DWELLER OF THE THRESHOLD:--FEAR (or HORROR), from whose ghastliness men are protected by the opacity of the region of Prescription and Custom.The moment this protection is relinquished, and the human spirit pierces the cloud, and enters alone on the unexplored regions of Nature, this Natural Horror haunts it, and is to be successfully encountered only by defiance,--by aspiration towards, and reliance on, the Former and Director of Nature, whose Messenger and Instrument of reassurance is Faith.
MERVALE:--CONVENTIONALISM.
NICOT:--Base, grovelling, malignant PASSION.
GLYNDON:--UNSUSTAINED ASPIRATION: Would follow Instinct, but is deterred by Conventionalism, is overawed by Idealism, yet attracted, and transiently inspired, but has not steadiness for the initiatory contemplation of the Actual.He conjoins its snatched privileges with a besetting sensualism, and suffers at once from the horror of the one and the disgust of the other, involving the innocent in the fatal conflict of his spirit.When on the point of perishing, he is rescued by Idealism, and, unable to rise to that species of existence, is grateful to be replunged into the region of the Familiar, and takes up his rest henceforth in Custom.(Mirror of Young Manhood.)...
ARGUMENT.
Human Existence subject to, and exempt from, ordinary conditions (Sickness, Poverty, Ignorance, Death).
SCIENCE is ever striving to carry the most gifted beyond ordinary conditions,--the result being as many victims as efforts, and the striver being finally left a solitary,--for his object is unsuitable to the natures he has to deal with.
The pursuit of the Ideal involves so much emotion as to render the Idealist vulnerable by human passion, however long and well guarded, still vulnerable,--liable, at last, to a union with Instinct.Passion obscures both Insight and Forecast.All effort to elevate Instinct to Idealism is abortive, the laws of their being not coinciding (in the early stage of the existence of the one).Instinct is either alarmed, and takes refuge in Superstition or Custom, or is left helpless to human charity, or given over to providential care.
Idealism, stripped of in sight and forecast, loses its serenity, becomes subject once more to the horror from which it had escaped, and by accepting its aids, forfeits the higher help of Faith; aspiration, however, remaining still possible, and, thereby, slow restoration; and also, SOMETHING BETTER.
Summoned by aspiration, Faith extorts from Fear itself the saving truth to which Science continues blind, and which Idealism itself hails as its crowning acquisition,--the inestimable PROOF wrought out by all labours and all conflicts.
Pending the elaboration of this proof,CONVENTIONALISM plods on, safe and complacent;SELFISH PASSION perishes, grovelling and hopeless;INSTINCT sleeps, in order to a loftier waking; andIDEALISM learns, as its ultimate lesson, that self-sacrifice is true redemption; that the region beyond the grave is the fitting one for exemption from mortal conditions; and that Death is the everlasting portal, indicated by the finger of God,--the broad avenue through which man does not issue solitary and stealthy into the region of Free Existence, but enters triumphant, hailed by a hierarchy of immortal natures.
The result is (in other words), THAT THE UNIVERSAL HUMAN LOT IS, AFTER ALL, THAT OF THE HIGHEST PRIVILEGE.
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