general sense) sectarian forms, constrict and distort both the judgment and the feeling, What we proudly term analysis and system are too often but an arbitrary classification, under whose heads we, Procrustes-like, compress or stretch out truths which were never meant to take such exact or fixed shapes, but should be allowed confluence and commixture, losing, like the hues of nature, all rigidness of outline in harmony and kindred. What a world of labor have metaphysicians wasted, by forgetting that they are not mathematicians, and endeavoring to hew the "lively stones" into such shape as may be fixed in a building of their architecture! How near the materialist has the self-styled idealist come by such affectations! Too much learning, (the scoffer was right,) or, rather, learning too much by itself, will make a wise man mad, We may hide our souls from our own view by our parchments, and look out upon the world of humanity through obstinate hypotheses as false as gnarled windowpanes. Critics have done laughing at Wordsworth's early puerilities, but every close student feels the force of the Laker's exhortation:
Why all this toil and trouble?
Up! up! my friend, and quit your books,
Or surely you'll grow double!"
Double indeed! deformed in mind as well as body.
Nor will it answer to attempt such recuperation by force of will alone. Accustomed to earnest occupation, we can not change the habit which has become a law to us. Though we leave office, counting-room, or library behind us, our calling will pursue us, and force our thoughts into their ordinary ruts. The man of business will be calculating his risks; the studious man working out his theories.
We can not shake the tormentor from the crupper, but must dismount from our hobby. We can rid ourselves of one pursuit only by adopting another—another lighter, less imperious; amusing, but not engrossing; releasing the mind, but not binding it again. We must have play instead of work; yet play that will be occupation.
