overnment, spiritual religion); secondly, in relation to
the arts of teaching, of explaining, of communicating any man's meaning
where it happened to be dark or perplexed (above all, if that meaning
were his own)--this same Kant was merely impotent; absolutely, and 'no
mistake,' a child of darkness. Were it not that veneration and gratitude
cause us to suspend harsh words with regard to such a man, who has upon
the greatest question affecting our human reason almost, we might say,
_revealed_ the truth (viz., in his theory of the categories), we should
describe him, and continually we are tempted to describe him as the most
superhuman of recorded blockheads. Would it be credited, that at this
time of day, actually in the very closing years of the eighteenth
century, a man armed with some reading, but not too much study--and
sixty years' profound meditation should treat it as a matter of obvious
good sense that crowns and the succession to mighty empires ought to
travel along the line of 'merit'; not exactly on the ground of personal
beauty, or because the pretender was taller by the head than most of his
subjects--no, _that_ would be the idea of a barbarous nation. Thank God!
a royal professor of Koenigsberg was above _that_. But on the assumption
of an _appropriate_ merit, as if, for instance, he were wiser, if he
were well grounded in Transcendentalism, if he had gained a prize for
'virtue,' surely, surely, such graces ought to ensure a sceptre to their
honoured professor. Especially when we consider how _readily_ these
personal qualities _prove_ themselves to the general understanding, and
how cheerfully they are always _allowed_ by jealous and abominating
competitors! Now turn from this haughty philosopher to a plain but most
sensible and reflecting scholar--Isaac Casaubon. This man pretended to
no philosophy, but a sincere, docile heart, much good sense, and patient
observation of his own country's annals, which in the midst of
belligerent papists, and very much against his own interest, had made
him a good Church of England Protestant, made him also intensely
attached to the doctrine of fixed succession under closer and clearer
limitations than exist even in England. For a thousand years this one
plain rule had been the amulet for liberating France (else so
constitutionally disposed to war) from the bloodiest of intestine
contests. The man's career was pretty nearly concurrent as to its two
limits with that of our ow