Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 | Page 9

destructive materialism, which is the horrid and treacherous development of a shallow realism.
In the midst of this splendid era there is a fast-increasing class who are disposed to make the earth the absolute All,--to deny any outlet from it,--to deny any capacity in man for another sphere,--to deny any attribute in God which interests Him in man,--to shut out, therefore, all faith, all that is mysterious, all that is spiritual, all that is immortal, all that is Divine.
"There live, alas! of heaven-directed mien, Of cultured soul, and sapient eye serene, Who hail thee Man!--the pilgrim of a day, Spouse of the worm, and brother of the clay, Frail as the leaf in autumn's yellow bower, Dust in the wind, or dew upon the flower, A friendless slave, a child without a sire. * * * * * Are these the pompous tidings ye proclaim, Lights of the world, and demigods of Fame? Is this your triumph, this your proud applause, Children of Truth, and champions of her cause? For this hath Science searched on weary wing, By shore and sea, each mute and living thing? Launched with Iberia's pilot from the steep, To worlds unknown, and isles beyond the deep? Or round the cope her living chariot driven, And wheeled in triumph through the signs of heaven? O star-eyed Science, hast thou wandered there, To waft us home the message of despair?"
Is shipwreck, after all, to be the end of the mysterious voyage? Yes, unless there is something else beside materialism in the world. Unless there is another spirit blowing off that dreadful shore, unless the chart opens a farther sea, unless the needle points to the same distant star, unless there are other orders, yet sealed and secret, there is no further destiny for the race, no further development for the soul. The intellect, however grand, is not the whole of man. Material progress, however magnificent, is not the guaranty, not even the cardinal element, of civilization. And civilization, in the highest possible meaning of that most expressive word, is that great and final and all-embosoming harbor toward which all these achievements and changes dimly, but directly, point. Upon that we have fixed our eyes, but we cannot imagine how it can be attained by intellectual and material force alone.
In order to indicate this more vividly, let us suppose that there is no other condition necessary to the glory of human nature and the world,--let us suppose that no other provision has been made, and that the age is to go on developing only in this one direction,--what a dreary grandeur would soon surround us! As icebergs floating in an Arctic sea are splendid, so would be these ponderous and glistering works. As the gilded and crimsoned cliffs of snow beautify the Polar day, so would these achievements beautify the present day. But expect no life, no joy, no soul, amid such ice-bound circumstances as these. The tropical heart must congeal and die; its luxuriant fruits can never spring up. The earth must lie sepulchred under its own magnificence; and the divinest feelings of the spirit, floating upward in the instinct of a higher life, but benumbed by the frigid air, and rebuked by the leaden sky, must fall back like clouds of frozen vapor upon the soul: and "so shall its thoughts perish."
It would be a gloomy picture to paint, if one could for a moment imagine that intellectual power and material success were all that enter into the development of the race. For if there is no other capacity, and no other field in which at least an equal commission to achieve is given, and for which equal arrangements have been made by the Providence that orders all, then the soul must soon be smothered, society dismembered, and human nature ruined.
But this very fact, which we purposely put in these strong colors, proves that there must be another and greater element, another and higher faculty, another and wider department, likewise under express and secret conditions of success. It shall come to pass, as the development goes on, that this other will become the foremost and all-important, --the relation between them will be reversed,--this must increase, that decrease,--the Material, although the first in time, the first in the world's interest, and the first in the world's effort, will be found to be only an ordained forerunner, preparing the way for Something Else, the latchet of whose shoes it is not worthy to unloose.
There is that in man--also wrapt up and sealed within his inscrutable brain--which provides for his inner as well as outer life; which insures his highest development; which shall protect, cherish, warm, and fertilize his nature now, and perpetuate and exalt his soul forever. It is a commission which begins, but does not end, in time.