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PRACTICAL ESSAYS.
by
ALEXANDER BAIN, LL.D.,
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN.
LONDON:
1884.
PREFACE.
The present volume is in great part a reprint of articles contributed to
Reviews. The principal bond of union among them is their practical
character. Beyond that, there is little to connect them apart from the
individuality of the author and the range of his studies.
That there is a certain amount of novelty in the various suggestions
here embodied, will be admitted on the most cursory perusal. The farther
question of their worth is necessarily left open.
The first two essays are applications of the laws of mind to some
prevailing Errors.
The next two have an educational bearing: the one is on the subjects
proper for Competitive Examinations; the other, on the present position
of the much vexed Classical controversy.
The fifth considers the range of Philosophical or Metaphysical Study,
and the mode of conducting this study in Debating Societies.
The sixth contains a retrospect of the growth of the Universities, with
more especial reference to those of Scotland; and also a discussion of
the University Ideal, as something more than professional teaching.
The seventh is a chapter omitted from the author's "Science of
Education"; it is mainly devoted to the methods of self-education by
means of books. The situation thus assumed has peculiarities that admit
of being handled apart from the general theory of Education.
The eighth contends for the extension of liberty of thought, as regards
Sectarian Creeds and Subscription to Articles. The total emancipation of
the clerical body from the thraldom of subscription, is here advocated
without reservation.
The concluding essay discusses the Procedure of Deliberative Bodies. Its
novelty lies chiefly in proposing to carry out, more thoroughly than has
yet been done, a few devices already familiar. But for an extraordinary
reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple and obvious remedies to a
growing evil, the article need never have appeared. It so happens, that
the case principally before the public mind at present, is the deadlock
in the House of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the author would not
have ventured to meddle with the subject. The difficulty, however, is
widely felt: and the principles here put forward are perfectly general;
being applicable wherever deliberative bodies are numerously constituted
and heavily laden with business.
ABERDEEN, _March_, 1884.
CONTENTS.
I.
COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.
Error regarding Mind as a whole--that Mind can be exerted without bodily
expenditure.
Errors with regard to the FEELINGS.
I. Advice to take on cheerfulness.
Authorities for this prescription.
Presumptions against our ability to comply with it.
Concurrence of the cheerful temperament with youth and health.
With special corporeal vigour. With absence of care and anxiety.
Limitation of Force applies to the mind.
The only means of rescuing from dulness--to increase the supports and
diminish the burdens of life.
Difficulties In the choice of amusements
II. Prescribing certain tastes, or pursuits, to persons
indiscriminately.
Tastes must repose as natural endowment, or else in prolonged education.
III. Inverted relationship of Feelings and Imagination.
Imagination does not determine Feeling, but the reverse.
Examples:--Bacon, Shelley, Byron, Burke, Chalmers, the Orientals, the
Chinese, the Celt, and the Saxon.
IV. Fallaciousness of the view, that happiness is best gained by not
being aimed at.
Seemingly a self-contradiction.
Butler's view of the disinterestedness of Appetite.
Apart from pleasure and pain, Appetite would not move us.
Parallel from other ends of pursuit--Health.
Life has two aims--Happiness and Virtue--each to be sought directly on
its own account.
Errors connected with the WILL.
I. Cost of energy, of Will. Need of a suitable physical confirmation.
Courage, Prudence, Belief.
II. Free-will a centre of various fallacies.
Doctrines repudiated from the offence given to personal dignity.
Operation of this on the history of Free-will.
III. Departing from the usual rendering of a fact, treated as denying
the fact.
Metaphysical and Ethical examples.
Alliance of Mind and Matter.
Perception of a Material World.
IV. The terms Freedom and Necessity miss the real point of the human
will.
V. Moral Ability and Inability.--Fallacy of seizing a question by the
wrong end.
Proper signification of Moral Inability--insufficiency of the ordinary
motives, but not of all motives.
* * * * *
II.
ERRORS OF SUPPRESSED CORRELATIVES.
Meanings of Relativity--intellectual and emotional.
All impressions greatest at first. Law of Accommodation and habit.
The pleasure of rest presupposes toil.
Knowledge has its charm from previous ignorance.
Silence is of value, after excess of speech.
Previous pain not, in all cases, necessary to pleasure.
Simplicity of Style praiseworthy only under prevailing artificiality. To
extol Knowledge is to reprobate Ignorance.
Authority appealed to, when in our favour, repudiated when against us.
Fallacy of declaring all labour honourable alike.
The happiness of Justice supposes reciprocity.
Love and Benevolence need to be reciprocated.
The _moral nature_ of God--a fallacy of suppressed correlative
A perpetual miracle--a self-contradiction.
Fallacy that, in the world, everything is mysterious.
Proper meaning of Mystery.
Locke and Newton on the true nature of Explanation
The Understanding cannot transcend its own experience.--Time and Space,
their Infinity.
We can assimilate facts, and generalise the many into one. This alone
constitutes Explanation.
Example from Gravity: not now mysterious.
Body and Mind. In what ways the mysteriousness of their union might be
done away with.
* * * * *
III.
THE CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATIONS.
I. HISTORICAL SKETCH.
First official recommendation of Competitive Examinations.
Successive steps towards their adoption.
First absolutely open Competition--in the India Service.
Macaulay's Report on the subjects for examination and their values.
Table of Subjects. Innovations of Lord Salisbury.
An amended Table.
II. THE SCIENCE CONSIDERED.
Doubts expressed as to the expediency of the competitive system.
Criticism of the present prescription for the higher Services.
The Commissioners' Scheme of Mathematics and Natural Science
objectionable.
Classification of the Sciences into Abstract or fundamental, and
Concrete or derivative.
Those of the first class have a fixed order, the order of dependence.
The other class is represented by the Natural History Sciences, which
bring into play the Logic of Classification.
Each of these is allied to one or other members of the primary Sciences.
The Commissioners' Table misstates the relationships of the various
Sciences.
The London University Scheme a better model.
The choice allowed by the Commissioners not founded on a proper
principle.
The higher Mathematics encouraged to excess.
Amended scheme of comparative values.
Position of Languages in the examinations.
The place in education of Language generally.
Purposes of Language acquisition.
Altered position of the Classical, languages.
Alleged benefits of these languages, after ceasing to be valuable in
their original use.
The teaching of the languages does not correspond to these secondary
values.
Languages are not a proper subject for competition with a view to
appointments.
For foreign service, there should be a pass examination in the languages
needful.
The training powers attributed to languages should be tested in its own
character.
Instead of the Languages of Greece, Rome, &c., substitute the History
and Literature.
Allocation of marks under this view.
Objections answered.
Certain subjects should be obligatory.
* * * * *
IV.
THE CLASSICAL CONTROVERSY.
ITS PRESENT ASPECT.
Attack on Classics by Combe, fifty years ago.
Alternative proposals at the present day:--
1. The existing system Attempts at extending the Science course under
this system.
2. Remitting Greek in favour of a modern language. A defective
arrangement.
3. Remitting both Latin and Greek in favour of French and German.
4. Complete bifurcation of the Classical and the Modern sides.
The Universities must be prepared to admit a thorough modern alternative
course.
Latin should not be compulsory in the modern side.
Defences of Classics.
The argument from the Greeks knowing only their own language--never
answered.
Admission that the teaching of classics needs improvement.
Alleged results of contact with the great authors of Greece and
Rome--unsupported by facts.
Amount of benefit attainable without knowledge of originals.
The element of training may be obtained from modern languages.
The classics said to keep the mind free from party bias.
Canon Liddon's argument in favour of Greek as a study.
* * * * *
V.
METAPHYSICS AND DEBATING SOCIETIES.
Metaphysics here taken as comprising Psychology, Logic, and their
dependent sciences.
Importance of the two fundamental departments.
The great problems, such as Free-will and External Perception should be
run up into systematic Psychology.
Logic also requires to be followed out systematically.
Slender connection of Logic and Psychology.
Derivative Sciences:--Education.
Aesthetics--a corner of the larger field of Human Happiness
The treatment of Happiness should be dissevered from Ethics
Adam Smith's loose rendering of the conditions of happiness
Sociology--treated, partly in its own field, and partly as a derivative
of Psychology.
Through it lies the way to Ethics.
The sociological and the ethical ends compared.
Factitious applications of Metaphysical study.
Bearings on Theology, as regards both attack and defence.
Incapable of supplying the place of Theology.
Polemical handling of Metaphysics.
Methodised Debate in the Greek Schools.
Much must always be done by the solitary thinker.
Best openings for Polemic:--Settling' the meanings of terms.
Discussing the broader generalities.
The Debate a light for mastery, and ill-suited for nice adjustments.
The Essay should be a centre of amicable co-operation, which would have
special advantages.
Avoidance of such debates as are from their very nature interminable.
* * * * *
VI.
THE UNIVERSITY IDEAL--PAST AND PRESENT.
The Higher Teaching in Greece.
The Middle Age and Boëthius.
Eve of the University.
Separation of Philosophy from Theology.
The Universities of Scotland founded--their history.
First Period.--The Teaching Body.
The Subjects taught and manner of teaching.
Second Period.--The Reformation.
Modified Curriculum--Andrew Melville.
Attempted reforms in teaching.
System of Disputation.
Improvements constituting the transition to the Third Period.
The Universities and the political revolutions.
How far the Universities are essential to professional teaching:
perennial alternative of Apprenticeship.
The Ideal Graduate.
* * * * *
VII.
THE ART OF STUDY.
Study more immediately supposes learning from Books.
The Greeks did not found an Art of Study, but afforded examples:
Demosthenes.
Quintilian's "Institutes" a landmark.
Bacon's Essay on Studies. Hobbes.
Milton's Tractate on Education.
Locke's "Conduct of the Understanding" very specific as to rules of
Study.
Watts's work entitled "The Improvement of the Mind".
What an Art of Study should attempt.
Mode of approaching it.
I. First Maxim--"Select a Text-book-in-chief".
Violations of the maxim: Milton's system.
Form or Method to be looked to, in the chief text-book.
The Sciences. History.
Non-methodical subjects.
Repudiation of plans of study by some.
Merits to be sought in a principal Text-book.
Question as between old writers and new.
Paradoxical extreme--one book and no more.
Single all-sufficing books do not exist.
Illustration from Locke's treatment of the Bible.
II. "What constitutes the study of a book?"
1. Copying literally:--Defects of this plan.
2. Committing to memory word for word.
Profitable only for brief portions of a book.
Memory in extension and intension.
3. Making Abstracts.
Variety of modes of abstracting.
4. Locke's plan of reading.
A sense of Form must concur with abstracting.
Example from the Practice of Medicine.
Example from the Oratorical Art
Choice of a series of Speeches to begin upon.
An oratorical scheme essential.
Exemplary Speeches.
Illustration from the oratorical quality of negative tact. Macaulay's
Speeches on Reform.
Study for improvement in Style.
III. Distributing the Attention in Reading.
IV. Desultory Reading.
V. Proportion of book-reading to Observation at first hand.
VI. Adjuncts of Reading.--Conversation.
Original Composition.
* * * * *
VIII.
RELIGIOUS TESTS AND SUBSCRIPTIONS.
Pursuit of Truth has three departments:--order of nature, ends of
practice, and the supernatural.
Growth of Intolerance. How innovations became possible.
In early society, religion a part of the civil government.
Beginnings of toleration--dissentients from the State Church.
Evils attendant on Subscription:--the practice inherently fallacious.
Enforcement of creeds nugatory for the end in view.
Dogmatic uniformity only a part of the religious character: element of
Feeling.
Recital of the general argument for religious liberty.
Beginnings of prosecution for heresy in Greece:--Anaxagoras, Socrates,
Plato, Aristotle.
Forced reticence in recent times:--Carlyle, Macaulay, Lyell.
Evil of disfranchising the Clerical class.
Outspokenness a virtue to be encouraged.
Special necessities of the present time: conflict of advancing knowledge
with the received orthodoxy.
Objections answered:--The Church has engaged itself to the State to
teach given tenets.
Possible abuse of freedom by the clergy.
The history of the English Presbyterian Church exemplifies the absence
of Subscription.
Various modes of transition from the prevailing practice.
* * * * *
IX.
PROCEDURE OF DELIBERATIVE BODIES.
Growing evil of the intolerable length of Debates.
Hurried decisions might be obviated by allowing an interval previous to
the vote.
The oral debate reviewed.--Assumptions underlying it, fully examined.
Evidence that, in Parliament, it is not the main engine of persuasion.
Its real service is to supply the newspaper reports.
Printing, without speaking, would serve the end in view.
Proposal to print and distribute beforehand the reasons for each Motion.
Illustration from decisions on Reports of Committees.
Movers of Amendments to follow the same course.
Further proposal to give to each member the liberty of circulating a
speech in print, instead of delivering it.
The dramatic element in legislation much thought of.
Comparison of the advantages of reading and of listening.
The numbers of backers to a motion should be proportioned to the size of
the assembly.
Absurdity of giving so much power to individuals.
In the House of Commons twenty backers to each bill not too many.
The advantages of printed speeches. Objections.
Unworkability of the plan in Committees. How remedied.
In putting questions to Ministers, there should be at least ten backers.
How to compensate for the suppression of oratory in the
House:--Sectional discussions.
The divisions occasioned at one sitting to be taken at the beginning of
the next.
Every deliberative body must be free to determine what amount of
speaking it requires.
The English Parliamentary system considered as a model.
Lord Derby and Lord Sherbrooke on the extension of printing.
Defects of the present system becoming more apparent.
* * * * *
_Notes and References in connection with Essay VIII. on Subscription_
First imposition of Tests after the English Reformation.
Dean Milman's speech in favour of total abolition of Tests.
Tests in Scotland: Mr. Taylor Innes on the "Law of Creeds".
Resumption of Subscription in the English Presbyterian Church.
Other English Dissenting Churches.
Presbyterian Church in the United States.
French Protestant Church--its two divisions.
Switzerland:--Canton of Valid.
Independent Evangelical Church of Neuchatel.
National Protestant Church of Geneva.
Free Church of Geneva. Germanic Switzerland.
Hungarian Reformed Church.
Germany:--Recent prosecutions for heresy.
Holland:--Calvinists and Modern School.
* * * * *
I.
COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.[1]
On the prevailing errors on the mind, proposed to be considered in this
paper, some relate to the Feelings, others to the Will.
In regard to Mind as a whole, there are still to be found among us some
remnants of a mistake, once universally prevalent and deeply rooted,
namely, the opinion that mind is not only a different fact from
body--which is true, and a vital and fundamental truth--but is to a
greater or less extent independent of the body. In former times, the
remark seldom occurred to any one, unless obtruded by some extreme
instance, that to work the mind is also to work a number of bodily
organs; that not a feeling can arise, not a thought can pass, without a
set of concurring bodily processes. At the present day, however, this
doctrine is very generally preached by men of science. The improved
treatment of the insane has been one consequence of its reception. The
husbanding of mental power, through a bodily _régime_, is a no less
important application. Instead of supposing that mind is something
indefinite, elastic, inexhaustible,--a sort of perpetual motion, or
magician's bottle, all expenditure, and no supply,--we now find that
every single throb of pleasure, every smart of pain, every purpose,
thought, argument, imagination, must have its fixed quota of oxygen,
carbon, and other materials, combined and transformed in certain
physical organs. And, as the possible extent of physical transformation
in each person's framework is limited in amount, the forces resulting
cannot be directed to one purpose without being lost for other purposes.
If an extra share passes to the muscles, there is less for the nerves;
if the cerebral functions are pushed to excess, other functions have to
be correspondingly abated. In several of the prevailing opinions about
to be criticised, failure to recognise this cardinal truth is the prime
source of mistake.
* * * * *
To begin with the FEELINGS.
I. We shall first consider an advice or prescription repeatedly put
forth, not merely by the unthinking mass, but by men of high repute: it
is, that with a view to happiness, to virtue, and to the accomplishment
of great designs, we should all be cheerful, light-hearted, gay.
I quote a passage from the writings of one of the Apostolic Fathers, the
Pastor of Hermas, as given in Dr. Donaldson's abstract:--
"Command tenth affirms that sadness is the sister of doubt, mistrust,
and wrath; that it is worse than all other spirits, and grieves the Holy
Spirit. It is therefore to be completely driven away, and, instead of
it, we are to put on cheerfulness, which is pleasing to God. 'Every
cheerful man works well, and always thinks those things which are good,
and despises sadness. The sad man, on the other hand, is always
bad.'"[2]
[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING CHEERFULNESS.]
Dugald Stewart inculcates Good-humour as a means of happiness and
virtue; his language implying that the quality is one within our power
to appropriate.
In Mr. Smiles's work entitled "Self-Help," we find an analogous strain
of remarks:--
"To wait patiently, however, man must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is
an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the
character. As a Bishop has said, 'Temper is nine-tenths of
Christianity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a considerable
make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom."
Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining profound observation
with strong genial sympathies and the highest charms of style,
repeatedly adverts to the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted
enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly
quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took
their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; _ils se divertirent moult
tristement à la mode de leur pays_"
There is no dispute as to the value or the desirableness of this
accomplishment. Hume, in his "Life," says of himself, "he was ever
disposed to see the favourable more than the unfavourable side of
things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born
to an estate of ten thousand a year". This sanguine, happy temper, is
merely another form of the cheerfulness recommended to general adoption.
I contend, nevertheless, that to bid a man be habitually cheerful, he
not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a
cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament
partly belongs to the original cast of the constitution--like the bone,
the muscle, the power of memory, the aptitude for science or for music;
and is partly the outcome of the whole manner of life. In order to
sustain the quality, the physical (as the support of the mental) forces
of the system must run largely in one particular channel; and, of
course, as the same forces are not available elsewhere, so notable a
feature of strength will be accompanied with counterpart weaknesses or
deficiencies. Let us briefly review the facts bearing upon the point.
The first presumption in favour of the position is grounded in the
concomitance of the cheerful temperament with youth, health, abundant
nourishment. It appears conspicuously along with whatever promotes
physical vigour. The state is partially attained during holidays, in
salubrious climates, and health-bringing avocations; it is lost, in the
midst of toils, in privation of comforts, and in physical prostration.
The seeming exception of elated spirits in bodily decay, in fasting, and
in ascetic practices, is no disproof of the general principle, but
merely the introduction of another principle, namely, that we can feed
one part of the system at the expense of degrading and prematurely
wasting others.
[LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS NOT IN OUR OWN POWER.]
A second presumption is furnished also from our familiar experience. The
high-pitched, hilarious temperament and disposition commonly appear in
company with some well-marked characteristics of corporeal vigour. Such
persons are usually of a robust mould; often large and full in person,
vigorous in circulation and in digestion; able for fatigue, endurance,
and exhausting pleasures. An eminent example of this constitution was
seen in Charles James Fox, whose sociability, cheerfulness, gaiety, and
power of dissipation were the marvel of his age. Another example might
be quoted in the admirable physical frame of Lord Palmerston. It is no
more possible for an ordinarily constituted person to emulate the flow
and the animation of these men, than it is to digest with another
person's stomach, or to perform the twelve labours of Hercules.
A third fact, less on the surface, but no less certain, is, that the men
of cheerful and buoyant temperament, as a rule, sit easy to the cares
and obligations of life. They are not much given to care and anxiety as
regards their own affairs, and it is not to be expected that they should
be more anxious about other people's. In point of fact, this is the
constitution of somewhat easy virtue: it is not distinguished by a
severe, rigid attention to the obligations and the punctualities of
life. We should not be justified in calling such persons selfish; still
less should we call them cold-hearted: their exuberance overflows upon
others in the form of heartiness, geniality, joviality, and even lavish
generosity. Still, they can seldom be got to look far before them; they
do not often assume the painfully circumspect attitude required in the
more arduous enterprises. They are not conscientious in trifles. They
cast off readily the burdensome parts of life. All which is in keeping
with our principle. To take on burdens and cares is to draw upon the
vital forces--to leave so much the less to cheerfulness and buoyant
spirits. The same corporeal framework cannot afford a lavish expenditure
in several different ways at one time. Fox had no long-sightedness, no
tendency to forecast evils, or to burden himself with possible
misfortunes. It is very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part
of Wellington in the Peninsula; his easy-going temperament would not
have submitted itself to all the anxieties and precautions of that vast
enterprise. But Palmerston was hale and buoyant, and the Prime Minister
of England at eighty: Wellington began to be infirm at sixty.
[LIMITATIONS OF THE MENTAL FORCES.]
To these three experimental proofs we may add the confirmation derived
from the grand doctrine named the Correlation, Conservation,
Persistence, or Limitation of Force, as applied to the human body and
the human mind. We cannot create force anywhere; we merely appropriate
existing force. The heat of our fires has been derived from the solar
fire. We cannot lift a weight in the hand without the combustion of a
certain amount of food; we cannot think a thought without a similar
demand; and the force that goes in one way is unavailable in any other
way. While we are expending ourselves largely in any single function--in
muscular exercise, in digestion, in thought and feeling, the remaining
functions must continue for the time in comparative abeyance. Now, the
maintenance of a high strain of elated feeling, unquestionably costs a
great deal to the forces of the system. All the facts confirm this high
estimate. An unusually copious supply of arterial blood to the brain is
an indispensable requisite, even although other organs should be
partially starved, and consequently be left in a weak condition, or else
deteriorate before their time. To support the excessive demand of power
for one object, less must be exacted from other functions. Hard bodily
labour and severe mental application sap the very foundations of
buoyancy; they may not entail much positive suffering, but they are
scarcely compatible with exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional
individuals whose _total_ of power is a very large figure, who can bear
more work, endure more privation, and yet display more buoyancy, without
shortened life, than the average human being. Hardly any man can attain
commanding greatness without being constituted larger than his fellows
in the sum of human vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact
in any given instance, we are safe in presuming that extraordinary
endowment in one thing implies deficiency in other things. More
especially must we conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant,
hopeful, elated temperament lacks some other virtues, aptitudes, or
powers, such as are seen flourishing in the men whose temperament is
sombre, inclining to despondency. Most commonly the contradictory demand
is reconciled by the proverbial "short life and merry".
Adverting now to the object that Helps had so earnestly at
heart--namely, to rouse and rescue the English population from their
comparative dulness to a more lively and cheerful flow of existence--let
us reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to be done. Not
certainly by an eloquent appeal to the nation to get up and be amused.
The process will turn out to be a more circuitous one.
The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit to be
less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of Irishmen,
Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch of our own
Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether remote
descent, or that coupled with the operation of climate and other local
peculiarities. How long would it take, and what would be the way to
establish in us a second nature on the point of cheerfulness?
Again, with the national temperament such as it is, there may be great
individual differences; and it may be possible by force of
circumstances, to improve the hilarity and the buoyancy of any given
person. Many of our countrymen are as joyous themselves, and as much the
cause of joy in others, as the most light-hearted Irishman, or the
gayest Frenchman or Italian. How shall we increase the number of such,
so as to make them the rule rather than the exception?
[SOLE MEANS OF ATTAINING CHEERFULLNESS.]
The only answer not at variance with the laws of the human constitution
is--_Increase the supports and diminish the burdens of life_.
For example, if by any means you can raise the standard of health and
longevity, you will at once effect a stride in the direction sought. But
what an undertaking is this! It is not merely setting up what we call
sanitary arrangements, to which, in our crowded populations, there must
soon be a limit reached (for how can you secure to the mass of men even
the one condition of sufficient breathing-space?), it is that health
cannot be attained, in any high general standard, without worldly means
far above the average at the disposal of the existing population; while
the most abundant resources are often neutralised by ineradicable
hereditary taint. To which it is to be added, that mankind can hardly as
yet be said to be in earnest in the matter of health.
Farther: it is especially necessary to cheerfulness, that a man should
not be overworked, as many of us are, whether from choice or from
necessity. Much, I believe, turns upon this circumstance. Severe toil
consumes the forces of the constitution, without leaving the remainder
requisite for hilarity of tone. The Irishman fed upon three meals of
potatoes a day, the lazy Highlander, the Lazaroni of Naples living upon
sixpence a week, are very poorly supported; but then their vitality is
so little drawn upon by work, that they may exceed in buoyancy of
spirits the well-fed but hard-worked labourer. We, the English people,
would not change places with them, notwithstanding: our _ideal_ is
industry with abundance; but then our industry sobers our temperament,
and inclines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, we may one
day hit a happier mean; but to the human mind extremes have generally
been found easiest.
Once more: the light-hearted races trouble themselves little about their
political constitution, about despotism or liberty; they enjoy the
passing moments of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes
them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of tyranny. Our liberty is
a serious object; it weighs upon our minds. Now any weight upon the mind
is so much taken from our happiness; hilarity may attend on poverty, but
not so well on a serious, forecasting disposition. Our regard to the
future makes us both personally industrious and politically anxious;
a temper not to be amused with the relaxations of the Parisian in his
_café_ on the boulevards, or with the Sunday merry-go-round of the
light-hearted Dane. Our very pleasures have still a sadness in them.
Then, again, what are to be our amusements? By what recreative
stimulants shall we irradiate the gloom of our idle hours and vacation
periods? Doubtless there have been many amusements invented by the
benefactors of our species--society, games, music, public
entertainments, books; and in a well-chosen round of these, many
contrive to pass their time in a tolerable flow of satisfaction. But
they all cost something; they all cost money, either directly, to
procure them, or indirectly, to be educated for them. There are few very
cheap pleasures. Books are not so difficult to obtain, but the enjoying
of them in any high degree implies an amount of cultivation that cannot
be had cheaply.
Moreover, look at the difficulties that beset the pursuit of amusements.
How fatiguing are they very often! How hard to distribute the time and
the strength between them and our work or our duties! It needs some art
to steer one's way in the midst of variety of pleasures. Hence there
will always be, in a cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain
satisfied with few and safe delights; to assume a sobriety of aims that
Helps might call dulness, but that many of us call the middle path.
* * * * *
[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING TASTES.]
II. A second error against the limits of the human powers is the
prescribing to persons indiscriminately, certain tastes, pursuits, and
subjects of interest, on the ground that what is a spring of enjoyment
to one or a few may be taken up, as a matter of course, by others with
the same relish. It is, indeed, a part of happiness to have some taste,
occupation, or pursuit, adequate to charm and engross us--a ruling
passion, a favourite study. Accordingly, the victims of dulness and
_ennui_ are often advised to betake themselves to something of this
potent character. Kingsley, in his little book on the "Wonders of the
Shore," endeavoured to convert mankind at large into marine naturalists;
and, some time ago, there appeared in the newspapers a letter from
Carlyle, regretting that he himself had not been indoctrinated into the
zoology of our waysides. I have heard a man out of health, hypochondriac,
and idle, recommended to begin botany, geology, or chemistry, as a
diversion of his misery. The idea is plausible and superficial. An
overpowering taste for any subject--botany, zoology, antiquities,
music--is properly affirmed to be born with a man. The forces of the
brain must from the first incline largely to that one species of
impressions, to which must be added years of engrossing pursuit. We may
gaze with envy at the fervour of a botanist over his dried plants, and
may wish to take up so fascinating a pursuit: we may just as easily wish
to be Archimedes when he leaped out of the bath; a man cannot re-cast
his brain nor re-live his life. A taste of a high order, founded on
natural endowment, formed by education, and strengthened by active
devotion, is also paid for by the atrophy of other tastes, pursuits, and
powers. Carlyle might have contracted an interest in frogs, and spiders,
and bees, and the other denizens of the wayside, but it would have been
with the surrender of some other interest, the diversion of his genius
out of its present channels. The strong emotions of the mind are not to
be turned off and on, to this subject and to that. If you begin early
with a human being, you may impress a particular direction upon the
feelings, you may even cross a natural tendency, and work up a taste on
a small basis of predisposition. Place any youth in the midst of
artists, and you may induce a taste for art that shall at length be
decided and strong. But if you were to take the same person in middle
life and immure him in a laboratory, that he might become an
enthusiastic chemist, the limits of human nature would probably forbid
your success.
Such very strong tastes as impart a high and perennial zest to one's
life are merely the special direction of a natural exuberance of feeling
or emotion. A spare and thin emotional temperament will undoubtedly have
preferences, likings and dislikings, but it can never supply the
material for fervour or enthusiasm in anything.
The early determining of natural tastes is a subject of high practical
interest. We shall only remark at present that a varied and broad
groundwork of early education is the best known device for this end.
* * * * *
[RELATION OF FEELINGS TO IMAGINATION.]
III. A third error, deserving of brief comment, is a singular inversion
of the relationship of the Feelings to the Imagination. It is frequently
affirmed, both in criticism and in philosophy, that the Feelings depend
upon, or have their basis in, the Imagination.
An able and polished writer, discussing the character of Edmund Burke,
remarks: "The passions of Burke were strong; this is attributable in
great measure to the intensity of the imaginative faculty". Again,
Dugald Stewart, observing upon the influence of the Imagination on
Happiness, says: "All that part of our happiness or misery which arises
from our _hopes_ or our _fears_ derives its existence entirely from the
power of imagination". He even goes the length of affirming that
"_cowardice_ is entirely a disease of the imagination". Another writer
accounts for the intensity of the amatory sentiments in Robert Burns by
the strength of his imagination.
[IMAGINATION GROUNDED IN FEELING.]
Now, I venture to affirm that this view very nearly reverses the fact.
The Imagination is determined by the Feelings, and not the Feelings by
the Imagination. Intensity of feeling, emotion, or passion, is the
earlier fact: the intellect swayed and controlled by feeling, shaping
forms to correspond with an existing emotional tone, is Imagination. It
was not the imaginative faculty that gave Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley,
and the poets generally, their great enjoyment of nature; but the love
of nature, pre-existing, turned the attention and the thoughts upon
nature, filling the mind as a consequence with the impressions, images,
recollections of nature; out of which grew the poetic imaginings.
Imagination is a compound of intellectual power and feeling. The
intellectual power may be great, but if it is not accompanied with
feeling, it will not minister to feeling; or it will minister to many
feelings by turns, and to none in particular. As far as the intellectual
power of a poet goes, few men have excelled Bacon. He had a mind stored
with imagery, able to produce various and vivid illustrations of
whatever thought came before him; but these illustrations touched no
deep feeling; they were fresh, original, racy, fanciful, picturesque,
a play of the head that never touched the heart. The man was by nature
cold; he had not the emotional depth or compass of an average
Englishman. Perhaps his strongest feeling of an enlarged or generous
description was for human progress, but it did not rise to passion;
there was no fervour, no fury in it. Compare him with Shelley on the
same subject, and you will see the difference between meagreness and
intensity of feeling. What intellect can be, without strong feeling,
we have in Bacon; what intellect is, with strong feeling, we have in
Shelley. The feeling gives the tone to the thoughts; sets the intellect
at work to find language having its own intensity, to pile up lofty and
impressive circumstances; and then we have the poet, the orator, the
thoughts that breathe, and the words that burn. Bacon wrote on many
impressive themes--on Truth, on Love, on Religion, on Death, and on the
Virtues in detail; he was always original, illustrative, fanciful; if
intellectual means and resources could make a man feel in these things,
he would have felt deeply; yet he never did. The material of feeling is
not contained in the intellect; it has a seat and a source apart. There
was nothing in mere intellectual gifts to make Byron a misanthrope: but,
given that state of the feelings, the intellect would be detained and
engrossed by it; would minister to, expand, and illustrate it; and
intellect so employed is Imagination.
Burke had indisputably a powerful imagination. He had both
elements:--the intellectual power, or the richly stored and highly
productive mind; and the emotional power, or the strength of passion
that gives the lead to intellect. His intellectual strength was often
put forth in the Baconian manner of illustration, in light and sportive
fancies. There were many occasions where his feelings were not much
roused. He had topics to urge, views to express, and he poured out
arguments, and enlivened them with illustrations. He was, on those
occasions, an able expounder, and no more. But when his passions were
stirred to the depths by the French Revolution, his intellectual power,
taking a new flight, supplied him with figures of extraordinary
intensity; it was no longer the play of a cool man, but the thunders of
an aroused man; we have then "the hoofs of the swinish multitude,"--"the
ten thousand swords leaping from their scabbards". Such feelings were
not produced by the speaker's imagination: they were produced by
themselves; they had their independent source in the region of feeling:
coupled with adequate powers of intellect, they burst out into strong
imagery.[3]
The Orientals, as a rule, are distinguished for imaginative flights.
This is apparent in their religion, their morality, their poetry, and
their science. The explanation is to be sought in the strength of their
feelings, coupled with a certain intellectual force. The same intellect,
without the feelings, would have issued differently. The Chinese are the
exception. They want the feelings, and they want the imagination. They
are below Europeans in this respect. When we bring before them our own
imaginative themes, our own cast of religion, accommodated as it is to
our own peculiar temperament, we fail in the desired effect. Our august
mysteries are responded to, not with reverential regard, but with, cold
analysis.
The Celt and the Saxon are often contrasted on the point of imagination;
the prior fact is the comparative endowment for emotion.
* * * * *
[HOW HAPPINESS SHOULD BE AIMED AT.]
IV. There is a fallacious mode of presenting the attainment of
happiness; namely, that happiness is best secured by not being aimed at.
We should be aiming always at something else.
When examined closely, the doctrine resolves itself into a kind of
paradox. All sorts of puzzles come up when we attempt to follow it to
its consequences.
We might ask, first, whether there is any other object of pursuit in the
same predicament--wealth, health, knowledge, fame, power. These are,
every one, a means or instrument of happiness, if not happiness itself.
Must we, then, in the case of each, avoid aiming straight at the goal?
must we look askance in some other direction?
Next, in the case of happiness proper, are we to aim at nothing at all,
to drift at random; or may we aim at a definite object, provided it is
not happiness; or, lastly, is there one side aim in particular that we
must take? The answer here would probably be--Aim at duty in general,
and at the good of others in particular. These ends are not the same as
happiness, yet by keeping them steadily in the view, and not thinking of
self at all, we shall eventually realise our greatest happiness.
Without, at present, raising any question as to the fact alleged, we
must again remark that the prescription seems to contradict itself.
Moralists of the austere type will never allow us to pursue happiness at
all; we must never mention the thing to ourselves: duty or virtue is the
one single aim and end of being. Such teachers may be right or they may
be wrong, but they do not contradict themselves. When, however, we are
told that by aiming at virtue, we are on the best possible road to
happiness, this is but another way of letting us into the secret of
happiness, of putting us on the right, instead of on the wrong, track,
to attain it. Our teacher assumes that we are in search of happiness,
and he tells us how we are to proceed; not by keeping it straight in the
view, but by keeping virtue straight in the view. Instead of pointing us
to the vulgar happiness-seeker who would take the goal in a line, he
corrects the course, and shows us the deviation that is necessary in
order to arrive at it; like the sailor making allowance for the
deviation of the magnetic pole, in steering. Happiness is not gained by
a point-blank aim; we must take a boomerang flight in some other line,
and come back upon the target by an oblique or reflected movement. It is
the idea of Young on the Love of Praise (Satire I., 5.)--
The love of Praise howe'er concealed by art,
Reigns more or less and glows in every heart,
The proud to gain it, toils on toils endure,
_The modest shun it but to make it sure_.
Under this corrected method, we are happiness seekers all the same; only
our aims are better directed, and our fruition more assured.
These remarks are intended to show that the doctrine of making men aim
at virtue, in order to happiness, has no further effect than to teach us
to include the interests of others with our own; by showing that our own
interests do not thereby suffer, but the contrary. The doctrine does not
substitute a virtuous motive for a selfish one; it is a refined artifice
for squaring the two. The world is no doubt a gainer by the change of
view, although the individual is not made really more meritorious.
We must next consider whether, in fact, the oblique aim at happiness is
really the most effectual.
A few words, first, as to the original source of the doctrine of a
devious course. Bishop Butler is renowned for his distinction between
Self-Love and Appetite; he contends that in Appetite the object of
pursuit is not the pleasure of eating, but the food: consequently,
eating is not properly a self-seeking act, it is an indifferent or
disinterested act, to which there is an incidental accompaniment of
pleasure. We should, under the stimulus of Hunger, seek the food,
whether it gave us pleasure or not.
Now, any truth that there is in Butler's view amounts to this:--In our
Appetites we are not thinking every instant of subduing pain and
attaining pleasure; we are ultimately moved by these feelings; but,
having once seen that the medium of their gratification is a certain
material object (food), we direct our whole aim to procuring that. The
hungry wolf ceases to think of his pains of hunger when he is in sight
of a sheep; but for these pains he would have paid no heed to the sheep;
yet when the sheep has to be caught, the hunger is submerged for the
time; the only relevant course, even on its account, is to give the
whole mind and body to the chase of the sheep. Butler calls this
indifferent or disinterested pursuit; and as much as says, that the wolf
is not self-seeking, but sheep-seeking, in its chase. Now, it is quite
true that if the wolf could give no place in its mind for anything but
its hungry pains, it would be in a bad way. It is wiser than that; it
knows the remedy; it is prepared to dismiss the pains from its thoughts,
in favour of a concentrated attention upon the distant flock. This
proves nothing as to its unselfishness; nor does it prove that Appetite
is a different thing from self-seeking or self-love.
[APPETITE DECLARED UNSELFISH.]
There may be disinterested motives in our constitution; but Appetite is
not in any sense one of these. We may have instincts answering to the
traditional phrase used in defining instinct, "a blind propensity" to
act, without aiming at anything in particular, and without any
expectation of pleasure or benefit. Such instincts would conform to
Butler's notion of appetite: they would be entirely out of the course of
self-love or self-seeking of any sort. Whether the nest-building
activity of birds, and the constructiveness of ants, bees, and beavers,
comply with this condition, I do not undertake to say. There is one
process better known to ourselves, not exactly an instinct, but probably
a mixture of instinct and acquirement--I mean the process of
Imitation--which works very much upon this model. Although coming under
the control of the Will, yet in its own proper character it operates
blindly, or without purpose; neither courting pleasure, nor chasing
pain. In like manner, Sympathy, in its most characteristic form,
proceeds without any distinct aim of pleasure to ourselves.
Nothing of this can be affirmed of the Appetites. In them, nature places
us, as Bentham says, under the government of two sovereign masters,
_pain_ and _pleasure_. An appetite would cease to move us, if its
painful and pleasurable accompaniments were done away with. It matters
not that we remit our attention, at times, to the pain or the pleasure;
these are always in the background; and the strength of the appetite is
their strength.