Knowledge is the
knowing that we cannot know. The dull pray; the geniuses are light
mockers. How respectable is earnestness on every platform! but intellect
kills it. Nay, San Carlo, my subtle and admirable friend, one of the
most penetrating of men, finds that all direct ascension, even of lofty
piety, leads to this ghastly insight, and sends back the votary
orphaned. My astonishing San Carlo thought the lawgivers and saints
infected. They found the ark empty; saw, and would not tell; and tried
to choke off their approaching followers, by saying, "Action, action,
my dear fellows, is for you!" Bad as was to me this detection by San
Carlo, this frost in July, this blow from a brick, there was still a
worse, namely, the cloy or satiety of the saints. In the mount of
vision, ere they have yet risen from their knees, they say, "We discover
that this our homage and beatitude is partial and deformed; we must
fly for relief to the suspected and reviled Intellect, to the
Understanding, the Mephistopheles, to the gymnastics of latent."
This is hobgoblin the first; and, though it has been the subject of
much elegy, in our nineteenth century, from Byron, Goethe, and other
poets of less fame, not to mention many distinguished private
observers,--I confess it is not very affecting to my imagination; for
it seems to concern the shattering of baby-houses and crockery-shops.
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