unfrequently an intentional deceiver of others. I do not say that
he is necessarily a scoundrel or a fool. He may be very little of
either, and he may be a little of both. These two words, which
sound rather roughly, will give us, I think, a faithful index to
his character. A man who is punctiliously proper has usually
become so in consequence of an attempt to cover up his mental
deficiencies or his moral obliquities. Punctilious propriety is
always pretentious, and pretentiousness is always an attempt at
fraud. A shallow mind is very apt to clothe itself with propriety
as with a garment. A brain that cannot handle large things very
often undertakes to manage a multiplicity of little things, and
runs naturally into those minute proprieties of life which are
showy, and which appear to the ignorant to indicate great powers
and acquisitions in reserve. Most proper men are nothing but a
shell, although many of them pass with the world for more. Their
life is all on the outside, and is placed and kept there for show.
We approach them, and very frequently find them so well guarded
that we do not get a look into their emptiness for a long time. We
examine them as we would a hillside strewn with fragments and
planted with boulders of marble. We are obliged to dig to learn
whether the signs we see are from an out-cropping ledge, or an
outside deposition. Sometimes the plunge of a single question will
reveal the whole story. A man with large brains and a large life
in him has something to do besides attending to the notions of
other people. He has at least no motive to deceive the world by
striving to appear to be more than he is.
I have said that there are some men who are punctiliously proper
for the purpose of covering their moral obliquities. The virtue of
a prude is always to be suspected. "So you have been looking after
the bad words," was savage old Dr. Johnson's reply to the very
proper woman who found fault with him for introducing so many
indecent words into his dictionary. There are few men who have not
frequently, during their lives, broken their way through a crust
of punctilious propriety into hearts full of all the blackness of
sensuality and sin. The world is full of hypocrisy, and hypocrisy
is nothing more than appearing to be what one is not. Indeed, I
believe that one of the strongest motives operative in the world
to render men scrupulously proper in their deportment and behavior
is sin. I make no hesitation in saying that shallowness and
sensuality are the leading ingredients in the majority of the
exceedingly proper characters with which I am acquainted.
Leaving this particular phase of my subject, I wish to call
attention to the well-recognized fact that all perfect people are
bores. A perfect character in a novel has no more power over a
reader--no more foothold among his sympathies--than a proposition
in mathematics would have. Of all stupid creations that the brain
of man has given birth to, there are none so stupid as the perfect
men and women whom we find upon the pages of fiction. Sometimes we
find in actual life a character so symmetrical, so rounded off at
the corners, and smoothed at the edges, and polished on the sides,
and unexceptionable in all its manifestations, that we cannot find
fault with it; yet we find it impossible for us to love it. Such a
character gets beyond the reach of our sympathies. Human affection
is like ivy. It cannot cling to glass; it must plant its feet in
imperfections. It is not to be denied that imperfection is the
true flavor of humanity. The mind refuses to sympathize where it
does not exist. What the world would call a perfect man--what
would be adjudged a perfect man by the best standards--would be as
tasteless as a last year's apple. A perfect woman could no more be
loved than she could be hated. I never saw a man with a perfect
face--a face modelled so symmetrically and so perfectly that no
fault could be found with it--who was not more or less a numskull.
A pretty man is always a pretty fool; and the more symmetrical the
features of a woman are, the more does she approach to the style
of beauty and expression and native gifts of a porcelain doll. The
mind and the character can be so symmetrical that they will lose
all charm and all significance. They descend into simple
prettiness, which is simple insipidity.
I say that imperfection is the true flavor of humanity. In
explanation, I ought to say that all individuality is either based
upon it or pre-supposes it. For instance: the preponderance of
certain powers and qualities of mind and character in me, over
certain other powers and qualities, and the weakness and
imperfection of these latter as related to the former, and to the
individualities of others, make my individuality what it, is. If
in me all mental and moral powers were in equipoise--if I were a
symmetrical man, as the first Adam may possibly have been--I
should have no individuality, no qualities that would distinguish
me--no weaknesses that would furnish footholds for human
sympathy--no freshness and flavor. A whole world full of perfect
men and women, each one like every other, would be unutterably
stupid. Where there is no weakness there is no individuality;
where there is no individuality there is no true humanity; where
there is no true humanity there is no sympathy; and where there is
no sympathy there is no pleasure. We demand that a man shall live
according to his law--develop himself according to his law--
manifest and express himself according to his law; and then he
will become the object of our sympathy or antipathy, according to
our law. We demand that the true flavor of every individuality
shall be declared, and not be masked by the imposition of
conventional regulations.
If every tree in the world were perfect, according to any
recognized standard, then all the trees would be alike, and would
cease to be attractive and picturesque. We keep all perfect things
out of pictures, because they are formal and tasteless. A bran new
cottage, with a picket fence around it, and every thing cleaned up
about it, is too perfect to be picturesque. An old, tumble-down
mill, with rude and rotten timbers, and a wheel outside, is
decidedly picturesque, because its imperfections make it informal.
The most unattractive of all houses is a model house. A house that
no man can find fault with, is a house that no man can love. It is
precisely thus with human character and with men. A proper,
perfect, "model" man, is an unlovable man. A sphere cannot be made
to fit an angle, and a spherical character has no point of
sympathy with one that is thrown into the angles necessary for
individuality. So we neither love symmetry and perfection in men,
according to any recognized standard, nor the appearance of them.
We demand not only that men shall have individuality, but that
they shall express it in their language and their lives. In
society we demand variety; and in order to have it, men must act
out themselves. The harmony and sweetness of social life consist
in the adjustment of the strong points of some to the weak points
of others.
With these facts so very evident as they must be to all thoughtful
minds, it is strange that such an effort is made to bring all men
to a certain standard and style of life. I do not believe there is
a country on the face of the earth where public opinion and
fashion and conventional and individual notions, exercise so
despotic a sway as they do in America. There is, in this "free
country," no play to individuality tolerated. No room is made for
the peculiarities of a man--no freedom is given to his mode of
manifestation. A man who has peculiar manners, and whose style of
individuality is marked, has no room allowed to him at all. He is
very likely to be called a fool, and laughed at by his inferiors.
We take no pains to look through the outside to find the heart and
soul, and refuse to see excellence behind manifestations that
offend our notions or our tastes. We go to hear a preacher, and if
he do not happen to have the externals, and the style of delivery
which we most admire, we condemn him at once. We make no room for
his individuality, and allow to it no freedom of manifestation.
Room and freedom--that which the ocean has, that which the rivers
have, that which the forest has, and that from which all of them
derive their beauty and their glory--room and freedom are denied
to men by men who need both, quite as much as their fellows.
The choicest food of the gossips is the personal peculiarities of
their acquaintances. The grand staple of ridicule is this same
individuality, whose importance I have endeavored to illustrate.
All the small wits of society busy themselves upon the eccentricities
of those around them. Church and creed, party and platform,
fashion and custom, all direct themselves against the development
of individuality. Sensitive natures shrink before such an array of
influences, and retire into themselves, drawing back and keeping
in check all their out-reaching individuality. Many a man, indeed,
who would face a cannon's mouth without trembling, flinches
when beset by ridicule. It is not the fault of society that the
whole race of mankind are not reduced to a dead level of character,
and a tasteless uniformity of life. Were it not that God does His
work so strongly, it would have been undone long ago. As it is, we
always have a few men and women who are true enough to God and
themselves to keep the world from stagnation, and give zest to life.
They sometimes shock Miss Nancy, but as they do not happen
to care what Miss Nancy thinks of them, they manage to live
and do something to keep Miss Nancy's friends from settling into
chronic inanity.
LESSON XXII.
THE POETIC TEST.
"I walked on, musing with myself
On life and art, and whether, after all,
A larger metaphysics might not help
Our physics--a completer poetry
Adjust our daily life and vulgar wants
More fully than the special outside plans,
Phalansteries, material institutes,
The civil conscriptions and lay monasteries,
Preferred by modern thinkers." MRS. BROWNING.
The highest poetry is the purest truth. To learn whether any thing
is as it ought to be, we have only to learn whether it is truly
poetical. It is a popular fallacy to suppose that poetical things
are necessarily fanciful, or imaginative, or sentimental in other
words, that poetry resides in that which is both baseless and
valueless. In the popular thought, poetry is shut out of the realm
of truth and reality. The reason, I suppose, is, that poetry demands
more of truth and harmony and beauty than is commonly found in the
actualities of human life.
Let us suppose that in a country journey we arrive at the summit
of a hill, at whose foot lies a charming village imbosomed in
trees from the midst of which, rises the white spire of the
village church. If we are in a poetical mood, we say: "How
beautiful is this retirement! This quiet retreat, away from the
world's distractions and great temptations, must be the abode of
domestic and social virtue--the home of contentment, of peace, and
of an unquestioning Christian faith. Fortunate are they whose lot
it is to be born and to pass their days here, and to be buried at
last in the little graveyard behind the church." As we see the
children playing upon the grass, and the tidy matrons sitting in
their doorways, and the farmers at work in the fields, and the
quiet inn, with its brooding piazzas like wings waiting for the
shelter of its guests, the scene fills us with a rare poetic
delight. In the midst of our little rapture, however, a
communicative villager comes along, and we question him. We are
shocked to learn that the inn is a very bad place, with a drunken
landlord, that there is a quarrel in the church which is about to
drive the old pastor away, that there is not a man in the village
who would not leave it if he could sell his property, that the
women give a free rein to their propensity for scandal, and that
half of the children of the place are down with the measles.
The true poet sees things not always as they are, but as they
ought to be. He insists upon congruity and consistency. Such a
life should be in such a spot, under such circumstances; and no
unwarped and unpolluted mind can fail to see that the poet's ideal
is the embodiment of God's will. The poet's Indian is very
different from the real native American who has been exposed to
the corrupting influences-of the white man's civilization. The
poet insists on seeing in the American Indian a noble manhood,
simple tastes, freedom from all conventionality, heroic fortitude,
and all those romantic qualities which a free forest life seems so
well calculated to engender. He looks upon the deep, mysterious
woods, traversed by nameless streams; the majestic mountains,
haunted by shadows; the broad lakes, swept only by the wind and
the wild man's oar, and he says: "it is fitting, and only fitting,
that out of such a realm should come such a life." Which is the
better and the more truthful Indian--that of the poet, or he who
drank the rum of our fathers and then scalped them? The poet's
village is the model village, and the poet's Indian is the model
Indian. Both are built of the best and truest materials that God
furnishes, and we see that when the actual village and the real
Indian are tried by the poetic standard, they are tried by the
severest standard that can be applied to them. The poet's ideal
embodies God's ideal of a village and an Indian.
The grand, basilar idea of American institutions is human
equality--the idea embodied in the American Declaration of
Independence, that men are created free and equal, each with an
independent, and all with a co-ordinate, right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. There is in this idea the highest
poetry, because it is the transcendent truth; and there is no true
poetry this side of the highest truth. Poetry follows the
universal law, and is dependent for its quality upon its
materials. In the degree in which its materials are fictitious and
artificial, is it poor and false. The Pilgrim's Progress is
essentially better poetry than the Paradise Lost, because it
contains more of the truth as it is in the divine life of man.
The poetic test, then, is practically a very valuable one, in all
the important matters that relate to our life. Much of that which
is miscalled poetry has been based upon arbitrary and artificial
distinctions in human society and human lot. The poet has often
sung of thrones and palaces, of kings and queens, of men and women
of gentle blood, of barons and knights and squires, of retainers
and dependents, of patricians and plebeians, and thus drawn his
grand interest from distinctions in which God and Nature have had
no hand. There may be romance, fancy, imagination, sentiment, and
even instruction in such compositions as these, but there is no
poetry. They have not in them the immortal life and the motive
power of truth. We have only to carry distinctions thus attempted
to be glorified to their logical results to land in the slavery of
the masses to the over-mastering few. Now there never was, and
there never can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time began no
true poet has undertaken to write a line in praise of slavery.
Poets have always been, and they must necessarily forever be, the
prophets and priests of freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken
to justify slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by
necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the country; but
no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. The most brilliant
prize offered by a national committee for the best poem in praise
of human slavery, would not be able to draw forth a single
stanza from any man capable of writing a line of true poetry.
Philosophical defences of slavery can be purchased, political
justifications can be had at the small price of a small office,
and Christian apologies to order, but, thank God! not one line in
praise of slavery could be written by a true poet, if the wealth
of the world were to be his reward.
We have in the present age a sickly, sentimental humanity which is
busily endeavoring to pervert the sense and love of justice in
mankind. It regards the disposition to do wrong as a disease, to
be treated with appropriate emollients applied over the heart, or
some gentle opiate or alterative taken through the ears. It pities
the murderer, and aims to give the impression to him and to the
world that he is a victim to the barbarous instincts of society in
the degree by which his punishment is made severe. It aims to
transform prisons into comfortable asylums, where those who have
been so unfortunate as to burn somebody's house, or steal
somebody's horse, or insert a dirk under somebody's waistcoat, may
retire and repent of their little follies, and in the mean time
get better food and lodging than they were ever able to steal.
Punishment--retribution--these are words which make them shudder.
Nothing in their view is proper but such treatment of the
criminal, be it soft or severe, as will contribute to his
reformation. The criminal has forfeited no rights, and society has
no claims upon him, if he only repents; and all punishment
inflicted beyond the measure necessary to secure repentance is
cruel. We have a great deal of this; and more or less it is
modifying theological systems and vitiating public policy. It is
carried to such an extent, often, as to make of the greatest
criminals notable martyrs. Society and the victim of wrong-doing
are both forgotten in sympathy for the wrong-doer.
Now these sentimental sympathizers with criminals, call
themselves Christians, and are not willing to believe that any man
can, in a truly Christian spirit, oppose their theories and their
influence. They have been able to blind almost every sense in a
man except the poetic sense; but to this they appeal in vain.
"Poetic justice" maintains its purity. The reader of a novel, no
matter how good or how bad he may be, demands that the villain of
the book shall be punished as a matter of justice alike to him.
and to those who have been his victims. Nothing but justice--
nothing but a fitting retribution--will satisfy. The poetic
instinct demands a perfect system of rewards and punishments, and
is as little satisfied when a hero succeeds indifferently, as when
a scoundrel fails to be punished according to his deserts. There
is no poetic fitness without justice--retribution, pound for
pound, and measure for measure. Set any audience that can be
gathered to watching a play in which criminal and crafty art is
made to meet and master a guileless spirit and pollute a spotless
womanhood, and the sympathies of the vilest will follow the
victim, and, in the end, demand the punishment of the victor.
Nothing will seem to any audience so entirely out of place as kind
and gentle treatment toward the artful brute, and nothing more
outrageously unjust than the idea that repentance is the principal
end of his punishment. The poetic instinct of fitness once
thoroughly roused, as it is in a story, a poem, or a play, will
be satisfied with nothing but full suffering for every sin. Now I
would trust this poetic instinct of fitness further than I would
all the sympathies of the humanitarians, all the sophistries of
the philosophers, all the subtleties of the theologians, and all
the milder virtues of Christianity itself. To me, it is as
authoritative as a direct revelation from God, and is equivalent
to it.
Again, nothing is more apparent in American character and American
life than a growing lack of reverence. It begins in the family,
and runs out through all the relations of society. The parent may
be loved, but he is much less revered than in the olden time.
Parental authority is cast off early, and age and gray hairs do
not command that tender regard and that careful respect that they
did in the times of the fathers. In politics, it is the habit to
speak in light and disrespectful terms of those whose experience
gives them the right to counsel and command. Young men talk
flippantly of "fossils," and "old fogies," and wonder why men who
have been buried once will not remain quietly in their graves. Of
course, when such a spirit as this prevails, there can be no
reverence for authority, no respect for place and position, and no
genuine and hearty loyalty. We nickname our Presidents; and "old
Buck" and "old Abe" are spoken of as familiarly as if they were a
pair of old oxen we were in the habit of driving. Every man
considers himself good enough for any place, and great enough to
judge every other man. If a pastor does not happen to suit a
parishioner, the parishioner has no feeling of reverence for him
that would hinder him from telling him so to his face. Every man
considers himself not only as good and as great as any other man,
but a little better and a little greater. No being but God is
revered, and He, I fear, not overmuch. What we call "Young
America" is made up of about equal parts of irreverence, conceit,
and that popular moral quality familiarly known as "brass."
It is the habit to applaud Young America--to magnify the superior
wisdom and efficiency of young men, to treat old age familiarly,
and to compel those of superior years to ignore the honors with
which God has crowned them. "Every dog has his day," we say, and
we are impatient of a man who declines to step into retirement the
moment that his hair turns gray, to make room for some specimen of
Young America with a snub nose and a smart shirt-collar. Now,
however this irreverence may be justified--and it is not only
justified but shamelessly gloried in--it is not poetical. Poetry
cannot be woven of improprieties. A people bowing with reverence
to those in authority, and regarding with profound respect high
official station; a family of children clinging, even through a
long manhood and womanhood, around the form of an aged parent with
assiduous attentions and tender reverence; a community or a nation
of young men looking to age for wisdom and for counsel; universal
respect for years on the part of the young--these are, and must
forever remain, poetical. Out of reverence can be woven the most
beautiful pictures which the poet's brain can conceive; but Young
America can no more excite poetic sentiment, or inspire poetic
imaginations, than the sham Havana it smokes, or the mongrel horse
it drives. There is no poetry in an irreverent character, or in an
irreverent community. Irreverence in any form will not stand the
poetic test.
Americans boast habitually of their country, and their boastings
always assume the poetic form. The ballot-box that they talk about
is the ballot-box that ought to be and not the ballot-box that is.
One would think, to hear what is said of the ballot-box, that it
literally shines with glory, so that every American freeman who
marches up to it to deposit the paper embodiment of his will,
glows like a God in its light, and grows godlike by his act. If we
are to believe Mr. Whittier, the poor voter sings on election day:
"The proudest now is but my peer,
The highest not more high;
To-day, of all the weary year,
A king of men am I.
To-day, alike are great and small,
The nameless and the known;
My palace is the people's hall,
The ballot-box my throne!"
This is a very splendid sort of a ballot-box, and he is a very
fine sort of an American who sings about it; but what are the
facts? There are a good many chances that the box stands in a
corner grocery, and that the poor voter is led up to deposit his
priceless ballot so drunk that he cannot walk without help. Mr.
Whittier would have us believe that the poor voter sings:
"To-day shall simple manhood try
The strength of gold and land;
The wide world has not wealth to buy
The power in my right hand."
The truth is that gold and land try the very "simple manhood" as
a rule, and very much less than the wide world is sufficient to
buy the power in a great multitude of poor voters' hands. The
poet sees what the ballot-box may be, ought to be, and, in some
rare instances, really is. He unerringly seizes upon the dignity
and majesty of self-government, the equal rights and privileges
of manhood, and the dissipation of all distinctions in the exercise
of the political franchise among freemen. The great truth of
human equality inspires him, and he uses the ideal and possible
ballot-box to illustrate it, and thus furnishes the standard by
which the real ballot-box is to be judged.