rude utterance, was as yet a heroic Song,
perhaps too a devotional Anthem. Religion was everywhere; Philosophy
lay hid under it, peacefully included in it. Herein, as in the
life-centre of all, lay the true health and oneness. Only at a later
era must Religion split itself into Philosophies; and thereby, the
vital union of Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision in
all provinces of Speech and Action more and more prevail. For if the
Poet, or Priest, or by whatever title the inspired thinker may be
named, is the sign of vigour and well-being; so likewise is the
Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of disease, probably of
decrepitude and decay. Thus, not to mention other instances, one of
them much nearer hand,--so soon as Prophecy among the Hebrews had
ceased, then did the reign of Argumentation begin; and the ancient
Theocracy, in its Sadducecisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling of
sects and doctors, give token that the _soul_ of it had fled, and that
the _body_ itself, by natural dissolution, "with the old forces still
at work, but working in reverse order," was on the road to final
disappearance.

* * * * *

We might pursue this question into innumerable other ramifications;
and everywhere, under new shapes, find the same truth, which we here
so imperfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the whole world
of man, in all manifestations and performances of his nature, outward
and inward, personal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery
to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does know itself is already
little, and more or less imperfect. Or otherwise, we may say,
Unconsciousness belongs to pure unmixed life; Consciousness to a
diseased mixture and conflict of life and death: Unconsciousness is
the sign of creation; Consciousness, at best, that of manufacture. So
deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well
might the Ancients make Silence a god; for it is the element of all
godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness; at once the source
and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends. In the same sense too,
have Poets sung "Hymns to the Night;" as if Night were nobler than
Day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread
transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and
hide from us its purely transparent, eternal deeps. So likewise have
they spoken and sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and complet