Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 | Page 7

many inventions. And in this very

universality of effort and result we discover another guaranty of the
great future. The river of Progress multiplies its tributaries the farther it
flows, and even now, unknown ages from its mouth, we already see
that magnificent widening of its channel, in which, like the Amazon, it
long anticipates the sea.
Man, the great achiever! the marvellous magician! Look at him! A head
hardly six feet above the ground out of which he was taken. His "dome
of thought and palace of the soul" scarce twenty-two inches in
circumference; and within it, a little, gray, oval mass of "convoluted
albumen and fibre, of some four pounds' weight," and there sits the
intelligence which has worked all these wonders! An intelligence, say,
six thousand years old next century. How many thousand years more
will it think, and think, and wave the wand, and raise new spirits out of
Nature, open her sealed-up mysteries, scale the stars, and uncover a
universe at home? How long will it be before this inherent power, laid
in it at the beginning by the Almighty, shall be exhausted, and reach its
limit? Yes, how long? We cannot begin to know. We cannot imagine
where the stopping-place could be. Perhaps there is none.
To take up the nautical figure which has furnished our title,--we are in
the midst of an infinite sea, sailing on to a destination we know not of,
but of which the vague and splendid fancies we have formed hang
before our prow like illusions in the sky. We are meeting on every hand
great opportunities which must not be lost, new achievements which
must be wrought, and strange adventures which must be undertaken:
every day wondering more to what our commission shall bring us at
last, full of magnificent hopes and a growing faith,--the inscrutable
bundle of orders not nearly exhausted: whole continents of knowledge
yet to be discovered and explored; the gates of yet distant sciences to be
sought and unlocked; the fortresses of yet undreamed necessities to be
taken; Arcadias of beauty to be visited and their treasures garnered by
the imagination; an intricate course to be followed amid all future
nations and governments, and their winding histories, as if threading
the devious channels of endless archipelagoes; the spoils of all ages to
be gathered, and treaties of commerce with all generations to be made,
before the mysterious voyage is done.
And now, before we leave this fascinating theme, or suffer another
dream, let us stop where we are, in order to see where we are. Let us

take our bearings. What says our chart? What do we find in the horizon
of the present, which may give us the wherewithal to hope, to doubt, or
to fear?
The era in which we live presents some remarkable characteristics,
which have been brought into it by this immense material success. It is
preeminently an age of _reality:_ an age in which a host of
unrealities--queer and strange old notions--have been destroyed forever.
Never were the vaulted spaces in this grand old temple of a world
swept so clean of cobwebs before. The mind has not gone forth
working outside wonders, without effecting equal inside changes. In
achieving abroad, it has been ennobling at home. At no time was it so
free from superstition as now, and from the absurdities which have for
centuries beset and filled it. What numberless delusions, what ghosts,
what mysteries, what fables, what curious ideas, have disappeared
before the besom of the day! The old author long ago foretasted this,
who wrote,--"The divine arts of printing and gunpowder have
frightened away Robin Goodfellow, and all the fairies." It is told of
Kepler, that he believed the planets were borne through the skies in the
arms of angels; but science shortly took a wider sweep, killed off the
angels, and showed that the wandering luminaries had been accustomed
from infancy to take care of themselves. And so has the firmament of
all knowledge been cleared of its vapors and fictions, and been revealed
in its solid and shining facts.
Here, then, lies the great distinction of the time: the accumulation of
_Truth_, and the growing appetite for the true and the real. The year
whirls round like the toothed cylinder in a threshing-machine, blowing
out the chaff in clouds, but quietly dropping the rich kernels within our
reach. And it will always be so. Men will sow their notions and reap
harvests, but the inexorable age will winnow out the truth, and scatter
to the winds whatsoever is error.
Now we see how that impalpable something has been produced which
we call the "Spirit of the Age,"--that peculiar atmosphere in which we
live, which fills the lungs of the human spirit, and gives vitality and