This eBook was produced by Andrew Heath
and David Widger
My Work, my Philosophical Work-the ambitious hope of my intellectuallife—how eagerly I returned to it again! Far away from my householdgrief, far away from my haggard perplexities—neither a Lilian nor aMargrave there!
As I went over what I had before written, each link in its chain ofreasoning seemed so serried, that to alter one were to derange all; andthe whole reasoning was so opposed to the possibility of the wonders Imyself had experienced, so hostile to the subtle hypotheses of a Faber, orthe childlike belief of an Amy, that I must have destroyed the entire workif I had admitted such contradictions to its design!
But the work was I myself!—I, in my solid, sober, healthful mind, beforethe brain had been perplexed by a phantom. Were phantoms to be allowed astestimonies against science? No; in returning to my Book, I returned tomy former Me!
How strange is that contradiction between our being as man and our beingas Author! Take any writer enamoured of a system: a thousand things mayhappen to him every day which might shake his faith in that system; andwhile he moves about as mere man, his faith is shaken. But when hesettles himself back into the phase of his being as author, the mere actof taking pen in hand and smoothing the paper before him restores hisspeculations to their ancient mechanical train. The system, the belovedsystem, reasserts its tyrannic sway, and he either ignores, or moulds intofresh proofs of his theory as author, all which, an hour before, had givenhis theory the lie in his living perceptions as man.
I adhered to my system,—I continued my work. Here, in the barbarousdesert, was a link between me and the Cities of Europe. All else mightbreak down under me. The love I had dreamed of was blotted out from theworld, and might never be restored; my heart might be lonely, my life bean exile's. My reason might, at last, give way before the spectres whichawed my senses, or the sorrow which stormed my heart. But here at leastwas a monument of my rational thoughtful Me,—of my individualizedidentity in multiform creation. And my mind, in the noon of its force,would shed its light on the earth when my form was resolved to itselements. Alas! in this very yearning for the Hereafter, though but theHereafter of a Name, could I see only the craving of Mind, and hear notthe whisper of Soul!
The avocation of a colonist, usually so active, had little interest forme. This vast territorial lordship, in which, could I have endeared itspossession by the hopes that animate a Founder, I should have felt all thezest and the pride of ownership, was but the run of a common to thepassing emigrant, who would leave no son to inherit the tardy products ofhis labour. I was not goaded to industry by the stimulus of need. Icould only be ruined if I risked all my capital in the attempt to improve.I lived, therefore, amongst my fertile pastures, as careless of culture asthe English occupant of the Highland moor, which he rents for the range ofits solitudes.
I knew, indeed, that if ever I became avaricious, I might swell my modestaffluence into absolute wealth. I had revisited the spot in which I haddiscovered the nugget of gold, and had found the precious metal in richabundance just under the first coverings of the alluvial soil. Iconcealed my discovery from all. I knew that, did I proclaim it, thecharm of my bush-life would be gone. My fields would be infested by allthe wild adventurers who gather to gold as the vultures of prey round acarcass; my servants would desert me, my very flocks wo