Now I should tell you, Gentlemen, that I hold such utterances as
this last--whatever you may think of the utterances of the
Botocudos--to be exorbitant: that I distrust all attempts to
build up (say) "Paradise Lost" historically from the yells and
capers of recondite savages. 'Life is real, life is earnest' may
be no better aesthetically (I myself think it a little better)
than 'Now we have something to eat' 'Brandy is good' may rival
Pindar's [Greek: Arioton men udor], and indeed puts what it
contains of truth with more of finality, less of provocation
(though Pindar at once follows up [Greek: Arioton men udor] with
exquisite poetry): but you cannot--truly you cannot--exhibit the
steps which lead up from 'Brandy is good' to such lines as
Thus with the year
Seasons return; but not to me returns
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn,
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose,
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine.
I bend over the learned page pensively, and I seem to see a
Botocudo Professor--though not high 'in the social scale,' they
may have such things--visiting Cambridge on the last night of the
Lent races and reporting of its inhabitants as follows:
They pay scant heed to their chiefs: they live only for their
immediate bodily needs, and take small thought for the
morrow. On festal occasions the whole horde meets by night
round the camp fire for a dance. Each dancer lays his arms
about the necks of his two neighbours, stamping strongly
with one foot and dragging the other after it. Now with
drooping heads they press closer and closer together; now
they widen the circle. Often one can hear nothing but a
continually repeated _kalanî aha,_ or again one hears short
improvised songs in which we are told the doings of the day,
the reasons for rejoicing, what not, as 'Good hunting,' 'Good
old--'[naming a tribal God], or in former times '_Now_ we shall
be but a short while,' or '_Woemma!_' Now and then, too, an
individual begins a song and is answered by the rest in
chorus--such as
For he is an estimable person
Beyond possibility of gainsaying.
The chorus twice repeats this and asseverates that they
are following a custom common to the flotilla, the
expeditionary force, and even their rude seats of learning.
And Dr Gummere, or somebody else, comments: 'As the unprejudiced
reader will see, this clear and admirable account confirms our
hypothesis that in communal celebration we have at once the
origin and model of three poems, "The Faerie Queene," "Paradise
Lost" and "In Memoriam," recorded as having been composed by
members of this very tribe.'
Although we have been talking of instincts, we are not concerned
here with the steps by which the child, or the savage, following
an instinct attains to _write_ poetry; but, more modestly, with
the instinct by which the child _likes_ it, and the way in which
he can be best encouraged to read and improve this natural
liking. Nor are we even concerned here to define Poetry. It
suffices our present purpose to consider Poetry as the sort of
thing the poets write.
But obviously if we find a philosopher discussing poetry without
any reference to children, and independently basing it upon the
very same imitative instincts which we have noted in children, we
have some promise of being on the right track.
V
So I return to Aristotle. Aristotle (I shall in fairness say)
does not anticipate Dr Gummere, to contradict or refute him; he
may even be held to support him incidentally. But he sticks to
business, and this is what he says ("Poetics," C. IV):
Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, and
these natural causes. First the instinct to imitate is
implanted in man from his childhood, and in this he differs
from other animals, being the most imitative of them all. Man
gets his first learning through imitation, and all men delight
in seeing things imitated. This is clearly shown by
experience....
To imitate, then, being instinctive in our nature, so too
we have an instinct for harmony and rhythm, metre being
manifestly a species of rhythm: and man, being born to these
instincts and little by little improving them, out of his early
improvisations created Poetry.
Combining these two instincts, with him, we arrive at _harmonious
imitation._ Well and good. But what is it we imitate in poetry?--
noble things or mean things? After considering this, putting mean
things aside as unworthy, and voting for the nobler--which must
at the same time be true, since without truth there can be no
real nobility--Aristotle has to ask `In what way true? True to
ordinary life, with its observed defeats of the right by the
wrong? or true, as again instinct tells good men it should be,
_universally_?' So he arrives at his conclusion that a true thing
is not necessarily truth of fact in a world where truth in fact
is so often belied or made meaningless--not the record that
Alcibiades went somewhere and suffered something--but truth to
the Universal, the superior demand of our conscience. In such a
way only we know that "The Tempest" or "Paradise Lost" or "The
Ancient Mariner" or "Prometheus Unbound" can be truer than any
police report. Yet we know that they are truer in essence, and in
significance, since they appeal to eternal verities--since they
imitate the Universal--whereas the police report chronicles
(faithfully, as in duty bound, even usefully in its way) events
which may, nay must, be significant somehow but cannot at best be
better to us than phenomena, broken ends and shards.