correctness of his judgment, or his facile use of the rich stores of English literature for the purposes of illustration and ornament. It is partly his own fault, if these more substantial merits of his writings have been sometimes overlooked, or not clearly perceived, through the glitter and sparkle of his sentences, and his frequent playfulness of manner. The last Lecture in this volume, on Intellectual Health and Disease, does more justice than the others to the higher qualities of his mind; we shall therefore make liberal quotations from it, though to be fairly appreciated, it must be read as a whole. The leading idea of the essay, or the philosophy of mental disease, is thus stated.

"An analysis of our consciousness, or rather a contemplation of the mysterious processes of our inward life, reveals no faculties and no impulses which can be disconnected from our personality. The mind is no collection of self-acting powers and passions, but a vital, indissoluble unit and person, capable, it is true, of great variety of manifestation, but still in its nature a unit, not an aggregate. For the purposes of science, or verbal convenience, we may call its various operations by different names, according as it perceives, feels, understands, or imagines; but the moment science breaks it up into a series of disconnected parts, and considers each part by itself as a separate power, that moment the living principle of mind is lost, and the result is an anarchy of faculties. Fortunately, however, we cannot free ourselves, by any craft of analysis, from personal pronouns. A man who speaks or acts, instinctively mentions it as- - I said, I did. We do not say that Milton's imagination wrote Paradise Lost, but that Milton wrote it. There is no mental operation in which the whole mind is not present; nothing produced but by the joint action of all its faculties, under the direction of its central personality. This central principle of mind is spiritual force, capacity to cause, to create, to assimilate, to be. This underlies all faculties; interpenetrates, fuses, directs all faculties. This thinks, this feels, this imagines, this worships; this is what glows with health, this is what is enfeebled and corrupted by disease. Call it what you please, — will, personality, individuality, character, force of being; but recognize it as the true spiritual power which constitutes a living soul. This is the only peculiarity which separates the impersonal existence of a vegetable from the personal life of a man. The material universe is instinct with spiritual existence, but only in man is it individualized into spiritual life.

"This mind, this free spiritual force, cannot grow, cannot

even exist, by itself. It can only grow by assimilating something external to itself, the very condition of mental life being the exercise of power within on objects without. The form and superficial qualities of objects it perceives; their life and spirit it conceives. Only what the mind conceives, it assimilates and draws into its own life;-intellectual conception indicating a penetrating vision into the heart of things, through a fierce, firm exertion of vital creative force. In this distinction between perception and conception, we have a principle which accounts for the limited degree in which so many persons grow in intelligence and character, in grace and gracelessness. Here, also, is the distinction between assent and faith, theory and practice. In the one case, opinions lie on the surface of the mind, mere objects, the truth of which it perceives, but which do not influence its will; in the other, ideas penetrate into the very substance of the mind, become one with it, and are springs of living thought and action. For instance, you may cram whole folios of morality and divinity into the heads of Dick Turpin and Captain Kidd, and both will cordially assent to their truth; but the captives of Dick's blunderbuss will still have to give up their purses, and the prisoners of Kidd's piracy will still have to walk the plank. On the other hand, you may pour all varieties of immoral opinions and images into the understanding of a pure and high nature, and there they will remain, unassimilated, uncorrupting; his mind, like that of Ion,

'Though shapes of ill

May hover round its surface, glides in light,
And takes no shadow from them.'

"In accordance with the same principle, all knowledge, however imposing in its appearance, is but superficial knowledge, if it be merely the mind's furniture, not the mind's nutriment. It must be transmuted into mind, as food is into blood, to become wisdom and power.

"If the mind thus grows by assimilating external objects, it is plain that the character of the objects it assimilates will determine the form of its development, and its health or disease. Mental health consists in the self-direction of mental power, in the capacity to perceive its own relations to objects and the relations of objects to each other, and to choose those which will conduce to its enlargement and elevation. Disease occurs both when it loses its self-direction, and its self-distrust. When it loses its self-direction, it surrenders itself to every outward impression; when it loses its self-distrust, it surrenders itself to every inward whim. In the one case, it loses all moral and intellectual character, becomes unstrung, sentimental, dissolute,

with feebleness at the very heart of its being; in the other, it perversely misconceives and discolors external things, views every object as a mirror of self, and, having no reverence for aught above itself, subsides into a poisonous mass of egotism, conceit, and falsehood. Thus disease occurs both when the mind loses itself in objects, and when objects are lost in it, when it parts with will, and when it becomes wilful. The last consequence of will submerged is sensuality, brutality, slavishness; the last consequence of will perverted is Satanic pride. Now, it is an almost universal law, that the diseased weak, the men of unrestrained appetites, shall become the victims and slaves of the diseased strong, the men of unrestrained wills, and that the result of this relation shall be misery, decay, and death, to both. Here is the principle of all slavery, political, intellectual, and religious, in individuals and in communities."

The danger of losing one's individuality, or the power of self-direction, is thus illustrated:

"Look around any community, and you find it dotted over with men, marked and ticketed as not belonging to themselves, but to some other man, from whom they take their literature, their politics, their religion. They are willing captives of a stronger nature; feed on his life as though it were miraculous manna rained from heaven; complacently parade his name as an adjective to point out their own; and give wonderful pertinence to that nursery rhyme, whose esoteric depth irradiates even its exoteric expression :

'Whose dog are you? I am Billy Patton's dog, Whose dog are you?'

"This social servility, as seen in its annual harvest of dwindled souls, abject in every thing, from the tie of a neckcloth to the points of a creed, is a sufficiently strong indication of the tyranny which a few forcible persons can establish in any of our free and enlightened' communities; but perhaps a more subtle influence than that which proceeds from social relations, comes from that abstract and epitome of the whole mind of the whole world, which we find in history and literature. Here the thought and action of the race are brought home to the individual intelligence; and the danger is, that we make what should be our emancipation an instrument of servitude, fall a victim to one author or one age, and lose the power of learning from many minds, by sinking into the contented vassal of one; and end, at last, in an intellectual resemblance to that gentleman who only knew two tunes, one of which,' he said, was Old Hundred,

and the other was n't.' The danger to individuality, in reading, is not that we repeat an author's opinions or expressions, but that we be magnetized by his spirit to the extent of being drawn into his stronger life, and losing our particular being. Now, no man is benefited by being conquered; and the most modest might say to the mightiest, to Homer, to Dante, to Milton, to Goethe,- Keep off, gentlemen,-not so near, if you please; you can do me vast service, provided you do not swallow me up; my personal being is small, but allow me to say of it, as Touchstone said of Audrey, his wife, 'A poor thing, sir, but mine own.'”

The fatal consequences of erring in the opposite extreme, by allowing will to degenerate into wilfulness, are set forth, first, in the case of individuals, and afterwards, of communities.

"In passing from the simple forms of Asiatic life to the complex civilization of Greece, a more difficult problem presents itself. The Greek Mind, with its combination of energy and objectiveness, its open sense to all the influences of nature, its wonderful adaptation to philosophy, and art, and arms, where, it may be asked, can you detect disease in that? The answer

-

to this question is fortunately partly contained in the statement of a fact. Greek civilization is dead; the Greek mind died out more than two thousand years ago; a race of heroes declined into a race of sycophants, sophists, and slaves; and no galvanic action of modern sympathy has ever yet convulsed it into even a resemblance of its old life. Now, if it died, it must have died of disease; for nothing else has power to kill a nation. In considering the causes of the decay of a national mind so orderly, comprehensive, and creative as the Greek, we must keep steadily prominent the fact that it began in Satanic energy, and that it is an universal law that this energy in the end consumes itself. Perhaps the history of the Greek Mind is best read in the characteristics of its three great dramatists, sublime and wilful in Eschylus, beautiful in Sophocles, sentimental in Euripides. The Greek deified Man, first as an object of religion, then as an object of art. Now, as it is a consequence of high culture, that a superstition, having its source in human passions, shall subside from a religion into an art, the Greek became atheistical as he grew intelligent. He had, so to speak, a taste for divinities, but no belief in them. He acknowledged nothing higher than his own mind; waxed measurelessly proud and conceited; worshipped, in fact, himself. He had opinions on morals, but he assimilated no moral ideas. Now, the moment he became an atheist,

the moment he ceased to rise above himself, he began to decay. The strength at the heart of a nation, which keeps it alive, must either grow or dwindle; and, after a certain stage in its progress, it can only grow by assimilating moral and religious truth. Moral corruption, which is the result of wilful energy, eats into the very substance and core of intellectual life. Energy, it is true, is requisite to all greatness of soul; but the energy of health, while it has the strength and fearlessness of Prometheus chained to the rock, or Satan, buffeting the billows of fire, is also meek, aspiring, and reverential. Its spirit is that of the stout old martyr, who told the trembling brethren of the faith who clustered around his funeral pyre, that if his soul was serene in its last struggle with death, he would lift up his hands to them as a sign. They watched, with tremulous eagerness, the fierce element, as it swept along and over his withered frame, and, in the awful agonies of that moment when he was encircled with fire, and wholly hidden from their view, two thin hands quivered up above fagot and flame, and closed in the form of prayer.

"In the Greek mind, the wilful element took the form of conceit rather than pride, and it is therefore in the civilization of Rome that we must seek for the best expression of the power and the weakness of Satanic passion. The myth, which declares its founders to have been suckled by a wolf, aptly symbolizes that base of ferocity and iron will on which its colossal dominion was raised. The Roman mind, if we look at it in relation to its all-conquering courage and intelligence, had many sublime qualities; but pride, hard, fierce, remorseless, invulnerable pride and contempt of right, was its ruling characteristic. It existed just as long as it had power to crush opposition. But avarice, licentiousness, effeminacy, the whole brood of the abject vices, are sure at last to fasten on the conqueror, humbling his proud will, and turning his strength into weakness. The heart of that vast empire was ulcerated long before it fell. The sensuality of a Mark Antony is a more frightful thing than the sensuality of a savage; and when self-abandonment thus succeeds to selfworship, and men are literally given over to their lusts, a state of society exists which, in its demoniacal contempt of restraint, sets all description at defiance. The irruption of barbarian energy into that worn-out empire, the fierce horde of savages that swept in a devouring flame over its plains and cities, we view with something of the grim satisfaction with which an old Hebrew might have surveyed the engulfing of Pharaoh and his host in the waters of the Red Sea."

These are copious extracts; but we must borrow one passage more, though from a different Lecture, to illustrate