Past and Present | Page 8

her riddle, it is well with thee. Answer it not, pass on
regarding it not, it will answer itself; the
solution for thee is a thing of
teeth and claws; Nature is a dumb lioness, deaf to thy pleadings,
fiercely devouring. Thou art not now her victorious bridegroom; thou
art her mangled victim, scattered on the precipices, as a slave found
treacherous, recreant, ought to be and must.
With Nations it is as with individuals: Can they rede the riddle of
Destiny? This English Nation, will it get to know the meaning of its
strange new Today? Is there sense enough extant,
discoverable
anywhere or anyhow, in our united twenty-seven million heads to
discern the same; valour enough in our
twenty-seven million hearts to
dare and do the bidding thereof? It will be seen!--
The secret of gold Midas, which he with his long ears never could
discover, was, That he had offended the Supreme Powers;--that he had
parted company with the eternal inner Facts of this Universe, and
followed the transient outer Appearances thereof; and so was arrived
here. Properly it is the secret of all unhappy men and unhappy nations.
Had they known Nature's right truth, Nature's right truth would have
made them free. They have become
enchanted; stagger spell-bound,
reeling on the brink of huge peril, because they were not wise enough.
They have forgotten the right Inner True, and taken up with the Outer

Sham-true. They answer the Sphinx's question wrong. Foolish men
cannot answer it aright! Foolish men mistake transitory semblance for
eternal fact, and go astray more and more.
Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed,
there is no justice, but an accidental one, here below. Judgment for an
evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two,
but it is sure as life, it is sure as death! In the centre of the
world-whirlwind, verily now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a
God. The great soul of the world is just. O brother, can it be needful
now, at this late epoch of experience, after eighteen centuries of
Christian preaching for one thing, to remind thee of such a fact; which
all manner of Mahometans, old Pagan Romans, Jews, Scythians and
heathen Greeks, and indeed more or less all men that God made, have
managed at one time to see into; nay which thou thyself, till 'redtape'
strangled the inner life of thee, hadst once some inkling of: That there
is justice here below; and even, at bottom, that there is nothing else but
justice! Forget that, thou hast
forgotten all. Success will never more
attend thee: how can it now? Thou hast the whole Universe against thee.
No more
success: mere sham-success, for a day and days; rising ever
higher,--towards its Tarpeian Rock. Alas, how, in thy soft-hung
Longacre vehicle, of polished leather to the bodily eye, of redtape
philosophy, of expediencies, clubroom moralities,
Parliamentary
majorities to the mind's eye, thou beautifully rollest: but knowest thou
whitherward? It is towards the
road's end. Old use-and-wont;
established methods, habitudes, once true and wise; man's noblest
tendency, his perseverance, and man's ignoblest, his inertia; whatsoever
of noble and
ignoble Conservatism there is in men and Nations,
strongest always in the strongest men and Nations: all this is as a road
to thee, paved smooth through the abyss,--till all this end. Till men's
bitter necessities can endure thee no more. Till Nature's patience with
thee is done; and there is no road or footing any farther, and the abyss
yawns sheer--
Parliament and the Courts of Westminster are venerable to me; how
venerable; grey with a thousand years of honourable age! For a
thousand years and more, Wisdom and faithful Valour,
struggling

amid much Folly and greedy Baseness, not without most sad distortions
in the struggle, have built them up; and they are as we see. For a
thousand years, this English Nation has found them useful or
supportable; they have served this English Nation's want; been a road
to it through the abyss of Time. They are venerable, they are great and
strong. And yet it is good to remember always that they are not the
venerablest, nor the greatest, nor the strongest! Acts of Parliament are

venerable; but if they correspond not with the writing on the
Adamant Tablet, what are they? Properly their one element of
venerableness, of strength or greatness, is, that they at all times
correspond therewith as near as by human possibility they can. They
are cherishing destruction in their bosom every hour that they continue
otherwise.
Alas, how many causes that can plead well for themselves in the Courts
of Westminster; and yet in the general Court of the Universe, and free
Soul of Man, have no word to utter!
Honourable Gentlemen may find
this worth considering, in times