ne limb
poised against the other; there they balanced, somersetted and made
postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with some pleasure, like Spinning
Dervishes, and ended where they began. So is it, so will it always be,
with all System-makers and builders of logical card-castles; of which
class a certain remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own,
survive and build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The
Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries,
dilemmas and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast
you a beautiful horoscope, and speak reasonable things; nevertheless
your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not
forthcoming. Often by some winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is,
of a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split
asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all
his logical tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on
all hands too hard for him.

Again, in the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed
everywhere in that superiority of what is called the Natural over the
Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades and
carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that
he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him: the one is in a
state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he "had no system;" the other,
in virtue of regimen and dietetic punctuality, feels at best that "his
system is in high order." So stands it, in short, with all the forms
of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding of truth, or to the
fit imparting thereof: to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of Insight,
which is the basis of both these; always the characteristic of right
performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; "the healthy
know not of their health, but only the sick." So that the old precept
of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious disciple,
might contain in it a most fundamental truth, applicable to us all,
and in much else than Literature: "Whenever you have written any
sentence that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it out."
In like manner, under milder phraseology, and with a meaning purposely
much wider, a living Thinker has taught us: "Of the Wrong we are
always conscious, of the Right never."

But if such is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intellectual
power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and