like thoughts; fancies, in imitation of
truths. The Proverbial Philosophy, in fact, appears to us one of the
most curious impositions we have ever met with. When you first read one
of the aphorisms, it strikes you as a sentiment of extraordinary wisdom.
But look more closely at it; try to apply it; and you will find that it
is merely a trick of words. What flashed upon you as a profound
distinction in morals, turns out to be nothing but a verbal antithesis.
What was paraded, as a kind of transcendental analogy between things not
before suspected of resemblance, discovered by the "spiritual insight"
of the moral seer, is in fact no more than a grave clench,--a solemn
quibble,--a conceit; arising not from the perfection of mind, but the
imperfection of language. Those conceptions, fabricated by Fancy out of
the materials that Fancy deals in, and colored by the rays of a poetic
sentiment, wear the same relation to truths, that the prismatic hues of
the spray of a fountain in the sunshine bear to the gems which it
perhaps outshines. It dazzles and delights, but if we try to apprehend
it we become bewildered; and finally discover that we were deceived by a
brilliant phantom of air. You may admire Mr. Tupper; you may enjoy him;
but you cannot understand him: the staple of his sentences is not stuff
of the understanding. Take one of Mr. Tupper's and one of Lord Bacon's
aphorisms; they flash with an equal bravery. But try them upon the
glassy surface of life. Bacon's cut it as if it were air: Tupper's turn
into a little drop of dirty water. One was a diamond, the other but an
icicle: one was the commonest liquor artificially refrigerated; the
other was a crystal in form, but in its substance the pure carbon of
truth. If these bright delusions which Mr. Tupper turns out to the
wonder and praise of his admirers, were really _thoughts_, is it to be
supposed that he would go on in this way, stringing them together, or
evolving one out of the other, as a spider weaves its unending line, or
as a boy blows soap bubbles from the nose of a tobacco pipe! Fancies,
conceits, intellectual phantoms, may be engendered out of the mind,
brooding in self-creation upon its own suggestions: but _truth_ is to be
mined from Nature, to be wrung from experience, to be seized as the
victor's trophy on the battlefield of action and suffering. The flowers
of poetry may bud spontaneously around the meditative spirit of genius,
but the harvest of Truth, thou