Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/124

 now its contraries. If it had not long ago been real it would have had no power to generate the unreal, which has ever floated before the imagination of mankind:—there are no dreams where there have been no substances.

Let it be so now that we listen to the exceptions of a captious and gratuitous criticism, and that, at its instance, we consent to remove from the book of Genesis its initial portions! Let it be that two, three, or more chapters of this book are rejected as "not historical." If so, then that which has rooted itself in human nature has itself no root! If it be so, then dreams have sprung of dreams in endless series:—if so, and if Poetry takes no rise in History, then must a deeper darkness spread itself as a pall over the abounding evils, sorrows, pains, and terrors that attend humanity. Thenceforward let it be—for who shall dare to gainsay Satan the Antiquarian!—let it be so that not only pain and toil, want, care, and grief, but also cruelty, wrong, violence, and war, shall proclaim an eternal triumph! The monster henceforward takes a firmer grasp of his victim:—if it be so—then, for aught we know, the rights of this tyranny are immemorially ancient:—they are as old as "the human period" of Geology:—for aught we know, the kingdom of Evil is from everlasting, and it shall be everlasting.

It shall not be so. Give me back that which a genuine criticism allows me to retain—the initial chapters of the Mosaic record. Give me—not as a