LIFE WITHOUT
AND
LIFE WITHIN;
OR,
REVIEWS, NARRATIVES, ESSAYS, AND
POEMS.
BY
MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI,
AUTHOR OF "WOMAN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY," "AT HOME ANDABROAD," "ART, LITERATURE, AND THE DRAMA," ETC.
EDITED BY HER BROTHER,ARTHUR B. FULLER.
BOSTON:
ROBERTS BROTHERS.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1859, by
ARTHUR B. FULLER,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts
Cambridge:
Presswork by John Wilson and Son.
PREFACE.
EVERY person, who can be said to really live at all, leads two livesduring this period of mortal existence. The one life is outward; it ispassed in reading the thoughts of others; in contemplating thestruggles, the defeats, the victories, the virtues, the sins, in fine,all things which make the history of those who surround us; and ingazing upon the structures which Art has reared, or paintings which shehath inscribed on the canvas; or looking upon the grand temple of thematerial universe, and beholding scenes painted by a hand more skilled,more wondrous, in its creative power, than ever can be human hand. Thelife passed in examining what other minds have produced, or living othermen's lives by looking at their deeds, or in any way discerning whataddresses the bodily eye or the physical ear,—this is often wise andwell; essential, indeed, to any inner life; but it is outward, notself-centred, not the product of our own individual natures.
But the thought of others suggests or develops thought of our own—thehistory of other men, as it is writing itself imperishably every dayupon their souls, or already has written itself in letters of livinglight or lines of gloomy blackness—gives rise to internal sympathy orabhorrence on the part of us who look on and read what is thus writingand written. Our own spirits are stirred within us: our passions, whichhave been sleeping lions, our affections and aspirations, before angelswith folded wings,—these are awakened by what others are doing, andthen we struggle with the bad or yield to it; we obey or disobey thegood, and our internal moral life begins; the outward universe or theGreat Spirit in our hearts speaks to our souls, leading first to inwarddissatisfaction, then to aspiration for and attainment of holiness, andnow the inner spiritual life, which shall transfigure all outward life,and throw its own light and give its own hue to all the outwarduniverse, has begun. These two lives are parallel streams; often theymingle their waters, and each imparts its own hue and characteristic tothe other. Sometimes the outer life is the main stream; men live only inother men's thoughts and deeds—look only upon the material universe,and retire but seldom within: the inner life is but a silver thread—alittle rill, scarce discoverable save by the eye of God. Again, withmany the outer life is but little; the passing scene, the din of thebattle which humanity is ever waging, the one scarce is gazed upon orthe other heard by those who retire much from the outward world, andlive almost excl