The Pagan God could have perfect peace with his votary, and yet could
have no tendency to draw that votary to himself. Not so with the God of
Christianity, who cannot give His peace without drawing like a vortex to
Himself, who cannot draw into His own vortex without finding His peace
fulfilled.
'An age when lustre too intense.'--I am much mistaken if Mr. Wordsworth
is not deeply wrong here. Wrong he is beyond a doubt as to the _fact_;
for there could have been no virtual intensity of lustre (unless merely
as a tinsel toy) when it was contradicted by everything in the
_manners_, _habits_, and situations of the Pagan Gods--they who were
content to play in the coarsest manner the part of gay young bloods,
_sowing_ their wild oats, and with a recklessness of consequences to
their female partners never by possibility rivalled by men. I believe
and affirm that lustre the most dazzling and blinding would not have any
_ennobling_ effect except as received into a matrix of previous
unearthly and holy type.
As to Bacchus being eternally young, the ancients had no idea or power
to frame the idea of eternity. Their eternity was a limitary thing. And
this I say not empirically, but _à priori_, on the ground that without
the idea of holiness and unfleshliness, eternity cannot rise buoyant
from the ground, cannot sustain itself. But waive this, and what becomes
of the other things? If he were characteristically distinguished as
young, then, by a mere rebound of the logic, the others were not so
honoured, else where is the special privilege of Bacchus?
'And she shall sing there as in the days of her youth' (Hosea ii.
15).--The case of pathos, a person coming back to places, recalling the
days of youth after a long woe, is quite unknown to the ancients--nay,
the maternal affection itself, though used inevitably, is never
consciously reviewed as an object of beauty.
Duties arise everywhere, but--do not mistake--not under their sublime
form _as_ duties. I claim the honour to have first exposed a fallacy too
common: duties never did, never will, arise save under Christianity,
since without it the sense of a morality lightened by religious motive,
aspiring to holiness, not only of act, but of motive, had not before it
even arisen. It is the pressure of society, its mere needs and palpable
claims, which first calls forth duties, but not _as_ duties; rather as
the casting of parts in a scenical arrangement. A duty, under the low
conception to which at first it conforms, is a _rôle_, no more; it is
strictly what we mean when we talk of a _part_. The sense of conscience
strictly is not touched under any preceding system of religion. It is
the daughter of Christianity. How little did Wordsworth seize the fact
in his Ode: 'Stern Daughter of the Voice of God' is not enough; the
voice of God is the conscience; and neither has been developed except by
Christianity.
The conscience of a pagan was a conscience pointing to detection: it
pointed only to the needs of society, and caused fear, shame, anxiety,
only on the principles of sympathy; that is, from the impossibility of
releasing himself from a dependence on the reciprocal feelings--the
rebound, the dependence on the _re_sentments of others.
_Morals._--Even ordinary morals could have little practical weight with
the ancients: witness the Roman juries and Roman trials. Had there been
any sense of justice predominant, could Cicero have hoped to prevail by
such defences as that of Milo and fifty-six others, where the argument
is merely fanciful--such a _Hein-gespinst_ as might be applauded with
'very good!' 'bravo!' in any mock trial like that silly one devised by
Dean Swift.
The slowness and obtuseness of the Romans to pathos appears _à priori_
in their amphitheatre, and its tendency to put out the theatre;
secondly, _à posteriori_, in the fact that their theatre was put out;
and also, _à posteriori_, in the coarseness of their sensibilities to
real distresses unless costumed and made sensible as well as
intelligible. The grossness of this demand, which proceeded even so far
as pinching to elicit a cry, is beyond easy credit to men of their time.
The narrow range of the Greek intellect, always revolving through seven
or eight centuries about a few memorable examples--from the Life of
Themistocles to Zeno or Demosthenes.
The Grecian glories of every kind seem sociable and affable, courting
sympathy. The Jewish seem malignantly [Greek: autarkeis].
But just as Paganism respected only rights of action, possession, etc.,
Christianity respects a far higher scale of claims, viz., as to the
wounds to feelings, to deep injury, though not grounded in anything
measurable or expoundable by external results. Man! you have said that
which you were too proud and obstinate to unsay, which has lacerated
some heart for thirty years that had perhaps secretly and faithfully
served you and yours. Christianity lays hold on that as a point of
conscience, if not of honour, to make _amends_, if in no other way, by
remorse.
As to the tears of Oedipus in the crises. I am compelled to believe that
Sophocles erred as regarded nature; for in cases so transcendent as this
Greek nature and English nature could not differ. In the great agony on
Mount Oeta, Hercules points the pity of his son Hyllus to the extremity
of torment besieging him on the humiliating evidence of the tears which
they extorted from him. 'Pity me,' says he, 'that weep with sobs like a
girl: a thing that no one could have charged upon the man' (pointing to
himself); 'but ever without a groan I followed out to the end my
calamities.' Now, on the contrary, on the words of the oracle, that
beckoned away with impatient sounds Oedipus from his dear sublime
Antigone, Oedipus is made to weep.
But this is impossible. Always the tears arose, and will arise, on the
_relaxation_ of the torment and in the rear of silent anguish on its
sudden suspense, amidst a continued headlong movement; and also, in
looking back, tears, unless checked, might easily arise. But never
during the torment: on the rack there are no tears shed, and those who
suffered on the scaffold never yet shed tears, unless it may have been
at some oblique glance at things collateral to their suffering, as
suppose a sudden glimpse of a child's face which they had loved in life.
Is not every [Greek: aiôn] of civilization an inheritance from a
previous state not so high? Thus, _e.g._, the Romans, with so little of
Christian restraint, would have perished by reaction of their own vices,
but for certain prejudices and follies about trade, manufacture, etc.,
and but for oil on their persons to prevent contagion. Now, this oil had
been, I think, a secret bequeathed from some older and higher
civilization long since passed away. We have it not, but neither have we
so much needed it. Soon, however, we shall restore the secret by science
more perfect.
Was Christianity meant to narrow or to widen the road to future
happiness? If I were translated to some other planet, I should say:
1. _No_; for it raised a far higher standard--_ergo_, made the
realization of this far more difficult.
2. _Yes_; for it introduced a new machinery for realizing this standard:
(first) Christ's atonement, (second) grace.
But, according to some bigots (as Jeremy Taylor and Sir Thomas Browne),
as cited by Coleridge, Christianity first opened any road at all. Yet,
surely they forget that, if simply to come too early was the fatal bar
to their claims in the case, Abraham, the father of the faithful, could
not benefit.
Yesterday, Thursday, October 21 (1843), I think, or the day before, I
first perceived that the first great proof of Christianity is the proof
of Judaism, and the proof of that lies in the Jehovah. What merely
natural man capable of devising a God for himself such as the Jewish?
Of all eradications of this doctrine (of human progress), the most
difficult is that connected with the outward shows--in air, in
colouring, in form, in grouping of the great elements composing the
furniture of the heavens and the earth. It is most difficult, even when
confining one's attention to the modern case, and neglecting the
comparison with the ancient, at all to assign the analysis of those
steps by which to us Christians (but never before) the sea and the sky
and the clouds and the many inter-modifications of these, A, B, C, D,
and again the many interactions of the whole, the sun (S.), the moon
(M.), the noon (N. S.)--the breathless, silent noon--the gay
afternoon--the solemn glory of sunset--the dove-like glimpse of Paradise
in the tender light of early dawn--by which these obtain a power utterly
unknown, undreamed of, unintelligible to a Pagan. If we had spoken to
Plato--to Cicero--of the deep pathos in a sunset, would he--would
either--have gone along with us? The foolish reader thinks, Why, perhaps
not, not altogether as to the quantity--the degree of emotion.
Doubtless, it is undeniable that we moderns have far more sensibility to
the phenomena and visual glories of this world which we inhabit. And it
_is_ possible that, reflecting on the singularity of this characteristic
badge worn by modern civilization, he may go so far as to suspect that
Christianity has had something to do with it. But, on seeking to
complete the chain which connects them, he finds himself quite unable to
recover the principal link.
Now, it will prove, after all, even for myself who have exposed and
revealed these new ligatures by which Christianity connects man with
awful interests in the world, a most insurmountable task to assign the
total nidus in which this new power resides, or the total phenomenology
through which that passes to and fro. Generally it seems to stand thus:
God reveals Himself to us more or less dimly in vast numbers of
processes; for example, in those of vegetation, animal growth,
crystallization, etc. These impress us not primarily, but secondarily on
reflection, after considering the enormity of changes worked annually,
and working even at the moment we speak. Then, again, other arrangements
throw us more powerfully upon the moral qualities of God; _e.g._, we see
the fence, the shell, the covering, varied in ten million ways, by which
in buds and blossoms He insures the ultimate protection of the fruit.
What protection, analogous to this, has He established for animals; or,
taking up the question in the ideal case, for man, the supreme of His
creatures? We perceive that He has relied upon love, upon love
strengthened to the adamantine force of insanity or delirium, by the
mere aspect of utter, utter helplessness in the human infant. It is not
by power, by means visibly developed, that this result is secured, but
by means spiritual and 'transcendental' in the highest degree.
The baseness and incorrigible ignobility of the Oriental mind is seen in
the radical inability to appreciate justice when brought into collision
with the royal privileges of rulers that represent the nation. Not only,
for example, do Turks, etc., think it an essential function of royalty
to cut off heads, but they think it essential to the consummation of
this function that the sacrifice should rest upon caprice known and
avowed. To suppose it wicked as a mere process of executing the laws
would rob it of all its grandeur. It would stand for nothing. Nay, even
if the power were conceded, and the sovereign should abstain from using
it of his own free will and choice, this would not satisfy the wretched
Turk. Blood, lawless blood--a horrid Moloch, surmounting a grim company
of torturers and executioners, and on the other side revelling in a
thousand unconsenting women--this hideous image of brutal power and
unvarnished lust is clearly indispensable to the Turk as incarnating the
representative grandeur of his nation. With this ideal ever present to
the Asiatic and Mohammedan mind, no wonder that even their religion
needs the aid of the sword and bloodshed to secure conversion.
In the _Spectator_ is mentioned, as an Eastern apologue, that a vizier
who (like Chaucer's Canace) had learned the language of birds used it
with political effect to his sovereign. The sultan had demanded to know
what a certain reverend owl was speechifying about to another owl
distantly related to him. The vizier listened, and reported that the
liberal old owl was making a settlement upon his daughter, in case his
friend's son should marry her, of a dozen ruined villages. Loyally long
life to our noble sultan! I shall, my dear friend, always have a ruined
village at your service against a rainy day, so long as our present
ruler reigns and desolates.
_Obliviscor jam injurias tuas, Clodia._--This is about the most
barefaced use of the rhetorical trick--viz., to affect _not_ to do, to
pass over whilst actually doing all the while--that anywhere I have met
with.--'Pro Cælio,' p. 234 [p. 35, Volgraff's edition].
_Evaserint_ and _comprehenderint._--Suppose they had rushed out, and
suppose they had seized Licinus. So I read--not _issent._--_Ibid., p.
236_ [_Ibid., p. 44_].
_Velim vel potius quid nolim dicere._--Aristotle's case of throwing
overboard your own property. He _vult dicere_, else he could not mean,
yet _nonvult_, for he is shocked at saying such things of
Clodia.--_Ibid., p. 242_ [_Ibid., p. 49_].