Charles Nisbet

“ Have not many of them, possessing courage to inspire, intelligence to enlighten, sensibility to refine the world, sickened under the languor of neglect or got embittered at the endless contradictions and misrepresentations of their fellows, dying at last as unfortunate men, unhappy to themselves, unbeneficial to their contemporaries? What an evil is the not unfrequent depravity of genius, and which under happier circumstances might have been a great salutary influence instead! ”

“ Still, occasionally, it may be wholesome, as it has confessedly a strange attraction for us, to journey to the confines of our little island of knowledge, and thence speculate a little on the trackless ocean of mystery to the navigation of which science and logic are alike inadequate. All true religion is founded on this consciousness of the infinite, of an ultimatum transcending our comprehension, but stimulating and exercising our faith. ”

“ If, again, our hearts, though so poor and insensible, can yet break in salt sorrow over the confused helpless misery of the masses, is the prayer that bursts involuntarily from them not in accord with the heart of God himself? Is it a foolish and false impulse which Nature stirs in the heart of the mother when she recognizes a quite infinite value in the poor helpless chick newly-born to her? ”

“ Trade thinks only on a good balance, and is proud of a good balance, be it got out of the follies and vices of men or in whatever way. Trade is thinning the country, crowding the towns, swelling dukes' incomes, fattening distillers and brewers, disfiguring and reducing the human physique, blighting the tenderness of relations between man and man, checking you off the values of the different sorts of intellect and inspiration. ”

“ The reconciliation of the spirit with Fate and Nature is a grace which rests sweetly and unconsciously in the heart of simple goodness, but is also the crowning grace of the boldest intellect which has pierced deep enough. Plato, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Kant, Goethe, and Schiller, are reverent worshipers, and walk in the sanctuary above arm-in-arm with Christ and the apostles. We see, in the "Nathan der Weise," how the brave Lessing received before death in fullest measure the gift of reconciliation. ”

“ Religion which sinks in us all personal regards, which would bring us into immediate communion with the Supreme, is ever a consciousness of inexhaustible resources—is more than a counterpoise for all the ills of life, and all the black facts which history can adduce—is a power which can dwarf all history, all the hitherto actual, into the insignificance of a mere prelude, and not an essential act in the drama of life itself. ”

“ The devil himself is subdued into good. Job's latter days are more beautiful than his early days. Through his sorrows and errors, Faust at last attains to a wider and holier life. The attraction to Gretchen, notwithstanding the sensuous illusions, has, in the heart of it, a soul of love and sacredness, and through the deep welter of sin and suffering is purified at last into sanctity. ”

“ Think of the generous human heart, brave will, and clear head of Burns, a man of quite transcendent powers, yet fain to slink past on the shady side of the street, left to bleed so wretchedly to death in the midsummer of his days. ”

“ Do you think Faust in the end would annihilate his experience of Gretchen if it were possible? No, the earth and heaven are dearer because of her. Gretchen is universalized, and the universal is Gretchenized; the world is all a sacred, pathetic Gretchen. ”

“ Nation after nation, Egyptian, Persian, Jewish, Grecian, Roman, Arabian, and Celtic, shoot into blossom in order to rot back into forgetfulness.
And if we take regard of the individual units that are always swarming by the millions into the world, what vast quantities get blasted out before they have well begun to cry, not to speak of the possible units frustrated of birth. And of those surviving the perils of the outset, how all get bruised and damaged sooner or later, till death comes and snuffs out the smoky tallow-lights! ”

“ Was not Lessing's child a boy of remarkable sense, who no sooner came into the world than, seeing his mistake, made out of it double-quick? Is it not probable that many brave souls, braver and better perhaps than any known to fame, have gone down to silence unregarded, the world's stupidity being more than a match for the gods themselves? ”

“ If Darwinism is true, and a man's spiritual supremacy is also true, the two facts will square with each other. For mind and Nature are the type and impression, in perfect correspondence to each other. The harshest exception is, when properly understood, no exception but a confirmation of the beautiful law. Depth and wholeness of vision will always be song and piety, be Dante and Shakespeare, never skepticism and mockery. ”

“ And in Jesus Christ, who felt an unspeakable interest even in the outcasts of society, and whose attitude toward the morally wrecked man, in whom desires and appetites had devoured all the handsome capital and prospects and possibilities in life, was not the side sniff of cold disdain, but condemnation into everlasting fire or an infinite yearning of compassion—in this appearance of Jesus Christ on earth have not men been constrained worshipfully to recognize the truest incarnation of God? ”

“ Savage countries lie thousands of years morally stagnating or decomposing, often physically starving, ground down under cruel despotisms and superstitions, reducing one another in perpetual warfares. The pages of the most favored countries show long chapters of declension, and the moral influxes, like angels' visits, only few and far between. The cause of Brut us opens the way to Cæsarism and death. Spain shares in the tide of new life, but that life is zealously extinguished, and the nation settles down to decay. ”

“ It is the conscious or unconscious conviction of every sound man that truth is better and more beautiful than any delusion—that a man's well-being is the measure of his conformity to truth. Does a man find his hitherto solid philosophy impugned, his most holy religion out of joint with new emerging facts, he will not shut his ears to the severe reason. ”

“ The history of the world presents itself rather as a Jeremiad, as a bottomless chaos in which evil and good wrestle with each other for the mastery, and where evil generally boasts the vast majority of forces. ”

“ In the higher provinces, too, your intellectual men are distributed into departments and sub-departments as writers or speakers, while life in the walks of fashion is a game of consumption and show. And when on the part of busy men the day's arduous endeavors toward the continuance of sublime human life are accomplished, and leisure is left for reflection, then a glass of beer, a pipe, cards, coffee and cake, a game at billiards or whist, a novel from the circulating library, is illimitable scope for the spiritual faculties. ”

“ But if we will have cleared to ourselves at the highest court what it is that imparts to error, crime, and tragedy, their powerful attraction, so that they are indispensable to high poetry and music and art, we shall find it is only because they constitute a dark background to heighten the play of the lightnings, to glorify the splendor of the sun. ”

“ Consider the tens of thousands always being born in our large cities, who by bad parentage, bad conception, foul air, foul food, and all manner of evil influences, get at once summarily stamped and sealed off to depravity and perdition. Think how in all our towns are houses where choice human cattle are kept, fed, and dressed, their soundness attested (on the Continent) by qualified officials; and how your choicest human cattle, rejoicing in their spiritual culture, throng into these shows to inspect and purchase. ”

“ And in this enlightened age we know this is Nature all the world over, and Nature must be obeyed.
We are proud of the present age as the triumph of trade and mechanism. And we know the high genius and aim of trade. ”

“ A long-living and prosperous nation must plough the soil, must sail the sea, must live much out-of-doors, must ever be prepared to defend its own against the whole surrounding world. And the artist or man of letters must not ensconce himself too much in his cozy study, but lay himself open to the shock of opposition and the misconstruction of his fellows, must not shrink from the experience of unkindly facts to try his nerve and test his digestion. ”

“ As soon as the man rises above his desires, and throws the roots of his being beyond the narrow confines of his egoism into the spiritual realm, where his own individual self sinks in other individuals, where other individuals become as much his proper interest as himself, then the soul becomes one with the universal soul, and perfect reconciliation is enjoyed. The man's past pains are healed, his very sins and sorrows yield themselves to him as experience and instruction and romance. ”

“ The sun, stars, woods, grasses, shells, birds, and wild creatures, are not corrupt, or at least do not suggest to man, when he contemplates them as a whole (æsthetically and not scientifically) —do not suggest images of corruption; but the poor besotted wretch beholds a perfect splendor in the sun, the prey of ruinous appetites looks into an eye of innocence in the flowers, the bankrupt gazes around and above him, and wonders why in a royal palace he should be a blot and disgrace. ”

“ Life is hope, is struggle upward and onward. Healthy and robust life can set no final goal to its endeavors and hopes, but carries deep in its bosom the promise of quite an infinity of inheritance—dim and unconscious perhaps, yet latently warm and unquestioning. ”

“ And how can the self-same life be held at one and the same time by each individual successive link in an endless chain, seeing the life devolves but in succession, and that each link in the chain sparkles into existence and luminousness only during the short term of actual possession? ”

“ For indeed we prize life not by the sum of our possessions, but only by the rate and steadiness of our growth. "Not the possession," says Lessing, "or fancied possession of the truth, but the endeavor after it, determines a man's value. ”

“ Does Science come and knock from under his feet the ground of immortality on which he had rested, it may help only to startle him out of his egoism—startle him on to some firmer footing. He must feel the immortality in the present, and not postpone it to the future. ”

“ When Jesus Christ appeared as a symbol of love and mercy in this world, preaching the prodigal son, and proclaiming the God of this world to be a God of righteousness and compassion, could the hearts of his hearers remain insensible to the manifestation and the sermon? ”

“ The baseness, stupidity, folly, injustice, suffering, and wreck, this world everywhere presents, are always a splendid challenge to strength, diligence, endurance, faith, wisdom—to all sublime and manly qualities. ”

“ The personal pain, lauguishment, and imbitteredness, do not spoil for the brave man his appreciation of life, but by persistent faith and well-doing he subdues and converts contrarieties into furtherances. Socrates and Paul and Cromwell and Milton did not break their hearts or give up the tight. Lessing, after all the languor and sickness of Wolfenbüttel, refused to die, though he bore in his heart the deadly ravages of fate, till he had first presented to his ungrateful country his large-hearted offering of "Nathan der Weise." ”

“ The subordination of self in the pious recognition of the eternal laws (= religion) and the adequate willing execution of the same (= art) —that alone is life, and a man is more or less according to the measure of his possession of this life. In the name of God, which is our highest expression of the world, is recognized something higher than our utmost sense of the just, good, and beautiful. ”

“ The moral government of the world, the spiritual tendency, or indeed any dominant direction, of things, is not patent to the fleeting glance, does not reveal itself even to the most strenuous thought. ”

“ Down to the last stage of depravity the man is never at home in his depravity. It is always depravity, and not native badness. The man's unsightliness, alienation from himself and his fellows, inward sense of bankruptcy and ruin, is an eloquent, pathetic sermon in behalf of the true. Injustice, selfishness, disavowal of obligations, seizure of others' property, never enriched or profited a man, but has always been so much inward contraction, induration, plethora, deliration—always so much disease involving so much pain, demanding so much expiation. ”

“ And if we turn to our highest spiritual institutions we see equal signs of prosperity. At all our famous universities droves of young men called "students" are invited to profane the holiest names and symbols under the pretext of studying them, as if the first and foremost condition to intellectual activity or "study" were not a certain degree of spiritual faculty, of purification of the heart. ”

“ Schopenhauer and Bahnsen, earnest thinkers, arrive, after exhaustive examination and mature deliberation, at the conclusion that the world is not the best but the worst conceivable, the best possible issue for it annihilation, man's greatest misfortune birth, his greatest happiness death. ”

“ The towns where they are collected for spiritual culture they defile more scandalously than any other class which makes no pretensions to spiritual culture.
Even if we single, out of the whole range of human history, the few men of genius whom we are constrained to regard as the eminently favored and endowed of our race, we find what a broken career has been allotted to the most of them. ”