The most studious Frenchman I ever met with used to say that he so hated

the pen as scarcely to resolve to write a letter. He reminded me of

Joubert in this; he often said, "J'ai horreur de la plume." Since he had

no profession his leisure was unlimited, and he employed it in educating

himself without any other purpose than this, the highest purpose of all,

to become a cultivated man. The very prevalent idea that lives of this

kind are failures unless they leave some visible achievement as a

testimony and justification of their labors, is based upon a narrow

conception both of duty and of utility. Men of this unproductive class

are sure to influence their immediate neighborhood by the example of

their life. Isolated as they are too frequently in the provinces, in the

midst of populations destitute of the higher culture, they often

establish the notion of it notwithstanding the contemptuous estimates of

the practical people around them. A single intellectual life, thus

modestly lived through in the obscurity of a country-town, may leave a

tradition and become an enduring influence. In this, as in all things,

let us trust the arrangements of Nature. If men are at the same time

constitutionally studious and constitutionally unproductive, in must be

that production is not the only use of study. Joubert was right in

keeping silence when he felt no impulses to speak, right also in saying

the little that he did say without a superfluous word. His mind is more

fully known, and more influential, than many which are abundantly

productive.

LETTER V.

TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.

Some intellectual products possible only in excitement--Byron's

authority on the subject--Can inventive minds work regularly?--Sir

Walter Scott's opinion--Napoleon on the winning of victories--The

prosaic business of men of genius--"Waiting for

inspiration"--Rembrandt's advice to a young painter--Culture necessary

to inspiration itself--Byron, Keats, Morris--Men of genius may be

regular as students.

In my last letter to you on quiet regularity of work, I did not give

much consideration to another matter which, in certain kinds of work,

has to be taken into account, for I preferred to make that the subject

of a separate letter. There are certain intellectual products which are

only possible in hours or minutes of great cerebral excitement. Byron

said that when people were surprised to find poets very much like others

in the ordinary intercourse of life, their surprise was due to ignorance

of this. If people knew, Byron said, that poetical production came from

an excitement which from its intensity could only be temporary, they

would not expect poets to be very different from other people when not

under the influence of this excitement. Now, we may take the word

"poet," in this connection, in the very largest sense. All men who have

the gift of invention are poets. The inventive ideas come to them at

unforeseen moments, and have to be seized when they come, so that the

true inventor works sometimes with vertiginous rapidity, and afterwards

remains for days or weeks without exercising the inventive faculty at

all. The question is, can you make an inventive mind work on the

principle of measured and regular advance. Is such counsel as that in my

former letter applicable to inventors?

Scott said, that although he had known many men of ordinary abilities

who were capable of perfect regularity in their habits, he had never

known a man of genius who was so. The popular impression concerning men

of genius is very strong in the same sense, but it is well not to attach

too much importance to popular impressions concerning men of genius, for

the obvious reason that such men come very little under popular

observation. When they work it is usually in the most perfect solitude,

and even people who live in the same house know very little, really, of

their intellectual habits.

The truth seems to be, first, that the moments of high excitement, of

noblest invention, are rare, and not to be commanded by the will; but,

on the other hand, that in order to make the gift of invention produce

its full effect in any department of human effort, vast labors of

preparation are necessary, and these labors may be pursued as steadily

as you like Napoleon I. used to say that battles were won by the sudden

flashing of an idea through the brain of the commander at a certain

critical instant. The capacity for generating this sudden electric spark

was military genius. The spark flashed independently of the will; the

General could not win that vivid illumination by labor or by prayer; it

came only in the brain of genius from the intense anxiety and excitement

of the actual conflict. Napoleon seems always to have counted upon it,

always to have believed that when the critical instant arrived the wild

confusion of the battle-field would be illuminated for him by that burst

of sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the prosaic

business of his profession, to which he attended more closely than any

other commander, what would these moments of supreme clearness have

availed him, or would they ever have come to him at all? If they had

come to him, they would have revealed only the extent of his own

negligence. Instead of showing him _what to do_, they would have made

painfully evident what _ought to have been done_. But it is more

probable that these clear moments would never have occurred to a mind

unprepared by study. Clear military inspirations never occur to

shopkeepers and farmers, as bright ideas about checkmates occur only to

persons who have studied chess. The prosaic business, then, of the man

of genius is to accumulate that preparatory knowledge without which his

genius can never be available, and he can do work of this kind as

regularly as he likes.

The one fatal mistake which is committed habitually by people who have

the scarcely desirable gift of half-genius is "waiting for inspiration."

They pass week after week in a state of indolence, unprofitable alike to

the mind and the purse, under pretext of waiting for intellectual

flashes like those which came to Napoleon on his battle-fields. They

ought to remember the advice given by one of the greatest artists of the

seventeenth century to a young painter of his acquaintance. "Practise

assiduously what you already know, and in course of time other things

will become clear to you." The inspirations come only to the

disciplined; the indolent wait for them in vain.

If you have genius, therefore, or believe you have, it is admitted that

you cannot be perpetually in a state of intense excitement. If you were

in that state without ceasing, you would go mad. You cannot be expected

to write poetry in the plodding ox-pace manner advocated for

intellectual work generally in my last letter. As for that good old

comparison between the hare and the tortoise, it may be answered for

you, simply, that you are not a tortoise, and that what is a most wise

procedure for tortoises may be impracticable for you. The actual

composition of poetry, especially poetry of a fiery kind, like--

"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,"

of Byron, is to be done not when the poet will, but when he can, or

rather, when he _must_.

But if you are a wise genius you will feel how necessary is culture even

for work of that kind. Byron would not have felt any enthusiasm for the

isles of Greece if he had not known something of their history. The

verses are an inspiration, but they could never have occurred to a quite

uncultivated person, however bright his inspirations. Even more

obviously was the genius of Keats dependent upon his culture. He did not

read Greek, but from translations of Greek literature and from the

direct study of Greek art he got the sort of material that he needed.

And in our own day Morris has been evidently a very diligent student of

many literatures. What I insist upon is, that we could not have had the

real Keats, the real Morris, unless they had prepared themselves by

culture. We see immediately that the work they have done is _their_

work, specially, that they were specially adapted for it--inspired for

it, if you will. But how evident it is that the inspiration could never

have produced the work, or anything like it, without labor in the

accumulation of material!

Now, although men of genius cannot be regularly progressive in actual

production, cannot write so many verses a day, regularly, as you may

spin yarn, they can be very regular as students, and some of the best of

them have been quite remarkable for unflinching steadiness of

application in that way. The great principle recommended by Mr. Galton,

of not looking forward eagerly to the end of your journey, but

interesting yourself chiefly in the progress of it, is as applicable to

the studies of men of genius as to those of more ordinary persons.

LETTER VI.

TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.

On some verses of Goethe--Man not constituted like a planet--Matthew

Arnold's poem, "Self-dependence"--Poetry and prose--The wind more

imitable than the stars--The stone in Glen Croe--Rest and be thankful.

"Rambling over the wild moors, with thoughts oftentimes as wild and

dreary as those moors, the young Carlyle, who had been cheered through

his struggling sadness, and strengthened for the part he was to play in

life, by the beauty and the wisdom which Goethe had revealed to him,

suddenly conceived the idea that it would be a pleasant and a fitting

thing if some of the few admirers in England forwarded to Weimar a

trifling token of their admiration. On reaching home Mr. Carlyle at once

sketched the design of a seal to be engraved, the serpent of eternity

encircling a star, with the words _ohne Hast, ohne Rast_ (unhasting,

unresting), in allusion to the well-known verses--

'Wie das Gestirn,

Ohne Hast

Aber ohne Rast

Drehe sich jeder

Um die eigne Last.'

(Like a star, unhasting, unresting, be each one fulfilling his God-given

'hest.')"[10]

This is said so beautifully, and seems so wise, that it may easily

settle down into the mind as a maxim and rule of life. Had we been told

in plain prose to take no rest, without the beautiful simile of the

star, and without the wise restriction about haste, our common sense

would have rebelled at once; but as both beauty and wisdom exist

together in the gem-like stanza, our judgment remains silent in charmed

acquiescence.

Let us ask ourselves, however, about this stella example, whether man is

naturally so constituted as to be able to imitate it. A planet moves

without haste, because it is incapable of excitement; and without rest,

because it is incapable of fatigue. A planet makes no effort, and

encounters no friction or resistance of any kind. Man is so constituted

as to feel frequently the stimulus of excitement, which immediately

translates itself either into actual acceleration or into the desire for

acceleration--a desire which cannot be restrained without an effort; and

whatever man undertakes to do he encounters friction and resistance,

which, for him, always sooner or later inevitably induce fatigue. Man is

neither constituted like a star nor situated like a star, and therefore

it is not possible for him to exist as stars exist.

You will object to this criticism that it handles a delicate little poem

very roughly, and you may tell me that I am unfit to receive the wisdom

of the poets, which is always uttered with a touch of Oriental

exaggeration. Certainly Goethe could never mean that a man should kill

himself by labors literally incessant. Goethe's own life is the best

elucidation of his true meaning. The example of the star was held up to

us to be followed only within the limits of our human nature, as a

Christian points to the example of Christ. In the same spirit Matthew

Arnold wrote his noble poem "Self-dependence," in which he tells us to

live like the stars and the sea:--

"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,

On my heart your mighty charm renew;

Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,

Feel my soul becoming vast like you."

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,

Over the lit sea's unquiet way,

In the rustling night-air came the answer:

"Wouldst thou _be_ as these are? _Live_ as they.

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,

Undistracted by the sights they see,

These demand not that the things without them

Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."

The true intention of poetical teachings like these is in the influence

they have over the feelings. If a star makes me steadier in my labor,

less of a victim to vain agitation, in consequence of Goethe's verses;

if the stars and the sea together renew more fully their mighty charm

upon my heart because those stanzas of Arnold have fixed themselves in

my memory, the poets have done their work. But the more positive

_prosateur_ has his work to do also, and you, as it seems to me, need

this positive help of prose.

You are living a great deal too much like a star, and not enough like a

human being. You do not hasten often, but you _never_ rest, except when

Nature mercifully prostrates you in irresistible sleep. Like the stars

and the sea in Arnold's poem, you do not ask surrounding things to yield

you love, amusement, sympathy. The stars and the sea can do without

these refreshments of the brain and heart, but you cannot. Rest is

necessary to recruit your intellectual forces; sympathy is necessary to

prevent your whole nature from stiffening like a rotifer without

moisture; love is necessary to make life beautiful for you, as the

plumage of certain birds becomes splendid when they pair; and without

amusement you will lose the gayety which wise men try to keep as the

best legacy of youth.

Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are

still. If you will have a model for your living, take neither the stars,

for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the

river that cannot stay, but rather let your life be like that of the

summer air, which has times of noble energy and times of perfect peace.

It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on

the breezy uplands; it works generously for the health and wealth of all

men, yet it claims its hours of rest. "I have pushed the fleet, I have

turned the mill, I have refreshed the city, and now, though the captain

may walk impatiently on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the

city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases me."

You have learned many things, my friend, but one thing you have _not_

learned--the art of resting. That stone in Glen Croe ought to have

impressed its lesson on the mind of many a traveller, long before Earl

Russell gave it a newspaper celebrity. Have we not rested there

together, you and I, a little in advance of the coach, which the weary

horses were still slowly dragging up the tedious hill? And as we sat on

the turf, and looked down the misty glen, did we not read the lesson

there engraven? How good and _human_ the idea was, the idea of setting

up that graven stone in the wilderness; how full of sympathy is that

inscription for all the weakness and weariness of humanity! Once, in the

ardor of youth, there shone before me a golden star in heaven, and on

the deep azure around it "_Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_," in letters of steady

flame; but now I see more frequently a plain little stone set up in the

earth, with the inscription, "Rest, and be thankful!"

Is not the stone just a little like a grave-stone, my friend? Perhaps it

is. But if we take rest when we require it during life, we shall not

need the grave's rest quite so soon.

LETTER VII.

TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.

The regret for lost time often a needless one--Tillier's doctrine

about _flanerie_--How much is gained in idle hours--Sainte-Beuve's

conviction that whatever he did he studied the infinite book of the

world and of life--Harness--Free play of the mind necessary--The

freedom of a grain of desert-sand--The freedom of the wild bee.

If we asked any intellectual workman what he would do if his life were

to be lived over again, I believe the answer, whatever its form, would

amount ultimately to this: "I would economize my time better." Very

likely if the opportunity were granted him he would do nothing of the

sort; very likely he would waste his time in ways more authorized by

custom, yet waste it just as extravagantly as he had done after his own

original fashion; but it always seems to us as if we could use the time

better if we had it over again.

It seems to me in looking back over the last thirty years, that the only

time really wasted has been that spent in laborious obedience to some

external authority. It may be a dangerous doctrine which Claude Tillier

expressed in an immortal sentence, but dangerous or not, it is full of

intellectual truth: "Le temps le mieux employe est celui que l'on

perd."[11] If what we are accustomed to consider lost time could be

removed, as to its effects at least, from the sum of our existence, it

is certain that we should suffer from a great intellectual

impoverishment. All the best knowledge of mankind, to begin with, is

acquired in hours which hard-working people consider lost hours--in

hours, that is, of pleasure and recreation. Deduct all that we have

learnt about men in times of recreation, in clubs and smoking-rooms, on

the hunting-field, on the cricket-ground, on the deck of the yacht, on

the box of the drag or the dog-cart, would the residue be worth very

much? would it not be a mere heap of dry bones without any warm flesh to

cover them? Even the education of most of us, such as it is, has been in

a great measure acquired out of school, as it were; I mean outside of

the acknowledged duties of our more serious existence. Few Englishmen

past forty have studied English literature either as a college exercise

or a professional preparation; they have read it privately, as an

amusement. Few Englishmen past forty have studied modern languages, or

science, or the fine arts, from any obedience to duty, but merely from

taste and inclination. And even if we studied these things formally, as

young men often do at the present day, it is not from the formal study

that we should get the _perfume_ of the language or the art, but from

idle hours in foreign lands and galleries. It is superfluous to

recommend idleness to the unintellectual, but the intellectual too often

undervalue it. The laborious intellect contracts a habit of

strenuousness which is some times a hindrance to its best activity.

"I have arrived," said Sainte-Beuve, "perhaps by way of secretly

excusing my own idleness, perhaps by a deeper feeling of the principle

that all comes to the same, at the conclusion that whatever I do or do

not, working in the study at continuous labor, scattering myself in

articles, spreading myself about in society, giving my time away to

troublesome callers, to poor people, to _rendez-vous_, in the street, no

matter to whom and to what, I cease not to do one and the same thing, to

read one and the same book, the infinite book of the world and of life,

that no one ever finishes, in which the wisest read farthest; I read it

then at all the pages which present themselves, in broken fragments,

backwards, what matters it? I never cease going on. The greater the

medley, the more frequent the interruption, the more I get on with this

book in which one is never beyond the middle; but the profit is to have

had it open before one at all sorts of different pages."

A distinguished author wrote to another author less distinguished: "You

have gone through a good deal of really vigorous study, but have not

_been in harness_ yet." By harness he meant discipline settled

beforehand like military drill. Now, the advantages of drill are evident

and very generally recognized, but the advantages of intellectual

_flanerie_ are not so generally recognized. For the work of the

intellect to be clear and healthy, a great deal of free play of the mind

is absolutely necessary. Harness is good for an hour or two at a time,

but the finest intellects have never _lived_ in harness. In reading any

book that has much vitality you are sure to meet with many allusions and

illustrations which the author hit upon, not when he was in harness, but

out at grass. Harness trains us to the systematic performance of our

work, and increases our practical strength by regulated exercise, but it

does not supply everything that is necessary to the perfect development

of the mind. The truth is, that we need both the discipline of harness

and the abundant nourishment of the free pasture. Yet may not our

freedom be the profitless, choiceless, freedom of a grain of

desert-sand, carried hither and thither by the wind, gaining nothing and

improving nothing, so that it does not signify where it was carried

yesterday or where it may fall to-morrow, but rather the liberty of the

wild bee, whose coming and going are ordered by no master, nor fixed by

any premeditated regulation, yet which misses no opportunity of

increase, and comes home laden in the twilight. Who knows where he has

wandered; who can tell over what banks and streams the hum of his wings

has sounded? Is anything in nature freer than he is; can anything

account better for a rational use of freedom? Would he do his work

better if tiny harness were ingeniously contrived for him? Where then

would be the golden honey, and where the waxen cells?

LETTER VIII.

TO A FRIEND (HIGHLY CULTIVATED) WHO CONGRATULATED HIMSELF ON HAVING

ENTIRELY ABANDONED THE HABIT OF READING NEWSPAPERS.

Advantages in economy of time--Much of what we read in newspapers is

useless to our culture--The too great importance which they attach to

novelty--Distortion by party spirit--An instance of false

presentation--Gains to serenity by abstinence from

newspapers--Newspapers keep up our daily interest in each other--The

French peasantry--The newspaper-reading Americans--An instance of

total abstinence from newspapers--Auguste Comte--A suggestion of

Emerson's--The work of newspaper correspondents--War

correspondents--Mr. Stanley--M. Erdan, of the _Temps_.

Your abstinence from newspaper reading is not anew experiment in itself,

though it is new in reference to your particular case, and I await its

effects with interest. I shall be curious to observe the consequences,

to an intellect constituted as yours is, of that total cutting off from

the public interests of your own century which an abstinence from

newspapers implies. It is clear that, whatever the loss may be, you

have a definite gain to set against it. The time which you have hitherto

given to newspapers, and which may be roughly estimated at about five

hundred hours a year, is henceforth a valuable time-income to be applied

to whatever purposes your best wisdom may select. When an intellectual

person has contrived by the force of one simple resolution to effect so

fine an economy as this, it is natural that he should congratulate

himself. Your feelings must be like those of an able finance minister

who has found means of closing a great leak in the treasury--if any

economy possible in the finances of a State could ever relatively equal

that splendid stroke of time-thrift which your force of will has enabled

you to effect. In those five hundred hours, which are now your own, you

may acquire a science or obtain a more perfect command over one of the

languages which you have studied. Some department of your intellectual

labors which has hitherto been unsatisfactory to you, because it was too

imperfectly cultivated, may henceforth be as orderly and as fruitful as

a well-kept garden. You may become thoroughly conversant with the works

of more than one great author whom you have neglected, not from lack of

interest, but from want of time. You may open some old chamber of the

memory that has been dark and disused for many a year; you may clear the

cobwebs away, and let the fresh light in, and make it habitable once

again.

Against these gains, of which some to a man of your industry are

certain, and may be counted upon, what must be our estimate of the

amount of sacrifice or loss? It is clear to both of us that much of what

we read in the newspapers is useless to our culture. A large proportion

of newspaper-writing is occupied with speculation on what is likely to

happen in the course of a few months; therefore, by waiting until the

time is past, we know the event without having wasted time in

speculations which could not effect it. Another rather considerable

fraction of newspaper matter consists of small events which have

interest for the day, owing to their novelty, but which will not have

the slightest permanent importance. The whole press of a

newspaper-reading country, like England or America, may be actively

engaged during the space of a week or a fortnight in discussing some

incident which everybody will have forgotten in six months; and besides

these sensational incidents, there are hundreds of less notorious ones,

often fictitious, inserted simply for the temporary amusement of the

reader. The greatest evil of newspapers, in their effect on the

intellectual life, is the enormous importance which they are obliged to

attach to mere novelty. From the intellectual point of view, it is of no

consequence whether a thought occurred twenty-two centuries ago to

Aristotle or yesterday evening to Mr. Charles Darwin, and it is one of

the distinctive marks of the truly intellectual to be able to take a

hearty interest in all truth, independently of the date of its

discovery. The emphasis given by newspapers to novelty exhibits things

in wrong relations, as the lantern shows you what is nearest at the cost

of making the general landscape appear darker by the contrast. Besides

this exhibition of things in wrong relations, there is a positive

distortion arising from the unscrupulousness of party, a distortion

which extends far beyond the limits of the empire.

An essay might be written on the distortion of English affairs in the

French press, or of French affairs in the English press, by writers who

are as strongly partisan in another country as in their own. "It is such

a grand thing," wrote an English Paris correspondent in 1870, "for

Adolphus Thiers, son of a poor laborer of Aix, and in early life a

simple journalist, to be at the head of the Government of France." This

is a fair specimen of the kind of false presentation which is so common

in party journalism. The newspaper from which I have quoted it was

strongly opposed to Thiers, being in fact one of the principal organs of

the English Bonapartists. It is not true that Thiers was the son of a

poor laborer of Aix. His father was a workman of Marseilles, his mother

belonging to a family in which neither wealth nor culture had been rare,

and his mother's relatives had him educated at the Lycee. The art of the

journalist in bringing together the two extremes of a career remarkable

for its steady ascent had for its object to produce the idea of

incongruity, of sudden and unsuitable elevation. Not only M. Thiers,

however, but every human being starts from a very small beginning, since

every man begins life as a baby. It is a great rise for one baby to the

Presidency of the French Republic; it was also a great rise for other

babies who have attained the premiership of England. The question is,

not what Thiers may have been seventy years ago, but what he was

immediately before his acceptance of the highest office of the State. He

was the most trusted and the most experienced citizen, so that the last

step in his career was as natural as the elevation of Reynolds to the

presidency of the Academy.

It is difficult for any one who cares for justice to read party journals

without frequent irritation, and it does not signify which side the

newspaper takes. Men are so unfair in controversy that we best preserve

the serenity of the intellect by studiously avoiding all literature that

has a controversial tone. By your new rule of abstinence from newspapers

you will no doubt gain almost as much in serenity as in time. To the

ordinary newspaper reader there is little loss of serenity, because he

reads only the newspaper that he agrees with, and however unfair it is,

he is pleased by its unfairness. But the highest and best culture makes

us disapprove of unfairness on our own side of the question also. We are

pained by it; we feel humiliated by it; we lament its persistence and

its perversity.

I have said nearly all that has to be said in favor of your rule of

abstinence. I have granted that the newspapers cost us much time, which,

if employed for great intellectual purposes, would carry us very far;

that they give disproportionate views of things by the emphasis they

give to novelty, and false views by the unfairness which belongs to

party. I might have added that newspaper writers give such a

preponderance to politics--not political philosophy, but to the everyday

work of politicians--that intellectual culture is thrown into the

background, and the election of a single member of Parliament is made to

seem of greater national importance than the birth of a powerful idea.

And yet, notwithstanding all these considerations, which are serious

indeed for the intellectual, I believe that your resolution is unwise,

and that you will find it to be untenable. One momentous reason more

than counterbalances all these considerations put together. Newspapers

are to the whole civilized world what the daily house-talk is to the

members of a household; they keep up our daily interest in each other,

they save us from the evils of isolation. To live as a member of the

great white race of men, the race that has filled Europe and America,

and colonized or conquered whatever other territories it has been

pleased to occupy, to share from day to day its cares, its thoughts, its

aspirations, it is necessary that every man should read his daily

newspaper. Why are the French peasants so bewildered and at sea, so out

of place in the modern world? It is because they never read a newspaper.

And why are the inhabitants of the United States, though scattered over

a territory fourteen times the area of France, so much more capable of

concerted political action, so much more _alive_ and modern, so much

more interested in new discoveries of all kinds and capable of selecting

and utilizing the best of them? It is because the newspaper penetrates

everywhere; and even the lonely dweller on the prairie or in the forest

is not intellectually isolated from the great currents of public life

which flow through the telegraph and the press.

The experiment of doing without newspapers has been tried by a whole

class, the French peasantry, with the consequences that we know, and it

has also from time to time been tried by single individuals belonging to

more enlightened sections of society. Let us take one instance, and let

us note what appear to have been the effects of this abstinence. Auguste

Comte abstained from newspapers as a teetotaller abstains from

spirituous liquors. Now, Auguste Comte possessed a gift of nature which,

though common in minor degrees, is in the degree in which he possessed

it rarer than enormous diamonds. That gift was the power of dealing with

abstract intellectual conceptions, and living amidst them always, as the

practical mind lives in and deals with material things. And it happened

in Comte's case, as it usually does happen in cases of very peculiar

endowment, that the gift was accompanied by the instincts necessary to

its perfect development and to its preservation. Comte instinctively

avoided the conversation of ordinary people, because he felt it to be

injurious to the perfect exercise of his faculty, and for the same

reason he would not read newspapers. In imposing upon himself these

privations he acted like a very eminent living etcher, who, having the

gift of an extraordinary delicacy of hand, preserves it by abstinence

from everything that may effect the steadiness of the nerves. There is a

certain difference, however, between the two cases which I am anxious to

accentuate. The etcher runs no risk of any kind by his rule of

abstinence. He refrains from several common indulgences, but he denies

himself nothing that is necessary to health. I may even go farther, and

say that the rules which he observes for the sake of perfection in his

art, might be observed with advantage by many who are not artists, for

the sake of their own tranquillity, without the loss of anything but

pleasure. The rules which Comte made for himself involved, on the other

hand, a great peril. In detaching himself so completely from the

interests and ways of thinking of ordinary men, he elaborated, indeed,

the conceptions of the positive philosophy, but arrived afterwards at a

peculiar kind of intellectual decadence from which it is

possible--probable even--that the rough common sense of the newspapers

might have preserved him. They would have saved him, I seriously

believe, from that mysticism which led to the invention of a religion

far surpassing in unreasonableness the least rational of the creeds of

tradition. It is scarcely imaginable, except on the supposition of

actual insanity, that any regular reader of the _Times_, the _Temps_,

the _Daily News_, and the _Saturday Review_, should believe the human

race to be capable of receiving as the religion of its maturity the

Comtist Trinity and the Comtist Virgin Mother. A Trinity consisting of

the Great Being (or humanity), the Great Fetish (or the earth), and the

Great Midst (or space); a hope for the human race (how unphysiological!)

that women might ultimately arrive at maternity independently of virile

help,--these are conceptions so remote, not only from the habits of

modern thought, but (what is more important) from its tendencies, that

they could not occur to a mind in regular communication with its

contemporaries.

"If you should transfer the amount of your reading day by day from the

newspaper to the standard authors?" To this suggestion of Emerson's it

may be answered that the loss would be greater than the gain. The

writers of Queen Anne's time could educate an Englishman of Queen Anne's

time, but they can only partially educate an Englishman of Queen

Victoria's time. The mind is like a merchant's ledger, it requires to be

continually posted up to the latest date. Even the last telegram may

have upset some venerable theory that has been received as infallible

for ages.

In times when great historical events are passing before our eyes, the

journalist is to future historians what the African traveller is to the

map-makers. His work is neither complete nor orderly, but it is the

fresh record of an eye-witness, and enables us to become ourselves

spectators of the mighty drama of the world. Never was this service so

well rendered as it is now, by correspondents who achieve heroic feats

of bodily and mental prowess, exposing themselves to the greatest

dangers, and writing much and well in circumstances the most unfavorable

to literary composition. How vividly the English war correspondents

brought before us the reality of the great conflict between Germany and

France! What a romantic achievement, worthy to be sung in heroic verse,

was the finding of Livingstone by Stanley! Not less interesting have

been the admirable series of letters by M. Erdan in the _Temps_, in

which, with the firmness of a master-hand, he has painted from the life,

week after week, year after year, the decline and fall of the temporal

power of the Papacy. I cannot think that any page of Roman history is

better worth reading than his letters, more interesting, instructive,

lively, or authentic. Yet with your contempt for newspapers you would

lose all this profitable entertainment, and seek instead of it the

accounts of former epochs not half so interesting as this fall of the

temporal power, accounts written in most cases by men in libraries who

had not seen the sovereigns they wrote about, nor talked with the people

whose condition they attempted to describe. You have a respect for these

accounts because they are printed in books, and bound in leather, and

entitled "history," whilst you despise the direct observation of a man

like Erdan, because he is only a journalist, and his letters are

published in a newspaper. Is there not some touch of prejudice in this,

some mistake, some narrowness of intellectual aristocracy?

LETTER IX.

TO AN AUTHOR WHO APPRECIATED CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.

Miss Mitford on the selfishness of authors--A suggestion of

Emerson's--A laconic rule of his--Traces of jealousy--And of a more

subtle feeling--A contradiction--Necessary to resist the invasion of

the present--A certain equilibrium--The opposite of a pedant--The best

classics not pedants, but artists.

Reading the other day a letter by Miss Mitford, I was reminded of you as

the eye is reminded of green when it sees scarlet. You, whose interest

in literature has ever kept pace with the time, to whom no new thing is

unwelcome if only it is good, are safe from her accusations; but how

many authors have deserved them! Miss Mitford is speaking of a certain

writer who is at the same time a clergyman, and whom it is not

difficult to recognize.

"I never," she says, "saw him interested in the slightest degree by the

work of any other author, except, indeed, one of his own followers or of

his own clique, and then only as admiring or helping him. He has great

kindness and great sympathy with working people, or with a dying friend,

but I profess to you I am amazed at the utter selfishness of authors. I

do not know one single poet who cares for any man's poetry but his own.

In general they read no books except such as may be necessary to their

own writings--that is to the work they happen to be about, and even then

I suspect that they only read the bits that they may immediately want.

You know the absolute ignorance in which Wordsworth lived of all modern

works; and if, out of compliment to a visitor, he thought it needful to

seem to read or listen to two or three stanzas, he gave unhesitating

praise to the writer himself, but took especial care not to repeat the

praise where it might have done him good--utterly fair and false."

There are touches of this spirit of indifference to contemporary

literature in several writers and scholars whom we know. There are

distinct traces of it even in published writings, though it is much more

evident in private life and habit. Emerson seriously suggests that "the

human mind would perhaps be a gainer if all the secondary writers were

lost--say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, through

the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds." In the same

spirit we have Emerson's laconic rule, "Never read any but famed books,"

which suggests the remark that if men had obeyed this rule from the

beginning, no book could ever have acquired reputation, and nobody would

ever have read anything. The idea of limiting English literature to a

holy trinity of Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, and voluntarily losing

all other authors, seems to me the most intense expression of the spirit

of aristocracy in reading. It is as if a man were to decide in his own

mind that society would be the better if all persons except the three

Emperors were excluded from it. There is a want of reliance upon one's

own judgment, and an excess of faith in the estimates of others, when we

resolve to read only those books which come to us in the splendor of a

recognized intellectual royalty. We read either to gain information, to

have good thinking suggested to us, or to have our imagination

stimulated. In the way of knowledge the best authors are always the most

recent, so that Bacon could not suffice. In the way of thinking, our

methods have gained in precision since Milton's time, and we are helped

by a larger experience than his. The one thing which Shakespeare and

Milton can do for us quite perfectly still, is to fill our imagination

richly, and give it a fine stimulus. But modern writers can render us

the same service.

Is there not a little jealousy of contemporaries in the persistence with

which some authors avoid them, and even engage others to avoid them? May

not there be a shade of another feeling than jealousy, a feeling more

subtle in operation, the undefined apprehension that we may find, even

amongst our more obscure contemporaries, merit equal to our own? So long

as we restrict our reading to old books of great fame we are safe from

this apprehension, for if we find admirable qualities, we know

beforehand that the world has handsomely acknowledged them, and we

indulge in the hope that our own admirable qualities will be recognized

by posterity with equal liberality. But it creates an unpleasant feeling

of uneasiness to see quantities of obscure contemporary work, done in a

plain way to earn a living by men of third or fourth-rate reputation, or

of no reputation at all, which in many respects would fairly sustain a

comparison with our own. It is clear that an author ought to be the last

person to advise the public not to read contemporary literature, since

he is himself a maker of contemporary literature; and there is a direct

contradiction between the invitation to read his book, which he

circulates by the act of publishing, and the advice which the book

contains. Emerson is more safe from this obvious rejoinder when he

suggests to us to transfer our reading day by day from the newspaper to

the standard authors. But are these suggestions anything more than the

reaction of an intellectual man against the too prevalent customs of

the world? The reading practised by most people, by all who do not set

before themselves intellectual culture as one of the definite aims of

life, is remarkable for the regularity with which it neglects all the

great authors of the past. The books provided by the circulating

library, the reviews and magazines, the daily newspapers, are read

whilst they are novelties, but the standard authors are left on their

shelves unopened. We require a firm resolution to resist this invasion

of what is new, because it flows like an unceasing river, and unless we

protect our time against it by some solid embankment of unshakable rule

and resolution, every nook and cranny of it will be filled and flooded.

An Englishman whose life was devoted to culture, but who lived in an

out-of-the-way place on the Continent, told me that he considered it a

decided advantage to his mind to live quite outside of the English

library system, because if he wanted to read a new book he had to buy it

and pay heavily for carriage besides, which made him very careful in his

choice. For the same reason he rejoiced that the nearest English

news-room was two hundred miles from his residence.

But, on the other hand, what would be the condition of a man's mind who

never read anything but the classic authors? He would live in an

intellectual monastery, and would not even understand the classic

authors themselves, for we understand the past only by referring it to

what we know in the present.

It is best to preserve our minds in a state of equilibrium, and not to

allow our repugnance to what we see as an evil to drive us into an evil

of an opposite kind. We are too often like those little toy-fish with a

bit of steel in their mouths, which children attract with a magnet. If

you present the positive pole of the magnet, the fish rushes at it at

once, but if you offer the negative end it retreats continually.

Everything relatively to our character has this positive or negative

end, and we either rush to things or rush away from them. Some persons

are actually driven away from the most entertaining writers because they

happen to be what are called classics, because pedants boast of having

read them. I know a man who is exactly the opposite of a pedant, who has

a horror of the charlatanism which claims social and intellectual

position as the reward for having laboriously waded through those

authors who are conventionally termed "classical," and this opposition

to pedantry has given him an aversion to the classics themselves, which

he never opens. The shallow pretence to admiration of famous writers

which is current in the world is so distasteful to the love of honesty

and reality which is the basis of his character, that by an unhappy

association of ideas he has acquired a repugnance to the writers

themselves. But such men as Horace, Terence, Shakespeare, Moliere,

though they have had the misfortune to be praised and commentated upon

by pedants, were in their lives the precise opposite of pedants; they

were _artists_ whose study was human nature, and who lived without

pretension in the common world of men. The pedants have a habit of

considering these genial old artists as in some mysterious way their own

private property, for do not the pedants live by expounding them? And

some of us are frightened away from the fairest realms of poetry by the

fences of these grim guardians.

LETTER X.

TO AN AUTHOR WHO KEPT VERY IRREGULAR HOURS.

Julian Fane--His late hours--Regularity produced by habit--The time of

the principal effort--That the chief work should be done in the best

hours--Physicians prefer early to late work--The practice of Goethe

and some modern authors--The morning worker ought to live in a

tranquil neighborhood--Night-work--The medical objection to it--The

student's objection to day-work--Time to be kept in masses by adults,

but divided into small portions by children--Rapid turning of the

mind--Cuvier eminent for this faculty--The Duke of Wellington--The

faculty more available with some occupations than others--The slavery

of a minute obedience to the clock--Broad rules the best--Books of

agenda, good in business, but not in the higher intellectual pursuits.

What you told me of your habits in the employment of your hours reminded

me of Julian Fane. Mr. Lytton tells us that "after a long day of

professional business, followed by a late evening of social amusement,

he would return in the small hours of the night to his books, and sit,

unwearied, till sunrise in the study of them. Nor did he then seem to

suffer from this habit of late hours. His nightly vigils occasioned no

appearance of fatigue the next day.... He rarely rose before noon, and

generally rose much later."

But however irregular a man's distribution of his time may be in the

sense of wanting the government of fixed rules, there always comes in

time a certain regularity by the mere operation of habit. People who get

up very late hardly ever do so in obedience to a rule; many get up early

by rule, and many more are told that they ought to get up early, and

believe it, and aspire to that virtue, but fail to carry it into

practice. The late-risers are rebels and sinners--in this respect--to a

man, and so persistently have the wise, from Solomon downwards, harped

upon the moral loveliness of early rising and the degradation which

follows the opposite practice, that one can hardly get up after eight

without either an uncomfortable sense of guilt or an extraordinary

callousness. Yet the late-risers, though obeying no rule, for the

abandoned sinner recognizes none, become regular in their late rising

from the gradual fixing power of habit. Even Julian Fane, though he

regretted his desultory ways, "and dwelt with great earnestness on the

importance of regular habits of work," was perhaps less irregular than

he himself believed. We are sure to acquire habits; what is important is

not so much that the habits should be regular, as that their regularity

should be of the kind most favorable in the long run to the

accomplishment of our designs, and this never comes by chance, it is the

result of an effort of the will in obedience to governing wisdom.

The first question which every one who has the choice of his hours must

settle for himself is at what time of day he will make his principal

effort; for the day of every intellectual workman ought to be marked by

a kind of artistic composition; there ought to be some one labor

distinctly recognized as dominant, with others in subordination, and

subordination of various degrees. Now for the hours at which the

principal effort ought to be made, it is not possible to fix them by the

clock so as to be suitable for everybody, but a broad rule may be

arrived at which is applicable to all imaginable cases. The rule is

this--to do the chief work in the best hours; to give it the pick of

your day; and by day I do not mean only the solar day, but the whole of

the twenty-four hours. There is an important physiological reason for

giving the best hours to the most important work. The better the

condition of the brain and the body, and the more favorable the

surrounding circumstances, the smaller will be the cost to the

organization of the labor that has to be done. It is always the safest

way to do the heaviest (or most important) work at the time and under

the conditions which make it the least costly.

Physicians are unanimous in their preference of early to late work; and

no doubt, if the question were not complicated by other considerations,

we could not do better than to follow their advice in its simplicity.

Goethe wrote in the morning, with his faculties refreshed by sleep and

not yet excited by any stimulant. I could mention several living authors

of eminence who pursue the same plan, and find it favorable alike to

health and to production. The rule which they follow is never to write

after lunch, leaving the rest of their time free for study and society,

both of which are absolutely necessary to authors. According to this

system it is presumed that the hours between breakfast and lunch are the

best hours. In many cases they are so. A person in fair health, after

taking a light early breakfast without any heavier stimulant than tea or

coffee, finds himself in a state of freshness highly favorable to sound

and agreeable thinking. His brain will be in still finer order if the

breakfast has been preceded by a cold bath, with friction and a little

exercise. The feeling of freshness, cleanliness, and moderate

exhilaration, will last for several hours, and during those hours the

intellectual work will probably be both lively and reasonable. It is

difficult for a man who feels cheerful and refreshed, and whose task

seems easy and light, to write anything morbid or perverse.

But for the morning to be so good as I have just described it, the

workman must be quite favorably situated. He ought to live in a very

tranquil neighborhood, and to be as free as possible from anxiety as to

what the postman may have in reserve for him. If his study-window looks

out on a noisy street, and if the day is sure, as it wears on, to bring

anxious business of its own, then the increasing noise and the

apprehension (even though it be almost entirely unconscious) of

impending business, will be quite sufficient to interfere with the work

of any man who is the least in the world nervous, and almost all

intellectual laborers _are_ nervous, more or less. Men who have the

inestimable advantage of absolute tranquillity, at all times, do well to

work in the morning, but those who can only get tranquillity at times

independent of their own choice have a strong reason for working at

those times, whether they happen to be in the morning or not.

In an excellent article on "Work" (evidently written by an experienced

intellectual workman), which appeared in one of the early numbers of the

_Cornhill Magazine_, and was remarkable alike for practical wisdom and

the entire absence of traditional dogmatism, the writer speaks frankly

in favor of night-work, "If you can work at all at night, one hour at

that time is worth any two in the morning. The house is hushed, the

brain is clear, the distracting influences of the day are at an end.

You have not to disturb yourself with thoughts of what you are about to

do, or what you are about to suffer. You know that there is a gulf

between you and the affairs of the outside world, almost like the chasm

of death; and that you need not take thought of the morrow until the

morrow has come. There are few really great thoughts, such as the world

will not willingly let die, that have not been conceived under the quiet

stars."

The medical objection to night-work in the case of literary men would

probably be that the night is _too_ favorable to literary production.

The author of the Essay just quoted says that at night "you only drift

into deeper silence _and quicker inspiration_. If the right mood is upon

you, _you write on_; if not, your pillow awaits you." Exactly so; that

is to say, the brain, owing to the complete external tranquillity, can

so concentrate its efforts on the subject in hand as to work itself up

into a luminous condition which is fed by the most rapid destruction of

the nervous substance that ever takes place within the walls of a human

skull. "If the right mood is upon you, _you write on_;" in other words,

if you have once well lighted your spirit-lamp, it will go on burning so

long as any spirit is left in it, for the air is so tranquil that

nothing comes to blow it out. You drift into deeper silence and "quicker

inspiration." It is just this quicker inspiration that the physician

dreads.

Against this objection may be placed the equally serious objection to

day-work, that every interruption, when you are particularly anxious not

to be interrupted, causes a definite loss and injury to the nervous

system. The choice must therefore be made between two dangers, and if

they are equally balanced there can be no hesitation, because all the

_literary_ interests of an author are on the side of the most tranquil

time. Literary work is always sure to be much better done when there is

no fear of disturbance than under the apprehension of it; and precisely

the same amount of cerebral effort will produce, when the work is

uninterrupted, not only better writing, but a much greater quantity of

writing. The knowledge that he is working well and productively is an

element of health to every workman because it encourages cheerful habits

of mind.

In the division of time it is an excellent rule for adults to keep it as

much as possible _in large masses_, not giving a quarter of an hour to

one occupation and a quarter to another, but giving three, four, or five

hours to one thing at a time. In the case of children an opposite

practice should be followed; they are able to change their attention

from one subject to another much more easily than we can, whilst at the

same time they cannot fix their minds for very long without cerebral

fatigue leading to temporary incapacity. The custom prevalent in

schools, of making the boys learn several different things in the course

of the day, is therefore founded upon the necessities of the boy-nature,

though most grown men would find that changes so frequent would, for

them, have all the inconveniences of interruption. To boys they come as

relief, to men as interruption. The reason is that the physical

condition of the brain is different in the two cases; but in our loose

way of talking about these things we may say that the boy's ideas are

superficial, like the plates and dishes on the surface of a

dinner-table, which may be rapidly changed without inconvenience,

whereas the man's ideas, having all struck root down to the very depths

of his nature, are more like the plants in a garden, which cannot be

removed without a temporary loss both of vigor and of beauty, and the

loss cannot be instantaneously repaired. For a man to do his work

thoroughly well, it is necessary that he should dwell in it long enough

at a time to get all the powers of his mind fully under command with

reference to the particular work in hand, and he cannot do this without

tuning his whole mind to the given diapason, as a tuner tunes a piano.

Some men can tune their minds more rapidly, as violins are tuned, and

this faculty may to a certain extent be acquired by efforts of the will

very frequently repeated. Cuvier had this faculty in the most eminent

degree. One of his biographers says: "His extreme facility for study,

and of directing all the powers of his mind to diverse occupations of

study, from one quarter of an hour to another, was one of the most

extraordinary qualities of his mind." The Duke of Wellington also

cultivated the habit (inestimably valuable to a public man) of directing

the whole of his attention to the subject under consideration, however

frequently that subject might happen to be changed. But although men of

exceptional power and very exceptional flexibility may do this with

apparent impunity, that still depends very much on the nature of the

occupation. There are some occupations which are not incompatible with a

fragmentary division of time, because these occupations are themselves

fragmentary. For example, you may study languages in phrase-books during

very small spaces of time, because the complete phrase is in itself a

very small thing, but you could not so easily break and resume the

thread of an elaborate argument. I suspect that though Cuvier appeared

to his contemporaries a man remarkably able to leave off and resume his

work at will, he must have taken care to do work that would bear

interruption at those times when he knew himself to be most liable to

it. And although, when a man's time is unavoidably broken up into

fragments, no talent of a merely auxiliary kind can be more precious

than that of turning each of those fragments to advantage, it is still

true that he whose time is at his own disposal will do his work most

calmly, most deliberately, and therefore on the whole most thoroughly

and perfectly, when he keeps it in fine masses. The mere knowledge that

you have three or four clear hours before you is in itself a great help

to the spirit of thoroughness, both in study and in production. It is

agreeable too, when the sitting has come to an end, to perceive that a

definite advance is the result of it, and advance in anything is

scarcely perceptible in less than three or four hours.

There are several pursuits which _cannot_ be followed in fragments of

time, on account of the necessary preparations. It is useless to begin

oil-painting unless you have full time to set your palette properly, to

get your canvas into a proper state for working upon, to pose the model

as you wish, and settle down to work with everything as it ought to be.

In landscape-painting from nature you require the time to go to the

selected place, and after your arrival to arrange your materials and

shelter yourself from the sun. In scientific pursuits the preparations

are usually at least equally elaborate, and often much more so. To

prepare for an experiment, or for a dissection, takes time which we feel

to be disproportionate when it leaves too little for the scientific work

itself. It is for this reason more frequently than for any other that

amateurs who begin in enthusiasm, so commonly, after a while, abandon

the objects of their pursuit.

There is a kind of slavery to which no really intellectual man would

ever voluntarily submit, a minute obedience to the clock. Very

conscientious people often impose upon themselves this sort of slavery.

A person who has hampered himself with rules of this kind will take up a

certain book, for instance, when the clock strikes nine, and begin at

yesterday's mark, perhaps in the middle of a paragraph. Then he will

read with great steadiness till a quarter-past nine, and exactly on the

instant when the minute-hand gets opposite the dot, he will shut his

book, however much the passage may happen to interest him. It was in

allusion to good people of this kind that Sir Walter Scott said he had

never known a man of genius who could be perfectly regular in his

habits, whilst he had known many blockheads who could. It is easy to see

that a minute obedience to the clock is unintellectual in its very

nature, for the intellect is not a piece of mechanism as a clock is, and

cannot easily be made to act like one. There may be perfect

correspondence between the locomotives and the clocks on a railway, for

if the clocks are pieces of mechanism the locomotives are so likewise,

but the intellect always needs a certain looseness and latitude as to

time. Very broad rules are the best, such as "Write in the morning, read

in the afternoon, see friends in the evening," or else "Study one day

and produce another, alternately," or even "Work one week and see the

world another week, alternately."

There is a fretting habit, much recommended by men of business and of

great use to them, of writing the evening before the duties of the day

in a book of agenda. If this is done at all by intellectual men with

reference to their pursuits, it ought to be done in a very broad, loose

way, never minutely. An intellectual worker ought never to make it a

matter of conscience (in intellectual labor) to do a predetermined

quantity of little things. This sort of conscientiousness frets and

worries, and is the enemy of all serenity of thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] Lewes's "Life of Goethe," Book vii. chap. 8.

[11] The best employed time is that which one loses.

PART XI.

_TRADES AND PROFESSIONS._

LETTER I.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF ABILITY AND CULTURE WHO HAD NOT DECIDED ABOUT

HIS PROFESSION.

The Church--Felicities and advantages of the clerical profession--Its

elevated ideal--That it is favorable to noble studies--French priests

and English Clergymen--The professional point of view--Difficulty of

disinterested thinking--Colored light--Want of strict

accuracy--Quotation from a sermon--The drawback to the clerical

life--Provisional nature of intellectual conclusions--The legal

profession--That it affords gratification to the intellectual

powers--Want of intellectual disinterestedness in lawyers--Their

absorption in professional life--Anecdote of a London

lawyer--Superiority of lawyers in their sense of

affairs--Medicine--The study of it a fine preparation for the

intellectual life--Social rise of medical men coincident with the

mental progress of communities--Their probable future influence on

education--The heroic side of their profession--The military and naval

professions--Bad effect of the privation of

solitude--Interruption--Anecdote of Cuvier--The fine arts--In what way

they are favorable to thought--Intellectual leisure of

artists--Reasoning artists--Sciences included in the fine arts.

It may be taken for granted that to a mind constituted as yours is, no

profession will be satisfactory which does not afford free play to the

intellectual powers. You might no doubt exercise resolution enough to

bind yourself down to uncongenial work for a term of years, but it would

be with the intention of retiring as soon as you had realized a

competency. The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and

educates what is best in us.

You had thoughts, at one time, of the Church, and the Church would have

suited you in many respects very happily, yet not, I think, in all

respects. The clerical profession has many great felicities and

advantages: it educates and develops, by its mild but regular

discipline, much of our higher nature; it sets before us an elevated

ideal, worth striving for at the cost of every sacrifice but one, of

which I intend to say something farther on; and it offers just that

mixture of public and private life which best affords the alternation of

activity and rest. It is an existence in many respects most favorable to

the noblest studies. It offers the happiest combination of duties that

satisfy the conscience with leisure for the cultivation of the mind; it

gives the easiest access to all classes of society, providing for the

parson himself a neutral and independent position, so safe that he need

only conduct himself properly to preserve it. How superior, from the

intellectual point of view, is this liberal existence to the narrower

one of a French _cure de campagne_! I certainly think that if a good

_cure_ has an exceptional genius for sanctity, his chances of becoming a

perfect saint are better than those of a comfortable English incumbent,

who is at the same time a gentleman and man of the world, but he is not

nearly so well situated for leading the intellectual life. Our own

clergy have a sort of middle position between the _cure_ and the layman,

which without at all interfering with their spiritual vocation, makes

them better judges of the character of laymen and more completely in

sympathy with it.

And yet, although the life of a clergyman is favorable to culture in

many ways, it is not wholly favorable to it. There exists, in clerical

thinking generally, just one restriction or impediment, which is the

overwhelming importance of the professional point of view. Of all the

professions the ecclesiastical one is that which most decidedly and most

constantly affects the judgment of persons and opinions. It is

peculiarly difficult for a clergyman to attain disinterestedness in his

thinking, to accept truth just as it may happen to present itself,

without passionately desiring that one doctrine may turn out to be

strong in evidence and another unsupported. And so we find the clergy,

as a class, anxious rather to discover aids to faith, than the simple

scientific truth; and the more the special priestly character develops

itself, the more we find them disposed to use their intellects for the

triumph of principles that are decided upon beforehand. Sometimes this

disposition leads them to see the acts of laymen in a colored light and

to speak of them without strict accuracy. Here is an example of what I

mean. A Jesuit priest preached a sermon in London very recently, in

which he said that "in Germany, France, Italy, and England, gigantic

efforts were being made to rob Christian children of the blessing of a

Christian education." "Herod, though dead," the preacher continued, "has

left his mantle behind him; and I wish that the soldiers of Herod in

those countries would plunge their swords into the breasts of little

children while they were innocent, rather than have their souls

destroyed by means of an unchristian and uncatholic education." No doubt

this is very earnest and sincere, but it is not accurate and just

thinking. The laity in the countries the preacher mentioned have

certainly a strong tendency to exclude theology from State schools,

because it is so difficult for a modern State to impose any kind of

theological teaching without injustice to minorities; but the laity do

not desire to deprive children of whatever instruction may be given to

them by the clergy of their respective communions. May I add, that to

the mind of a layman it seems a sanguinary desire that all little

children should have swords plunged into their breasts rather than be

taught in schools not clerically directed? The exact truth is, that the

powerful lay element is certainly separating itself from the

ecclesiastical element all over Europe, because it is found by

experience that the two have a great and increasing difficulty in

working harmoniously together, but the ecclesiastical element is

detached and not destroyed. The quotation I have just made is in itself

a sufficient illustration of that very peculiarity in the more exalted

ecclesiastical temperament, which often makes it so difficult for

priests and governments, in these times, to get on comfortably together.

Here is first a very inaccurate statement, and then an outburst of most

passionate feeling, whereas the intellect desires the strictest truth

and the most complete disinterestedness. As the temper of the laity

becomes more and more intellectual (and that is the direction of its

movement), the sacerdotal habit will become more and more remote from

it.

The clerical life has many strong attractions for the intellectual, and

just one drawback to counterbalance them. It offers tranquillity,

shelter from the interruptions and anxieties of the more active

professions, and powerful means of influence ready to hand; but it is

compatible with intellectual freedom and with the satisfaction of the

conscience, only just so long as the priest really remains a believer in

the details of his religion. Now, although we may reasonably hope to

retain the chief elements of our belief, although what a man believes at

twenty-five is always what he will most probably believe at fifty,

still, in an age when free inquiry is the common habit of cultivated

people of our sex, we may well hesitate before taking upon ourselves any

formal engagement for the future, especially in matters of detail. The

intellectual spirit does not regard its conclusions as being at any time

final, but always provisional; we hold what we believe to be the truth

until we can replace it by some more perfect truth, but cannot tell how

much of to-day's beliefs to-morrow will retain or reject. It may be

observed, however, that the regular performance of priestly functions is

in itself a great help to permanence in belief by connecting it closely

with practical habit, so that the clergy do really and honestly often

retain through life their hold on early beliefs which as laymen they

might have lost.

The profession of the law provides ample opportunities for a critical

intellect with a strong love of accuracy and a robust capacity for hard

work, besides which it is the best of worldly educations. Some lawyers

love their work as passionately as artists do theirs, others dislike it

very heartily, most of them seem to take it as a simple business to be

done for daily bread. Lawyers whose heart is in their work are

invariably men of superior ability, which proves that there is something

in it that affords gratification to the intellectual powers. However, in

speaking of lawyers, I feel ignorant and on the outside, because their

profession is one of which the interior feelings can be known to no one

who has not practised. One thing seems clear, they get the habit of

employing the whole strength and energy of their minds for especial and

temporary ends, the purpose being the service of the client, certainly

not the revelation of pure truth. Hence, although they become very

acute, and keen judges of that side of human nature which they

habitually see (not the best side), they are not more disinterested than

clergymen.[12] Sometimes they take up some study outside of their

profession and follow it disinterestedly, but this is rare. A busy

lawyer is much more likely than a clergyman to become entirely absorbed

in his professional life, because it requires so much more intellectual

exertion. I remember asking a very clever lawyer who lived in London,

whether he ever visited an exhibition of pictures, and he answered me by

the counter-inquiry whether I had read Chitty on Contracts, Collier on

Partnerships, Taylor on Evidence, Cruse's Digest, or Smith's Mercantile

Law? This seemed to me at the time a good instance of the way a

professional habit may narrow one's views of things, for these law-books

were written for lawyers alone, whilst the picture exhibitions were

intended for the public generally. My friend's answer would have been

more to the point if I had inquired whether he had read Linton on

Colors, and Burnet on Chiaroscuro.

There is just one situation in which we all may feel for a short time as

lawyers feel habitually. Suppose that two inexperienced players sit down

to a game of chess, and that each is backed by a clever person who is

constantly giving him hints. The two backers represent the lawyers, and

the players represent their clients. There is not much disinterested

thought in a situation of this kind, but there is a strong stimulus to

acuteness.

I think that lawyers are often superior to philosophers in their sense

of what is relatively important in human affairs with reference to

limited spaces of time, such as half a century. They especially know the

enormous importance of custom, which the speculative mind very readily

forgets, and they have in the highest degree that peculiar sense which

fits men for dealing with others in the affairs of ordinary life. In

this respect they are remarkably superior to clergymen, and superior

also to artists and men of science.

The profession of medicine is, of all fairly lucrative professions, the

one best suited to the development of the intellectual life. Having to

deal continually with science, being constantly engaged in following and

observing the operation of natural laws, it produces a sense of the

working of those laws which prepares the mind for bold and original

speculation, and a reliance upon their unfailing regularity, which gives

it great firmness and assurance. A medical education is the best

possible preparation for philosophical pursuits, because it gives them a

solid basis in the ascertainable. The estimation in which these studies

are held is an accurate meter of the intellectual advancement of a

community. When the priest is reverenced as a being above ordinary

humanity, and the physician slightly esteemed, the condition of society

is sure to be that of comparative ignorance and barbarism; and it is one

of several signs which indicate barbarian feeling in our own

aristocracy, that it has a contempt for the study of medicine. The

progress of society towards enlightenment is marked by the steady social

rise of the surgeon and the physician, a rise which still continues,

even in Western Europe. It is probable that before very long the medical

profession will exercise a powerful influence upon general education,

and take an active share in it. There are very strong reasons for the

opinion that schoolmasters educated in medicine would be peculiarly well

qualified to train both body and mind for a vigorous and active manhood.

An immense advantage, even from the intellectual point of view, in the

pursuit of medicine and surgery, is that they supply a discipline in

mental heroism. Other professions do this also, but not to the same

degree. The combination of an accurate training in positive science with

the habitual contempt of danger and contemplation of suffering and

death, is the finest possible preparation for noble studies and arduous

discoveries. I ought to add, however, that medical men in the provinces,

when they have not any special enthusiasm for their work, seem

peculiarly liable to the deadening influences of routine, and easily

fall behind their age. The medical periodicals provide the best remedy

for this.

The military and naval professions are too active, and too much bound to

obedience in their activity, for the highest intellectual pursuits; but

their greatest evil in this respect is the continual privation of

solitude, and the frequency of interruption. A soldier's life in the

higher ranks, when there is great responsibility and the necessity for

personal decision, undoubtedly leads to the most brilliant employment of

the mental powers, and develops a manliness of character which is often

of the greatest use in intellectual work; so that a man of science may

find his force augmented, and better under control, for having passed

through a military experience; but the life of barracks and camps is

destructive to continuity of thinking. The incompatibility becomes

strikingly manifest when we reflect how impossible it would have been

for Ney or Massena to do the work of Cuvier or Comte. Cuvier even

declined to accompany the expedition to Egypt, notwithstanding the

prospects of advantage that it offered. The reason he gave for this

refusal was, that he could do more for science in the tranquillity of

the Jardin des Plantes. He was a strict economist of time, and dreaded

the loss of it involved in following an army, even though his mission

would have been purely scientific. How much more would Cuvier have

dreaded the interruptions of a really military existence! It is these

interruptions, and not any want of natural ability, that are the true

explanation of the intellectual poverty which characterizes the military

profession. Of all the liberal professions it is the least studious.

Let me say a word in conclusion about the practical pursuit of the fine

arts. Painters are often remarkable for pleasant conversational power,

and a degree of intelligence strikingly superior to their literary

culture. This is because the processes of their art can be followed, at

least under certain circumstances, by the exercise of hand and eye,

directed merely by artistic taste and experience, whilst the intellect

is left free either for reflection or conversation. Rubens liked to be

read to when he painted; many artists like to hear people talk, and to

take a share occasionally in the conversation. The truth is that

artists, even when they work very assiduously, do in fact enjoy great

spaces of intellectual leisure, and often profit by them. Painting

itself is also a fine discipline for some of the best faculties of the

mind, though it is well known that the most gifted artists think least

about their art. Still there is a large class of painters, including

many eminent ones, who _proceed intellectually_ in the execution of

their works, who reason them out philosophically step by step, and

exercise a continual criticism upon their manual labor as it goes

forward. I find, as I know art and artists better, that this class is

more numerous than is commonly suspected, and that the charming effects

which we believe to be the result of pure inspiration have often been

elaborately reasoned out like a problem in mathematics. We are very apt

to forget that art includes a great science, the science of natural

appearances, and that the technical work of painters and engravers

cannot go forward safely without the profoundest knowledge of certain

delicate materials, this being also a science, and a difficult one. The

common tendency is to underrate (from ignorance) what is intellectual in

the practice of the fine arts; and yet the artists of past times have

left evidence enough that they thought about art, and thought deeply.

Artists are often illiterate; but it is possible to be at the same time

illiterate and intellectual; as we see frequent examples of

book-learning in people who have scarcely a single idea of their own.

LETTER II.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, BUT NO

PROFESSION.

The world only recognizes performance--Uselessness of

botch-work--Vastness of the interval between botch-work and

handicraft--Delusions of the well-to-do--Quotation from Charles

Lever--Indifference, and even contempt, for skill--Moral contempt for

skill--The contempt which comes from the pride of

knowledge--Intellectual value of skill and of professional discipline.

It is not a graceful thing for me to say, nor pleasant for you to hear,

that what you have done hitherto in art and literature is neither of

any value in itself nor likely to lead you to that which is truly and

permanently satisfying. I believe you have natural ability, though it

would not be easy for any critic to measure its degree when it has never

been developed by properly-directed work. Most critics would probably

err on the unfavorable side, for we are easily blind to powers that are

little more than latent. To see anything encouraging in your present

performance, it would need the sympathy and intelligence of the American

sculptor Greenough, of whom it was said that "his recognition was not

limited to achievement, but extended to latent powers." The world,

however, recognizes nothing short of performance, because the

performance is what it needs, and promises are of no use to it.

In this rough justice of the world there is a natural distribution of

rewards. You will be paid, in fame and money, for all excellent work;

and you will be paid, in money, though not in fame, for all work that is

even simply good, provided it be of a kind that the world needs, or

fancies that it needs. But you will never be paid at all for botch-work,

neither in money nor in fame, nor by your own inward approval.

For we all of us either know that our botch-work is worthless, or else

have serious misgivings about it. That which is less commonly realized

by those who have not undergone the test of professional labor is the

vastness of the interval that separates botch-work from handicraft, and

the difficulty of getting over it. "There are few delusions," Charles

Lever said in "The Bramleighs," "more common with well-to-do people than

the belief that if 'put to it' they could earn their own livelihood in a

variety of ways. Almost every man has some two or three or more

accomplishments which he fancies would be quite adequate to his support;

and remembering with what success the exercise of these gifts has ever

been hailed in the society of his friends, he has a sort of generous

dislike to be obliged to eclipse some poor drudge of a professional,

who, of course, will be consigned to utter oblivion after his own

performance. Augustus Bramleigh was certainly not a conceited or a vain

man, and yet he had often in his palmy days imagined how easy it would

be for him to provide for his own support. He was something of a

musician; he sang pleasingly; he drew a little; he knew something of

three or four modern languages; he had that sort of smattering

acquaintance with questions of religion, politics, and literature which

the world calls being 'well-informed,' and yet nothing short of the

grave necessity revealed to him that towards the object of securing a

livelihood a cobbler in his bulk was out-and-out his master. The world

has no need of the man of small acquirements, and would rather have its

shoes mended by the veriest botch of a professional than by the

cleverest amateur that ever studied a Greek sandal."

Something of this illusion, which Charles Lever has touched so truly,

may be due to a peculiarity of the English mind in its present (not

quite satisfactory) stage of development, a peculiarity which I am not

the first to point out, since it has been already indicated by Mr.

Pointer, the distinguished artist; and I think that this peculiarity is

to be found in very great force, perhaps in greater force than

elsewhere, in that well-to-do English middle class in which you have

been born and educated. It consists in a sort of indifference to skill

of all kinds, which passes into something not very far from active

contempt when a call is made for attention, recognition, admiration. The

source of this feeling will probably be found in the inordinate respect

for wealth, between which and highly developed personal skill, in

anything, there is a certain antagonism or incompatibility. The men of

real skill are almost always men who earn their living by their skill.

The feeling of the middle-class capitalists concerning the skilful man

may be expressed, not unjustly, as follows: "Yes, he is very clever; he

may well be clever--it is his trade; he gets his living by it." This is

held to exonerate us from the burden of admiration, and there is not any

serious interest in the achievements of human endeavor as evidence of

the marvellous natural endowments and capabilities of the human

organism. In some minds the indifference to skill is more active and

grows into very real, though not openly expressed contempt. This

contempt is partly moral. The skilful man always rejoices in his skill

with a heaven-bestowed joy and delight--one of the purest and most

divine pleasures given by God to man--an encouragement to labor, and a

reward, the best reward, after his arduous apprenticeship. But there is

a sour and severe spirit, hating all innocent pleasures, which despises

the gladness of the skilful as so much personal vanity.

There is also the contempt for skill which comes from the pride of

knowledge. To attain skill _in_ anything a degree of application is

necessary which absorbs more time than the acquisition of knowledge

_about_ the thing, so that the remarkably skilful man is not likely to

be the erudite man. There have been instances of men who possessed both

skill and learning. The American sculptor Greenough, and the English

painter Dyce, were at the same time both eminently skilful in their

craft and eminently learned out of it; but the combination is very rare.

Therefore the possession of skill has come to be considered presumptive

evidence of a want of general information.

But the truth is that professional skill is knowledge tested and

perfected by practical application, and therefore has a great

intellectual value. Professional life is to private individuals what

active warfare is to a military state. It brings to light every

deficiency, and reveals our truest needs. And therefore it seems to me a

matter for regret that you should pass your existence in irresponsible

privacy, and not have your attainments tested by the exigencies of some

professional career. The discipline which such a career affords, and

which no private resolution can ever adequately replace, may be all that

is wanting to your development.

LETTER III.

TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO WISHED TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO LITERATURE AS A

PROFESSION.

Byron's vexation at the idea of poetry being considered a

profession--Buffon could not bear to be called a naturalist--Cuvier

would not be called a Hellenist--Faraday's life not professional--The

intellectual life frequently protected by professions outside of

it--Professional work ought to be plain business work--Michelet's

account of the incubation of a book--Necessity for too great rapidity

of production in professional literature--It does not pay to do your

best--Journalism and magazine-writing--Illustration from a sister

art--Privilege of an author to be allowed to write little.

Do you remember how put out Byron was when some reviewer spoke of

Wordsworth as being "at the head of the profession"? Byron's vexation

was not entirely due to jealousy of Wordsworth, though that may have had

something to do with it, nor was it due either to an aristocratic

dislike of being in a "profession" himself, though this feeling may have

had a certain influence; it was due to a proper sense of the dignity of

the intellectual life. Buffon could not bear to be called a

"naturalist," and Cuvier in the same way disliked the title of

Hellenist, because it sounded professional: he said that though he knew

more Greek than all the Academy he was not a Hellenist as Gail was,

because he did not live by Greek.

Now, if this feeling had arisen merely from a dislike to having it

supposed that one is obliged to earn his own living, it would have been

a contemptibly vulgar sentiment, whoever professed it. Nothing can be

more honorable to a man than to earn his bread by honest industry of any

kind, whether it be manual or intellectual, and still I feel with Byron,

and Buffon, and Cuvier, that the great instruments of the world's

intellectual culture ought not to be, in the ordinary sense,

professions. Byron said that poetry, as he understood it, was "an art,

an attribute," but not what is understood by a "profession." Surely the

same is true of all the highest intellectual work, in whatever kind. You

could scarcely consider Faraday's life to be what is commonly understood

by a professional life. Tyndall says that if Faraday had chosen to

employ his talents in analytical chemistry he might have realized a

fortune of 150,000_l._ Now that would have been a professional

existence; but the career which Faraday chose (happily for science) was

not professional, but intellectual. The distinction between the

professional and the intellectual lives is perfectly clear in my own

mind, and therefore I ought to be able to express it clearly. Let me

make the attempt.

The purpose of a profession, of a profession pure and simple, is to turn

knowledge and talent to pecuniary profit. On the other hand, the purpose

of cultivated men, or men of genius, who work in an unprofessional

spirit, is to increase knowledge, or make it more accurate, or else

simply to give free exercise to high faculties which demand it. The

distinction is so clear and trenchant that most intellectual men, whose

private fortunes are not large, prefer to have a profession distinct

from their higher intellectual work, in order to secure the perfect

independence of the latter. Mr. Smiles, in his valuable book on

"Character," gives a list of eminent intellectual men who have pursued

real professional avocations of various kinds separately from their

literary or scientific activity, and he mentions an observation of

Gifford's which is much to my present purpose:--"Gifford, the editor of

the _Quarterly_, who knew the drudgery of writing for a living, once

observed that 'a single hour of composition, won from the business of

the day, is worth more than the whole day's toil of him who works at the

trade of literature: in the one case, the spirit comes joyfully to

refresh itself, like a hart to the water-brooks; in the other, it

pursues its miserable way, panting and jaded, with the dogs of hunger

and necessity behind.'" So Coleridge said that "three hours of leisure,

unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a

change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger

product of what is truly genial than weeks of compulsion." Coleridge's

idea of a profession was, that it should be "some regular employment

which could be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum

only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its

faithful discharge." Without in the least desiring to undervalue good

professional work of any kind, I may observe that, to be truly

professional, it ought to be always at command, and therefore that the

average power of the man's intellect, not his rare flashes of highest

intellectual illumination, ought to suffice for it. Professional work

ought always to be plain business work, requiring knowledge and skill,

but not any effort of genius. For example, in medicine, it is

professional work to prescribe a dose or amputate a limb, but not to

discover the nervous system or the circulation of the blood.

If literature paid sufficiently well to allow it, a literary man might

very wisely consider _study_ to be his profession, and not production.

He would then study regularly, say, six hours a day, and write when he

had something to say, and really wanted to express it. His book, when it

came out, would have had time to be properly hatched, and would probably

have natural life in it. Michelet says of one of his books: "Cette

oeuvre a du moins le caractere d'etre venue comme vient toute vraie

creation vivante. Elle s'est faite a la chaleur d'une douce

incubation."[13] It would be impossible, in so short a space, to give a

more accurate description of the natural manner in which a book comes

into existence. A book ought always to be "fait a la chaleur d'une douce

incubation."

But when you make a profession of literature this is what you can hardly

ever get leave to do. Literary men require to see something of the

world; they can hardly be hermits, and the world cannot be seen without

a constant running expenditure, which at the end of the year represents

an income. Men of culture and refinement really _cannot_ live like very

poor people without deteriorating in refinement, and falling behind in

knowledge of the world. When they are married, and have families, they

can hardly let their families live differently from themselves; so that

there are the usual expenses of the English professional classes to be

met, and these are heavy when they have to be got out of the profits of

literature. The consequence is, that if a book is to be written

prudently it must be written quickly, and with the least amount of

preparatory labor that can possibly be made to serve. This is very

different from the "_douce incubation_" of Michelet. Goldsmith said of

hack-writing, that it was difficult to imagine a combination more

prejudicial to taste than that of the author whose interest it is to

write as much as possible, and the bookseller, whose interest it is to

pay as little as possible. The condition of authors has no doubt greatly

improved since Goldsmith's time, but still the fact remains that the

most careful and finished writing, requiring extensive preparatory

study, is a luxury in which the professional writer can only indulge

himself at great risk. Careful writing does, no doubt, occasionally pay

for the time it costs; but such writing is more commonly done by men who

are either independent by fortune, or who make themselves, as authors,

independent by the pursuit of some other profession, than by regular men

of letters whose whole income is derived from their inkstands. And when,

by way of exception, the hack-writer does produce very highly-finished

and concentrated work, based upon an elaborate foundation of hard study,

that work is seldom professional in the strictest sense, but is a labor

of love, outside the hasty journalism or magazine-writing that wins his

daily bread. In cases of this kind it is clear that the best work is not

done as a regular part of professional duty, and that the author might

as well earn his bread in some other calling, if he still had the same

amount of leisure for the composition of real literature.

The fault I find with writing as a profession is that _it does not pay

to do your best_. I don't mean to insinuate that downright slovenly or

careless work is the most profitable; but I do mean to say that any high

degree of conscientiousness, especially in the way of study and

research, is a direct injury to the professional writer's purse.

Suppose, for example, that he is engaged in reviewing a book, and is to

get 3_l._ 10_s._ for the review when it is written. If by the accident

of previous accumulation his knowledge is already fully equal to the

demand upon it, the review may be written rapidly, and the day's work

will have been a profitable one; but if, on the other hand, it is

necessary to consult several authorities, to make some laborious

researches, then the reviewer is placed in a dilemma between literary

thoroughness and duty to his family. He cannot spend a week in reading

up a subject for the sum of 3_l._ 10_s._ Is it not much easier to string

together a few phrases which will effectually hide his ignorance from

everybody but the half-dozen enthusiasts who have mastered the subject

of the book? It is strange that the professional pursuit of literature

should be a direct discouragement to study; yet it is so. There _are_

hack-writers who study, and they deserve much honor for doing so, since

the temptations the other way are always so pressing and immediate.

Sainte-Beuve was a true student, loving literature for its own sake, and

preparing for his articles with a diligence rare in the profession. But

he was scarcely a hack-writer, having a modest independency, and living

besides with the quiet frugality of a bachelor.

The truth seems to be that literature of the highest kind can only in

the most exceptional cases be made a profession, yet that a skilful

writer may use his pen professionally if he chooses. The production of

the printed talk of the day _is_ a profession, requiring no more than

average ability, and the tone and temper of ordinary educated men. The

outcome of it is journalism and magazine-writing; and now let me say a

word or two about these.

The highest kind of journalism is very well done in England; the men who

do it are often either highly educated, or richly gifted by nature, or

both. The practice of journalism is useful to an author in giving him a

degree of readiness and rapidity, a skill in turning his materials to

immediate account, and a power of presenting one or two points

effectively, which may often be valuable in literature of a more

permanent order. The danger of it may be illustrated by a reference to a

sister art. I was in the studio of an English landscape-painter when

some pictures arrived from an artist in the country to go along with his

own to one of the exhibitions. They were all very pretty and very

clever--indeed, so clever were they, that their cleverness was almost

offensive--and so long as they were looked at by themselves, the

brilliance of them was rather dazzling. But the instant they were placed

by the side of thoroughly careful and earnest work, it became strikingly

evident that they had been painted hastily, and would be almost

immediately exhausted by the purchaser. Now these pictures were the

_journalism of painting_; and my friend told me that when once an

artist has got into the habit of doing hasty work like that, he seldom

acquires better habits afterwards.

Professional writers who follow journalism for its immediate profits,

are liable in like manner to retain the habit of diffuseness in

literature which ought to be more finished and more concentrated.

Therefore, although journalism is a good teacher of promptitude and

decision, it often spoils a hand for higher literature by incapacitating

it for perfect finish; and it is better for a writer who has ambition to

write little, _but always his best_, than to dilute himself in daily

columns. One of the greatest privileges which an author can aspire to is

_to be allowed to write little_, and that is a privilege which the

professional writer does not enjoy except in such rare instances as that

of Tennyson, whose careful finish is as prudent in the professional

sense as it is satisfactory to the scrupulous fastidiousness of the

artist.

LETTER IV.

TO AN ENERGETIC AND SUCCESSFUL COTTON MANUFACTURER.

Two classes in their lower grades inevitably hostile--The spiritual

and temporal powers--The functions of both not easily exercised by the

same person--Humboldt, Faraday, Livingstone--The difficulty about

time--Limits to the energy of the individual--Jealousy between the

classes--That this jealousy ought not to exist--Some of the sciences

based upon an industrial development--The work of the intellectual

class absolutely necessary in a highly civilized community--That it

grows in numbers and influence side by side with the industrial class.

Our last conversation together, in the privacy of your splendid new

drawing-room after the guests had gone away and the music had ceased for

the night, left me under the impression that we had not arrived at a

perfect understanding of each other. This was due in a great measure to

my unfortunate incapacity for expressing anything exactly by spoken

words. The constant habit of writing, which permits a leisurely

selection from one's ideas, is often very unfavorable to readiness in

conversation. Will you permit me, then, to go over the ground we

traversed, this time in my own way, pen in hand?

We represent, you and I, two classes which in their lower grades are

inevitably hostile; but the superior members of these classes ought not

to feel any hostility, since both are equally necessary to the world. We

are, in truth, the spiritual and the temporal powers in their most

modern form. The chief of industry and the man of letters stand to-day

in the same relation to each other and to mankind as the baron and

bishop of the Middle Ages. We are not recognized, either of us, by

formally conferred titles, we are both held to be somewhat intrusive by

the representatives of a former order of things, and there is, or was

until very lately, a certain disposition to deny what we consider our

natural rights; but we know that our powers are not to be resisted, and

we have the inward assurance that the forces of nature are with us.

This, with reference to the outer world. But there is a want of

clearness in the relation between ourselves. You understand your great

temporal function, which is the wise direction of the industry of

masses, the accumulation and distribution of wealth; but you do not so

clearly understand the spiritual function of the intellectual class, and

you do not think of it quite justly. This want of understanding is

called by some of us your Philistinism. Will you permit me to explain

what the intellectual class thinks of you, and what is its opinion about

itself?

Pray excuse any appearance of presumption on my part if I say we of the

intellectual class and you of the industrial. My position is something

like that of the clergyman who reads, "Let him come to me or to some

other learned and discreet minister of God's word," thereby calling

himself learned and discreet. It is a simple matter of fact that I

belong to the intellectual class, since I lead its life, just as it is

a fact that you have a quarter of a million of money.

First, I want to show that the existence of my class is necessary.

Although men in various occupations often acquire a considerable degree

of culture outside their trade, the highest results of culture can

scarcely ever be attained by men whose time is taken up in earning a

fortune. Every man has but a limited flow of mental energy per day; and

if this is used up in an industrial leadership, he cannot do much more

in the intellectual sphere than simply ascertain what has been done by

others. Now, although we have a certain respect, and the respect is

just, for those who know what others have accomplished, it is clear that

if no one did more than this, if no one made any fresh discoveries, the

world would make no progress whatever; and in fact, if nobody ever had

been dedicated to intellectual pursuits in preceding ages, the men who

only learn what others have done, would in these days have had nothing

to learn. Past history proves the immensity of the debt which the world

owes to men who gave their whole time and attention to intellectual

pursuits; and if the existences of these men could be eliminated from

the past of the human race, its present would be very different from

what it is. A list has been published of men who have done much good

work in the intervals of business, but still the fact remains that the

great intellectual pioneers were absorbed and devoted men, scorning

wealth so far as it affected themselves, and ready to endure everything

for knowledge beyond the knowledge of their times. Instances of such

enthusiasm abound, an enthusiasm fully justified by the value of the

results which it has achieved. When Alexander Humboldt sold his

inheritance to have the means for his great journey in South America,

and calmly dedicated the whole of a long life, and the strength of a

robust constitution, to the advancement of natural knowledge, he acted

foolishly indeed, if years, and strength, and fortune are given to us

only to be well invested in view of money returns; but the world has

profited by his decision. Faraday gave up the whole of his time to

discovery when he might have earned a large fortune by the judicious

investment of his extraordinary skill in chemistry. Livingstone has

sacrificed everything to the pursuit of his great work in Africa. Lives

such as these--and many resemble them in useful devotion of which we

hear much less--are clearly not compatible with much money-getting. A

decent existence, free from debt, is all that such men ought to be held

answerable for.

I have taken two or three leading instances, but there is quite a large

class of intellectual people who cannot in the nature of things serve

society effectively in their own way without being quite outside of the

industrial life. There is a real incompatibility between some pursuits

and others. I suspect that you would have been a good general, for you

are a born leader and commander of men; but it would have been difficult

to unite a regular military career with strict personal attention to

your factories. We often find the same difficulty in our intellectual

pursuits. We are not always quite so unpractical as you think we are;

but the difficulty is how to find the time, and how to arrange it so as

not to miss two or three distinct classes of opportunities. We are not

all of us exactly imbeciles in money matters, though the pecuniary

results of our labors seem no doubt pitiful enough. There is a tradition

that a Greek philosopher, who was suspected by the practical men of his

day of incapacity for affairs, devoted a year to prove the contrary, and

traded so judiciously that he amassed thereby great riches. It may be

doubtful whether he could do it in one year, but many a fine

intellectual capacity has overshadowed a fine practical capacity in the

same head by the withdrawal of time and effort.

It is because the energies of one man are so limited, and there is so

little time in a single human life, that the intellectual and industrial

functions must, _in their highest development_, be separated. No one man

could unite in his own person your life and Humboldt's, though it is

possible that he might have the natural capacity for both. Grant us,

then, the liberty _not_ to earn very much money, and this being once

granted, try to look upon our intellectual superiority as a simple

natural fact, just as we look upon your pecuniary superiority.

In saying in this plain way that we are intellectually superior to you

and your class, I am guilty of no more pride and vanity than you when

you affirm or display your wealth. The fact is there, in its simplicity.

We have culture because we have paid the twenty or thirty years of labor

which are the price of culture, just as you have great factories and

estates which are the reward of your life's patient and intelligent

endeavor.

Why should there be any narrow jealousy between us; why any contempt on

the one side or the other? Each has done his appointed work, each has

caused to fructify the talent which the Master gave.

Yet a certain jealousy _does_ exist, if not between you and me

personally, at least between our classes. The men who have culture

without wealth are jealous of the power and privileges of those who

possess money without culture; and on the other hand, the men whose time

has been too entirely absorbed by commercial pursuits to leave them any

margin sufficient to do justice to their intellectual powers, are often

painfully sensitive to the contempt of the cultivated, and strongly

disposed, from jealousy, to undervalue culture itself. Both are wrong so

far as they indulge any unworthy and unreasonable feeling of this kind.

The existence of the two classes is necessary to an advanced

civilization. The science of accumulating and administrating material

wealth, of which you yourself are a great practical master, is the

foundation of the material prosperity of nations, and it is only when

this prosperity is fully assured to great numbers that the arts and

sciences can develop themselves in perfect liberty and with the tranquil

assurance of their own permanence. The advancement of material

well-being in modern states tends so directly to the advancement of

intellectual pursuits, even when the makers of fortunes are themselves

indifferent to this result, that it ought always to be a matter of

congratulation for the intellectual class itself, which needs the

support of a great public with leisure to read and think. It is easy to

show how those arts and sciences which our class delights to cultivate

are built upon those developments of industry which have been brought

about by the energy of yours. Suppose the case of a scientific chemist:

the materials for his experiments are provided ready to his hand by the

industrial class; the record of them is preserved on paper manufactured

by the same industrial class; and the public which encourages him by its

attention is usually found in great cities which are maintained by the

labors of the same useful servants of humanity. It is possible, no

doubt, in these modern times, that some purely pastoral or agricultural

community might produce a great chemist, because a man of inborn

scientific genius who came into the world in an agricultural country

might in these days get his books and materials from industrial centres

at a distance, but his work would still be based on the industrial life

of others. No pastoral or agricultural community which was really

isolated from industrial communities ever produced a chemist. And now

consider how enormously important this one science of chemistry has

proved itself even to our intellectual life! Several other sciences have

been either greatly strengthened or else altogether renewed by it, and

the wonderful photographic processes have been for nature and the fine

arts what printing was for literature, placing reliable and authentic

materials for study within the reach of every one. Literature itself has

profited by the industrial progress of the present age, in the increased

cheapness of everything that is material in books. I please myself with

the reflection that even you make paper cheaper by manufacturing so much

cotton.

All these are reasons why we ought not to be jealous of you; and now

permit me to indicate a few other reasons why it is unreasonable on your

part to feel any jealousy of us.

Suppose we were to cease working to-morrow--cease working, I mean, in

our peculiar ways--and all of us become colliers and factory operatives

instead, with nobody to supply our places. Or, since you may possibly be

of opinion that there is enough literature and science in the world at

the present day, suppose rather that at some preceding date the whole

literary and scientific and artistic labor of the human race; had come

suddenly to a standstill. Mind, I do not say of Englishmen merely, but

of the whole race, for if any intellectual work had been done in France

or Germany, or even in Japan, you would have imported it like cotton and

foreign cereals. Well, I have no hesitation in telling you that although

there was a good deal of literature and science in England before the

1st of January, 1800, the present condition of the nation would have

been a very chaotic condition if the intellectual class had ceased on

that day to think and observe and to place on record its thoughts and

observations. The life of a progressive nation cannot long go forward

exclusively on the thinking of the past: its thoughtful men must not be

all dead men, but living men who accompany it on its course. It is they

who make clear the lessons of experience; it is they who discover the

reliable general laws upon which all safe action must be founded in the

future; it is they who give decision to human action in every direction

by constantly registering, in language of comprehensive accuracy, both

its successes and its failures. It is their great and arduous labor

which makes knowledge accessible to men of action at the cost of little

effort and the smallest possible expenditure of time. The intellectual

class grows in numbers and in influence along with the numbers and

influence of the materially productive population of the State. And not

only are the natural philosophers, the writers of contemporary and past

history, the discoverers in science, _necessary_ in the strictest sense

to the life of such a community as the modern English community, but

even the poets, the novelists, the artists are necessary to the

perfection of its life. Without them and their work the national mind

would be as incomplete as would be the natural universe without beauty.

But this, perhaps, you will perceive less clearly, or be less willing to

admit.

LETTER V.

TO A YOUNG ETONIAN WHO THOUGHT OF BECOMING A COTTON-SPINNER.

Absurd old prejudices against commerce--Stigma attached to the great

majority of occupations--Traditions of feudalism--Distinctions between

one trade and another--A real instance of an Etonian who had gone into

the cotton-trade--Observations on this case--The trade a fine field

for energy--A poor one for intellectual culture--It develops practical

ability--Culture not possible without leisure--The founders of

commercial fortunes.

It is agreeable to see various indications that the absurd old

prejudices against commerce are certainly declining. There still remains

quite enough contempt for trade in the professional classes and the

aristocracy, to give us frequent opportunities for studying it as a

relic of former superstition, unhappily not yet rare enough to be quite

a curiosity; but as time passes and people become more rational, it

will retreat to out-of-the-way corners of old country mansions and rural

parsonages, at a safe distance from the light-giving centres of

industry. It is a surprising fact, and one which proves the almost

pathetic spirit of deference and submission to superiors which

characterizes the English people, that out of the hundreds of

occupations which are followed by the busy classes of this country, only

three are entirely free from some degrading stigma, so that they may be

followed by a high-born youth without any sacrifice of caste. The wonder

is that the great active majority of the nation, the men who by their

industry and intelligence have made England what she is, should ever

have been willing to submit to so insolent a rule as this rule of caste,

which, instead of honoring industry, honored idleness, and attached a

stigma to the most useful and important trades. The landowner, the

soldier, the priest, these three were pure from every stain of

degradation, and only these three were quite absolutely and ethereally

pure. Next to them came the lawyer and the physician, on whom there

rested some traces of the lower earth; so that although the youthful

baron would fight or preach, he would neither plead nor heal. And after

these came the lower professions and the innumerable trades, all marked

with stigmas of deeper and deeper degradation.

From the intellectual point of view these prejudices indicate a state of

society in which public opinion has not emerged from barbarism. It

understands the strength of the feudal chief having land, with serfs or

voters on the land; it knows the uses of the sword, and it dreads the

menaces of the priesthood. Beyond this it knows little, and despises

what it does not understand. It is ignorant of science, and industry,

and art; it despises them as servile occupations beneath its conception

of the gentleman. This is the tradition of countries which retain the

impressions of feudalism; but notwithstanding all our philosophy, it is

difficult for us to avoid some feeling of astonishment when we reflect

that the public opinion of England--a country that owes so much of her

greatness and nearly all her wealth to commercial enterprise--should be

contemptuous towards commerce.

I may notice, in passing, a very curious form of this narrowness. Trade

is despised, but distinctions are established between one trade and

another. A man who sells wine is considered more of a gentleman than a

man who sells figs and raisins; and I believe you will find, if you

observe people carefully, that a woollen manufacturer is thought to be a

shade less vulgar than a cotton manufacturer. These distinctions are

seldom based on reason, for the work of commerce is generally very much

the same sort of work, mentally, whatever may be the materials it deals

in. You may be heartily congratulated on the strength of mind, firmness

of resolution, and superiority to prejudice, which have led you to

choose the business of a cotton-spinner. It is an excellent business,

and, in itself, every whit as honorable as dealing in corn and cattle,

which our nobles do habitually without reproach. But now that I have

disclaimed any participation in the stupid narrowness which despises

trade in general, and the cotton-trade in particular, let me add a few

words upon the effects of the cotton business on the mind.

There appeared in one of the newspapers a little time since a most

interesting and evidently genuine letter from an Etonian, who had

actually entered business in a cotton factory, and devoted himself to it

so as to earn the confidence of his employers and a salary of 400_l_. a

year as manager. He had waited some time uselessly for a diplomatic

appointment which did not arrive, and so, rather than lose the best

years of early manhood, as a more indolent fellow would have done very

willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolution of entering

business, and carried out his determination with admirable persistence.

At first nobody would believe that the "swell" could be serious; people

thought that his idea of manufacturing was a mere freak, and expected

him to abandon it when he had to face the tedium of the daily work; but

the swell _was_ serious--went to the mill at six in the morning and

stayed there till six at night, from Monday till Saturday inclusive.

After a year of this, his new companions believed in him.

Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a manifestation of energy, and

that truest independence which looks to fortune as the reward of its own

manly effort, but it may be permitted to me to make a few observations

on this young gentleman's resolve. What he did seems to me rather the

act of an energetic nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of an

intellectual nature seeking pasture and exercise for the intellect. I am

far indeed from desiring, by this comparison, to cast any disparaging

light on the young gentleman's natural endowments, which appear to have

been valuable in their order and robust in their degree, nor do I

question the wisdom of his choice; all I mean to imply is, that although

he had chosen a fine large field for simple energy, it was a poor and

barren field for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for one moment

the difference in this respect between the career which he had abandoned

and the trade he had embraced. As an _attache_ he would have lived in

capital cities, have had the best opportunities for perfecting himself

in modern languages, and for meeting the most varied and the most

interesting society. In every day there would have been precious hours

of leisure, to be employed in the increase of his culture. If an

intellectual man, having to choose between diplomacy and

cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spinning it would be from the desire

for wealth, or from the love of an English home. The life of a cotton

manufacturer, who personally attends to his business with that close

supervision which has generally conducted to success, leaves scarcely

any margin for intellectual pleasure or spare energy for intellectual

work. After ten hours in the mill, it is difficult to sit down and

study; and even if there were energy enough, the mind would not readily

cast off the burden of great practical anxieties and responsibilities so

as to attune itself to disinterested thinking. The leaders of industry

often display mental power of as high an order as that which is employed

in the government of great empires; they show the highest administrative

ability, they have to deal continually with financial questions which on

their smaller scale require as much forethought and acumen as those that

concern the exchequer; but the ability they need is always strictly

practical, and there is the widest difference between the practical and

the intellectual minds. A constant and close pressure of practical

considerations develops the sort of power which deals effectually with

the present and its needs but atrophies the higher mind. The two minds

which we call intelligence and intellect resemble the feet and wings of

birds. Eagles and swallows walk badly or not at all, but they have a

marvellous strength of flight; ostriches are great pedestrians, but they

know nothing of the regions of the air. The best that can be hoped for

men immersed in the details of business is that they may be able, like

partridges and pheasants, to take a short flight on an emergency, and

rise, if only for a few minutes, above the level of the stubble and the

copse.

Without, therefore, desiring to imply any prejudiced contempt for trade,

I do desire to urge the consideration of its inevitable effects upon the

mind. For men of great practical intelligence and abundant energy, trade

is all-sufficing, but it could never entirely satisfy an intellectual

nature. And although there is drudgery in every pursuit, for even

literature and painting are full of it, still there are certain kinds of

drudgery which intellectual natures find to be harder to endure than

others. The drudgery which they bear least easily is an incessant

attention to duties which have no intellectual interest, and yet which

cannot be properly performed mechanically so as to leave the mind at

liberty for its own speculations. Deep thinkers are notoriously absent,

for thought requires abstraction from what surrounds us, and it is hard

for them to be denied the liberty of dreaming. An intellectual person

might be happy as a stone-breaker on the roadside, because the work

would leave his mind at liberty; but he would certainly be miserable as

an engine-driver at a coal-pit shaft, where the abstraction of an

instant would imperil the lives of others.

In a recent address delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool, he

acknowledged the neglect of culture which is one of the shortcomings of

our trading community, and held out the hope (perhaps in some degree

illusory) that the same persons might become eminent in commerce and in

learning. No doubt there have been instances of this; and when a

"concern" has been firmly established by the energy of a predecessor,

the heir to it may be satisfied with a royal sort of supervision,

leaving the drudgery of detail to his managers, and so secure for

himself that sufficient leisure without which high culture is not

possible. But the _founders_ of great commercial fortunes have, I

believe, in every instance thrown their _whole_ energy into their trade,

making wealth their aim, and leaving culture to be added in another

generation. The founders of commercial families are in this country

usually men of great mother-wit and plenty of determination--but

illiterate.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] The word "disinterested" is used here in the sense explained in

Part II. Letter III.

[13] "This work has at any rate the character of having come into the

world like every really living creation. It has been produced by the

heat of a gentle incubation."

PART XII.

_SURROUNDINGS._

LETTER I.

TO A FRIEND WHO OFTEN CHANGED HIS PLACE OF RESIDENCE.

An unsettled class of English people--Effect of localities on the

mind--Reaction against surroundings--Landscape-painting a consequence

of it--Crushing effect of too much natural magnificence--The mind

takes color from its surroundings--Selection of a place of

residence--Charles Dickens--Heinrich Heine--Dr. Arnold at Rugby--His

house in the lake district--Tycho Brahe--His establishment on the

island of Hween--The young Humboldts in the Castle of Tegel--Alexander

Humboldt's appreciation of Paris--Dr. Johnson--Mr.

Buckle--Cowper--Galileo.