says: "Certainly it is heaven upon earth to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth": -"arming myself with patience, To stay the providence of some high powers, That govern us below."- Jul. Cæsar, Act V. Sc. 1. And the strangers, that arrived in the island of Bensalem, in the New Atlantis, finding that the Governor knew all about them and their country, while they had never before heard of him or his island, were lost in wonder, not knowing what to make of it; for that it seemed to them "a condition and propriety of divine powers and beings, to be hidden and unseen of others, and yet to have others open and as in a light to them." Among other very admirable observations upon the ideal in Shakespeare, Gervinus makes this happy remark: "This ideality shows itself, also, in the high moral spirit, which in Shakespeare's plays controls the complications of fate and the issues of human actions, in that spirit, which develops before us that higher order, which Bacon required in poetry, indicating the eternal and uncorrupted justice in human things, the finger of God, which our dull eyes do not perceive in reality."1 Indeed, throughout both these writings, the universe, human affairs included, is contemplated as being moved, governed, and directed by an all-pervading and immanent divine providence; a fact, of which the mere materialist, or politician, who imagines that states and peoples, lives and fortunes, are to be manipulated by cunning and manœuvre, like machines that go by wire-pulling and money, is not supposed to take much note, any more than certain politic church-building priests, but of which Hamlet seems to have been fully aware; as when, at the grave, taking up the skull that had been "knocked about the mazzard with a sexton's spade," he speculates thus: "This might be the pate of a politician, which this ass now o'er-reaches; one that would circumvent God, might it not?" Act V. Sc. 1. 1 Shakes. Comm., by Prof. Gervinus, II. 582 (Lond. 1863). The world known to us may be but a small part of the whole existent creation: as far as we may come to see and know it, we may know Him and no further. So far as we are able thus to discover and see the course and ends of providence in the known and knowable universe of mind within us and mind without us, extending our view around us, and with the eye of prevision forward into the certain, the possible, and the probable future, as well as with the eye of science backward into "the abysm of time," back through the whole historical and traditional line, and thence backward through the archæological and ethnological lines, extending far into geological epochs; and thence still backward through the entire zoological scale of ascending types of created forms and the stratified leaves of the geological record to the cooling crust of the molten globe; and thence still backward, through the astronomical order, even to the time when the first forms of substance began to be created and gathered by the creative power into a spiral nebula, perhaps, to form a world,-when time and chronology for a solar system, or a globe, began, being bounded out of eternity, which is the possibility of time, and out of immensity, which is the possibility of space; and taking even so much of the past order of creation into view, and learning to comprehend the present and ever continuous order, with due perception of the actual and eternal, and with due prevision and anticipation of the possible and probable in the future continuation thereof, we may come not only to understand something of the mystery of His providence, but even to possess a certain degree and measure of foreknowledge; but not otherwise. This law is never dead, nor asleep : 66 Takes note of what is done; and, like a prophet, Are now to have no successive degrees, Measure for Measure, Act II. Sc. 2. So much may be revealed to man; no more can be revealed to him in any way; for nothing streams into man from the supernatural world, in the direction in which the thinking soul comes, but his existence as such and the power to perceive, conceive, remember, think, know, and do. Thoughts, ideas, or knowledge of what the ideas and purposes of the Creator are, or have been, or foreknowledge of what they will be, do not, nor can, by any conceivable possibility, enter into the mind of man from that direction, nor by that road. § 2. DESTINY. Men have tried to believe, that some Dæmon, or Genius, or Angel, or some other kind of spiritual phantasm, stood behind their inmost selves, pouring into them, as it were, from the supernatural world, thoughts, ideas, revelations, divinations, prophecies, auguries, and foreknowledge; and that they had nothing to do but to put themselves into an attitude of passive receptivity, and to let these supernatural communications flow into them, as it were by the divine grace, or some kind of spiritual telegraphy. The idea is as old as Socrates, at least; and it has made a large figure among the poets, both ancient and modern. Even Goethe must have a Dæmon, and a spirit must tell his Mignon who was the father of Felix. Our author had need of the same conception for his poetical purposes, and he makes good use of it thus: and again: "Macb. And under him, My Genius is rebuk'd." - Act III. Sc. 1. "Sooth. Thy dæmon, that's thy spirit which keeps thee, is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable, Where Cæsar is not; but near him, thy angel and still again: "Duke. One of these men is Genius to the other; And so of these: which is the natural man, And which the spirit?"- Com. of Errors, Act V. Sc. 1. and still again : — "Tro. Hark! you are call'd: some say the Genius so Cries, Come!' to him that instantly must die." Tro. and Cr., Act IV. Sc. 4. and thus, again, in the "Julius Cæsar": — "Brut. Since Cassius first did whet me against Cæsar, I have not slept. Between the acting of a dreadful thing, And the first motion, all the interim is The nature of an insurrection."- Act II. Sc. 1. And thus guardian angels, guiding geniuses, good dæmons, and spirits good and bad, have, from the earliest times, haunted the imaginations of men. The Chaldæan astrology, the Hebrew inspiration, the divinations of the Grecian oracles, and the Roman auguries, were little else than more or less gross forms of this same superstitious conceit. Even in the days of St. Paul the order of dignities in the Church was such, that prophecy and divination held only the second place, and miracle-working, only the fourth rank; for, says St. Paul, "God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts. And yet shew I unto you a more excellent way." Bacon treated all these imaginary supernatural powers, spirits, and gifts, with little more ceremony than he did those powers 1 1 Cor. xii. 28-31. of miracle-working faith, that presumed to command nature, those "vast and bottomless follies," which were to be driven back into the limbo of Paracelsus and "the darksome authors of magic." 66 But, for the substance of the soul, he believed it was not "extracted out of the mass of heaven and earth,” but was a spirit newly inclosed in a body of earth." 1 He was not of the school of those who look upon mind, or soul, as a mere secretion of the brain, or as a simple result of some kind of arterial brain-flow and consumption of neurine, as light comes of the burning of a candle; for he says, “the nature of man (the special and peculiar work of providence) includes mind and intellect, which is the seat of providence; and since to derive mind and reason from principles brutal and irrational would be harsh and incredible, it follows almost necessarily that the human spirit was endued with providence not without the precedent and intention and warrant of the greater providence"; and in reference to final causes, he thought it was to be regarded as "the centre of the world."2 Again he says, "the soul on the other side is the simplest of substances; as is well expressed, --- · purumque reliquit Ethereum sensum, atque auraï simplicis ignem. Whence it is no marvel that the soul so placed enjoys no rest: according to the axiom that the motion of things out of their place is rapid, and in their place calm." It was not a product of dead substratum, but “ was breathed immediately from God; so that the ways and proceedings of God with spirits [souls] are not included in Nature, that is, in the laws of heaven and earth: but are reserved to the law of his secret will and grace: wherein God worketh still and resteth not from the work of redemption, as he 1 Valerius Terminus, Works (Boston), VI. 28. 2 Prometheus, Works (Boston), XIII. 147. 8 Trans. of the De Aug., Works (Boston), IX. 25. |