The Journey of Life

By Harry Sebastian

I.

FATE.

Delicate omens traced in air
To the lone bard true witness bare;
Birds with auguries on their wings
Chanted undeceiving things
Him to beckon, him to warn;
Well might then the poet scorn
To learn of scribe or courier
Hints writ in vaster character;
And on his mind, at dawn of day,
Soft shadows of the evening lay.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.
FATE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Harry Sebastian
• Release date: Jul 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201343958

Harry Sebastian

AUTHOR: HARRY SEBASTIAN

Book preview

The Journey of Life

Harry Sebastian

Published by Harry Sebastian, 2022.

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Journey of Life

About the Author

I.

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It chanced for the duration of one winter, some years ago, that our towns have been bent on discussing the principle of the Age. By an abnormal accident, 4 or 5 cited guys have been every studying a discourse to the residents of Boston or New York, at the Spirit of the Times. It so came about that the situation had the equal prominence in a few splendid pamphlets and journals issued in London withinside the equal season. To me, but, the query of the instances resolved itself into a realistic query of the behavior of existence. How shall I stay? We are incompetent to remedy the instances. Our geometry can't span the large orbits of the triumphing thoughts, behold their go back, and reconcile their competition. We can handiest obey our very own polarity. 'Tis great for us to invest and decide on our route, if we should receive an impossible to resist dictation.

In our first steps to benefit our needs, we stumble upon immovable obstacles. We are fired with the desire to reform guys. After many experiments, we discover that we should start in advance,—at college. But the men and ladies aren't docile; we will make not anything of them. We determine that they're now no longer of accurate inventory. We should start our reform in advance nonetheless,—at generation: this is to mention, there may be Fate, or legal guidelines of the arena.

But if there be impossible to resist dictation, this dictation knows itself. If we should receive Fate, we aren't much less forced to verify liberty, the importance of the person, the grandeur of obligation, the strength of man or woman. This is genuine, and that different is genuine. But our geometry can't span those excessive factors, and reconcile them. What to do? By obeying every notion frankly, with the aid of using harping, or, if you may, pounding on every string, we examine at remaining its strength. By the equal obedience to different mind, we examine theirs, after which comes a few affordable desire of harmonizing them. We are certain, that, aleven though we recognise now no longer how, necessity does comport with liberty, the person with the arena, my polarity with the spirit of the instances. The riddle of the age has for every a non-public solution. If one could examine his very own time, it should be with the aid of using this technique of taking on in flip every of the main subjects which belong to our scheme of human existence, and, with the aid of using firmly mentioning all this is agreeable to enjoy on one, and doing the equal justice to the opposing statistics withinside the others, the genuine obstacles will seem. Any extra of emphasis, on one component, could be corrected, and a simply stability could be made.

But allow us to absolutely nation the statistics. Our America has a awful call for superficialness. Great guys, incredible countries, have now no longer been boasters and buffoons, however perceivers of the fear of existence, and feature manned themselves to stand it. The Spartan, embodying his faith in his united states of america, dies earlier than its majesty with out a query. The Turk, who believes his doom is written at the iron leaf withinside the second while he entered the arena, rushes at the enemy's sabre with undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accepts the foreordained destiny.

"On  days, it steads now no longer to run from thy grave,

The appointed, and the unappointed day;

On the primary, neither balm nor medical doctor can shop,

Nor thee, on the second one, the Universe slay."

The Hindoo, below the wheel, is as corporation. Our Calvinists, withinside the remaining generation, had some thing of the equal dignity. They felt that the burden of the Universe held them right all the way down to their location. What should they do? Wise guys sense that there may be some thing which can't be talked or voted away,—a strap or belt which girds the arena.

"The Destiny, minister preferred,

That executeth withinside the global o'er all,

The purveyance which God hath visible beforne,

So sturdy it's far, that tho' the arena had sworn

The opposite of a component with the aid of using yea or nay,

Yet someday it shall fallen on an afternoon

That falleth now no longer oft in 1000 12 months;

For, simply, our appetites right here,

Be it of conflict, or peace, or hate, or love,

All that is dominated with the aid of using the sight above."

CHAUCER: The Knight's Tale.

The Greek Tragedy expressed the equal feel: Whatever is fated, in an effort to take location. The incredible enormous thoughts of Jove isn't always to be transgressed.

Savages hang to a neighborhood god of 1 tribe or metropolis. The extensive ethics of Jesus have been quick narrowed to village theologies, which pontificate an election or favoritism. And, now after which, an amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which, on every occasion the coolest guy wishes a dinner, makes that any person shall knock at his door, and depart a 1/2 of-greenback. But Nature isn't anyt any sentimentalist,—does now no longer cosset or pamper us. We should see that the arena is hard and surly, and could now no longer thoughts drowning a person or a lady; however swallows your deliver like a grain of dirt. The bloodless, thoughtless of humans, tingles your blood, benumbs your toes, freezes a person like an apple. The diseases, the factors, fortune, gravity, lightning, recognize no humans. The manner of Providence is a touch impolite. The dependancy of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and different leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey withinside the coil of the anaconda,—those are withinside the machine, and our conduct are like theirs. You have simply dined, and, but scrupulously the slaughter-residence is hid withinside the sleek distance of miles, there may be complicity,—pricey races,—race residing on the cost of race. The planet is susceptible to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, changes of weather, precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up with the aid of using establishing of the wooded area. The sea adjustments its mattress. Towns and counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed guys like flies. At Naples, 3 years ago, 10000 humans have been beaten in a couple of minutes. The scurvy at sea; the sword of the weather withinside the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, reduce off guys like a massacre. Our western prairie shakes with fever and ague. The cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to a few tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, having crammed the summer time season with noise, are silenced with the aid of using a fall of the temperature of 1 night time. Without uncovering what does now no longer situation us, or counting what number of species of parasites grasp on a bombyx; or groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory biters, or the obscurities of change generation;—the types of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of the ocean-wolf paved with crushing tooth, the guns of the grampus, and different warriors hidden withinside the sea,—are guidelines of ferocity withinside the interiors of nature. Let us now no longer deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, hard, incalculable street to its cease, and it's far of little need to try and whitewash its large, combined instrumentalities, or to get dressed up that first rate benefactor in a easy blouse and white neckcloth of a scholar in divinity.

Will you say, the failures which threaten mankind are splendid, and one want now no longer lay his account for cataclysms each day? Aye, however what occurs as soon as, can also additionally manifest once more, and as long as those strokes aren't to be parried with the aid of using us, they should be feared.

But those shocks and ruins are much less negative to us, than the stealthy strength of different legal guidelines which act on us every day. An cost of ends to manner is destiny;—organisation tyrannizing over man or woman. The menagerie, or paperwork and powers of the spine, is a ee-e book of destiny: the invoice of the fowl, the cranium of the snake, determines tyrannically its limits. So is the dimensions of races, of temperaments; so is intercourse; so is weather; so is the response of abilties imprisoning the essential strength in sure directions. Every spirit makes its residence; however afterwards the residence confines the spirit.

The gross traces are legible to the stupid: the cabman is phrenologist thus far: he appears for your face to peer if his shilling is certain. A dome of forehead denotes one component; a pot-stomach some other; a squint, a pugnose, mats of hair, the pigment of the epidermis, betray man or woman. People appear sheathed of their hard organisation. Ask Spurzheim, ask the docs, ask Quetelet, if temperaments determine not anything? or if there be whatever they do now no longer determine? Read the outline in scientific books of the 4 temperaments, and you may assume you're studying your very own mind that you had now no longer but advised. Find the component which black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally withinside the organisation. How shall a person break out from his ancestors, or draw off from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or his mom's existence? It frequently seems in a own circle of relatives, as though all of the characteristics of the progenitors have been potted in numerous jars,—a few ruling first-class in every son or daughter of the residence,—and occasionally the unmixed temperament, the rank unmitigated elixir, the own circle of relatives vice, is drawn off in a separate person, and the others are proportionally relieved. We occasionally see a trade of expression in our partner, and say, his father, or his mom, involves the home windows of his eyes, and occasionally a faraway relative. In special hours, a person represents every of numerous of his ancestors, as though there have been seven or 8 folks rolled up in every guy's pores and skin,—seven or 8 ancestors at the least,—and that they represent the sort of notes for that new piece of song which his existence is. At the nook of the road, you study the opportunity of every passenger, withinside the facial attitude, withinside the complexion, withinside the intensity of his eye. His parentage determines it. Men are what their moms made them. You can also additionally as nicely ask a loom which weaves huckaback, why it does now no longer make cashmere, as anticipate poetry from this engineer, or a chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger withinside the ditch to provide an explanation for Newton's legal guidelines: the great organs of his mind were pinched with the aid of using overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for one hundred years. When every comes forth from his mom's womb, the gate of presents closes in the back of him. Let him cost his fingers and toes, he has however one pair. So he has however one destiny, and this is already predetermined in his lobes, and defined in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat shape. All the privilege and all of the law of the arena can't meddle or assist to make a poet or a prince of him.

Jesus stated, When he looketh on her, he hath devoted adultery. But he's an adulterer earlier than he has but regarded at the lady, with the aid of using the superfluity of animal, and the disorder of notion, in his charter. Who meets him, or who meets her, in the road, sees that they're ripe to be every different's sufferer.

In sure guys, digestion and intercourse take in the essential pressure, and the more potent those are, the person is a lot weaker. The greater of those drones perish, the higher for the hive. If, later, they provide delivery to a few advanced person, with pressure sufficient to feature to this animal a brand new goal, and a whole equipment to paintings it out, all of the ancestors are gladly forgotten. Most guys and maximum ladies are simply one couple greater. Now after which, one has a brand new mobileular or camarilla opened in his mind,—an architectural, a musical, or a philological knack, a few stray flavor or expertise for plants, or chemistry, or pigments, or tale-telling, a very good hand for drawing, a very good foot for dancing, an athletic body for extensive journeying, &c.—which talent nowise alters rank withinside the scale of nature, however serves to byskip the time, the existence of sensation taking place as earlier than. At remaining, those guidelines and dispositions are constant in a single, or in a succession. Each absorbs a lot meals and pressure, as to end up itself a brand new centre. The new expertise attracts off so hastily the essential pressure, that now no longer sufficient stays for the animal capabilities, infrequently sufficient for fitness; in order that, withinside the 2d generation, if the like genius seem, the fitness is visibly deteriorated, and the generative pressure impaired.

People are born with the ethical or with the fabric bias;—uterine brothers with this diverging destination: and I suppose, with excessive magnifiers, Mr. Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter would possibly come to differentiate withinside the embryo on the fourth day, that is a Whig, and that a Free-soiler.

It turned into a poetic try to raise this mountain of Fate, to reconcile this despotism of race with liberty, which led the Hindoos to mention, Fate is not anything however the deeds devoted in a previous nation of lifestyles. I discover the accident of the extremes of japanese and western hypothesis withinside the bold announcement of Schelling, there may be in each guy a sure feeling, that he has been what he's from all eternity, and in no way have become such in time. To say it much less sublimely,—withinside the records of the person is usually an account of his circumstance, and he is aware of himself to be a celebration to his gift property.

A good buy of our politics is physiological. Now after which, a person of wealth withinside the heyday of young people adopts the guiding principle of broadest freedom. In England, there may be usually a few guy of wealth and huge connection planting himself, for the duration of all his years of fitness, at the facet of development, who, as quickly as he starts to die, assessments his ahead play, calls in his troops, and turns into conservative. All conservatives are such from private defects. They were effeminated with the aid of using function or nature, born halt and blind, via luxurious in their dad and mom, and might handiest, like invalids, act at the defensive. But sturdy natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots, till their existence ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and cash, warp them.

The most powerful concept incarnates itself in majorities and countries, withinside the healthiest and most powerful. Probably, the election is going with the aid of using avoirdupois weight, and, if you can weigh physical the tonnage of any hundred of the Whig and the Democratic celebration in a metropolis, at the Dearborn stability, as they surpassed the hayscales, you can are expecting with reality which celebration could convey it. On the complete, it'd be as a substitute the speediest manner of figuring out the vote, to place the selectmen or the mayor and aldermen on the hayscales.

In technology, we need to keep in mind  matters: strength and situation. All we recognise of the egg, from every successive discovery, is, some other vesicle; and if, after 5 hundred years, you get a higher observer, or a higher glass, he unearths in the remaining located some other. In vegetable and animal tissue, it's far simply alike, and all that the number one strength or spasm operates, is, nonetheless, vesicles, vesicles. Yes,—however the tyrannical Circumstance! A vesicle in new situations, a vesicle lodged in darkness, Oken notion, have become animal; in mild, a plant. Lodged withinside the discern animal, it suffers adjustments, which result in unsheathing wonderful functionality withinside the unaltered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, fowl, or quadruped, head and foot, eye and claw. The Circumstance is Nature. Nature is, what you could do. There is plenty you could now no longer. We have  matters,—the situation, and the existence. Once we notion, nice strength turned into all. Now we examine, that terrible strength, or situation, is 1/2 of. Nature is the tyrannous situation, the thick cranium, the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock-like jaw; necessitated interest; violent path; the situations of a tool, just like the locomotive, sturdy sufficient on its track, however that may do not anything however mischief off of it; or skates, which might be wings at the ice, however fetters at the floor.

The ee-e book of Nature is the ee-e book of Fate. She turns the massive pages,—leaf after leaf,—in no way re-turning one. One leaf she lays down, a ground of granite; then 1000 a long time, and a mattress of slate; 1000 a long time, and a degree of coal; 1000 a long time, and a layer of marl and dust: vegetable paperwork seem; her first misshapen animals, zoophyte, trilobium, fish; then, saurians,—impolite paperwork, wherein she has handiest blocked her destiny statue, concealing below those unwieldly monsters the great form of her coming king. The face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate, and guy is born. But while a race has lived its time period, it comes no greater once more.

The populace of the arena is a conditional populace; now no longer the excellent, however the excellent that would stay now; and the dimensions of tribes, and the stability with which victory adheres to 1 tribe, and defeat to some other, is as uniform because the superposition of strata. We recognise in records what weight belongs to race. We see the English, French, and Germans planting themselves on each shore and marketplace of America and Australia, and monopolizing the trade of those international locations. We just like the apprehensive and effective dependancy of our very own department of the own circle of relatives. We comply with the step of the Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. We see how plenty will has been expended to extinguish the Jew, in useless. Look on the unpalatable conclusions of Knox, in his Fragment of Races,—a rash and unsatisfactory writer, however charged with smelly and unforgetable truths. Nature respects race, and now no longer hybrids. Every race has its very own habitat. Detach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates to the crab. See the sun sunglasses of the photograph. The German and Irish hundreds of thousands, just like the Negro, have a incredible deal of guano of their future. They are ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to make corn reasonably-priced, after which to lie down in advance to make a gap of inexperienced grass at the prairie. One greater fagot of those adamantine bandages, is, the brand new technology of Statistics. It is a rule, that the maximum informal and extremely good activities—if the idea of populace is extensive sufficient—end up remember of constant calculation. It could now no longer be secure to mention while a captain like Bonaparte, a singer like Jenny Lind, or a navigator like Bowditch, could be born in Boston: however, on a populace of twenty or  hundred hundreds of thousands, some thing like accuracy can be had.1

[1]

Everything which relates to the human species, taken into consideration as an entire, belongs to the order of bodily statistics. The more the range of people, the greater does the have an impact on of the person will disappear, leaving predominance to a sequence of preferred statistics depending on reasons with the aid of using which society exists, and is preserved.—QUETELET.

'Tis frivolous to restoration pedantically the date of precise innovations. They have all been invented time and again fifty instances. Man is the arch gadget, of which most of these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He enables himself on every emergency with the aid of using copying or duplicating his very own shape, simply thus far because the want is. 'Tis difficult to discover the proper Homer, Zoroaster, or Menu; more difficult nonetheless to discover the Tubal Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, or Fust, or Fulton, the indeniable inventor. There are ratings and centuries of them. The air is complete of guys. This sort of expertise so abounds, this optimistic tool-making performance, as though it adhered to the chemic atoms, as though the air he breathes have been made from Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts.

Doubtless, in each million there can be an astronomer, a mathematician, a comedian poet, a mystic. No you possibly can study the records of astronomy, with out perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, aren't new guys, or a brand new sort of guys, however that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empedocles, Aristarchus, Pythagoras, Œnopides, had predicted them; every had the equal aggravating geometrical mind, apt for the equal energetic computation and good judgment, a thoughts parallel to the motion of the arena. The Roman mile probable rested on a degree of a diploma of the meridian. Mahometan and Chinese recognise what we recognise of leap-12 months, of the Gregorian calendar, and of the precession of the equinoxes. As, in each barrel of cowries, added to New Bedford, there will be one orangia, so there will, in a dozen hundreds of