real scene, an imagined scene, or a feeling, is given in few but
effective strokes. And it is so given simply because they see it all so
distinctly. As Longinus says of Sappho's famous ode of passion, the
supreme writer seizes upon the essential and salient features, combines
them, and trusts to your and my imagination to supply the rest. When a
writer welters in words and lines, when he elaborates touch upon touch,
you may be sure that he is trying to fill the picture into his
imagination, instead of being possessed by an imagination which
determine the picture.
In the _Ancient Mariner_ Coleridge describes the passing of the spectral
ship:--
The western wave was all aflame,
The day was well-nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun,
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.
And straight the Sun was fleck'd with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peer'd
With broad and burning face.
Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a Death? and are there two?
Is Death that Woman's mate?
and then--
The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out;
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.
For my own part those words make me see it all fully, vividly. I do not
merely behold the scene: I feel the peculiar awe of the narrator. Can
you doubt that Coleridge saw this in his brain exactly as if it were
real?
When Keats in his mind's eye saw Madeline praying under that Gothic
window which was so "innumerable of stains and splendid dyes" he beheld
the scene as if he were positively on the spot to paint it. And how does
he paint it? What an opportunity for the display of pictorial technique
in words! But Keats is not thinking of that. One does not really
perceive a myriad little details at such a time. You never do actually
see all the things which you would describe if you sat down to think
details out one by one. If you had really fixed your eyes on the
kneeling Madeline, as Porphyro did on that eve of St. Agnes, you could
not also be taking an inventory of the particulars in the situation. The
inferior writer forgets this, because he is writing from his wits, and
not, as Keats wrote, from the spontaneous picture of imagination. What
Keats sees is this:--
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast,
As down she knelt for Heaven's grace and boon;
Rose bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross fair amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint.
That is all, and it is enough. A kneeling figure, the wintry moon, and
some few of the colours of the glass, described as they fall upon what
you would really note, the head and breast and the clasped hands. What
would not a Rossetti have done with such material!
These are descriptions. It is the same with emotions. "Pray you, undo
this button." The supreme writer does not tear passion rhetorically to
pieces. He does not elaborate it till he fritters it away. He condenses
it all into the poignant cry which goes straight from heart to heart.
What in the circumstances could Burns have said more final than--
Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met and never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted.
I know that there are people who cannot see that these four simple lines
are the consummate expression of a vast range of feeling. We can only
pray that Heaven will some day be merciful to them.
* * * * *
One word more seems necessary to be said. How can we tell when a writer
is succeeding in his effort to communicate, to body forth what he seeks
to body forth? Simply by our own complete apprehension, by the universal
humanity in us, by the fact that we keenly recognize that such and such
a sensation is one in which we have at least shared, but which we have
never known how to express. We realize how it has been brought over us
by loneliness, mountain solitude, a sunset, great heights, stormy seas,
music, sorrow, love, the sound of distant bells, calm evenings, summer
and the perfume of the flowers, fine characters, heroic deeds, and a
thousand other causes, within us and without: and, when the supreme
writer voices it for us, whatever it may be, we feel and know it at once
for the final and the perfect.
If that test is not sufficient, I know no other.
Hebraism and Hellenism
Students of the history of society and literature have grown fond of
distinguishing between two powerful influences upon our ways of thinking
and of looking at life. They find two chief attitudes of mind, two chief
animating spirits, so different from each other in the main that they
deserve and have received special and practically antithetical names.
Our manner of regarding life and society, morals and sentiment, nature
and art, is determined by whichever of these two spirits predominates in
us. Sometimes one whole nation has its view in almost all things
pervaded by the one set of principles; another nation is no less
manifestly informed by the other set. At other times it is an individual
who stands out in broad spiritual and intellectual contrast with another
of the same people and the same age. These two spirits have been called
by Matthew Arnold the "Hebraic" and the "Hellenic"; the one Hebraic,
because its clearest and most consistent manifestation has been among
the Hebrews; the other Hellenic, because its clearest and most
consistent manifestation has been among the Hellenes, or ancient Greeks.
And not only have these two spirits been specially manifested there, but
it is directly from those peoples that two corresponding influences have
spread to all the more highly civilized portions of the world. From the
Hebrews there has spread one great force, and from the Hellenes another
great force, and these two forces have in a larger or smaller measure
determined the characters and views of those peoples, who, being neither
Hebrews nor Hellenes, had not of themselves developed so intense a
spirituality or so active an intellectuality as one or other of these
two possessed.
It is rather in their historical aspect that I propose to make some
observations upon these two forces.
I feel a natural diffidence and some little constraint in treating such
a subject before a specially Hebrew gathering. But the Hebrews of whom I
have to speak are not yourselves, but your ancestors, and they are
ancestors with a history so remarkable and a spirit so potent that,
though I have no share in your pride, I can in a large measure cordially
share in your admiration of them. In a large measure, I say, for I
propose to show how the mental view and temperament of Israel, when
Israel was his truest self, needed to be qualified and corrected by
another mental view and temperament--that of the Greeks, when the Greeks
were their truest selves. And if there were here any descendant of
Pericles or Sophocles or Phidias, I should similarly say to him that,
though I feel the keenest zest of admiration for the many sublime things
which his Athenian ancestors did and wrote and wrought, yet the full
perfection of human character and life was not reached by them, and
could not be reached by them, until their own spirit was corrected by
another, the spirit exemplified in the Hebrews. You will, I am sure,
allow me to say whatever I feel to be just. And that there may be no
misconception, let me add that, whenever I speak of the Hebraic spirit,
I shall mean, not the spirit which an individual contemporary Hebrew may
happen to display, but the spirit which was characteristic of Israel as
a nation before the dispersion. In the same way the Hellenic spirit
will mean the spirit which was characteristic of the pure Hellene before
he was demoralized and adulterated by Roman, Slav, and Turk.
Man, chameleon-like, is apt to take the colour of the land on which he
happens to be, and a Jew who lives in modern times, amid social and
religious conditions, education, and material circumstances so different
from those of ancient Palestine, may differ very widely from the type of
the race as we gather it from history and literature. Nor is race
everything. Even if the Jews once more gathered together into one nation
from all quarters of the earth, we should by no means necessarily behold
a people of the same spiritual attributes and ideals as the Hebrews who
built the Temple under Ezra, or who fought like lions under the
Maccabees. As with the early Saracens, it is often some one great idea
or principle which--for the time at least--determines the whole current
of a nation's mental and spiritual being. But that idea may gradually
lose its intensity and its energizing power, and the Saracen sinks into
the voluptuous Mussulman. Hebraism and Hellenism, therefore, mean the
diverse spirits of two peoples as they once were, not as they may be
now, or will necessarily be again.
One cannot with truth draw absolutely clear and sharp distinctions
between the mental processes of different peoples. One cannot say that a
Hebrew, in virtue of being a Hebrew, would necessarily act and think
thus and thus, while a Greek, in virtue of being a Greek, would
necessarily act and think in some other definite way. Here and there a
fervid or brooding mind among the Greeks, such as that of AEschylus,
might often approach the lines of Hebraism. Here and there some son of
Shem must have been mentally constituted more like the sons of Javan.
None the less, when we survey the history and study the literature of
these two races as a whole, it is impossible not to perceive a clear and
consistent difference between their respective ways of looking at
things, at life and conduct, sentiment and nature and art.
Max Mueller, speaking of the English people, says that we are Jewish in
our religion, Greek in our philosophy, Roman in our politics, and Saxon
in our morality. This ingenious remark is, as such absolute analyses are
apt to be, only partially true. We have, indeed, borrowed from the
Jews, from the Greeks, and from the Romans, in those several
departments. But those departments over-lap and interpenetrate each
other. The fact is that, in us English, with certain Teutonic qualities
ineradically at the bottom of our nature, the modes in which our
religion, philosophy, politics, and morality have developed themselves
have been determined by a blending of all that we have learned from
Jews, Greeks, and Romans alike. In the workings of our intellect and
morals, Athens and Jerusalem in particular have operated upon us far
more than we can now exactly estimate.
Looking at the matter historically, the special quality and type of
Hebraism we must deduce from Hebrew literature, from Hebrew history,
from the characteristics of eminent Hebrews, and from the average of
testimony to Hebrew character supplied to us by reputable authors, Jew
and Gentile, in poetry, drama, fiction, or other forms of literary
creation. The special quality and type of Hellenism we must deduce from
similar material concerning Greeks and things Grecian. And here I must
confess that I am no Hebraist. I am not intimately acquainted with the
heterogeneous compilation called the Talmud, nor with Alexandrine and
mediaeval Jewish literature. Nevertheless no one brought up strictly in a
Christian Church can help becoming in some measure versed in things
Hebraic. To be perpetually exercised from early childhood in reading,
marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the one great Hebrew document,
the Bible; to have its very words and phrases ready to spring to one's
lips; to be saturated with its sentiments; to have been made much more
familiar with the sayings and doings of Abraham and Joseph, David and
Solomon, Isaiah and Ezekiel, than even with those of the kings, heroes,
and poets of one's own people--all this cannot but impart to a receptive
mind the power of distinguishing with fair accuracy the Hebraic quality
from the un-Hebraic. On the other hand, in Hellenic studies I may be
allowed to take a more confident stand; and as sometimes the long august
procession of Hebrew history and Hebrew letters passes across the mind,
and sometimes again the brilliant march of Grecian deeds and Grecian
words, one cannot fail to be more and more impressed with the contrast
between the excellences or the shortcomings of the two.
Up till the present time, the life and literature of Europe in general
has twice passed beneath Hebraic influences, twice beneath Hellenic.
Each influence has been greater or less, more or less durable, in
different regions; nevertheless there are two clearly distinguishable
invasions of the influences in each case. The intellectual influence of
Greece was first felt in pagan times, when Greek ideas and Greek
philosophy passed westward to Rome and through Rome permeated the
peoples under Roman sway. The spiritual influence of Hebraism was first
felt when, soon after this, the Christian Jews carried the doctrine of
one God amongst the pagans, and when Christianity,--which, however
otherwise diverse from Judaism, is none the less its outcome--became the
religion of all the European stocks. The first influence which came from
Greece was an intellectual influence, the passing of a fresh and
stimulating breeze. The first influence of Jerusalem was a moral
re-awakening and revelation, the shaking of a rushing mighty wind. The
moral principle of Hebraism, in the special guise of Christianity,
transformed the whole life and conduct and ideals of European men. What
had been virtues in some cases became vices, what had been weaknesses
became virtues.
We need not dwell upon this immense change; its nature is known to all,
and its source was Jewish. Centuries pass by. The Christianised world
has sunk its intelligence beneath the prescriptions of a demoralized
Church; the moral impulse of the religion borrowed from the Hebrews has
died down into formalism. I speak of the period immediately preceding
the later Renaissance and the Reformation. Strange to say, it was in a
large measure the Ottoman Turk who came to the rescue. He over-ran
Greece, captured Constantinople, and was the cause of a great westward
exodus of Greek talent and learning. Italy in particular was filled with
Greeks whose profit and pride it was to spread far and wide the
literature and culture of their nation. The avidity with which this new
learning was received was marvellous; still more marvellous was the
effect. It was, in truth, a _renaissance_, a new birth of intellect. It
meant no less than a general revival of the spirit of inquiry, of
open-eyed observation, of a desire and a resolve to see things as they
were, and not as tradition and dogma had taught men to see them. Italy,
France, Germany and England became alive with fresh efforts of the
reason, inspired with fresh ideas of taste and beauty in artistic
creation, and with new hopes and schemes of progress. The astonishing
abundance, the immense variety, and the splendid quality of the
Elizabethan literature are due to no other recognisable cause. It was
one and the same cause that made Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, and Bacon
possible. A new springtime seemed to have dawned upon the world of
thought. This was the second period of Hellenic influence, an influence
wholly intellectual and artistic.
Following the re-awakening of speculation came the Reformation. The
Reformation brought the reading of the Bible at first hand, and a new
style of preaching and exhorting directly from it. In religion and
morals the reformers fell back upon the Scriptures themselves. They
drank in the Scriptures, and therewith the Hebraic spirit which pervades
them. In most cases the salutary effect upon character and conduct can
hardly be overstated. In other cases there was extravagance and harm.
Uncompromisingly, and not very intelligently, did they speak Scripture,
think Scripture, and act Scripture, like Hebrews born out of due
season. Knox invested himself with the austere authority of the Hebrew
prophet; Calvin was fain to hew Agag in pieces before the Lord. The
Puritans of England became fanatical in their sombre conception of sin
and in the rigour of their exaggerated Hebraism. Here was the second
period of Hebraic influence, an influence wholly moral and religious.
In each case the new invasion of the Hellenic spirit precedes, and is
the handmaid of, the Hebraic. In each case the influence of Greece is to
procure the open mind, that of Jerusalem, to mould the unsteady heart.
The Greek works first upon the intellect to make it supple, the Hebrew
comes after and gives robustness to the moral will. Such, in the main,
is the distinction and the historic sequence of the two forces. We have
twice passed under each, and we shall, I believe and hope, feel the
strong power of each again, for we sorely need, on the one hand,
something to give stamina to our weak moral conceptions, and, on the
other, something to give us clear principles of social life, art, and
culture.
Let us look a little closer at what our distinction implies.
Physically the unlikeness of Hebrew to Greek was very marked. Allowing
for climatic effects, the Hebrew physiognomy has preserved itself until
to-day. The true, or at least the ideal, Greek type is almost lost in
hybrid forms, yet we know what it was. The ideal Hellene was tall,
upright, strong and supple withal, his lightish hair and beard were
thick and curling, his features straight and firm, his brow broad, his
eyes full and light. The whole form and aspect expressed a healthy zest
of life, an open-eyed contemplation of men and things, and a belief in
the sovereign virtue of reason. The outward aspect of the Hebrew type is
very different from this. The inward difference of the two races was no
less great. The essential contrast between them is not one of brow and
eye, it is one of thinking and seeing, a contrast between two sets of
ideals and principles, two ways of looking at life and the world. Romans
like Juvenal, who saw both Greeks and Jews numerous in the imperial
city, could only superficially observe that the Jew was unsocial, narrow
in his prejudices and obstinate in his superstitions, while the Greek
was as devoid of principle as he was brilliantly versatile. The Jew and
Greek whom he saw were those of a demoralised period; but in any case
the Roman did not understand either; he did not know that each was the
representative of a certain important set of principles carried to
excess. He would hardly have thought it worth his while to reflect on
such a matter. It is otherwise with us, to whom all great human
phenomena are of significance for that sound thinking which is essential
to progress.
How can we describe in brief and intelligible terms these two spirits,
the Hebraic and the Hellenic? One might use many figures of speech.
Matthew Arnold's antithesis of Hellenic thinking to Hebraic doing needs
much qualification. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the
Hebraic spirit is heat, the Hellenic spirit is light. Hebraism means
moral fervour; Hellenism means intellectual sensibility. Hebraism
suggests strength of conviction, tenacity of resolve, prophetic
vehemence; Hellenism suggests flexibility of thought, adaptability to
circumstances, artistic serenity. Hebraism suggests the austere and
spiritual life, Hellenism the social and sensuous life. Yet none of
these brief antitheses can be wholly or exclusively true. The difference
is not thus to be labelled away, any more than one can label the
difference between scents of flowers or tones of voices. There are two
experiences which are apt to change the whole complexion of things; the
one is religious conversion, the other falling in love. Yet how could
one sum up the transformation except by those terms "converted" and "in
love"? So, when the Hebrew, morally introspective, reliant on some great
power outside himself, fervid in his beliefs as in his passions, intense
in his imaginations and enthusiasms, is compared with the Hellene, a
being intellectually open and curious, artistically sensitive, a
cultivator of humanity and its delights, many-sided and self-possessed,
by what condensed terms shall one describe their diverse ways of taking
the whole of life and its concerns? In default of such terms let us hear
a modern descendant of Israel, one who was at the time half thinking of
this very distinction. Heinrich Heine, though an apostate from Judaism,
and though he liked to fancy himself a Hellene, was nevertheless by
constitution a Hebrew. He describes a visit which he paid to Goethe,
than whom in form and mind and principle no more perfect Hellene ever
lived in Hellas itself. When Heine came face to face with Goethe at
Weimar, he tells us that he felt as if Goethe must be Jupiter, and that
he involuntarily glanced aside to see whether the eagle was not there
with the thunderbolt in his beak. He almost addressed him in Greek, but,
finding he "understood German," he made the profound remark that the
plums on the road were delicious. And now, hear how Heine draws the
contrast between the Hellenic Teuton and himself, the Teutonic Hebrew:
"At bottom Goethe and I are opposite natures and mutually repellent. He
is essentially a man on whom life sits easily, who looks on enjoyment of
life as the highest good, and though at times he has glimpses and vague
feelings of the ideal life and expresses them in his poems, yet he has
never comprehended it, much less lived it. I, on the contrary, am
essentially an enthusiast, that is, so inspired by the ideal as to be
ready to offer myself up to it, and even prompted to let myself be
absorbed by it. But, as a fact, I have caught at the enjoyments of life,
and found pleasure in them; hence the fierce struggle that goes on in me
between my clear reason, which approves the enjoyments of life, and
rejects the devotion of self-sacrifice as a folly, and my enthusiasm,
which is always rising up and laying violent hands on me, and trying to
drag me down again to her ancient solitary realm. Up, I ought perhaps to
say, for it is still a grave question whether the enthusiast who gives
up his life for the idea does not in a single moment live more and feel
more than Herr von Goethe in his sixth-and-seventieth year of egotistic
tranquillity." Heine was not a typical Hebrew, and hence the struggle of
which he speaks; but his words express what we want to have expressed.
The true Hellene lives for the sake of life, and for whatsoever things
are lovely and charming. The true Hebrew lives for the sake of his idea,
and for whatsoever things are of spiritual power.