[Italics are marked with _underscores_.]
DISCOURSES IN AMERICA
BY
MATTHEW ARNOLD
London
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1885
_Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh._
PREFACE.
Of the three discourses in this volume, the second was originally given
as the Rede Lecture at Cambridge, was recast for delivery in America,
and is reprinted here as so recast. The first discourse, that on
‘Numbers,’ was originally given in New York. It was afterwards published
in the _Nineteenth Century_, and I have to thank Mr. Knowles for kindly
permitting me to reprint it now. The third discourse, that on ‘Emerson,’
was originally given in Emerson’s ‘own delightful town,’ Boston.
I am glad of every opportunity of thanking my American audiences for the
unfailing attention and kindness with which they listened to a speaker
who did not flatter them, who would have flattered them ill, but who yet
felt, and in fact expressed, more esteem and admiration than his words
were sometimes, at a hasty first hearing, supposed to convey. I cannot
think that what I have said of Emerson will finally be accounted scant
praise, although praise universal and unmixed it certainly is not. What
high esteem I feel for the suitableness and easy play of American
institutions I have had occasion, since my return home, to say publicly
and emphatically. But nothing in the discourse on ‘Numbers’ was at
variance with this high esteem, although a caution, certainly, was
suggested. But then some caution or other, to be drawn from the
inexhaustibly fruitful truth that moral causes govern the standing and
the falling of States, who is there that can be said not to need?
All need it, we in this country need it, as indeed in the discourse on
‘Numbers’ I have by an express instance shown. Yet as regards us in this
country at the present moment, I am tempted, I confess, to resort to the
great truth in question, not for caution so much as for consolation. Our
politics are ‘battles of the kites and the crows,’ of the Barbarians and
the Philistines; each combatant striving to affirm himself still, while
all the vital needs and instincts of our national growth demand, not
that either of the combatants should be enabled to affirm himself, but
that each should be transformed. Our aristocratical class, the
Barbarians, have no perception of the real wants of the community at
home. Our middle classes, the great Philistine power, have no perception
of our real relations to the world abroad, no clue, apparently, for
guidance, where-ever that attractive and ever-victorious rhetorician,
who is the Minister of their choice, may take them, except the formula
of that submissive animal which carried the prophet Balaam. Our affairs
are in the condition which, from such parties to our politics, might be
expected. Yet amid all the difficulties and mortifications which beset
us, with the Barbarians impossible, with the Philistines determining our
present course, with our rising politicians seeking only that the mind
of the Populace, when the Populace arrives at power, may be found in
harmony with the mind of Mr. Carvell Williams, which they flatter
themselves they have fathomed; with the House of Lords a danger, and the
House of Commons a scandal, and the general direction of affairs
infelicitous as we see it,—one consolation remains to us, and that no
slight or unworthy one. Infelicitous the general direction of our
affairs may be; but the individual Englishman, whenever and wherever
called upon to do his duty, does it almost invariably with the old
energy, courage, virtue. And this is what we gain by having had, as a
people, in the ground of our being, a firm faith in conduct; by having
believed, more steadfastly and fervently than most, this great law that
moral causes govern the standing and the falling of men and nations. The
law gradually widens, indeed, so as to include light as well as honesty
and energy; to make light, also, a moral cause. Unless we are
transformed we cannot finally stand, and without more light we cannot be
transformed. But in the trying hours through which before our
transformation we have to pass, it may well console us to rest our
thoughts upon our life’s law even as we have hitherto known it, and upon
all which even in our present imperfect acception of it it has done for
us.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
Numbers; or, The Majority and the Remnant 1
Literature and Science 72
Emerson 138
NUMBERS;
OR,
THE MAJORITY AND THE REMNANT.
There is a characteristic saying of Dr. Johnson: ‘Patriotism is the last
refuge of a scoundrel.’ The saying is cynical, many will even call it
brutal; yet it has in it something of plain, robust sense and truth. We
do often see men passing themselves off as patriots who are in truth
scoundrels; we meet with talk and proceedings laying claim to
patriotism, which are these gentlemen’s last refuge. We may all of us
agree in praying to be delivered from patriots and patriotism of this
sort. Short of such, there is undoubtedly, sheltering itself under the
fine name of patriotism, a good deal of self-flattery and self-delusion
which is mischievous. ‘Things are what they are, and the consequences of
them will be what they will be; why, then, should we desire to be
deceived?’ In that uncompromising sentence of Bishop Butler’s is surely
the right and salutary maxim for both individuals and nations.
Yet there is an honourable patriotism which we should satisfy if we can,
and should seek to have on our side. At home I have said so much of the
characters of our society and the prospects of our civilisation, that I
can hardly escape the like topic elsewhere. Speaking in America, I
cannot well avoid saying something about the prospects of society in the
United States. It is a topic where one is apt to touch people’s
patriotic feelings. No one will accuse me of having flattered the
patriotism of that great country of English people on the other side of
the Atlantic, amongst whom I was born. Here, so many miles from home, I
begin to reflect with tender contrition, that perhaps I have not,—I
will not say flattered the patriotism of my own countrymen enough, but
regarded it enough. Perhaps that is one reason why I have produced so
very little effect upon them. It was a fault of youth and inexperience.
But it would be unpardonable to come in advanced life and repeat the
same error here. You will not expect impossibilities of me. You will not
expect me to say that things are not what, in my judgment, they are, and
that the consequences of them will not be what they will be. I should
make nothing of it; I should be a too palpable failure. But I confess
that I should be glad if in what I say here I could engage American
patriotism on my side, instead of rousing it against me. And it so
happens that the paramount thoughts which your great country raises in
my mind are really and truly of a kind to please, I think, any true
American patriot, rather than to offend him.
The vast scale of things here, the extent of your country, your numbers,
the rapidity of your increase, strike the imagination, and are a common
topic for admiring remark. Our great orator, Mr. Bright, is never weary
of telling us how many acres of land you have at your disposal, how many
bushels of grain you produce, how many millions you are, how many more
millions you will be presently, and what a capital thing this is for
you. Now, though I do not always agree with Mr. Bright, I find myself
agreeing with him here. I think your numbers afford a very real and
important ground for satisfaction.
Not that your great numbers, or indeed great numbers of men anywhere,
are likely to be all good, or even to have the majority good. ‘The
majority are bad,’ said one of the wise men of Greece; but he was a
pagan. Much to the same effect, however, is the famous sentence of the
New Testament: ‘Many are called, few chosen,’ This appears a hard
saying; frequent are the endeavours to elude it, to attenuate its
severity. But turn it how you will, manipulate it as you will, the few,
as Cardinal Newman well says, can never mean the many. Perhaps you will
say that the majority _is_, sometimes, good; that its impulses are good
generally, and its action is good occasionally. Yes, but it lacks
principle, it lacks persistence; if to-day its good impulses prevail,
they succumb to-morrow; sometimes it goes right, but it is very apt to
go wrong. Even a popular orator, or a popular journalist, will hardly
say that the multitude may be trusted to have its judgment generally
just, and its action generally virtuous. It may be better, it is better,
that the body of the people, with all its faults, should act for itself,
and control its own affairs, than that it should be set aside as
ignorant and incapable, and have its affairs managed for it by a
so-called superior class, possessing property and intelligence. Property
and intelligence cannot be trusted to show a sound majority themselves;
the exercise of power by the people tends to educate the people. But
still, the world being what it is, we must surely expect the aims and
doings of the majority of men to be at present very faulty, and this in
a numerous community no less than in a small one. So much we must
certainly, I think, concede to the sages and to the saints.
Sages and saints are apt to be severe, it is true; apt to take a gloomy
view of the society in which they live, and to prognosticate evil to it.
But then it must be added that their prognostications are very apt to
turn out right. Plato’s account of the most gifted and brilliant
community of the ancient world, of that Athens of his to which we all
owe so much, is despondent enough. ‘There is but a very small remnant,’
he says, ‘of honest followers of wisdom, and they who are of these few,
and who have tasted how sweet and blessed a possession is wisdom, and
who can fully see, moreover, the madness of the multitude, and that
there is no one, we may say, whose action in public matters is sound,
and no ally for whosoever would help the just, what,’ asks Plato, ‘are
they to do? They may be compared,’ says Plato, ‘to a man who has fallen
among wild beasts; he will not be one of them, but he is too unaided to
make head against them; and before he can do any good to society or his
friends, he will be overwhelmed and perish uselessly. When he considers
this, he will resolve to keep still, and to mind his own business; as it
were standing aside under a wall in a storm of dust and hurricane of
driving wind; and he will endure to behold the rest filled with
iniquity, if only he himself may live his life clear of injustice and of
impiety, and depart, when his time comes, in mild and gracious mood,
with fair hope.’
Plato’s picture here of democratic Athens is certainly gloomy enough. We
may be sure the mass of his contemporaries would have pronounced it to
be monstrously overcharged. We ourselves, if we had been living then,
should most of us have by no means seen things as Plato saw them. No, if
we had seen Athens even nearer its end than when Plato wrote the strong
words which I have been quoting, Athens in the very last days of Plato’s
life, we should most of us probably have considered that things were not
going badly with Athens. There is a long sixteen years’
administration,—the administration of Eubulus,—which fills the last
years of Plato’s life, and the middle years of the fourth century before
Christ. A temperate German historian thus describes Athens during this
ministry of Eubulus: ‘The grandeur and loftiness of Attic democracy had
vanished, while all the pernicious germs contained in it were fully
developed. A life of comfort and a craving for amusement were encouraged
in every way, and the interest of the citizens was withdrawn from
serious things. Conversation became more and more superficial and
frivolous. Famous courtesans formed the chief topic of talk; the new
inventions of Thearion, the leading pastry-cook in Athens, were hailed
with loud applause; and the witty sayings which had been uttered in gay
circles were repeated about town as matters of prime importance.’
No doubt, if we had been living then to witness this, we should from
time to time have shaken our heads gravely, and said how sad it all was.
But most of us would not, I think, have been very seriously disquieted
by it. On the other hand, we should have found many things in the Athens
of Eubulus to gratify us. ‘The democrats,’ says the same historian whom
I have just quoted, ‘saw in Eubulus one of their own set at the head of
affairs;’ and I suppose no good democrat would see that without
pleasure. Moreover, Eubulus was of popular character. In one respect he
seems to have resembled your own ‘heathen Chinee;’ he had ‘guileless
ways,’ says our historian, ‘in which the citizens took pleasure.’ He was
also a good speaker, a thorough man of business; and, above all, he was
very skilful in matters of finance. His administration was both popular
and prosperous. We should certainly have said, most of us, if we had
encountered somebody announcing his resolve to stand aside under a wall
during such an administration, that he was a goose for his pains; and if
he had called it ‘a falling among wild beasts’ to have to live with his
fellow-citizens who had confidence in Eubulus, their country, and
themselves, we should have esteemed him very impertinent.
Yes;—and yet at the close of that administration of Eubulus came the
collapse, and the end of Athens as an independent State. And it was to
the fault of Athens herself that the collapse was owing. Plato was right
after all; the majority were bad, and the remnant were impotent.
So fared it with that famous Athenian State, with the brilliant people
of art and intellect. Now let us turn to the people of religion. We have
heard Plato speaking of the very small remnant which honestly sought
wisdom. _The remnant!_—it is the word of the Hebrew prophets also, and
especially is it the word of the greatest of them all, Isaiah. Not used
with the despondency of Plato, used with far other power informing it,
and with a far other future awaiting it, filled with fire, filled with
hope, filled with faith, filled with joy, this term itself, _the
remnant_, is yet Isaiah’s term as well as Plato’s. The texts are
familiar to all Christendom. ‘Though thy people Israel be as the sand of
the sea, only a remnant of them shall return.’ Even this remnant, a
tenth of the whole, if so it may be, shall have to come back into the
purging fire, and be again cleared and further reduced there. But
nevertheless, ‘as a terebinth tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in
them, though they be cut down, so the stock of that burned tenth shall
be a holy seed.’
Yes, the small remnant should be a holy seed; but the great majority, as
in democratic Athens, so in the kingdoms of the Hebrew nation, were
unsound, and their State was doomed. This was Isaiah’s point. The actual
commonwealth of the ‘drunkards’ and the ‘blind,’ as he calls them, in
Israel and Judah, of the dissolute grandees and gross and foolish common
people, of the great majority, must perish; its perishing was the
necessary stage towards a happier future. And Isaiah was right, as Plato
was right. No doubt to most of us, if we had been there to see it, the
kingdom of Ephraim or of Judah, the society of Samaria and Jerusalem,
would have seemed to contain a great deal else besides dissolute
grandees and foolish common people. No doubt we should have thought
parts of their policy serious, and some of their alliances promising. No
doubt, when we read the Hebrew prophets now, with the larger and more
patient temper of a different race and an augmented experience, we often
feel the blame and invective to be too absolute. Nevertheless, as to his
grand point, Isaiah, I say, was right. The majority in the Jewish State,
whatever they might think or say, whatever their guides and flatterers
might think or say, the majority were unsound, and their unsoundness
must be their ruin.
Isaiah, however, does not make his remnant confine itself, like Plato’s,
to standing aside under a wall during this life and then departing in
mild temper and good hope when the time for departure comes; Isaiah’s
remnant saves the State. Undoubtedly he means to represent it as doing
so. Undoubtedly he imagines his Prince of the house of David who is to
be born within a year’s time, his royal and victorious Immanuel, he
imagines him witnessing as a child the chastisement of Ephraim and the
extirpation of the bad majority there; then witnessing as a youth the
chastisement of Judah and the extirpation of the bad majority there
also; but finally, in mature life, reigning over a State renewed,
preserved, and enlarged, a greater and happier kingdom of the chosen
people.
Undoubtedly Isaiah conceives his remnant in this wise; undoubtedly he
imagined for it a part which, in strict truth, it did not play, and
could not play. So manifest was the non-fulfilment of his prophecy,
taken strictly, that ardent souls feeding upon his words had to wrest
them from their natural meaning, and to say that Isaiah directly meant
something which he did not directly mean. Isaiah, like Plato, with
inspired insight foresaw that the world before his eyes, the world of
actual life, the State and city of the unsound majority, could not
stand. Unlike Plato, Isaiah announced with faith and joy a leader and a
remnant certain to supersede them. But he put the leader’s coming, and
he put the success of the leader’s and the remnant’s work, far, far too
soon; and his conception, in this respect, is fantastic. Plato betook
himself for the bringing in of righteousness to a visionary republic in
the clouds; Isaiah,—and it is the immortal glory of him and of his race
to have done so,—brought it in upon earth. But Immanuel and his reign,
for the eighth century before Christ, were fantastic. For the kingdom of
Judah they were fantastic. Immanuel and the remnant could not come to
reign under the conditions there and then offered to them; the thing was
impossible.
The reason of the impossibility is quite simple. The scale of things, in
petty States like Judah and Athens, is too small; the numbers are too
scanty. Admit that for the world, as we hitherto know it, what the
philosophers and prophets say is true: that the majority are unsound.
Even in communities with exceptional gifts, even in the Jewish State,
the Athenian State, the majority are unsound. But there is ‘the
remnant.’ Now the important thing, as regards States such as Judah and
Athens, is not that the remnant bears but a small proportion to the
majority; the remnant always bears a small proportion to the majority.
The grave things for States like Judah and Athens is, that the remnant
must in positive bulk be so small, and therefore so powerless for
reform. To be a voice outside the State, speaking to mankind or to the
future, perhaps shaking the actual State to pieces in doing so, one man
will suffice. But to reform the State in order to save it, to preserve
it by changing it, a body of workers is needed as well as a leader;—a
considerable body of workers, placed at many points, and operating in
many directions. This considerable body of workers for good is what is
wanting in petty States such as were Athens and Judah. It is said that
the Athenian State had in all but 350,000 inhabitants. It is calculated
that the population of the kingdom of Judah did not exceed a million and
a quarter. The scale of things, I say, is here too small, the numbers
are too scanty, to give us a remnant capable of saving and perpetuating
the community. The remnant, in these cases, may influence the world and
the future, may transcend the State and survive it; but it cannot
possibly transform the State and perpetuate the State: for such a work
it is numerically too feeble.
Plato saw the impossibility. Isaiah refused to accept it, but facts were
too strong for him. The Jewish State could not be renewed and saved, and
he was wrong in thinking that it could. And therefore I call his grand
point this other, where he was altogether right: that the actual world
of the unsound majority, though it fancied itself solid, and though most
men might call it solid, could not stand. Let us read him again and
again, until we fix in our minds this true conviction of his, to edify
us whenever we see such a world existing: his indestructible conviction
that such a world, with its prosperities, idolatries, oppression,
luxury, pleasures, drunkards, careless women, governing classes, systems
of policy, strong alliances, shall come to nought and pass away; that
nothing can save it. Let us do homage, also, to his indestructible
conviction that States are saved by their righteous remnant, however
clearly we may at the same time recognise that his own building on this
conviction was premature.
That, however, matters to us little. For how different is the scale of
things in the modern States to which we belong, how far greater are the
numbers! It is impossible to overrate the importance of the new element
introduced into our calculations by increasing the size of the remnant.
And in our great modern States, where the scale of things is so large,
it does seem as if the remnant might be so increased as to become an
actual power, even though the majority be unsound. Then the lover of
wisdom may come out from under his wall, the lover of goodness will not
be alone among the wild beasts. To enable the remnant to succeed, a
large strengthening of its numbers is everything.
Here is good hope for us, not only, as for Plato’s recluse, in departing
this life, but while we live and work in it. Only, before we dwell too
much on this hope, it is advisable to make sure that we have earned the
right to entertain it. We have earned the right to entertain it, only
when we are at one with the philosophers and prophets in their
conviction respecting the world which now is, the world of the unsound
majority; when we feel what they mean, and when we go thoroughly along
with them in it. Most of us, as I have said already, would by no means
have been with them when they were here in life, and most of us are not
really with them now. What is saving? Our institutions, says an
American; the British Constitution, says an Englishman; the civilising
mission of France, says a Frenchman. But Plato and the sages, when they
are asked what is saving, answer: ‘To love righteousness, and to be
convinced of the unprofitableness of iniquity.’ And Isaiah and the
prophets, when they are asked the same question, answer to just the same
effect: that what is saving is to ‘order one’s conversation right’; to
‘cease to do evil’; to ‘delight in the law of the Eternal’; and to ‘make
one’s study in it all day long.’
The worst of it is, that this loving of righteousness and this
delighting in the law of the Eternal sound rather vague to us. Not that
they are vague really; indeed, they are less vague than American
institutions, or the British Constitution, or the civilising mission of
France. But the phrases sound vague because of the quantity of matters
they cover. The thing is to have a brief but adequate enumeration of
these matters. The New Testament tells us how righteousness is composed.
In England and America we have been brought up in familiarity with the
New Testament. And so, before Mr. Bradlaugh on our side of the water,
and the Congress of American Freethinkers on yours, banish it from our
education and memory, let us take from the New Testament a text showing
what it is that both Plato and the prophets mean when they tell us that
we ought to love righteousness and to make our study in the law of the
Eternal, but that the unsound majority do nothing of the kind. A score
of texts offer themselves in a moment. Here is one which will serve very
well: ‘Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are elevated,
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever
things are amiable, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be
any virtue, and if there be any praise; have these in your mind, let
your thoughts run upon these.’[1] That is what both Plato and the
prophets mean by loving righteousness, and making one’s study in the law
of the Eternal.
Now the matters just enumerated do not come much into the heads of most
of us, I suppose, when we are thinking of politics. But the philosophers
and prophets maintain that these matters, and not those of which the
heads of politicians are full, do really govern politics and save or
destroy States. They save or destroy them by a silent, inexorable
fatality; while the politicians are making believe, plausibly and
noisily, with their American institutions, British Constitution, and
civilising mission of France. And because these matters are what do
really govern politics and save or destroy States, Socrates maintained
that in his time he and a few philosophers, who alone kept insisting on
the good of righteousness and the unprofitableness of iniquity, were the
only real politicians then living.
I say, if we are to derive comfort from the doctrine of _the remnant_
(and there is great comfort to be derived from it), we must also hold
fast to the austere but true doctrine as to what really governs
politics, overrides with an inexorable fatality the combinations of the
so-called politicians, and saves or destroys States. Having in mind
things true, things elevated, things just, things pure, things amiable,
things of good report; having these in mind, studying and loving these,
is what saves States.
There is nothing like positive instances to illustrate general
propositions of this kind, and to make them believed. I hesitate to take
an instance from America. Possibly there are some people who think that
already, on a former occasion, I have said enough about America without
duly seeing and knowing it. So I will take my instances from England,
and from England’s neighbour and old co-mate in history, France. The
instance from England I will take first. I will take it from the grave
topic of England’s relations with Ireland. I am not going to reproach
either England or Ireland. To reproach Ireland here would probably be
indiscreet. As to England, anything I may have to say against my own
countrymen I prefer to say at home; America is the last place where I
should care to say it. However, I have no wish or intention now to
reproach either the English or the Irish. But I want to show you from
England’s relations with Ireland how right the philosophers and prophets
are. Every one knows that there has been conquest and confiscation in
Ireland. So there has elsewhere. Every one knows that the conquest and
the confiscation have been attended with cupidity, oppression, and
ill-usage. So they have elsewhere. ‘Whatsoever things are just’ are not
exactly the study, so far as I know, of conquerors and confiscators
anywhere; certainly they were not the study of the English conquerors of
Ireland. A failure in justice is a source of danger to States. But it
may be made up for and got over; it has been made up for and got over in
many communities. England’s confiscations in Ireland are a thing of the
past; the penal laws against Catholics are a thing of the past; much has
been done to make up for the old failure in justice; Englishmen
generally think that it has been pretty well made up for, and that
Irishmen ought to think so too. And politicians invent Land Acts for
curing the last results of the old failure in justice, for insuring the
contentment of the Irish with us, and for consolidating the Union: and
are surprised and plaintive if it is not consolidated. But now see how
much more serious people are the philosophers and prophets than the
politicians. _Whatsoever things are amiable!_—the failure in
amiability, too, is a source of danger and insecurity to States, as well
as the failure in justice. And we English are not amiable, or at any
rate, what in this case comes to the same thing, do not appear so. The
politicians never thought of that! Quite outside their combinations lies
this hindrance, tending to make their most elaborate combinations
ineffectual. Thus the joint operation of two moral causes together,—the
sort of causes which politicians do not seriously regard,—tells against
the designs of the politicians with what seems to be an almost
inexorable fatality. If there were not the failure in amiability,
perhaps the original failure in justice might by this time have been got
over; if there had not been the failure in justice, perhaps the failure
in amiability might not have mattered much. The two failures together
create a difficulty almost insurmountable. Public men in England keep
saying that it will be got over. I hope that it will be got over, and
that the union between England and Ireland may become as solid as that
between England and Scotland. But it will not become solid by means of
the contrivances of the mere politician, or without the intervention of
moral causes of concord to heal the mischief wrought by moral causes of
division. Everything, in this case, depends upon the ‘remnant,’ its
numbers, and its powers of action.
My second instance is even more important. It is so important, and its
reach is so wide, that I must go into it with some little fulness. The
instance is taken from France. To France I have always felt myself
powerfully drawn. People in England often accuse me of liking France and
things French far too well. At all events I have paid special regard to
them, and am always glad to confess how much I owe to them. M.
Sainte-Beuve wrote to me in the last years of his life: ‘You have passed
through our life and literature by a deep inner line, which confers
initiation, and which you will never lose.’ _Vous avez traversé notre
vie et notre littérature par une ligne intérieure, profonde, qui fait
les initiés, et que vous ne perdrez jamais._ I wish I could think that
this friendly testimony of that accomplished and charming man, one of my
chief benefactors, were fully deserved. But I have pride and pleasure in
quoting it; and I quote it to bear me out in saying, that whatever
opinion I may express about France, I have at least been a not
inattentive observer of that great country, and anything but a hostile
one.
The question was once asked by the town clerk of Ephesus: ‘What man is
there that knoweth not how that the city of the Ephesians is a
worshipper of the great goddess Diana?’ Now really, when one looks at
the popular literature of the French at this moment,—their popular
novels, popular stage-plays, popular newspapers,—and at the life of
which this literature of theirs is the index, one is tempted to make a
goddess out of a word of their own, and then, like the town clerk of
Ephesus, to ask: ‘What man is there that knoweth not how that the city
of the French is a worshipper of the great goddess Lubricity?’ Or
rather, as Greek is the classic and euphonious language for names of
gods and goddesses, let us take her name from the Greek Testament, and
call her the goddess Aselgeia. That goddess has always been a sufficient
power amongst mankind, and her worship was generally supposed to need
restraining rather than encouraging. But here is now a whole popular
literature, nay, and art too, in France at her service! stimulations and
suggestions by her and to her meet one in it at every turn. She is
becoming the great recognised power there; never was anything like it.
M. Renan himself seems half inclined to apologise for not having paid
her more attention. ‘Nature cares nothing for chastity,’ says he; _Les
frivoles ont peut-être raison;_ ‘The gay people are perhaps in the
right,’ Men even of this force salute her; but the allegiance now paid
to her, in France, by the popular novel, the popular newspaper, the
popular play, is, one may say, boundless.
I have no wish at all to preach to the French; no intention whatever, in
what I now say, to upbraid or wound them. I simply lay my finger on a
fact in their present condition; a fact insufficiently noticed, as it
seems to me, and yet extremely potent for mischief. It is well worth
while to trace the manner of its growth and action.
The French have always had a leaning to the goddess of whom we speak,
and have been willing enough to let the world know of their leaning, to
pride themselves on their Gaulish salt, their gallantry, and so on. But
things have come to their present head gradually. Catholicism was an
obstacle; the serious element in the nation was another obstacle. But
now just see the course which things have taken, and how they all, one
may say, have worked together, for this goddess. First, there was the
original Gaul, the basis of the French nation; the Gaul, gay, sociable,
quick of sentiment, quick of perception; apt, however, very apt, to be
presumptuous and puffed up. Then came the Roman conquest, and from this
we get a new personage, the Gallo-Latin; with the Gaulish qualities for
a basis, but with Latin order, reason, lucidity, added, and also Latin
sensuality. Finally, we have the Frankish conquest and the Frenchman.
The Frenchman proper is the Gallo-Latin, with Frankish or Germanic
qualities added and infused. No mixture could be better. The Germans
have plenty of faults, but in this combination they seem not to have
taken hold; the Germans seem to have given of their seriousness and
honesty to the conquered Gallo-Latin, and not of their brutality. And
mediæval France, which exhibits the combination and balance, under the
influence then exercised by Catholicism, of Gaulish quickness and gaiety
with Latin rationality and German seriousness, offers to our view the
soundest and the most attractive stage, perhaps, in all French history.
But the balance could not be maintained; at any rate, it was not
maintained. Mediæval Catholicism lost its virtue. The serious Germanic
races made the Reformation, feeling that without it there was no safety
and continuance for those moral ideas which they loved and which were
the ground of their being. France did not go with the Reformation; the
Germanic qualities in her were not strong enough to make her go with it.
‘France did not want a reformation which was a moral one,’ is Michelet’s
account of the matter: _La France ne voulait pas de réforme morale._ Let
us put the case more favourably for her, and say that perhaps, with her
quick perception, France caught sense, from the very outset, of that
intellectual unsoundness and incompleteness in the Reformation, which is
now so visible. But, at any rate, the Reformation did not carry France
with it; and the Germanic side in the Frenchman, his Germanic qualities,
thus received a check. They subsisted, however, in good force still; the
new knowledge and new ideas, brought by the revival of letters, gave an
animating stimulus; and in the seventeenth century the Gaulish gaiety
and quickness of France, the Latin rationality, and the still subsisting
German seriousness, all combining under the puissant breath of the
Renascence, produced a literature, the strongest, the most substantial
and the most serious which the French have ever succeeded in producing,
and which has, indeed, consummate and splendid excellences.
Still, the Germanic side in the Frenchman had received a check, and in
the next century this side became quite attenuated. The Germanic
steadiness and seriousness gave way more and more; the Gaulish salt, the
Gaulish gaiety, quickness, sentiment, and sociability, the Latin
rationality, prevailed more and more, and had the field nearly to
themselves. They produced a brilliant and most efficacious
literature,—the French literature of the eighteenth century. The
goddess Aselgeia had her part in it; it was a literature to be praised
with reserves; it was, above all, a revolutionary literature. But
European institutions were then in such a superannuated condition,
straightforward and just perception, free thought and rationality, were
at such a discount, that the brilliant French literature in which these
qualities predominated, and which by their predominance was made
revolutionary, had in the eighteenth century a great mission to fulfil,
and fulfilled it victoriously.
The mission is fulfilled, but meanwhile the Germanic quality in the
Frenchman seems pretty nearly to have died out, and the Gallo-Latin in
him has quite got the upper hand. Of course there are individuals and
groups who are to be excepted; I will allow any number of exceptions you
please; and in the mass of the French people, which works and is silent,
there may be treasures of resource. But taking the Frenchman who is
commonly in view—the usual type of speaking, doing, vocal, visible
Frenchman—we may say, and he will probably be not at all displeased at
our saying, that the German in him has nearly died out, and the
Gallo-Latin has quite got the upper hand. For us, however, this means
that the chief source of seriousness and of moral ideas is failing and
drying up in him, and that what remains are the sources of Gaulish salt,
and quickness, and sentiment, and sociability, and sensuality, and
rationality. And, of course, the play and working of these qualities is
altered by their being no longer in combination with a dose of German
seriousness, but left to work by themselves. Left to work by themselves,
they give us what we call the _homme sensuel moyen_, the average sensual
man. The highest art, the art which by its height, depth, and gravity
possesses religiousness,—such as the Greeks had, the art of Pindar and
Phidias; such as the Italians had, the art of Dante and Michael
Angelo,—this art, with the training which it gives and the standard
which it sets up, the French have never had. On the other hand, they had
a dose of German seriousness, a Germanic bent for ideas of moral duty,
which neither the Greeks had, nor the Italians. But if this dies out,
what is left is the _homme sensuel moyen_. This average sensual man has
his very advantageous qualities. He has his gaiety, quickness,
sentiment, sociability, rationality. He has his horror of sour
strictness, false restraint, hypocrisy, obscurantism, cretinism, and the
rest of it. And this is very well; but on the serious, moral side he is
almost ludicrously insufficient. Fine sentiments about his dignity and
his honour and his heart, about the dignity and the honour and the heart
of France, and his adoration of her, do duty for him here; grandiose
phrases about the spectacle offered in France and in the French Republic
of the ideal for our race, of the _épanouissement de l’élite de
l’humanité_, ‘the coming into blow of the choice flower of humanity.’ In
M. Victor Hugo we have (his worshippers must forgive me for saying so)
the average sensual man impassioned and grandiloquent; in M. Zola we
have the average sensual man going near the ground. ‘Happy the son,’
cries M. Victor Hugo, ‘of whom, one can say, “He has consoled his
mother!” Happy the poet of whom one can say, “He has consoled his
country!”’ The French themselves, even when they are severest, call this
kind of thing by only the mild name of emphasis, ‘_emphase_,’—other
people call it fustian. And a surly Johnson will growl out in answer, at
one time, that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’; at
another time, that fine sentiments about _ma mère_ are the last refuge
of a scoundrel. But what they really are is the creed which in France
the average sensual man rehearses, to do duty for serious moral ideas.
And, as the result, we have a popular literature and a popular art
serving, as has been already said, the goddess Aselgeia.
Such an art and literature easily make their way everywhere. In England
and America the French literature of the seventeenth century is
peculiarly fitted to do great good, and nothing but good; it can hardly
be too much studied by us. And it is studied by us very little. The
French literature of the eighteenth century, also, has qualities to do
us much good, and we are not likely to take harm from its other
qualities; we may study it to our great profit and advantage. And it is
studied by us very little. The higher French literature of the present
day has more knowledge and a wider range than its great predecessors,
but less soundness and perfection, and it exerts much less influence
than they did. Action and influence are now with the lower literature of
France, with the popular literature in the service of the goddess
Aselgeia. And this popular modern French literature, and the art which
corresponds to it, bid fair to make their way in England and America far
better than their predecessors. They appeal to instincts so universal
and accessible; they appeal, people are beginning boldly to say, to
Nature herself. Few things have lately struck me more than M. Renan’s
dictum, which I have already quoted, about what used to be called the
virtue of chastity. The dictum occurs in his very interesting
autobiography, published but the other day. M. Renan, whose genius I
unfeignedly admire, is, I need hardly say, a man of the most perfect
propriety of life; he has told us so himself. He was brought up for a
priest, and he thinks it would not have been in good taste for him to
become a free liver. But this abstinence is a mere matter of personal
delicacy, a display of good and correct taste on his own part in his own
very special circumstances. ‘Nature,’ he cries, ‘cares nothing about
chastity.’ What a slap in the face to the sticklers for ‘Whatsoever
things are pure’!
I have had to take a long sweep to arrive at the point which I wished to
reach. If we are to enjoy the benefit, I said, of the comfortable
doctrine of the remnant, we must be capable of receiving also, and of
holding fast, the hard doctrine of the unsoundness of the majority, and
of the certainty that the unsoundness of the majority, if it is not
withstood and remedied, must be their ruin. And therefore, even though a
gifted man like M. Renan may be so carried away by the tide of opinion
in France where he lives, as to say that Nature cares nothing about
chastity, and to see with amused indulgence the worship of the great
goddess Lubricity, let us stand fast, and say that her worship is
against nature, human nature, and that it is ruin. For this is the test
of its being against human nature, that for human societies it is ruin.
And the test is one from which there is no escape, as from the old tests
in such matters there may be. For if you allege that it is the will of
God that we should be pure, the sceptical Gallo-Latins will tell you
that they do not know any such person. And in like manner, if it is said
that those who serve the goddess Aselgeia shall not inherit the kingdom
of God, the Gallo-Latin may tell you that he does not believe in any
such place. But that the sure tendency and upshot of things establishes
that the service of the goddess Aselgeia is ruin, that her followers are
marred and stunted by it and disqualified for the ideal society of the
future, is an infallible test to employ.
The saints admonish us to let our thoughts run upon whatsoever things
are pure, if we would inherit the kingdom of God; and the divine Plato
tells us that we have within us a many-headed beast and a man, and that
by dissoluteness we feed and strengthen the beast in us, and starve the
man; and finally, following the divine Plato among the sages at a humble
distance, comes the prosaic and unfashionable Paley, and says in his
precise way that ‘this vice has a tendency, which other species of vice
have not so directly, to unsettle and weaken the powers of the
understanding; as well as, I think, in a greater degree than other
vices, to render the heart thoroughly corrupt.’ True; and once admitted
and fostered, it eats like a canker, and with difficulty can ever be
brought to let go its hold again, but for ever tightens it. Hardness and
insolence come in its train; an insolence which grows until it ends by
exasperating and alienating everybody; a hardness which grows until the
man can at last scarcely take pleasure in anything, outside the service
of his goddess, except cupidity and greed, and cannot be touched with
emotion by any language except fustian. Such are the fruits of the
worship of the great goddess Aselgeia.
So, instead of saying that Nature cares nothing about chastity, let us
say that human nature, _our_ nature, cares about it a great deal. Let us
say that, by her present popular literature, France gives proof that she
is suffering from a dangerous and perhaps fatal disease; and that it is
not clericalism which is the real enemy to the French so much as their
goddess; and if they can none of them see this themselves, it is only a
sign of how far the disease has gone, and the case is so much the worse.
The case is so much the worse; and for men in such case to be so
vehemently busy about clerical and dynastic intrigues at home, and about
alliances and colonial acquisitions and purifications of the flag
abroad, might well make one borrow of the prophets and exclaim, ‘Surely
ye are perverse’! perverse to neglect your really pressing matters for
those secondary ones. And when the ingenious and inexhaustible M.
Blowitz, of our great London _Times_, who sees everybody and knows
everything, when he expounds the springs of politics and the causes of
the fall and success of ministries, and the combinations which have not
been tried but should be, and takes upon him the mystery of things in
the way with which we are so familiar,—to this wise man himself one is
often tempted, again, to say with the prophets: ‘Yet the Eternal also is
wise, and will not call back his words.’ M. Blowitz is not the only wise
one; the Eternal has his wisdom also, and somehow or other it is always
the Eternal’s wisdom which at last carries the day. The Eternal has
attached to certain moral causes the safety or the ruin of States, and
the present popular literature of France is a sign that she has a most
dangerous moral disease.
Now if the disease goes on and increases, then, whatever sagacious
advice M. Blowitz may give, and whatever political combinations may be
tried, and whether France gets colonies or not, and whether she allies
herself with this nation or with that, things will only go from bad to
worse with her; she will more and more lose her powers of soul and
spirit, her intellectual productiveness, her skill in counsel, her might
for war, her formidableness as a foe, her value as an ally, and the life
of that famous State will be more and more impaired, until it perish.
And this is that hard but true doctrine of the sages and prophets, of
the inexorable fatality of operation, in moral failure of the unsound
majority, to impair and destroy States. But we will not talk or think of
destruction for a State with such gifts and graces as France, and which
has had such a place in history, and to which we, many of us, owe so
much delight and so much good. And yet if France had no greater numbers
than the Athens of Plato or the Judah of Isaiah, I do not see how she
could well escape out of the throttling arms of her goddess and recover.
She must recover through a powerful and profound renewal, a great inward
change, brought about by ‘the remnant’ amongst her people; and, for
this, a remnant small in numbers would not suffice. But in a France of
thirty-five millions, who shall set bounds to the numbers of the
remnant, or to its effectualness and power of victory?