The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1858-12-30


here vile and tawny, reeking with coarse pas
sion and vulgar instinct; how animal. how SEN
sual, Is every thought and deed of these lazy
Apollos, these gorging, brutalized, six feet of
human mud! Have they really souls worthy
of enlightened concern? See them there, how
| they loll, and battle, and gluttonize, and dream,
and satisfy their passions, with never a thought
for Future nor for Past, vilely deifying the
Now, and leaving the To-Come to the chance
workings Of wind, wave, and sunshine And
still happy! Oh, let me away, let me flee from
| thesel"
| In another place he writes:
| Il had a dream last night, signifying some
thing, but what, | am unable exactly to inter
pret 50 | set it down, in case subsequent ex-
perences will enable me more thoroughly to
appreciate its intention. 1t certainly was
vision, and yet the impression is so vivid, and
the Keeping, IN every particular of element and
detail, so perfect, that | can scarcely rid my
self of the idea of its actual occurrence
Il dreamt that / was in the library at home,
musing over some book or other, Il think it
was that old Fabricius folio of Proclus, n,
Theoiogidm PlatOniS,' that l have SO often
puzzled over, thinking that there was an intel
ligible meaning in it--thanks to Coleridge for
that waste time j and with my mind full of
thousand Of those shadowy indefinite fances to
which we can find no adequate verbal expires
sion. Gradually fell into deeper revere,
III which my tancies, rapt away entirely from
mundane influences, began TO clothe them
selves IN tangible and appreciable shape
saw myself, thought, in the third person, with
the penetration, and the absolute want of per-
sonal identity, characteristic of the clairvoyant
vision. | stood apart. as it were, and gazed
| upon myself In calm spectator fashion. Yet
what L gazed at, though me, seemed less the
andiridual Ich than typical me. There was
less of the Var, and more of the Homo. 1t was
not the concrete Jasper, seaman and bow oar
IN John Hussey's boat but any Jasper, an d6-
stract entity, something with a soul and body
assuming specific form and features. While
gazed, L iancied that this abstract man, by
some gradual process which | could not ana
| lyZe, could not in fact recognise the method of
was disintegrated, and separated into two con-
| stituents, which | knew to be the two compo
nent elements that, properly blended, make up
him whom we denominate man. These two
stood beside another, and were named
by me--through the impulse of an intuition
l could not explain-the one, the sensual,
the other, the spiritual They were not sim
ply soul and body, for each possessed some
thing of both, and had life Of its own. The
separation proceeded on a principle entirely
different from death, and was, in fact, precisely
what L have termed it-a disi'ttegrdtiOn Of tie
citdt man. 1t was as if one should precipitate
a solution, and obtain its two elements in their
original state. These two principles, ! say
stood side by side, and ! compared them to-
gether with an analytic eye, in which curiosity
and horror were quantity blended The one
which have named the Sensual, took upon
itself the form of beast such as / have never
seen, such in fact as does not exist. Low and
stout, and strong, and gross, it was the most
perfect embodiment that could be imagined of
our mental conception of the bcStial Especial
ly did notice the eye small twinkling, full of
low cunning, speaking entirely of brute appetite,
and brute will to satisfy it aud tho texture
and color of the hide, which was tough with
out hair, (saTe On the square, broad breast
and OF q brown smoke hue, most like a cured
bacon-filtch, shiny, greasy, and tght-drawn.
his beast, with his massive grOssness of frame,
standing before me there, without one feature
capable of attracting or pleasing, all pervaded
with an unredeemed repulsiveness-thi beast
say, III Its own person proclaimed It's own ma
ture, and the qualify " ypifed. observed
ITS mqtions in disgust, taking particular notice
OF Its strength, its complacenty, it, evidently
well:grounded entire Yeifaace ppon sell, and the
complete ciTcumscription of its life within the
narrow circle of the present, ! turned away,
shuddering, to look at its eo-mate. If the
Sensual was characterized in its physical
and visible presentation by peculiar massive
ness and strength. equally as il stood before
me, was the Spiritual characterized nv .l.o
infnity of its peculiar and vap;I;a,ng ,eeaI1.eSs.
which ITS form aF Cncs expressed and typi6ed.
It's hgure was that of man, tall and oomely,
but man made IA Il we're of finest gauze,
faintest in outline, translucent and only semi.
material. Its chief noticeable features were,
pale, peary, yet perfectly daphanous Qyeen
| ppI ub L..
lmpracucahle yIsc6ra showed plainly a face
1911 4t capacity for the heavenly, yet ever vary.
ing in expression, and utterly and entirely
feeble, dependent, unreliable an Gn,sstain,
unsubStantial pose, EhicA me WIND even, We're
# the Hlgtest breathing zephyr, was cae3Lia
Of swaying 10 and flo, perhaps Of dssipatine
altogether i and general shadowy m"..;on
vague, unreal, and indeteymins::e. Il was the
symbol, in fact, of an infinite possibility. pti.
t9ly incapable of realizing itself
| While continued gazing and wondering,
the two forms reunited, became again q man,
| aahin myself; and the vision melted away, like
the smoke wreath from ones pipe. What did
| it mean? What did it symbolize? Was if a
verifcatOn of that doctrine Of
| But 1t Is not my purpose to give tho reader
any of Jaspers metaphysics TO puzzle over.
simply quoted the above extract to show that
he IS improving forgetting his eternal me, me,
me- and suffering bis thought power to awaken
| INTO activity though We must confess its modes
and subjects of action are decidedly UNIQUE II
! there be any significance and esoteric doctrine
| IN the above dream, leave the reader to arrive
at it by himself, because in that way he will be
afforded no just grounds for quarrellng with the
Interpretation,
pHe other extract, ere we have done with
Jasper's journal of the cruise. He is in the
Polar Seas, mid icebergs and hummocks
" write with frozen fingers, and the Their
mometer ever so many degrees minus yet |
can write myself happier than / have been
sinoe---ah, Ruth ah, Mother guess ye now,
as We gaze out at the Pole Star, how far your
Jasper has gone towards it in quest of his fate ?
" But this ~ not my thought now thank
Heaven, can Danish such, and live amid others.
more soul-awakening, more healthy For in
stance, such as these come throngingly in upon
me: How wondrOus a subject is Nature to the
careful observer of those infinite diversities
which she delights to maintain within the great
clfcle OF her strict cosmical simplicity Here,
we cannot discover one single feature that char
acterized those dreamy islets and Furnished
waters of the Southern Seas All is stern here.
and sternly grand AS calm yet multiform and
painted beauty was the index feature in those
lands, so here We have the statuesuue simplicity
OF the craven sublime. Not coloress, either,
are these regions, but every hue is outspoken,
and OF primitive defniteness. The dazzling
white of the snow fields the magnificent ice
bergs, with their stalagmite fringes, their deep
blue caverns, the radiant fair virginity Of their
glistening peaks, and their jasper-green sides,
against which the waters continually fret them
selves into foam and spray the hard, repellant
sky, so distant in its cold blue, so threatening
l Gta al tha ,f