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Literature is a definition of man-The definition according to Thackeray-Wherein
it differs from the truth..

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ECCENTRIC AND IMPORTANT POSITION OF CARLYLE IN ENGLAND.

III.

IV.

INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN IDEAS IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND-GERMAN

STUDIES OF CARLYLE.

Appearance of original forms of mind-How they act and result-Artistic genius
of the Renaissance-Oratorical genius of the classic age-Philosophical genius
of the modern age-Probable analogy of the three ages.....................

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Wherein consists the modern and German form of mind-How the aptitude for
universal ideas has renewed the science of language, mythology, æsthetics,
nistory, exegesis, theology, and metaphysics-How the metaphysical bent has
transformed poetry.
Capital idea derived thence-Conception of essential and complimentary parts-
New conception of nature and man..
Inconvenience of this aptitude-Gratuitous hypothesis and vague abstraction-
Transient discredit of German speculations..

How each nation may reforge them-Ancient examples: Spain in the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries-The Puritans and Jansenists in the seventeenth
century-France in the eighteenth century-By what roads these ideas may
enter France-Positivism-Criticism...

By what roads these ideas may enter England-Exact and positive mind-Im
passioned and poetic inspiration-Road followed by Carlyle..

§3.-PHILOSOPHY, Morality, AND CRITICISM.

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His judgment of modern England-Against the taste for comfort and the lukewarm-
ness of convictions-Gloomy forebodings for the future of modern democracy
—Against the authority of votes-Monarchical theory.....

Criticism of these theories-Dangers of enthusiam-Comparison of Carlyle and

Macaulay....

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Object of logic-Wherein it is distinguished from psychology and metaphysics..... 677
What is a judgment?-What do we know of the external and inner worlds?—The
whole object of science is to add or connect facts...........
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The system based on this view of the nature of our knowledge..

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Theory of definitions-Its importance-Refutation of the old theory-There are

no definitions of things, but of names only..

Theory of proof-Ordinary theory-Its refutation-What is the really funda-
mental part of a syllogism?...

684

Theory of axioms-Ordinary theory-Its refutation-Axioms are only truths of

experience of a certain class..

Theory of induction-The cause of a fact is only its invariable antecedent-
Experience alone proves the stability of the laws of nature-What is a law?—
By what methods are laws discovered?-The methods of agreement, of dif-
ferences, of residues, of concomitant variations......

Examples and applications-Theory of dew.....

Deduction-Its province and method.........

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Theory of induction-Its methods are of elimination or abstraction..

The two great operations of the mind, experience and abstraction-The two great

manifestations of things, sensible facts and abstract laws--Why we ought to

pass from the first to the second-Meaning and extent of the axiom of causa-

tion.

It is possible to arrive at the knowledge of first elements-Error of German meta-
physicians-They have neglected the element of chance, and of local perturba-
tions What might be known by philosophizing ant-Idea and limits of meta-
physics Its state in the three thinking nations

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Return of Tennyson to his first style-In Memoriam-Elegance, coldness, and
lengthiness of this poem-The subject and the talent must harmonize-What
subjects agree with the dilettante artist-The Princess-Comparison with As
You Like It-Fanciful and picturesque world-How Tennyson repeats the
dreams and the style of the Renaissance..
How Tennyson repeats the ingenuousness and simplicity of the old epic-The
Idylls of the King-Why he has restored the epic of the Round Table-Purity
and elevation of his models and his poetry-Elaine Morte d'Arthur-Want
of individual and absorbing passion-Flexibility and disinterestedness of his
mind-Talent for metamorphosis, embellishment, and refinement.....
His public-Society in England-Country comfort-Elegance-Education-Habits
Wherein Tennyson suits such a society-Society in France-Parisian life-

Its pleasures-Display-Conversation-Boldness of mind-Wherein Alfred de

Musset suits such a society-Comparison of the two societies and of the two

poets

718

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704

INTRODUCTION.

the lustorian might place himself for a given period, say a series of ages, or in the num soul, or with some particular people; he might study, describe, relate, all the events, all the transformations, all the revolutions which had been accomplished in the interna. man; and when he had finished his work, he would have a history of civilization amongs the people and in the period he had selected.-Guizot, Civilization in Europe, p. 25. HISTORY has been transformed, within | into existence all alone. It is but a a hundred years in Germany, within sixty years in France, and that by the study of their literatures.

It was perceived that a literary work is not a mere individual play of imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners, a manifestation of a certain kind of mind. It was concluded that we might recover, from the monuments of literature, a knowledge of the manner in which men thought and felt centuries ago. The attempt was made, and it succeeded.

Pondering on these modes of feeling and thought, men decided that they were facts of the highest kind. They saw chat these facts bore reference to the most important occurrences, that they explained and were explained by them, that it was necessary thenceforth to give them a rank, and a most important rank, in history. This rank they have received, and from that moment history has undergone a complete change in its subject-matter, its system, its machinery, the appreciation of laws and of causes. It is this change, such as it is and must be, that we shall bere endeavor to exhibit.

I.

What is your first remark on turning over the great, stiff leaves of a folio, the yellow sheets of a manuscript,- -a poem, a code of laws, a confession of faith? This, you say, did not come

mould, like a fossil shell, an imprint, like one of those shapes embossed in stone by an animal which lived and perished. Under the shell there was an animal, and behind the document there was a man. Why do you study the shell, except to bring before you the animal? So you study the document only to know the man. The shell and the document are lifeless wrecks, valuable only as a clue to the entire and living existence. We must get hold of this existence, endeavor to recreate it. It is a mistake to study the document, as if it were isolated. This were to treat things like a simple scholar, to fall into the error of the bibliomaniac. Neither mythology nor languages exist in themselves; but only men, who arrange words and imagery according to the necessities of their organs and the original bent of their intellects. A dogma is nothing in itself; look at the people who have made it,—a portrait, for instance, of the sixteenth century, say the stern powerful face of an English archbishop or martyr. Nothing exists except through some individual man; it is this individual with whom we must become acquainted. When we have established the parentage of dogmas, or the classification of poems, or the progress of constitutions, or the transformation of idioms, we have only cleared the soil: genuine history is brought into exist ence only when the historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of time, the

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living nan, toiling, impassioned, en- their genealogies on their fingers i trenched in his customs, with his voice order to obtain the right of sitti and features, his gestures and his dress, down in the presence of the King o distinct and complete as he from whom Queen. On that head consult St. S we have just parted in the street. Let mon and the engravings of Pérelle, as us endeavor, then, to annihilate as far for the present age you have consulted as possible this great interval of time, Balzac and the water-colors of Eugène which prevents us from seeing man Lami. Similarly, when we read a with our eyes, with the eyes of our Greek tragedy, our first care should be head. What have we under the fair to realize to ourselves the Greeks, that glazed pages of a modern poem? A is, the men who live half naked, in the modern poet, who has studied and gymnasia, or in the public squares, travelled, a man like Alfred de Musset, under a glowing sky, face to face with Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Heine, in the most beautiful and the most noble a black coat and gloves, welcomed by landscapes, bent on making their the ladies, and making every evening bodies lithe and strong, on conversing, his fifty bows and his score of bon- discussing, voting, carrying on patri mots in society, reading the papers in otic piracies, nevertheless lazy and tem the morning, lodging as a rule on a perate, with three urns for their furni second floor; not over gay, because he ture, two anchovies in a jar of oil for has nerves, and especially because, in their food, waited on by slaves, so as this dense democracy where we choke to give them leisure to cultivate their one another, the discredit of the dig- understanding and exercise their limbs, nities of office has exaggerated his pre- with no desire beyond that of having tensions while increasing his impor- the most beautiful town, the most tance, and because the keenness of his beautiful processions, the most beauti feelings in general disposes him some-ful ideas, the most beautiful men. what to believe himself a deity. This is what we take note of under modern Meditations or Sonnets. Even so, under a tragedy of the seventeenth century we have a poet, like Racine for instance, elegant, staid, a courtier, a fine talker, with a majestic wig and ribboned shoes, at heart a royalist and a Christian, who says, "God has been so gracious to me, that in whatever company I find myself I never have occasion to blush for the gospel or the xing; "* clever at entertaining the prince, and rendering for him into good French the" old French of Amyot; very respectful to the great, always 'knowing his place; as assiduous and reserved at Marly as at Versailles, amidst the regular pleasures of polished and ornate nature, amidst the salutations, graces, airs, and fopperies of the braided lords, who rose early in the morning to obtain the promise of being appointed to some office in case of the death of the present hoider, and amongst charming ladies who count

this subject, a statue such as the Meleager or the Theseus of the Parthenon, or still more, the sight of the Mediterranean, blue and lustrous as a silken tunic, and the islands that stud it with their massive marble outlines: add to these twenty select phrases from Plato and Aristophanes, and they will teach you much more than a multitude of dissertations and commentaries. And so again, in order to understand an Indian Purana, begin by imagining to yourself the father of a family, who, "having seen a son on his son's knees," retires, according to the law, into soli tude, with an axe and a pitcher under a banyan tree, by the brook-side, talks no more, adds fast to fast, dwells naked between four fires, and under that ter rible sun, which devours and renews without end all things living; who, for weeks at a time, fixes his imagination first upon the feet of Brahma, next upon his knee, next upon his thigh, next upon his navel, and so on, unti, beneath the strain of this intense medi tation, hallucinations begin to appear, Mary Wollstonecraft, in her Historical until all the forms of existence, mingled and Moral View of the French Revolution, p: and transformed the one with the other, 25, says, in quoting this passage, "What could be expected from the courtier who could write quaver before a sight dazzled and gid in these terms to Madame de Maintenon.-TR. | dy, until the motionless nan, catching

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