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

truth which it cannot comprehend, or it may be so superficial as to
suspect everything it is asked to believe, and refuse to trust a fact out of
its sight. There is the danger of the day. There is the lee-shore upon
which the tendencies of the age are blowing our bark: a gross and
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