Edinburgh Essays

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1857 edition. Excerpt: ...himself reached the Promised Land--only seeing it afar from the mountain peak ere he lay down to die, and who escaped from the bondage of Egypt only to be with his murmuring unthankful people in the great and terrible wilderness. These and similar considerations point towards the conclusion that men of genius appear in the world in order painfully to give their lives for the world's great gain, and that it is very difficult to distinguish between the misfortune which is unnecessary waste, and that which is necessary to their highest effort. This conclusion has no charm of novelty about it, for it is as old as human thought, and even savages express it in their own rude frank way. Foe, the distinguished Buddhist who, near Kala on the Indus, gave his body to preserve a famishing tiger, only acted on the doctrine that men of genius must give themselves to preserve the perishing Time-Spirit. When the Arab merchant, Shayk Mohammed of Tunis, went among the Forians of Central Africa, these intelligent clouded-black critics, observing his Semitic reddish-brown complexion, and considering the subject in the light of such moral and physical truth as abounds amongst them, came to the conclusion that he was not a ripe man; that he had been born into the world before his time; that men so born are good to eat--and that their Sultan had sent this one to be devoured. A very rude way that was, but at least unaffected, of stating the doctrine; and I must say that in all the lately published philosophical treatises, I have found no such proof of penetrating genius as is afforded by the above judgment, which proves, moreover, if the work of a poet be to speak what other men do, that these negroes were poets as well as philosophers. But in order to see the...