Where is the reconciling link between these seeming contradictions?

Now eminence in any of the received sciences, or branches of literature, has rich capabilities of affording happiness. To penetrate the depths of mathematics, chemistry, or astronomy—to revel in the stores of ancient lore;—all such pursuits generally become more delightfully attractive, the further one advances; or, after the ancient indefinite use of terms, knowledge might be taken for the just proportionate training of all the faculties, in distinction from the teaching, which impresses so many items of truth. And such education preeminently fits one to pass time happily.

The maxim in question then applies emphatically to the forethought, which anticipates the dawn of ideas.* [Or, more generally, we might define, an accurate perception of the difference between what is and what ought to be—between reality and ideal perfection. Perhaps we might say, insight into logical futurity.] And although, as above said, none do greatly anticipate beyond the general sense of the age, yet some may too much for their own comfort.

This thought Schiller finely sets forth in his Cassandra. At the hour of her sister's nuptials, while the rest give loose to merriment at the festival, the prophetess wanders forth alone, complaining, that her insight into futurity debars her from participation in the common joy.

    "To all its arms doth mirth unfold,
          And every heart foregoes its cares,
     And hope is busy in the old;
          The bridal robe my sister wears,
     And I alone, alone am weeping;
          The sweet delusion mocks not me;
     Around these walls destruction sweeping,
          More near and near I see.

     A torch before my vision glows,
          But not in Hymen's hand it shines;
     A flame that to the welkin goes,
          But not from holy offering shrines:
     Glad hands the banquet are preparing,
          And near and near the halls of state,
     I hear the god that comes unsparing,
          I hear the steps of fate.

     And men my prophet wail deride!
          The solemn sorrow dies in scorn;
     And lonely in the waste I hide
          The tortured heart that would forewarn.
     And the happy, unregarded,
          Mocked by their fearful joy, I trod:
     Oh! dark to me the lot awarded,
          Thou evil Pythian god!

     Thine oracle in vain to be,
          Oh! wherefore am I thus consigned,
     With eyes that every truth must see,
          Lone in the city of the blind?
     Cursed with the anguish of a power
          To view the fates I may not thrall;
     The hovering tempest still must lower,
          The horror must befall.

     Boots it, the veil to lift, and give
          To sight the frowning fates beneath?
     For error is the life we live,
          And, oh, our knowledge is but death!
     Take back the clear and awful mirror,
          Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare;
     Thy truth is but a gift of terror,
          When mortal lips declare.

     My blindness give to me once more,
          The gay, dim senses that rejoice;
     The past's delighted songs are o'er
          For lips that speak a prophet's voice.

     To me the future thou has granted;
            I miss the moment from the chain—
     The happy present hour enchanted!
          Take back thy gift again!"* [Bulwer's translation.]

These lines express more than the trite observation, that a knowledge of futurity would prove a torment to the possessor. Beneath that obvious is couched the deeper moral, which expresses the sufferings of the philosophic prophet—of the man who, too much for his own quiet, anticipates reasonings, conclusions, sentiments, forms of social life yet to prevail—the man to whom not coming events, but coming ideas, cast their shadows before. If we could suppose one at the time of the crusades, educated to associate and sympathize with the choice spirits of the age, yet anticipating the sense of their age, in making the comparative estimate of chivalrous adventure, and successful cultivation of the arts of peace and industry; he must have felt somewhat like Cassandra among the less gifted. If we could look on life, as our successors will two hundred years hence, we too might complain of being "lone in the city of the blind;" unless large Hope and Benevolence enabled us to live on the future. Thus we find additional motive to desiring a united and absolute, rather than an individual and relative progress, in the consideration that knowledge most worthily so called—whoso increaseth greatly beyond the average attainment, doth so to his own sorrow.

To complete the list of false estimates of good, refuted by one test, we should allude to the frivolities of gentility and fashion-the passion for wearing badges of distinction, however impotent or unmeaning such may be. This is the very poorest form of finding delight, in what from the nature of the case can be shared by few. For its incommunicableness is its only recommendation. It is an icy repellant, freezing up the kindly flow of sympathy with universal humanity; and uncompensated loss of that best ingredient of earthly felicity—the interchange of friendly feelings and offices; that store of wealth, from which the more that take, and the fuller their share, the more they leave to be taken by others.

The foregoing may be treated as a fine and just speculation, but as what ever must remain a barren speculation; as if it were after the example of all ages, that men should mistake the material of happiness for happiness itself. So it always has been, so it always will be, that false notions of good usurp the place of the true, despite the demonstrations of moralists and divines to the contrary.

Mind, however, has not stood still in this matter. It has moved, and that in the right direction. We may note a progress from age to age, in coming to a just estimate of life. Start not at the use of terms, rendered suspicious by the extravagancies of which they have been made the vehicle. But we must not reject ideas great, just, or new, because of the distortions and caricatures of little minds. If one idea occupies the mind all them more for being great and just, it will be likely to overmaster that mind, so as not to be produced in its fair proportions, or rightly applied. So fare they, with whom the one idea is, the progress of society—the growth of thought. The Mississippi in its progress throws froth and scum on its surface, more conspicuous than the under-running current. So radical folly and transcendental nonsense is obtruded on the sight, from the sympathy of little minds with the deeper current of thought. To gauge the progress of mind from those who are most noisy on the matter, would be, like taking the direction and rapidity of the Mississippi, from the froth, which the wind blows hither and thither over its surface.

"Let us go on to perfection"—"Forgetting the things behind, and pressing onward to the things before." Such language describes distinctively the American character, and the spirit of Christianity. Only, where is perfection?