Published in 1855 | 230 pages | PDF reader required
INTRODUCTION
The ordinary and familiar operations of the human mind are generally accepted as the measure and standard of its normal activity and capacity. Accordingly, whenever the faculties exhibit unusual intensity and power, or are exercised on subjects which far transcend the range of popular thought, even the noblest efforts are regarded as abnormal eccentricities. It was long since proved i.e., if the rote of the majority can settle a question of this nature that the multitudes who occupy the plane of the common mind are preeminently compos mentis. Having no decided mental and moral qualities to distinguish them one from another, they conclude that they are free from angularities, and are most symmetrically developed. Being self-constituted judges of others as well as of themselves, they assume the right to decide who is crazy and who is devilish. They seldom or never question the senses nor the judgment of those who are free from new ideas; but the man who dreamed last night of the next grand discovery, whether it be a new continent, another planet, or an additional motive power, is treated as & visionary this morning, though the day may realize all that his dream foreshadowed. The world regards its own; and in every age the man who has approved the existing government, however oppressive, who has revered the established religion, however corrupt, and defended the prevailing philosophies and customs, however superficial and absurd, has been the accredited example of human consistency, and, it may be, the oracle of the people. The most devoted worshiper at the shrine of art, the wisest philosopher, the founder of a new science, and the advocates of the latest and the noblest reforms are often treated as mere enthusiasts, and accused of profaning the altars and dishonoring the memory of the dead. Men of sense are, weary of the repetition of this solemn, senseless farce; but it furnishes knaves with congenial employment and fools with agreeable entertainment, and so the play goes on. The inspired teachers of every age and nation-in whose souls the thoughts of angels and the revolutions of earth and time are born- have been derided and condemned, and still the thoughtless world in its rude and sensual delirium scourges, incarcerates, and crucifies its benefactors and its saviours!
The idea is exceedingly prevalent, even now, that the world is chiefly indebted to a diseased action of the human mind for the results which have contributed most essentially to enlighten and exalt mankind. The proudest monuments of art, the discoveries in physical science, and the progress in mental, moral, and spiritual philosophy, no less than the airy visions and ideal conceptions of the poet, have been the legitimate offspring of those who were denominated dreamers, until the great thoughts which eluded the grasp of cotemporaneous millions were simplifed and systematized for the instruction of the common mind. Those who give birth to divine ideas are anathematized, while those who incarnate the same in material forms of use are respected. The world is alike stupid in its judgment and blind in its idolatry. The miserable hypothesis by which Materialism attempts to solve the problem before us, lies in our way, bat it may be speedily dissected and removed. It is conjectured that a morbid irritability of certain portions of the brain occasions great functional intensity and power; hence the convergence of mental forces as exhibited in the production of the mind's most enduring memorials. ...
