, if they are always to be the fittest, continue
always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful: and if
Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope. Nay, if we look
well to it, what is all Derangement, and necessity of great Change, in
itself such an evil, but the product simply of _increased resources_
which the old _methods_ can no longer administer; of new wealth which
the old coffers will no longer contain? What is it, for example, that
in our own day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political Systems,
and perplexes all Europe with the fear of Change, but even this: the
increase of social resources, which the old social methods will no
longer sufficiently administer? The new omnipotence of the
Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite other mountains than the
physical. Have not our economical distresses, those barnyard
Conflagrations themselves, the frightfullest madness of our mad epoch,
their rise also in what is a real increase: increase of Men; of human
Force; properly, in such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all
increases? It is true again, the ancient methods of administration
will no longer suffice. Must the indomitable millions, full of old
Saxon energy and fire, lie cooped up in this Western Nook, choking one
another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a whole fertile
untenanted Earth, desolate for want of the ploughshare, cries: Come
and till me, come and reap me? If the ancient Captains can no longer
yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the difficulty lies not
in nature, but in artifice; the European Calcutta-Blackhole has no
walls but air ones and paper ones.--So too, Scepticism itself, with
its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour fruit of a most
blessed increase, that of Knowledge; a fruit too that will not always
continue _sour_?

In fact, much as we have said and mourned about the unproductive
prevalence of Metaphysics, it was not without some insight into the
use that lies in them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil,
is the forerunner of much good. The fever of Scepticism must needs
burn itself out, and burn out thereby the Impurities that caused it;
then again will there be clearness, health. The principle of life,
which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin and barren domain of
the Conscious or Mechanical, may then withdraw into its inner
sanctuaries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw deeper than
ever into that domain of t