This Wisdom of the Moderns, then, to resume with those to whom the appeal is made, this new learning which the Wise Man and Innovator of the Modern Ages tells us must be clothed in fable, and adorned with verse, this learning that must be made to fall under and strike the senses; this dumb show of science, that is but show to him who cannot yet take the player's own version of what it means; this illustrated tradition, this beautiful tradition of the New Science of Human Nature,--where is it? This historical collection, this gallery that was to contain scientific draughts and portraitures of the human character, that should exhaust its varieties,--where is it? These new Georgics of the mind whose _argument is here_,--where are they? This new Virgil who might promise himself such glory,--such new glory in the singing of them,--where is he? Did he make so deep a summer in his verse, that the track of the precept was lost in it? Were the flowers, and the fruit, so thick, there; was the reed so sweet that the argument of that great husbandry could no point,--could leave no furrow in it?
'Where souls do couch, on flowers, we'll hand in hand, And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze: Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops, And all the haunt be ours.'
'The neglect of our times,' says this author, in proposing this great argument, this new argument, of the application of SCIENCE to the Culture and Cure of the Mind, 'the neglect of _our times_, wherein _few men do hold any consultations_ touching the _reformation of their lives, may_ make _this part_ seem superfluous. As Seneca excellently saith, "De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo."' And is that, after all,--is that the trouble still? Is it, that that characteristic of Elizabeth's time--that same thing which Seneca complained of in Nero's,--is it that _that_ is not yet obsolete? Is that the reason, this so magnificent part, this radical part of the new discovery of the Modern Ages, is still held 'superfluous?' 'De partibus vitae quisquae deliberat, de summa nemo.' 'Now that we have spoken, and spoken for so many ages, of this fruit of life, it remaineth to speak of the husbandry thereunto.' That is the scientific proposition which has waited now two hundred and fifty years, for a scientific audience. The health of the soul, the scientific promotion of it, the FRUIT OF LIFE, and the observations of its husbandry. 'And if it be said,' he continues, anticipating the first inconsiderate objection, 'if it be said that the cure of mens' minds belongeth to sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet, moral philosophy may be preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For as the Psalm saith, that the eyes of the handmaid look perpetually towards the _mistress_, and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the _discretion_ of the handmaid, to _discern of the mistress' will_; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.'