Whatever most dignifies humanity, and makes our labors sweet, and causes us to forget our pains, and kindles us to lofty contemplations, and prompts us to heroic sacrifice, is the most real and the most useful. Even the leaves of a barren and neglected philosophy may be in some important respects of more value than all the boasted fruit of utilitarian science. Is that which is most useful always the most valuable,--that, I mean, which gives the highest pleasure? Do we not plant our grounds with the acacia, the oak, the cedar, the elm, as well as with the apple, the pear, and the cherry? Are not flowers and shrubs which beautify the lawn as desirable as beans and turnips and cabbages? Is not the rose or tulip as great an addition to even a poor man's cottage as his bed of onions or patch of potatoes? What is the scale to measure even mortal happiness? What is the marketable value of friendship or of love? What makes the dinner of herbs sometimes more refreshing than the stalled ox? What is the material profit of a first love? What is the value in tangible dollars and cents of a beautiful landscape, or a speaking picture, or a marble statue, or a living book, or the voice of eloquence, or the charm of earliest bird, or the smile of a friend, or the promise of immortality? In what consisted the real glory of the country we are never weary of quoting,--the land of Phidias and Pericles and Demosthenes? Was it not in immaterial ideas, in patriotism, in heroism, in conceptions of ideal beauty, in speculations on the infinite and unattainable, in the songs which still inspire the minds of youth, in the expression which made marble live, in those conceptions of beauty and harmony which still give shape to the temples of Christendom? Was Rome more glorious with her fine roads and tables of thuja-root, and Falernian wines, and oysters from the Lucrine Lake, and chariots of silver, and robes of purple and rings of gold,--these useful blessings which are the pride of an Epicurean civilization? And who gave the last support, who raised the last barrier, against that inundation of destructive pleasures in which some see the most valued fruits of human invention, but which proved a canker that prepared the way to ruin? It was that pious Emperor who learned his wisdom from a slave, and who set a haughty defiance to all the grandeur and all the comforts of the highest position which earth could give, and spent his leisure hours in the quiet study of those truths which elevate the soul,--truths not taught by science or nature, but by communication with invisible powers.
Ah, what indeed is reality; what is the higher good; what is that which perishes never; what is that which assimilates man to Deity?
Is it houses, is it lands, is it gold and silver, is it luxurious couches, is it the practical utilitarian comforts that pamper this mortal body in its brief existence? or is it women's loves and patriots' struggles, and sages' pious thoughts, affections, noble aspirations, Bethanies, the serenities of virtuous old age, the harmonies of unpolluted homes, the existence of art, of truth, of love; the hopes which last when sun and stars decay? Tell us, ye women, what are realities to you,--your carpets, your plate, your jewels, your luxurious banquets; or your husbands' love, your friends' esteem, your children's reverence? And ye, toiling men of business, what is really your highest joy,--your piles of gold, your marble palaces; or the pleasures of your homes, the approbation of your consciences, your hopes of future bliss? Yes, you are dreamers, like poets and philosophers, when you call yourselves pack-horses. Even you are only sustained in labor by intangible rewards that you can neither see nor feel. The most practical of men and women can really only live in those ideas which are deemed indefinite and unreal. For what do the busiest of you run away from money-making, and ride in cold or heat, in dreariness or discomfort,--dinners, or greetings of love and sympathy? On what are such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving Day based?--on consecrated sentiments that have more force than any material gains or ends. These, after all, are realities to you as much as ideas were to Plato, or music to Beethoven, or patriotism to Washington. Deny these as the higher certitudes, and you rob the soul of its dignity, and life of its consolations.
AUTHORITIES.
Bacon's Works, edited by Basil Montagu; Bacon's Life, by Basil Montagu; Bacon's Life, by James Spedding; Bacon's Life, by Thomas Fowler; Dr. Abbott's Introduction to Bacon's Essays, in Contemporary Review, 1876; Macaulay's famous essay in Edinburgh Review, 1839; Archbishop Whately's annotations of the Essays of Bacon; the general Histories of England.
GALILEO.
A. D. 1564-1642.
ASTRONOMICAL DISCOVERIES.
Among the wonders of the sixteenth century was the appearance of a new star in the northern horizon, which, shining at first with a feeble light, gradually surpassed the brightness of the planet Jupiter; and then changing its color from white to yellow and from yellow to red, after seventeen months, faded away from the sight, and has not since appeared. This celebrated star, first seen by Tycho Brahe in the constellation Cassiopeia, never changed its position, or presented the slightest perceptible parallax. It could not therefore have been a meteor, nor a planet regularly revolving round the sun, nor a comet blazing with fiery nebulous light, nor a satellite of one of the planets, but a fixed star, far beyond our solar system. Such a phenomenon created an immense sensation, and has never since been satisfactorily explained by philosophers. In the infancy of astronomical science it was regarded by astrologers as a sign to portend the birth of an extraordinary individual.
