CONTENTS. I.-Enthusiasm; its Nature and Conditions,. II.—Truth, as a Dogma and as a Principle,... UNIVERSALIST QUARTERLY AND GENERAL REVIEW. ARTICLE I. Enthusiasm; its Nature and Conditions. By the word enthusiasm, we wish to signify that particular interest in a conviction which leads its possessor to place a great value upon it, and which prompts him to extend, as far as he may be able to do, its influence among men. As thus defined, enthusiasm, however occasioned, evidently has its root in an innate law or constituent element of the human soul. It is not a dictate of conscience, compelling a man to work for the spread of doctrines which he believes to be true. It is not an impulse of generosity, prompting him to acquaint his fellow men with doctrines which he believes will benefit them. No doubt a sense of duty and a benevolent feeling very generally coöperate with, and materially strengthen the feeling of enthusiasm ; but the essential quality which we distinguish by this name is not born of conscience, nor is it a form of kindly feeling. We desire, in the outset, to recognize and clearly state the independent character of the impulse of enthusiasm in the human soul. We wish to guard against any proneness to confound it with, or to resolve it into, any other affection of the soul; and he who should attempt to resolve enthusiasm into consciousness, or into benevolence, or into both, because both of these often coöperate with and strengthen it, would commit precisely the same mistake as he who should think of resolving sight into touch and hearing, because touch and hearing, in an innumerable number of cases, cooperate with and assist the sight. And in order to make the independent character of enthusiasm the more obvious, we may call attention to the fact, that although conscience and benevolence generally coöperate with enthu siasm, there are manifest exceptions to the rule. There are cases on record-perhaps our own experience will acquaint us with similar ones-in which men have labored for the spread of dogmas with an intense enthusiasm, while it was painfully evident that the same persons were seriously lacking in those traits of character which come from a vigorous conscience and from the benevolent impulses. The testimony of history is but too explicit, that there have been instances in which cruel and iniquitous measures have been used to compel men to assent to dogmas which they secretly loathed. If we may determine the nature of any faculty or disposition by observing its abuses, or excessive manifestations, we certainly have abundant data for the dictum, that the feeling of enthusiasm must be referred to a primary and constituent law of human nature; a law which finds only its occasion by no means its cause-in the convictions of the understanding. Enthusiasm therefore is to be expected, and as a matter of course, of every man who professes a conviction of truth or of right. We expect that the lodgment of a truth in his mind will start up there a desire that other men become acquainted with it. We conceive it to be, as it were, a necessity existing in the adaptation of a conviction to a human soul, that a contact of the two shall generate what we have called a feeling of enthusiasm ;-we anticipate this result with the same kind of confidence that we anticipate an explosion on the contact of fire and powder. Of course, many things come in to modify the intensity and the application of the enthusiastic impulse. Every earnest believer is not necessarily a Hotspur. The blood is not equally warm, nor does it throb with equal force, in everybody veins. The force of enthusiasm will be determined in a great degree by the temperament of the individual, and to some extent by his education. The man of cool blood and deliberate calculation will not leap to the defence of his convictions with the same impatience and agility as he |