CHARACTERISTICS. BY THOMAS CARLYLE. BOSTON: JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, 1877. HE healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the physi cian's aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working wrong. In the body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first condition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain, then already has one of those unfortunate "false centres of sensibility" established itself, already is derangement there. The perfection of bodily well-being is, that the collective bodily activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves, but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his system is in high order, dietetic philosophy may indeed take credit; but the true peptician was that countryman who answered that, "for his part, he had no system." In fact, unity, agreement, is always silent or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself. So long as the several elements of life, all fitly adjusted, can pour forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and unison; life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial music and diapason, - which also, like that other music of the spheres, even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus too, in some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that we are whole. Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that felicity of "having no system"; nevertheless, most of us, looking back on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial translucency and elasticity and perfect freedom; the body had not yet become the prison-house of the soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled, and leapt; through eye and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings from without, and from within issued clear victorious force; we stood as in the centre of Nature, giving and receiving, in harmony with it all; unlike Virgil's Husbandmen, |