impelled, by the stock which it already had, to desert sensation and intuition, and strive after distinctness of knowledge; and not surpassed, because only a certain degree of clearness can consist with a certain fullness and warmth. The Greeks had attained this degree, and if they had desired to realize a higher cultivation, they must have surrendered, like ourselves, the totality of their being, and pursued truth through diverse bypaths.

There was no other method of developing man's manifold dispositions, than by placing them in opposition. This antagonism of powers is the great instrument of culture, but still only the instrument; for so long as the antagonism lasts, one is only on the way to culture. The single powers of man isolate themselves and arrogate an exclusive legislation; and for this reason alone, they are found at variance with the truth of things, and compel the common sense, which usually rests with idle satisfaction in outward appearances, to press into the depths of objects. While the pure intellect usurps an authority in the external world, and the empirical is employed in subjecting it to the conditions of experience, both dispositions expand to their utmost ripeness, and exhaust the whole extent of their sphere. While in one the imagination dares to dissolve by its caprice the universal order, it compels in the other the reason to climb to the highest sources of knowledge, and to call in aid against it the law of necessity.

Partiality in the exercise of powers leads, it is true, the individual inevitably into error, but the race to truth. We concentrate the whole energy of our spirit in one focus, and draw together our whole being into a single power, and for this reason alone, we bestow as it were wings upon this single power, and bear it ingeniously far over the limits which nature seems to have imposed upon it. As certain as that all human individuals combined, with the powers of vision that nature has bestowed upon them, could never succeed in discovering a satellite of Jupiter, which the astronomer's telescope reveals; just so certain is it, that human reflection would never have conducted an analysis of the infinite or a criticism of pure reason, if the reason had not apportioned itself to single kindred subjects, freed as it were from all matter, and had not strengthened its glance into the absolute by the highest effort of abstraction. But in fact would such a spirit, dissolved in pure intellect and contemplation, be fit to exchange for the stern fetters of logic the free gait of imagination, and to comprehend the individuality of things with just and pure perception? Here nature places limits to universal genius, which it cannot transgress, and the truth will make martyrs so long as philosophy makes its chief business the laying down regulations against error.

Thus, however much may be gained for the world as a whole by this fragmentary cultivation, it is not to be denied, that the individuals whom it befalls, are cursed for the benefit of the world. An athletic frame, it is true, is fashioned by gymnastic exercises, but a form of beauty only by free and uniform action. Just so the

exertions of single talents can create extraordinary men indeed, but happy and perfect men only by their uniform temperature. And in what relation should we stand then to the past and coming age, if the cultivation of human nature made necessary such a sacrifice? We should have been the slaves of humanity, and drudged for her century after century, and stamped upon our mutilated natures the humiliating traces of our bondage - that the coming race might nurse its moral healthfulness in blissful leisure, and unfold the free growth of its humanity!

But can it be intended that man should neglect himself for any particular design? Ought nature to de prive us by its design of a perfection, which reason by its own prescribes to us? Then it must be false that the development of single faculties makes the sacrifice of totality necessary; or, if indeed the law of nature presses thus heavily, it becomes us, to restore by a higher art, this totality in our nature which art has destroyed.

SEVENTH LETTER.

SHOULD We look for this effect from the state? That is impossible, since the state as at present constituted, has induced the evil, and the state which the reason presents to itself in idea, instead of being able to found this improved humanity, must first be founded thereon itself. And so my researches hitherto have led me back to the point, from which they drew me for a time. The present age, far from exhibiting to us such a form of humanity, as is known to be the necessary condition for a moral reform of the state, shows us rather the direct opposite. Then if the principles laid down by me are accurate, and experience sanctions my sketch of the present, it is evident that every experiment in such a reform is so long premature, and every hope founded thereon chimerical, till the divisions of the inner man are again abolished, and his nature is so far developed, that she herself may be the artist, and warrant the reality of the reason's political creation.

Nature traces out for us in the physical, the way we should pursue in the moral creation. She does not apply herself to the noble formation of the physical man, till she has quieted the strife of elementary powers in the lower organizations. Just so must the strife of elements in the ethical man, the conflict of blind instincts, be first appeased, and stupid opposition must have ceased in him, before he can venture to gratify his manifoldness. On the other side, the self-dependence of his character must be secured, and the subjection of a becoming freedom to external, despotic forms must be abolished, before he can submit his manifoldness to the unity of the ideal. Where the child of nature still abuses his caprice so lawlessly, one hardly need point out to him his freedom; where the educated man still neglects his freedom, one need not deprive him of his caprice. The gift of liberal principles is treason to the whole, if it joins itself to a power that is still tumultuous, and strengthens an already superior nature; the law of conformity becomes tyranny to the individual, when it is combined with an already prevailing weakness and physical constraint, thus quenching the last glimmering sparks of self-activity and possession.

The character of the age then must first recover from its deep abasement; in one quarter, nature must resign its blind force, and in another return to its simplicity, truth and fulness; the work of more than a century. In the mean time, I readily allow, that many isolated experiments can succeed, but on the whole, nothing will be thereby gained, and the contradiction of conduct with the unity of maxims will be continually manifest. In the other hemisphere, humanity will be respected in the negro, and in Europe disgraced in the thinker. The old principles will re