You will tell me that our philosopher has clipped his wings, in order to
strengthen his legs. Certainly; and he has acted wisely. Experience
limits the career which it opens to us; it has given us our goal, but
also our boundaries. We have only to observe the elements of which our
experience is composed, and the facts from which it sets out, to
understand that its range is limited. Its nature and its method confine
its progress to a few steps. And, in the first place,[425] the ultimate
laws of nature cannot be less numerous than the several distinct species
of our sensations. We can easily reduce a movement to another movement,
but not the sensation of heat to that of smell, or of color, or of
sound, nor either of these to a movement. We can easily connect together
phenomena of different degrees, but not phenomena differing in species.
We find distinct sensations at the bottom of all our knowledge, as
simple indecomposable elements, separated absolutely one from another,
absolutely incapable of being reduced one to another. Let experience do
what she will, she cannot suppress these diversities which constitute
her foundation. On the other hand, experience, do what she will, cannot
escape from the conditions under which she acts. Whatever be her
province, it is bounded by time and space; the fact which she observes
is limited and influenced by an infinite number of other facts to which
she cannot attain. She is obliged to suppose or recognize some
primordial condition from whence she starts, and which she does not
explain.[426] Every problem has its accidental or arbitrary data: we
deduce the rest from these, but there is nothing from which these can be
deduced. The sun, the earth, the planets, the initial impulse of the
heavenly bodies, the primitive chemical properties of substances, are
such data.[427] If we possessed them all we could explain everything by
them, but we could not explain these themselves. Mill says:
"Why these particular natural agents existed originally and no others,
or why they are commingled in such and such proportions, and distributed
in such and such a manner throughout space, is a question we cannot
answer. More than this: we can discover nothing regular in the
distribution itself; we can reduce it to no uniformity, to no law. There
are no means by which, from the distribution of these causes, or agents,
in one part of space, we could conjecture whether a similar distribution
prevails in another."[428]
And astronomy, which just now afforded us the model of a perfect
science, now affords us an example of a limited science. We can predict
the numberless positions of all the planetary bodies; but we are obliged
to assume, beside the primitive impulse and its amount, not only the
force of attraction and its law, but also the masses and distances of
all the bodies in question. We understand millions of facts, but it is
by means of a hundred facts which we do not comprehend; we arrive at
necessary results, but it is only by means of accidental antecedents; so
that if the theory of our universe were completed there would still
remain two great voids: one at the commencement of the physical world,
the other at the beginning of the moral world; the one comprising the
elements of being, the other embracing the elements of experience; one
containing primary sensations, the other primitive agents. "Our
knowledge," says Royer-Collard, "consists in tracing ignorance as far
back as possible."
Can we at least affirm that these irreducible data are so only in
appearance, and in relation to our mind? Can we say that they have
causes, like the derived facts of which they are the causes? Can we
conclude that every event, always and everywhere, happens according to
laws, and that this little world of ours, so well-regulated, is a sort
of epitome of the universe? Can we by aid of the axioms, quit our narrow
confines, and affirm anything of the universe? In no wise; and it is
here that Mill pushes his principles to their furthest consequences: for
the law which attributes a cause to every event, has to him no other
foundation, worth, or scope, than what it derives from experience. It
has no inherent necessity; it draws its whole authority from the great
number of cases in which we have recognized it to be true; it only sums
up a mass of observations; it unites two data, which, considered in
themselves, have no intimate connection; it joins antecedents generally
to consequents generally, just as the law of gravitation joins a
particular antecedent to a particular consequent; it determines a
couple, as do all experimental laws, and shares in their uncertainty and
in their restrictions. Listen to this bold assertion:
"I am convinced that anyone accustomed to abstraction and analysis, who
will fairly exert his faculties for the purpose, will, when his
imagination has once learnt to entertain the notion, find no difficulty
in conceiving that in some one, for instance, of the many firmaments
into which sidereal astronomy now divides the universe, events may
succeed one another at random, without any fixed law; nor can anything
in our experience, or in our mental nature, constitute a sufficient, or
indeed any, reason for believing that this is nowhere the case. The
grounds, therefore, which warrant us in rejecting such a supposition
with respect to any of the phenomena of which we have experience, must
be sought elsewhere than in any supposed necessity of our intellectual
faculties."[429]
Practically, we may trust in so well-established a law; but
"In distant parts of the stellar regions, where the phenomena may be
entirely unlike those with which we are acquainted, it would be folly to
affirm confidently that this general law prevails, any more than those
special ones which we have found to hold universally on our own planet.
The uniformity in the succession of events, otherwise called the law of
causation, must be received not as a law of the universe, but of that
portion of it only which is within the range of our means of sure
observation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To
extend it further is to make a supposition without evidence, and to
which, in the absence of any ground from experience for estimating its
degree of probability, it would be idle to attempt to assign any."[430]
We are, then, irrevocably driven back from the infinite: our faculties
and our assertions cannot attain to it; we remain confined in a small
circle; our mind reaches not beyond its experience; we can establish no
universal and necessary connection between facts; such a connection
probably does not even exist. Mill stops here; but certainly, by
carrying out his idea to its full extent, we should arrive at the
conception of the world as a mere collection of facts; no internal
necessity would induce their connection or their existence; they would
be simple, arbitrary, accidentally-existing facts. Sometimes, as in our
system, they would be found assembled in such a manner as to give rise
to regular recurrences; sometimes they would be so assembled that
nothing of the sort would occur. Chance, as Democritus taught, would be
at the foundation of all things. Laws would be the result of chance, and
sometimes we should find them, sometimes not. It would be with
existences as with numbers--decimal fractions, for instance, which,
according to the chance of their two primitive factors, sometimes recur
regularly, and sometimes not. This is certainly an original and lofty
conception. It is the final consequence of the primitive and dominant
idea, which we have discovered at the beginning of the system, which has
transformed the theories of Definition, of Propositions, and of the
Syllogism; which has reduced axioms to experimental truths; which has
developed and perfected the theory of induction; which has established
the goal, the limits, the province, and the methods of science; which
everywhere, in nature and in science, has suppressed interior
connections; which has replaced the necessary by the accidental; cause
by antecedent; and which consists in affirming that every assertion
which is not merely verbal forms in effect a couple, that is to say,
joins together two facts which were separate by their nature.
Part II.--Abstraction
Section I.--Agreement of this Philosophy with the English Mind
An abyss of chance and an abyss of ignorance. The prospect is gloomy: no
matter, if it be true. At all events, this theory of science is a theory
of English science. Rarely, I grant you, has a thinker better summed up
in his teaching the practice of his country; seldom has a man better
represented, by his negations and his discoveries, the limits and scope
of his race. The operations, of which he constructs science, are those
in which the English excel all others, and those which he excludes from
science are precisely those in which the English are deficient, more
than any other nation. He has described the English mind, whilst he
thought to describe the human mind. That is his glory, but it is also
his weakness. There is in your idea of knowledge a flaw, of which the
incessant repetition ends by creating the gulf of chance, from which,
according to him, all things arise, and the gulf of ignorance, at whose
brink, according to him, our knowledge ends. And see what comes of it.
By cutting away from science the knowledge of first causes, that is, of
divine things, you reduce men to become sceptical, positive,
utilitarian, if they are cool-headed; or mystical, enthusiastic,
methodistical, if they have lively imaginations. In this huge unknown
void, which you place beyond our little world, passionate men and uneasy
consciences find room for all their dreams; and men of cold judgment,
despairing of arriving at any certain knowledge, have nothing left but
to sink down to the search for practical means which may serve for the
amelioration of our condition. It seems to me that these two
dispositions are most frequently met with in an English mind. The
religious and the positive spirit dwell there side by side, but
separate. This produces an odd medley, and I confess that I prefer the
way in which the Germans have reconciled science with faith.--But their
philosophy is but badly written poetry.--Perhaps so.--But what they call
reason, or intuition of principles, is only the faculty of building up
hypotheses.--Perhaps so.--But the systems which they have constructed
have not held their ground before experience.--I do not defend what they
have done.--But their absolute, their subject, their object, and the
rest, are but big words.--I do not defend their style.--What, then, do
you defend?--Their idea of Causation.--You believe with them that causes
are discovered by a revelation of the reason?--By no means.--You believe
with us that our knowledge of causes is based on simple
experience?--Still less.--You think, then, that there is a faculty,
other than experience and reason, capable of discovering
causes?--Yes.--You think there is an intermediate course between
intuition and observation, capable of arriving at principles, as it is
affirmed that the first is, capable of arriving at truths, as we find
that the second is?--Yes.--What is it? Abstraction. Let us return to
your original idea; I will endeavor to show in what I think it
incomplete, and how you seem to me to mutilate the human mind. But my
argument will be the formal one of an advocate, and requires to be
stated at length.
Section II.--The Nature of Abstraction
Your starting-point is good: man, in fact, does not know anything of
substances; he knows neither minds nor bodies; he perceives only
transient, isolated, internal conditions; he makes use of these to
affirm and name exterior states, positions, movements, changes, and
avails himself of them for nothing else. He can only attain to facts,
whether within or without, sometimes transient, when his impression is
not repeated; sometimes permanent, when his impression, many times
repeated, makes him suppose that it will be repeated as often as he
wishes to experience it. He only grasps colors, sounds, resistances,
movements: sometimes momentary and variable, sometimes like one another,
and renewed. To group these facts more advantageously, he supposes, by
an artifice of language, qualities and properties. We go even further
than you: we think that there are neither minds nor bodies, but simply
groups of present or possible movements or thoughts. We believe that
there are no substances, but only systems of facts. We regard the idea
of substance as a psychological illusion. We consider substance, force,
and all the modern metaphysical existences, as the remains of scholastic
entities. We think that there exists nothing but facts and laws, that
is, events and the relations between them; and we recognize, with you,
that all knowledge consists, first of all, in connecting or adding fact
to fact. But when this is done, a new operation begins, the most fertile
of all, which consists in reducing these complex into simple facts. A
splendid faculty appears, the source of language, the interpreter of
nature, the parent of religions and philosophies, the only genuine
distinction, which according to its degree, separates man from the
brute, and great from little men. I mean Abstraction, which is the power
of isolating the elements of facts, and of considering them one by one.
My eyes follow the outline of a square, and abstraction isolates its two
constituent properties, the equality of its sides and angles. My fingers
touch the surface of a cylinder, and abstraction isolates its two
generative elements, the idea of a rectangle, and of the revolution of
this rectangle about one of its sides as an axis. A hundred thousand
experiments develop for me, by an infinite number of details, the series
of physiological operations which constitute life; and abstraction
isolates the law of this series, which is a round of constant loss and
continual reparation. Twelve hundred pages teach me Mill's opinion on
the various facts of science, and abstraction isolates his fundamental
idea, namely, that the only fertile propositions are those which connect
a fact with another not contained in the first. Everywhere the case is
the same. A fact, or a series of facts, can always be resolved into its
components. It is this resolution which forms our problem, when we ask
what is the nature of an object. It is these components we look for when
we wish to penetrate into the inner nature of a being. These we
designate under the names of forces, causes, laws, essences, primitive
properties. They are not new facts added to the first, but an essence or
extract from them; they are contained in the first, they have no
existence apart from the facts themselves. When we discover them, we do
not pass from one fact to another, but from one to another aspect of the
same fact; from the whole to a part, from the compound to the
components. We only see the same thing under two forms; first, as a
whole, then as divided: we only translate the same idea from one
language into another, from the language of the senses into abstract
language, just as we express a curve by an equation, or a cube as a
function of its side. It signifies little whether this translation be
difficult or not; or that we generally need the accumulation or
comparison of a vast number of facts to arrive at it, and whether our
mind may not often succumb before accomplishing it. However this may be,
in this operation, which is evidently fertile, instead of proceeding
from one fact to another, we go from the same to the same; instead of
adding experiment to experiment, we set aside some portion of the first;
instead of advancing, we pause to examine the ground we stand on. There
are, thus, fruitful judgments, which, however, are not the results of
experience: there are essential propositions, which, however, are not
merely verbal: there is, thus, an operation, differing from experience,
which acts by cutting down, instead of by addition; which, instead of
acquiring, devotes itself to acquired data; and which, going further
than observation, opening a new field to the sciences, defines their
nature, determines their progress, completes their resources, and marks
out their end.
This is the great omission of your system. Abstraction is left in the
background, barely mentioned, concealed by the other operations of the
mind, treated as an appendage of Experience; we have but to re-establish
it in the general theory, in order to reform the particular theories in
which it is absent.
Section III.--Definitions Explain the Abstract Generating Elements
of Things
To begin with Definitions. Mill teaches that there is no definition of
things, and that when you define a sphere as the solid generated by the
revolution of a semicircle about its diameter, you only define a name.
Doubtless you tell me by this the meaning of a name, but you also teach
me a good deal more. You state that all the properties of every sphere
are derived from this generating formula; you reduce an infinitely
complex system of facts to two elements; you transform sensible into
abstract data; you express the essence of the sphere, that is to say,
the inner and primordial cause of all its properties. Such is the nature
of every true definition; it is not content with explaining a name, it
is not a mere description; it does not simply indicate a distinctive
property; it does not limit itself to that ticketing of an object which
will cause it to be distinguished from all others. There are, besides
its definition, several other ways of causing the object to be
recognized; there are other properties belonging to it exclusively: we
might describe a sphere by saying that, of all bodies having an equal
surface, it occupies the most space; or in many other ways. But such
descriptions are not definitions; they lay down a characteristic and
derived property, not a generating and primitive one; they do not reduce
the thing to its factors, and reconstruct it before our eyes; they do
not show its inner nature and its irreducible elements. A definition is
a proposition which marks in an object that quality from which its
others are derived, but which is not derived from others. Such a
proposition is not verbal, for it teaches the quality of a thing. It is
not the affirmation of an ordinary quality, for it reveals to us the
quality which is the source of the rest. It is an assertion of an
extraordinary kind, the most fertile and valuable of all, which sums up
a whole science, and in which it is the aim of every science to be
summed up. There is a definition in every science, and one for each
object. We do not, in every case, possess it, but we search for it
everywhere. We have arrived at defining the planetary motion by the
tangential force and attraction which compose it; we can already
partially define a chemical body by the notion of equivalent, and a
living body by the notion of type. We are striving to transform every
group of phenomena into certain laws, forces, or abstract notions. We
endeavor to attain in every object the generating elements, as we do
attain them in the sphere, the cylinder, the circle, the cone, and in
all mathematical loci. We reduce natural bodies to two or three kinds of
movement--attraction, vibration, polarization--as we reduce geometrical
bodies to two or three kinds of elements--the point, the movement, the
line; and we consider our science partial or complete, provisional or
definite, according as this reduction is approximate or absolute,
imperfect or complete.
Section IV.--The Basis of Proof in Syllogism is an Abstract Law
The same alteration is required in the Theory of Proof. According to
Mill, we do not prove that Prince Albert will die by premising that all
men are mortal, for that would be asserting the same thing twice over;
but from the facts that John, Peter, and others, in short, all men of
whom we have ever heard, have died.--I reply that the real source of our
inference lies neither in the mortality of John, Peter, and company, nor
in the mortality of all men, but elsewhere. We prove a fact, says
Aristotle,[431] by showing its cause. We shall therefore prove the
mortality of Prince Albert, by showing the cause which produces his
death. And why will he die? Because the human body, being an unstable
chemical compound, must in time be resolved; in other words, because
mortality is added to the quality of man. Here is the cause and the
proof. It is this abstract law which, present in nature, will cause the
death of the prince, and which, being present to my mind, shows me that
he will die. It is this abstract proposition which is demonstrative; it
is neither the particular nor the general propositions. In fact the
abstract proposition proves the others. If John, Peter, and others, are
dead, it is because mortality is added to the quality of man. If all men
are dead, or will die, it is still because mortality is added to the
quality, of man. Here, again, the part played by Abstraction has been
overlooked. Mill has confounded it with Experience: he has not
distinguished the proof from the materials of the proof, the abstract
law from the finite or indefinite number of its applications. The
applications contain the law and the proof, but are themselves neither
law nor proof. The examples of Peter, John, and others, contain the
cause, but they are not the cause. It is not sufficient to add up the
cases, we must extract from them the law. It is not enough to
experimentalize, we must abstract. This is the great scientific
operation. Syllogism does not proceed from the particular to the
particular, as Mill says, nor from the general to the particular, as the
ordinary logicians teach, but from the abstract to the concrete; that is
to say, from cause to effect. It is on this ground that it forms part of
science, the links of which it makes and marks out; it connects
principles with effects; it brings together definitions and phenomena.
It diffuses through the whole range of science that Abstraction which
definition has carried to its summit.
Section V.--Axioms are Relations between Abstract Truths
Abstraction explains also axioms. According to Mill, if we know that
when equal magnitudes are added to equal magnitudes the wholes are
equal, or that two straight lines cannot enclose a space, it is by
external ocular experiment, or by an internal experiment, by the aid of
imagination. Doubtless we may thus arrive at the conclusion that two
straight lines cannot enclose a space, but we might recognize it also in
another manner. We might represent a straight line in imagination, and
we may also form a conception of it by reason. We may either study its
form or its definition. We can observe it in itself, or in its
generating elements. I can represent to myself a line ready drawn, but I
can also resolve it into its elements. I can go back to its formation,
and discover the abstract elements which produce it, as I have watched
the formation of the cylinder and discover the revolution of the
rectangle which generated it. It will not do to say that a straight line
is the shortest from one point to another, for that is a derived
property; but I may say that it is the line described by a point,
tending to approach towards another point, and towards that point only:
which amounts to saying that two points suffice to determine a straight
line; in other words, that two straight lines, having two points in
common, coincide in their entire length; from which we see that if two
straight lines approach to enclose a space, they would form but one
straight line, and enclose nothing at all. Here is a second method of
arriving at a knowledge of the axiom, and it is clear that it differs
much from the first. In the first we verify; in the second we deduce it.
In the first we find by experience that it is true; in the second we
prove it to be true. In the first we admit the truth; in the second we
explain it. In the first we merely remark that the contrary of the axiom
is inconceivable; in the second we discover, in addition, that the
contrary of the axiom is contradictory. Having given the definition of
the straight line, we find that the axiom that two straight lines cannot
enclose a space is comprised in it, and may be derived from it, as a
consequent from a principle. In fact, it is nothing more than an
identical proposition, which means that the subject contains its
attribute; it does not connect two separate terms, irreducible one to
the other; it unites two terms, of which the second is a part of the
first. It is a simple analysis, and so are all axioms. We have only to
decompose them, in order to see that they do not proceed from one object
to a different one, but are concerned with one object only. We have but
to resolve the notions of equality, cause, substance, time, and space
into their abstracts, in order to demonstrate the axioms of equality,
substance, cause, time, and space. There is but one axiom, that of
identity. The others are only its applications or its consequences. When
this is admitted, we at once see that the range of our mind is altered.
We are no longer merely capable of relative and limited knowledge, but
also of absolute and infinite knowledge; we possess in axioms facts
which not only accompany one another, but one of which includes the
other. If, as Mill says, they merely accompanied one another, we should
be obliged to conclude with him, that perhaps this might not always be
the case. We should not see the inner necessity for their connection,
and should only admit it as far as our experience went; we should say
that, the two facts being isolated in their nature, circumstances might
arise in which they would be separate; we should affirm the truth of
axioms only in reference to our world and mind. If, on the contrary, the
two facts are such that the first contains the second, we should
establish on this very ground the necessity of their connection;
wheresoever the first may be found, it will carry the second with it,
since the second is a part of it, and cannot be separated from it.
Nothing can exist between them and divide them, for they are but one
thing under different aspects. Their connection is therefore absolute
and universal; and we possess truths which admit neither doubt nor
limitation, nor condition, nor restriction. Abstraction restores to
axioms their value, whilst it shows their origin; and we restore to
science her dispossessed dominion, by restoring to the mind the faculty
of which it had been deprived.
Section VI.--The Methods of Induction
Induction remains to be considered: which seems to be the triumph of
pure experience, while it is in reality, the triumph of abstraction.
When I discover, by induction, that cold produces dew, or that the
passage from the liquid to the solid state produces crystallization, I
establish a connection between two abstract facts. Neither cold, nor
dew, nor the passage from the liquid to the solid state, nor
crystallization, exist in themselves. They are parts of phenomena,
extracts from complex cases, simple elements included in compound
aggregates. I withdraw and isolate them; I isolate dew in general from
all local, temporary, special dews which I observe; I isolate cold in
general from all special, various distinct colds, which may be produced
by all varieties of texture, all diversities of substance, all
inequalities of temperature, all complications of circumstances. I join
an abstract antecedent to an abstract consequent, and I connect them, as
Mill himself shows, by subtractions, suppressions, eliminations; I expel
from the two groups, containing them, all the proximate circumstances; I
discover the couple under the surroundings which obscure it; I detach,
by a series of comparisons and experiments, all the subsidiary
accidental circumstances which have clung to it, and thus I end by
laying it bare. I seem to be considering twenty different cases, and in
reality I only consider one; I appear to proceed by addition, and in
fact I am performing subtraction. All the methods of Induction,
therefore, are methods of Abstraction, and all the work of Induction is
the connection of abstract facts.
Section VII.--Experience and Abstraction
We see now the two great moving powers of science, and the two great
manifestations of nature. There are two operations, experience and
abstraction; there are two kingdoms, that of complex facts, and that of
simple elements. The first is the effect, the second the cause. The
first is contained in the second, and is deduced from it, as a
consequent from its principle. The two are equivalent: they are one and
the same thing considered under two aspects. This magnificent moving
universe, this tumultuous chaos of mutually dependent events, this
incessant life, infinitely varied and multiplied, may be all reduced to
a few elements and their relations. Our whole efforts result in passing
from one to the other, from the complex to the simple, from facts to
laws, from experiences to formulas. And the reason of this is evident;
for this fact, which I perceive by the senses or the consciousness, is
but a fragment, arbitrarily severed by my senses or my consciousness,
from the infinite and continuous woof of existence. If they were
differently constituted, they would intercept other fragments; it is the
chance of their structure which determines what is actually perceived.
They are like open compasses, which might be more or less extended; and
the area of the circle which they describe is not natural, but
artificial. It is so in two ways, both externally and internally. For,
when I consider an event, I isolate it artificially from its natural
surroundings, and I compose it artificially of elements which do not
form a natural group. When I see a falling stone, I separate the fall
from the anterior circumstances which are really connected with it; and
I put together the fall, the form, the structure, the color, the sound,
and twenty other circumstances which are really not connected with it. A
fact, then, is an arbitrary aggregate, and at the same time an arbitrary
severing;[432] that is to say, a factitious group, which separates
things connected, and connects things that are separate. Thus, so long
as we only regard nature by observation, we do not see it as it is: we
have only a provisional and illusory idea of it. Nature is, in reality,
a tapestry, of which we only see the reverse; this is why we try to turn
it. We strive to discover laws; that is, the natural groups which are
really distinct from their surroundings, and composed of elements really
connected. We discover couples; that is to say, real compounds and real
connections. We pass from the accidental to the necessary, from the
relative to the absolute, from the appearance to the reality; and having
found these first couples, we practice upon them the same operation as
we did upon facts, for, though in a less degree, they are of the same
nature. Though more abstract, they are still complex. They may be
decomposed and explained. There is some ulterior reason for their
existence. There is some cause or other which constructs and unites
them. In their case, as well as for facts, we can search for generating
elements into which they may be resolved, and from which they may be
deduced. And this operation may be continued until we have arrived at
elements wholly simple; that is to say, such that their decomposition
would involve a contradiction. Whether we can find them or not, they
exist; the axiom of causation would be falsified if they were absent.
There are, then, indecomposable elements, from which are derived more
general laws; and from these, again, more special laws; and from these
the facts which we observe; just as in geometry there are two or three
primitive notions, from which are deduced the properties of lines, and
from these the properties of surfaces, solids, and the numberless forms
which nature can produce, or the mind imagine. We can now comprehend the
value and meaning of that axiom of causation which governs all things,
and which Mill has mutilated. There is an inner constraining force which
gives rise to every event, which unites every compound, which engenders
every actual fact. This signifies, on the one hand, that there is a
reason for everything; that every fact has its law; that every compound
can be reduced to simple elements; that every product implies factors;
that every quality and every being must be reducible from some superior
and anterior term. And it signifies, on the other hand, that the product
is equivalent to the factors, that both are but the same thing under
different aspects; that the cause does not differ in nature from the
effect; that the generating powers are but elementary properties; that
the active force, by which we represent Nature to our minds, is but the
logical necessity which mutually transforms the compound and the simple,
the fact and the law. Thus we determine beforehand the limits of every
science; and we possess the potent formula, which, establishing the
invincible connection and the spontaneous production of existences,
places in Nature the moving spring of Nature, whilst it drives home and
fixes in the heart of every living thing the iron fangs of necessity.
Section VIII.--Idea and Limits of Metaphysics
Can we arrive at a knowledge of these primary elements? For my part, I
think we can; and the reason is, that, being abstractions, they are not
beyond the region of facts, but are comprised in them, so that we have
only to extract them from the facts. Besides, being the most abstract,
that is, the most general of all things, there are no facts which do not
comprise them, and from which we cannot extract them. However limited
our experience may be, we can arrive at these primary notions; and it is
from this observation that the modern German metaphysicians have
started, in attempting their vast constructions. They understood that
there are simple notions, that is to say, indecomposable abstract facts,
that the combinations of these engender all others, and that the laws
for their mutual union or contrarieties, are the primary laws of the
universe. They tried to attain to these ideas, and to evolve, by pure
reason, the world as observation shows it to us. They have partly
failed; and their gigantic edifice, factitious and fragile, hangs in
ruins, reminding one of those temporary scaffoldings which only serve to
mark out the plan of a future building. The reason is, that with a high
notion of our powers, they had no exact view of their limits. For we are
outflanked on all sides by the infinity of time and space; we find
ourselves thrown in the midst of this monstrous universe like a shell on
the beach, or an ant at the foot of a steep slope. Here Mill is right.
Chance is at the end of all our knowledge, as on the threshold of all
our postulates: we vainly try to rise, and that by conjecture, to an
initial state; but this state depends on the preceding one, which
depends on another, and so on; and thus we are forced to accept it as a
pure postulate, and to give up the hope of deducing it, though we know
that it ought to be deduced. It is so in all sciences, in geology,
natural history, physics, chemistry, psychology, history, and the
primitive accidental fact extends its effects into all parts of the
sphere in which it is comprised. If it had been otherwise, we should
have neither the same planets, nor the same chemical compounds, nor the
same vegetables, nor the same animals, nor the same races of men, nor,
perhaps, any of these kinds of beings. If an ant were taken into another
country, it would see neither the same trees, nor insects, nor
dispositions of the soil, nor changes of the atmosphere, nor, perhaps,
any of these forms of existence. There is, then, in every fact and in
every object, an accidental and local part, a vast portion, which, like
the rest, depends on primitive laws, but not directly, only through an
infinite circuit of consequences in such a way that between it and the
primitive laws there is an infinite hiatus, which can only be bridged
over by an infinite series of deductions.
Such is the inexplicable part of phenomena, and this is what the German
metaphysicians tried to explain. They wished to deduce from their
elementary theorems the form of the planetary system, the various laws
of physics and chemistry, the main types of life, the progress of human
civilizations and thought. They contorted their universal formulae with
the view of deriving from them particular cases; they took indirect and
remote consequences as direct and proximate ones; they omitted or
suppressed the great work which is interposed between the first laws and
the final consequences; they discarded Chance from their construction,
as a basis unworthy of science; and the void so left, badly filled up by
deceptive materials, caused the whole edifice to fall to ruins.
Does this amount to saying, that in the facts with which this little
corner of the universe furnishes us, everything is local? By no means.
If an ant were capable of making experiments, it might attain to the
idea of a physical law, a living form, a representative sensation, an
abstract thought; for a foot of ground, on which there is a thinking
brain, includes all these. Therefore, however limited be the field of
the mind, it contains general facts; that is, facts spread over very
vast external territories, into which its limitation prevents it from
penetrating. If the ant were capable of reasoning, it might construct
arithmetic, algebra, geometry, mechanics; for a movement of half an inch
contains in the abstract, time, space, number, and force: all the
materials of mathematics: therefore, however limited the field of a
mind's researches be, it includes universal data; that is, facts spread
over the whole region of time and space. Again, if the ant were a
philosopher, it might evolve the ideas of existence, of nothingness, and
all the materials of metaphysics; for any phenomenon, interior or
exterior, suffices to present these materials: therefore, however
limited the field of a mind be, it contains absolute truths; that is,
such that there is no object from which they could be absent. And this
must necessarily be so; for the more general a fact is, the fewer
objects need we examine to meet with it. If it is universal, we meet
with it everywhere; if it is absolute, we cannot escape meeting it. This
is why, in spite of the narrowness of our experience, metaphysics, I
mean the search for first causes, is possible, but on condition that we
remain at a great height, that we do not descend into details, that we
consider only the most simple elements of existence, and the most
general tendencies of nature. If anyone were to collect the three or
four great ideas in which our sciences result, and the three or four
kinds of existence which make up our universe; if he were to compare
those two strange quantities which we call duration and extension, those
principal forms or determinations of quantity which we call physical
laws, chemical types, and living species, and that marvellous
representative power, the Mind, which, without falling into quantity,
reproduces the other two and itself; if he discovered among these three
terms--the pure quantity, the determined quantity, and the suppressed
quantity[433]--such an order that the first must require the second, and
the second the third; if he thus established that the pure quantity is
the necessary commencement of Nature, and that Thought is the extreme
term at which Nature is wholly suspended; if, again, isolating the
elements of these data, he showed that they must be combined just as
they are combined, and not otherwise: if he proved, moreover, that there
are no other elements, and that there can be no other, he would have
sketched out a system of metaphysics without encroaching on the positive
sciences, and have attained the source, without being obliged to descend
to trace the various streams.
In my opinion, these two great operations, Experience as you have
described it, and Abstraction, as I have tried to define it, comprise in
themselves all the resources of the human mind, the one in its
practical, the other in its speculative direction. The first leads us to
consider nature as an assemblage of facts, the second as a system of
laws: the exclusive employment of the first is English; that of the
second, German. If there is a place between these two nations, it is
ours. We have extended the English ideas in the eighteenth century; and
now we can, in the nineteenth, add precision to German ideas. Our
business is to restrain, to correct, to complete the two types of mind,
one by the other, to combine them together, to express their ideas in a
style generally understood, and thus to produce from them the universal
mind.
Section IX.--A Morning in Oxford
We went out. As it ever happens in similar circumstances, each had
caused the other to reflect, and neither had convinced the other. But
our reflections were short: in the presence of a lovely August morning,
all arguments fall to the ground. The old walls, the rain-worn stones,
smiled in the rising sun. A fresh light rested on their embrasures, on
the keystones of the cloisters, on the glossy ivy leaves. Roses and
honeysuckles climbed the walls, and their flowers quivered and sparkled
in the light breeze. The fountains murmured in the vast lonely courts.
The beautiful town stood out from the morning's mist, as adorned and
tranquil as a fairy palace, and its robe of soft rosy vapor was
indented, as an embroidery of the Renaissance, by a border of towers,
cloisters, and palaces, each enclosed in verdure and decked with
flowers. The architecture of all ages had mingled their arches,
trefoils, statues, and columns; time had softened their tints; the sun
united them in its light, and the old city seemed a shrine to which
every age and every genius had successively added a jewel. Beyond this,
the river rolled its broad sheets of silver: the mowers stood up to the
knee in the high grass of the meadows. Myriads of buttercups and
meadow-sweets; grasses, bending under the weight of their gray heads,
plants sated with the dew of the night, swarmed in the rich soil. Words
cannot express this freshness of tints, this luxuriance of vegetation.
The more the long line of shape receded, the more brilliant and full of
life the flowers appeared. On seeing them, virgin and timid in their
gilded veil, I thought of the blushing cheeks and fine modest eyes of a
young girl who puts on for the first time her necklace of jewels.
Around, as though to guard them, enormous trees, four centuries old,
extended in regular lines; and I found in them a new trace of that
practical good sense which has effected revolutions without committing
ravages; which, while reforming in all directions, has destroyed
nothing; which has preserved both its trees and its constitution, which
has lopped off the dead branches without levelling the trunk; which
alone, in our days, among all nations, is in the enjoyment not only of
the present, but of the past.
[Footnote 396: M. Taine has published this "Study on Mill" separately,
and preceded it by the following note, as a preface:--"When this Study
first appeared, Mr. Mill did me the honor to write to me that it would
not be possible to give in a few pages a more exact and complete notion
of the contents of his work, considered as a body of philosophical
teaching. 'But,' he added, 'I think you are wrong in regarding the views
I adopt as especially English. They were so in the first half of the
eighteenth century, from the time of Locke to that of the reaction
against Hume. This reaction, beginning in Scotland, assumed long ago the
German form, find ended by prevailing universally. When I wrote my book,
I stood almost alone in my opinions; and though they have met with a
degree of sympathy which I by no means expected, we may still count in
England twenty à priori and spiritualist philosophers for every
partisan of the doctrine of Experience.'
"This remark is very true. I myself could have made it, having been
brought up in the doctrines of Scottish philosophy and the writings of
Reid. I simply answer, that there are philosophers whom we do not count,
and that all such, whether English or not, spiritualist or not, may be
neglected without much harm. Once in a half-century, or perhaps in a
century, or two centuries, some thinker appears; Bacon and Hume in
England, Descartes and Condillac in France, Kant and Hegel in Germany.
At other times the stage is unoccupied, or ordinary men come forward,
and offer the public that which the public likes--Sensualists or
Idealists, according to the tendency of the day, with sufficient
instruction and skill to play leading parts, and enough capacity to
reset old airs, well drilled in the works of their predecessors, but
destitute of real invention--simple executant musicians, who stand in
the place of composers. In Europe, at present, the stage is a blank. The
Germans adapt and alter effete French materialism. The French listen
from habit, but somewhat wearily and distractedly, to the scraps of
melody and eloquent commonplace which their instructors have repeated to
them for the last thirty years. In this deep silence, and from among
these dull mediocrities, a master comes forward to speak. Nothing of the
sort has been seen since Hegel."]
[Footnote 397: This law has been abrogated by an Act of Parliament.--Tr.]
[Footnote 398: "It is certain, then, that a part of our notion of a body
consists of the notion of a number of sensations of our own, or of other
sentient beings, habitually occurring simultaneously. My conception of
the table at which I am writing is compounded of its visible form and
size, which are complex sensations of sight; its tangible form and size,
which are complex sensations of our organs of touch and of our muscles;
its weight, which is also a sensation of touch and of the muscles; its
colour, which is a sensation of sight; its hardness, which is a
sensation of the muscles; its composition, which is another word for all
the varieties of sensation which we receive, under various
circumstances, from the wood of which it is made, and so forth. All, or
most of these various sensations, frequently arc, and, as we learn by
experience, always might be, experienced simultaneously, or in many
different orders of succession, at our own choice: and hence the thought
of any one of them makes us think of the others, and the whole becomes
mentally amalgamated into one mixed state of consciousness, which, in
the language of Locke and Hartley, is termed a Complex Idea."--Mill's
"System of Logic," 4th ed. 2 vols. I. 62.]
[Footnote 399: Mill's "Logic," I. 68.]
[Footnote 400: "Every attribute of a mind consists either in being
itself affected in a certain way, or affecting other minds in a
certain way. Considered in itself, we can predicate nothing of it but
the series of its own feelings. When we say of any mind, that it is
devout, or superstitious, or meditative, or cheerful, we mean that the
ideas, emotions, or volitions implied in those words, form a frequently
recurring part of the series of feelings, or states of consciousness,
which fill up the sentient existence of that mind.
"In addition, however, to those attributes of a mind which are grounded
on its own states of feeling, attributes may also be ascribed to it, in
the same manner as to a body, grounded on the feelings which it excites
in other minds. A mind does not, indeed, like a body, excite sensations,
but it may excite thoughts or emotions. The most important example of
attributes ascribed on this ground, is the employment of terms expressive
of approbation or blame. When, for example, we say of any character, or
(in other words) of any mind, that it is admirable, we mean that the
contemplation of it excites the sentiment of admiration; and, indeed,
somewhat more, for the word implies that we not only feel admiration,
but approve that sentiment in ourselves. In some cases, under the
semblance of a single attribute, two are really predicated: one of them,
a state of the mind itself; the other, a state with which other minds
are affected by thinking of it. As when we say of anyone that he is
generous. The word generosity expresses a certain state of mind, but
being a term of praise, it also expresses that this state of mind
excites in us another mental state, called approbation. The assertion
made, therefore, is twofold, and of the following purport: Certain
feelings form habitually a part of this person's sentient existence;
and the idea of those feelings of his, excites the sentiment of
approbation in ourselves or others."--Mill's "Logic," 80.]
[Footnote 401: Mill's "Logic," 110.]
[Footnote 402: "According to idealist logicians, this being is arrived
at by examining our notion of it; and the idea, on analysis, reveals the
essence. According to the classifying school, we arrive at the being by
placing the object in its group, and the notion is defined by stating
the genus and the difference. Both agree in believing that we are capable
of grasping the essence."--Mill's "Logic," I. 127.]
[Footnote 403: "An essential proposition, then, is one which is purely
verbal; which asserts of a thing under a particular name, only what is
asserted of it in the fact of calling it by that name; and which,
therefore, either gives no information, or gives it respecting the name,
not the thing. Non-essential or accidental propositions, on the
contrary, may be called Real Propositions, in opposition to Verbal. They
predicate of a thing, some fact not involved in the signification of the
name by which the proposition speaks of it; some attribute not connoted
by that name."--Mill's "Logic," I. 127.]
[Footnote 404: Mill's "Logic," I. 162.]
[Footnote 405: "The definition above given of a triangle obviously
comprises not one, but two propositions, perfectly distinguishable.
The one is, 'There may exist a figure bounded by three straight lines
the other. 'And this figure may be termed a triangle.' The former of
these propositions is not a definition at all; the latter is a mere
nominal definition, or explanation of the use and application of a term.
The first is susceptible of truth or falsehoods, and may therefore be
made the foundation of a train of reasoning. The latter can neither be
true nor false; the only character it is susceptible of is that of
conformity to the ordinary usage of language."--Mill's "Logic," I. 162.]
[Footnote 406: Mill's "Logic," I. 211.]
[Footnote 407: Mill's "Logic," I. 218.]
[Footnote 408: Ibid. I. 240.]
[Footnote 409: "For though, in order actually to see that two given
lines never meet, it would be necessary to follow them to infinity; yet,
without doing so, we may know that if they ever do meet, or if, after
diverging from one another, they begin again to approach, this must take
place not at an infinite, but at a finite distance. Supposing,
therefore, such to be the case, we can transport ourselves thither in
imagination, and can frame a mental image of the appearance which one or
both of the lines must present at that point, which we may rely on as
being precisely similar to the reality. Now, whether we fix our
contemplation upon this imaginary picture, or call to mind the
generalizations we have had occasion to make from former ocular
observation, we learn by the evidence of experience, that a line which,
after diverging from another straight line, begins to approach to it,
produces the impression on our senses which we describe by the
expression 'a bent line,' not by the expression 'a straight
line.'"--Mill's "Logic," I. 364.]
[Footnote 410: Mill's "Logic," I. 315.]
[Footnote 411: "We must first observe, that there is a principle implied
in the very statement of what Induction is; an assumption with regard
to the course of nature and the order of the universe; namely, that there
are such things in nature as parallel cases; that what happens once,
will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen
again, and not only again, but as often as the same circumstances recur.
This, I say, is an assumption, involved in every case of induction. And,
if we consult the actual course of nature, we find that the assumption is
warranted. The universe, so far as known to us, is so constituted, that
whatever is true in any one case, is true in all cases of a certain
description; the only difficulty is, to find what description."--Mill's
"Logic," I. 337.]
[Footnote 412: Mill's "Logic," I. 351.]
[Footnote 413: Mill's "Logic," I. 359.]
[Footnote 414: Ibid. I. 360.]
[Footnote 415: Ibid. I. 365.]
[Footnote 416: Mill's "Logic." I. 372.]
[Footnote 417: "If we take fifty crucibles of molten matter and let them
cool, and fifty solutions and let them evaporate, all will crystallize.
Sulphur, sugar, alum, salt--substances, temperatures, circumstances--all
are as different as they can be. We find one, and only one, common
fact--the change from the liquid to the solid state--and conclude,
therefore, that this change is the invariable antecedent of
crystallization. Here we have an example of the Method of Agreement. Its
canon is:--
"'I. If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation
have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone
all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given
phenomenon.'"--Ibid. I. 422.]
[Footnote 418: "A bird in the air breathes; plunged into carbonic acid
gas, it ceases to breathe. In other words, in the second case,
suffocation ensues. In other respects the two cases are as similar as
possible, since we have the same bird in both, and they take place in
immediate succession. They differ only in the circumstance of immersion
in carbonic acid gas being substituted for immersion in the atmosphere,
and we conclude that this circumstance is invariably followed by
suffocation. The Method of Difference is here employed. Its canon is:--
"'II. If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigation occurs,
and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstance in
common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstance
in which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or
a necessary part of the cause, of the phenomenon.'"--Ibid. I. 423.]
[Footnote 419: ("A combination of these methods is sometimes employed,
and is termed the Indirect Method of Difference, or the Joint Method of
Agreement and Difference. It is, in fact, a double employment of the
Method of Agreement, first applying that method to instances in which
the phenomenon in question occurs, and then to instances in which it
does not occur. The following is its canon:--
"'III. If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurs have
only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances in which
it does not occur have nothing in common, save the absence of that
circumstance; the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instances
differ, is the effect, or the cause, or a necessary part
of the cause, of the phenomenon.'")--Mill's "Logic," I. 429.
"If we take two groups--one of antecedents and one of consequents--and
can succeed in connecting by previous investigations all the antecedents
but one to their respective consequents, and all the consequents but one
to their respective antecedents, we conclude that the remaining
antecedent is connected to the remaining consequent. For example,
scientific men had calculated what ought to be the velocity of sound
according to the laws of the propagation of sonorous waves, but found
that a sound actually travelled quicker than their calculations had
indicated. This surplus, or residue of speed, was a consequent for which
an antecedent had to be found. Laplace discovered the antecedent in the
heat developed by the condensation of each sonorous wave, and this new
element, when introduced into the calculation, rendered it perfectly
accurate. This is an example of the Method of Residues, the canon of
which is as follows:--
"'IV. Subduct from any phenomenon such part as is known by previous
inductions to be the effect of certain antecedents, and the residue of
the phenomenon is the effect of the remaining antecedents.'"--Mill's
"Logic," I. 431.]
[Footnote 420: "Let us take two facts--as the presence of the earth and
the oscillation of the pendulum; or, again, the presence of the moon and
the flow of the tide. To connect these phenomena directly, we should
have to suppress the first of them, and see if this suppression would
occasion the stoppage of the second. Now, in both instances, such
suppression is impossible. So we employ an indirect means of connecting
the phenomena. We observe that all the variations of the one correspond
to certain variations of the other; that all the oscillations of the
pendulum correspond to certain different positions of the earth; that
all states of the tide correspond to positions of the moon. From this we
conclude that the second fact is the antecedent of the first. These are
examples of the Method of Concomitant Variations. Its canon is:--
"'V. Whatever phenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon
varies in some particular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that
phenomenon, or is connected with it through some fact of
causation.'"--Mill's "Logic," I. 435.]
[Footnote 421: "The Method of Agreement," says Mill ("Logic," I. 4-14),
"stands on the ground that whatever can be eliminated, is not connected
with the phenomenon by any law. The Method of Difference has for its
foundation, that whatever cannot be eliminated, is connected with the
phenomenon by a law." The Method of Residues is a case of the Method of
Differences. The Method of Concomitant Variations is another case of the
same method; with this distinction, that it is applied, not to the
phenomena, but to their variations.]
[Footnote 422: This quotation, and all the others in this paragraph, are
taken from Mill's "Logic," I. 451-9. Mr. Mill quotes from Sir John
Herschel's "Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy."]
[Footnote 423: Mill's "Logic," I. 526.]
[Footnote 424: See chapter 9, book VI. V. 2, 478, on The Physical or
Concrete Deductive Method as applied to Sociology; and chapter 13, book
III, for explanations, after Liebig, of Decomposition, Respiration, the
Action of Poisons, etc. A whole book is devoted to the logic of the
moral sciences; I know no better treatise on the subject.]
[Footnote 425: Mill's "Logic," II. 4.]
[Footnote 426: "There exists in nature a number of Permanent Causes,
which have subsisted ever since the human race has been in existence,
and for an indefinite and probably an enormous length of time previous.
The sun, the earth, and planets, with their various constituents, air,
water, and the other distinguishable substances, whether simple or
compound, of which nature is made up, are such Permanent Causes. They
have existed, and the effects or consequences which they were fitted
to produce have taken place (as often as the other conditions of the
production met), from the very beginning of our experience. But we can
give no account of the origin of the Permanent Causes themselves."--Mill's
"Logic," I. 378.]
[Footnote 427: "The resolution of the laws of the heavenly motions
established the previously unknown ultimate property of a mutual
attraction between all bodies: the resolution, so far as it has yet
proceeded, of the laws of crystallization, or chemical composition,
electricity, magnetism, etc., points to various polarities, ultimately
inherent in the particles of which bodies are composed; the comparative
atomic weights of different kinds of bodies were ascertained by
resolving, into more general laws, the uniformities observed in the
proportions in which substances combine with one another; and so forth.
Thus, although every resolution of a complex uniformity into simpler and
more elementary laws has an apparent tendency to diminish the number of
the ultimate properties, and really does remove many properties from the
list; yet (since the result of this simplifying process is to trace up
an ever greater variety of different effects to the same agents), the
further we advance in this direction, the greater number of distinct
properties we are forced to recognize in one and the same object; the
coexistences of which properties must accordingly be ranked among the
ultimate generalities of nature."--Mill's "Logic," II. 108.]
[Footnote 428: Ibid. I. 378.]
[Footnote 429: Mill's "Logic," II. 95.]
[Footnote 430: Mill's "Logic," II. 104.]
[Footnote 431: See the Posterior Analytics, which are much superior to
the Prior--δί αίνίων κα ηρότέρων.]
[Footnote 432: An eminent student of Physical Science said to me: "A fact
is a superposition of laws."]
[Footnote 433: Die aufgehobene Quantität.]
CHAPTER SIXTH
POETRY--TENNYSON
Section I.--His Talent and Work
When Tennyson published his first poems, the critics found fault with
them. He held his peace; for ten years no one saw his name in a review,
nor even in a publisher's catalogue. But when he appeared again before
the public, his books had made their way alone and under the surface,
and he passed at once for the greatest poet of his country and his time.
Men were surprised, and with a pleasing surprise. The potent generation
of poets who had just died out, had passed like a whirlwind. Like their
forerunners of the sixteenth century, they had carried away and hurried
everything to its extreme. Some had culled gigantic legends, piled up
dreams, ransacked the East, Greece, Arabia, the Middle Ages, and
overloaded the human imagination with hues and fancies from every clime.
Others had buried themselves in metaphysics and moral philosophy, had
mused indefatigably on the condition of man, and spent their lives on
the sublime and the monotonous. Others, making a medley of crime and
heroism, had conducted, through darkness and flashes of lightning, a
train of contorted and terrible figures, desperate with remorse,
relieved by their grandeur. Men wanted to rest after so many efforts and
so much excess. On the going out of the imaginative, sentimental and
Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All the forms and ideas
which had pleased them were found in him, but purified, modulated, set
in a splendid style. He completed an age; he enjoyed that which had
agitated others; his poetry was like the lovely evenings in summer: the
outlines of the landscape are then the same as in the daytime; but the
splendor of the dazzling celestial arch is dulled; the reinvigorated
flowers lift themselves up, and the calm sun, on the horizon,
harmoniously casts a network of crimson rays over the woods and meadows
which it just before burned by its brightness.
Section II.--Portraits of Women
What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of women: Adeline,
Eleanore, Lilian, the May Queen, were keepsake characters, from the hand
of a lover and an artist. The keepsake is gilt-edged, embossed with
flowers and decorations, richly got up, soft, full of delicate faces,
always elegant and always correct, which we might take to be sketched at
random, and which are yet drawn carefully, on white vellum, slightly
touched by their outline, all selected to rest and occupy the soft,
white hands of a young bride or a girl. I have translated many ideas and
many styles, but I shall not attempt to translate one of these
portraits. Each word of them is like a tint, curiously deepened or
shaded by the neighboring tint, with all the boldness and results of the
happiest refinement. The least alteration would obscure all. And there
an art so just, so consummate, is necessary to paint the charming
prettinesses, the sudden hauteurs, the half blushes, the imperceptible
and fleeting caprices of feminine beauty. He opposes, harmonizes them,
makes of them, as it were, a gallery. Here is the frolicsome child, the
little fluttering fairy, who clasps her tiny hands, who,
"So innocent-arch, so cunning-simple,
From beneath her gather'd wimple
Glancing with black-beaded eyes,
Till the lightning laughters dimple
The baby-roses in her cheeks;
Then away she flies."[434]
Then the pensive fair, who dreams, with large open blue eyes:
"Whence that aery bloom of thine,
Like a lily which the sun
Looks thro' in his sad decline,
And a rose-bush leans upon,
Thou that faintly smilest still,
As a Naiad in a well,
Looking at the set of day."[435]
Anew "the ever-varying Madeline," now smiling, then frowning, then
joyful again, then angry, then uncertain between the two:
"Frowns perfect-sweet along the brow
Light-glooming over eyes divine,
Like little clouds sun-fringed."[436]
The poet returned well pleased to all things, refined and exquisite. He
caressed them so carefully that his verses appeared at times
far-fetched, affected, almost euphuistic. He gave them too much
adornment and polishing; he seemed like an epicurean in style, as well
as in beauty. He looked for pretty rustic scenes, touching remembrances,
curious or pure sentiments. He made them into elegies, pastorals, and
idyls. He wrote in every accent, and delighted in entering into the
feelings of all ages. He wrote of St. Agnes, St. Simeon Stylites,
Ulysses, Œnone, Sir Galahad, Lady Clare, Fatima, the Sleeping Beauty.
He imitated, alternately, Homer and Chaucer, Theocritus and Spenser, the
old English poets and the old Arabian poets. He gave life successively
to the little real events of English life, and the great fantastic
adventures of extinguished chivalry. He was like those musicians who use
their bow in the service of all masters. He strayed through nature and
history, with no foregone conclusions, without fierce passion, bent on
feeling, relishing, culling from all parts, in the flower-stand of the
drawing-room and in the rustic hedgerows, the rare or wild flowers whose
scent or beauty could charm or amuse him. Men entered into his pleasure;
smelt the grateful bouquets which he knew so well how to put together;
preferred those which he took from the country; found that his talent
was nowhere more at ease. They admired the minute observation and
refined sentiment which knew how to grasp and interpret the fleeting
aspects of things. In the "Dying Swan" they forgot that the subject was
almost threadbare, and the interest somewhat slight, that they might
appreciate such verses as this:
"Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind was the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far thro' the marish green and still
The tangled water-courses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow."[437]
But these melancholy pictures did not display him entirely; men
accompanied him to the land of the sun, toward the soft voluptuousness
of southern seas; they returned, with an involuntary fascination, to the
verses in which he depicts the companions of Ulysses, who, slumbering in
the land of the Lotos-eaters, happy dreamers like himself, forgot their
country, and renounced action:
"A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
Stood sun-set flush'd: and, dew'd with showery drops,
Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse....
"There is sweet music here that softer falls
Than petal from blown roses on the grass,
Or night-dews on still waters between walls
Of shadowy granite, in a gleaming pass;
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies,
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes;
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Here are cool mosses deep,
And thro' the moss the ivies creep,
And in the stream the long-leaved flowers weep,
And from the craggy ledge the poppy hangs in sleep....
"Lo! in the middle of the wood,
The folded leaf is woo'd from out the bud
With winds upon the branch, and there
Grows green and broad, and takes no care,
Sun-steep'd at noon, and in the moon
Nightly dew-fed; and turning yellow
Falls, and floats adown the air.
Lo! sweeten'd with the summer light,
The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil....
"But, propt on beds of amaranth and moly,
How sweet (while warm airs lull us, blowing lowly),
With half-dropt eyelids still,
Beneath a heaven dark and holy,
To watch the long bright river drawing slowly
His waters from the purple hill--
To hear the dewy echoes calling
From cave to cave thro' the thick-twined vine--
To watch the emerald-colour'd water falling
Thro' many a wov'n acanthus-wreath divine!
Only to hear and see the far-off sparkling brine,
Only to hear were sweet, stretch'd out beneath the pine."[438]
Section III.--Wherein Tennyson is at One with Nature
Was this charming dreamer simply a dilettante? Men liked to consider him
so; he seemed too happy to admit violent passions. Fame came to him
easily and quickly, at the age of thirty. The Queen had justified the
public favor by creating him Poet-Laureate. A great writer declared him
a more genuine poet than Lord Byron, and maintained that nothing so
perfect had been seen since Shakespeare. The student, at Oxford, put
Tennyson's works between an annotated Euripides and a handbook of
scholastic philosophy. Young ladies found him amongst their marriage
presents. He was said to be rich, venerated by his family, admired by
his friends, amiable, without affectation, even unsophisticated. He
lived in the country, chiefly in the Isle of Wight, amongst books and
flowers, free from the annoyances, rivalries, and burdens of society,
and his life was easily imagined to be a beautiful dream, as sweet as
those which he had pictured.
Yet the men who looked closer saw that there was a fire of passion under
this smooth surface. A genuine poetic temperament never fails in this.
It feels too acutely to be at peace. When we quiver at the least touch,
we shake and tremble under great shocks. Already, here and there, in his
pictures of country and love, a brilliant verse broke with its glowing
color through the calm and correct outline. He had felt that strange
growth of unknown powers which suddenly arrest a man with fixed gaze
before revealed beauty. The specialty of the poet is to be ever young,
forever virgin. For us, the vulgar things are threadbare; sixty
centuries of civilization have worn out their primitive freshness;
things have become commonplace; we perceive them only through a veil of
ready-made phrases; we employ them, we no longer comprehend them; we see
in them no longer magnificent flowers, but good vegetables; the
luxuriant primeval forest is to us nothing but a well-planned, and too
well-known, kitchen garden. On the other hand, the poet, in presence of
this world, is as the first man, on the first day. In a moment our
phrases, our reasonings, all the trappings of memory and prejudice,
vanish from his mind; things seem new to him; he is astonished and
ravished; a headlong stream of sensations oppresses him; it is the
all-potent sap of human invention, which, checked in us, begins to flow
in him. Fools call him mad, but in truth he is a seer: for we may indeed
be sluggish, but nature is always full of life; the rising sun is as
beautiful as on the first dawn; the streaming floods, the teeming
flowers, the trembling passions, the forces which hurl onward the stormy
whirlwind of existence, aspire and strive with the same energy as at
their birth; the immortal heart of nature beats yet, heaving its coarse
trappings, and its beatings work in the poet's heart when they no longer
echo in our own. Tennyson felt this not indeed always; but twice: or
thrice, at least, he has dared to make it heard. We have found anew the
free action of full emotion, and recognized the voice of a man in these
verses of "Locksley Hall":
"Then her cheek was pale and thinner than should be for one so young,
And her eyes on all my motions with a mute observance hung.
And I said, 'My cousin Amy, speak, and speak the truth to me,
Trust me, cousin, all the current of my being sets to thee.'
On her pallid cheek and forehead came a colour and a light,
As I have seen the rosy red flushing in the northern night.
And she turn'd--her bosom shaken with a sudden storm of sighs--
All the spirit deeply dawning in the dark of hazel eyes--
Saying, 'I have hid my feelings, fearing they should do me wrong;'
Saying, 'Dost thou love me, cousin?' weeping, 'I have loved thee
long.'
Love took up the glass of Time, and turn'd it in his glowing hands;
Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands.
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with
might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight.
Many a morning on the moorland did we hear the copses ring,
And her whisper throng'd my pulses with the fulness of the Spring.
Many an evening by the waters did we watch the stately ships,
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the lips.
O my cousin, shallow-hearted! O my Amy, mine no more!
O the dreary, dreary moorland! O the barren, barren shore!
Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung,
Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue!
Is it well to wish thee happy?--having known me--to decline
On a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart than mine!
Yet it shall be: thou shalt lower to his level day by day,
What is fine within thee growing coarse to sympathize with clay.
As the husband is, the wife is: thou art mated with a clown,
And the grossness of his nature will have weight to drag thee down.
He will hold thee, when his passion shall have spent its novel force,
Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.
What is this? his eyes are heavy: think not they are glazed with wine.
Go to him: it is thy duty: kiss him: take his hand in thine.
It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought:
Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter thought.
He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand--
Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my hand!"[439]
This is very frank and strong. "Maud" appeared, and was still more so.
In it the rapture broke forth with all its inequalities, familiarities,
freedom, violence. The correct, measured poet betrayed himself, for he
seemed to think and weep aloud. This book is the diary of a gloomy young
man, soured by great family misfortunes, by long solitary meditations,
who gradually became enamoured, dared to speak, found himself loved. He
does not sing, but speaks; they are the hazarded, reckless words of
ordinary conversation; details of every-day life; the description of a
toilet, a political dinner, a service and sermon in a village church.
The prose of Dickens and Thackeray did not more firmly grasp real and
actual manners. And by its side, most splendid poetry abounded and
blossomed, as in fact it blossoms and abounds in the midst of our
commonplaces. The smile of a richly dressed girl, a sunbeam on a stormy
sea, or on a spray of roses, throws all at once these sudden
illuminations into impassioned souls. What verses are these, in which he
represents himself in his dark little garden:
"A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime
In the little grove where I sit--ah, wherefore cannot I be
Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland,
When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime,
Half lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea,
The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land?"[440]
What a holiday in his heart when he is loved! What madness in these
cries, that intoxication, that tenderness, which would pour itself on
all, and summon all to the spectacle and the participation of his
happiness! How all is transfigured in his eyes; and how constantly he is
himself transfigured! Gayety, then ecstasy, then archness, then satire,
then disclosures, all ready movements, all sudden changes, like a
crackling and flaming fire, renewing every moment its shape and color:
how rich is the soul, and how it can live a hundred years in a day! The
hero of the poem, surprised and insulted by the brother of Maud, kills
him in a duel, and loses her whom he loved. He flees; he is seen
wandering in London. What a gloomy contrast is that of the great busy
careless town, and a solitary man haunted by true grief! We follow him
down the noisy thoroughfares, through the yellow fog, under the wan sun
which rises above the river like a "dull red ball," and we hear the
heart full of anguish, deep sobs, insensate agitation of a soul which
would, but cannot, tear itself from its memories. Despair grows, and in
the end the reverie becomes a vision:
"Dead, long dead,
Long dead!
And my heart is a handful of dust,
And the wheels go over my head,
And my bones are shaken with pain,
For into a shallow grave they are thrust,
Only a yard beneath the street,
And the hoofs of the horses beat, beat,
The hoofs of the horses beat,
Beat into my scalp and my brain,
With never an end to the stream of passing feet,
Driving, hurrying, marrying, burying,
Clamour and rumble, and ringing and clatter....[441]
O me! why have they not buried me deep enough?
Is it kind to have made me a grave so rough,
Me, that was never a quiet sleeper?
Maybe still I am but half-dead;
Then I cannot be wholly dumb;
I will cry to the steps above my head,
And somebody, surely, some kind heart will come
To bury me, bury me
Deeper, ever so little deeper."[442]
However, he revives, and gradually rises again. War breaks out, a
liberal and generous war, the war against Russia; and the big, manly
heart, wounded by deep love, is healed by action and courage:
"And I stood on a giant deck and mix'd my breath
With a loyal people shouting a battle-cry....
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreak'd on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the peace, that I deem'd no peace, is over and done,
And now by the side of the Black and the Baltic deep,
And deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress, flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire."[443]
This explosion of feeling was the only one; Tennyson has not again
encountered it. In spite of the moral close, men said of "Maud" that he
was imitating Byron; they cried out against these bitter declamations;
they thought that they perceived the rebellious accent of the Satanic
school; they blamed this uneven, obscure, excessive style; they were
shocked at these crudities and incongruities; they called on the poet to
return to his first well-proportioned style. He was discouraged, left
the storm-clouds, and returned to the azure sky. He was right; he is
better there than anywhere else. A fine soul may be transported, attain
at times to the fire of the most violent and the strongest beings:
personal memories, they say, had furnished the matter of "Maud" and of
"Locksley Hall"; with a woman's delicacy, he had the nerves of a woman.
The fit over, he fell again into his "golden languors," into his calm
reverie. After "Locksley Hall" he wrote the "Princess"; after "Maud" the
"Idylls of the King."
Section IV.--In Memoriam.--The Princess
The great task of an artist is to find subjects which suit his talent.
Tennyson has not always succeeded in this. His long poem, "In Memoriam,"
written in praise and memory of a friend who died young, is cold,
monotonous, and too prettily arranged. He goes into mourning; but, like
a correct gentleman, with brand new gloves, wipes away his tears with a
cambric handkerchief, and displays throughout the religious service,
which ends the ceremony, all the compunction of a respectful and
well-trained layman. He was to find his subjects elsewhere. To be
poetically happy is the object of a dilettante-artist. For this, many
things are necessary. First of all, that the place, the events, and the
characters shall not exist. Realities are coarse, and always, in some
sense, ugly; at least they are heavy; we do not treat them as we should
like, they oppress the fancy; at bottom there is nothing truly sweet and
beautiful in our life but our dreams. We are ill at ease whilst we
remain glued to earth, hobbling along on our two feet, which drag us
wretchedly here and there in the place which impounds us. We need to
live in another world, to hover in the wide-air kingdom, to build
palaces in the clouds, to see them rise and crumble, to follow in a hazy
distance the whims of their moving architecture, and the turns of their
golden volutes. In this fantastic world, again, all must be pleasant and
beautiful, the heart and senses must enjoy it, objects must be smiling
or picturesque, sentiments delicate or lofty; no crudity, incongruity,
brutality, savageness, must come to sully with its excess the modulated
harmony of this ideal perfection. This leads the poet to the legends of
chivalry. Here is the fantastic world, splendid to the sight, noble and
specially pure, in which love, war, adventures, generosity, courtesy,
all spectacles and all virtues which suit the instincts of our European
races, are assembled, to furnish them with the epic which they love, and
the model which suits them.
The "Princess" is a fairy tale, as sentimental as those of Shakespeare.
Tennyson here thought and felt like a young knight of the Renaissance.
The mark of this kind of mind is a superabundance, as it were, a
superfluity of sap. In the characters of the "Princess," as in those of
"As You Like It," there is an over-fulness of fancy and emotion. They
have recourse, to express their thought, to all ages and lands; they
carry speech to the most reckless rashness; they clothe and burden every
idea with a sparkling image, which drags and glitters around it, like a
brocade clustered with jewels. Their nature is over-rich; at every shock
there is in them a sort of rustle of joy, anger, desire; they live more
than we, more warmly and more quickly. They are ever in excess, refined,
ready to weep, laugh, adore, jest, inclined to mingle adoration and
jests, urged by a nervous rapture to opposite extremes. They sally in
the poetic field with impetuous and ever-changing caprice and joy. To
satisfy the subtlety and superabundance of their invention, they need
fairy-tales and masquerades. In fact, the "Princess" is both. The
beautiful Ida, daughter of King Gama, who is monarch of the South (this
country is not to be found on the map), was affianced in her childhood
to a beautiful prince of the North. When the time appointed has arrived,
she is claimed. She, proud and bred on learned arguments, has become
irritated against the rule of men, and in order to liberate women has
founded a university on the frontiers, which is to raise her sex, and to
be the colony of future equality. The prince sets out with Cyril and
Florian, two friends, obtains permission from good King Gama, and,
disguised as a girl, gets admission to the maiden precincts, which no
man may enter on pain of death. There is a charming and sportive grace
in this picture of a university for girls. The poet gambols with beauty;
no badinage could be more romantic or tender. We smile to hear long
learned words come from these rosy lips:
"There sat along the forms, like morning doves
That sun their milky bosoms on the thatch,
A patient range of pupils."[444]
They listen to historic dissertations and promises of a social
revolution, in "Academic silks, in hue the lilac, with a silken hood to
each, and zoned with gold,... as rich as moth from dusk cocoons."
Amongst these girls was Melissa, a child--
"A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
That clad her like an April daffodilly
(Her mother's colour), with her lips apart,
And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
As bottom agates seem to wave and float
In crystal currents of clear morning seas."[445]
The site of this university for girls enhances the magic of the scene.
The words "College" and "Faculty" bring before the mind of Frenchmen
only wretched and dirty buildings, which we might mistake for barracks
or boarding-houses. Here, as in an English university, flowers creep up
the porches, vines cling round the bases of the monuments, roses strew
the alleys with their petals; the laurel thickets grow around the gates,
the courts pile up their marble architecture, bossed with sculptured
friezes, varied with urns from which droop the green pendage of the
plants. "The Muses and the Graces, group'd in threes, enring'd a
billowing fountain in the midst." After the lecture, some girls, in the
deep meadow grass, "smoothed a petted peacock down"; others,
"Leaning there on those balusters, high
Above the empurpled champaign, drank the gale
That blown about the foliage underneath,
And sated with the innumerable rose
Beat balm upon our eyelids."[446]
At every gesture, every attitude, we recognize young English girls; it
is their brightness, their freshness, their innocence.
And here and there, too, we perceive the deep expression of their
large dreamy eyes:
"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more....