ART. V.-ECONOMIES. A true To begin, there is an economy of the individual. economy of the individual implies a coördination of life with physical laws, not only because the body is the garment. of an immortal soul, and should not be soiled or rudely torn, -not only because it is the soul's earthly house, and should not be undermined, not merely because it is the soul's temple consecrated by Divine illumination, and should have no idols in its shrine and no strange fire upon its altar; for it is more than all these to the soul, more than vesture to a wearer, than a dwelling to a tenant, than a temple to a worshipper, it is an inseparable element in that composite unity which now, in time, constitutes the living man. And to this whole living man a life in coördination with these laws is that only which brings health and strength and power. Yet not for mere health and strength and power, not even for their continuance, has coördination with these laws its most impressive value. Not by length of days is this value to be measured. Length of days has no worth in itself. Length of days may be but a higher sort of vegetation; or it may be a long struggle with the stubborn wants of existence; or it may be a protracted succession of transmigrations from vanity to vanity; or it may be an enduring sentence to hard labor, self-pronounced and self-inflicted, from which death alone can give release, who will come at last to tell the convict that his term has expired, that he has collected gold enough and may quit the prison. It is harmony with these laws that gives fitness for the highest labor, and susceptibility to the purest things. Without it, there can be no purpose in the will, no power in the act, no dignity in the being. Men become as walking shadows to the darkened eye and the disordered head, the heavens a pestilent collection of vapors, and earth a sterile promontory. The heart, made faint, trembles amidst scenes in which purer and braver hearts exult. The brain, enfeebled or bewildered, "in wandering mazes lost," dwells often in a region between the idiot and the madman, hovers, it may be, over him for a while, and then drops into the blackness of darkness for ever. What to an untuned frame, in which remorse keeps company with discord, are the sweetness of prayer, the calls of duty, the electric tones of eloquence, the charms of art? 1849.] Economy of the Individual. 237 To such a one, the whole of existence is unstrung, and all is hard, and not only unmusical, but also hopeless. Daily society loses to him its vitality and its freshness, and opportunity after opportunity passes from the sphere of the possible to that of the impossible. Was it to one becoming thus insensate that the poet spoke? "O, how canst thou renounce the boundless store O, how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven?" A true economy of the individual implies a coördination of the life with spiritual laws, with the law of thought, the law of conscience, and the law of goodness. How rich the life is, in which this is found, how poor, where it is not! Give a certain amount of capacity, and there is scarcely a limit to what may be accomplished by diligence, industry, and vital meditation. It is not knowledge, alone, that will be gained, but plastic command over it, the heat that melts and the talent that moulds it to the mind's command. The thing that appeared impossible, contemplated for a while, merely seems difficult, and after more intense regard the difficulty itself is gone; that which was dark and crude, as the mind broods upon it, emerges into light, and, coming to the light, grows into order. And it may be, down below the whole there lies a lyric sweetness, to which only earnest and repeated struggles for articulation can afford a worthy utterance. Give the same amount of capacity, but with it connect indolence, listlessness, self-seeking, and self-indulgence, and years leave nothing but the ghosts of promises without performance, the remembrance of unsuccessful attempts, the consciousness of being beaten in the race, and despair of gaining the goal at any odds or in any way. When to this we add the vague ideas coming ever to the mind to mock it, telling it, like so many dim but tormenting fiends, of all that it has lost, what treasures of memory, what stores of thought, what facility of execution, what abundance of fancy and emotion, all of which it might have had, but sought not rightly, we have a case which it might seem hard to make more painful. Yet so it is not. Let the law of con VOL. XLVI. 4TH S. VOL. XI. NO. II. 21 science be disregarded also, let the law of goodness have been habitually violated, and then the case is far more desperate. The moral faculties give interest to all the others; they give them their depth and significance. Untrue to these, we not only waste the life, we kill it. It is not that the best affections languish, but they die. Even the faculties that are purely intellectual suffer. To obtain the largest possible result from our minds, we must be able to call all their powers into action, into continuous action, into concentrated action; and we must be able to do this without compromise and without fear. Now, in violating the moral laws of the spirit, we, in the first place, corrupt the sources of culture, and circumscribe its sphere, and lessen its means; we, in the second, put the faculties themselves into hostility against it. For how shall we dare to go to memory, if she can open her book only to judge us, or to imagination, if she has only demons with which to scare us, or to the affections, if weepings and wounds are all that they can show us? How shall we go to reason, even, if a great portion of our ingenuity has been used in contrivances to blind or to deceive her, to silence her voice, or to belie her counsel ? And thus one part of our spiritual existence must be smothered before its birth, and another part must be stunted or strangled in its growth. But connected with the moral laws, in faithful and living union, there is no need of minute detail to exhibit the wide range of being and the glorious spheres of bliss and usefulness to which this capacity would attain. No result can be obtained, if the laws of thought are disregarded. If they be fully and profoundly carried out, despite of disloyalty to conscience and to goodness, it is not to be denied that very imposing results may be had, of a certain kind. But imposing as they may be, do they subserve the true economy of an individual life? Connect thought with any of those strong passions which despise every law but their own, is it, in its utmost success, the best order of an individual man? Suppose it aspires to become great, great by whatever distinction you please, but leaving out conscience and goodness, the inward heart of a man must be blank and poor, even when it has every thing else to fulness. Let a man have missed of no pleasure that he could enjoy, what of it all remains? Let a man have secured the most ample fortune, what has he in it, if he will pause but for one moment, and occupy that pause rightly, if conscience 1849.] Incompleteness. 239 or goodness can have no place in it? The greatest soldier that ever lived is poorly engaged, if he be engaged only about his battles when his battles are over. The lives of such men are, for themselves, as little consistent with the best order of life as those lives are which are wasted in the lower senses; while, for others, they are incalculably more injurious. What is the violence of a drunken clown to the ravages of a temperate Mahomet? "The ideal of morality," says Novalis, as quoted by Carlyle, "has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named very falsely, as it was here meant the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage. . . . . . By this ideal, a man an becomes a beast-spirit, a mixture; whose brutal wit has for weaklings a brutal power of attraction." In the harmony of body, spirit, and estate would consist the completeness of the individual. Economy of the individual includes not the man alone, but his adjuncts also. Economy, as merely applied to thrift and foresight, has a solemn meaning; and the possession of it, or the want of it, has most important bearings on individual power and individual destiny. Qualities are these which, even as thus practically understood, often spring from the best faculties of our nature, and enable us to exercise these best faculties in their divinest spheres. "It is better to give than to receive "; and it is economy, in its humblest meaning, yet its highest, which enables many a lowly soul to translate this precept into practice. Many a story of godlike beauty might be written under this title, and many a tragedy. The tragedy would not be confined to the griefs which want of economy has brought home to individual hearts, but would include wide-spread woes, which it has brought on cycles of generations and realms of nations. The same tragedy is still omnipresent, in hearts, in homes, in states, in sorrows, in suicides, in struggles, working with the sadness that cannot speak, with the misery that despairs, with the convulsions that only a benignant Power above us can assuage. - The harmony, we have said, of body, spirit, and estate forms the completeness of the individual man. The derangement of this harmony, by the sacrifice of the spirit to the body, can never be otherwise than guilty and degrading. It is not so with regard to the sacrifice of the body to the spirit. Sometimes, it is true, this may be fanaticism; sometimes it may be folly; but never is it gross. It may be the highest right, and the highest right it is, to consign the body to hunger, to nakedness, to peril, to torture, to prison, and to death, when the higher life demands the lower. And this, we suppose, is the meaning of that great saying which declares, that, when a man "loses his life" in obedience to a holy faith, he "gains" it. Sacrifices thus made are truly grand. Sublime was that immolation which Milton made to the honor of his country, when he laid his sight upon the altar of its defence. And yet more sublime was that offering of life which the immortal Howard made to the good of his race, of a life which he spent in the depths of European prisons, which he lost in an Asiatic wilderness. Neither can we help admiring the intellectual enthusiasm which, even without result, may consume the body before its time. Though the body perish, we cannot mourn, while the soul can live, should it live but in one choice memory. But when it lives in memories without number, then we have reason only to rejoice. It is not permitted us to lament, while the soul abides in the thinker or the writer, whose visible presence, indeed, disappears, but whose being continues in immortal words or in immortal facts. And that rapture, that rapture unto death, which flashes glory on the painter's canvas, which cries with wildness in the poet's song, wretched would it be for cold prudence to condemn, rejoicing as we do in its light, and charmed as we are by its sound. When the spell has left us, sorrow, and not judgment, comes back with the thought, that the hand is stiff which illumined the canvas, that the heart is quenched which fired the song. Much less genius is lost to the world than the world fancies; still, there is genius lost. Every generous man who has risen to fame has some one to speak of, as one who deserved fame, but missed it. He will tell us of his rare intellect, of his deep philosophy, of his soul-filled eloquence, and all this he will say of his friend with an impassioned faith in what he might have been and what he could have done. If this friend has left among men any fragments of his power, he traces out for us the design of which these fragments were but parts; and, haply, he completes the plan. Yet, ever comes lament along with admiration, and ever, as he praises, he will confess that. somewhat was wanted to carry promise to fulfilment. Incompleteness in any form is distressing. Structures in ruin sadden the heart, structures unfinished chill it. The walls |