_Morality._--That Paley's principle does not apply to the higher
morality of Christianity is evident from this: when I seek to bring
before myself some ordinary form of wickedness that all men offend by, I
think, perhaps, of their ingratitude. The man born to £400 a year thinks
nothing of it, compares himself only with those above his own standard,
and sees rather a ground of discontent in his £400 as not being £4,000
than any ground of deep thankfulness. Now, this being so odious a form
of immorality, should--by Paley--terminate in excessive evil. On the
contrary, it is the principle, the very dissatisfaction which God uses
for keep_ing_ the world mov_ing_ (how villainous the form--these
'ings'!).
All faith in the great majority is, and ought to be, implicit. That is,
your faith is not unrolled--not separately applied to each individual
doctrine--but is applied to some individual man, and on him you rely.
What he says, you say; what he believes, you believe. Now, he believes
all these doctrines, and you implicitly through him. But what I chiefly
say as the object of this note is, that the bulk of men must believe by
an implicit faith. _Ergo_, decry it not.
You delude yourself, Christian theorist, with the idea of offences that
else would unfit you for heaven being washed out by repentance. But
hearken a moment. Figure the case of those innumerable people that,
having no temptation, small or great, to commit murder, _would_ have
committed it cheerfully for half-a-crown; that, having no opening or
possibility for committing adultery, _would_ have committed it in case
they had. Now, of these people, having no possibility of repentance (for
how repent of what they have not done?), and yet ripe to excess for the
guilt, what will you say? Shall they perish because they _might_ have
been guilty? Shall they not perish because the potential guilt was not,
by pure accident, accomplished _in esse_?
Here is a mistake to be guarded against. If you ask why such a man,
though by nature gross or even Swift-like in his love of dirty ideas,
yet, because a gentleman and moving in corresponding society, does not
indulge in such brutalities, the answer is that he abstains through the
modifications of the sympathies. A low man in low society would not be
doubtful of its reception; but he, by the anticipations of sympathy (a
form that should be introduced as technically as Kant's anticipations of
perception), feels it would be ill or gloomily received. Well now, I,
when saying that a man is altered by sympathy so as to think _that_,
through means of this power, which otherwise he would not think, shall
be interpreted of such a case as that above. But wait; there is a
distinction: the man does not think differently, he only acts as if he
thought differently. The case I contemplate is far otherwise; it is
where a man feels a lively contempt or admiration in consequence of
seeing or hearing such feelings powerfully expressed by a multitude, or,
at least, by others which else he would not have felt. Vulgar people
would sit for hours in the presence of people the most refined, totally
unaware of their superiority, for the same reason that most people (if
assenting to the praise of the Lord's Prayer) would do so
hyper-critically, because its real and chief beauties are negative.
Not only is it false that my understanding is no measure or rule for
another man, but of necessity it is so, and every step I take towards
truth for myself is a step made on behalf of every other man.
We doubt if the world in the sense of a synthesis of action--the
procession and carrying out of ends and purposes--_could_ consist with
the [Greek: anti]-world (in a religious sense). Men who divide all into
pious people and next to devils see in such a state of evil the natural
tendency (as in all other _monstrous_ evils--which this must be if an
evil at all) to correction and redress. But now assume a man, sober,
honourable, cheerful, healthy, active, occupied all day long in toilsome
duties (or what he believes duties) for ends not selfish; this man has
never had a thought of death, hell, etc., and looking abroad on those
who dwell in such contemplations, he regards them sincerely, not
unkindly or with contempt; partially he respects them, but he looks on
them as under a monstrous delusion, in a fever, in a panic, as in a case
of broken equilibrium. Now he is right. And, moreover, secondly, two
other feelings or suspicions come on, (1) of hypocrisy, (2) of the
violation of inner shame in publishing the most awful private feelings.
_The Tendency of a Good Fortune inherited._--I know not that any man has
reason to wish a _sufficient_ patrimonial estate for his son. Much to
have something so as to start with an advantage. But the natural
consequence of having a full fortune is to become idle and vapid. For,
on asking what a young man has that he can employ himself upon, the
answer would be, 'Oh! why, those pursuits which presuppose solitude.' At
once you feel this to be hollow nonsense. Not one man in ten thousand
has powers to turn solitude into a blessing. They care not, _e.g._, for
geometry; and the cause is chiefly that they have been ill taught in
geometry; and the effect is that geometry must and will languish, if
treated as a mere amateur pursuit. So of any other. Secondly, yet of
Englishmen I must say that beyond all nations a man so situated does
not, in fact, become idle. He it is, and his class, that discharge the
public business of each county or district. Thirdly: And in the view,
were there no other, one sees at once the use of fox-hunting, let it be
as boisterous as you please. Is it not better to be boisterous than
gossip-ridden, eaves-dropping, seeking aliment for the spirits in the
petty scandal of the neighbourhood?
'He' (_The Times_) 'declares that the poorest artisan has a greater
stake than they' ('the Landed Interest') 'in the prosperity of the
country, and is, consequently, more likely to give sound advice. His
exposition of the intimate connection existing between the welfare of
the poor workman and the welfare of the country is both just and
admirable. But he manifestly underrates the corresponding relations of
the landowners, and wholly omits to show, even if the artisan's state
were the greatest, how his opinions are likely to be most valuable. To
suppose that a man is necessarily the best judge in whatever concerns
him most is a sad _non-sequitur_; for if self-interest ensured wisdom,
no one would ever go wrong in anything. Every man would be his own
minister, and every invalid would be his own best physician. The wounded
limbs of the community are the best judges of the pain they suffer; but
it is the wise heads of the community that best can apply a remedy that
best can cure the wound without causing it to break out in another
quarter. Poverty is blind; but the upper classes "education has
enlightened, and habit made foreseeing."'
We live in times great from the events and little from the character of
the actors. Every month summons us to the spectacle of some new perfidy
in the leaders of parties and the most conspicuous public servants; and
the profligacy which we charge upon the statesmen of the seventeenth
century has revolved in full measure upon our own days.
_Justifications of Novels._--The two following justifications of novels
occur to me. Firstly, that if some dreadful crisis awaited a ship of
passengers at the line--where equally the danger was mysterious and
multiform, the safety mysterious and multiform--how monstrous if a man
should say to a lady, 'What are you reading?' 'Oh, I'm reading about our
dreadful crisis, now so near'; and he should answer, 'Oh, nonsense! read
something to improve your mind; read about Alexander the Great, about
Spurius Ahala, about Caius Gracchus, or, if you please, Tiberius.' But
just such nonsense it is, when people ridicule reading romances in which
the great event of the fiction is the real great event of a female
life.
There are others, you say--she loses a child. Yes, that's a great event.
But that arises out of this vast equinoctial event.
Secondly, as all things are predisposed to the natures which must be
surrounded by them, so we may see that the element of social evolution
of character, manners, caprices, etc., has been adapted to the vast mass
of human minds. It is a mean element, you say. The revelations of Albert
Smith, Dickens, etc., are essentially mean, vulgar, plebeian, not only
in an aristocratic sense, but also in a philosophical sense. True, but
the minds that are to live and move in it are also mean, essentially
mean. Nothing grand in them? Yes, doubtless in the veriest grub as to
capacity, but the capacity is undeveloped.
_Ergo_, as to the intrigue or fable, and as to the conduct or evolution
of this fable--novels must be the chief natural resource of woman.
_Moral Certainty._--As that a child of two years (or under) is not party
to a plot. Now, this would allow a shade of doubt--a child so old might
cry out or give notice.
This monstrous representation that the great war with France (1803-15)
had for its object to prevent Napoleon from sitting on the throne of
France--which recently, in contempt of all truth and common-sense, I
have so repeatedly seen advanced--throws a man profoundly on the
question of what _was_ the object of that war. Surely, in so far as we
are concerned, the matter was settled at Amiens in the very first year
of the century. December, 1799, Napoleon had been suffered by the
unsteady public opinion of France--abhorring a master, and yet sensible
that for the chief conscious necessity of France, viz., a developer of
her latent martial powers, she must look for a master or else have her
powers squandered--to mount the consular throne. He lived, he _could_
live, only by victorious war. Most perilous was the prospect for
England. In the path which not Napoleon, but France, was now preparing
to tread, and which was the path of Napoleon no otherwise than that he
was the tool of France, was that servitor who must gratify her grand
infirmity or else be rapidly extinguished himself, unhappily for
herself, England was the main counter-champion. The course of honour
left to England was too fatally the course of resistance. Resistance to
what? To Napoleon personally? Not at all; but to Napoleon as pledged by
his destiny to the prosecution of a French conquering policy. That
personally England had no hostility to Napoleon is settled by the fact
that she had at Amiens cheerfully conceded the superior power. Under
what title? would have been the most childish of demurs. That by act she
never conceded the title of emperor was the mere natural diplomatic
result of never having once been at peace with Napoleon under that
title. Else it was a point of entire indifference. Granting the
consulship, she had granted all that could be asked. And what she
opposed was the determined war course of Napoleon and the schemes of
ultra-Polish partition to which Napoleon had privately tempted her under
circumstances of no such sense as existed and still exist for Russia.
This policy, as soon as exposed, and not before bitter insults to
herself, England resisted. And therefore it is that at this day we live.
But as to Napoleon, as apart from the policy of Napoleon, no
childishness can be wilder.
At some unlucky moment when the Crown commanded unusual resources, the
De Quinceys met with the fate ascribed, perhaps fabulously, to some
small heavenly bodies (asteroids or what, I do not precisely know): on
some dark day, by mistake perhaps, they exploded, and scattered their
ruins all over the central provinces of England, where chiefly had lain
their territorial influence. Especially in the counties of Leicester,
Lincoln and Rutland were found fragments of the vast landed estates held
by these potentates when Earls of Winchester.
The hatred of truth at first dawning--that instinct which makes you
revolt from the pure beams which search the foul depths and abysses of
error--is well illustrated by the action of the atmospheric currents,
when blowing through an open window upon smoke. What do you see?
Sometimes the impression is strong upon your _ocular_ belief that the
window is driving the smoke in. You can hardly be convinced of the
contrary--scarcely when five or seven minutes has absolutely rarefied the
smoke so much that a book-lettering previously invisible has become even
legible. And at last, when the fact, the result, the experience, has
corrected the contradictory theory of the eye, you begin to suspect,
without any aid from science, that there were two currents, one of which
comes round in a curve [Illustration: )] and effects the exit for the
other which the window had driven in; just as in the Straits of Gibraltar
there is manifestly an upper current setting one way, which you therefore
conjecture to argue a lower current setting the other, and thus
redressing the equilibrium. Here the smoke corresponds to bits of chip or
any loose suspended body in the Gibraltar current. What answers to the
current of water is the air, and if the equilibrium _is_ kept up, the
re-entrant current balances your retiring current, and the latter carries
out the smoke entangled in itself. By the objection, say, of a child,
there ought to be a re-entrant column of smoke, which there is not. For
the air drives the smoke of the fire up the chimney, and of its own
contribution the air has no smoke to give.
Or the Augean stable may image it. Doubtless when the first disturbance
took place in the abominable mess, those acting would be apt to question
for a moment whether it had not been more advisable to leave it alone.
Moralists say, 'Nobody will attack you, or hate you, or blame you for
your virtues.' What falsehood! Not _as_ virtues, it may be in their
eyes, but virtues, nevertheless. Connect with Kant the error of
supposing _ætas parentum_, etc., to be the doctrine of sin.
Not for what you have done, but for what you are--not because in life
you did forsake a wife and children--did endure to eat and drink and lie
softly yourself whilst those who should have been as your heart-drops
were starving: not because you did that so much is forgiven you, but
because you were capable of that, therefore you are incapable of heaven.
_Immodesty._--The greatest mistake occurs to me now (Wednesday, April
17th, '44). A girl who should have been unhappily conscious of
voluptuous hours, her you would call modest in case of her passing with
downcast looks. But why, then, is she not so? That girl is immodest who
reconciles to herself such things, and yet assumes the look of
innocence.
_About Women._--A man brings his own idle preconceptions, and fancies
that he has learned them from his experience.
Far more to be feared than any depth of serious love, however absorbing
and apparently foolish, is that vicious condition in which trifling
takes the place of all serious love, when women are viewed only as
dolls, and addressed with an odious leer of affected knowingness as 'my
dear,' wink, etc. Now to this tends the false condition of women when
called 'the ladies.' On the other hand, what an awful elevation arises
when each views in the other a creature capable of the same noble
duties--she no less than he a creature of lofty aspirations; she by the
same right a daughter of God as he a son of God; she bearing her eyes
erect to the heavens no less than he!
_Low Degree._--We see often that this takes place very strongly and
decidedly with regard to men, notoriously pleasant men and remarkably
good-natured, which shows at once in what road the thing travels. And if
such a nature should be combined with what Butler thinks virtue, it
might be doubtful to which of the two the tribute of kind attentions
were paid; but now seeing the true case, we know how to interpret this
hypothetical case of Butler's accordingly.
'Visit the sins of the fathers,' etc. This people pretend to think
monstrous. Yet what else in effect happens and must happen to Jews
inheriting by filial obedience and natural sympathy all that
anti-Christian hostility which prevailed in the age succeeding to that
of Christ? What evil--of suffering, of penalties now or in reserve may
be attached to this spirit of hostility--follows the children through
all generations!
Case of Timoleon, whose killing of his brother might afterwards be read
into X Y Z or into X a b according to his conduct (either into murder or
patriotism), is a good illustration of synthesis.
To illustrate Cicero's argument in 'Pro Cælio' as to the frequency of
men wild and dissipated in youth becoming eminent citizens, one might
adduce this case from the word _Themistocles_ in the Index to the Græci
Rhetorici. But I see or I fancy cause to notice this passage for the
following cause: it contains only nine words, four in the first comma,
five in the last, and of these nine four are taken up in noting the time
[Greek: to prôton to telen]; ergo, five words record the remarkable
revolution from one state to another, and the character of each state.
Two cases of young men's dissipation--1. Horace's record of his father's
advice: 'Concessa,' etc.; 2. Cicero's 'Pro Cælio.'
_What Crotchets in every Direction!_--1. The Germans, or, let me speak
more correctly, some of the Germans (and doubtless full of Hoch beer or
strong drink), found out some thirty years ago that there were only
three men of genius in the records of our planet. And who were they? (1)
Homer; (2) Shakespeare; (3) Goethe. So that absolutely Milton was shut
out from the constellation. Even he wanted a ticket, though Master
Sorrows-of-Werther had one. The porter, it seems, fancied he had no
marriage garment, a mistake which a mob might correct, saying, 'No
marriage garment! then, damme, he shall have this fellow's' (viz.,
Goethe's). The trinity, according to these vagabonds, was complete
without Milton, as the Roman pomp was full to the eye of the sycophant
without the bust of Brutus.
2. Macaulay fancied there were only two men of genius in the reign of
Charles II., viz., Milton and the tinker Bunyan.
3. Coleridge (p. 237, 'Table-Talk') fancied there were only two men of
genius in his own generation: W. W. and Sir Humphrey Davy.
Jeremy Taylor having mentioned two religious men, St. Paul the Hermit
and Sulpitius, as having atoned for some supposed foolish garrulities,
the one by a three years' silence, the other by a lifelong silence, goes
on to express his dissatisfaction with a mode of _rabiosa silentia_ so
memorable as this.
Yet it is certain in silence there is wisdom, and there may be deep
religion. And indeed it is certain, great knowledge, if it be without
vanity, is the most severe bridle of the tongue. For so I have heard
that all the noises and prating of the pool, the croaking of frogs and
toads, is hushed and appeased upon the instant of bringing upon them the
light of a candle or torch. Every beam of reason and ray of knowledge
checks the dissoluteness of the tongue. 'Ut quisque contemplissimus est,
ita solutissimæ linguæ est,' said Seneca.
The silence must be [Greek: kairios], not sullen and ill-natured; 'nam
sic etiam tacuisse nocet'?--of all things in the world a prating
religion and much talk in holy things does most profane the
mysteriousness of it, and dismantles its regard, and makes cheap its
reverence and takes off fear and awfulness, and makes it loose and
garish, and like the laughters of drunkenness.
_Public Morality._--It ought not to be left to a man's interest merely
to protect the animals in his power. Dogs are no longer worked in the
way they were, although the change must have arbitrarily robbed many
poor men of half bread. But in a case as valuable as that of the horse,
it has been known that a man has incurred the total ruin of a series of
horses against even his own gain or self-interest. There ought to be a
_custos veteranorum_, a keeper and protector of the poor brutes who are
brought within the pale of social use and service. The difficulty, you
say! Legislation has met and dealt effectively with far more complicated
and minute matters than that. For, after all, consider how few of the
brute creation on any wide and permanent scale are brought into the
scheme of human life. Some birds as food, some fishes as ditto; beeves
as food and _sometimes_ as appliers of strength; horses in both
characters. These with elephants and camels, mules, asses, goats, dogs,
and sheep, cats and rabbits, gold-fishes and singing-birds, really
compose the whole of our animal equipage harnessed to the car of human
life.
3.--On Words And Style.
There are a number of words which, unlocked from their absurd
imprisonment, would become extensively useful. We should say, for
instance, 'condign honours,' 'condign treatment' (treatment appropriate
to the merits), thus at once realizing two rational purposes, viz.,
giving a useful function to a word, which at present has none, and also
providing an intelligible expression for an idea which otherwise is left
without means of uttering itself except through a ponderous
circumlocution. Precisely in the same circumstances of idle and absurd
sequestration stands the term _polemic_. At present, according to the
popular usage, this word has some fantastic inalienable connection with
controversial theology. There cannot be a more childish chimera. No
doubt there is a polemic side or aspect of theology; but so there is of
_all_ knowledge; so there is of _every_ science. The radical and
characteristic idea concerned in this term _polemic_ is found in our own
Parliamentary distinction of _the good speaker_, as contrasted with _the
good debater_. The good speaker is he who unfolds the whole of a
question in its affirmative aspects, who presents these aspects in their
just proportions, and according to their orderly and symmetrical
deductions from each other. But the good debater is he who faces the
negative aspects of the question, who meets sudden objections, has an
answer for any momentary summons of doubt or difficulty, dissipates
seeming inconsistencies, and reconciles the geometrical smoothness of _à
priori_ abstractions with the coarse angularities of practical
experience. The great work of Ricardo is of necessity, and almost in
every page, polemic; whilst very often the particular objections or
difficulties, to which it replies, are not indicated at all, being
spread through entire systems, and assumed as _precognita_ that are
familiar to the learned student.
Writing to scholastic persons, I should be ashamed to explain, but
hoping that I write to many also of the non-scholastic, and even of the
unlearned, I rejoice to explain the proper sense of the word _implicit_.
As the word _condign_, so capable of an extended sense, is yet
constantly restricted to one miserable association, viz., that with the
word _punishment_ (for we never say, as we might say, 'condign
rewards'), so also the word _implicit_ is in English always associated
with the word _faith_. People say that Papists have an _implicit_ faith
in their priests. What they mean is this: If a piece of arras, or a
carpet, is folded up, then it is _implicit_ according to the original
Latin word; if it is unfolded and displayed, then it is _explicit_.
Therefore, when a poor illiterate man (suppose a bog-trotter of Mayo or
Galway) says to his priest (as in effect always he _does_ say), 'Sir, I
cannot comprehend all this doctrine; bless you, I have not the
thousandth part of the learning for it, so it is impossible that I
should directly believe it. But your reverence believes it, the thing is
_wrapt up_ (implicit) in you, and I believe it on that account.' Here
the priest believes explicitly: _he_ believes implicitly.
_Modern._--Is it not shameful that to this hour even literary men of
credit and repute cannot for the life of them interpret this line from
'As You Like It'--
'Full of wise saws and modern instances'?
A man as well read as Mr. Theodore Hook, and many a hundred beside, have
seriously understood it to mean 'Full of old proverbs, the traditionary
wisdom of nations, and of illustrative examples drawn from modern
experience.' Nonsense! The meaning is, 'Full of old maxims and proverbs,
and of trivial attempts at argument.' That is, tediously redundant in
rules derived from the treasury of popular proverbs,' and in feeble
attempts at connecting these general rules with the special case before
him. The superannuated old magistrate sets out with a proverb, as for
instance this, that _the mother of mischief is no bigger than a midge's
wing_. That proverb forms his major proposition. In his minor
proposition he goes on to argue that the trespass charged upon the
particular prisoner before him was very little bigger than a midge's
wing. And then in his conclusion triumphantly he infers, Ergo, the
prisoner at the bar is the mother of mischief. But says the constable,
'Please, your worship, the prisoner is a man, a hulking clodhopper, some
six or seven feet high, with a strong black beard.' 'Well, that makes no
odds,' rejoins his worship; 'then he's the father of mischief. Clerk,
make out his mittimus.'
The word 'instance' (from the scholastic _instantia_) never meant
_example_ in Shakespeare's age. The word 'modern' never once in
Shakespeare means what it means to _us_ in these days. Even the monkish
Latin word 'modernus' fluctuated in meaning, and did not always imply
_recens_, _neotericus_; but in Shakespeare never. What _does_ it mean in
Shakespeare? Once and for ever it means _trivial_, _inconsiderable_. Dr.
Johnson had too much feeling not to perceive that the word 'modern' had
this value in Shakespeare's acceptation; practically, he felt that it
_availed_ for that sense, but theoretically he could not make out the
_why_. It means that, said the Doctor; but feebly and querulously, like
one sick of the pip, he added, 'Yet I don't know why.' Don't you? Now,
we _do_. The fact is, Dr. Johnson was in a fit of the dismals at that
time; he had recently committed a debauch of tea, having exceeded his
usual allowance by seventy-five cups, so that naturally he had a
'curmurring' in the stomach. Else he could not have failed to see what
we are now going to explain with a wet finger. Everybody is aware that
to be _material_ is the very opposite of being trivial. What is
'material' in a chain of evidence, or in an argument, can never be
trifling. Now, therefore, if you can find a word that will flatly
contradict this word _material_, then you have a capital term for
expressing what is trivial. Well, you find in the word _immaterial_ all
that you are seeking. 'It is quite immaterial' will suit Mr. Touts's
purpose just as well as 'It is really of no consequence, of no
consequence in the world.' To say in a law court that the objection is
immaterial is otherwise to say that it is trivial. Here, then, is the
first step: to contradict the idea of _material_ is effectually to
express the idea of _trivial_. Let us now see if we can find any other
contradiction to the idea of _material_, for one antithesis to that idea
will express as well as any other antithesis the counterpole of the
trivial. Now, clearly the substance of a thing, the material out of
which it is made, is oftentimes of great importance by comparison with
its shape, fashion, or mode. It is of value in your eyes to know whether
your family plate is in substance of gold or of silver; but whether such
a vessel is round or square, ornamented with a wreath of acanthus or
ivy, supported by tigers or by fawns, may be a trivial consideration, or
even worse; for the fashion of your plate, after it has once become
obsolete, may count against you for so much loss as something that will
cost a good deal of money to alter. Here, then, is another contradiction
to the material, and therefore another expression for the trivial:
matter, as against vacancy or the privation of matter, yields the
antithesis of material or immaterial, substantial and unsubstantial;
matter, as against form, yields the antithesis of substance and shape,
or otherwise of material and modal--what is matter and what is the mere
modification of matter, its variation by means of ornament or shape.
The word 'modern' is therefore in Shakespeare uniformly to be pronounced
with the long _o_, as in the words m_o_dal, m_o_dish, and never with the
short _o_ of m[)o]derate, m[)o]dest, or our present word m[)o]dern. And
the law under which Shakespeare uses the word is this: whatsoever is so
trivial as to fall into the relation of a mere shape or fleeting mode to
a permanent substance, _that_ with Shakespeare is modish, or (according
to his form) modern.[29] Thus, a weak, trivial argument (or _instantia_,
the scholastic term for an argument not latent merely, or merely having
the office of sustaining a truth, but urged as an objection, having the
polemic office of contradicting an opponent) is in Shakespeare's idiom,
when viewed as against a substantial argument, a _modern_ argument.
Again, when Cleopatra, defending herself against the perfidy of her
steward, wishes to impress upon Octavius that any articles which she may
have kept back from the inventory of her personal chattels are but
trifles, she expresses this by saying that they are but
'Such as we greet modern friends withal;'
_i.e._, such as we bestow, at welcoming or at parting, upon the
slightest acquaintances. The whole stress of the logic lies upon the
epithet _modern_--for simply as friends, had they been substantial
friends, they might have levied any amount from the royal lady's bounty;
kingdoms would have been slight gifts in her eyes, and _that_ would soon
have been objected to by her conqueror. But her argument is, that the
people to whom such gifts would be commensurate are mere _modish_
friends, persons known to us on terms of bare civility, people with whom
we exchange salutations in the street, or occasional calls, what now we
call acquaintances, for whom in Shakespeare's time there was no
distinguishing expression.
Another case we remember at this moment in 'All's Well that Ends Well.'
It occurs in Act II., at the very opening of scene iii.; the particular
edition, the only one we can command at the moment, is an obscure one
published by Scott, Webster and Geary, Charterhouse Square, 1840, and we
mention it thus circumstantially because the passage is falsely
punctuated; and we have little doubt that in all other editions, whether
with or without the false punctuation, the syntax is generally
misapprehended. In reality, the false punctuation has itself grown out
of the false apprehension of the syntax, and not _vice versâ_. Thus the
words stand _literatim et punctuatim_: 'They say, miracles are past: and
we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things,
supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after
'familiar,' the sense being this--and we have amongst us sceptical and
irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence
things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not
lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as
miracles by the immediate agency of God). According to the true sense,
_things supernatural and causeless_ must be understood as the subject,
of which _modern and familiar_ is the predicate.
Mr. Grindon fancies that _frog_ is derived from the syllable [Greek:
trach (k)] of [Greek: batrachos]. This will cause some people to smile,
and recall Menage's pleasantry about Alfana, the man of Orlando; It is
true that _frog_ at first sight seems to have no letter in common except
the snarling letter (_litera canina_). But this is not so; the _a_ and
the _o_, the _s_ and the _k_, are perhaps essentially the same. And even
in the case where, positively and literally, not a single letter is
identical, it is odd, but undeniable, that the two words may be nearly
allied as mother and child. One instance is notorious, but it is worth
citing for a purpose of instructive inference. 'Journal,' as a French
word, or, if you please, as an English word--whence came that?
Unquestionably and demonstrably from the Latin word _dies_, in which,
however, visibly there is not one letter the same as any one of the
seven that are in journal. Yet mark the rapidity of the transition.
_Dies_ (a day) has for its derivative adjective _daily_ the word
_diurnus_. Now, the old Roman pronunciation of _diu_ was exactly the
same as _gio_, both being pronounced as our English _jorn_. Here, in a
moment, we see the whole--_giorno_, a day, was not derived directly from
_dies_, but secondarily through _diurnus_. Then followed _giornal_, for
a diary, or register of a day, and from that to French, as also, of
course, the English _journal_. But the _moral_ is, that when to the eye
no letter is the same, may it not be so to the ear? Already the _di_ of
_dies_ anticipates and enfolds the _giorno_.
Mr. Grindon justly remarks upon the tendency, in many instances, of the
German _ss_ to reappear in English forms as _t_. Thus _heiss_ (hot),
_fuss_ (foot), etc. These are Mr. Grindon's own examples, and a striking
confirmation occurs in the old English _hight_, used for _he was
called_, and again for the participle _called_, and again, in the 'Met.
Romanus,' for _I was called_: 'Lorde, he saide, I highth Segramour.'
Now, the German is _heissen_ (to be called). And this is a tendency
hidden in many long ages: as, for instance, in Greek, every person must
remember the transition of [Greek: tt] and [Greek: ss] as in [Greek:
thattô], [Greek: thassô].
_On Pronunciation and Spelling._--If we are to surrender the old
vernacular sound of the _e_ in certain situations to a ridiculous
criticism of the _eye_, and in defiance of the protests rising up
clamorously from every quarter of old English scholarship, let us at
least know to _what_ we surrender. What letter is to usurp the vacant
seat? What letter? retorts the purist--why, an _e_, to be sure. An _e_?
And do you call _that_ an _e_? Do you pronounce 'ten' as if it were
written 'tun', or 'men' as if written 'mun'? The 'Der' in Derby,
supposing it tolerable at all to alter its present legitimate sound,
ought, then, to be pronounced as the 'Der' in the Irish name Derry, not
as 'Dur'; and the 'Ber' in Berkeley not as 'Bur,' but as the 'Ber' in
Beryl. But the whole conceit has its origin in pure ignorance of English
archæology, and in the windiest of all vanities, viz., the attempt to
harmonize the spelling and the pronunciation of languages.
Naturally, it fills one with contempt for these 'Derby' purists to find
that their own object, the very purpose they are blindly and
unconsciously aiming at, has been so little studied or steadily
contemplated by them in anything approaching to its whole extent. Why,
upon the principle which they silently and virtually set up, though
carrying it out so contradictorily (driving out an _a_ on the plea that
it is not an _e_, only to end by substituting, _and without being
aware_, the still remoter letter _u_), the consequence must be that the
whole language would go to wreck. Nine names out of every ten would need
tinkering. 'London,' for instance, no more receives the normal sound of
the _o_ in either of its syllables than does the _e_ in 'Derby.' The
normal sound of the _o_ is that heard in 'song,' 'romp,' 'homage,'
'drop.' Nevertheless, the sound given to the _o_ in 'London,'
'Cromwell,' etc., which strictly is the short sound of _u_ in 'lubber,'
'butter,' etc., is a secondary sound of _o_ in particular combinations,
though not emphatically its proper sound. The very same defence applies
to the _e_ in 'Berkeley,' etc. It is the legitimate sound of the English
_e_ in that particular combination, viz., when preceding an _r_, though
not its normal sound. But think of the wild havoc that would be made of
other more complex anomalies, if these purists looked an inch in
advance. Glocester or Gloucester, Worcester, Cirencester, Pontefract,
etc. What elaborate and monstrous pronunciations would they affix to
these names? The whole land would cease to recognise itself. And that
the purists should never have contemplated these veritable results, this
it is which seals and rivets one's contempt for them.
Now, if such harmony were at all desirable (whereas, on the contrary, we
should thus be carrying ruin into the traditions and obliteration into
the ethnological links of languages, industriously, in fact, throwing up
insuperable obstacles in the path of historical researches), it would be
far better, instead of adjusting the pronunciation to the imaginary
value of the spelling, inversely to adjust the spelling to the known and
established pronunciation, as a certain class of lunatics amongst
ourselves, viz., the _phonetic gang_, have for some time been doing
systematically.
Here, therefore, I hope is one fixed point. Here there is anchorage. The
usage is the rule, at any rate; and the law of analogy takes effect only
where _that_ cannot be decisively ascertained.
_The Latin Word 'Felix.'_--The Romans appear to me to have had no term
for _happy_, which argues that they had not the idea. _Felix_ is tainted
with the idea of success, and is thus palpably referred to life as a
competition, which for Romans every distinguished life was. In fact,
apart from his city the Roman was nothing. Too poor to have a villa or
any mode of retirement, it is clear that the very idea of Roman life
supposes for the vast majority a necessity of thick crowded intercourse,
without the possibility of solitude. I, for my peculiar constitution of
mind, to whom solitude has in all periods of life been more of a
necessity almost than air, view with special horror the life of a Roman
or Athenian. All the morning he had to attend a factious hustings or a
court--assemblies deliberative or judicial. Here only he was somebody,
and yet, however, somebody through others. Combining with one leader and
many underlings like himself, he also became a power; but in himself and
for himself, after all, he was consciously nothing. When Cicero speaks
of his _nunquam minus Solus quam cum solus_, he is announcing what he
feels to be, and knows will be, accepted as a very extraordinary fact.
For even _in rure_ it is evident that friends made it a duty of
friendship to seek out and relieve their rusticating friends.
_On the Distinction between 'Rhetorica utens' and 'Rhetorica
docens'._--It was a perplexity, familiar to the experience of the
Schoolmen, that oftentimes one does not know whether to understand by
the term _logic_ the act and process of reasoning involved and latent in
any series of connected propositions, or this same act and process
formally abstracting itself as an art and system of reasoning. For
instance, if you should happen to say, 'Dr. Isaac Watts, the English
Nonconformist, was a good man, and a clever man; but alas! for his
logic, what can his best friend say for it? The most charitable opinion
must pronounce it at the best so, so'--in such a case, what is it that
you would be understood to speak of? Would it be the general quality of
the Doctor's reasoning, the style and character of his philosophical
method, or would it be the particular little book known as 'The Doctor:
his _Logic_,' price 5s., bound in calf, and which you might be very shy
of touching with a pair of tongs, for fear of dimming their steel
polish, so long as your wife's eye was upon your motions? The same
ambiguity affects many other cases. For instance, if you heard a man
say, 'The _rhetoric_ of Cicero is not fitted to challenge much
interest,' you might naturally understand it of the particular style and
rhetorical colouring--which was taxed with being florid; nay, Rhodian;
nay, even Asiatic--that characterizes that great orator's compositions;
or, again, the context might so restrain the word as to _force_ it into
meaning the particular system or theory of rhetoric addressed to
Herennius, a system which (being traditionally ascribed to Cicero) is
usually printed amongst his works. Here, and in scores of similar cases,
lies often a trap for the understanding; but the Schoolmen evaded this
trap by distinguishing between 'Rhetorica _utens_,' and 'Rhetorica
_docens_,' between the rhetoric that laid down or delivered didactically
the elements of oratorical persuasion as an art to be learned, and
rhetoric, on the other hand, as a creative energy that _wielded_ these
elements by the mouth of Pericles in the year 440 B. C., or by the mouth
of Demosthenes, 340 B. C.; between rhetoric the scholastic art and
rhetoric the heaven-born _power;_ between the rhetoric of Aristotle that
illuminated the solitary student, and the rhetoric of Demosthenes that
ran along in rolling thunders to the footstool of Artaxerxes' throne.
Oh, these dear spindle-shanked Schoolmen! they were people, respected
reader, not to be sneezed at. What signifies having spindle-shanks?
_Synonyms._--A representative and a delegate, according to Burke, are
identical; but there is the same difference as between a person who on
his own results of judgment manages the interests of X, and a person
merely reporting the voice of X. Probably there never was a case which
so sharply illustrated the liability of goodish practical understanding
to miss, to fail in seeing, an object lying right before the eyes; and
that is more wonderful in cases where the object is not one of
multitude, but exists almost in a state of insulation. At the coroner's
inquest on a young woman who died from tight-lacing, acting, it was
said, in combination with a very full meal of animal food, to throw the
heart out of position, Mr. Wakely pronounced English or British people
all distorted in the spine, whereas _Continental_ people were all right.
Continental! How unlimited an idea! Why, it meant nothing; it defines
nothing, limits nothing, excludes nothing. Who or what is Continental?
Apparently it means anyone out of 240 millions not being one of the 27
millions in the Britannides. Every man escapes an insane folly who
happens to breathe an air E. (N. E., S. E., N. N. E., S. S. E., etc.) of
the Britannides. Vanity, the inevitable wish to improve, or rather to
avail, one's self of a natural means offered for deepening and marking
out the natural outline of the shape, _i.e._, of the sexual
characteristics, has no effect, dies out, the instant that a family is
one of those who have the privilege of basking anywhere 2,000 miles E.
or 2,000 miles N. and S.!
A whistling to a horse: Poppysme (_vide_ Whistling, Lat. Dict.); but
poppysme is a patting, a clapping, on the back, neck, or, doubtless,
wherever the animal is sensible of praise.
'Takest away.' This beautiful expression, though exquisitely treated by
position--
'That all evil thoughts and aims
Takest away,'
is yet originally borrowed by Mr. W. from the Litany: 'O Lamb of God,
that takest away the sins of the world.'
In style to explain the true character of note-writing--how compressed
and unrambling and direct it ought to be, and _illustrate_ by the
villainous twaddle of many Shakespearian notes.
_Syllogism._--In the _Edin. Advertiser_ for Friday, January 25, 1856, a
passage occurs taken from _Le Nord_ (or _Journal du Nord_), or some
paper whose accurate title I do not know, understood to be Russian in
its leanings, which makes a most absurd and ignorant use of this word.
The Allies are represented as addressing an argument to Russia,
amounting, I think, to this, viz.: that, in order to test her sincerity,
would it not be well for Russia at once to cede such insulated points of
territory as were valuable to Russia or suspicious to the Allies simply
as furnishing means for invasion of Turkey? And this argument is called
a _syllogism_.
'_Laid in wait_ for him.'--This false phrase occurs in some article (a
Crimea article, I suppose) in the same _Advertiser_ of January 25. And I
much doubt whether any ordinary ear would reconcile itself to _lay in
wait_ (as a _past_ tense) even when instructed in its propriety.
Those Scotticisms are worst which are nonsensical, as _e.g._:
'Whenever he died
Fully more.'
_Timeous_ and _dubiety_ are bad, simply as not authorized by any but
local usage. A word used only in Provence or amongst the Pyrenees could
not be employed by a classical French writer, except under a _caveat_
and for a special purpose.
Plent_y_, used under the absurd misleading of its terminal 'y' as an
adjective. _Alongst_, remember _of_; able _for_, the worse _of_ liquor,
to call _for, to go the length_ of, as applied to a distance; 'I don't
think _it_,' instead of 'I don't think _so_.'
In the _Lady's Newspaper_ for Saturday, May 8, 1852 (No. 280), occurs
the very worst case of exaggerated and incredible mixed silliness and
vulgarity connected with the use of _assist_ for _help_ at the
dinner-table that I have met with. It occurs in the review of a book
entitled 'The Illustrated London Cookery Book,' by Frederick Bishop. Mr.
Bishop, it seems, had 'enjoyed the office of cuisinier at the Palace,
and among some of our first nobility.' He has, by the way, an
introductory 'Philosophy of Cookery.' Two cases occur of this matchless
absurdity:
1. An ideal carver is described: he, after carving, 'is as cool and
collected as ever, and _assists_ the portions he has carved with as much
grace as he displayed in carving the fowl.'
2. Further on, when contrasting, not the carvers, but the things _to be_
carved, coming to '_Neck of Veal_,' he says of the carver: 'Should the
vertebræ have not been jointed by the butcher, you would find yourself
in the position of the ungraceful carver, being compelled to exercise a
degree of strength which should never be suffered to appear, very
possibly, too, _assisting_ gravy in a manner not contemplated by the
person unfortunate enough to receive it.'
_Genteel_ is the vulgarest and most plebeian of all known words.
Accordingly (and strange it is that the educated users of this word
should not perceive that fact), aristocratic people--people in the most
undoubted _élite_ of society as to rank or connections--utterly ignore
the word. They are aware of its existence in English dictionaries; they
know that it slumbers in those vast repositories; they even apprehend
your meaning in a vague way when you employ it as an epithet for
assigning the pretensions of an individual or a family. Generally it is
understood to imply that the party so described is in a position to make
morning calls, to leave cards, to be presentable for anything to the
contrary apparent in manners, style of conversation, etc. But these and
other suggestions still leave a vast area unmapped of blank charts in
which the soundings are still doubtful.
The word 'genteel' is so eminently vulgar apparently for this reason,
that it presents a non-vulgar distinction under a gross and vulgar
conception of that distinction. The true and central notion, on which
the word revolves, is elevating; but, by a false abstraction of its
elements, it is degraded. And yet in parts of this island where the
progress of refinement is torpid, and the field of vision is both narrow
and unchanging in all that regards the _nuances_ of manners, I have
remarked that the word 'genteel' maintains its old advantageous
acceptation; and as a proof of this, eminent and even revolutionary
thinkers born and bred in such provincial twilight, use the word as if
untainted and hardly aware that it is flyblown.
Among ourselves it is certain that a peculiar style of gossip, of
babble, and of miniature intriguing, invests the atmosphere of little
'townishness,' such as often entangles the more thoughtful and
dignified of the residents in troublesome efforts at passive resistance
or active counter-action. In dealing with this matter, Mr. Wordsworth
instanced Northampton and Nottingham; but a broader difference could
hardly be than between these towns. And just as 'genteel' remains the
vulgarest of all words, so the words 'simple' and 'simplicity,' amongst
all known words, offer the most complex and least simple of ideas.
Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using
such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was
(and _is_, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more
than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet
excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the
Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than
aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the
ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. Norwich,
again, though a seat of manufacturing industry, has always been modified
considerably by a literary body of residents.
'Mein alter Herr' (von Stein) 'pflegte dann wohl scherzend zu sagen: Ich
müsse von irgend eine Hexe meinen Altem als ein Wechselbalg in's Nest
gelegt seyn; ich gehöre offenbar einem Stamm amerikanischer wilden an,
und habe noch die Hühnerhundnase zum Auswittern des verschiedenen
Blutes.' Arndt, speaking of his power to detect at sight (when seen at a
distance) Russians, English, etc., says that Von Stein replied thus in
his surprise. But I have cited the passage as one which amply
illustrates the suspensive form of sentence in the German always
indicated by a colon (:), thus: 'zu sagen: Ich müsse'--to say that I
must have been (p. 164).
The active sense of _fearful_, viz., that which causes and communicates
terror--not that which receives terror--was undoubtedly in Shakespeare's
age, but especially amongst poets, the preponderant sense. Accordingly I
am of opinion that even in neutral cases, such as are open indifferently
to either sense, viz., that which affrights, or that which is itself
affrighted, the bias in Shakespeare's interpretation of the feeling lay
towards the former movement. For instance, in one of his sonnets:
'Oh, fearful meditation! where, alas!'
the true construction I believe to be--not this: Oh, though _deriving_
terror from the circumstances surrounding thee, _suffering_ terror from
the _entourage_ of considerations pursuing thee; but this: Oh, thought
impressing and creating terror, etc. A 'fearful' agent in Shakespeare's
use is not one that shrinks in alarm from the act, but an agent that
causes others to shrink; not panic-struck, but panic-striking.
Miss Edgeworth, let me remark, commits trespasses on language that are
really past excusing. In one place she says that a man 'had a
_contemptible_ opinion' of some other man's understanding. Such a
blunder is not of that class which usage sanctions, and an accuracy not
much short of pedantry would be argued in noticing: it is at once
illiterate and vulgar in the very last degree. I mean that it is common
amongst vulgar people, and them only. It ranks, for instance, with the
common formula of '_I_ am agreeable, if you prefer it.'
Style is the disentangling of thoughts or ideas reciprocally involved in
each other.