, how far intellectual culture may be carried, without producing intellectual emancipation. I suppose it would be only varying the expression of his thought to say, Jesuitical education strikingly exemplifies, how much intellectual culture may be superinduced upon the mind, without awakening intellectual life—without developing a spontaneous aptness to appreciate, seek, find, embrace the truth. The head is filled with the thoughts of others-many ascertained facts and just conclusions. It can reason aright in the circles of thought, where it has been trained to move; but elsewhere, no spontaneous activity—no self-directed power of thinking justly on new emergencies and questions not yet settled by rule—no spring within, from which living waters flow.

The difference between intellectual culture and intellectual life appears in the fact, that in regard to those mastering ideas, which to after times mark one age as in advance of the preceding, the classical scholars, the scientific luminaries, the constitutional expounders of the day, are quite as likely to be behind the general sense of the age, as to be in advance.

The question, What is human life? arises on a contemplation like this: There is no difficulty in determining the life of all the other tenants of earth; unless, indeed, those which man has so long and so universally subjected to his purposes, that the whereabouts, or indeed the existence of the original stock, remains in doubt. The inferior animals, left to themselves in favorable circumstances, manifest one development, attain to one flourish, live the same life, from generation to generation. Man may superinduce upon them what he calls improvements, because they better fit them for his purposes. But said improvements are never transmitted from generation to its successor; left to itself, the race reverts to proper life, the same it has lived from the beginning.

Man here presents a singular exception to the general rule of earth's inhabitants. The favorite pursuits of one age are abandoned in the next. This generation looks back on the earnest occupations of a preceding, as the adult looks back on the sports and toys of childhood. It is more than supposable, that the planning for the chances of office, the competition for making most gain out of the least productiveness—these earnest pursuits of the men of this age—in the next will be resigned to the children of larger growth; just as are now resigned the trappings of military glory. Where then is the human mind ultimately to fix? Where is man to find so essentially his good, as to fix his earnest pursuit in one direction, in which the race is still to hold on? Such seems to be the question, What is life?

The elements of that darkness, which excludes the light of life, may be considered as these three: First, the excessive preponderance of self-love, as the ruling motive of human conduct. Secondly, the short-sightedness of self-love, in magnifying the present, at the cost of the distant future. And, Thirdly, the grossness of self-love, in preferring of present goods the vulgar and the sensible, to the refined and more exquisitely satisfactory. And there are three ways, in which we may attempt the abatement of existing evils; or, there are three agencies we may call in for this purpose.

In the first place, leaving individuals to the operation of the common motives, we may labor at the social institutions, to adjust them to the rule, that, each seeking his own, after the common apprehension of present interests, may do so consistently with acting the part of a good citizen—contributing something to the general welfare; or, at least, not greatly detracting therefrom. Here, the agency employed, the Greeks would have called by a name, from which we have derived the word politics; which word, from abuse, has well nigh lost its original sense, The science of social welfare. Policy, we might say, for want of an exacter word.

The second way, in which we may seek the same result, is, to inculcate juster apprehensions of present good—to inform and refine self-love; to show, that the purest of present enjoyments, are like the loaves and fishes distributed by divine hands, multiplying by division and participation—the best of all being such as none can enjoy fully, till they become the common property of the race. For want of a more accurately defined term, the agent here introduced may be called Philosophy; understanding by the term, the search, what would be the conduct and preferences of a truly wise man, dispassionately seeking for himself the best enjoyment of this life, uninformed of another to follow.

Or, thirdly, we may seek to infuse a nobler principle than self-love, however refined—even the charity, whose essence is, to love one's neighbor as one's self; while, at the same time, this life being earnestly contemplated as but the introductory part of an immense whole, additional security is provided for the coincidence of interest with duty. In a word, the third agency to be employed is Religion.

The whole subject thus sketched is one of which the writer is not aware, that it has been distinctly defined, as a field for thought and investigation. He has little to learn from the successes or the failures of predecessors. Be this his excuse for seeming prosy and dull; possibly for mistakes and crudities. He has the doubly difficulty of attempting to turn thought into trains to which it is not accustomed; and yet of offering no results so profound as to have escaped other observers; or so sublime as to be the due prize of genius, venturing where few can soar. If he offers any thoughts new, just, and important, they have rather been overlooked for their simplicity and obviousness. One may dive too deep for that which floats on the surface. Here are to be expected none of the splendid results, which dazzle in the popular sciences. The cultivator of this field can hope only to favor, imperceptibly it may be, the growth of thoughts and sentiments, tending slowly to work out a better condition of the human family. And he begs to commend that advice of Lacon, which himself has found so profitable: "In the pursuit of knowledge, follow it, wherever it is to be found; like fern, it is the produce of all climates; and like coin, its circulation is not restricted to any particular class. * * * * Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed; and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her. Therefore condescend to men of low estate, and be for wisdom, that which Alcibiades was for power." (Vol. I., p. 122.)

The difficulty with us Americans, in the way of being instructed, has been, that too proud, as if already possessed of the fullness of political wisdom, we have withal cherished a self-distrust, forbidding us to harmonize our institutions and modes of thinking into conformity with our work and altered situation. We have seen the British nation, choosing by the accident of birth a baby for its future sovereign, and training it in a way the least possible calculated to favor relations of acquaintance and sympathy with varied wants of the many; and our first impression, I fear, has been our last: What drivellers! Obstinately blind to the clearest lights of common sense! Whereas wiser for us would it be, to derive from the spectacle these general conclusion: that hard is it for the human mind to proceed in advance of ideas received and fashionable; that the so-called independent and original thinkers—leaders of public sentiment-are such as anticipate by a little the general progress of thought, as our hill-tops catch first by a little the beams of the rising sun, before they fill the intervening valleys; that men's superiority in profound thought or liberal ideas, in one direction, affords no security for their attaining to mediocrity in others; and that one familiar with the history of thought, may pronounce, with moral certainty, that such and such ideas were never entertained in such or such society, where due preparation did not exist. As we may confidently say, No mountain-top can tower high enough, to catch the sunbeams at midnight; with equal confidence we may say of many ideas now familiar as school-boy truths: no intellect in ancient Greece or Rome soared high enough above the mass to grasp them.