_theoretical_.) This solitary term (“practical”) serves a large number of
persons as a substitute for all patient and steady thought; and, at all
events, instead of meaning that which is useful as opposed to that which
is useless, it constantly signifies that of which the use is grossly and
immediately palpable, as distinguished from that of which the usefulness
can only be discerned after attention and exertion.
SIR HENRY MAINE.
* * * * *
(Men are) dragged along the physiological history, because easy to
conceive, and baffled by the spiritual, because it has no pictures to
help it.
J. MARTINEAU (_Hours of Thought_, I, 100).
* * * * *
As psychology comprises all our sensibilities, pleasures, affections,
aspirations, capacities, it is thought on that ground to have a special
nobility and greatness, and a special power of evoking in the student
the feelings themselves. The mathematician, dealing with conic sections,
spirals, and differential equations, is in danger of being ultimately
resolved into a function or a co-efficient: the metaphysician, by
investigating conscience, must become conscientious; driving fat oxen is
the way to grow fat.
ALEXANDER BAIN (1818-1903) (_Contemporary Review_, April 1877).
* * * * *
There is a crude absurd materialism abroad which hasn’t yet learned
the fundamental difference between Mind and Matter. It is altogether
incomprehensible how any material processes can beget sensations and
feelings and thoughts; it is altogether incomprehensible how _you_ arose
or _I_ arose. Listen to Spencer:—“Were we compelled to choose between the
alternatives of translating mental phenomena into physical phenomena,
or of translating physical phenomena into mental phenomena, the latter
alternative would seem the more preferable of the two.... Hence though
of the two it seems easier to translate so-called Matter into so-called
Spirit, than to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter (which
latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no translation can carry us
beyond our symbols.”
RICHARD HODGSON (_Letter, March 21, 1880_).
* * * * *
_Clown._ What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild-fowl?
_Malvolio._ That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird.
_Clown._ What thinkest thou of his opinion?
_Malvolio._ I think nobly of the soul, and no way approve his opinion.
_Clown._ Fare thee well. Remain thou still in darkness.
SHAKESPEARE (_Twelfth Night_, IV, 2).
* * * * *
As the old hermit of Prague, that never saw pen and ink, very wittily
said to a niece of King Gorboduc, “That, that is, is.”
SHAKESPEARE (_Twelfth Night_, IV, 2).
* * * * *
WHAT IS LOVE?
The passion which unites the sexes ... is the most compound, and
therefore the most powerful of all the feelings. Added to the purely
physical elements of it are, first, those highly complex impressions
produced by personal beauty.... With this there is united the complex
sentiment which we term affection—a sentiment which, as it can exist
between those of the same sex, must be regarded as an independent
sentiment.... Then there is the sentiment of admiration, respect, or
reverence.... There comes next the feeling called love of approbation.
To be preferred above all the world, and that by one admired above
all others, is to have the love of approbation gratified in a degree
passing every previous experience.... Further, the allied emotion of
self-esteem comes into play. To have succeeded in gaining such attachment
from, and sway over, another is a proof of power which cannot fail
agreeably to excite the _amour propre_. Yet again, the proprietary
feeling has its share in the general activity: there is the pleasure
of possession—the two belong to each other. Once more, the relation
allows of an extended liberty of action. Towards other persons a
restrained behaviour is requisite. Round each there is a subtle boundary
that may not be crossed—an individuality on which none may trespass.
But in this case the barriers are thrown down; and thus the love of
unrestrained activity is gratified. Finally there is an exaltation of
the sympathies. Egoistic pleasures of all kinds are doubled by another’s
sympathetic participation; and the pleasures of another are added to
the egoistic pleasures. Thus, round the physical feeling, forming the
nucleus of the whole, are gathered the feelings produced by personal
beauty, that constituting simple attachment, those of reverence, of love
of approbation, of self-esteem, of property, of love of freedom, of
sympathy. These, all greatly exalted, and severally tending to reflect
their excitements on one another, unite to form the mental state we call
Love.
HERBERT SPENCER (_Principles of Psychology_, 3rd Ed., Vol. I, 487).
The heading is, of course, mine—not Spencer’s.
* * * * *
WHAT AM I?
The aggregate of feelings and ideas, constituting the mental _I_, have
not in themselves the principle of cohesion holding them together as
a whole; but the _I_ which continuously survives as the subject of
these changing states is that portion of the Unknowable Power, which
is statically conditioned in (my particular one of those) special
nervous structures pervaded by a dynamically-conditioned portion of the
Unknowable Power called energy.
HERBERT SPENCER (_Principles of Psychology_, 3rd Ed., Vol. II, 504).
The heading and words in brackets are mine. As the reader may
at any time be asked “What are you?” it would be well to be
ready with a simple reply.
* * * * *
New truths, old truths! sirs, there is nothing new possible to be
revealed to us in the moral world; we know all we shall ever know: and
it is for simply reminding us, by their various respective expedients,
how we do know this and the other matter, that men get called prophets,
poets, and the like. A philosopher’s life is spent in discovering that,
of the half-dozen truths he knew when a child, such an one is a lie, as
the world states it in set terms; and then, after a weary lapse of years,
and plenty of hard-thinking, it becomes a truth again after all, as he
happens to newly consider it and view it in a different relation with the
others: and so he restates it, to the confusion of somebody else in good
time. As for adding to the original stock of truths,—impossible!
R. BROWNING (_A Soul’s Tragedy_).
* * * * *
When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter,
And proved it, ’twas no matter what he said.
BYRON (_Don Juan, Canto XI_).
* * * * *
The law of equal freedom which Herbert Spencer deduces is binding only
upon those who admit both that human happiness is the Divine Will and
that we should act in accordance with the Divine Will. Why should I
obey this law? Because without such obedience human happiness cannot be
complete. Why should I aim at human happiness? Because human happiness is
the Divine Will. The inexorable _why_ pursues us here—Why should I aim
at the fulfilment of the Divine Will? To this question there seems no
satisfactory reply but that it is for my own happiness to do so.
RICHARD HODGSON (_Unpublished Essay_, 1879).
* * * * *
I have no ambition to wander into the inane and usurp the sceptre of the
dim Hegel, situated Nowhere, with pure Nothing behind him, and pure Being
before him, steadfastly and vainly endeavouring with his _Werden_ to stop
the sand-flowing of smiling Time.
RICHARD HODGSON (_Early Unpublished Essay_).
_Werden_ in Hegel is usually translated “Becoming.” To Hegel
the truth of the world is found in life or movement, not in
Being which is changeless, but tells and does nothing.
* * * * *
Edwin (afterwards Sir Edwin) Arnold was with Herbert Spencer on a Nile
steamer. Spencer was dyspeptic and irritable; Arnold was a nocturnal
bird, pacing the deck alone in a long gown and smoking a long pipe.
Suddenly appeared a white figure, Spencer in his night-shirt, who in the
bad light took Arnold for a sailor (and Arnold did not undeceive him).
“Hi! there!”
“Ay, ay, Sir.”
“What are the men making that noise there forward for?”
“Cleaning the engines, Sir.”
“Just tell them not to make such a row, keeping good Christians from
their sleep at this time of night.”
“Ay, ay, Sir.”
(Disappearance of ghost; joke next morning,)
(_Told by Arnold to Hodgson, June, 1884_).
The great agnostic, usually most precise in his language,
describes himself as a “good Christian”!
* * * * *
The very law which moulds a tear
And bids it trickle from its source,—
That law preserves the earth a sphere,
And guides the planets in their course.
SAMUEL ROGERS (_On a Tear_).
* * * * *
WILLIAM BLAKE.
He came to the desert of London town
Grey miles long;
He wander’d up and he wander’d down,
Singing a quiet song,
He came to the desert of London Town,
Mirk miles broad;
He wandered up and he wandered down,
Ever alone with God.
There were thousands and thousands of human kind
In this desert of brick and stone:
But some were deaf and some were blind,
And he was there alone.
At length the good hour came; he died
As he had lived, alone:
He was not miss’d from the desert wide,—
Perhaps he was found at the Throne.
JAMES THOMSON (“B.V.”).
_The desert of London town_—_Magna civitas, magna solitudo_: “a
great city is a great solitude.”
It is strange to think that these verses (and especially the
last verse) were written by the pessimist who wrote in all
sincerity the terrible lines in Pt. VIII of “The City of
Dreadful Night.”
* * * * *
Farewell, green fields and happy grove,
Where flocks have ta’en delight;
Where lambs have nibbled, silent move
The feet of angels bright;
Unseen, they pour blessing
And joy without ceasing,
On each bud and blossom,
And each sleeping bosom.
They look in every thoughtless nest,
Where birds are covered warm;
They visit caves of every beast,
To keep them all from harm:
If they see any weeping
That should have been sleeping,
They pour sleep on their head,
And sit down by their bed.
When wolves and tigers howl for prey,
They pitying stand and weep;
Seeking to drive their thirst away,
And keep them from the sheep,
But if they rush dreadful,
The angels, most heedful,
Receive each mild spirit,
New worlds to inherit.
WILLIAM BLAKE (_Night_).
* * * * *
Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves,
Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis, oves,
Sic vos non vobis mellificatis, apes,
Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra, boves.
(So you, birds, build nests—not for yourselves,
So you, sheep, grow fleeces—not for yourselves,
So you, bees, make honey—not for yourselves,
So you, oxen, draw the plough—not for yourselves.)
VIRGIL.
According to Donatus, Virgil wrote a couplet in praise of
Cæsar and posted it anonymously on the portals of the palace
(31 B.C.). Bathyllus gave himself out as the author of this
couplet, and on that account received a present from Cæsar.
Next night _Sic vos non vobis_ (“So you not for you”) was found
written four times in the same place. The Romans were puzzled
as to what was meant by these words, until Virgil came forward
and completed the verse—adding a preliminary line, _Hos ego
versiculos feci, tulit alter honores_, “I wrote the lines,
another wears the bays.”
Shelley in _Song to the Men of England_ wrote as a socialist:
The seed ye sow, another reaps;
The wealth ye find, another keeps;
The robes ye weave, another wears;
The arms ye forge, another bears.
In previous verses he refers to bees, and, of course, the above
quotation was in his mind.
* * * * *
I know, of late experience taught, that him
Who is my foe I must but hate as one
Whom I may yet call Friend: and him who loves me
Will I but serve and cherish as a man
Whose love is not abiding. Few be they
Who, reaching friendship’s port, have there found rest.
SOPHOCLES (_Ajax_).
This is from C. S. Calverley’s fine translation of the speech
of Ajax.
* * * * *
A maiden’s heart is as champagne, ever aspiring and struggling upwards,
And it needeth that its motions be checked by the silvered cork of
Propriety:
He that can afford the price, his be the precious treasure,
Let him drink deeply of its sweetness, nor grumble if it tasteth of the
cork.
C. S. CALVERLEY.
Imitating the now-forgotten Martin Tupper.
* * * * *
Whosoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony.... Even that
vulgar and Tavern Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of
the First Composer.... There is something in it of Divinity more than
the ear discovers: it is an Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the
whole World, and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear as the whole
World, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a
sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of
God.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE (_Religio Medici_).
* * * * *
(Speaking of an Essay on Wordsworth he is about to write for some
Melbourne society) I purpose describing briefly the poetic tendencies,
or rather the unpoetic tendencies, of the 18th Century, and the new
school beginning to manifest itself in Cowper. I shall then refer
to W.’s principles—shall banish to a future time the working out of
the _psychological_ connection between forms of nature and the human
soul—shall banish also the feelings, the elementary feelings, of
humanity, which W. drew _powerful_ attention to, and confine myself to
pointing out those characteristics in external nature which he took
note of. These produce corresponding feelings in the “human,” and some
of them are _beauty_, _silence and calm_, _joyousness_, _generosity_,
_freedom_, _grandeur_, and _Spirituality_. These are found in Nature,
and W. saw them, and in the growing familiarity with them a man’s soul
becomes _beautiful_, _calm_, _joyous_, _generous_, _free_, _grand_,
and _spiritual_. The first ones, of course, all depend on and grow
from the last, and the Spirituality is God immanent. This last, as the
root of all the others, will merit special attention—it exhibits W.’s
poetico-philosophy so far as it regards the work of Nature upon man; and
includes too the Platonic Reminiscence business. (_Here follows personal
chit-chat._) I think we might add the “supreme loftiness of _labour_” to
the foregoing elements in Nature. In the _Gipsies_ (I give both readings)
O better wrong and strife,
Better vain deeds or evil than such life!
The silent heavens have goings-on;
The stars have tasks—but these have none!
Oh, better wrong and strife
(By nature transient) than this torpid life:
Life which the very stars reprove
As on their silent tasks they move.
R. HODGSON (_Letter_, 1877, when aged 21).
In 1877 Blake was little appreciated. (I remember only that in
our children’s books we had “Tiger, Tiger burning bright”—and
it was a strange thing to include in such books a poem which
raises the problems of the existence of evil and the nature of
God). Hence it will be evident why so keen a student of poetry
as Hodgson did not couple Blake with Cowper as a precursor of
the Romantic Revival. As a matter of fact Blake had more of the
“Romantic” spirit than Cowper, and really preceded him, for
the poor verse that Cowper published the year before Blake’s
_Poetical Sketches_ need not be considered. While still in his
teens Blake wrote (“To the Muses”):
... Fair Nine, forsaking Poetry,
How have you left the ancient love
That bards of old enjoyed in you!
The languid strings do scarcely move,
The sound is forced, the notes are few.
Curiously enough Gray also had in him an element of the
Romantic _which he suppressed_. It is very remarkable that in
his Elegy (published 1751) he cut out the following verse:
There scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.
* * * * *
Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
WORDSWORTH (_Song at the Feast of Brougham
Castle_).
* * * * *
Ambition tempts to rise,
Then whirls the wretch from high
To bitter Scorn a sacrifice
And grinning Infamy.
THOMAS GRAY (_On a Distant Prospect of Eton
College_).
Slightly altered verbally to admit of quotation.
* * * * *
MEDITATIONS OF A HINDU PRINCE
All the world over, I wonder, in lands that I never have trod,
Are the people eternally seeking for the signs and steps of a God?
Westward across the ocean, and Northward across the snow,
Do they all stand gazing, as ever, and what do the wisest know?
Here, in this mystical India, the deities hover and swarm
Like the wild bees heard in the tree-tops, or the gusts of a gathering
storm;
In the air men hear their voices, their feet on the rocks are seen,
Yet we all say, “Whence is the message, and what may the wonders mean?”
A million shrines stand open, and ever the censer swings,
As they bow to a mystic symbol, or the figures of ancient kings;
And the incense rises ever, and rises the endless cry
Of those who are heavy-laden, and of cowards loth to die.
For the Destiny drives us together, like deer in a pass of the hills,
Above is the sky, and around us the sound of the shot that kills;
Pushed by a Power we see not, and struck by a hand unknown,
We pray to the trees for shelter, and press our lips to a stone.
The trees wave a shadowy answer, and the rock frowns hollow and grim,
And the form and the nod of the demon are caught in the twilight dim;
And we look to the sunlight falling afar on the mountain crest,
Is there never a path runs upward to a refuge there and a rest?
The path, ah! who has shown it, and which is the faithful guide?
The haven, ah! who has known it? for steep is the mountain side.
Forever the shot strikes surely, and ever the wasted breath
Of the praying multitude rises, whose answer is only death.
Here are the tombs of my kinsfolk, the fruit of an ancient name,
Chiefs who were slain on the war-field, and women who died in flame;
They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard
our race,
Ever I watch and worship—they sit with a marble face.
And the myriad idols around me, and the legion of muttering priests,
The revels and rites unholy, the dark, unspeakable feasts!
What have they wrung from the Silence? Hath even a whisper come
Of the secret, Whence and Whither? Alas! for the gods are dumb.
Shall I list to the word of the English, who come from the uttermost sea?
“The Secret, hath it been told you, and what is your message to me?”
It is nought but the wide-world story how the earth and the heavens
began,
How the gods are glad and angry, and a Deity once was man.
I had thought, “Perchance in the cities where the rulers of India dwell,
Whose orders flash from the far land, who girdle the earth with a spell,
They have fathomed the depths we float on, or measured the unknown main—”
Sadly they turn from the venture, and say that the quest is vain.
Is life, then, a dream and delusion, and where shall the dreamer awake?
Is the world seen like shadows on water, and what if the mirror break?
Shall it pass as a camp that is struck, as a tent that is gathered and
gone
From the sands that were lamp-lit at eve, and at morning are level and
lone?
Is there nought in the heaven above, whence the hail and the levin are
hurled,
But the wind that is swept around us by the rush of the rolling world?
The wind that shall scatter my ashes, and bear me to silence and sleep
With the dirge, and the sounds of lamenting, and the voices of women who
weep.
SIR ALFRED LYALL.
* * * * *
MEDITATION OF A HINDU PRINCE AND SCEPTIC
I think till I weary with thinking, said the sad-eyed Hindu King,
But I see but shadows around me, illusion in everything.
How knowest thou aught of God, of his favour or his wrath?
Can the little fish tell what the lion thinks, or map out the eagle’s
path?
Can the finite the infinite search,—did the blind discover the stars?
Is the thought that I think a thought, or a throb of the brain in its
bars?
For aught that my eye can discern, your god is what you think good,
Yourself flashed back from the glass when the light pours on it in flood!
You preach to me of his justice, and this is his realm, you say,
Where the good are dying of hunger, and the bad gorge every day.
You tell me he loveth mercy, but the famine is not yet gone,—
That he hateth the shedder of blood, yet he slayeth us, everyone.
You tell me the soul must live, that spirit can never die,
If he was content when I was not, why not when I’ve passed by?
You say that I must have a meaning! So has dung,—and its meaning is
flowers:
What if our lives are but nurture for souls that are higher than ours?
When the fish swims out of the water, when the bird soars out of the
blue,
Man’s thought shall transcend man’s knowledge, and your God be no reflex
of you!
AUTHOR NOT TRACED.
The preceding poem by Lyall had the same title as these
verses, “Meditation of a Hindu Prince _and Sceptic_” when
first published in the _Cornhill_, September, 1877. I was
fully convinced, for reasons that would take too long to set
out here, that these verses were by Hodgson. But Mrs. Piper,
the well-known trance-medium, says that Hodgson gave her a
copy signed with other initials than his, and that she is sure
he was not the author. She has mislaid the copy she refers
to. In view of this statement I must not attribute the verses
to Hodgson, although I cannot but doubt whether Mrs. Piper’s
recollection is correct.
* * * * *
One summer hour abides, what time I perched,
Dappled with noon-day, under simmering leaves,
And pulled the pulpy oxhearts, while aloof
An oriole clattered and the robins shrilled,
Denouncing me an alien and a thief.
J. R. LOWELL (_The Cathedral_).
* * * * *
The present writer ... was seated in a railway-carriage, five minutes
or so before starting, and had time to contemplate certain waggons or
trucks filled with cattle, drawn up on a parallel line, and quite close
to the window at which he sat. The cattle wore a much-enduring aspect;
and, as he looked into their large, patient, melancholy eyes,—for, as
before mentioned, there was no space to speak of intervening,—a feeling
of puzzlement arose in his mind.... The much-enduring animals in the
trucks opposite had unquestionably some rude twilight of a notion of a
world; of objects they had some unknown cognizance; but he could not get
behind the melancholy eye within a yard of him and look through it. How,
from that window, the world shaped itself, he could not discover, could
not even fancy; and yet, staring on the animals, he was conscious of a
certain fascination in which there lurked an element of terror. These
wild, unkempt brutes, with slavering muzzles, penned together, lived,
could choose between this thing and the other, could be frightened,
could be enraged, could even love and hate; and gazing into a placid,
heavy countenance, and the depths of a patient eye, not a yard away, he
was conscious of an obscure and shuddering recognition of a life akin
so far with his own. But to enter into that life imaginatively, and to
conceive it, he found impossible. Eye looked upon eye, but the one could
not flash recognition on the other; and, thinking of this, he remembers,
with what a sense of ludicrous horror, the idea came,—what, if looking
on one another thus, some spark of recognition could be elicited; if
some rudiment of thought could be detected; if there were indeed a point
at which man and ox could meet and compare notes? Suppose some gleam or
scintillation of humour had lighted up the unwinking, amber eye? Heavens,
the bellow of the weaning calf would be pathetic, shoe-leather would be
forsworn, the eating of roast meat, hot or cold, would be cannibalism,
the terrified world would make a sudden dash into vegetarianism!
ALEXANDER SMITH (_On the Importance of Man to Himself_).
Does not this give the reason why we do not eat dogs and
horses? We, more than other nations, recognize in the horse, as
well as in the dog, a life and intelligence akin to our own.
We also believe that both animals reciprocate the affection
we feel towards them. (Coleridge in _Table Talk_ says: “The
dog alone, of all brute animals, has a στοργή or affection
_upwards_ to man.”)
* * * * *
When I am playing with my Cat, who knowes whether she have more sport
in dallying with me, than I have in gaming with her? We entertaine one
another with mutual apish trickes: If I have my houre to begin or to
refuse, so hath she hers.
MONTAIGNE (_Bk. II, ch. 12_).
* * * * *