classical translation of Mr Lockhart,[D] been made the peculiar property of
English literature.

[Footnote D: Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern.
Blackwoods, Edinburgh, 1841.]

In the first chapter of his "_Philosophie des Lebens_," the Viennese
lecturer states very clearly the catholic and comprehensive ground which
all philosophy must take that would save itself from dangerous error. The
philosopher must start from the complete living totality of man, formed as
he is, not of flesh merely, a Falstaff--or of spirit merely, a Simon
Pillarman and Total Abstinence Saint--but of both flesh and spirit, body
and soul, in his healthy and normal condition. For this reason
clearly--true philosophy is not merely sense-derived and material like
the French philosophy of Helvetius, nor altogether ideal like that of
Plotinus, and the pious old mathematical visionaries at Alexandria; but
it stands on mother earth, like old Antaeus drinking strength therefrom,
and filches fire at the same time, Prometheus-like, from heaven, feeding
men with hopes--not, as Aeschylus says, altogether "blind," ([Greek:
tuphlas d eu autois elôidas katôkioa)] but only blinking. Don't court,
therefore, if you would philosophize wisely, too intimate an acquaintance
with your brute brother, the baboon--a creature, whose nature speculative
naturalists have most cunningly set forth by the theory, that it is a
parody which the devil, in a fit of ill humour, made upon God's noblest
work, man; and don't hope, on the other hand, as many great saints and
sages have done, by prayer and fasting, or by study and meditation, to
work yourself up to a god, and jump bodily out of your human skin. Assume
as the first postulate, and lay it down as the last proposition of your
"philosophy of life," that a man is neither a brute, nor a god nor an
angel, but simply and sheerly a MAN. Furthermore, as man is not only a