Character
Superiority of any kind involves discipline, self-denial, and self-
sacrifice. It is the law of excellence that he who would secure it must
pay for it. In this way the intellectual process is bound up with the
moral process, and a man must give his character firmness and fibre before
he can make his talent effective or his genius fruitful. The way of the
most gifted workman is no easier than that of the most mediocre; he learns
his lesson more easily, but he must learn the same lesson. The familiar
story of the Sleeping Princess protected by a hedge of thorns, told in so
many languages, is a parable of all success of a high order. The highest
prizes are always guarded from the facile hand; they exact patience,
persistence, intelligence, and force. If they were easily secured they
would be easily misused; it rarely happens, however, that a man of high
artistic gifts degrades his talent. He may set it to unprofitable uses,
but he rarely makes merchandise of it. A Rembrandt, Thackeray, or Lowell
cannot do inferior work for personal ends without suffering that devouring
remorse which accompanies the conscience of the artist, and turns all
ignoble popular successes into mockeries and scourges.
Moral education precedes mastership in every art, because the training
which mastery involves reacts upon character and gives it steadiness and
solidity. Great writers have sometimes lived careless, irresponsible
lives, but they have always paid a great price for self-indulgence. The
work of an irresponsible man of genius always suggests the loss which
society has suffered by reason of his moral instability. Such men have
done charming work; they have touched their creations with the magic of
natural grace and the beauty of fresh and rich feeling; but they miss that
completeness and finality which carry with them the conviction that the
man has put forth all that was in him. We value what they have done, but
we are always asking whether they could not have done more. Genius is of
so rare and vital a nature that it will flash through all manner of
obscurations, but there is a vast difference between the light which
shines through a clear medium and that which is dimmed and reflected by a
murky atmosphere. A man of Chatterton's temperament will give evidence of
the possession of genius, but how far removed he is, in influence,
position, and power, from a Tennyson or a Wordsworth!
The connection between sane living and sound work is a physiological and
psychological necessity. The time, strength, poise, capacity for sustained
work, steadiness of will, involved in the successful performance of great
tasks or the production of great artistic creations exclude from the race
all save those who bring to it health, vigour, and energy. It is
unnecessary to inquire with regard to the habits of the man who builds up
a great business enterprise or who secures genuine financial reputation
and authority; these achievements always involve self-control, courage,
persistence, and moral vigour. They are beyond the reach of the self-
indulgent man. The man whose weakness of will makes him the victim of
appetite or passion may make brilliant efforts, but he is incapable of
sustained effort; he may do beautiful things from time to time, he cannot
do beautiful things continuously and on a large scale. A Villon may give
the world a few songs of notable sweetness or power; he cannot give the
world a Divine Comedy or the plays of Corneille.
Every attempt to dissever art from character, however brilliantly
sustained, is doomed to failure because the instinct, the intelligence,
and the experience of the race are against it. Physiology and psychology
are as definite as religion in their declarations on this matter; it is
not a question of dogma or even of faith; it is a question of elementary
laws and of common sense. All modern investigation goes to show the subtle
and vital relations which exist between the different parts of a man's
nature, and the certainty of the reaction of one part upon another; so
that whatever touches the body ultimately touches the innermost nature of
the man, and whatever affects the spirit eventually leaves its record on
the physique. Every piece of genuine work which comes from a man's hand
bears the impress of and is stamped with the quality of his whole being;
it is the complex product of all that the man is and of all that be has
done; it is the result of his genius, his industry, and his character.
Goethe saw clearly, as every critic of insight must see, that the artist
is conditioned on the man; that whenever a man does anything which has
greatness in it he does it with his whole nature. Into his verse the poet
puts his body, his mind, and his soul; he is as powerless to detach his
work from his past as he is to detach himself from it; and one of the
saddest penalties of his misdoings is their survival in his work. The
dulness of the poet's ear shows itself in the defective melody of his
verse; for both metre and rhythm have a physiological basis; they
represent and express the harmony which is in the body when the body is
finely attuned to the spirit. Dull senses and a sluggish body are never
found in connection with a great command of the melodic quality in
language.
Goethe, with his deep insight, held so uncompromisingly to the unity of
man and his works, that he would not have tried to escape the criticism of
his nature which his works, adequately interpreted, suggest. He would have
expected to find his moral limitations reproduced in his art. He indicated
the fundamental principle when he said that his works, taken together,
constituted one great confession. And this may be affirmed of every man's
work; it is inevitably, and by the law of his nature, a disclosure of what
he is, and what he is depends largely upon what he has been. Men have
nowhere more conspicuously failed to escape themselves than in their
works. Literary history, especially, is a practically unused treasure-
house of moral illustration and teaching; for in no other record of human
activity is the dependence of a man's work on his nature more constantly
and strikingly brought out. The subtle relation between temperament,
genius, environment, and character is in constant evidence to the student
of literature; and he learns at last the primary truth that because a
man's work is a revelation of the man, it is, therefore, as much a matter
of his character as of his genius. The order of the world is moral in
every fibre; men may do what they please within certain limits, and
because they do what they please society seems to be in a state of moral
chaos; but every word and deed reacts instantly on the man, and this
reaction is so inevitable that since time began not one violator of any
law of life has ever escaped the penalty. He has paid the price of his
word or his deed on the instant in its reaction upon his character. God
does not punish men; they punish themselves in their own natures and in
the work of their hands. When Mirabeau, in the consciousness of the
possession of the most masterful genius of his time, rose to speak in the
States General, he became aware that his dissolute past was standing
beside him and mocking him. His vast power, honestly put forth for great
ends, was neutralised by a record which made belief in him almost
impossible. In bitterness of soul he learned that genius and character are
bound together by indissoluble ties, and that genius without character is
like oil that blazes up and dies down about a shattered lamp. More than
once, in words full of the deepest pathos, he recognised the immense value
of character in men of far less ability than himself. The words which Mrs.
Ward puts into the mouth of Henri Regnault are memorable as embodying
searching criticism: "No, we don't lack brains, we French. All the same, I
tell you, in the whole of that room there are about half-a-dozen people,--
oh, not so many!--not nearly so many!--who will ever make a mark, even for
their own generation, who will ever strike anything out of nature that is
worth having--wrestle with her to any purpose. Why? Because they have
every sort of capacity--every sort of cleverness--and no _character!"_
If a man is insensibly determining the quality of his work by everything
which he is doing; if he is fixing the excellence of its workmanship by
the standards he is accepting and the habits he is forming; if he is
creating in advance its spiritual content and significance by the quality
which his own nature is unconsciously taking on; and if he is determining
its quantity and force by the strength, persistence, and steadfastness
which he is developing, it is clear that work rests ultimately upon
character, and that character conditions work in quality, content, skill,
and mass.