sure die away. It appears to us that, in Eng-like that in nursery Spectres;" or, as Jean Paul land, there is a distinct spirit of tolerant and has it, "Of the World will be made a Worldsober investigation abroad, in regard to this Machine, of the Æther a Gas, of God a Force, and other kindred matters; a persuasion, fast and of the Second World-a Coffin." We raspreading wider and wider, that the plummet ther think, such a day will not come. At all of French or Scotch Logic, excellent, nay, in- events, while the battle is still waging, and dispensable as it is for surveying all coasts that Coffin-and-Gas Philosophy has not yet seand harbours, will absolutely not sound the cured itself with Tithes and penal Statutes, let deep-seas of human Inquiry; and that many a there be free scope for Mysticism, or whatever Voltaire and Hume, well-gifted and highly me- else honestly opposes it. A fair field, and no ritorious men, were far wrong in reckoning favour, and the right will prosper! "Our prethat when their six hundred fathoms were out, sent time," says Jean Paul elsewhere, "is inthey had reached the bottom, which, as in the deed a criticising and critical time, hovering Atlantic, may lie unknown miles lower. Six betwixt the wish and the inability to believe; hundred fathoms is the longest, and a most a chaos of conflicting times; but even a chavaluable nautical line: but many men sound otic world must have its centre, and revolution with six and fewer fathoms, and arrive at pre-round that centre; there is no pure entire Concisely the same conclusion. fusion, but all such presupposes its opposite, before it can begin." "The day will come," said Lichtenberg, in bitter irony," when the belief in God will be SIGNS OF THE TIMES. [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1829.] It is no very good symptom either of nations | ture on such actions and imaginations, as or individuals, that they deal much in vaticination. Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them. Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand. Know'st thou Yesterday, its aim and reason? Work'st thou well To-day, for worthy things? Then calmly wait the Morrow's hidden season, And fear not thou, what hap soe'er it brings! But man's "large discourse of reason" will look "before and after;" and, impatient of "the ignorant present time," will indulge in anticipation far more than profits him. Seldom can the unhappy be persuaded that the evil of the day is sufficient for it; and the ambitious will not be content with present splendour, but paints yet more glorious triumphs, on the cloud-curtain of the future. large communities of sane men have, in such circumstances, entertained as sound wisdom. Witness long scenes of the French Revolution! a whole people drunk with blood and arrogance, and then with terror and cruelty, and with desperation, and blood again! Levity is no protection against such visitations, nor the utmost earnestness of character. The New England Puritan burns witches, wrestles for months with the horrors of Satan's invisible world, and all ghastly phantasms, the daily and hourly precursors of the Last Day; then suddenly bethinks him that he is frantic, weeps bitterly, prays contritely, and the history of that gloomy season lies behind him like a frightful dream. And Old England has had her share of such frenzies and panics; though happily, like other old maladies, they have grown milder of late and since the days of Titus Oates, have The case, however, is still worse with na- mostly passed without loss of men's lives, or tions. For here the prophets are not one, but indeed without much other loss than that of many; and each incites and confirms the reason, for the time, in the sufferers. In this other; so that the fatidical fury spreads wider mitigated form, however, the distemper is of and wider, till at last even Saul must join in it. pretty regular recurrence; and may be reckFor there is still a real magic in the action oned on at intervals, like other natural visitaand reaction of minds on one another. The tions; so that reasonable men deal with it, as casual deliration of a few becomes, by this the Londoners do with their fogs,-go cautimysterious reverberation, the frenzy of many; ously out into the groping crowd, and patiently men lose the use, not only of their understand- carry lanterns at noon; knowing, by a wellings, but of their bodily senses; while the grounded faith, that the sun is still in existence, most obdurate, unbelieving hearts melt, like and will one day reappear. How often have the rest, in the furnace where all are cast as we heard, for the last fifty years, that the victims and as fuel. It is grievous to think, country was wrecked, and fast sinking; wherethat this noble omnipotence of Sympathy has as, up to this date, the country is entire and been so rarely the Aaron's-rod of Truth and afloat! The "State in Danger" is a condition Virtue, and so often the Enchanter's-rod of of things, which we have witnessed a hundred Wickedness and Folly! No solitary miscre- times; and as for the church, it has seldom been ant, scarcely any solitary maniac, would ven-out of "danger" since we can remember it. All men are aware, that the present is a crisis of this sort; and why it has become so. The repeal of the Test Acts, and then of the Catholic disabilities, has struck many of their admirers with an indescribable astonishment. Those things seemed fixed and immovable; deep as the foundations of the world; and lo! in a moment they have vanished, and their place knows them no more! Our worthy friends mistook the slumbering Leviathan for an island; often as they had been assured, that intolerance was, and could be nothing but a Monster; and so, mooring under the lee, they had anchored comfortably in his scaly rind, thinking to take good cheer; as for some space they did. But now their Leviathan has suddenly dived under; and they can no longer be fastened in the stream of time; but must drift forward on it, even like the rest of the world; no very appalling fate, we think, could they but understand it: which, however, they will not yet, for a season. Their little island is gone, and sunk deep amid confused eddies; and what is left worth caring for in the universe? What is it to them, that the great continents of the earth are still standing; and the polestar and all our loadstars, in the heavens, still shining and eternal? Their cherished little haven is gone, and they will not be comforted! And therefore, day after day, in all manner of periodical or perennial publications, the most lugubrious predictions are sent forth. The king has virtually abdicated; the church is a widow, without jointure; public principle is gone; private honesty is going; society, in short, is fast falling in pieces; and a time of unmixed evil is come on us. At such a period, it was to be expected that the rage of prophecy should be more than usually excited. Accordingly, the Millenarians have come forth on the right hand, and the Millites on the left. The Fifth-monarchy men prophesy from the Bible, and the Utilitarians from Bentham. The one announces that the last of What wonderful accessions have thus been the seals is to be opened, positively, in the made, and are still making, to the physical year 1860; and the other assures us, that "the power of mankind; how much better fed, greatest happiness principle" is to make a clothed, lodged, and, in all outward respects, heaven of earth, in a still shorter time. We accommodated, men now are, or might be, by know these symptoms too well, to think it ne-a given quantity of labour, is a grateful refleccessary or safe to interfere with them. Time tion which forces itself on every one. and the hours will bring relief to all parties. changes, too, this addition of power is introThe grand encourager of Delphic or other ducing into the social system; how wealth noises is the Echo. Left to themselves, they has more and more increased, and at the same will soon dissipate, and die away in space. time gathered itself more and more into masses, strangely altering the old relations, and increasing the distance between the rich and the poor, will be a question for Political Economists, and a much more complex and important one than any they have yet engaged with But leaving these matters for the present, let us observe how the mechanical genius of our time has diffused itself into quite other provinces. Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here, too, nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old, natural methods. Every thing has its cunningly devised implements, its pre-established apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery. Thus we have machines for Education: Lancastrian relations to it, our own true aims and endeavours in it, may also become clearer. Were we required to characterize this age of ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it, not an Heroical, Devotional, Philosophical, or Moral Age, but, above all others, the Mechanical Age. It is the Age of Machinery, in every outward and inward sense of that word; the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches, and practises the great art of adopting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning, abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. The sailor furls his sail, and lays down his oar, and bids a strong, unwearied servant, on vapourous wings, bear him through the waters. Men have crossed oceans by steam; the Birmingham Fire-king has visited the fabulous East; and the genius of the Cape, were there any Camoens now to sing it, has again been alarmed, and with far stranger thunders than Gama's. There is no end to machinery. Even the horse is stripped of his harness, and finds a fleet fire-horse yoked in his stead. Nay, we have an artist that hatches chickens by steam; the very brood-hen is to be superseded! For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes, we, have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep. We remove mountains, and make seas our smooth highway; nothing can resist us. We war with rude nature; and, by our resistless engines, come off always victorious, and loaded with spoils. Meanwhile, we too admit that the present is an important time; as all present time necessarily is. The poorest day that passes over us is the conflux of two Eternities! and is made up of currents that issue from the remotest Past, and flow onwards into the remotest Future. We were wise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; and by knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own position in it. Let us then, instead of gazing idly into the obscure distance, look calmly around us for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stand. Perhaps, on a more serious inspection, something of its perplexity will disappear, some of its distinctive characters, and deeper tendencies, more clearly reveal themselves; whereby our own What SIGNS OF THE TIMES. cities, like so many well-finished hives, to machines; Hamiltonian machines; Monitors, | phic Institutes. Hence the Royal and Imperial maps, and emblems. Instruction, that myste- Societies, the Bibliothèques, Glyptotheques, rious communing of Wisdom with Ignorance, Technothèques, which front us in all capital is no longer an indefinable tentative process, requiring a study of individual aptitudes, and a perpetual variation of means and methods, to attain the same end; but a secure, universal, straight-forward business, to be conducted in the gross, by proper mechanism, with such intellect as comes to hand. Then, we have Religious machines, of all imaginable varieties; the Bible Society, professing a far higher and heavenly structure, is found, on inquiry, to be altogether an earthly contrivance, supported by collection of moneys, by fomenting of vanities, by puffing, intrigue, and chicane; and yet, in effect, a very excellent machine for converting the heathen. It is the same in all other departments. Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do, they can nowise proceed at once, and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery they were hopeless, helpless; a colony of Hindoo weavers squatting in the heart of Lancashire. Then every machine must have its moving power, in some of the great currents of society: Every little sect among us, Unitarians, Utilitarians, Anabaptists, Phrenologists, must each have its periodical, its monthly or quarterly magazine, hanging out, like its windmill, into the popularis aura, to grind meal for the society. With individuals, in like manner, natural strength avails little. No individual now hopes to accomplish the poorest enterprise single-handed, and without mechanical aids; he must make interest with some existing Coporation, and till his field with their oxen. In these days, more emphatically than ever, "to live, signifies to unite with a party, or to make one." Philosophy, Science, Art, Literature, all depend on machinery. No Newton, by silent meditation, now discovers the system of the world from the falling of an apple; but some quite other than Newton stands in his Museum, his Scientific Institution, and behind whole batteries of retorts, digesters, and galvanic piles imperatively "interrogates Nature," -who, however, shows no haste to answer. In defect of Raphaels, and Angelos, and Mozarts, we have Royal Academies of Painting, Sculpture, Music; whereby the languishing spirit of art may be strengthened by the more generous diet of a Public Kitchen. Literature, too, has its Paternoster-row mechanism, its Trade dinners, its Editorial conclaves, and huge subterranean puffing bellows; so that books are not only printed, but, in a great measure, written and sold, by machinery. National culture, spiritual benefit of all sorts, is under the same management. No Queen Christina, in these times, needs to send for her Descartes; no King Frederic for his Voltaire, and painfully nourish him with pensions and flattery: but any sovereign of taste, who wishes to enlighten his people, has only to impose a new tax, and with the proceeds establish Philoso These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions,-for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character. We may trace this tendency, we think, very distinctly, in all the great manifestations of our time; in its intellectual aspect, the studies it most favours, and its manner of conducting them; in its practical aspects, its politics, arts, religion, morals; in the whole sources, and throughout the whole currents, of its spiritual, no less than its material activity. Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations, there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter. The French were the first to desert this school of Metaphysics; and though they have lately affected to revive it, it has yet no signs of vitality. The land of Malebranche, Pascal, Descartes, and Fenelon, has now only its Cousins and Villemains; while, in the department of Physics, it reckons far other names. Among ourselves, the Philosophy of Mind, after a rickety infancy, which never reached the vigour of manhood, fell suddenly into decay, languished, and finally died out, with its last amiable cultivator, Professor Stewart. In no nation but Germany has any. decisive effort been made in psychological science; not to speak of any decisive result. The science of the age, in short, is physical, chemical, physiological, and, in all shapes, mechanical. Our favourite Mathematics, the highly prized exponent of all these other sciences, has also become more and more mechanical. Excellence, in what is called its higher departments, depends less on natural genius, than on acquired expertness in wield ing its machinery. Without undervaluing the | Religion (and it is really worth knowing) are wonderful results which a Lagrange, or La- "a product of the smaller intestines!" We place, educes by means of it, we may remark, have the greatest admiration for this learned that its calculus, differential and integral, is doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks little else than a more cunningly-constructed through the land of wonders, unwondering; arithmetical mill, where the factors being put like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, in, are, as it were, ground into the true pro- imposing Vauxhall, whose fire-works, casduct, under cover, and without other effort, on cades, and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy our part, than steady turning of the handle. and believe in,-but where he finds nothing We have more Mathematics certainly than real but the saltpetre, pasteboard, and catgut. ever; but less Mathesis. Archimedes and His book may be regarded as the ultimatum Plato could not have read the Mécanique Céleste; of mechanical metaphysics in our time; a rebut neither would the whole French Institute markable realization of what in Martinus see aught in that saying, "God geometrizes!" Scriblerus was still only an idea, that "as the but a sentimental rodomontade. jack had a meat-roasting quality, so had the body a thinking quality"-upon the strength of which the Nurembergers were to build a wood and leather man," who should reason as well as most country parsons." Vaucanson did indeed make a wooden duck, that seemed to eat and digest; but that bold scheme of the Nurembergers remained for a more modern virtuoso. From Locke's time downwards, our whole Metaphysics have been physical; not a spiritual Philosophy, but a material one. The singular estimation in which his Essay was so long held as a scientific work, (for the character of the man entitled all he said to veneration,) will one day be thought a curious indication of the spirit of these times. His whole doctrine is mechanical, in its aim and origin, in its method and its results. It is a mere discussion concerning the origin of our consciousness, or ideas, or whatever else they are called; a genetic history of what we see in the mind. But the grand secrets of Necessity and Free-will, of the mind's vital or nonvital dependence on matter, of our mysterious relations to Time and Space, to God, to the universe, are not, in the faintest degree, touched on in these inquiries; and seem not to have the smallest connection with them. This condition of the two great departments of knowledge—the outward, cultivated exclusively on mechanical principles; the inward finally abandoned, because, cultivated on such principles, it is found to yield no result-sufficiently indicates the intellectual bias of our time, its all-pervading disposition towards that line of inquiry. In fact, an inward persuasion has long been diffusing itself, and now and then even comes to utterance, that, except the external, there are no true sciences; that to the inward world (if there be any) our only conceivable road is through the outward; that, in short, what cannot be investigated and understood mechanically, cannot be investigated and understood at all. We advert the more particularly to these intellectual propensities, as to prominent symptoms of our age; because Opinion is at all times doubly related to Action, first as cause, then as effect; and the speculative tendency of any age will therefore give us, on the whole, the best indications of its practical tendency. The last class of our Scotch Metaphysicians had a dim notion that much of this was wrong; but they knew not how to right it. The school of Reid had also from the first taken a mechanical course, not seeing any other. The singular conclusions at which Hume, setting out from their admitted premises, was arriving, brought this school into being; they let loose Instinct, as an undiscriminating ban-dog, to guard them against these conclusions;they tugged lustily at the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly towing them and Nowhere, for example, is the deep, almost the world into bottomless abysses of Atheism exclusive faith, we have in Mechanism, more and Fatalism. But the chain somehow snap- visible than in the Politics of this time. Civil ped between them; and the issue has been government does, by its nature, include much that nobody now cares about either, any that is mechanical, and must be treated acmore than about Hartley's, Darwin's, or Priest- cordingly. We term it, indeed, in ordinary ley's contemporaneous doings in England. language, the Machine of Society, and talk of Hartley's vibrations and vibratiuncles one it as the grand working wheel from which all would think were material and mechanical private machines must derive, or to which enough; but our continental neighbours have they must adapt, their movements. Considergone still farther. One of their philosophers ed merely as a metaphor, all this is well has lately discovered, that "as the liver se- enough; but here, as in so many other cases, cretes bile, so does the brain secrete thought;" the "foam hardens itself into a shell," and the which astonishing discovery Dr. Cabanis, shadow we have wantonly evoked stands termore lately still, in his Rapports du Physique et ribly before us, and will not depart at our biddu Morale de l'Homme, has pushed into its mi- ding. Government includes much also that is nutest developments. The metaphysical philo- not mechanical, and cannot be treated mesophy of this last inquirer is certainly no sha- chanically; of which latter truth, as appears dowy or unsubstantial one. He fairly lays open to us, the political speculations and exertions our moral structure with his dissecting-knives of our time are taking less and less cogniand real metal probes; and exhibits it to the in-sance. spection of mankind, by Leuwenhoek micro- Nay, in the very outset, we might note the scopes and inflation with the anatomical blow- mighty interest taken in mere political arrangepipe. Thought, he is inclined to hold, is still ments, as itself the sign of a mechanical age. secreted by the brain; but then Poetry and The whole discontent of Europe takes this di rection. The deep, strong cry of all civilized | see continually the faith, hope, and practice nations-a cry which every one now sees, of every one founded on Mechanism of one must and will be answered-is, Give us a re- kind or other, it is apt to seem quite natural, form of Government! A good structure of and as if it could never have been otherwise. legislation, a proper check upon the execu- Nevertheless, if we recollect or reflect a little, tive, a wise arrangement of the judiciary, is we shall find both that it has been, and might all that is wanting for human happiness. The again be, otherwise. The domain of MechanPhilosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a ism,-meaning thereby political, ecclesiastical, Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on or other outward establishments,-was once men the necessity and infinite worth of moral considered as embracing, and we are pergoodness, the great truth that our happiness suaded can at any time embrace but a limited depends on the mind which is within us, and portion of man's interests, and by no means not on the circumstances which are without the highest portion. us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,-that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all. Equally mechanical, and of equal simplicity, are the methods proposed by both parties for completing or securing this all-sufficient perfection of arrangement. It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws. Thus is the Body-politic more than ever worshipped and tended: but the Soul-politic less than ever. Love of country, in any high or generous sense, in any other than an almost animal sense, or mere habit, has little importance attached to it in such reforms, or in the opposition shown them. Men are to be guided only by their self-interests. Good government is a good balancing of these; and, except a keen eye and appetite for self-interest, requires no virtue in any quarter. To both parties it is emphatically a machine: to the discontented, a "taxing machine;" to the contented, a "machine for securing property." Its duties and its faults are not those of a father, but of an active parish constable. To speak a little pedantically, there is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infi nite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate "motives," as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment. Now it is certain, that in former times the wise men, the enlightened lovers of their kind, who appeared generally as Moralists, Poets, or Priests, did, without neglecting the Mechanical province, deal chiefly with the Dynamical; applying themselves chiefly to regulate, increase, and purify the inward primary powers of man; and fancying that herein lay the main difficulty, and the best service they could undertake. But a wide difference is manifest in our age. For the wise men, who now appear as Political Philosophers, deal exclusively with the Mechanical province; and occupying themselves in counting up and estimating men's motives, strive by curious checking and balancing, and other adjustments of Profit and Loss, to guide them to their true advantage: while, unfortunately, those same "motives' are so innumerable, and so variable in every individual, that no really useful conclusion can ever be drawn from their enumeration. But though Mechanism, wisely contrived, has done much for man, in a social and moral point of view, we cannot be persuaded that it has ever been the chief source of his worth or happiness. Con 99 Thus it is by the mere condition of the machine; by preserving it untouched, or else by re-constructing it, and oiling it anew, that man's salvation as a social being is to be in-sider the great elements of human enjoyment, sured and indefinitely promoted. Contrive the fabric of law aright, and without farther effort on your part, that divine spirit of freedom, which all hearts venerate and long for, will of herself come to inhabit it; and under her healing wings every noxious influence will wither, every good and salutary one more and more expand. Nay, so devoted are we to this principle, and at the same time so curiously mechanical, that a new trade, specially grounded in it, has arisen among us, under the name of "Codification," or code-making in the abstract; whereby any people, for a reasonable consideration, may be accommodated with a patent code,-more easily than curious individuals with patent breeches, for the people does not need to be measured first. To us who live in the midst of all this, and the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him, and still continues to him. Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain_advance. ment, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficial guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculp |