v 
 
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 AN AD D 11 E S S , 
 
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 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAJ SOCIETY, 
 
 OE 
 
 
 . 
 
 MIDDLE BURY COLLEGE, 
 
 August 20, 1850. 
 
 By Rev. TRUMAN M. P 0 S T / 
 
 #F SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI. 
 
 [Published by f h e request of the Society .J 
 
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 -**38? -.A A . * ‘a '\\ :, i 
 
 M*I>DLBBUKY : 
 
 JUSTUS COBB, PRINTER, REGISTER OFFICE. 
 
 <V 
 
Genius 
 
 AN ADDRESS, 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY, 
 
 # 
 
 OF 
 
 MIDDLEBURY COLLEGE, 
 
 August 20, 1850, 
 
 By Rev. TRUMAN M. POST, 
 
 OF SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI. 
 
 [Published by the request of the Society.] 
 
 MIDDLEBURY : 
 
 JUSTUS COBB, PRINTER, REGISTER OFFICE. 
 
 1850. 
 
» 
 
 
 
 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2017 with funding from 
 
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 https://archive.org/details/geniusaddressdelOOpost 
 
GENIUS. 
 
 Y 
 
 In addressing a Literary Association, on the occasion of a Liter- 
 ary Anniversary connected with a Semi-Centennial Academic Ju- 
 bilee, likely to embrace almost all the variety of schools, moral, po- 
 litical, philosophical and ecclesiastic, into which American Society 
 resolves itself, I have thought fit to select a purely literary theme. 
 I have purposely eschewed questions which most profoundly and 
 passionately agitate the Age, and which most powerfully attract and 
 usually engage my own mind ; and have sought instead, those which 
 may bear us amid serener and more tranquil walks, and amid scene- 
 ry of softer and more genial influence, if of less brilliant and fiery 
 splendor. Themes which trumpet up passions stimulated to habit- 
 ual intensity in the practical battle of Life and Society — the war 
 cry of sects and schools and parties — which startle the millions as 
 with an alarm peal, and which at this hour convulse church and 
 state and civilization itself — fevering through empires, — and like 
 electric bolts, flashing from land to land, shattering systems and 
 springing the earthquake of revolution — such themes, with their 
 attractiveness of readier power over interest and passion, I forego 
 at the behest of the genius of the occasion, which seems to me, to 
 be rather that of memory and kindly sympathy and calm specula- 
 tion. I seek topics that may take us out of the atmosphere of con- 
 flict. I prefer to find here, for the time, an Elis, — a land of peace 
 where all the Hellenic Brotherhood may meet in family affection 
 and concord. 
 
 As from various sections and schools and parties, with the dust 
 and soil of battle on our mail, we gather once more into the shades 
 of our literary Mother, rejoicing to find her, though venerable, yet 
 unlike alas, some venerable things, still youthful, hopeful and beau- 
 
4 PIIILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 tiful, fain would we establish here “ the Truce of God,” and laying 
 by our ordinary armour, consecrate the hours to common memories, 
 and affections, and to emotions genial* and joyous, though shaded and 
 subdued by thoughts that come unbidden, but not unwelcome, of 
 those once of our number, but now in the land of the Departed. 
 Our task for the time is rather to forget the years that have passed 
 since we looked upon each other’s faces, and taking position at that 
 stand-point of life whence our paths then diverged, to knit up again 
 the ravelled web of sympathy. We would that the memories of the 
 present hour should be all kindly and gladsome, and be able to re- 
 peat themselves in Wordsworth’s description of his reunion with 
 Scott on the banks of the Yarrow — 
 
 “ No public and no private care 
 j The freeborn soul enthralling, 
 
 | We made a day of happy hours, 
 
 j Our happy days recalling. 
 
 Brisk youth appeared, the morn of youth, 
 
 With freaks of graceful folly — 
 
 Life’s temperate noon, her sober eve, 
 
 Her night not melancholy ; 
 
 Past, present, future, all appeared 
 
 In harmony united, * 
 
 Like guests that meet, and some from far. 
 
 By cordial love invited.” 
 
 Thus may this middle pause in life’s battle possess something of 
 the tranquility of those years when we looked out upon it as future, 
 and of those not distant shades whence we shall look back upon it 
 as past. 
 
 But my theme, if not one to start the passions of party with, is 
 one not without interest to all schools and parties. It is the prima- 
 ry question of that Power, minister of success and victory to all 
 but belonging exclusively to none, in each colaborator with truth in 
 urging on the great movement of Humanity — the Power we call 
 Genius. Let no one be alarmed at the annunciation of my theme. 
 With the idea that in many minds addicted to wonder and worship, 
 starts at the name of Genius, we shall have nothing to do. Brilliant 
 delirium, beautiful insanity, Pythic rage — all that order we dismiss. 
 The method of madness, the substance of shadow, the reason of 
 unreason we do not design to pursue ; nor are we ambitious to go a 
 ballooning after rainbows, or a rocketting after star-showers ; nor 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 5 
 
 with the celestial or the infernal, but with minds walking this 
 middle world shall we have to do ; in short, with the human quite, 
 nothing more. 
 
 That Genius so called, be it real or only imaginary, that simply 
 blazes and detonates athwart the vision of our world like a bolt of 
 the skies and often to our view as random and ruinous — its movement, 
 however dazzling or mighty, as barren as the furrow of the lightning 
 in the Heavens or of the Hurricane on the Deep — such Genius were 
 a theme certainly little appropriate to a Society eminently devoted 
 by its very name to self-culture, and to emulation rather than 
 worship. Nor is it a theme so attractive to my own mind. I be- 
 lieve that in the economy of our world the useful is the most beau- 
 tiful ; the mightiest, the most normal and orderly. The stars that 
 shine fixedly on in their high walks seem to me lovelier far and 
 stronger, than constellations shooting madly from their spheres ; and 
 the Sun-car moving in regular orbit up the Heavens, not only more 
 beneficent, but sublimer and mightier far, than when driven by 
 mad Phaeton blazing and blasting through the crackling skies. 
 
 Intellectual power — not miraculous or prodigious, but normal, ex- 
 plicable, cultivable, and imitable though it may be at an awful dis- 
 tance, will be our less ambitious theme ; the wild leven of the skies 
 subservient to human good— subordinated to law and method and 
 intelligent will, and the minister of Truth and Civilization to the na- 
 tions. The worship of abnormal genius has been most pernicious ; 
 productive of false ideas and false practice ; of arrogant confidence, 
 indolent pride, or of paralyzing despair. The more salutary, and 
 as we believe, the more truthful view, stimulates the energies of an 
 active and emulative hope. Such a view will at present engage us. 
 A Demosthenes or a Tully, a Milton or Newton, a Cuvier a Pitt, a 
 Fox, a Burke and the like, belonging as we know to the cultivable 
 and imitable type of Genius, present an order of intellectual 
 power high enough to satisfy our ambition of analysis or of imita- 
 tion. And we doubt not all the mightiest and most beneficent names 
 in the history of Thought and Art, would rank in the same class, were 
 the biography of their minds laid open to us. Examples of this 
 description — as they present the common law of intellectual achieve- 
 
6 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 ment and one within the grasp of the understanding and the will, 
 and as they exhibit the common methods upon which society must 
 rely for advancement in Science and Literature — constitute at least 
 a more practical subject of inquiry than exceptional prodigies, in- 
 tellectual anomalies and monstrosities, and the precocious miracles, 
 philologic, aesthetic, or mathematic, of a Salford, a Colburn, a Mo- 
 zart, or a Crichton. 
 
 Not that I am disposed to deny the phenomenon of what is called 
 Original Genius. I do not suppose God has made all minds alike, 
 any more than he has all faces — He has undoubtedly for his own 
 ends, gifted some originally with vast and peculiar powers, a living 
 force, an intensity, a sensibility and an insight, which place them 
 almost as gods among their fellows, and which constitute, by Heav- 
 en’s decree, organic and original forces in the mechanism of Histo- 
 ry. But such souls it is the Divine prerogative alone to create. 
 Their strength and beauty are a mystery of God. Still even m re- 
 gard to souls of this order, so far removed beyond our ambition 
 and our knowledge, and almost beyond our sympathy and our love 
 — so high and awful seem they — even their intellectual greatness 
 admits, I believe, to some extent of analysis, and a comprehensi- 
 ble and practical philosophy. We may track the lightning to its 
 high home, and discover the secret place of the thunder, and de- 
 tect their laws and processes, though we cannot manufacture or 
 mimic them. And often I imagine, we shall find less of miracle and 
 mystery, or of the abnormal and preternatural' than we are wont 
 to suppose. The blade of Achilles will be found to be tempered of 
 earthly steel, the bow of Ulysses to twang with the terrestrial yew, 
 and the club of Alcides to be knotted and gnarled of vulgar hickory. 
 
 Genius then, — stimulated, developed, disciplined, and all but 
 created, of culture, — the child of both God and the human will — being 
 our elected theme, let us inquire into some of its methods and pro- 
 cesses, and see if we may be able to penetrate at all the mystery of 
 its might. But here we premise, that even within our limited view 
 (of Genius) our survey must be partial. So manifold and multiform 
 are the aspects and elements of Genius, as to baffle any attempt at 
 complete analysis of even our restricted definition, on an occasion 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 7 
 
 j! like the present. The larger life breathed into it of God, may work 
 | all its processes and faculties to a peculiar energy, as well as those we 
 design especially to note. Our analysis will have respect to a single 
 element, ultimate and primary to all the phenomena of genius, but 
 eminently cultivable ; one which is not so much a separate faculty 
 or process of the mind, as the tonic quality of them all, giving es- 
 pecial intensity to the entire mental action. I refer to the Atten- 
 tion, or power of quick and intense and steadfast concentrative- 
 ness of the mind on a single subject ; the power of collected and 
 rapid discharge of its energies, not only upon some single theme, 
 but on some single point to be resolved in that theme, a power 
 that sustains something of the same relation to intellectual, as tone 
 does to muscular force ; that nervous energy that sometimes changes 
 the feeble organism of the delicate woman to iron, and , gives the 
 slight form of the emaciate maniac power to crush the giant. 
 
 Newton expressly places the secret of his intellectual power in 
 this quality of mind ; “ If in any thing,” says he, u my mind sur- 
 passes that of other men, it is in the faculty of attention.” Cuvier 
 informs us that the secret of his vast intellectual accumulations, 
 and his capacity for immense and vastly multifarious duties pressing 
 on him at the same time, was in the same thing — in simply attend- 
 ing to each thing in its time, singly and exclusively. 
 
 Napoleon also attributes his own intellectual superiority to his fac- 
 ulty of intense and steadfast concentrativeness of mind. Indeed 
 his energetic concentrativeness in the field of thought, was the pro- 
 totype and cause of his terrible energetic concentrativeness on the 
 field of battle, which wrought ever the storm of war beneath his 
 eye, from the wind to the whirlwind. 
 
 Instances in kind both of the living and the dead could be mul- 
 tiplied : but these suffice. 
 
 These are certainly types of what may eminently be termed Ge- 
 nius ; and they are surely witnesses competent to affirm of them- 
 selves. I believe their self-analysis may be almost universalized — 
 that it is true not only of them, but of those regarded as anomalies 
 and monsters — the wonders of precocious and prodigious talent for 
 
8 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 art or science or letters — that an essential distinctive attribute of 
 all genius — of all types and in all labors analytic or imaginative, 
 critical or constructive — whether it be as the galvanic battery shred- 
 ding and dissecting the subtlest textures of nature, or the electric 
 cloud, battling flash after flash with some lone and lofty crag, or 
 whether it be as the sun looking upon the ice-mountain till it melts, 
 or upon the sea till it exhales into the architecture of the skies — 
 that an essential characteristic of Genius in all these phases and 
 functions, is the power of intense and steadfast direction, and of 
 quick and collected discharge. Allowing as we must for diversities 
 and inequalities of original delicacy and force, we may assign as a 
 definition descriptive of the mood and quality, if not the absolute 
 essence of Genius, Mind intensified, or mind energetically, 
 concentratively and sharply attentiye. This definition ap- 
 plies to genius in discovering, resolving, combining, vivifying or 
 uttering truth. For the rapidity and clearness of its intuitions, the 
 vividness and permanency of its impressions, or its faculty of analy- 
 sis and order, of combination or utterance, here is the hiding of 
 its power — in its ability promptly to converge the mental rays to a 
 fine and burning focus on each point, in each aspect and relation, 
 in singleness and succession. Without this, mere original 
 strength or energy will be of little avail — nay rather, blind and 
 wasteful — like the powder exploding in the magazine rather than im- 
 pelling the missile toward the mark. The intellectual blade must be 
 brought to a keen edge that it may cut, and to a fine point that it 
 may pierce, and it must too, be capable of nimble use in the prac- 
 ticed hand, or however ponderous, it will still be as inefficient as the 
 sword of Michael in mortal grasp. 
 
 The philosophy of this relation of attention to intellectual power, 
 and the primal principle from which a logical analysis of genius 
 must start, are found in the fact that the mind is not properly a 
 Creator , but only a Seer — that its great function is to behold, and 
 that in the combinations of wit, or fancy, or taste, or logic, the mind 
 is simply a discerner, not an originator of ideas and relations, and 
 is a creator only in selecting and regarding certain ideas and rela- 
 tions, and neglecting others ; that no act of the will can call up the 
 
 
 i 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 9 
 
 requisite relation or idea, but they must be waited and watched for, 
 till the laws of association shall purvey them. 
 
 The mind can not create an idea more than it can create worlds. 
 God alone does this. — God that made the Heavens and the Earth, 
 the spiritual universe and the soul of man. It was a beautiful 
 thought of Plato that the Archetypes of all ideas were in the mind 
 of God from eternity ; and a great truth lies under its beauty. Our 
 chainworks of Imagination or of Reasoning even, — they are but a 
 series of which each new link is neither of our creating nor sum- 
 moning, but in which the mind grasps fast hold of the last one in the 
 unfinished chain, and holds it up as it were toward Heaven, — as 
 the philosopher presents the conductor to the electric cloud waiting 
 the spark, — while through the modes of action, which we call laws 
 of mind, God sends forth from his vast arcana another link. 
 
 God has established in the mind laws of association or suggestion, 
 by which one idea calls up its fellow in a certain order, and 
 in a rapid and infinite succession, each one thus a link in an 
 endless series. The train once started must go on forever, unless 
 interrupted by the suspension of intellectual action, or the ob- 
 trusion of some new object of thought from without. The 
 order of association along which the mind is borne, and of the re- 
 lations by which ideas are bound together, is at first determined by 
 the attention and finally becomes stereotyped by habit, and may at 
 last assume the fixedness of fate. In this law of Endless Succes- 
 sion, according to orders and relations previously established in the 
 mind, and bringing past us, as it were, the Panorama of the Uni- 
 verse and of Eternity, lie vast destinies, intellectual and moral, for 
 the soul of man. Eternal Doom is in it. Habits of association es- 
 tablished here, — as they determine the career of Genius in this life, 
 for good or ill, truth or falsehood, — so they are its window of infin- 
 ite outlook toward the unapproachable Brightness or the Eternal 
 Night. 
 
 By this law of infinite succession all ideas are linked together, so 
 that as God is one, and Truth is one, all ideas may be said in a cer- 
 tain sense to be one. God throws down to man a thread of that 
 vast tissue of truth that shoots its filaments through the Universe. 
 
10 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 I Man is steadfastly to hold on to that thread, as to the clue that 
 | warps through the mighty Unity. 
 
 The mind has but to open its eye and God causes the vast Panor- 
 ama to pass before it. Ideas and relations, modes and essences, 
 
 | thoughts, feelings, and intellectual forms, infinite in aspect and 
 number and combination, come trooping by ; presenting not Or- 
 der or System, or Art or Science or Poetry or Philosophy, but the 
 elements and material of them all, just as in the confusion of the 
 outward world. The great cunning of Genius amid the transit of 
 1 this phantom army is to give heed , to select and arrest the hurrying 
 | fugitives, and then inspect and marshal them in order, whether a- 
 j mong the light skirmishers of wit and fancy, or the heavy phalanx 
 
 | of Philosophy, or the plumed and dashing squadron of Poetry or 
 
 Eloquence. In other words, one is to select from this thronging 
 | march of suggested thoughts, those pertinent to the special object 
 | he has in view at the time, and to subject them to the examination 
 and process demanded by that object, according as the end may be, 
 Logic or Poetry, the ascertainment of facts or enrichment of Fan- 
 cy, the faculty of Language or Philosophy. And be it the Reason 
 or Imagination or Taste or the moral sentiment that rightfully pre- 
 ! sides over the hour, the special end must be for the time absolute, 
 
 I and its affinities the supreme Law. It must be the germ of crys- 
 
 j talization, the archetype of form, and the norm of organism, applied 
 
 I to the hurrying and chaotic drift, and the mould into which the 
 
 molten lava of passion is to run. Amid the infinite scenery of fugi- 
 tive thought he must attend to certain ideas of a certain class, and 
 no other, and to certain aspects and relations of those ideas, and 
 i follow out certain suggestions of those aspects and relations, and no 
 j other. For illustration — place the Artist, the Archaeologist, the Ge- 
 ologist, the Botanist and the Husbandman in view of the same land- 
 ! scape. How different the orders of thought in presence of the com- 
 mon object, and how different the principles of eclecticism and clas- 
 sification applied to the ideal phenomena passing before the mind, 
 in each individual, appropriate to his special end. 
 
 First, in the general Landscape, the lines of environment and undu- 
 lation, the light, shade, colour, form, grouping and elements of natural 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 11 
 
 
 
 beauty or sublimity, attract the Artist. Questions of structure and 
 stratification, on the other hand, of aqueous or igneous formation and 
 j of constituent minerals and earths, occupy the Geologist; while the 
 
 Botanist, again, sees only its vegetation and Flora, and the Agricul- 
 
 j 
 
 I turist has suggested to him only questions of cultivableness, produc- 
 
 j tion and irrigation, &c. In the same field of vision, meantime, the 
 
 ! Archaeologist sees starting forth only the historic names and storied 
 
 | lineages connected with the spot, or the pageant of battle, burial 
 
 j or bridal, of which it has been the theatre. All fitly have different 
 
 I ideas of that landscape and yet all truthfnl. So of any single ob- 
 
 I ject in the landscape. The ruined castle for instance, sends the 
 
 j minds of the several beholders diversely to the questions of the or- 
 
 i der of architecture it exhibits, the quarry where its rock was hewn, 
 
 I its artistic relations to a landscape picture, the storms of battle that 
 
 | have left their trace on its fallen walls, or the scenes of pleasure, 
 
 !j or tales of murder, that start at sight of its mouldering wainscot- 
 I ing and mottled mosaic. 
 
 In the above cases, each must pursue his own specific aim exclu- 
 I sively ; selecting, rejecting, classifying and combining only by the 
 j principle of associative affinity it requires, if the hour is to achieve 
 
 I a work of Genius. So in the ideal and outward world universally ; 
 
 i each object is many-faced ; the one aspect fitting your proposed aim, 
 
 alone you are to contemplate. Each object is the key to an infin- 
 | ite number of apartments of thought ; one only you are to enter. 
 
 Each throws off innumerable sprangles of association,' warping 
 through an immeasurable network : one clue alone you are to fol- 
 low. Take now Genius in one of its happiest moods — acquisitive, 
 analytic or creative — when its reason seems insight, and its insight 
 inspiration, and its combination and architecture rapid, subtle, ex- 
 act, vast and gorgeous like a god’s, and its memory too, seems as 
 quick and immortal. 
 
 Mark first its aspect of profound and strong repose. It is the re- 
 pose of trance-like attention — of concentrated, fascinated, resolved 
 gaze upon its theme. The eye of the mind is open wide ; intent, 
 silent aud fixed as a star. It is the telescope directed to the rolling 
 j sphere. God is passing in the glory of the Material and the Spir- 
 
PIIILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 12 
 
 itual Universe before that mind — God dwelling above and behind the 
 unapproachable Light, but His train falling down and sweeping the 
 field of mortal vision — enduring laws of mind His ministers, and 
 shapes intellectual and ideal, a mighty host, His Sabaoth. 
 
 The mind is now to unite in its act the Seer and the Prophet. Its 
 mission for the hour is to see and to tell. But not to see and to tell 
 all y more than the eye sees all the images which light builds on 
 the optic nerve turned toward the outward world. The visible Uni- 
 verse pictures itself there, but thought is cognizant of only a single 
 point. So in the mighty tide that sweeps along, the mind sees on- 
 I ly the One Relation and One Idea — the ruling type for the hour, 
 j Their impress, image and action engage it everywhere. The mind 
 • in such moods seems to type the universe with its own dominant 
 | thought. Each mote in the vast drift seems to glow and live with 
 one reflected face. All things are interpenetrated by one Arche- 
 | typal Relation — all moulded to one Archetypal Form. Under the 
 influence of this entranced concentrativeness, the process of sug- 
 gestion is stimulated to wonderful energy. The succession now be 
 comes inconceivably rapid. Ideas linked by the magic tie of Asso- 
 ciation, start up, thick and rushing as the light; of every mein, 
 shape and hue, gloomy or gay ; solid or shadowy forms, permanent 
 or fugitive relations, essences truthful and real, or “ of such stuff 
 as dreams are made of,” — “ shapes that in the colors of the rainbow 
 flit or play in the plighted clouds.” They sweep by like a storm, or 
 the light-shotten clouds hastening to their eternal setting. Mo- 
 mently their aspects glimpse on you and vanish — 
 
 ,{ Brief as the lightning in the collied night 
 Which, ere a man hath power to say, Behold ! 
 
 | The jaws of darkness do devour it up.” 
 
 There needs now a gift to stereotype the wavy flash of Niagara — 
 
 ; to daguerreotype the lightning — to arrest and dissect the sun beam. 
 
 Quick, intent, instant now, must be Genius. It now needs to be j 
 
 the Orpheus to charm back the bright phantoms from the verge of 
 
 | perpetual night, it needs to be the Alcides to wrestle with Death for 
 
 | the beautiful. 
 
 Processes of selection, analysis, comparison and combination, 
 quick, subtle and strong as the action of the imponderable agents 
 
REV. MR. POST S ADDRESS 
 
 13 
 
 of Nature — Light, Heat and Electricity — are now requisite to meet 
 the exigencies of the moment. Amid that shadowy rush of ideas 
 you need now to grasp some one appropriate to your present pur- 
 pose, and hold it as with a clutch of steel in the focus of the Intel- 
 tellectual rays, till it glows, blazes and makes full evolution of itself 
 and till relation after relation flashes out, and faces of Truth and 
 Beauty look forth from its shadowiness. 
 
 Arrest then these fugitive and phantom-shapes as they pass , for 
 a long future, perhaps to come no more. That spectral army have 
 passed millions of our race before, but have gone unquestioned and 
 unshrived on to night. Not so be it now. That questionable 
 shape — bright or dark — quick, stay it ere it vanish. Speak to it. 
 Demand its secret. Confine it to tell you why thus it walks the 
 twilight of your mind, and what its mission and message to man. 
 
 Now in all the above process — the “ Orpheus and Alcides” — 
 the electric solvent or the magic organizer — the “ clutch of steel,” 
 and the focal power — the necromantic inquest is merely the quick, 
 intent, steadfast attention , which, as it starts this tumultuous flood 
 of ideas, so nerves also each faculty of the mind to its mightiest 
 tone, and endues it with power to fix the chaotic drift, and throw 
 out upon it lines of order and beauty and life. 
 
 Ideas thus arrested and resolved under the analysis of an intense 
 attention, and made to develope their affinities and relations, are now 
 under the same influence recombined, and grouped ; whether by es- 
 sential and permanent relations, as of cause and effect, and of in- 
 trinsic and enduring correspondency ; or by the lighter ones of su- 
 perficial or accidental affinities, or mere juxtaposition, or of flitting, 
 unique or capricious analogies. And thus recombined and grouped 
 they are laid by in magazine , as the ready furniture of the mind 
 future — whether of knowledge or embellishment, illustration or ar- 
 gument — or as the ideal archetypes of Art, or the organic general- 
 izations of Philosophy. They are laid by to come forth, when the 
 hour needs, in groups, chainworks and masses, — the glittering 
 wreath of fancy, the playful summer flash of wit, the hot thick 
 shafts of passion, the linked bolts of logic, or the collected storms, 
 massing all in one, — of Poetry or Oratory. Thus wrought, they 
 
14 
 
 PIIILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 are committed over to the memory, which under the same intense 
 concentrated action of the mind, becomes not so much recollection, 
 as an ever quick and living consciousness. Indeed they seem not 
 so much remembered, as spontaneously kindling up when the mind 
 is highly excited, like fireworks attached to the mind, ignited and 
 discharged by its glow ; to which glow the mind is wrought, when 
 a fitting theme is presented, by the same attention that first at- 
 tached these combustible projectiles to it. 
 
 Thus it is Attention to the great end, and the specific relation, 
 and the precise point, following it out through division and subdivi- 
 sion, and through all complexities of the web work of association — 
 it is such an Attention, that is the Genius of Analysis and Order 
 and Generalization, and of Artistic and Poetic combination and 
 creation. It is the same faculty or act of the mind, which daguer- 
 reotypes and stereotypes the fugitive ideas upon the mind, with a 
 vividness imperishable as the mind itself. It is this, too, laying them 
 by in store, classified, grouped and compacted, and when the hour 
 for their use comes, throwing an intense irradiation in to the rich 
 and ready magazine — it is this that characterizes and well-nigh cre- 
 ates the Genius of Utterance or Eloquence. 
 
 I believe this description opens the secret Laboratory of Genius. 
 All is quite human, and like most of the vast and sublime operations 
 of nature — the result of great simplicity of cause, or at least 
 of process. 
 
 But the effect astounds men like the Epiphany of a God ; 
 and Genins seems to them to burst upon the world like the Olympi- 
 an Jove, with his emblazonry of stars and storms, and with bolts 
 forged by Titanic hands, in awful and mysterious gloom. But 
 wdiatever or however mysterious the diversities of original power, 
 the method of Genius is single ; and it is intelligible and cultivable. 
 Without the method, the power is barren, with it, ordinary power 
 may rise to the mightiness of Genius. 
 
 It would perhaps take from our wonder and worship, but surely 
 would be more useful far, could we follow out the process described 
 above, in the case of a Swift, Garrick or Sheridan, patiently and 
 silently concocting the wit which was subsequently to burst forth 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 15 
 
 — — 
 
 like inspiration before delighted clubs, or glitter like an electric 
 storm over dazzeled Parliament ; or could we pursue the analysis 
 in case of a Burke, a Chatham, a Henry or Ames, a Tully, a De- 
 ! mosthenes, long and toilsomely wreathing the fiery and gorgeous 
 logic, that at last seemed to leap at once like the “live thunder” 
 j over astonished realms. Through the entire process, the great effort 
 in each case, was to keep steadfast, and intent the eye of the mind, 
 
 | while God and nature, or rather God through nature, showed them 
 wondrous things. Laws that -work in all minds to some extent, uni- 
 versally and everlastingly, independent of the will as the heaving | 
 of the lungs or beating of the heart, did the rest. The prodigie s 
 of Genius are achieved in the intellectual as in the material world, j 
 by observing the method of nature, disembarrasing her ministry 
 and giving intelligent and concentrative direction to her blind force. 
 
 It will illustrate our position to look at some of those forms of 
 intellectual power which in their unusual manifestation, we ascribe 
 | to Genius. We wonder at the Faculty of Language in Genius. 
 
 Its speech is not like other men’s. It has the raciness of intimate 
 and analytic commerce with its object, and it sparkles with the ori- 
 : ginality of direct and independent looking at things. You recog- 
 
 nize in it the life of direct contact with nature, and a suggestive- 
 |l ness rich as a strain of old music. Its diction is a gallery of art, 
 where the vividness of picture blends with the individuality and 
 | relief of statuary, and the charm of music floats through all. The 
 
 ! words seem pictures, and the figures statues, so adjusted and dis- 
 
 tributed that you can no more transpose them than you could the 
 marble of a Grecian temple, and can no more replace a lost or mu- 
 I tilated member than you could restore an arm of the Herculean 
 
 | Torso, or a lip of the Medicean Venus. 
 
 The words of Genius are breathing thoughts, and its thoughts 
 again, ever lighten into burning words : and they are an infinite ar- 
 j my of the strong and beautiful ; and they come quick ministers of 
 
 j it in its hour of need. But the magician that prepared and evoked 
 
 jj this host, is the Attention. This gives them their precision and 
 
 ji delicacy, and their copiousness and force. This makes them leap 
 
 } forth at its call, keen, massive, nimble and innumerable, like MiL 
 

 i ton’s “ millions of flaming swords,” drawn from the thighs of mighty 
 cherubim. This it is that freights words with thought, and quickens 
 speech with a living soul, and makes it as quick and delicate and 
 massive as the iron-clad steam-power, that now cuts the eye of the 
 needle, now spins the gossamer filament, and now crushes the gran- 
 ite, or moulds the steel, or wrestles with the tempest on the stormy 
 main. 
 
 This it is that incarnates the abstract and translates vague gen- 
 eralities into sharply defined, statuesque individualizations. Dead 
 terms become living, charged, electric. The word War, for in- 
 stance, which to the superficial view, starts only the glittering mar- 
 tial pageant, or the rapture of battle, or the pomp of victory — to 
 the mind turning its converging lens upon it, what a Hell yawns in 
 its three letters. So “ Art,” which to the common mind walks a 
 vague and cold abstraction — how to analytic and meditative thought 
 it trains along a host of the historic and ideal beautiful. And 
 “ Religion,” again, to the unheeding ear a sound so dead, and of- 
 ten so repulsive, — to the intent and familiar reflection, what an elo- 
 quence of sweet charities and holy affections, what a scenery of aw- 
 ful Love and Beauty, what an exceeding and unutterable weight of 
 glory there is in it ! 
 
 We are often referred to sudden and brilliant displays of elo- i| 
 quence as mere spontaneous outbursts of Genius, — as not only im- 
 provised, but independent and defiant of culture — as the product of 
 the passion and conscious exigency of the hour. But the words 
 j which seem to rally round the orator in his hour of need like an ar- 
 my at a trumpet call, come, thus, with their perfect fitness, and 
 delicate and powerful expressiveness, only through previous attentive 
 thought directed to them. They come not like Deucalion’s army 
 from the earth — they are children of culture. The passion and ex- 
 citement of the occasion cannot create words — cannot originate a 
 knowledge of our vernacular, any more than they can a knowledge 
 of Greek. They no more furnish a solution of Genius’ gift of speech, 
 than the being “ full of new wine,” if truly charged on the Apos- 
 tles, could explain their speaking with tongues on the day of Pen- 
 tecost. Passion may kindle anew old impressions and fading know- 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 17 
 
 ledge — may lighten the dim chirograph of past thought and feeling 
 in the soul. But the thought and feeling will be of little avail un- 
 less previously knit by association — which passion may quicken — 
 to words. The resurrection of the spiritual element will be of little 
 benefit unless the linguistic body have been prepared for it. The 
 Orator needs previous commerce with words representing his topic 
 in its various aspects and relations. He needs first to have studied 
 the dialect of his theme , and then, when the hour of utterance comes 
 to cast the heat and light of a focal attention upon his theme, to 
 quicken thereby not only its logical and aesthetic, but its rhetorical 
 and verbal associations. Thus it is the steadfast concentrative vi- 
 sion of the mind that makes nature and history and speech — things 
 and their linguistic representatives — animate and eloquent ; as it is 
 this also that opens the ear of Genius to their richer and loftier di- 
 alect in the hour of need. 
 
 In like manner, Novelty and Originality and Raciness that mark 
 Genius, spring also in a great measure from the same cause. So 
 multiform and billion-faced is Truth and Reality, that he that looks 
 directly and intently at them, will, in thinking his own thought, and 
 uttering his own speech, hardly fail to be fresh and vigorous in dic- 
 tion, and to attract with novel views of even familiar objects ; while 
 the mind that looks not at things themselves, but indolently and 
 servilely receives mere terms and dogmas of other minds, can only 
 weary with stale hum-drum and droning echo. 
 
 We wonder again at Genius for its quick, delicate and riving 
 Analysis , applying itself as the flame of the compound Blow-pipe 
 to every object. But it is simply the mind holding the object in the 
 blaze of its own gaze, till the object resolves itself ; or at least is 
 resolved by the same power that decomposes the substance held be- 
 tween the poles of the galvanic circle. Indeed, the mind itself may 
 be termed the Universal Solvent, requiring only that its theme be 
 held immersed in its thought till nature effects the resolution. 
 
 Again we wonder at Genius classifying. Order seems its in- 
 stinct. Armed with this faculty of method , such minds as Aris- 
 totle’s, Bacon’s and Newton’s, seem to move through the domain of 
 Science as Architects almost Divine. But they did not create 
 
 / 
 
18 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 method in Nature and Truth. They only saw it. God put it there 
 before. Theirs was only the steadfast grasp and intent vision, while 
 order developed itself; or looking beyond laws of mind to the Leg- i 
 islator, we should perhaps rather say, silent and intent they looked 
 out on Chaos, while God said “ Let there be Light,” and the Celes- I 
 tial Compass twirled. 
 
 Genius again excites our astonishment by the vastness and rapid- 
 ity of its inductions. But here again mind is not a creator , but on- 
 ly a discerner. The vast laws it announces, it simply sees, not en- 
 acts. Their establishment was of Old and by the Most High. 
 Those laws have been constantly attested from the Beginning, by 
 millions of particulars. But it was the prerogative of Genius, strict- 
 ly and exclusively heeding a certain order of Association, to simply 
 read and interpret that testimony. The links of a law of nature 
 must be noted, as they glitter into sight amid the hurried transit of 
 associated thought, till they wreathe themselves into a great ordi- 
 nance enchaini ng nature to the throne of God. Apples had fallen 
 in the view of man ever since Eve ate of the fatal tree in Eden. 
 But it was the Genius of Attention in the mind of Newton that first 
 arrested for analysis the fleeting phenomenon, and put it under 
 duresse and question, till it should disclose its secret, and witness 
 of the Law of Gravitation and the system of the physical Universe. 
 
 In this manner has the faculty of Attention ever been the Fa- 
 miliar of the Philosopher, the Artist, the Poet and the Orator. It 
 was this that made Cuvier a restorer of the ante-historic cycles of 
 the earth. It was his intense and exclusive heed of certain orders 
 of relation and suggestion — those of comparative anatomy — in pe- 
 rusing the geologic tablets of the Earth, that enabled him from a 
 fragment of fossil bone to restore a lost tribe of the animal king- 
 dom, and find in the cliff and mountain a storied urn of a Past World. 
 
 It was this that to Linnaeus, strictly and intently pursuing analo- 
 gies of physiology and structure through the pictured maze of the 
 vegetable world, revealed the secret of the Order of Flora and clas- 
 sified her confused gorgeousness from the Arctic Circle to the Line. 
 
 It was this that enabled Praxiteles to arrest the glorious Ideal 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 19 
 
 in dim and fugitive shape, and to make it stand at his easel until 
 he could transfuse its beauty from soul to canvass, and lo, one fairer 
 than the Sea-born stood before ravished Antiquity. It was this 
 that held the Archetypes of the soul spell-bound under the gaze of 
 a Phidias or a Michael Angelo, till the world saw its own, long, dim- 
 glimpsed and shadowy dream of Ideal grandeur and awe, bodied 
 forth in the Olympian Jove, or the Angel of the Last Judgment. 
 
 So again Poetic Genius, though undoubtedly implying peculiar 
 original gifts, presents to us, in its moods of inspiration, mind in stead- 
 fast and eclectic attention to the aesthetic relation of things and the 
 aspects and similitudes of life . Its norm of eclecticism is a feel- 
 ing of life and beauty, or I may rather sety, of a Beautiful Life ; for 
 i it is attracted to Beauty as the garment of soul — as the face of 
 Passion and Feeling. The ^Esthetic is to it the exponent of the 
 Moral. Under the power of this feeling of Beauty and Life, it 
 idealizes and impersonates all it touches. All things live ; but 
 with a life and form, though like, still passing the actual. Mark 
 this faculty in the great types of the Poetic mind — a Homer for in- 
 stance, or Dante, a Shakspeare or Milton. How intent and en- 
 tranced its gaze, how piercing its insight, how quick and delicate 
 its eclecticism and appropriation of the poetic element, as the intel- 
 lectual ray flashes through the Infinite. The common seas and 
 skies and mountain and river, and the common aspects of the 
 changing seasons, and of Day and Night, were around them 
 as around all ; and also the common scenery of mortal life, and the 
 common dreams that wander to us from the awful realms beyond it. 
 But peculiarly their own , was the rapt, eclectic, idealizing and en- 
 souling gaze, with which they ranged the realm of nature and of 
 soul ; selecting, combining and grouping everywhere by msthetic 
 principles. Under that gaze nature changed to spirit. Darkness 
 kindled up with faces of Beauty, Silence started to Music, and 
 Death became a new glory or an awful mystery of Life. 
 
 That gaze with microscopic fineness and telescopic vastness of 
 vision, in its infinite traverse pursuing not the relations of science 
 j or logic, but as an Instinct of Life and Beauty, making an JEsthetic 
 I extract of the Universe , ranged the real and ideal world ; the world 
 
20 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 j of the Living and the Dead, the Past and the Future, the Sensible 
 
 1 1 and the Spiritual, purveying from all their elements of the Grand and 
 
 !j Fair, and their wealth of Life, — semblant or real — its glory and pas- 
 
 ! sion and suffering and power. Thus it subsidized all time and space, 
 
 ! and all moods and forms of being, from the star-paned Olympus to 
 
 gloom}’- Tartarus ; from the burning sea and the pale nations of Ev- 
 erlasting sorrow to the Orders bright and Hallelujahs round the 
 Eternal Throne — to swell the pomp of their great arguments. 
 
 The materials thus purveyed, again, under the aesthetic principle 
 i of affinity steadfastly applied to them, recombine and crystalize in- 
 
 j to a new Universe — a Universe sublimated, idealized like the real, 
 
 | and of it, and yet not it. In it the mountain rose, the forest waved, 
 
 and the cataract dashed, the rainbow threw its arch, the Earthquake 
 yawned and the Deep lifted up his hands on high against the stormy 
 or the starry ’sky. There were the forms of heroic men, or dream- 
 like faces of female loveliness — the sweetness and the woe of mor- 
 tal affection — the Pageant and the Doom of Empire — the pride and 
 passion and glory of life, and the silent kingdoms of the sad De- 
 parted — all life-like, or verisimilar, and wearing the type of objec- 
 tive realities presented to the outward sense or the eye of faith, but 
 all draped in the mezzotint of the Ideal, and showing in poetic di- 
 orama like images projected through the painted windows of some 
 Gothic Cathedral, or glimpsed dim, fantastic, and dilated in its col- 
 ored light. Beside these types of the real, arose also in the recom- 
 bination, forms belonging purely to the empire of the Imagination . 
 of all orders, from “ Gorgons and Hydras and Chimeras dire ” and 
 i the Horrors at the Gate of Hell, to the Queen of Beauty and the 
 Lord of Light and the Angel of the Sun ; and from the Ariel and 
 Titania of Shakspeare to the Lucifer of Dante and Satan of Milton 
 — all, if of Nature, yet as far removed from it, as the Andromeda 
 i of Lvbia from the Andomeda of the Stars, or Proserpine gathering 
 flowers at Enna from Proserpine on the throne of Dis. 
 
 This Poetic idealization or imagination is only mind in steadfast, 
 aesthetic attention, till laws of association present the fitting combi- 
 nation. For wonderful to tell, while the mind looks, not only does 
 the object resolve itself and develope its poetic relations and affini- 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 21 I 
 
 ties, but by force of affinities thus disclosed, and under the influ- 
 ence of Associative laws, guided by these affinities, as its elements 
 recombine, into the Ideal ; just as in the material world under the 
 operation of the strongest solvent forces, as for instance, of the 
 galvanic battery, not only is the old compound resolved but the new 
 is created. The mightiest analysts are the mightiest creators. The 
 same elements that decompose the dead animal or vegetable sub- 
 stance, build anew the beauty of Flower or the Living Body. The 
 office of the mind as far as it depends on the will , in poetic creation, 
 is to hold fast the theme and the aesthetic relations developed, with 
 stern exclusiveness rejecting all alien elements, and all the inapt 
 combinations which a capricious or fantastic suggestion may present , 
 until the perfect, the Beau Ideal is exhibited. 
 
 Of Poetic Genius, then, we may predicate as the inseparable 
 mood, if not the very essence — the uniform attribute, if not the 
 very substance — Attention — eclectic of the Sublime and Beautiful 
 - — earnest and concentrative — and by force of co-operative mental 
 laws analytic and creative. Such an attention, directed to the Vis- 
 ible or Invisible realms — to the Material Universe or the scenery of 
 Society, or the inner world of Soul, must eminently have marked 
 the Masters of Song. What time must they have given to trance- 
 like thoughts while following the requisite law of Association they 
 were borne beyond the actual into the outer infinite of the phantom- 
 peopled Ideal. With what rigid exclusiveness must they have shut 
 out the outward and real, and whatever would break the spell of 
 ideality, and interrupt the solemn genesis of new worlds. Each 
 subject of observation and thought must have been made to show 
 its aesthetic aspect, and to start a new series of the Beautiful, to be 
 subjected to a new eclecticism and combination. 
 
 Now imagine a mind with such an attention, combined with the 
 boundless discursiveness of the great masters of Ancient, Medieval 
 and Modern Song which we have mentioned — at work in the school 
 of Nature and Life and reflective Thought for years : what a mag- 
 azine of the ideal it must have prepared ! What a wealth of beau- 
 ty and grandeur and passion l What an infinite permutation and 
 combination of the poetic elements ! What a faculty like instinct 
 
 / 
 
22 
 
 PIIILOMATIIESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 selective, appropriative and formative of them it must have exhib- 
 ited ! What an Ideal Universe, and aDemiurgos, creative and ad- 
 ministrative of it ! — Age may have cooled life’s fever and quenched 
 the fine phrensy of the outward eye in perpetual night: hut such 
 has been the vividness and precision and strength of the portraiture 
 drawn upon the mind, and such the disciplined habit of steadfast 
 and absorbing concentrativeness of thought, that the eye of the 
 mind seems kindled to keener intensity, and to discern more clear- 
 ly the inner world now that the outward is recognized with a duller 
 sense, or forever withdrawn. That world for many years had grown 
 upon their gaze, as grow new worlds under the microscope or as 
 grow the stars upon eye gazing into space ; had grown perpetually 
 the angels of the human mind, the aesthetic and elective Laws of 
 Association building all the while in the solitude or the city, the 
 noon-tide or the solemn night. And what an inner world was that 
 which now grew upon the eye, as under the rays of an introspective 
 attention the invisible handwriting and picture of the Past came j 
 out on the tablet of the soul ! There it stood photographed ; called 
 from all that eye had seen, or ear heard, or heart conceived, or 
 fancy dreamed — grouped and animate by the “ feeling infinite ” of 
 Life and Beauty — the eclectic , Poetic Cosmos — the aesthetic re- 
 print of the Universe. There was the vast, varied, passionate, 
 and phantom-drama of the Present; the splendor of cities, the 
 pomp of thrones, the tramp of armies, the clang of plumed and j 
 bristling Battle ; kaleidoscope forms of the brave, the strong and the 
 beautiful ; and there in funeral procession followed the solemn Past, 
 
 — of the Present the gloomy and mournful shadow ; there too was 
 Imagination’s brood — Sons of pale Erebus or Holy Light, with the 
 Scyllean Bage, the enchanted gardens, and Syren’s Isle. There 
 were the Crystal Battlements and the Sapphire Blaze of Heaven, 
 and there the awful structures of Eternal Night, and the gloomy 
 Palace of the King of Hell ; there wandered the Happy amid am- 
 aranth and ever-blooming asphodel ; or zephyrs sighed along the 
 stream of oblivion, and funeral trees waved dusky branches amid 
 the pale skies of Eternal Pain. The white-robed walked along the 
 streets of pearl and the River of Life, or the Lost shrieked around 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 23 
 
 the City of Dis and the Burning Sea, or the Departed stretched 
 their shadowy hands across the Dark Elver, still longing and lov- 
 ing, towards the children of Mortality. There stood they all, wait- 
 ing the heraldry of their Orchestral Song — the archetypes of the 
 Verse that was to chasm all time. 
 
 Oratory, again, is a kindred exhibition of attention guided by the 
 peculiar exigencies and elective affinities of the theme , the occasion , 
 and the object . In the first place, it is the utterance of a send pos- 
 sessed with it , intensely attentive to its theme ; I may almost say, of 
 a soul become an impersonation of its theme ; to such a degree 
 does it merge self-consciousness in it. The theme, brooded and 
 meditated, must have uttered its eloquence to the listening soul, and 
 breathed conviction and passion there, before it can transfuse them 
 into other minds. Hence no tricks of art, no studied attitude or 
 movement or intonation can achieve genuine eloquence. Nature re- 
 fuses to become^ac complice to a counterfeit. The muscles of the 
 frame, the organs of the voice, the light of the eye will not play 
 for it. The inimitable tone, aspect and action of true sentiments, 
 nothing but the theme impersonate and sovereign in the soul, can 
 commend. They come from looking not at terms, but things. The 
 inspiration comes from passing beyond the veil of other men’s words 
 or thoughts into the very sanctuary of Reality and Truth. 
 
 In the second place, a species of triple consciousness must pos- 
 sess the Orator, first of his theme, and secondly of his auditory as 
 related to the theme and in the third place, of the object or end to 
 be achieved by the application of the theme to the minds before 
 him. This end — or to move those minds in a given direction, by 
 attraction or impulsion or conviction — is the Orator’s norm of 
 eclecticism applied to the thronging ideas which Suggestion, stimu- 
 lated by the occasion, crowds upon him. He has to frame a triple 
 charm, massive, glowing and glittering, of Logic, Taste and Pas- 
 sion : knitting the Cytherean Cestus with the Scourge of the Erin- 
 nyes, and wreathing with both the chain let down from the throne of 
 Highest Jove, and binding all things (the %o kalov and to 8 m von 
 with the o logos') ; and to fashion his charms with the peculiar apti- 
 tudes fitting the minds to be moved by it. 
 
 't 
 

 
 The power of concentrating the^energy of the mind with light- 
 ning stroke and star-like steadfastness on the objects of this triple 
 consciousness and on the multiplex and shifting aspects of the tri- 
 ple relation between them, is the prerogative of the Genius of Per- 
 suasion. It is only when all the elements of the triple relation are 
 vast and noble that the highest order of Eloquence is born — the 
 theme great — the auditory great, in power, character or destiny, 
 and an End moving and mighty. When all these are great, speech 
 is great if uttered by a mind whose attention develops their great- 
 ness. Oft-times the light and inattentive glance will fail to detect 
 it even if present. But in case of such failure in regard to either 
 of these, one element of the highest eloquence is wanting. The 
 mind of the preacher, for instance, must not only sympathize with 
 the vastness of the doctrine he unfolds, and of the End to which he 
 would persuade, but must see before him, not merely so many weak, 
 ignorant and sinful men and women, but an assembly of the heirs of 
 eternity — bearing in themselves the destiny of gods for weal or 
 woe, for glory or shame. The mind must thus discern the great- 
 ness of his auditory or his thought and speech will not rise to the 
 real greatness of the occasion. So in regard to the Subject and the 
 End ; a strongly directed attention must evolve their vastness, or no 
 original gifts can bestow eloquence. 
 
 Such an attention it was, and no Pythian inspiration or breath of 
 Muse that whispered in the ear of a Demosthenes in the stormy 
 Ecclesia, or a Tully in the earth-ruling Senate — of a Chatham in 
 the British Parliament ; or an Adams in the Continental Congress. 
 Imagine one of these rising in his historic forum. As the mood of 
 power comes on him you see in face-attitude and gesture, the con- 
 centrated soul. Yet not like the poet, carried away by his theme (; 
 
 from the Actual to the Ideal. Contrariwise, he is in intense sym- i 
 
 pathy with the Actual — intensely conscious not only of his theme, 
 but of his auditory, of the Persuasion, and the practical End. He 
 grasps his subject with the energy of spasm, and grapples it upon 
 his, quick consciousness with bands of steel — and thus applied, he 
 holds it up before the mind, fixed in the focus of the intellectual 
 vision, till that which at first seemed dark and dead, glows and takes 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 25 | 
 
 I 
 
 '. . I 
 
 fire, and flashes out its relations. Lines of order and life gleam | 
 
 out. It is a Promethean process — a creative energy. 
 
 The theme itself now seems, as it were, strangely to assume an 
 objective life and personality. A strange interaction seems to take 
 place between it and the gazing soul — an interaction intensifying 
 the attraction that unites them ; as under the intent view of the 
 fascinated soul, new life and interest look forth from the theme, 
 constantly strengthening that fascination. 
 
 The mind seems to project itself — its own interest and passion 
 upon the theme — and then to be irresistibly attracted towards its 
 own image reflected there. It is the fable of Eros and Chaos- — 
 Love impregnating shadow. It is Pygmalion ravished over the life 
 waking from the marble. 
 
 Intense, concentrative earnestness now gives inimitable magic to ! ! 
 tone, look and movement. The heart of nature in the auditory re- lj 
 sponds to the potency of nature in the Orator. The electric chain of 
 sympathy which multiplies while it transmits, thrills with a common |j 
 sentiment from bosom to bosom. He sees himself reflected back 
 on all sides round as in a room hung with mirrors, his conviction ji 
 and emotion flashing back to him from each face. 
 
 Pie is now the conscious centre of a multitude of sympathies — lj 
 
 the common heart of the assemblage — that heart throbbing with one j 
 
 idea. Numbers now no longer distract: they multiply the con- 
 centrative force. Not that he becomes unconscious of his auditory j 
 as we are sometimes told. He is intensely conscious both of them | 
 
 and his subject ; and conscious through quick sympathy of their re* j 
 
 lation to each other and to the end to be secured. And this com- j 
 plex consciousness, so far from distracting, only multiplies the bands 
 which keep the mind steadfast to its aim, and render more delicate ! 
 and nimble the eclecticism that appropriates, as by instinct, the el- 
 ements that are adapted to that aim. This interaction between him- j 
 self and his auditory goes on, increasing in intensity, till in the fo- 
 cus of a multitude of minds his own glows as if girt round with a 
 circle of fire. He now seems rapt — absorbed, merging his very per- 
 sonality — living, moving, having being in the One Idea, or aim of I 
 the hour. Self-abnegated, forgot, he rises superior to fear. His 
 
20 
 
 PHILOMATIIESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 whole port is changed, his mien loftier and more erect. The entire 
 man is Pythic. The eye kindles. The lip wreaths. The nostril 
 dilates. The breast heaves with a strange and mighty delight. 
 The ideal of ancient sculpture that stood in the temple of the god 
 of light, seems growing real before you. 
 
 The man seems now only embodied speech — a self-uttering soul. 
 The whole man is utterance — not the lips only, each limb, each mus- 
 cle, each fibre speaks. The whole body seems only a transparen- 
 cy, through which flashes his theme now wrought to a living soul. 
 The entire nature is roused, and each faculty in its mightiest mood. 
 The invisible writing on the pages of memory comes out. Now the 
 graves open and the dead arise. The Past all lives. The veil of 
 oblivion and of mystery is rent in twain. Each domain of nature 
 and being, of thought and act, of passion and imagination, of his- 
 tory or science or fiction, is subsidized, and with the strange quick- 
 ening of the intellectual and moral being, in this hour of exultant 
 agonism, the chains of association, by which thought has been pre- 
 viously bound to speech, flash out and shimmer in lines of fire, and 
 legions of words come trooping around him like embattled armies 
 startled at a mighty larum. The hour seems as an epitome of his 
 being. The Soul seems to wreak itself in words, and those words 
 lightnings. 
 
 At such times appears the full glory of the Orator, perhaps that 
 of the loftiest attitude of man among men — almost as of a Superi- 
 or Being swaying the will and reason as he lists — instinctively 
 grasping at once a multitude of heartstrings, and sweeping them in- 
 to symphony with his own passion — and hurling forth over the as- 
 tounded auditory the bolts, fiery or beautiful, riving and overthrow- 
 ing all in their path. An embattled storm — a veritable cloud-com- 
 peller — he moves along his victorious march. Above and beyond 
 himself — yea, above and beyond man — almost an inspired Revelator 
 seems he — yea, almost a very revelation, he stands before us in such 
 an hour, — an incarnated Idea, — a Living Logic, — a fiery-lipped 
 Thought. 
 
 Demosthenes is no longer Demosthenes, but Greece herself — 
 
 -starting one glorious mo- 
 
 trampled, torn, bleeding, yet beautiful,- 
 
REV. MR. POST S ADDRESS. 
 
 27 
 
 ment in her mighty despair, lifting her hand to the blue heavens 
 over her heroic Dead, and swearing her Great Oath. 
 
 Cicero is no longer Cicero, but the awful Genius of Eternal Rome 
 herself, in death-grapple with Assassin^. 
 
 Paul is no longer Paul, of stammering speech and feeble pres- 
 ence. He has put on “ the Crucified.” He is an impersonation 
 of the Everlasting Gospel, with Logic and Love kindled at the Un- 
 approachable Glory. 
 
 Ames is no longer the Senator — broken and bowed with pale con- 
 sumption. His port rises to the awful earnestness and command of 
 the Genius of Humanity itself, with intellectual buckler beating 
 back from the land the storm of War — and pouring warning and 
 wail upon the ears of the pale Senate. His voice is the cry of woe to 
 a thousand log cabins beyond the mountains — the shriek of a thou- 
 sand miles of frontier burning with savage war. 
 
 Whitfield is no longer Whitfield, but the Great Doom itself im- 
 personate, summoning a pale and conscience-stricken world to the 
 Bar of Eternal Judgment. 
 
 In such moments the Orator stands before you as an accepted 
 and legitimate Lord of Mankind. The mind of the thousands is 
 only one vast organ on which he plays as he lists. The doubtful 
 become confident, the apathetic enthusiastic, and the feeble are he- 
 roes. Everything gives way before the roused and collected en- 
 ergies of a mind thus quickened to almost superhuman might, un- 
 der the power of an idea steadfastly contemplated, till by its self- 
 evolution it has fascinated and possessed the mind, and of a theme 
 held fast-bound upon the soul, till it has become as coals of fire. 
 Thus possessed and inflamed, he rushes on, one central soul-attract • 
 ing, illumining and bearing along all others — a sun trailing a starry 
 host up its high orbit of order and light, or a baleful meteor stream- 
 ing with its train into night. 
 
 Such, young gentlemen of the Philomathesian Society, are some 
 of the relations of attention to the common phenomena of Genius. 
 It is not because of the want of Truth and Beauty in this universe 
 of ours, nor of souls responsive to aesthetic and logical laws, that 
 
28 
 
 ’IIILOMATIIESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 men so often fail of becoming wise, original or eloquent ; but from 
 the want of the open eye, and steadfast eclectic gaze. 
 
 This faculty or habit of the mind, is eminently cultivable , though 
 existing perhaps in different degrees in different minds ; and 
 cultivable, like all our other faculties, by exercise. By patient and 
 resolute practice it may become the fixed habit of the mind, so that 
 it shall approach every subject with a grasp quick, strong and tensive 
 as a spring of steel. In all reading and study and thought, make it 
 a point to fix clearly and precisely the specific object to be achieved or 
 considered. Then cleave to that object spite of all tempting sugges- 
 tions and diverting ideas. Keep the mind not only true to the gener- 
 al aim, but to a distinct, fine point. Then as relation after relation 
 is developed, and associated thoughts troop in, bar out all aliens and 
 vagrants. Use a religious exclusiveness. From the intellectual 
 sanctuary be all intruders banished as Gentile and Profane, no mat- 
 ter how gorgeous or fascinating. 
 
 Beware of the intoxication and fascination of a day-dreaming 
 re very. Beware of counting mere chaotic drift of ideas for thoughts, 
 or disorderly and miscellaneous cramming for knowlege. What is 
 needed is to translate chaotic ideas into organized thought and sys- 
 tematic truth. All the rocks of the Andes do not make a single 
 St. Peters, or an infinitude of Chaos, a solar system or a single star. 
 Grasp then with steadfast hold, as you attempt the analysis of a 
 theme, both the theme and the chain of association pertinent to 
 your object for the time. Be its law of relation the iron rule and 
 order of your thought for the hour. Follow the appropriate clue 
 and it alone. Enter the apartment to which it guides, inexorably 
 turning from all tempting side-views, and disregarding all repelling 
 obstacles. Spite of seductions or fears, hold fast the changeful 
 j Proteus, till he answers your inquiry. Be the prize you seek guarded 
 j like the apples ol the Hesperides, by dragons and fire-breathers — 
 
 | or worse, like the treasure of some weird castle watched by the 
 
 guileful beauty of tempting enchantresses, still champion all — be a 
 hero. Amid legions of phantoms — images and combinations, gro- 
 tesque, fantastic and monstrous — and truths and trains of thought, 
 glimpsing beautiful and attractive through side-avenues ; through 
 
REV. MR. POST S ADDRESS. 
 
 29 
 
 an army of tropes and metaphors, similitudes, contrasts, causations, 
 correlations and allusions — bewildering like a Boreal Aurora flit- 
 ting and flashing around you ; still undazzled, unseduced, unterri- 
 fied, move sternly on to your purposed goal. 
 
 Some minds there are, which seem to be at the mercy of every 
 casual suggestion, turned aside by every allusion, borne off captive 
 by every trope. They are not masters' of their own minds, and con- 
 sequently rarely masters of any subject or science. When en- 
 gaged with Mathematics, they can not be brought near a Geometric 
 Diagram, but that it forthwith changes to the Musical Staff, and 
 straightway 
 
 “ In many a winding bout 
 
 Of linked sweetness long drawn out,” 
 
 they are hopelessly meshed, or in the bewilderment of octaves, 
 counterpoints, thundering crescendos, and shrieking sopranos, in 
 some stormy bravura they are rapt away. They can never acquire 
 the Science of Astronomy, for that they are perpetually beset with 
 its poetry. Their Logic is ever ready to sigh into sentiments ; their 
 chemistry evaporates into cloud-castles ; their History bolts the 
 track of the Actual, and dashes off into the Ideal. They can nev- 
 er get the arts of Eloquence, because they are always dreaming of 
 its triumphs. They are in imagination overwhelming applauding 
 Senates and lachrymose Juries, when they should be patiently dig- 
 ging into the roots of Grammar and Law. With the book of Phys- 
 ics before them, instead of resolutely wrestling with its dry Statics 
 and Dynamics and Pneumatics and Electrics, they are run away with 
 by revery, amid the scenery of mountains and rivers and groves and 
 flowers, chasing the sweet sights and sounds of nature, or the Sylphid 
 and Dryad forms of not immortal Mould, that, in fancy’s picturing, 
 figure amid the material world whose philosophy they would search 
 out. They can not learn Metaphysics because they are carried 
 away by each passion they would analyse. The necromancer is 
 borne off by the Spirit he calls up ; the chemist is blown up by his 
 own crucible and retort. Philosophy runs wild with Imagination 
 and Passion. Shakspeare and Spenser overshadow Plato and Jus- 
 
30 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 | 
 
 tinian, and Moore and Byron and Scott are picturing the pages of 
 Locke and Chitty. 
 
 Some, again, are slaves and victims to their own wit. They can 
 no more withhold a witticism than they can hold coals of fire. It 
 will out, in the Pulpit or at the Grave. Some minds, again, of an 
 inflammable order, explode at a word. They fly off rocket-like at 
 some grammatical form. Those of a mercurial temperament such 
 as I wot of in “ life’s young summer,” are upset at the outset of 
 the study of language, by encountering a verb they are too apt to 
 conjugate in actual life, which meets them at the threshold of all 
 the dialects of the earth : A common, classic, regular, very regu- 
 lar, verb ; there it stands, in the Latin “ Amare,” in the German 
 “ Lieben,” French, “Aimer,” English “ To Love.” There is no 
 getting by the word, and, alas ! what diablerie there is in it ! 
 What Spirits come trooping up at its “ Presto.” A tempest of 
 sighs and smiles and tears and fair faces aud bright eyes sweeps by. 
 
 In a storm of satin and muslin and azure and scarlet, of cashmeres, 
 laces, rosettes, ringlets, brocade and prunella, the man is gone, clear 
 gone — rapt off like Rome’s great Founder ; translated in a tempest 
 to the stars. But alas for the less mercurial elements of meta- j 
 physics and grammar and hermeneutics, that will not float in that | 
 high ether — they are left far behind. 
 
 But while some are thus at the caprice of every superficial and 
 casual association, others again are the slaves of those of a Philo- 
 sophic cast. In the sparkling and genial intercourse of the social 
 circle they are cyphers or bores, because some abstract speculation, 
 tangential to the topic on hand ; or some Philosophic habit or hobby 
 ever ready to seize on the suggestive principle, bears them off to j 
 the outer and solitary Deeps. Now with all the habitudes of these 
 descriptions — with all seductions, diversions, obstacles and bewil- 
 derments, the successful thinker must resolutely wrestle. Through 
 all, the intellectual Hero must press sternly on — through avenues 
 of fair or fiery shapes, till he reach the secret chamber and wake 
 the glorious sleeper — the virgin Truth that is guarded there. 
 
 To such an extent is the attention cultivable, and so much is it 
 under the control of habit, that circumstances seemingly most un- 
 
REV. MR. POST S ADDRESS. 
 
 31 
 
 favorable and distracting may at last become the most efficient aids 
 and almost indispensable requisites to its exercise. Thus, while some 
 can attend only in the silence and solitude of the study, others seem 
 to require the clatter and din of assemblies, and to find a stimulus 
 to this faculty in the bustle of business, and the confusion of 
 the Counting-room and the Exchange. We come in time, by force 
 of practice, to extract concentrative and tranquilizing influences, 
 from that which is naturally most perturbing and distracting ; like 
 the man related to have accustomed himself to seek repose in the 
 interior of steam boilers in the process of manufacture, till at last 
 the din of the trip-hammer and the welded iron became requisite to 
 brace and compose his nerves to slumber. 
 
 It is important that the public speaker cultivate a hardihood of 
 attention. Some are discomposed and upset by a lis tless look or 
 yawn, as is related of, I think, Erskine in his maiden Parliamenta- 
 ry effort. As he first rose in the blouse, bringing to the aid of the 
 opposition his distinguished reputation for eloquence as a barrister, 
 the intense public expectation of both parties waiting his debut, to- 
 gether with the novelty of the circumstances and a sense of the 
 importance of the occasion, naturally oppressing and intimidating 
 him, a sceiie like the following (I speak from general^ memory) is 
 related to have ensued. Pitt, the Premier, seated prominent in his 
 place on this occasion, had turned toward him an aspect of roused and 
 fixed attention, (unusual for him to bestow upon a speaker in Par- 
 liament,) with pen in hand for taking notes. Under the embarrass- 
 ment of the scene, Erskine at first unhappily faltered. Pitt there- 
 upon looks disappointed and doubtful. Erskine having Pitt in di- 
 rect eyeshot, and quickly sensitive to such manifestations, hesitates 
 and stumbles still more. Pitt grows listless. Another halting and 
 discomfited sentence, and Pitt contemptuously lays down his pen. 
 Another more awful boggle of Erskine’s, now divorced from his 
 theme, and struggling on in hopeless bewilderment. Pitt yawns. 
 One more attempt of the now desperate and confounded speaker. 
 Pitt nods assent to the incoherent and floundering orator. Pitt has 
 -gone to sleep, and Erskine’s eloquence has gone with Pitt. This 
 stroke of rhetorical strategy, which we have dramatized from Wrax- 
 
32 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 hall — for so we must consider it- — is said well nigh to have killed 
 | Erskine as a Parliamentary speaker. He never fully recovered 
 
 j from it. 
 
 I 
 
 But above all, it is needed for the Preacher to cultivate an iron 
 j nerve in this matter. lie must be able to see and feel and utter 
 intently his theme, not only amid the difficulties that always beset 
 attention to spiritual interests amid a world of Sense, but amid a 
 din and clatter of crowds, and a scenery often of smirking or listless, 
 or nodding faces, that would drag down the eloquence of a Gabriel. 
 In presence of such an auditory, with all their worldliness and fash- 
 ion, their greed and gaud, their pleasures and passions, smiles and 
 signals, carelessness or sneers, (or mores ), he must still bear up, 
 keep up not only the tone of his own mind in stern and steadfast 
 vision upon his theme, but must lift his auditory, with this world 
 thus all hanging on their skirts, up amid the awful solemnities of 
 the Unseen — to a vision of God, Eternity and the Great Judgment. 
 He must hold fast his theme against all sorts of foes and annoy- 
 ances, or he fails. He must fight for it with slamming doors and 
 .explosive coughs, and listless yawns and looking at watches, and 
 flirting of fans, and sometimes with audible whisperings of the ill- 
 bred that will obtrude their vulgarity on public assemblies ; and 
 with omnibuses and street-clamors, and fire-bells, and last not least 
 with “ Music heavenly maid,” but all too u young, ” of screaming 
 Babyhood. To all these he must not only be himself superior, but 
 must make others so, to meet the requisites of the Genius of Sa- 
 cred Eloquence. 
 
 It is important, also, to cultivate nimbleness as well as steadfast- 
 ness of this faculty — the power of quick transfer, like an intense 
 and burning ray traversing a mighty range. It is difficult to com- 
 bine these two qualities ; some minds are like a cambric needle, 
 quick, sharp, but superficial — they prick and prick, but never kill. 
 Others are like the Turkish ordnance of the Dardanelles ; vast, pon- 
 derous and able to sink a whole fleet at once, could they only be 
 brought to bear. But it takes half a day to load them, and once 
 discharged, before they could be levelled again, the navy of an 
 Empire might pass by. So, in many cases, the attention is strong 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 38 
 
 and ponderous as a Phalanx ; but as unwieldy and elephantine. This 
 is an especial characteristic often of the Philosophic habit and tem- 
 perament ; as in the case of Sir Isaac Newton, who could — if not 
 slanderously misreported — mistake the fair finger of the lady he was 
 wooing, for a tobacco stopper ! and who then and there — unless 
 foully belied in scholarly tradition — did actually apply the delicate 
 taper instrument that was thrilling under his touch— the Muse of 
 Philosophy blushes to remember — to that abominable office. The 
 result of Philosophic speculations on the aforesaid memorable occa- 
 sion — what new dynamic forces he discovered, or what sort of stars 
 he saw — history does not relate. But from what she discloses, it is 
 not improbable that amid the stellar scenery, there was a sudden 
 and untoward apparition of the Medusa ; and we are left to regret 
 for the sake of the Philosopher as well as the world, that one so 
 great, because his attention was master of him, could not have been 
 still greater, by being master of his atttention. 
 
 Our analysis also developes, in part at least, the relation of Pas- 
 sion to Genius, and teaches as a practical rule of vast consequence 
 to subsidize the emotions. Emotion and Attention interact and 
 mutually strengthen each other. Emotion is, as it were, the elec- 
 tric stimulus, the galvanic fluid of mind, quickening it to energy 
 and tone, arousing and concentrating all its faculties, and giving 
 them the power of focal discharge on a given object. It gives the 
 Attention a burning intensity that makes its impressions immortal 
 and its analysis like the flame of the Deflagrator. Passion burns 
 its letters into the soul, and arms it with a strength and nimbleness 
 and insight almost superhuman — as it sometimes seems to endue the 
 muscular system with preternatural power. All of us have won- 
 dered at times at the facility with which we have mastered a diffi- 
 cult theme when anything chanced to throw around it the light and 
 heat of intense emotion. None forget their hours of deep pleasure 
 or woe, the scenery of intense fear or love or moral struggle ; the 
 bridal, or a mother’s grave. Call in, then, the affections to the aid 
 of attention ; cluster these around the object you wish to investigate 
 or discuss. Make it interesting. Our schemes for developing and 
 educating mental power, too much lose sight of the fact that the 
 
34 PHILOMATIIESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 emotions are tlie vital and motive stimuli of the intellect. As a 
 ! common rule, study and read only where you can secure a feeling 
 of interest, and conversely, aim to become interested in what it be- 
 comes a necessity or duty to pursue. Study itself, as it opens and de- 
 velops a subject, will often create an interest unfelt before. Pre- 
 cious are the moods of interest to the prosecution of any study. 
 Seize on such moods, they are worth half a life of listlessness and 
 languor : such moods glow with intuition and force. They are, more- 
 over, not only seasons of most rapid and facile achievement, but 
 are most healthful and least exhaustive for effort. Emotionless 
 drudgery is not only the least effective, but the most crushing of all 
 labor, both to body and mind. All know how much more difficult 
 it is to address an empty house than a full one, and how many a 
 poor minister is veritably broken down by the very smallness of his 
 charge. Aim, then, ever to project the fascination of interest over 
 your theme. To this end, begin with meditating it. Ply it with 
 interrogations. What ? — Whence ? and u Wherefore ” ? — What its 
 relations to things already known ? What the limits of your know- 
 ledge in regard to it ? What part of its landscape is dark to you j 
 
 and needs illumination ? and the like. Thus brood it into life ; 
 arouse an intellectual appetite, the hunger of curiosity. Remember 
 | interest is not in the subject itself any more than color and beauty 
 in external objects, but is in your mind and its relation to it ; and 
 that you have to bring out this interest from your mind, and with it 
 invest your subject. The mind may be said to project itself upon ! 
 its theme as did the Hebrew Prophet upon the Shunamite’s child, 
 and is attracted to the life it has awakened — or rather it stamps up- 
 i on the theme its own impress and then becomes enamored of its 
 i own image reflected there. Be, then, your theme however dry or 
 
 j repulsive — if it lies in your path of duty or success, boldly take it 
 
 up. Throw the mind in the steadfastness and abandonment of 
 trance upon it. In that trance the Creative voice shall come to 
 
 thee, as to our first father in Eden. Thou shalt feel a spirit of 
 
 ! Life and Beauty evoked forth from within thee and assuming an 
 objective form and existence. The soul shall wake to gaze on the 
 
 evoked spirit of Beauty as our first mother started under the wins- 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 35 \ 
 
 ! 
 
 per of God to gaze, half-life, half-dream, on her own loveliness im= 
 aged in the fountain. Be assured that no truth in this Universe 
 has a right to he, that shall not, as part of the great Unity, have as- 
 pects and relations of interest and value. Be confident, then, as 
 God lets it be, there’s life in it. Bind it then fast upon your mind 
 and you shall at last feel that life, whether stealing upon you with 
 gradual lambent charm, like the beamy arms of the love-sick moon 
 around the sleeping Endymion, or rising upon you in solemn gran- 
 deur such as “ stays the evening star in his deep course,” or with 
 sudden shock startling, like the larum bolt from the long-watched 
 cloud. 
 
 This relation of emotion to the attention shows us why it often 
 seems impossible to some minds to make the requisite intellectual 
 preparation for public occasions till just on the eve of those occa- 
 sions. - Why, for instance, it is found by clergymen often so much 
 easier to study their thesis for the Sabbath on Saturday evening, 
 than on any previous time of the week. It is not simply indolent 
 procrastination on one day and inexorable necessity on the other. 
 
 But the coming occasion throws its shadow before, and the imme- j 
 diate proximity invests the theme with an interest that strongly at- j 
 tracts the mind to it, and makes the study of it natural and easy. j 
 
 Nevertheless, great loss is incurred by such a habit, from the want j 
 
 of opportunity for deliberate study, and for the application of the ! 
 taste and reason of calmer and cooler moments to products which j 
 have been struck off in moods of heated and turbid power. The 
 lateness of the excitement of interest leaves no room for the analy- 
 sis that should follow. Minds compelled thus to wait the very brink 
 
 of occasions, are like a Western Steamer that never can rouse her i 
 . | 
 fires to get steam up, till the moment has come advertised for start- 
 ing. We need to aim to secure emotion, binding the mind to its \ 
 theme, in such season that the facile and powerful attention which 
 interest naturally creates, may aid in the deliberate analysis and 
 fruitful meditation of the Study. Those that can not act unless un- 
 der the immediate stimulus of the time and place and auditory, 
 how often, when the interest and exigency of the occasion have 
 rivetted the attention on its theme, as it were, by bands of fire — 
 
PIIILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 36 
 
 I 
 
 
 do their minds look longingly and regretfully on glorious after- 
 thoughts that spontaneously sparkle out after the hour and scene 
 are forever passed. The occasion has kindled the theme to a burn- 
 ing flame that has left its track through the mind, like the path of 
 the meteor that kindles and glistens with outflasliings of light, as 
 though space were set on fire, when the blazing mass itself has 
 sunk below the horizon. 
 
 The relation of emotion to attention explains also the relation of 
 great occasions to Genius. We have heard of lecturers growing 
 eloquent even to tears over a Greek particle or an Iota subscript. 
 But it is commonly great occasions that make thought and speech 
 great. They produce an irresistible convergency of the public 
 and the individual mind on a single interest, and the intensity of 
 emotion in the individual is multiplied by the conspiring sympathy 
 of the Million ; till a concentrative power is created like the cen- 
 tripetal attractions of the Solar System — all minds centralizing on 
 one theme till that theme glows like a Sun in the skies, filling the 
 earth with its illuminating and genial glow, or like the baleful orb of 
 the Apocalypse scorching men with its lurid heat. 
 
 In such times Titans are born. Intellectual power seems to 
 come forth like the Genius of Oriental fable, ’mid heralding thun- 
 der and earthquake. 
 
 Thus often the most brilliant periods of literature spring from 
 great convulsions, such as most mightily startle and concentrate the 
 minds of the million. They bloom often from agony and carnage, 
 as from the blood of Medusa that sowed the deserts of Africa with 
 serpents, sprang also the winged steed of the muses and Chrysaor 
 of the golden sword. A Trojan or a Persian war — the death-strug- 
 gles of Freedom against Philip, or the crimes and calamities of 
 falling or convulsed empire — the conflicts of ambition for vast prizes 
 and on high theatres — great national struggles — crusades dashing 
 continent upon continent — epochs dazzling nations with victory and 
 intoxicating with conquests— the discovery of new Worlds, or vast 
 achievements of Art opening startling visions of Progress — these 
 and the like, may be the arousing and concentrative causes. But 
 especially does Genius seem born of the life or death-throes of 
 
 I 
 
 
 j ; 
 
 
 i 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 
 
 37 
 
 vast Truths or Falsehoods. It germinates under the shadow of 
 awful change. Its richest fruitage springs from the earthquake of 
 Lutheran or Puritan Reforms, its flames of rarest beauty broider 
 the crater edge of Revolutions. It starts up like the bow over Ni- 
 agara from the agony of great Ideas — vast hopes, mighty enthusi- 
 asms, and heroic Despair. 
 
 It is especially of such periods that the mightiest Genius of El- 
 oquence is produced. In the awful crisis of history, when the vi- 
 tal issues of empire are at stake, and times and seasons change, and 
 order seems going into dissolution. When Governments perish, 
 Thrones sink, Liberty falls, or Civilization dies — then often, just on 
 the brink of perpetual Night, the Genius of Eloquence seems to 
 waken to an hour of glorious euthanasia, and the national life, 
 Swan-like, pours itself forth in a strain of Ciceronian or Demos- 
 | thenic Music. 
 
 The phenomenon of the vast power of Genius on great occasions 
 is not simply because of the prodigious concentrativeness and tonic 
 action of the mind, wrought by the consciousness of the conspiring 
 sympathy of great masses, and the fact that all interests and pas- 
 sions of the period converge toward the same point, but we must 
 add the fact also, that the attention of the auditory is intensified 
 by the same causes, and every thing uttered is in consequence re- 
 ceived with a quicker apprehensiveness and larger interpretation. 
 Words are to them more significant and strike the key to deeper 
 passions. The theme is already heated and glowing and dilated in 
 the atmosphere of their own minds, and is there already knit up 
 with passion, logic, and persuasion. The speaker has little more to 
 do than throw coals into a magazine. But effects are ascribed to 
 him which belong quite as much to the previous condition of the 
 minds he addresses. 
 
 Were we to attempt in the light of this theory to cast the hor- 
 oscope of the Genius of the Future — to define the field of its 
 most brilliant triumphs and predict its distinctive type and Spirit, 
 we should inquire towards what vast themes the earth is moving 
 what dominant Ideas and what mighty Passions are now stirring at 
 its heart, the destined Lords of Future History — what interests 
 
38 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 seem likely to attract the convergent Attention of the coming Age, 
 and to arouse Emotion that shall give that Attention a living inten- 
 sity, and burn its themes into the soul of the World. In taking 
 that horoscope we ask, as the Constellations of the Past are reced- 
 ing, toward what new lights in the historic firmament we are be- 
 ing borne, and what new orbs are looming up most conspicuous and 
 effulgent in the forward distanee ? And lo ! we see unmistakea- 
 bly, Ideas of the Aristocratic and Partial and Forceful Eras are 
 sinking from the ascendant : those of Universal Humanity, of the 
 Million and for the Million, are entering the House of Life. The 
 constellations of War and Hate and Fraud and Violence — the rage 
 of Sirius and Orion’s Sword, Sagittarius, “ Ophiucus huge,” 
 
 Leo and the Bear, treacherous Scorpio and the sideling Crab, too, 
 we trust, we leave far behind. Toward the celestial Hercules — 
 the Monster queller — the truthful Scales, the meek Pleiades of 
 s weet influences, and fair Astrea Redux, that erst from the iron- 
 time fled on high, and the sign of the Blessed Cross, our world is i 
 moving in its moral Kosmos. From the dim outlying Realms border- 
 ing on Old Night, the realms of shams and falsehood, mighty shadows 
 and dazzling phantoms, we emerge into the sunlight of the Real ; 
 into the glory of Truth and the effulgence of a nearer God. 
 
 Around the great Reality of Humanity — o’er-watched by Deity j 
 and its guardian cherubim, Liberty, Truth and Love — the Thought j 
 
 and Feeling of the Future are to concentrate. Here are to con- j 
 
 verge the ruling Ideas and Passions of the New Era — those des- 
 tined to create order, shape history and reform, and reconstruct So- ; 
 ciety, yea, which are heaving like an earthquake at the heart of 
 the Earth this hour. Here, then, is the destined theme of the Emo- 
 tion and Attention of coming Ages — and here, consequently, the ! 
 field for future Genius — for its loftiest achievements and its endu- 
 ring fame. Christianity, grasping in its idea both Humanity and 
 God, and wedding them together, is to be the central and vital el- 
 ement, not of the social and moral, but of the intellectual order that ; 
 earth is about to behold. Around Christian Truth and Liberty 
 and the Heroic and Beautiful of Love, the splendors of future Ge- j 
 nius are to culminate — and their culmination to be that of all time, ; 
 
REV. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 39 
 
 the highest, purest, brightest, and the immortal. The Literature 
 of the Christian Age shall be the ultimate and choice flower and 
 fruitage of all History. Then shall there be heroes in thought as 
 in act, such as Time never saw before. The Olympian shall sup- 
 plant the Titan, Reason, Force, Truth, Falsehood, and Love, Hate, 
 in Literature as in Life ; and the Song and Eloquence and Logic 
 of the Hew- Jerusalem shall be heard breaking through the sereen 
 of the skies. 
 
 Methinks I see Genius thus born of Mighty Themes that are 
 waking and converging the world’s mind, becoming the thunder- 
 bearer in the rule of Public Reason and Love. I see it flashing 
 along the iron nerves of continents, intelligencing from land to 
 land as the lightning shineth from one end of the heavens to the 
 other — a ubiquitous power, championing universal Humanity, vin- 
 dicating the overborne truth, and lifting up the fallen right on all 
 the battle-fields of Earth — writing its words of fear over the revels 
 of guilty Power, and striking down the oppressor in his city of for- 
 tresses, and in the secret chambers of his pride. I see it quelling 
 the tyrannous one, breathing over his mailed myriads like the 
 destroying angel of God. I see it subduing the despotic Million, 
 staying their rage as the breath of the Almighty stilleth the tumult 
 of the Seas. I see it, inspired from no Delian Isle or Delphic Cave, 
 but by the Eternal Spirit, grasping the vast truths of Christianity 
 and Humanity, and working them into the latest and most glorious 
 Order of Time — the Architecture of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Hail, then, the Genius of the Better Era ! Hail ye mighty 
 Themes ! lifting your shining peaks like the Delectable Mountains 
 over the future pilgrimage of Humanity, giving it already an out- 
 look into Heaven ! Hail ye Omnipotent tractors of future thought ! 
 towards which already moves its electric cloud of Mind, and around 
 which already interchange flashes commercing between this and 
 the other World. Ye shall unite again the Prophet and the Poet, 
 and inaugurate the true Priest as the true Philosopher, and link 
 anew Earth’s Genius to the Eternal Throne ! Fade then the glories 
 along the iEgean wave or Delphian Steep, and dumb be the echoes 
 along Arno’s and even Avon’s stream, still I see o’er Zion’s height 
 
 t 
 
40 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 and Siloe’s brook the seven-fold noon arise, and Genius soaring far 
 “ above the Aonian -Mount,” to the Eternal Light-fountain. I see 
 Poesy and Philosophy and Oratory with sympathies broad as uni- 
 versal humanity, with the sweetness and persuasion and strength 
 and beauty inbreathed by the all quickening Spirit, building a ladder 
 between earth and heaven, along which the angels of God shall 
 again be seen ascending and descending upon the children of men. 
 I hear them pouring forth in dialects already borrowed from the 
 “ words unutterable,” the latest and richest utterance of Genius — 
 a fitting euthanasia of Humanity as it is translated to the skies. 
 
 To these high themes, then, of Christian truth and beauty and 
 heroism and love, the coming Age beckons the aspiring and noble 
 of soul. Habitually and meditatively concentrate thought and in- 
 terest upon these themes, till they become living, suggestive and 
 eloquent in the soul. So shall you be in sympathy with Earth’s 
 great thought this hour. So shall you write your name most bene- 
 ficently and enduringly on the pages of Time, or at least, so shall 
 you write it forever in the Book of Life. 
 
 Connected with this thought, permit me, young gentlemen, to al- 
 lude, in conclusion, to another relation of my subject : one most im- 
 portant of all, yea, of infinite solemnity. In the conduct and direc- 
 tion of the Attention lie moral destinies for both worlds. We grow 
 like that we look on, be it of Heaven or Hell. The attention is 
 the direction of the soul — a direction prophetic and determinative 
 of its eternal career — its outbreak and movement towards the ev- 
 erlasting. The mind follows its intellectual ray projected upon the 
 Universe, be it toward light or gloom. If Attention is Genius — 
 its direction is Destiny. This determines whether Genius shall be 
 of Glory or Shame — of Heaven or Hell. This controls our moral 
 sentiments, and is the key to our moral character. Directed to a 
 narrow and partial circle of truths, political, philosophical or reli- 
 gious, it makes the bigot, the fanatic, and the moral or social luna- 
 tic ; and will lead man to imagine that the Heavens and the Earth 
 were of old fashioned according to his formularies. Directed to 
 the mere letter and outworks of Christianity, to mere visible forms 
 of order, creed or ceremonial, it dooms the mind to imprisonment 
 
REY. MR. POST’S ADDRESS. 41 
 
 of its reason and charity within these ecclesiastic munitions as a 
 Bastile— degrades and enslaves the soul, and condemns it to grind 
 all its days in gloom and shame and fear : Fixed contrariwise, on 
 the spirit and life of Christianity, it makes a spiritual freeman, 
 god-like expansiveness of intellect and souk 
 
 Bear it in mind, then, that our themes of steadfast and habitual 
 thought shape and doom the soul. Turning from the good and per- 
 sistingly gazing on the evil, the mind establishes its gravitation to- 
 ward eternal Night. The bands of association become chains of 
 darkness binding to the gates of Hell. Mighty it may still be, but 
 with the might of a fallen Angel. Oh, there are minds — a vast and 
 gloomy army of them — starlike in their birth, and lit up of God to 
 shine forever beside His throne ; but whose intellectual ray, alas ! j 
 turned ever toward the outer dark, drew them down forevermore. 
 Comet-minds there are, which, like those wanderers of immensity, 
 whichever side the orb of light they turn, project their ray ev- 
 er to the opposite realm of night. Drawn though they be within the I 
 very verge of Heaven, still turns their vision ever to the nether 
 glooms ; and hurrying in seeming impatience and pain through their 
 perihelion, they follow their projected visual ray into the dark and 
 infinite void. The face of Evil, gazed on, throws out its baleful as- 
 similative influence, and its bands of deadly fascination, and draws I 
 them within its malignant sphere forever, while of the sons of j 
 
 light a different destiny follows a different mental gaze. They j 
 
 SHALL BE LIKE GOD, FOR THEY SHALL SEE HlM AS He IS. 
 
 Here, then, we leave our theme. Our analysis, if correct, leaves, 
 for the most part , intellectual as well as moral destiny , in solemn \ 
 commitment to the human will. 
 
 Wouldest thou then be wise and strong and eloquent ? yea — good, 
 pure, holy ? Envy not, despair not, seek not what thou wishest from 
 far — it is nigh thee — around thee, — within thee. And that thou : 
 seekest, thou seekest not alone. Mighty agencies co-operate. 
 
 God and Nature are thine allies. Thou art called upon, not to j 
 create, but only to see. Open thine eyes and the Highest shall 
 make his glory to pass before thee. Open thine eye : Lo, he is 
 there ! and Beauty and Truth, His daughters. The angels of 
 
42 
 
 PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY. 
 
 thine own mind — the wondrous Laws of Association — shall cause 
 to move past thee the Panorama of the Real and Ideal World — 
 the Series and Orders of Universal Truth — yea, shall present to 
 thee at last, the central and ultimate of all truths. 
 
 Yea, the great Father of Mind shall Himself bring to thee — 
 as to our first Parent in Eden — for thy contemplation and naming, 
 the vast and varied types of Nature and Being, and shall at last 
 present unto thee the glorious Eva, the Mother of all Beauty and 
 all Life. 
 
 Mightier — and lovelier — shall the mind progressively rise with 
 its ascending scale of Themes, until at last it shall see God. 
 
/ 
 
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