able also to preserve some coherence, and to give consistency to both in its flow of language. 491. There are, however, products of the human intellect of a far more complicated order than those we have now been supposing, and to which it is exceedingly difficult-granting it to be possible to apply a suggestive theory of any kind. In yielding itself to a law of suggestion, or to two or three such laws, running on parallel to each other, it either obeys these influences according to their relative forces, or itself rules them the ultimate product is either, mathematically, such as the two suggestions make it, or it is such as these make it, controlled, not by another suggestion, but by the Mind-uncontrolled, and in act a law to itself. 492. Whatever may be the instances which we should adduce in support of an hypothesis that might seem to be applicable to the problem before us, they ought to be relied upon always with a degree of reserve as being in some sense ambiguous; for, whenever a question arises concerning the existence or the non-existence of an elementary principle or a primary fact in nature, we surrender the very ground on which we wish to establish our theory if we go about to make it good by a course of logical reasoning. This rule has already been insisted upon. Instances brought forward in illustration of any such hypothesis should be appealed to only for the purpose of showing that, if we grant this hypothesis, then such and such facts become more intelligible than they can be in rejecting it. 493. Let it be that we are held to a dilemma of this sort—we must accept an inconceivable supposition of one kind, or we must yield assent to an inconceivable supposition of another kind; the difference between the two being this, that the one accords with our consciousness, while the other contradicts it. 494. Among the highest products of the human mind, those must take a foremost place in which several elements, each governed by its own law, each having its own conditions, are so combined as to yield a uniform, symmetrical, and congruous result—a result in which no violence has been done to any propriety, and in which nothing is redundant, nothing is wanting. A product which actually satisfies these conditions, difficult as they are, may safely be adduced as an exemplification of the structure and functions of Mind, or as a proof of what it is capable of when putting forth its powers at the best. 495. Products of the human mind may be regarded as admirable either absolutely in themselves, or considered in relation to the peculiar circumstances under which they may have appeared. A labored oration is what it is after the toils of weeks and the hours of many nights have given it the faultless perfection which at length it exhibits; or an oration—and perhaps it is not inferior to this first-may have burst from the speaker at the moment, and under the inspiration of some extraordinary occasion. In this latter case it would surely seem to deserve a higher praise than in the former. 496. In such an imagined instance of extemporaneous eloquence, the orator-at the bar or in the senate -brings up to the occasion first his main purpose or his political or legal doctrine; then he brings his own habituated flow of language-his style and manner; then he brings his copious treasure of images, analogies, tropes, and figures-a never exhausted stock. With all these various materials in hand, we may suppose that he is able to make them available from instant to instant, as he goes on; and they are thus available-let us grant it-because certain laws of suggestion, which are already familiar to him, and are prompt to present themselves, bring forward the very article which best fits the occasion, each kind taking its turn, and each giving place to another, when it ought, with electric rapidity. 497. But now, while this evolution of commingled thought is in full flow, an incident-unlooked for— such as the suddenly manifested feeling of those whom he is addressing, and whose concurrence he is laboring to secure, induces the speaker, in a moment, to shift his ground of argument, to modify his doctrine, and to divert from his first purpose and to aim at any other. 498. At this critical moment, then, there comes to bear upon the mind a new law of suggestion-a train of ideas not at first included in the fabric of thought, and this must now be combined with it; yet it must so be done as to avoid abruptness or the appearance of incoherence. The then-present trains of thought must be severally seized anew, and must be trimmed and adjusted, and the fabric must offer to the admiring eyes of those around a new pattern, a new color, and, nevertheless, it must be a perfect work. 499. The achievement of a task so arduous as this (and to achieve it with brilliant success) seems to demand these two conditions, and the one of them as indispensably needed as the other. The first is this: that copious and various materials should so range themselves within prospect of the mind as to be available at the instant when they are needed; the second condition is this: that a disposing power superior to these materials, and restricted by no conditions, and shackled by no laws of sequency, shall hold the central place, while it freely gives law to all. 500. Yet may not this hypothetic supremacy be itself resolvable into another law of a higher order, which comes in to take effect over the head of all others? This may be imagined as possible, though it be at variance with our consciousness of intellectual action. 501. We turn to another instance, and it shall be one that is familiar to every English reader. Let it be the "Elegy written in a Country Church-yard." In this highly-finished production three separate elements are combined in one harmonious result, and they are so combined and so perfectly blended as that each, in turn, might be regarded as the chief, or the sole purpose that had been in the poet's view, and to which he had subordinated the other two. Each is precisely what it should be irrespectively of the others; each is as if it were principal, and each is as if it were subsidiary. 502. In this Elegy there is, first, a deep moral intention; there is the doctrine of human life in its sombre aspect, and such as it shows itself to be, not in king's palaces, but in a rural church-yard. The sec ond of these elements, every where present, and subsidiary to the principal intention, and yet independent of it, is a delicious series of images-pictures-drawn from the purest and most agreeable sources, and each presented in the purple light-the subdued splendor of the poet's own brilliant and chastened fancy. The third of these elements, again subservient to the first and to the second, and yet governed in the most absolute manner by its own laws, is the faultless rhythm of the composition-its soft cadences-the music of its highly artificial collocation of syllables. The verse is as if it were allowed to be master of the sense and soul of the poetry; the imagery is as if the poet's only aim had been to yield a luxurious hour to the intellectual voluptuary; the moral is such as the preacher would willingly make his own, and render into his dry didactic style. 503. Nevertheless, this Elegy is not an alternation of verse, and of imagery, and of doctrine, for it is, throughout, one product; every where, and in each line apart, it is true to the requirements of each of its constituent principles. 504. The characteristic of a production of this order is this, that it contains no instances of an ill-managed compromise either of the sense to the sound, or of the sound to the sense; there is no putting in of images which subserve no purpose but that of decoration. On the contrary, an artist of inferior ability quickly betrays his want of skill and the low rate of his disposing power: his materials kick against his main intention; the moral gives way to the obduracy of the versification; and often the humiliating fact ob |