Genius

God expects no lustre from the minor Stars; but if the Sun should not illuminate all, it were a sin in Nature. _Ultimus bonoram_, will not excuse every man, nor is it sufficient for all to hold the common level: Mens names should not only distinguish them: A man should be something, that men are not, and individual in somewhat beside his proper Name. Thus while it exceeds not the bounds of reason and modesty, we cannot condemn singularity, _Nos numerus sumus_, is the Motto of the multitude, and for that reason are they Fools. For things as they recede from unity, the more they approach to imperfection, and Deformity; for they hold their perfection in their Simplicities, and as they nearest approach unto God. [Sidenote: _Universities why many times full of Scholars, and empty of Learning._] [Sidenote: _The natural genius or inclination, have much to be regarded in the choice of a Profession._]

Now as there are many great Wits to be condemned, who have neglected the increment of Arts, and the sedulous pursuit of knowledge; so are there not a few very much to be pitied, whose industry being not attended with natural parts, they have sweat to little purpose, and rolled the stone in vain. Which chiefly proceedeth from natural incapacity, and genial indisposition, at least, to those particulars whereunto they apply their endeavours. And this is one reason why, though Universities be full of men, they are oftentimes empty of learning: Why, as there are some men do much without learning, so others but little with it, and few that attain to any measure of it. For many heads that undertake it, were never squared, nor timber'd for it. There are not only particular men, but whole Nations indisposed for learning; whereunto is required, not only education, but a pregnant _Minerva_, and teeming Constitution. For the Wisdom of God hath divided the _Genius_ of men according to the different affairs of the World: and varied their inclination according to the variety of Actions to be performed therein. Which they who consider not, rudely rushing upon professions and ways of life, unequal to their natures; dishonour, not only themselves and their Functions, but pervert the harmony of the whole World. For, if the World went on as God hath ordained it, and were every one imployed in points concordant to their Natures, Professions; Arts and Commonwealths would rise up of themselves; nor needed we a Lanthorn to find a man in _Athens_.

The reason why man is .obliged to subdue the earth to himself, the reason why God cannot confer sovereignty by word of mouth or other mechanical 64 PEOPERTY AS A SYMBOL. metlaod, is, that all true sovereignty is inwardly generated. It is never imposed lapon a person from without by the deed of another, but grows up from within, is a sovereignty of genius. It is never mechanical, but always rational, proceeding from an exact ratio or adaptation between superior and inferior. Besides, God is a spirit without any finite natural continent or body, and He cannot therefore communicate any gift to man in an out- ward way, but only in an inward way, or through the man himself. In short the conditio sine qua non of His doing anything for man, is the endowment of man's selfhood, the imparting to him a self- hood which shall be exactly proportionate to His own, which shall be instinct with all power.

The answer is plain. Men are ashamed of the respect they pay it. Property cannot be a final fact of history, cannot be a good in itself, cannot be a divine end in humanity, because every man in proportion to his inward culture, in proportion to his genius, is ashamed of the deference he pays it. He feels this deference to be a mere trick of his servile and scullion nature, and inwardly or individually renounces it every time it recurs. The fact is that it is only among the lowest persons intellectually, persons in whom the sensuous imagination predominates, that you find any open profession of respect for it left. Among slaves, in fact among negroes as a class, and among the retainers of great families, in short among all per- sons in whom self-respect has never been developed or fostered, it still exerts an unrebuked dominion. But there it stops. No man of refinement allows it any indulgence.

The incomparable depth and splendour of Swe- denborg’s genius are shewn in this, that he alone of men has ever dared to bring creation within the bounds of consciousness — within the grasp of the soul. He alone has dared to give to Nature human unity, to endow it with the proportions of man. This is the fundamental distinction be- tween his genius and that of all our other great writers, that while they, by exteriorating object to subject, Creator to creature, God to man, mate- rialize man’s motives, and so construct a grossly sensual Theology, and an utterly selfish Ethics ; he in interiorating object to subject, God to man, spiritualizes man’s motives, and consequently con- structs a Theology which places God exclusively within the soul, and an Ethics whose sanctions lie in the demands of our endless spiritual develop- ment, and no longer in the arbitrary pleasure of any foreign power. As it is impossible to com- prehend the laws of creation without a clear per- e 3

to us as yet only in a celestial condition, that is, in its infantile beginnings ; and although this con- dition is one of seeming innocence, yet the least reflection shews that the innocence is more appa- rent than real, more superficial than solid, being of -that sort which characterizes lambs and doves rather than humanity. It is destitute of the human element, which is spontaneity, and hence will not keep. It is the innocence which flows into us from spiritual association, which we inherit from our past ancestry, and is consequently inca- pable of constituting our true individuality. As to my natural or inherited genius, I may be as guileless and harmless as all the lambs and doves extant ; yet nothing shall hinder me spiritually or individually becoming perhaps as ravenous as the wolf, as cunning as the fox, as lordly as the lion, as venomous as the serpent, simply because this guilelessness and harmlessness have no root in my proper spontaneity, that is in my God-given self- hood, but are reflected upon me from chance spi- ritual association. Swedenborg was never able to discover any angelic existence which was sponta- neously good, or good of itself. On the contrary, he found that the highest angel, when dissociated from his fellows, and brought into contact with lower influences, became as lascivious and vile as any devil. In short, he discovered that the angelic goodness was invariably contingent upon harmonic association, or depended upon a rigorous previous

The honour of this admirable effort of genius is shared by Mr. Adams and M. Le Verrier, who, independently of each other, arrived at these wonderful results. Mr. Adams had determined the mass and apparent diameter of Neptune, with all the circumstances of its motion, eight months before M. Le Verrier had terminated his results, and had also pointed out the exact spot where the planet would be found; but the English observers neglected to look for it till M. Le Verrier made known his researches, and communicated its position to Dr. Galle, at Berlin, who found it the very first night he looked for it, and then it was evident that it would have been seen in the place Mr. Adams had assigned to it eight months before had it been looked for. So closely did the results of these two great mathematicians agree. Neptune has a diameter of 39,793 miles, consequently he is nearly 200 times larger than the earth, and may be seen with a telescope of moderate power. His motion is retrograde at present, and six times slower than that of the earth. At so great a distance from the sun it can only have the 1/1300th part of the light and heat the earth receives; but having a satellite, the deficiency of light may in some measure be supplied.

But this alternative is wholly lacking in the catastrophe imagined by orthodoxy. Orthodoxy alleges that God makes all things out of noth- ing, out of absolutely no material whatever ; so that if they turn out ill, the responsibility of their aberration in no way attaches to them- selves: for by the hypothesis they have no selfhood or character but what God imposes upon them, being summoned into instant con- sciousness by the creative fiat : and so attaches wholly to their maker. The orthodox concep- tion is that the creature is formed out of abso- lutely nothings and hence is utterly destitute of subjective force or selfhood apart from his ob- jective being: so that any evil which may ap- pear in him attributes itself instantly to the creator, confesses itself exclusively due either to His original want of genius to conceive, or His original want of skill to execute, a perfect work: in short, to some defect in the creative love or wisdom, or both.

No man of Comte's intellectual make has the slightest title to prejudice the question in hand, because he has no apprehension of the spiritual uses of Philosophy, which alone supply the clew to its solution. The grand use of Philosophy is to promote the spiritual understanding in man» by disengaging the infinite in human conception from the grasp of the finite, or what is the same thing, revealing the latent harmony which pre- vails between being and seeming, between sub- stance and form, between spirit and flesh. Evi- dently then the very first requisite to a competent judgment of Philosophy is, that one believe in/ the Infinite at least as much as he believes in the finite, or be quite as unwilling to see religioil merge in science as to see science absorbed by religion. None of these men fulfil this condi- tion. They all admit the Finite, but they scout the Infinite out of sight as a rational cognition. They perfectly believe in science, but they have . a total disbelief in religion save as an early ne- 1 cessity of the scientific intellect, or at best a/ courteous dofling of the hat to Deity. They are consequently all alike incompetent to esti- mate the grandly reconciling genius and func- tion of Philosophy, just as incompetent as a one- legged man would be to run a race, or a one- eyed man to appreciate the stereoscope. It is

ual form or objectivity in him, as the statue has ideal form or objectivitv in the genius of the sculptor, or the child moral form or objectivity in the loins of his father, but they must actually go forth from him, or exist in their own proper sub- stance, in their own constitutional identity, just as the statue exists in the appropriate constitutional substance which the marble gives it, or the child in the proper constitutional linea- ments with which the mother invests it. The legal maxim is, de non apparentibus et non existentibiis eadem est ratio. The philosophic demand is broader. It says, no esse without exis- tere ; no reality without corresponding actuality ; no soul with- out body ; no form without substance : no being without mani- festation ; in short, no creation on God's part save in so far as there is a rigidly constitutional response and reaction on ours.