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156 take it with a blessing: would to Heaven I had enough for thee!' If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, 'to a certain extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still greater extent, 160 80 is this. We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, uty, namely the P the Passive half: could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it!

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But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay, properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation 170 is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices: only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a 175 system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except by Action.' On which ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in dark180 ness or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to me was of invaluable service: 'Do the Duty which 185 lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.

May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual Enfranchisement is 190 even this: When your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, and thrown open; and you discover, 196 with amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that your 'America is here or nowhere?' The Situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by 200 man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work it out

therefrom; and working, believe, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thy- 205 self, the impediment too is in thyself: thy Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the 210 Form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, 216 know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!

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But it is with man's Soul as it 220 was with Nature: the beginning of Creation is Light. Till the eye have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over 225 the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: Let there be Light! Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler 230 figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foun- 235 dations are built beneath; and the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, Heaven-encompassed World.

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I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, 245 produce it, in God's name! the utmost thou hast in thee: out with it, then. Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole might. Work while it is 250 called Today; for the Night cometh, wherein no man can work.

From PAST AND PRESENT.

[Book III, Chapters 10 and 11 (1843)]

Chapter X. Plugson of Undershot.

One thing I do know: Never, on this Earth, was the relation of man to man long carried on by Cashpayment alone. If, at any time, a 5 philosophy of Laissez-faire, Competition and Supply-and-demand, start up as the exponent of human relations, expect that it will soon end.

Such philosophies will arise: for 10 man's philosophies are usually the 'supplement of his practice'; some ornamental Logic-varnish, some outer skin of Articulate Intelligence, with which he strives to render his dumb 15 Instinctive Doings presentable when they are done. Such philosophies will arise; be preached as MammonGospels, the ultimate Evangel of the World; be believed, with what is 20 called belief, with much superficial bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction real in its way: but they are ominous gospels! They are the sure, and even swift, forerunner of 25 great changes. Expect that the old System of Society is done, is dying and fallen into dotage, when it begins to rave in that fashion. Most Systems that I have watched the death of, 30 for the last three thousand years, have gone just so. The Ideal, the True and Noble that was in them having faded out, and nothing now remaining but naked Egoism, vultur35 ous Greediness, they cannot live; they are bound and inexorably ordained by the oldest Destinies, Mothers of the Universe, to die. Curious enough: they thereupon, as I have pretty 40 generally noticed, devise some light comfortable kind of 'wine-and-walnuts philosophy' for themselves, this of Supply-and-demand or another; and keep saying, during hours of mastica45 tion and rumination, which they call

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Cash-payment never was, or could except for a few years be, the unionbond of man to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully his deserts to another; nor could it, nor can it, 55 now or henceforth to the end of the world. I invite his Grace of CastleRackrent to reflect on this; does he think that a Land Aristocracy when it becomes a Land Auctioneer- 60 ship can have long to live? Or that Sliding-scales will increase the vital stamina of it? The indomitable Plugson too, of the respected Firm of Plugson, Hunks and Company, 65

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St. Dolly Undershot, is invited to reflect on this; for to him also it will be new, perhaps even newer. Book-keeping by double entry is admirable, and records several things 70 in an exact manner. But the MotherDestinies also keep their Tablets; in Heaven's Chancery also there goes on a recording; and things, as my Moslem friends say, are 'written on 7% the iron leaf'.

Your Grace and Plugson, it is like, go to Church occasionally: did you never in vacant moments, with perhaps a dull parson droning to so you, glance into your New Testament, and the cash-account stated four times over, by a kind of quadruple entry, in the Four Gospels there? I consider that a cash-account, 85 and balance-statement of work done and wages paid, worth attending to. Precisely such, though on a smaller scale, go on at all moments under this Sun; and the statement and 90

balance of them in the Plugson Ledgers and on the Tablets of Heaven's Chancery are discrepant exceedingly; - which ought really 95 to teach, and to have long since taught, an indomitable common-sense Plugson of Undershot, much more an unattackable uncommon-sense Grace of Rackrent, a thing or two! - In 100 brief, we shall have to dismiss the Cash-Gospel rigorously into its own place: we shall have to know, on the threshold, that either there is some infinitely deeper Gospel, sub105 sidiary, explanatory and daily and hourly corrective, to the Cash one; or else that the Cash one itself and all others are fast travelling!

For all human things do require 110 to have an Ideal in them; to have some Soul in them, as we said, were it only to keep the Body unputrefied. And wonderful it is to see how the Ideal or Soul, place it in 116 what ugliest Body you may, will irradiate said Body with its own nobleness; will gradually, incessantly, mould, modify, new-form or reform said ugliest Body, and make it at 120 last beautiful, and to a certain degree divine! Oh, if you could dethrone that Brute-god Mammon, and put a Spirit-god in his place! One way or other, he must and will have to 125 be dethroned.

Fighting, for example, as I often say to myself, Fighting with steel murder-tools is surely a much uglier operation than Working, take it how 130 you will. Yet even of Fighting, in religious Abbot Samson's days, see what a Feudalism there had grown, - a 'glorious Chivalry', much besung down to the present day. Was not 135 that one of the 'impossiblest' things? Under the sky is no uglier spectacle than two men with clenched teeth, and hell-fire eyes, hacking one another's flesh; converting precious liv

ing bodies, and priceless living souls, 140 into nameless masses of putrescence, useful only for turnip-manure. How did a Chivalry ever come out of that; how anything that was not hideous, scandalous, infernal? It will 145 be a question worth considering by and by.

I remark, for the present, only two things: first, that the Fighting itself was not, as we rashly suppose 150 it, a Fighting without cause, but more or less with cause. Man is created to fight; he is perhaps best of all definable as a born soldier; his life 'a battle and a march', under 155 the right General. It is forever indispensable for a man to fight: now with Necessity, with Barrenness, Scarcity, with Puddles, Bogs, tangled Forests, unkempt Cotton; now also 160 with the hallucinations of his poor fellow Men. Hallucinatory visions rise in the head of my poor fellow man; make him claim over me rights which are not his. All fighting, as 165 we noticed long ago, is the dusty conflict of strengths, each thinking itself the strongest, or, in other words, the justest; - of Mights which do in the long-run, and forever will in 170 this just Universe in the long-run, mean Rights. In conflict the perishable part of them, beaten sufficiently, flies off into dust: this process ended, appears the imperishable, the true 175 and exact.

And now let us remark a second thing: how, in these baleful operations, a noble devout-hearted Chevalier will comport himself, and an ignoble god- 180 less Bucanier and Chactaw Indian. Victory is the aim of each. But deep in the heart of the noble man it lies forever legible, that as an Invisible Just God made him, so will and 185 must God's Justice and this only, were it never so invisible, ultimately prosper in all controversies and enter

prises and battles whatsoever. What 190 an Influence; ever-present, like a

Soul in the rudest Caliban of a body; like a ray of Heaven, and illuminative creative Fiat-Lux, in the wastest terrestrial Chaos! Blessed divine In195 fluence, traceable even in the horror of Battlefields and garments rolled in blood: how it ennobles even the Battlefield; and, in place of a Chactaw Massacre, makes it a Field of Hon200 Our!

A Battlefield too is great. Considered well, it is a kind of Quintessence of Labour; Labour distilled into its utmost concentration; the significance of years of it compressed❘ 205 into an hour. Here too thou shalt be strong, and not in muscle only, if thou wouldst prevail. Here too thou shalt be strong of heart, noble of soul; thou shalt dread no pain or 210 death, thou shalt not love ease or life; in rage, thou shalt remember mercy, justice; thou shalt be a Knight and not a Chactaw, if thou wouldst prevail! It is the rule of 215 all battles, against hallucinating fellow

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Men, against unkempt Cotton, or whatsoever battles they may be, which a man in this world has to fight.

Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian 220 Seas with blood, piles his decks with. plunder; approves himself the expertest Seaman, the daringest Seafighter: but he gains no lasting victory, lasting victory is not possible for 225 him. Not, had he fleets larger than the combined British Navy all united with him in bucaniering. He, once for all, cannot prosper in his duel. He strikes down his man: yes; but 230 his man, or his man's representative,

has no notion to lie struck down; neither, though slain ten times, will he keep so lying; nor has the Universe any notion to keep him so 235 lying! On the contrary, the Universe and he have, at all moments, all manner of motives to start up again,

and desperately fight again. Your Napoleon is flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter end of him 240 sternly compensating the beginning. The Bucanier strikes down a man, a hundred or a million men: but what profits it? He has one enemy never to be struck down; nay two 245 enemies: Mankind and the Maker of Men. On the great scale or on the small, in fighting of men or fighting of difficulties, I will not embark my venture with Howel Davies: 250 it is not the Bucanier, it is the Hero only that can gain victory, that can do more than seem to succeed. These things will deserve meditating; for they apply to all battle and soldier- 255 ship, all struggle and effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life. It is a poor Gospel, Cash-Gospel or whatever name it have, that does not, with clear tone, uncontradictable, carry- 260 ing conviction to all hearts, forever keep men in mind of these things.

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plugson of Undershot has, in a great degree, forgotten them; as, alas, 265 all the world has; as, alas, our very Dukes and Soul-Overseers have, whose special trade it was to remember them! Hence these tears. Plugson, who has indomitably spun Cotton 270 merely to gain thousands of pounds, I have to call as yet a Bucanier and Chactaw; till there come something better, still more indomitable from him. from him. His hundred Thousand- 275 pound Notes, if there be nothing other, are to me but as the hundred Scalps in a Chactaw wigwam. The blind Plugson: he was a Captain of Industry, born member of the Ulti- 280 mate genuine Aristocracy of this Universe, could he have known it! These thousand men that span and toiled round him, they were a regiment whom he had enlisted, man by 285 man; to make war on a very genuine

enemy: Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton-fibre, which will not, unless forced to it, consent to cover 290 bare backs. Here is a most genuine enemy; over whom all creatures will wish him victory. He enlisted his thousand men: said to them, 'Come, brothers, let us have a dash at Cot295 ton!' They follow with cheerful shout; they gain such a victory over Cotton as the Earth has to admire and clap hands at: but, alas, it is yet only of the Bucanier or Chactaw sort, as 300 good as no victory! Foolish Plugson of St. Dolly Undershot: does he hope to become illustrious by hanging up the scalps in his wigwam, the hundred thousands at his banker's, 305 and saying, Behold my scalps? Why, Plugson, even thy own host is all in mutiny: Cotton is conquered; but the 'bare backs' are worse covered than ever! Indomitable Plugson, thou 310 must cease to be a Chactaw; thou and others; thou thyself, if no other!

Did William the Norman Bastard, or any of his Taillefers, Ironcutters, manage so? Ironcutter, at the end 315 of the campaign, did not turn-off his thousand fighters, but said to them: Noble fighters, this is the land we have gained; be I Lord in it, what we will call Law-ward, 320 maintainer and keeper of Heaven's Laws: be I Law-ward, or in brief orthoepy Lord in it, and be ye Loyal Men around me in it; and we will stand by one another, as soldiers 325 round a captain, for again we shall have need of one another!' Plugson, bucanier-like, says to them: 'Noble spinners, this is the Hundred Thousand we have gained, wherein I mean 390 to dwell and plant vineyards; the hundred thousand is mine, the three and sixpence daily was yours: adieu, noble spinners; drink my health with this groat each, which I give you 385 over and above!' The entirely un

Herrig-Förster, British Authors.

just Captain of Industry, say I; not Chevalier, but Bucanier! Commercial Law' does indeed acquit him; asks, with wide eyes, What else? So too Howel Davies asks, Was it not accord- 340 ing to the strictest Bucanier Custom? Did I depart in any jot or tittle from the Laws of the Bucaniers?

After all, money, as they say, is miraculous. Plugson wanted victory; 345 as Chevaliers and Bucaniers, and all men alike do. He found money recognised, by the whole world with one assent, as the true symbol, exact equivalent and synonym of victory; 350

and here we have him, a grimbrowed, indomitable Bucanier, coming home to us with a 'victory', which the whole world is ceasing to clap hands at! The whole world, taught 355 somewhat impressively, is beginning to recognise that such victory is but half a victory; and that now, if it please the Powers, we must have the other half!

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Money is miraculous. What miraculous facilities has it yielded, will it yield us; but also what neverimagined confusions, obscurations has it brought in; down almost to total 365 extinction of the moral-sense in large masses of mankind! 'Protection of property,' of what is 'mine', means with most men protection of money,

the thing which, had I a thou- 370 sand padlocks over it, is least of all mine; is, in a manner, scarcely worth calling mine! The symbol shall be held sacred, defended everywhere with tipstaves, ropes and gibbets; the thing 375 signified shall be composedly cast to the dogs. A human being who has worked with human beings clears all scores with them, cuts himself with triumphant completeness forever loose 380 from them, by paying down certain shillings and pounds. Was it not the wages I promised you? There they are, to the last sixpence,

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