regarded as more subtile and generative instruments, in like manner developing, with various degrees of purity and power, the ideal fact of music. Instances of Nature's adherence to leading conceptions are indeed never few to seek. The tree form has not been forgotten, nor laid aside, in building the human body. The nervous system has so nearly the form of an inverted tree, that a drawing forces the resemblance upon the dullest eye; and the sanguineous system shows the same form, though with less precision of likeness. Nay, as Lord Bacon was perhaps the first to hint, what is the human body, as a whole, but a tree with its feeding and governing part in the air, the head being the spiritual, the mouth the ingesting root, while the trunk, like that of the tree, branches into limbs, and the limbs at their extremities branch farther into fingers and toes, as those of the tree into twigs? - At first sight, it does not seem pleasant to think of man as an inverted tree, some painfulness being suggested; but we soon discover that the real inversion is in the case of the tree itself, its allegiance to the mere earth being affirmed by this imbedment of its head in the soil. Its inspiration comes from the dark centres of the physical world, from the realms of opacity; only its results or tendencies look upward. Man lifts his root upwards, asserting thereby his filial relationship to the skies, that is, to the universe as a whole; while the downward-reaching limbs, bearing no flower or foliage, suggest no downward tendency, but lend themselves humbly to the spheral and all-related head. This is digression, but has its use in vindicating the instances chosen, and the law they illustrate. It were easy to multiply these instances of unity of working, but one more must suffice; that, however, is rendered emphatic by the wide separation of its terms. In the tree and the human body, representing fairly enough the extremes of life upon our globe, we find likeness of design; but if we go back as far as to the solar system on the one hand, and forward to the human spirit on the other, an equal likeness will appear. For the centripetal and centrifugal forces, in virtue of whose co-working worlds revolve, hold a position in man's nature not less primal and commanding than in the solar system. The great central religious attraction binds man ineffably to the ineffable One-in-all, and in the lower form of social sentiment holds him fast and forever to the heart of his kind; and there is no atheist nor worldling, no solitary nor cynic, who is insensible to it the sentiment of unity works, and works with mastery, in all, though with interpretations more or less noble. But, on the other hand, there is a tendency in every man to put forth and assert his peculiar life, to go out, as it were, upon straight lines of individual demonstration; and this, as all must see, corresponds precisely to the centrifugal tendency of planets. Nature holds to her themes; and accordingly, having once found the idea of self-defence in her hands, we may be sure that it is never cast aside. With higher organizations there are higher expressions of every leading thought; and therefore, on arriving at man, we discover that the provisions for defence partake of the general elevation, and are, for the most part, much removed from a beastly simplicity of biting and scratching. For physical defence, man is weaponed in part by the immediate powers and cunning of the hand, but far more by that command of natural forces which the finer cunning of understanding confers upon him. For subtler encounters he is more subtly armed. In every eye is a dagger, - here bold, aggressive, piratical, there gently withdrawn, and softly sheathed, but still there, and with a point. Some voices are not simply defensive, but offensive, a perpetual assault and battery but in every voice should be a possible cut; and if we miss this metallic force and edge, it sounds doughy and insipidly soft. Every one has heard voices with a whole park of artillery in them, though they might not be loud, nor in any degree robbed of human sweetness. Thus is man weaponed thoroughly, body for the defence of body, and mind, through its more subtile and expressive agents, for the defence of mind. Since, however, he possesses a higher order of weapons, why should he not trust to these alone for protection? The answer is easy. In all defences you necessarily use a weapon not only fit for you, as a man, to employ, but appropriate also to the foe or danger that threatens you. In every action a certain respect is paid to the uses had in view. He is insane who addresses sounds to the eye, or sights to the ear, or scents to the general touch; and sanity consists to no small degree in the ability to pay this constant respect to objects and uses. When Don Quixote attacks the windmills, and when the little girl in the fable attempts reasoning with a wolf, there is lawful exertion of powers, but not due recognition of character in the object. Now no one (this side India) prohibits the expenditure of powder and ball upon wolves; therefore no one thinks the rifle an instrument whose use is intrinsically unsuitable to man. The only question accordingly will be this: Is ever a fellow-man one of those foes against whom mortal defences may be turned? The answer is, that whenever a man is a wolf, as too many men are, then weapon against wolf is weapon against him. But here will come the retort, that to call men wolves is a mere piece of rhetoric, and beneath use in serious discussion. Let us see. What is a wolf? or, in other words, what is that fact in the wolf-nature which of right exposes the creature to odium and deadly assault? Not the fact that he is a four-footed animal of the canine family; but simply that he is a lawless depredator and destroyer, a soldier of chaos, opposed to a human order of things in the world. It is not against shapes of creatures that we fight; it is not shapes of creatures that we should spare; we fight only against lawless destruction, against chaos; and to destroy aught but destruction, or to fail of warring upon this, is a shame and a wickedness. There is a certain narrowness and rigidity of regard in making overmuch of these distinctions of quadruped and biped, and one should take care that his sympathy do not get imprisoned in the formulas of nature more than in those of man. Moral altitude has a lawful supremacy, whether for praise or condemnation, over all this mere symbolism of form; for that is the fact which form only aims to signify. Accordingly, to term the lawless destroyer a wolf, is no boyish vagueness of rhetoric, but strict accuracy of speech; for here the deeper community of nature overrides, as it should, the more outward distinction of form. The wolf is shot, not as a beast, but as a beast of prey; and the men of prey are in the same category with him in the fulness of that fact, which alone condemns him to death. It is the habits and purposes, not the anatomy, against which the sword is turned; it is base and bloody dispositions that justify the recriminations of battle; and wolf is wolf to us only as he is a murderer of the flock; and man is man to us only as he is human, not inhuman. We have, indeed, precisely the same argument for the defence of the body by physical force as for its nourishing by material aliment. Man lives not by bread alone, nor protects himself by the hand alone; yet the same who said, "He that drinketh of the water that I give him shall never thirst," was mocked at as a wine-bibber for his continual and genial presence at feasts; and as the fact of a nobler nutrition should not banish the dinner-table, so that of a higher resistance should not tie the hands. But Nature has added to these general provisions the force of a special commandment. Nature's ordinances are instincts, and to her every creature is a Sinai. But who knows not that the instinct of the human race points undividedly to defence of your own person and rights, and still more, and with added dignity, to protection of those whom Nature has left in some degree defenceless,- of babes and children, of disabled persons, of weak minorities, and (with some timidity we add) of women? Moreover, muscular resources are specially provided to meet the demands of this instinct. There was never a man who, upon seeing a child subjected to outrage, or a woman brutally assaulted, did not feel the tides of force streaming toward his hands, and doubling their strength; the bidding of the highest authority to interfere, and the power to interfere with efficacy, burn along every artery, thrill down every sinew; and who shall gainsay them? Who shall gainsay, unless he be prepared to show that Nature is superfluous, irrational, wicked? Who shall gainsay, and yet confess that she is infinitely wise and sure, and man and the world rightly builded? This "But these instincts, though actual, are brutal." objection has been already met; yet here is occasion to say that this poor word brutal suffers no little maltreatment, — its merely rhetorical use being reflected to an overshadowing degree upon its more proper signification. The implication is, that there exists in man an entire category of powers and designed originally In impulses, made only to be eradicated, for treatment with caustic potash. "Brutal," that is, natural instincts, as every one at this late day should know, arein their way, time, place, natural degree, and lawful subordination not only respectable, but sacred, and endowed with unspeakable authority. Hunger and thirst are "brutal"; but they tell truly that man is to eat and drink, and they point, in the main, to their legitimate satisfactions, that is, hunger not at water, nor thirst to a dry biscuit. a rhetorical use of language, we call those actions or impulses of men brutal which are unnaturally base, fierce, or obscene; that is, we indicate the aversion of an instinct from its lawful course. But it is a strange arguing crab-wise, to infer from this piece of mere accommodation in speech, that whatsoever instincts man has in common with brutes are bad, in other words, that a part of his nature is unnatural, — a portion of his instincts wrong, not by their crooked and unseasonable, but by straightforward and timely action. In truth, natural instincts and impulses are in themselves destitute of moral content; they are simply vehicles for the conveyance of whatever freight, good or bad, sweet or unwholesome, may be bestowed upon them. Kings and beggars travel on the same road. The sword is ever the same; but either heaven or hell may lay hand to its hilt. Even the simplest self-preservation, and secured by use of the same simple means, differs in character in different cases to the last stretch of unlikeness. A story is told of a Puritan mother, who, alone in her hut on the skirt of the forest, saw the savage prowling for the scalp of her golden-haired child, then sleeping before her. She was a tender and susceptible woman, with a horror of instruments of death hitherto unconquerable. Her husband had often sought to instruct her in the management of the rifle, that she might be the more safe in his absence; but her shrinking would not be overcome, though she had, half unconsciously, kept some observant side-glances upon him during his handling of the weapon. But in this peril of her babe, the woman's nature seemed wholly to change. She barred door and window, and in the venerable hardihood of |