least to mark the dividing line between religion and morality, between
religion and philosophy. No one has ever desired, more earnestly and
eagerly than I, to discover the foundations of the intellectual
religion; no one has ever felt more chilling disappointment in the
perception of the plain bare fact that the intellect gives morality,
philosophy, precious things indeed, but not religion. It is like seeking
art by science. Thousands of artists, whole schools from generation to
generation, have sought fine art through anatomy and perspective; and
although these sciences did not hinder the born artists from coming to
art at last, they did not ensure their safe arrival in the art-paradise;
in many instances they even led men away from art. So it is with the
great modern search for the intellectual religion; the idea of it is
scientific in its source, and the result of it, the last definite
attainment, is simply intellectual morality, not religion in the sense
which all humanity has attached to religion during all the ages that
have preceded ours. We may say that philosophy is the religion of the
intellectual; and if we go scrupulously to Latin derivations, it is so.
But taking frankly the received meaning of the word as it is used by
mankind everywhere, we must admit that, although high intellect would
lead us inevitably to high and pure morality, and to most scrupulously
beautiful conduct in everything, towards men, towards women, towards
even the lower and lowest animals, still it does not lead us to that
belief in the otherwise unbelievable, or to that detailed _cultus_
which is meant by religion in the universally accepted sense. It is
disingenuous to take a word popularly respected and attribute to it
another sense. Such a course is not strictly honest, and therefore not
purely intellectual; for the foundation of the intellectual life is
honesty.
The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that whilst it can never
assume a position of hostility to religion, which it must always
recognize as the greatest natural force for the amelioration of mankind,
it is nevertheless compelled to enunciate truths which may happen to be
in contradiction with dogmas received at this or that particular time.
That you may not suspect me of a disposition to dwell continually on
safe generalities and to avoid details out of timidity, let me mention
two cases on which the intellectual and scientific find themselves at
variance with the clergy. The clergy tell us that mankind descend from a
single pair, and that in the earlier ages the human race attained a
longevity counted not by decades but by centuries. Alexander Humboldt
disbelieves the first of these propositions, Professor Owen disbelieves
the second. Men of science generally are of the same opinion. Few men of
science accept Adam and Eve, few accept Methuselah. Professor Owen
argues that, since the oldest skeletons known have the same system of
teething that we have, man can never have lived long enough to require
nine sets of teeth. In regard to these, and a hundred other points on
which science advances new views, the question which concerns us is how
we are to maintain the integrity of the intellectual life. The danger is
the loss of inward ingenuousness, the attempt to persuade ourselves that
we believe opposite statements. If once we admit disingenuousness into
the mind, the intellectual life is no longer serene and pure. The plain
course for the preservation of our honesty, which is the basis of truly
intellectual thinking, is to receive the truth, whether agreeable or the
contrary, with all its train of consequences, however repulsive or
discouraging. In attempting to reconcile scientific truth with the
oldest traditions of humanity, there is but one serious danger, the loss
of intellectual integrity. Of that possession modern society has little
left to lose.
But let us understand that the intellectual life and the religious life
are as distinct as the scientific and the artistic lives. They may be
led by the same person, but by the same person in different moods. They
coincide on some points, accidentally. Certainly, the basis of high
thinking is perfect honesty, and honesty is a recognized religious
virtue. Where the two minds differ is on the importance of authority.
The religious life is based upon authority, the intellectual life is
based upon personal investigation. From the intellectual point of view I
cannot advise you to restrain the spirit of investigation, which is the
scientific spirit. It may lead you very far, yet always to truth,
ultimately,--you, or those after you, whose path you may be destined to
prepare. Science requires a certain inward heat and heroism in her
votaries, notwithstanding the apparent coldness of her statements.
Especially does she require that intellectual fearlessness which accepts
a proved fact without reference to its personal or its social
consequences.
LETTER V.
TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO HIMSELF, INTELLECTUALLY, FROM
THE NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman--Religious belief protects traditions,
but does not weaken the critical faculty itself--Illustration from the
art of etching--Sydney Smith--Dr. Arnold--Earnest religious belief of
Ampere--Comte and Sainte-Beuve--Faraday--Belief or unbelief proves
nothing for or against intellectual capacity.
I happened once to be travelling in Switzerland with an eminent citizen
of that country, and I remember how in speaking of some place we passed
through he associated together the ideas of Protestantism and
intellectual superiority in some such phrase as this: "The people here
are very superior; they are Protestants." There seemed to exist, in my
companion's mind, an assumption that Protestants would be superior
people intellectually, or that superior people would be Protestants;
and this set me thinking whether, in the course of such experience as
had fallen in my way, I had found that religious creed had made much
difference in the matter of intellectual acumen or culture.
The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or
that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the
energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so
protected. Let me illustrate this by a reference to one of the fine
arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of
a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is
removed the acid bites the copper. The waxy ground does not in the least
affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the
metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual
acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from
the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the
critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible
is protected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical
faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and
many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters
not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common sense of
Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at a time when it needed not only
much courage but great originality to expose them! Remember the
intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was
one--so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion!
Intellectual forces of this kind act freely not only in the Church of
England, but in other Churches, even in the Church of Rome. Who amongst
the scientific men of this century has been more profoundly scientific,
more capable of original scientific discovery than Ampere? Yet Ampere
was a Roman Catholic, and not a Roman Catholic in the conventional sense
merely, like the majority of educated Frenchmen, but a hearty and
enthusiastic believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The belief
in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampere from becoming one of the
best chemists of his time, just as the belief in the plenary inspiration
of the New Testament does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an
acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may have the finest
scientific faculty, the most advanced scientific culture, and still
believe the consecrated wafer to the body of Jesus Christ. For since he
still believes it to be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a
wafer, it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis would
resolve itself into the same elements as before consecration; therefore
why consult chemistry? What has chemistry to say to a mystery of this
kind, the essence of which is the _complete_ disguise of a human body
under a form in _all_ respects answering the material semblance of a
wafer? Ampere must have foreseen the certain results of analysis as
clearly as the best chemist educated in the principles of Protestantism,
but this did not prevent him from adoring the consecrated host in all
the sincerity of his heart.
I say that it does not follow, because M. or N. happens to be a
Protestant, that he is intellectually superior to Ampere, or because M.
or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, or a Positivist, that he is
intellectually superior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on the other
side of this question it is equally unfair to conclude that because a
man does not share whatever may be our theological beliefs on the
positive side, he must be less capable intellectually than we are. Two
of the finest and most disciplined modern intellects, Comte and
Sainte-Beuve, were neither Catholics, nor Protestants, nor Deists, but
convinced atheists; yet Comte until the period of his decline, and
Sainte-Beuve up to the very hour of his death, were quite in the highest
rank of modern scientific and literary intellect.
The inference from these facts which concerns every one of us is, that
we are not to build up any edifice of intellectual self-satisfaction on
the ground that in theological matters we believe or disbelieve this
thing or that. If Ampere believed the doctrines of the Church of Rome,
which to us seem so incredible, if Faraday remained throughout his
brilliant intellectual career (certainly one of the most brilliant ever
lived through by a human being) a sincere member of the obscure sect of
the Sandemanians, we are not warranted in the conclusion that we are
intellectually their betters because our theology is more novel, or more
fashionable, or more in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other hand,
does our orthodoxy prove anything in favor of our mental force and
culture. Who, amongst the most orthodox writers, has a more forcible and
cultivated intellect than Sainte-Beuve?--who can better give us the tone
of perfect culture, with its love of justice, its thoroughness in
preparation, its superiority to all crudeness and violence? Anglican or
Romanist, dissenter or heretic, may be our master in the intellectual
sphere, from which no sincere and capable laborer is excluded, either by
his belief or by his unbelief.
LETTER VI.
TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS OF A WANT
OF REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY.
Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful--The
Papal Infallibility--The Infallibility of the Sacred
Scriptures--Opposition of method between Intellect and
Faith--The perfection of the intellectual life requires intellectual
methods--Inevitable action of the intellectual
forces.
It is very much the custom, in modern writing about liberty of thought,
to pass lightly over the central difficulty, which sooner or later will
have to be considered. The difficulty is this, that the freedom of the
intellectual life can never be secured except by treating as if they
were doubtful several affirmations which large masses of mankind hold to
be certainties as indisputable as the facts of science. One of the most
recently conspicuous of these affirmations is the infallibility of the
Pope of Rome. Nothing can be more certain in the opinion of immense
numbers of Roman Catholics than the infallible authority of the Supreme
Pontiff on all matters affecting doctrine. But then the matters
affecting doctrine include many subjects which come within the circle of
the sciences. History is one of those subjects which modern intellectual
criticism takes leave to study after its own methods, and yet certain
prevalent views of history are offensive to the Pope and explicitly
condemned by him. The consequence is, that in order to study history
with mental liberty, we have to act practically as if there existed a
doubt of the Papal infallibility. The same difficulty occurs with
reference to the great Protestant doctrine which attributes a similar
infallibility to the various authors who composed what are now known to
us as the Holy Scriptures. Our men of science act, and the laws of
scientific investigation compel them to act, as if it were not quite
certain that the views of scientific subjects held by those early
writers were so final as to render modern investigation superfluous. It
is useless to disguise the fact that there is a real opposition of
method between intellect and faith, and that the independence of the
intellectual life can never be fully secured unless all affirmations
based upon authority are treated as if they were doubtful. This implies
no change of manner in the intellectual classes towards those classes
whose mental habits are founded upon obedience. I mean that the man of
science does not treat the affirmations of any priesthood with less
respect than the affirmations of his own scientific brethren; he applies
with perfect impartiality the same criticism to all affirmations, from
whatever source they emanate. The intellect does not recognize authority
in any one, and intellectual men do not treat the Pope, or the author of
Genesis, with less consideration than those famous persons who in their
day have been the brightest luminaries of science. The difficulty,
however, remains, that whilst the intellectual class has no wish to
offend either those who believe in the infallibility of the Pope, or
those who believe in the infallibility of the author of Genesis, it is
compelled to conduct its own investigations as if those infallibilities
were matters of doubt and not of certainty.
Why this is so, may be shown by a reference to the operation of Nature
in other ways. The rewards of physical strength and health are not given
to the most moral, to the most humane, to the most gentle, but to those
who have acted, and whose forefathers have acted, in the most perfect
accordance with the laws of their physical constitution. So the
perfection of the intellectual life is not given to the most humble, the
most believing, the most obedient, but to those who use their minds
according to the most purely intellectual methods. One of the most
important truths that human beings can know is the perfectly independent
working of the natural laws: one of the best practical conclusions to be
drawn from the observation of Nature is that in the conduct of our own
understandings we should use a like independence.
It would be wrong, in writing to you on subjects so important as these,
to shrink from handling the real difficulties. Every one now is aware
that science must and will pursue her own methods and work according to
her own laws, without concerning herself with the most authoritative
affirmations from without. But if science said one thing and
authoritative tradition said another, no perfectly ingenuous person
could rest contented until he had either reconciled the two or decidedly
rejected one of them. It is impossible for a mind which is honest
towards itself to admit that a proposition is true and false at the same
time, true in science and false in theology. Therefore, although the
intellectual methods are entirely independent of tradition, it may
easily happen that the indirect results of our following those methods
may be the overthrow of some dogma which has for many generations been
considered indispensable to man's spiritual welfare. With regard to this
contingency it need only be observed that the intellectual forces of
humanity must act, like floods and winds, according to their own laws;
and that if they cast down any edifice too weak to resist them, it must
be because the original constructors had not built it substantially, or
because those placed in charge of it had neglected to keep it in repair.
This is their business, not ours. Our work is simply to ascertain truth
by our own independent methods, alike without hostility to any persons
claiming authority, and without deference to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The title of this letter seems so odd, that it may be necessary
to inform the reader that it was addressed to a real person.
[7] I had desired to say something about the uses of tradition in the
industrial arts and in the fine arts, but the subject is a very large
one, and I have not time or space to treat it properly here. I may
observe, however, briefly, that the genuine spirit of tradition has
almost entirely disappeared from English industry and art, where it
has been replaced by a spirit of scientific investigation and
experiment. The true traditional spirit was still in full vigor in
Japan a few years ago, and it kept the industry and art of that
country up to a remarkably high standard. The traditional spirit is
most favorable to professional skill, because, under its influence,
the apprentice learns thoroughly, whereas under other influences he
often learns very imperfectly. The inferiority of English painting to
French (considered technically) has been due to the prevalence of a
traditional spirit in the French school which was almost entirely
absent from our own.
PART VII.
_WOMEN AND MARRIAGE._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF INTELLECTUAL TASTES, WHO, WITHOUT HAVING AS YET
ANY PARTICULAR LADY IN VIEW, HAD EXPRESSED, IN A GENERAL WAY, HIS
DETERMINATION TO GET MARRIED.
How ignorant we all are about marriage--People wrong in their
estimates of the marriages of others--Effects of marriage on the
intellectual life--Two courses open--A wife who would not interfere
with elevated pursuits--A wife capable of understanding them--Madame
Ingres--Difference in the education of the sexes--Difficulty of
educating a wife.
The subject of marriage is one concerning which neither I nor anybody
else can have more than an infinitesimally small atom of knowledge. Each
of us knows how his or her own marriage has turned out; but that, in
comparison with a knowledge of marriage generally, is like a single
plant in comparison with the flora of the globe. The utmost experience
on this subject to be found in this country extends to about three
trials or experiments. A man may become twice a widower, and then marry
a third time, but it may be easily shown that the variety of his
experience is more than counterbalanced by its incompleteness in each
instance. For the experiment to be conclusive even as to the wisdom of
one decision, it must extend over half a lifetime. A true marriage is
not a mere temporary arrangement, and although a young couple are said
to be married as soon as the lady has changed her name, the truth is
that the real marriage is a long slow intergrowth, like that of two
trees planted quite close together in the forest.
The subject of marriage generally is one of which men know less than
they know of any other subject of universal interest. People are almost
always wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others, and the best
proof how little we know the real tastes and needs of those with whom we
have been most intimate, is our unfailing surprise at the marriages they
make. Very old and experienced people fancy they know a great deal about
younger couples, but their guesses, there is good reason to believe,
never _exactly_ hit the mark.
Ever since this idea, that marriage is a subject we are all very
ignorant about, had taken root in my own mind, many little incidents
were perpetually occurring to confirm it; they proved to me, on the one
hand, how often I had been mistaken about other people, and, on the
other hand, how mistaken other people were concerning the only marriage
I profess to know anything about, namely, my own.
Our ignorance is all the darker that few men tell us the little that
they know, that little being too closely bound up with that innermost
privacy of life which every man of right feeling respects in his own
case, as in the case of another. The only instances which are laid bare
to the public view are the unhappy marriages, which are really not
marriages at all. An unhappy alliance bears exactly the same relation to
a true marriage that disease does to health, and the quarrels and misery
of it are the crises by which Nature tries to bring about either the
recovery of happiness, or the endurable peace of a settled separation.
All that we really know about marriage is that it is based upon the most
powerful of all our instincts, and that it shows its own justification
in its fruits, especially in the prolonged and watchful care of
children. But marriage is very complex in its effects, and there is one
set of effects, resulting from it, to which remarkably little attention
has been paid hitherto,--I mean its effects upon the intellectual life.
Surely they deserve consideration by all who value culture.
I believe that for an intellectual man, only two courses are open;
either he ought to marry some simple dutiful woman who will bear him
children, and see to the household matters, and love him in a trustful
spirit without jealousy of his occupations; or else, on the other hand,
he ought to marry some highly intelligent lady, able to carry her
education far beyond school experiences, and willing to become his
companion in the arduous paths of intellectual labor. The danger in the
first of the two cases is that pointed out by Wordsworth in some verses
addressed to lake-tourists who might feel inclined to buy a peasant's
cottage in Westmorland. The tourist would spoil the little romantic
spot if he bought it; the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the
poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed away by the influence of
the things that are necessary to people in the middle class. I remember
dining in a country inn with an English officer whose ideas were
singularly unconventional. We were waited upon by our host's daughter, a
beautiful girl, whose manners were remarkable for their natural elegance
and distinction. It seemed to us both that no lady of rank could be more
distinguished than she was; and my companion said that he thought a
gentleman might do worse than ask that girl to marry him, and settle
down quietly in that quiet mountain village, far from the cares and
vanities of the world. That is a sort of dream which has occurred no
doubt to many an honorable man. Some men have gone so far as to try to
make the dream a reality, and have married the beautiful peasant. But
the difficulty is that she does not remain what she was; she becomes a
sort of make-belief lady, and then her ignorance, which in her natural
condition was a charming _naivete_, becomes an irritating defect. If,
however it were possible for an intellectual man to marry some
simple-hearted peasant girl, and keep her carefully in her original
condition, I seriously believe that the venture would be less perilous
to his culture than an alliance with some woman of our Philistine
classes, equally incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much more
likely to interfere with them. I once had a conversation on this subject
with a distinguished artist, who is now a widower, and who is certainly
not likely to be prejudiced against marriage by his own experience,
which had been an unusually happy one. His view was that a man devoted
to art might marry either a plain-minded woman, who would occupy herself
exclusively with household matters and shield his peace by taking these
cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his
artistic life; but he was convinced that a marriage which exposed him to
unintelligent criticism and interference would be dangerous in the
highest degree. And of the two kinds of marriage which he considered
possible he preferred the former, that with the entirely ignorant and
simple person from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He
considered the first Madame Ingres the true model of an artist's wife,
because she did all in her power to guard her husband's peace against
the daily cares of life and never herself disturbed it, acting the part
of a breakwater which protects a space of calm, and never destroys the
peace that it has made. This may be true for artists whose occupation
is rather aesthetic than intellectual, and does not get much help or
benefit from talk; but the ideal marriage for a man of great literary
culture would be one permitting some equality of companionship, or, if
not equality, at least interest. That this ideal is not a mere dream,
but may consolidate into a happy reality, several examples prove; yet
these examples are not so numerous as to relieve me from anxiety about
your chances of finding such companionship. The different education of
the two sexes separates them widely at the beginning, and to meet on any
common ground of culture a second education has to be gone through. It
rarely happens that there is resolution enough for this.
The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but
especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which
is not very favorable to companionship in married life. It appears to be
thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to
give women a degree of respect for men's attainments, which they would
not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them
critically; whilst girls are taught arts and languages which until
recently were all but excluded from our public schools, and won no rank
at our universities. Men and women had consequently scarcely any common
ground to meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline in the
training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of
that earnest intellectual labor which might have remedied the
deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then,
and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily
surmountable impediment to culture. The history of many marriages which
have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a
sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of
my friends: "She knew nothing when I married her. I tried to teach her
something; it made her angry, and I gave it up."
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The foundations of the intellectual marriage--Marriage not a snare or
pitfall for the intellectual--Men of culture, who marry badly, often
have themselves to blame--For every grade of the masculine intellect
there exists a corresponding grade of the feminine
intellect--Difficulty of finding the true mate--French University
Professors--An extreme case of intellectual separation--Regrets of a
widow--Women help us less by adding to our knowledge than by
understanding us.
In several letters which have preceded this I have indicated some of the
differences between the female sex and ours, and it is time to examine
the true foundations of the intellectual marriage. Let me affirm, to
begin with, my profound faith in the natural arrangement. There is in
nature so much evident care for the development of the intellectual
life, so much protection of it in the social order, there are such
admirable contrivances for continuing it from century to century, that
we may fairly count upon some provision for its necessities in marriage.
Intellectual men are not less alive to the charms of women than other
men are; indeed the greatest of them have always delighted in the
society of women. If marriage were really dangerous to the intellectual
life, it would be a moral snare or pitfall, from which the best and
noblest would be least likely to escape. It is hard to believe that the
strong passions which so often accompany high intellectual gifts were
intended either to drive their possessors into immorality or else to the
misery of ill-assorted unions.
No, there _is_ such a thing as the intellectual marriage, in which the
intellect itself is married. If such marriages are not frequent, it is
that they are not often made the deliberate purpose of a wise alliance.
Men choose their wives because they are pretty, or because they are
rich, or because they are well-connected, but rarely for the permanent
interest of their society. Yet who that had ever been condemned to the
dreadful embarrassments of a _tete-a-tete_ with an uncompanionable
person, could reflect without apprehension on a lifetime of such
_tete-a-tetes_?
When intellectual men suffer from this misery they have themselves to
blame. What is the use of having any mental superiority, if, in a
matter so enormously important as the choice of a companion for life, it
fails to give us a warning when the choice is absurdly unsuitable? When
men complain, as they do not unfrequently, that their wives have no
ideas, the question inevitably suggests itself, why the superiority of
the masculine intellect did not, in these cases, permit it to discover
the defect in time? If we are so clever as to be bored by ordinary
women, why cannot our cleverness find out the feminine cleverness which
would respond to it?
What I am going to say now is in its very nature incapable of proof, and
yet the longer I live the more the truth of it is "borne in upon me." I
feel convinced that for every grade of the masculine intellect there
exists a corresponding grade of the feminine intellect, so that a
precisely suitable intellectual marriage is always possible for every
one. But since the higher intellects are rare, and rare in proportion to
their elevation, it follows that the difficulty of finding the true mate
increases with the mental strength and culture of the man. If the
"mental princes," as Blake called himself, are to marry the mental
princesses, they will not always discover them quite so easily as kings'
sons find kings' daughters.
This difficulty of finding the true mate is the real reason why so many
clever men marry silly or stupid women. The women about them seem to be
all very much alike, mentally; it seems hopeless to expect any real
companionship, and the clever men are decided by the color of a girl's
eyes, or a thousand pounds more in her dowry, or her relationship to a
peer of the realm.
It was remarked to me by a French university professor, that although
men in his position had on the whole much more culture than the middle
class, they had an extraordinary talent for winning the most vulgar and
ignorant wives. The explanation is, that their marriages are not
intellectual marriages at all. The class of French professors is not
advantageously situated; it has not great facilities for choice. Their
incomes are so small that, unless helped by private means, the first
thing they can prudently look to in a wife is her utility as a domestic
servant, which, in fact, it is her destiny to become. The intellectual
disparity is from the beginning likely to be very great, because the
professor is confined to the country-town where his _Lycee_ happens to
be situated, and in that town he does not always see the most cultivated
society. He may be an intellectual prince, but where is he to find his
princess? The marriage begins without the idea of intellectual
companionship, and it continues as it began. The girl was uneducated: it
seems hopeless to try to educate the woman; and then there is the
supreme difficulty, only to be overcome by two wills at once most
resolute and most persistent, namely, how to find the time. Years pass;
the husband is occupied all day, the wife needs to cheer herself with a
little society, and goes to sit with neighbors who are not likely to
add anything valuable to her knowledge or to give any elevation to her
thoughts. Then comes the final fixing and crystallization of her
intellect, after which, however much pains and labor might be taken by
the pair, she is past the possibility of change.
These women are often so good and devoted that their husbands enjoy
great happiness; but it is a kind of happiness curiously independent of
the lady's presence. The professor may love his wife, and fully
appreciate her qualities as a housekeeper, but he passes a more
interesting evening with some male friend whose reading is equal to his
own. Sometimes the lady perceives this, and it is an element of sadness
in her life.
"I never see my husband," she tells you, not in anger. "His work
occupies him all day, and in the evening he sees his friends." The pair
walk out together twice a week. I sometimes wonder what they say to each
other during those conjugal promenades. They talk about their children,
probably, and the little recurring difficulties about money. He cannot
talk about his studies, or the intellectual speculations which his
studies continually suggest.
The most extreme cases of intellectual separation between husband and
wife that ever came under my observation was, however, not that of a
French professor, but a highly-cultivated Scotch lawyer. He was one of
the most intellectual men I ever knew--a little cynical, but full of
original power, and uncommonly well-informed. His theory was, that women
ought not to be admitted into the region of masculine thought--that it
was not good for them; and he acted so consistently up to this theory,
that although he would open his mind with the utmost frankness to a male
acquaintance over the evening whisky-toddy, there was not whisky enough
in all Scotland to make him frank in the presence of his wife. She
really knew nothing whatever about his intellectual existence; and yet
there was nothing in his ways of thinking which an honorable man need
conceal from an intelligent woman. His theory worked well enough in
practice, and his reserve was so perfect that it may be doubted whether
even feminine subtlety ever suspected it. The explanation of his system
may perhaps have been this. He was an exceedingly busy man; he felt that
he had not time to teach his wife to know him as he was, and so
preferred to leave her with her own conception of him, rather than
disturb that conception when he believed it impossible to replace it by
a completely true one. We all act in that way with those whom we
consider _quite_ excluded from our private range of thought.
All this may be very prudent and wise: there may be degrees of conjugal
felicity, satisfactory in their way, without intellectual intercourse,
and yet I cannot think that any man of high culture could regard his
marriage as altogether a successful one so long as his wife remained
shut out from his mental life. Nor is the exclusion always quite
agreeable to the lady herself. A widow said to me that her husband had
never thought it necessary to try to raise her to his own level, yet she
believed that with his kindly help she might have attained it.
You with your masculine habits, may observe, as to this, that if the
lady had seriously cared to attain a higher level she might have
achieved it by her own private independent effort. But this is exactly
what the feminine nature never does. A clever woman is the best of
pupils, when she loves her teacher, but the worst of solitary learners.
It is not by adding to our knowledge, but by understanding us, that
women are our helpers. They understand us far better than men do, when
once they have the degree of preliminary information which enables them
to enter into our pursuits. Men are occupied with their personal works
and thoughts, and have wonderfully little sympathy left to enable them
to comprehend us; but a woman, by her divine sympathy--divine indeed,
since it was given by God for this--can enter into our inmost thought,
and make allowances for all our difficulties. Talk about your work and
its anxieties to a club of masculine friends, they will give very little
heed to you; they are all thinking about themselves, and they will
dislike your egotism because they have so much egotism of their own,
which yours invades and inconveniences. But talk in the same way to any
woman who has education enough to enable her to follow you, and she will
listen so kindly, and so very intelligently, that you will be betrayed
into interminable confidences.
Now, although an intellectual man may not care to make himself
understood by all the people in the street, it is not a good thing for
him to feel that he is understood by nobody. The intellectual life is
sometimes a fearfully solitary one. Unless he lives in a great capital
the man devoted to that life is more than all other men liable to suffer
from isolation, to feel utterly alone beneath the deafness of space and
the silence of the stars. Give him one friend who can understand him,
who will not leave him, who will always be accessible by day and
night--one friend, one kindly listener, just one, and the whole universe
is changed. It is deaf and indifferent no longer, and whilst _she_
listens, it seems as if all men and angels listened also, so perfectly
his thought is mirrored in the light of her answering eyes.
LETTER III.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The intellectual ideal of marriage--The danger of dulness--To be
counteracted only by the renewal of both minds--Example of Lady
Baker--Separation of the sexes by an old prejudice about
education--This prejudice on the decline--Influence of the late Prince
Consort.
How far may you hope to realize the intellectual ideal of marriage? Have
I ever observed in actual life any approximate realization of that
ideal?
These are the two questions which conclude and epitomize the last of
your recent letters. Let me endeavor to answer them as satisfactorily as
the obscurity of the subject will permit.
The intellectual ideal seems to be that of a conversation on all the
subjects you most care about, which should never lose its interest. Is
it possible that two people should live together and talk to each other
every day for twenty years without knowing each other's views too well
for them to seem worth expressing or worth listening to? There are
friends whom we know _too_ well, so that our talk with them has less of
refreshment and entertainment than a conversation with the first
intelligent stranger on the quarter-deck of the steamboat. It is evident
that from the intellectual point of view this is the great danger of
marriage. It may become dull, not because the mental force of either of
the parties has declined, but because each has come to know so
accurately beforehand what the other will say on any given topic, that
inquiry is felt to be useless. This too perfect intimacy, which has
ended many a friendship outside of marriage, may also terminate the
intellectual life in matrimony itself.
Let us not pass too lightly over this danger, for it is not to be
denied. Unless carefully provided against, it will gradually extinguish
the light that plays between the wedded intelligences as the electric
light burns between two carbon points.
I venture to suggest, however, that this evil may be counteracted by
persons of some energy and originality. This is one of those very
numerous cases in which an evil is sure to arrive if nothing is done to
prevent it, yet in which the evil need not arrive when those whom it
menaces are forewarned. To take an illustration intelligible in these
days of steam-engines. We know that if the water is allowed to get very
low in the boiler a destructive explosion will be the consequence; yet,
since every stoker is aware of this, such explosions are not of frequent
occurrence. That evil is continually approaching and yet continually
averted by the exercise of human foresight.
Let us suppose that a married couple are clearly aware that in the
course of years their society is sure to become mutually uninteresting
unless something is done to preserve the earlier zest of it. What is
that something?
That which an author does for the unknown multitude of his readers.
Every author who succeeds takes the trouble to renew his mind either by
fresh knowledge or new thoughts. Is it not at least equally worth while
to do as much to preserve the interest of marriage? Without undervaluing
the friendly adhesion of many readers, without affecting any contempt
for fame, which is dearer to the human heart than wealth itself whenever
it appears to be not wholly unattainable, may not I safely affirm that
the interest of married life, from its very _nearness_, has a still
stronger influence upon the mind of any thinking person, of either sex,
than the approbation of unnumbered readers in distinct countries or
continents? You never _see_ the effect of your thinking on your readers;
they live and die far away from you, a few write letters of praise or
criticism, the thousands give no sign. But the wife is with you always,
she is almost as near to you as your own body; the world, to you, is a
figure-picture in which there is one figure, the rest is merely
background. And if an author takes pains to renew his mind for the
people in the background, is it not at least equally worth your while to
bring fresh thought for the renewal of your life with her?
This, then, is my theory of the intellectual marriage, that the two
wedded intellects ought to renew themselves continually for each other.
And I argue that if this were done in earnest, the otherwise inevitable
dulness would be perpetually kept at bay.
To the other question, whether in actual life I have ever seen this
realized, I answer yes, in several instances.
Not in very many instances, yet in more than one. Women, when they have
conceived the idea that this renewal is necessary, have resolution
enough for the realization of it. There is hardly any task too hard for
them, if they believe it essential to the conjugal life. I could give
you the name and address of one who mastered Greek in order not to be
excluded from her husband's favorite pursuit; others have mastered other
languages for the same object, and even some branch of science for which
the feminine mind has less natural affinity than it has for imaginative
literature. Their remarkable incapacity for independent mental labor is
accompanied by an equally remarkable capacity for labor under an
accepted masculine guidance. In this connection I may without
impropriety mention one Englishwoman, for she is already celebrated, the
wife of Sir Samuel Baker, the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza. She stood
with him on the shore of that unknown sea, when first it was beheld by
English eyes; she had passed with him through all the hard preliminary
toils and trials. She had learned Arabic with him in a year of necessary
but wearisome delay; her mind had travelled with his mind as her feet
had followed his footsteps. Scarcely less beautiful, if less heroic, is
the picture of the geologist's wife, Mrs. Buckland, who taught herself
to reconstruct broken fossils, and did it with a surprising delicacy,
and patience, and skill, full of science, yet more than science, the
perfection of feminine art.
The privacy of married life often prevents us from knowing the extent to
which intelligent women have renewed their minds by fresh and varied
culture for the purpose of retaining their ascendency over their
husbands, or to keep up the interest of their lives. It is done much
more frequently by women than by men. They have so much less egotism, so
much more adaptability, that they fit themselves to us oftener than we
adapt ourselves to them. But in a quiet perfect marriage these efforts
would be mutual. The husband would endeavor to make life interesting to
his companion by taking a share in some pursuit which was really her
own. It is easier for us than it was for our ancestors to do this--at
least for our immediate ancestors. There existed, fifty years ago, a
most irrational prejudice, very strongly rooted in the social
conventions of the time, about masculine and feminine accomplishments.
The educations of the two sexes were so trenchantly separated that
neither had access to the knowledge of the other. The men had learned
Latin and Greek, of which the women were ignorant; the women had learned
French or Italian, which the men could neither read nor speak. The
ladies studied fine art, not seriously, but it occupied a good deal of
their time and thoughts; the gentlemen had a manly contempt for it,
which kept them, as contempt always does, in a state of absolute
ignorance. The intellectual separation of the sexes was made as complete
as possible by the conventionally received idea that a man could not
learn what girls learned without effeminacy, and that if women aspired
to men's knowledge they would forfeit the delicacy of their sex. This
illogical prejudice was based on a bad syllogism of this kind:--
Girls speak French, and learn music and drawing.
Benjamin speaks French, and learns music and drawing.
Benjamin is a girl.
And the prejudice, powerful as it was, had not even the claim of any
considerable antiquity. Think how strange and unreasonable it would have
seemed to Lady Jane Grey and Sir Philip Sidney! In their time, ladies
and gentlemen studied the same things, the world of culture was the same
for both, and they could meet in it as in a garden.
Happily we are coming back to the old rational notion of culture as
independent of the question of sex. Latin and Greek are not unfeminine;
they were spoken by women in Athens and Rome; the modern languages are
fit for a man to learn, since men use them continually on the
battle-fields and in the parliaments and exchanges of the world. Art is
a manly business, if ever any human occupation could be called manly,
for the utmost efforts of the strongest men are needed for success in
it.
The increasing interest in the fine arts, the more important position
given to modern languages in the universities, the irresistible
attractions and growing authority of science, all tend to bring men and
women together on subjects understood by both, and therefore operate
directly in favor of intellectual interests in marriage. You will not
suspect me of a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royalty if I trace
some of these changes in public opinion to the example and influence of
the Prince Consort, operating with some effect during his life, yet with
far greater force since he was taken away from us. The truth is, that
the most modern English ideal of gentlemanly culture is that which
Prince Albert, to a great extent, realized in his own person. Perhaps
his various accomplishments may be a little embellished or exaggerated
in the popular belief, but it is unquestionable that his notion of
culture was very large and liberal, and quite beyond the narrow pedantry
of the preceding age. There was nothing in it to exclude a woman, and we
know that she who loved him entered largely into the works and
recreations of his life.
LETTER IV.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor--Their
resignation to ignorance--Absence of scientific curiosity in
women--They do not accumulate accurate knowledge--Archimedes in his
bath--Rarity of inventions due to women--Exceptions.
Before saying much about the influence of marriage on the intellectual
life, it is necessary to make some inquiry into the intellectual nature
of women.
The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be
practically of no importance to an argument, women do not of themselves
undertake intellectual labor. Even in the situations most favorable for
labor of that kind, women do not undertake it unless they are urged to
it, and directed in it, by some powerful masculine influence. In the
absence of that influence, although their minds are active, that
activity neither tends to discipline nor to the accumulation of
knowledge. Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are
not superior, either in knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the age
of fifty to what they were at the age of twenty-five. In other words,
they have not in themselves the motive powers which can cause an
intellectual advance.
The best illustration of this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old
maids, with all the advantages of leisure. You will observe that they
invariably remain, as to their education, where they were left by their
teachers many years before. They will often lament, perhaps, that in
their day education was very inferior to what it is now; but it never
occurs to them that the large leisure of subsequent years might, had it
been well employed, have supplied those deficiencies of which they are
sensible. Nothing is more curiously remote from masculine habits than
the resignation to particular degrees of ignorance, as to the
inevitable, which a woman will express in a manner which says: "You know
I am so; you know that I cannot make myself better informed." They are
like perfect billiard-balls on a perfect table, which stop when no
longer impelled, wherever they may happen to be.
It is this absence of intellectual initiative which causes the great
ignorance of women. What they have been well taught, that they know, but
they do not increase their stores of knowledge. Even in what most
interests them, theology, they repeat, but do not extend, their
information. All the effort of their minds appears (so far as an outside
observer may presume to judge) to act like water on a picture, which
brings out the colors that already exist upon the canvas but does not
add anything to the design. There is a great and perpetual freshness and
vividness in their conceptions, which is often lacking in our own. Our
conceptions fade, and are replaced; theirs are not replaced, but
refreshed.
What many women do for their theological conceptions or opinions, others
do with reference to the innumerable series of questions of all kinds
which present themselves in the course of life. They attempt to solve
them by the help of knowledge acquired in girlhood; and if that cannot
be done, they either give them up as beyond the domain of women, or else
trust to hearsay for a solution. What they will _not_ do is to hunt the
matter out unaided, and get an accurate answer by dint of independent
investigation.
There is another characteristic of women, not peculiar to them, for many
men have it in an astonishing degree, and yet more general in the female
sex than in the male: I allude to the absence of scientific curiosity.
Ladies see things of the greatest wonder and interest working in their
presence and for their service without feeling impelled to make any
inquiries into the manner of their working. I could mention many very
curious instances of this, but I select one which seems typical. Many
years ago I happened to be in a room filled with English ladies, most of
whom were highly intelligent, and the conversation happened to turn upon
a sailing-boat which belonged to me. One of the ladies observed that
sails were not of much use, since they could only be available to push
the boat in the direction of the wind; a statement which all the other
ladies received with approbation. Now, all these ladies had seen ships
working under canvas against head-winds, and they might have reflected
that without that portion of the art of seamanship every vessel
unprovided with steam would assuredly drift upon a lee-shore; but it was
not in the feminine nature to make a scientific observation of that
kind. You will answer, perhaps, that I could scarcely expect ladies to
investigate men's business, and that seamanship is essentially the
business of our own sex. But the truth is, that all English people, no
matter of what sex, have so direct an interest in the maritime activity
of England, that they might reasonably be expected to know the one
primary conquest on which for many centuries that activity has depended,
the conquest of the opposing wind, the sublimest of the early victories
of science. And this absence of curiosity in women extends to things
they use every day. They never seem to want to know the insides of
things as we do. All ladies know that steam makes a locomotive go; but
they rest satisfied with that, and do not inquire further _how_ the
steam sets the wheels in motion. They know that it is necessary to wind
up their watches, but they do not care to inquire into the real effects
of that little exercise of force.
Now this absence of the investigating spirit has very wide and important
consequences. The first consequence of it is that women do not naturally
accumulate accurate knowledge. Left to themselves, they accept various
kinds of teaching, but they do not by any analysis of their own either
put that teaching to any serious intellectual test, or qualify
themselves for any extension of it by independent and original
discovery. We of the male sex are seldom clearly aware how much of our
practical force, of the force which discovers and originates, is due to
our common habit of analytical observation; yet it is scarcely too much
to say that most of our inventions have been suggested by actually or
intellectually pulling something else in pieces. And such of our
discoveries as cannot be traced directly to analysis are almost always
due to habits of general observation which lead us to take note of some
fact apparently quite remote from what it helps us to arrive at. One of
the best instances of this indirect utility of habitual observation, as
it is one of the earliest, is what occurred to Archimedes in his bath.
When the water displaced by his body overflowed, he noticed the fact of
displacement, and at once perceived its applicability to the cubic
measurement of complicated bodies. It is possible that if his mind had
not been exercised at the time about the adulteration of the royal
crown, it would not have been led to anything by the overflowing of his
bath; but the capacity to receive a suggestion of that kind is, I
believe, a capacity exclusively masculine. A woman would have noticed
the overflowing, but she would have noticed it only as a cause of
disorder or inconvenience.
This absence of the investigating and discovering tendencies in women is
confirmed by the extreme rarity of inventions due to women, even in the
things which most interest and concern them. The stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are the two inventions which would most naturally have
been hit upon by women, for people are naturally inventive about things
which relieve _themselves_ of labor, or which increase their own
possibilities of production; and yet the stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are both of them masculine ideas, carried out to
practical efficiency by masculine energy and perseverance. So I believe
that all the improvements in pianos are due to men, though women have
used pianos much more than men have used them.
This, then, is in my view the most important negative characteristic of
women, that they do not push forwards intellectually by their own force.
There have been a few instances in which they have written with power
and originality, have become learned, and greatly superior, no doubt, to
the majority of men. There are three or four women in England, and as
many on the Continent, who have lived intellectually in harness for many
years, and who unaffectedly delight in strenuous intellectual labor,
giving evidence both of fine natural powers and the most persevering
culture; but these women have usually been encouraged in their work by
some near masculine influence. And even if it were possible, which it is
not, to point to some female Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci, it is not
the rare exceptions which concern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature.
Without desiring to compare our most learned ladies with anything so
disagreeable to the eye as a bearded woman, I may observe that Nature
generally has a few exceptions to all her rules, and that as women
having beards are a physical exception, so women who naturally study and
investigate are intellectual exceptions. Once more let me repudiate any
malicious intention in establishing so unfortunate and _maladroite_ an
association of ideas, for nothing is less agreeable than a woman with a
beard, whilst, on the contrary, the most intellectual of women may at
the same time be the most permanently charming.
LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The danger of deviation--Danger from increased expenditure--Nowhere so
great as in England--Complete absorption in business--Case of a
tradesman--Case of a solicitor--The pursuit of comfort dangerous to
the Intellectual Life--The meanness of its results--Fireside
purposes--Danger of deviation in rich marriages--George Sand's study
of this in her story of "Valvedre."
Amongst the dangers of marriage, one of those most to be dreaded by a
man given to intellectual pursuits is the deviation which, in one way or
other, marriage inevitably produces. It acts like the pointsman on a
railway, who, by pulling a lever, sends the train in another direction.
The married man never goes, or hardly ever goes, exactly on the same
intellectual lines which he would have followed if he had remained a
bachelor. This deviation may or may not be a gain; it is always a most
serious danger.
Sometimes the deviation is produced by the necessity for a stricter
attention to money, causing a more unremitting application to work that
pays well, and a proportionate neglect of that which can only give
extension to our knowledge and clearness to our views.
In no country is this danger so great as it is in England, where the
generally expensive manner of living, and the prevalent desire to keep
families in an ideally perfect state of physical comfort, produce an
absorption in business which in all but the rarest instances leaves no
margin for intellectual labor. There are, no doubt, some remarkable
examples of men earning a large income by a laborious profession, who
have gained reputation in one of the sciences or in some branch of
literature, but these are very exceptional cases. A man who works at his
profession as most Englishmen with large families have to work, can
seldom enjoy that surplus of nervous energy which would be necessary to
carry him far in literature or science. I remember meeting an English
tradesman in the railway between Paris and the coast, who told me that
he was obliged to visit France very frequently, yet could not speak
French, which was a great deficiency and inconvenience to him. "Why not
learn?" I then asked, and received the following answer:
"I have to work at my business all day long, and often far into the
night. When the day's work is over I generally feel very tired, and want
rest; but if I don't happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work
that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel
the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be
both pleasant and useful to me to know French; indeed, I constantly feel
the want of it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn from a
phrase-book in the railway train, but to save time I always travel at
night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my
business."
A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same
language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the
most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the
household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in
was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few
hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the _Times_ which
relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years
an amount of reading sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature.
This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine's description of
the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the _Times_.
In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly
felt as a deviation; but when culture has been fairly begun, and
marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen
path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not
without its bitterness.
A remarkable article on "Luxury," in the second volume of the _Cornhill
Magazine_, deals with this subject in a manner evidently suggested by
serious reflection and experience. The writer considers the effects of
the pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it is now) on the higher
moral and intellectual life. The comforts of a bachelor were not what
the writer meant; these are easily procured, and seldom require the
devotion of all the energies. The "comfort" which is really dangerous to
intellectual growth is that of a family establishment, because it so
easily becomes the one absorbing object of existence. Men who began life
with the feeling that they would willingly devote their powers to great
purposes, like the noble examples of past times who labored and suffered
for the intellectual advancement of their race, and had starvation for
their reward, or in some cases even the prison and the stake--men who in
their youth felt themselves to be heirs of a nobility of spirit like
that of Bruno, of Swammerdam, of Spinoza, have too often found
themselves in the noon of life concentrating all the energies of body
and soul on the acquisition of ugly millinery and uglier upholstery, and
on spreading extravagant tables to feed uncultivated guests.
"It is impossible," says the writer of the article just alluded to, "it
is impossible to say why men were made, but assuming that they were made
for some purpose, of which the faculties which they possess afford
evidence, it follows that they were intended to do many other things
besides providing for their families and enjoying their society. They
were meant to know, to act, and to feel--to know everything which the
mind is able to contemplate, to name, and to classify; to do everything
which the will, prompted by the passions and guided by the conscience,
can undertake; and, subject to the same guidance, to feel in its utmost
vigor every emotion which the contemplation of the various persons and
objects which surround us can excite. This view of the objects of life
affords an almost infinite scope for human activity in different
directions; but it also shows that it is in the highest degree dangerous
to its beauty and its worth to allow any one side of life to become the
object of idolatry; and there are many reasons for thinking that
domestic happiness is rapidly assuming that position in the minds of the
more comfortable classes of Englishmen.... It is a singular and
affecting thing, to see how every manifestation of human energy bears
witness to the shrewdness of the current maxim that a large income is a
necessary of life. Whatever is done for money is done admirably well.
Give a man a specific thing to make or to write, and pay him well for
it, and you may with a little trouble secure an excellent article; but
the ability which does these things so well, might have been and ought
to have been trained to far higher things, which for the most part are
left undone, because the clever workman thinks himself bound to earn
what will keep himself, his wife, and his six or seven children, up to
the established standard of comfort. What was at first a necessity,
perhaps an unwelcome one, becomes by degrees a habit and a pleasure, and
men who might have done memorable and noble things, if they had learnt
in time to consider the doing of such things an object worth living for,
lose the power and the wish to live for other than fireside purposes."
But this kind of intellectual deviation, you may answer, is not strictly
the consequence of marriage, _qua_ marriage; it is one of the
consequences of a degree of relative poverty, produced by the larger
expenditure of married life, but which might be just as easily produced
by a certain degree of money-pressure in the condition of a bachelor.
Let me therefore point out a kind of deviation which may be as
frequently observed in rich marriages as in poor ones. Suppose the case
of a bachelor with a small but perfectly independent income amounting to
some hundreds a year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, and
spends his time in study or with cultivated friends of his own, choosing
friends whose society is an encouragement and a help. Suppose that this
man makes an exceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich woman, you may
safely predict, in this instance, intellectual deviations of a kind
perilous to the highest culture. He will have new calls upon his time,
his society will no longer be entirely of his own choosing, he will no
longer be able to devote himself with absolute singleness of purpose to
studies from which his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he were to
continue faithful to his old habits, and shut himself up every day in
his library or laboratory, or set out on frequent scientific
expeditions, his wife would either be a lady of quite extraordinary
perfection of temper, or else entirely indifferent in her feelings
towards him, if she did not regard his pursuits with quickly-increasing
jealousy. She would think, and justifiably think, that he ought to give
more of his time to the enjoyment of her society, that he ought to be
more by her side in the carriage and in the drawing-room, and if he
loved her he would yield to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He would
spend many hours of every day in a manner not profitable to his great
pursuits, and many weeks of every year in visits to her friends. His
position would be even less favorable to study in some respects than
that of a professional man. It would be difficult for him, if an amateur
artist, to give that unremitting attention to painting which the
professional painter gives. He could not say, "I do this for you and for
our children;" he could only say, "I do it for my own pleasure," which
is not so graceful an excuse. As a bachelor, he might work as
professional people work, but his marriage would strongly accentuate the
amateur character of his position. It is possible that if his labors had
won great fame the lady might bear the separation more easily, for
ladies always take a noble pride in the celebrity of their husbands; but
the best and worthiest intellectual labor often brings no fame whatever,
and notoriety is a mere accident of some departments of the intellectual
life, and not its ultimate object.
George Sand, in her admirable novel "Valvedre," has depicted a situation
of this kind with the most careful delicacy of touch. Valvedre was a man
of science, who attempted to continue the labors of his intellectual
life after marriage had united him to a lady incapable of sharing them.
The reader pities both, and sympathizes with both. It is hard, on the
one hand, that a man endowed by nature with great talents for scientific
work should not go on with a career already gloriously begun; and yet,
on the other hand, a woman who is so frequently abandoned for science
may blamelessly feel some jealousy of science.
Valvedre, in narrating the story of his unhappy wedded life, said that
Alida wished to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to accompany
her, but that he felt in himself a more serious ambition. He had not
aimed at fame, but he had thought it possible to become a useful
servant, bringing his share of patient and courageous seekings to the
edifice of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida would understand this.
"'There is time enough for everything,' she said, still retaining him in
the useless wandering life that she had chosen. 'Perhaps,' he answered,
'but on condition that I lose no more of it; and it is not in this
wandering life, cut to pieces by a thousand unforeseen interruptions,
that I can make the hours yield their profit.'
"'Ah! we come to the point!' exclaimed Alida impetuously. 'You wish to
leave me, and to travel alone in impossible regions.'
"'No, I will work near you and abandon certain observations which it
would be necessary to make at too great a distance, but you also will
sacrifice something: we will not see so many idle people, we will settle
somewhere for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, and if the place
does not suit you, we will try another; but from time to time you will
permit me a phase of sedentary work.'
"'Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself alone; you have lived enough
for me. I understand; your love is satiated and at an end.'
"Nothing could conquer her conviction _that study was her rival_, and
that love was only possible in idleness.
"'To love is everything,' she said; 'and he who loves has not time to
concern himself with anything else. Whilst the husband is intoxicating
himself with the marvels of science, the wife languishes and dies. It is
the destiny which awaits me; and since I am a burden to you, I should do
better to die at once.'
"A little later Valvedre ventured to hint something about work, hoping
to conquer his wife's _ennui_, on which she proclaimed the hatred of
work as a sacred right of her nature and position.
"'Nobody ever taught me to work,' she said, 'and I did not marry under a
promise to begin again at the _a_, _b_, _c_ of things. Whatever I know I
have learned by intuition, by reading without aim or method. I am a
woman; my destiny is to love my husband and bring up children. It is
very strange that my husband should be the person who counsels me to
think of something better.'"
I am far from suggesting that Madame Valvedre is an exact representative
of her sex, but the sentiments which in her are exaggerated, and
expressed with passionate plainness, are in much milder form very
prevalent sentiments indeed; and Valvedre's great difficulty, how to get
leave to prosecute his studies with the degree of devotion necessary to
make them fruitful, is not at all an uncommon difficulty with
intellectual men after marriage. The character of Madame Valvedre, being
passionate and excessive, led her to an open expression of her
feelings; but feelings of a like kind, though milder in degree, exist
frequently below the surface, and may be detected by any vigilant
observer of human nature. That such feelings are very natural it is
impossible even for a _savant_ to deny; but whilst admitting the clear
right of a woman to be preferred by a man to science when once he has
married her, let me observe that the man might perhaps do wisely, before
the knot is tied, to ascertain whether her intellectual dowry is rich
enough to compensate him for the sacrifices she is likely to exact.
LETTER VI.
TO A SOLITARY STUDENT.
Need of a near intellectual friendship in solitude--Persons who live
independently of custom run a peculiar risk in marriage--Women by
nature more subservient to custom than men are--Difficulty of
conciliating solitude and marriage--De Senancour--The marriages of
eccentrics--Their wives either protect them or attempt to reform them.
Isolated as you are, by the very superiority of your culture, from the
ignorant provincial world around you, I cannot but believe that marriage
is essential to your intellectual health and welfare. If you married
some cultivated woman, bred in the cultivated society of a great
capital, that companionship would give you an independence of
surrounding influences which nothing else can give. You fancy that by
shutting yourself up in a country house you are uninfluenced by the
world around you. It is a great error. You know that you are isolated,
that you are looked upon and probably ridiculed as an eccentric, and
this knowledge, which it is impossible to banish from your mind,
deprives your thinking of elasticity and grace. You urgently need the
support of an intellectual friendship quite near to you, under your own
roof. Bachelors in great cities feel this necessity less.
Still remember, that whoever has arranged his life independently of
custom runs a peculiar risk in marriage. Women are by nature far more
subservient to custom than we are, more than we can easily conceive. The
danger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is that a woman
entering your house might enter it as the representative of that
minutely-interfering authority which you continually ignore. And let us
never forget that a perfect obedience to custom requires great
sacrifices of time and money that you might not be disposed to make, and
which certainly would interfere with study. You value and enjoy your
solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your
hours. It is difficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise and
suitable selection of acquaintances, with the semi-publicity of
marriage. Heads of families receive many persons in their houses whom
they would never have invited, and from whose society they derive little
pleasure and no profit. De Senancour had plans of studious retirement,
and hoped that the "_douce intimite_" of marriage might be compatible
with these cherished projects. But marriage, he found, drew him into the
circle of ordinary provincial life, and he always suffered from its
influences.
You are necessarily an eccentric. In the neighborhood where you live it
is an eccentricity to study, for nobody but you studies anything. A man
so situated is fortunate when this feeling of eccentricity is
alleviated, and unfortunate when it is increased. A wife would certainly
do one or the other. Married to a very superior woman, able to
understand the devotion to intellectual aims, you would be much relieved
of the painful consciousness of eccentricity; but a woman of less
capacity would intensify it.
So far as we can observe the married life of others, it seems to me that
I have met with instances of men, constituted and occupied very much as
you are, who have found in marriage a strong protection against the
ignorant judgments of their neighbors, and an assurance of intellectual
peace; whilst in other cases it has appeared rather as if their solitude
were made more a cause of conscious suffering, as if the walls of their
cabinets were pulled down for the boobies outside to stare at them and
laugh at them. A woman will either take your side against the customs of
the little world around, or she will take the side of custom against
you. If she loves you deeply, and if there is some visible result of
your labors in fame and money, she may possibly do the first, and then
she will protect your tranquillity better than a force of policemen, and
give you a delightful sense of reconciliation with all humanity; but
many of her most powerful instincts tend the other way. She has a
natural sympathy with all the observances of custom, and you neglect
them; she is fitted for social life, which you are not. Unless you win
her wholly to your side, she may undertake the enterprise of curing your
eccentricities and adapting you to the ideal of her caste. This may be
highly satisfactory to the operator, but it is full of inconveniences to
the patient.
LETTER VII.
TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO ASSOCIATE WITH
PERSONS OF HER OWN SEX.
Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation--The interest of
it would be increased if women could be more freely initiated into
great subjects--Small subjects interesting when seen in relation to
central ideas--That ladies of superior faculty ought rather to elevate
female society than withdraw from it--Women when displaced do not
appear happy.
What you confided to me in our last interesting conversation has given
me material for reflection, and afforded a glimpse of a state of things
which I have sometimes suspected without having data for any positive
conclusion. The society of women is usually sought by men during hours
of mental relaxation, and we naturally find such a charm in their mere
presence, especially when they are graceful or beautiful, that we are
not very severe or even accurate judges of the abstract intellectual
quality of their talk. But a woman cannot feel the indescribable charm
which wins us so easily, and I have sometimes thought that a superior
person of your sex might be aware of certain deficiencies in her sisters
which men very readily overlook. You tell me that you feel embarrassed
in the society of ladies, because they know so little about the subjects
which interest you, and are astonished when you speak about anything
really worth attention. On the other hand, you feel perfectly at ease
with men of ability and culture, and most at your ease with men of the
best ability and the most eminent attainments. What you complain of
chiefly in women seems to be their impatience of varieties of thought
which are unfamiliar to them, and their constant preference for small
topics.
It has long been felt by men that if women could be more freely
initiated into great subjects the interest of general conversation would
be much increased. The difficulty appears to lie in their instinctive
habit of making all questions personal questions. The etiquette of
society makes it quite impossible for men to speak to ladies in the
manner which would be intellectually most profitable to them. We may
not teach because it is pedantic, and we may not contradict, because it
is rude. Most of the great subjects are conventionally held to be
closed, so that it is a sin against good taste to discuss them. In every
house the ladies have a set of fixed convictions of some kind, which it
is not polite in any man to appear to doubt. The consequence of these
conventional rules is that women live in an atmosphere of acquiescence
which makes them intolerant of anything like bold and original thinking
on important subjects. But as the mind always requires free play of some
kind, when all the great subjects are forbidden it will use its activity
in playing about little ones.
For my part I hardly think it desirable for any of us to be incessantly
coping with great subjects, and the ladies are right in taking a lively
interest in the small events around them. But even the small events
would have a deeper interest if they were seen in their true relations
to the great currents of European thought and action. It is probably the
ignorance of these relations which, more than the smallness of the
topics themselves, makes feminine talk fatiguing to you. Very small
things indeed have an interest when exhibited in relation to larger, as
men of science are continually demonstrating. I have been taking note
lately of the talk that goes on around me, and I find that when it is
shallow and wearisome it is always because the facts mentioned bear no
reference to any central or governing idea, and do not illustrate
anything. Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality
of the central ideas which serve as pivots, and the fitness of the
little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers. For
instance, if people happened to be talking about rats, and some one
informed you that he had seen a rat last week, that would be quite
uninteresting: but you would listen with greater attention if he said;
"The other night, as I was going up stairs very late, I followed a very
fine rat who was going up stairs too, and he was not in the least
hurried, but stopped after every two or three steps to have a look at me
and my candle. He was very prettily marked about the face and tail, so I
concluded that he was not a common rat, but probably a lemming. Two
nights afterwards I met him again, and this time he seemed almost to
know me, for he quietly made room for me as I passed. Very likely he
might be easily tamed." This is interesting, because, though the fact
narrated is still trifling, it illustrates animal character.
If you will kindly pardon an "improvement" of this subject, as a
preacher would call it, I might add that an intellectual lady like
yourself might, perhaps, do better to raise the tone of the feminine
talk around her than to withdraw from it in weariness. There are always,
in every circle, a few superior persons who, either from natural
diffidence, or because they are not very rich, or because they are too
young, suffer themselves to be entirely overwhelmed by the established
mediocrity around them. What they need is a leader, a deliverer. Is it
not in your power to render services of this kind? Could you not select
from the younger ladies whom you habitually meet, a few who, like
yourself, feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what you describe
as the current feminine conversation? There is often a painful shyness
which prevents people of real ability from using it for the advantage of
others, and this shyness is nowhere so common as in England, especially
provincial England. It feels the want of a hardy example. A lady who
talked really well would no doubt run some risk of being rather
unpleasantly isolated at first, but surely, if she tried, she might
ultimately find accomplices. You could do much, to begin with, by
recommending high-toned literature, and gradually awakening an interest
in what is truly worth attention. It seems lamentable that every
cultivated woman should be forced out of the society of her own sex, and
made to depend upon ours for conversation of that kind which is an
absolute necessity to the intellectual. The truth is, that women so
displaced never appear altogether happy. And culture costs so much
downright hard work, that it ought not to be paid for by any suffering
beyond those toils which are its fair and natural price.
LETTER VIII.
TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE.
Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women--They do not
hear truth--Men disguise their thoughts for women--Cream and
curacoa--Probable permanence of the desire to please women--Most truth
in cultivated society--Hopes from the increase of culture.
I think that the greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women
is that they do not hear the truth from men.
All men in cultivated society say to women as much as possible that
which they may be supposed to wish to hear, and women are so much
accustomed to this that they can scarcely hear without resentment an
expression of opinion which takes no account of their personal and
private feeling. The consideration for the feelings of women gives an
agreeable tone to society, but it is fatal to the severity of truth.
Observe a man of the world whose opinions are well known to you,--notice
the little pause before he speaks to a lady. During that little pause he
is turning over what he has to say, so as to present it in the manner
that will please her best; and you may be sure that the integrity of
truth will suffer in the process. If we compare what we know of the man
with that which the lady hears from him, we perceive the immense
disadvantages of her position. He ascertains what will please her, and
that is what he administers. He professes to take a deep interest in
things which he does not care for in the least, and he passes lightly
over subjects and events which he knows to be of the most momentous
importance to the world. The lady spends an hour more agreeably than if
she heard opinions which would irritate, and prognostics which would
alarm her, but she has missed an opportunity for culture, she has been
confirmed in feminine illusions. If this happened only from time to
time, the effect would not tell so much on the mental constitution; but
it is incessant, it is continual. Men disguise their thoughts for women
as if to venture into the feminine world were as dangerous as travelling
in Arabia, or as if the thoughts themselves were criminal.
There appeared two or three years ago in _Punch_ a clever drawing which
might have served as an illustration to this subject. A fashionable
doctor was visiting a lady in Belgravia who complained that she suffered
from debility. Cod-liver oil being repugnant to her taste, the agreeable
doctor, wise in his generation, blandly suggested as an effective
substitute a mixture of cream and curacoa. What that intelligent man did
for his patient's physical constitution, all men of politeness do for
the intellectual constitution of ladies. Instead of administering the
truth which would strengthen, though unpalatable, they administer
intellectual cream and curacoa.
The primary cause of this tendency to say what is most pleasing to
women is likely to be as permanent as the distinction of sex itself. It
springs directly from sexual feelings, it is hereditary and instinctive.
Men will never talk to women with that rough frankness which they use
between themselves. Conversation between the sexes will always be
partially insincere. Still I think that the more women are respected,
the more men will desire to be approved by them for what they are in
reality, and the less they will care for approval which is obtained by
dissimulation. It may be observed already that, in the most intellectual
society of great capitals, men are considerably more outspoken before
women than they are in the provincial middle-classes. Where women have
most culture, men are most open and sincere. Indeed, the highest culture
has a direct tendency to command sincerity in others, both because it is
tolerant of variety in opinion, and because it is so penetrating that
dissimulation is felt to be of no use. By the side of an uncultivated
woman, a man feels that if he says anything different from what she has
been accustomed to she will take offence, whilst if he says anything
beyond the narrow range of her information he will make her cold and
uncomfortable. The most honest of men, in such a position, finds it
necessary to be very cautious, and can scarcely avoid a little
insincerity. But with a woman of culture equal to his own, these causes
for apprehension have no existence, and he can safely be more himself.
These considerations lead me to hope that as culture becomes more
general women will hear truth more frequently. Whenever this comes to
pass, it will be, to them, an immense intellectual gain.
LETTER IX.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL EDUCATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT
IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF
SOMEWHAT AUTHORITATIVE DISPOSITION, BUT UNEDUCATED.
A sort of misunderstanding common in modern households--Intolerance of
inaccuracy--A false position--A lady not easily
intimidated--Difficulty of arguing when you have to teach--Instance
about the American War--The best course in discussion with
ladies--Women spoilt by non-contradiction--They make all questions
personal--The strength of their feelings--Their indifference to
matters of fact.
I have been thinking a good deal, and seriously, since we last met,
about the subject of our conversation, which though a painful one is not
to be timidly avoided. The degree of unhappiness in your little
household, which ought to be one of the pleasantest of households, yet
which, as you confided to me, is overshadowed by a continual
misunderstanding, is, I fear, very common indeed at the present day. It
is only by great forbearance, and great skill, that any household in
which persons of very different degrees of culture have to live together
on terms of equality, can be maintained in perfect peace; and neither
the art nor the forbearance is naturally an attribute of youth. A man
whose scholarly attainments were equal to your own, and whose experience
of men and women was wider, could no doubt offer you counsel both wise
and practical, yet I can hardly say that I should like you better if you
followed it. I cannot blame you for having the natural characteristics
of your years, an honest love of the best truth that you have attained
to, an intolerance of inaccuracy on all subjects, a simple faith in the
possibility of teaching others, even elderly ladies, when they happen to
know less than yourself. All these characteristics are in themselves
blameless; and yet in your case, and in thousands of other similar
cases, they often bring clouds of storm and trial upon houses which, in
a less rapidly progressive century than our own, might have been blessed
with uninterrupted peace. The truth is, that you are in a false position
relatively to your mother, and your mother is in a false position
relatively to you. She expects deference, and deference is scarcely
compatible with contradiction; certainly, if there be contradiction at
all, it must be very rare, very careful, and very delicate. You, on the
other hand, although no doubt full of respect and affection for your
mother in your heart, cannot hear her authoritatively enunciating
anything that you know to be erroneous, without feeling irresistibly
urged to set her right. She is rather a talkative lady; she does not
like to hear a conversation going forward without taking a part in it,
and rather an important part, so that whatever subject is talked about
in her presence, that subject she will talk about also. Even before
specialists your mother has an independence of opinion, and a degree of
faith in her own conclusions, which would be admirable if they were
founded upon right reason and a careful study of the subject. Medical
men, and even lawyers, do not intimidate her; she is convinced that she
knows more about disease than the physician, and more about legal
business than an old attorney. In theology no parson can approach her;
but here a woman may consider herself on her own ground, as theology is
the speciality of women.
All this puts you out of patience, and it is intelligible that, for a
young gentleman of intellectual habits and somewhat ardent temperament
like yourself, it must be at times rather trying to have an AUTHORITY at
hand ever ready to settle all questions in a decisive manner. To you I
have no counsel to offer but that of unconditional submission. You have
the weakness to enter into arguments when to sustain them you must
assume the part of a teacher. In arguing with a person already
well-informed upon the subject in dispute, you may politely refer to
knowledge which he already possesses, but when he does not possess the
knowledge you cannot argue with him; you must first teach him, you must
become didactic, and therefore odious. I remember a great scene which
took place between you and your mother concerning the American War. It
was brought on by a too precise answer of yours relatively to your
friend B., who had emigrated to America. You mother asked to what part
of America B. had emigrated, and you answered, "The Argentine Republic."
A shade of displeasure clouded your mother's countenance, because she
did not know where the Argentine Republic might be, and betrayed it by
her manner. You imprudently added that it was in South America. "Yes,
yes, I know very well," she answered; "there was a great battle there
during the American War. It is well your friend was not there under
Jefferson Davis." Now, permit me to observe, my estimable young friend,
that this was what the French call a fine opportunity for holding your
tongue, but your missed it. Fired with an enthusiasm for truth (always
dangerous to the peace of families), you began to explain to the good
lady that the Argentine Republic, though in South America, was not one
of the Southern States of the Union. This led to a scene of which I was
the embarrassed and unwilling witness. Your mother vehemently affirmed
that all the Southern States had been under Jefferson Davis, that she
knew the fact perfectly, that it had always been known to every one
during the war, and that, consequently, as the Argentine Republic was in
South America, the Argentine Republic had been under Jefferson Davis.
Rapidly warming with this discussion, your mother "supposed that you
would deny next that there had ever been such a thing as a war between
the North and the South." Then you, in your turn, lost temper, and you
fetched an atlas for the purpose of explaining that the southern
division of the continent of America was not the southern half of the
United States. You were landed, as people always are landed when they
prosecute an argument with the ignorant, in the thankless office of the
schoolmaster. You were actually trying to give your mother a lesson in
geography! She was not grateful to you for your didactic attentions. She
glanced at the book as people glance at an offered dish which they
dislike. She does not understand maps; the representation of places in
geographical topography has never been quite clear to her. Your little
geographical lecture irritated, but did not inform; it clouded the
countenance, but did not illuminate the understanding. The distinction
between South America and the Southern States is not easy to the
non-analytic mind under any circumstances, but when _amour propre_ is
involved it becomes impossible.
I believe that the best course in discussions of this kind with ladies
is simply to say _once_ what is true, for the acquittal of your own
conscience, but after that to remain silent on that topic, leaving the
last word to the lady, who will probably simply re-affirm what she has
already said. For example, in the discussion about the Argentine
Republic, your proper course would have been to say first, firmly, that
the territory in question was not a part of the seceded States and had
never been in the Union, with a brief and decided geographical
explanation. Your mother would not have been convinced by this, and
would probably have had the last word, but the matter would have ended
there. Another friend of mine, who is in a position very like your own,
goes a step farther, and is determined to agree with his mother-in-law
in everything. He always assents to her propositions. She is a
Frenchwoman, and has been accustomed to use _Algerie_ and _Afrique_ as
convertible terms. Somebody spoke of the Cape of Good Hope as being in
Africa. "Then it belongs to France, as Africa belongs to France." "Oui,
chere mere," he answered, in his usual formula; "vous avez raison."
He alluded to this afterwards when we were alone together. "I was
foolish enough some years since," he said, "to argue with my _belle
mere_ and try to teach her little things from time to time, but it kept
her in a state of chronic ill-humor and led to no good; it spoiled her
temper, and it did not improve her mind. But since I have adopted the
plan of perpetual assent we get on charmingly. Whatever she affirms I
assent to at once, and all is well. My friends are in the secret, and so
no contradictory truth disturbs our amiable tranquillity."
A system of this kind spoils women completely, and makes the least
contradiction intolerable to them. It is better that they should at
least have the opportunity of hearing truth, though no attempt need be
made to force it upon them. The position of ladies of the generation
which preceded ours is in many respects a very trying one, and we do not
always adequately realize it. A lady like your mother, who never really
went through any intellectual discipline, who has no notion of
intellectual accuracy in anything, is compelled by the irresistible
feminine instinct to engage her strongest feelings in every discussion
that arises. A woman can rarely detach her mind from questions of
persons to apply it to questions of fact. She does not think simply, "Is
that true of such a thing?" but she thinks, "Does he love me or respect
me?" The facts about the Argentine Republic and the American War were
probably quite indifferent to your mother; but your opposition to what
she had asserted seemed to her a failure in affection, and your attempt
to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling in women is far from
being wholly egoistic. They refer everything to persons, but not
necessarily to their own persons. Whatever you affirm as a fact, they
find means of interpreting as loyalty or disloyalty to some person whom
they either venerate or love, to the head of religion, or of the State,
or of the family. Hence it is always dangerous to enter upon
intellectual discussion of any kind with women, for you are almost
certain to offend them by setting aside the sentiments of veneration,
affection, love, which they have in great strength, in order to reach
accuracy in matters of fact, which they neither have nor care for.
PART VIII.
_ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN.
A contrast--A poor student--His sad fate--Class-sentiment--Tycho
Brahe--Robert Burns--Shelley's opinion of Byron--Charles
Dickens--Shopkeepers in English literature--Pride of aristocratic
ignorance--Pursuits tabooed by the spirit of caste--Affected
preferences in intellectual pursuits--Studies that add to
gentility--Sincerity of interest needed for genuine culture--The
exclusiveness of scholarly caste--Its bad influence on
outsiders--Feeling of Burns toward scholars--Sureness of
class-instinct--Unforeseen effect of railways--Return to nomadic life
and the chase--Advantages and possibilities to life in the higher
classes.
It is one of the privileges of authorship to have correspondents in the
most widely different positions, and by means of their frank and
friendly letters (usually much more frank than any oral communication)
to gain a singularly accurate insight into the working of circumstances
on the human intellect and character. The same post that brought me your
last letter brought news about another of my friends whose lot has been
a striking contrast to your own.[8]
Let me dwell upon this contrast for a few minutes. All the sunshine
appears to have been on your side, and all the shadow on his. Born of
highly cultivated parents, in the highest rank in England under royalty,
you have lived from the beginning amongst the most efficient aids to
culture, and Nature has so endowed you that, instead of becoming
indifferent to these things from familiarity, you have learned to value
them more and more in every successive year. The plainest statement of
your advantages would sound like an extract from one of Disraeli's
novels. Your father's principal castle is situated amongst the finest
scenery in Britain, and his palace in London is filled with masterpieces
of art. Wherever you have lived you have been surrounded by good
literature and cultivated friends. Your health is steadily robust, you
can travel wherever you choose, and all the benefits of all the capitals
of Europe belong to you as much as to their own citizens. In all these
gifts and opportunities there is but one evil--the bewilderment of their
multiplicity.
My other correspondent has been less fortunately situated. "I began
school," he says, "when six years old, was taken from it at eleven and
sent to the mines to earn a little towards my own support. I continued
there till fourteen, when through an unlucky incident I was made a
hopeless cripple. At that day I was earning the noble sum of eightpence
per day, quite as much as any boy of that age got in the lead mines. I
suffered much for two years; after that, became much easier, but my legs
were quite useless, and have continued so up to the present time. The
right thigh-bone is decayed, has not got worse these nine years;
therefore I conclude that I may live--say another thirty years. I should
_like_, at all events, for life _is_ sweet even at this cost; not but
what I could die quietly enough, I dare say. I have not been idle these
years...."
(Here permit me to introduce a parenthesis. He certainly had _not_ been
idle. He had educated himself up to such a point that he could really
appreciate both literature and art, and had attained some genuine skill
in both. His letters to me were the letters of a cultivated gentleman,
and he used invariably to insert little pen-sketches, which were done
with a light and refined hand.)
"I can do anything almost in bed--except getting up. I am now twenty-two
years old. My father was a miner, but is now unable to work. I have only
one brother working, and we are about a dozen of us; consequently we are
not in the most flourishing circumstances, but a friend has put it in my
power to learn to etch. I have got the tools and your handbook on the
subject."
These extracts are from his first letter. Afterwards he wrote me others
which made me feel awed and humbled by the manly cheerfulness with which
he bore a lot so dreary, and by the firmness of resolution he showed in
his pursuits. He could not quit his bed, but that was not the worst; he
could not even sit up in bed, and yet he contrived, I know not how, both
to write and draw and etch on copper, managing the plaguy chemicals, and
even printing his own proofs. His bed was on wheels, on a sort of light
iron carriage, and he saw nature out-of-doors. All the gladness of
physical activity was completely blotted out of his existence, and in
that respect his prospects were without hope. And still he said that
"life was sweet." O marvel of all marvels, how _could_ that life be
sweet!
Aided by a beautiful patience and resignation the lamp of the mind
burned with a steady brightness, fed by his daily studies. In the
winters, however, the diseased limb gave him prolonged agony, and in the
autumn of 1872, to avoid the months of torture that lay before him, he
had himself put in the railway and sent off, in his bed, to Edinburgh,
sleeping in a waiting-room on the way. There was no one to attend him,
but he trusted, not vainly, to the humanity of strangers. Just about the
same time your lordship went northwards also, with many friends, to
enjoy the noble scenery, and the excitement of noble sport. My poor
cripple got to Edinburgh, got a glimpse of Scott's monument and the
Athenian pillars, and submitted himself to the surgeons. They rendered
him the best of services, for they ended his pains forever.
So I am to get no more of those wonderfully brave and cheerful letters
that were written from the little bed on wheels. I miss them for the
lessons they quite unconsciously conveyed. He fancied that he was the
learner, poor lad! and I the teacher, whereas it was altogether the
other way. He made me feel what a blessing it is, even from the purely
intellectual point of view, to be able to get out of bed after the
night's rest, and go from one room to another. He made me understand the
value of every liberty and every power whilst at the same time he taught
me to bear more patiently every limit, and inconvenience, and
restriction.
In comparing his letters with yours I have been struck by one reflection
predominantly, which is, the entire absence of class-sentiment in both
of you. Nobody, not in the secret, could guess that one set of letters
came from a palace and the other set from a poor miner's cottage; and
even to me, who do not see the habitations except by an effort of the
memory or imagination, there is nothing to recall the immensity of the
social distance that separated my two friendly and welcome
correspondents. It is clear, of course, that one of them had enjoyed
greater advantages than the other, but neither wrote from the point of
view which marks his caste or class. It was my habit to write to you,
and to him, exactly in the same tone, yet this was not felt to be
unsuitable by either.
Is it not that the love and pursuit of culture lead each of us out of
his class, and that class-views of any kind, whether of the aristocracy,
or of the middle class, or of the people, inevitably narrow the mind and
hinder it from receiving pure truth? Have you ever known any person who
lived habitually in the notions of a caste, high or low, without
incapacitating himself in a greater or less degree for breadth and
delicacy of perception? It seems to me that the largest and best minds,
although they have been born and nurtured in this caste or that, and may
continue to conform externally to its customs, always emancipate
themselves from it intellectually, and arrive at a sort of neutral
region, where the light is colorless, and clear, and equal, like plain
daylight out of doors. So soon as we attain the forgetfulness of self,
and become absorbed in our pursuits for their own sakes, the feeling of
caste drops off from us. It was not a mark of culture in Tycho Brahe,
but rather of the imperfections of his culture, that he felt so strongly
the difficulty of conciliating scientific pursuits with the obligations
of noble birth, and began his public discourses on astronomy by telling
his audience that the work was ill-suited to his social
position--hesitating, too, even about authorship from a dread of social
degradation. And to take an instance from the opposite extreme of human
society, Robert Burns betrayed the same imperfection of culture in his
dedication to the members of the Caledonian Hunt, when he spoke of his
"honest rusticity," and told the gentlefolks that he was "bred to the
plough, and independent." Both of these men had been unfavorably
situated for the highest culture, the one by the ignorance of his epoch
the other by the ignorance of his class; hence this uneasiness about
themselves and their social position. Shelley said of Byron, "The canker
of aristocracy wants to be cut out;" and he did not say this from the
point of view of a democrat, for Shelley was not precisely a democrat,
but from, the broadly human point of view, on which the finest
intellects like to take their stand. Shelley perceived that Byron's
aristocracy narrowed him, and made his sympathies less catholic than
they might have been, nor can there be any doubt of the accuracy of this
estimate of Shelley's; if a doubt existed it would be removed by Byron's
alternative for a poet, "solitude, or high life." Another man of genius,
whose loss we have recently deplored, was narrowed by his antipathy to
the aristocratic spirit, though it is necessary to add, in justice, that
it did not prevent him from valuing the friendship of noblemen whom he
esteemed. The works of Charles Dickens would have been more accurate as
pictures of English life, certainly more comprehensively accurate, if he
could have felt for the aristocracy that hearty and loving sympathy
which he felt for the middle classes and the people. But the narrowness
of Dickens is more excusable than that of Byron, because a kindly heart
more easily enters into the feelings of those whom it can often pity
than of those who appear to be lifted above pity (though this is nothing
but an appearance) and also because it is the habit of aristocracies to
repel such sympathy by their manners, which the poor do not.
I have often thought that a sign of aristocratic narrowness in many
English authors, including some of the most popular authors of the day,
is the way they speak of shopkeepers. This may be due to simple
ignorance; but if so, it is ignorance that might be easily avoided.
Happily for our convenience there are a great many shopkeepers in
England, so that there is no lack of the materials for study; but our
novelists appear to consider this important class of Englishmen as
unworthy of any patient and serious portraiture. You may remember Mr.
Anthony Trollope's "Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson," which
appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, under Thackeray's editorship. That
was an extreme instance of the way the class is treated in our
literature; and then in poetry we have some disdainful verses of Mr.
Tennyson's. It may be presumed that there is material for grave and
respectful treatment of this extensive class, but our poets and
novelists do not seem to have discovered, or sought to discover, the
secret of that treatment. The intensity of the prejudices of caste
prevents them from seeing any possibility of true gentlemanhood in a
draper or a grocer, and blinds them to the aesthetic beauty or grandeur
which may be as perfectly compatible with what is disdainfully called
"counter-jumping" as it is admitted to be with the jumping of
five-barred gates.
The same caste prejudices have often kept the mass of the upper classes
in ignorance of most valuable and important branches of knowledge. The
poor have been ignorant, yet never proud of their ignorance; the
ignorance that men are proud of belongs to caste always, not always to
what we should call an aristocratic caste, but to the caste-feeling in
one class or another. The pride of the feudal baron in being totally
illiterate amounted to self-exclusion from all intellectual culture, and
we may still find living instances of partial self-exclusion from
culture, of which pride is the only motive. There are people who pass
their time in what are considered amusements (that do not amuse),
because it seems to them a more gentlemanly sort of life than the
devotion to some great and worthy pursuit which would have given the
keenest zest and relish to their whole existence (besides making them
useful members of society, which they are not), but which happens to be
tabooed for them by the prejudices of their caste. There are many
studies, in themselves noble and useful, that a man of good family
cannot follow with the earnestness and the sacrifice of time necessary
to success in them, without incurring the disapprobation of his
friends. If this disapprobation were visited on the breaker of
caste-regulations because he neglected some other culture, there would
still be something reasonable in it; but this is not the case. The
caste-regulation forbids the most honorable and instructive labor when
it does not forbid the most unprofitable idleness, the most utter
throwing away of valuable time and faculty. Tycho Brahe feared to lose
caste in becoming the most illustrious astronomer of his time; but he
would have had no such apprehension, nor any ground for such
apprehension, if instead of being impelled to noble work by a high
intellectual instinct, he had been impelled by meaner passions to
unlimited self-indulgence. Even, in our own day these prejudices are
still strong enough, or have been until very lately, to keep our upper
classes in great darkness about natural knowledge of all kinds, and
about its application to the arts of life. How few gentlemen have been
taught to draw accurately, and how few are accurately acquainted with
the great practical inventions of the age! The caste-sentiment does not,
in these days, keep them ignorant of literature, but it keeps them
ignorant of _things_. A friend who had a strong constructive and
experimental turn, told me that, as a rule, he found gentlemen less
capable of entering into his ideas than common joiners and blacksmiths,
because these humble workmen, from their habit of dealing with matter,
had acquired some experience of its nature. For my own part, I have
often been amazed by the difficulty of making something clear to a
classically educated gentleman which any intelligent mechanic would have
seen to the bottom, and all round, after five or six minutes of
explanation. There is a certain French nobleman whose ignorance I have
frequent opportunities of fathoming, always with fresh astonishment at
the depths of it, and I declare that he knows no more about the
properties of stone, and timber, and metal, than if he were a cherub in
the clouds of heaven!
But there is something in caste-sentiment even more prejudicial to
culture than ignorance itself, and that is the affectation of strong
preferences for certain branches of knowledge in which people are not
seriously interested. There is nothing which people will not pretend to
like, if a liking for it is supposed to be one of the marks and
indications of gentility. There has been an immense amount of this kind
of affectation in regard to classical scholarship, and we know for a
certainty that it _is_ affectation whenever people are loud in their
praise of classical authors whom they never take the trouble to read. It
may have happened to you, as it has happened to me from time to time, to
hear men affirm the absolute necessity of classical reading to
distinction of thought and manner, and yet to be aware at the same time,
from close observation of their habits, that those very men entirely
neglected the sources of that culture in which they professed such
earnest faith. The explanation is, that as classical accomplishments are
considered to be one of the evidences of gentility, whoever speaks
loudly in their favor affirms that he has the tastes and preferences of
a gentleman. It is like professing the fashionable religion, or
belonging to an aristocratic shade of opinion in politics. I have not a
doubt that all affectations of this kind are injurious to genuine
culture, for genuine culture requires sincerity of interest before
everything, and the fashionable affectations, so far from attracting
sincere men to the departments of learning which happen to be _a la
mode_, positively drive them away, just as many have become
Nonconformists because the established religion was considered necessary
to gentility, who might have remained contented with its ordinances as a
simple discipline for their souls.
I dislike the interference of genteel notions in our studies for another
reason. They deprive such culture as we may get from them, of one of the
most precious results of culture, the enlargement of our sympathy for
others. If we encourage ourselves in the pride of scholarly caste, so
far as to imagine that we who have made Latin verses are above
comparison with all who have never exercised their ingenuity in that
particular way, we are not likely to give due and serious attention to
the ideas of people whom we are pleased to consider uneducated; and yet
it may happen that these people are sometimes our intellectual
superiors, and that their ideas concern us very closely. But this is
only half the evil. The consciousness of our contempt embitters the
feelings of men in other castes, and prevents them from accepting our
guidance when it might be of the greatest practical utility to them. I
may mention Robert Burns as an instance of a man of genius who would
have been happier and more fortunate if he had felt no barrier of
separation between himself and the culture of his time. His poetry is as
good rustic poetry as the best that has come down to us from antiquity,
and instead of feeling towards the poets of times past the kind of
soreness which a parvenu feels towards families of ancient descent, he
ought rather to have rejoiced in the consciousness that he was their
true and legitimate successor, as the clergy of an authentic Church feel
themselves to be successors and representatives of saints and apostles
who are gathered to their everlasting rest. But poor Burns knew that in
an age when what is called scholarship gave all who had acquired it a
right to look down upon poets who had only genius as the illegitimate
offspring of nature, his position had not that solidity which belonged
to the scholarly caste, and the result was a perpetual uneasiness which
broke out in frequent defiance.
"There's ither poets, much your betters,
Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hae thought they had ensur'd their debtors
A' future ages;
_Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages_."
And again, in another poem--
"A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
_They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o' Greek!_"
It was the influence of caste that made Burns write in this way, and how
unjust it was every modern reader knows. The great majority of poets
have been well-educated men, and instead of ganging into college like
stirks and coming out like asses, they have, as a rule, improved their
poetic faculty by an acquaintance with the masterpieces of their art.
Yet Burns is not to be blamed for this injustice; he sneered at Greek
because Greek was the mark of a disdainful and exclusive caste, but he
never sneered at French or Italian. He had no soreness against culture
for its own sake; it was the pride of caste that galled him.
How surely the wonderful class-instinct guided the aristocracy to the
kind of learning likely to be the most effectual barrier against
fellowship with the mercantile classes and the people! The uselessness
of Greek in industry and commerce was a guarantee that those who had to
earn their bread would never find time to master it, and even the
strange difficult look of the alphabet (though in reality the alphabet
was a gate of gossamer), ensured a degree of awful veneration for those
initiated into its mysteries. Then the habit our forefathers had of
quoting Latin and Greek to keep the ignorant in their places, was a
strong defensive weapon of their caste, and they used it without
scruple. Every year removes this passion for exclusiveness farther and
farther into the past; every year makes learning of every kind less
available as the armor of a class, and less to be relied upon as a means
of social advancement and consideration. Indeed, we have already reached
a condition which is drawing back many members of the aristocracy to a
state of feeling about intellectual culture resembling that of their
forefathers in the middle ages. The old barbarian feeling has revived of
late, a feeling which (if it were self-conscious enough) might find
expression in some such words as these:--
"It is not by learning and genius that we can hold the highest place,
but by the dazzling exhibition of external splendor in those costly
pleasures which are the plainest evidence of our power. Let us have
beautiful equipages on the land, beautiful yachts upon the sea; let our
recreations be public and expensive, that the people may not easily lose
sight of us, and may know that there is a gulf of difference between our
life and theirs. Why should we toil at books that the poorest students
read, we who have lordly pastimes for every month in the year? To be
able to revel immensely in pleasures which those below us taste rarely
or not at all, this is the best evidence of our superiority. So let us
take them magnificently, like English princes and lords."
Even the invention of railways has produced the unforeseen result of a
return in the direction of barbarism. If there is one thing which
distinguishes civilization it is fixity of residence; and it is
essential to the tranquil following of serious intellectual purposes
that the student should remain for many months of the year in his own
library or laboratory, surrounded by all his implements of culture. But
there are people of the highest rank in the England of to-day whose
existence is as much nomadic as that of Red Indians in the reserved
territories of North America. You cannot ascertain their whereabouts
without consulting the most recent newspaper. Their life may be quite
accurately described as a return, on a scale of unprecedented splendor
and comfort, to the life of tribes in that stage of human development
which is known as the period of the chase. They migrate from one
hunting-ground to another as the diminution of the game impels them.
Their residences, vast and substantial as they are, serve only as tents
and wigwams. The existence of a monk in the cloister, of a prisoner in a
fortress, is more favorable to the intellect than theirs.
And yet notwithstanding these re-appearances of the savage nature at the
very summit of modern civilization, the life of a great English
nobleman of to-day commands so much of what the intellectual know to be
truly desirable, that it seems as if only a little firmness of
resolution were needed to make all advantages his own. Surrounded by
every aid, and having all gates open, he sees the paths of knowledge
converging towards him like railways to some rich central city. He has
but to choose his route, and travel along it with the least possible
hindrance from every kind of friction, in the society of the best
companions, and served by the most perfectly trained attendants. Might
not our lords be like those brilliant peers who shone like intellectual
stars around the throne of Elizabeth, and our ladies like that great
lady of whom said a learned Italian, "che non vi aveva altra dama al
mondo che la pareggiasse nella cognizione delle arti e nella notizia
delle scienze e delle lingue," wherefore he called her boldly, in the
enthusiasm of his admiration, "_grande anfitrite, Diana nume della
terra!_"
LETTER II.
TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT.