essential respects un-Puritan, so also was he un-modern. There is a
characteristic difference between antique and modern symbols for those
necessary processes, beyond the sphere of our own wills, by which our
lives are determined. The ancients pictured it with austere simplicity.
Life is a simple thread. The Fates spin it. It is drawn out on the
distaff and cut off by the fatal shears.
Compare this with the phrase Carlyle loved to quote, “the roaring loom
of Time.” Life is not a spinning-wheel, but a loom. A million shuttles
fly; a million threads are inextricably interwoven. You cannot long
trace the single thread; you can discern only the growing pattern.
There is inevitable causation, but it is not simple but complex. The
situation at the present moment is the result not of one cause but of
innumerable causes, and it is in turn the cause of results that are
equally incalculable. We are a part of
the web of being blindly wove
By man and beast and air and sea.
Men of science show us how the whole acts upon each part and each part
acts upon the whole. Modern novelists attempt, not always successfully,
to give the impression of the amazing complexity of actual life, where
all sorts of things are going on at the same time.
Whether we look upon it as his limitation or as his good fortune,
Hawthorne adhered to the spinning-wheel rather than the loom. We see
the antique Fates drawing out the thread. A long series of events
follow one another from a single cause.
A part of the power of Hawthorne over our imagination lies in his
singleness of purpose. In “The Marble Faun” we are told, “The stream
of Miriam’s trouble kept its way through this flood of human life, and
neither mingled with it nor was turned aside.”
We are made to see the dark streams that do not mingle nor turn aside,
and we watch their fatal flow.
But is this real, normal life? In such life do not the streams
mingle? Are not evil influences quickly neutralized, as noxious germs
die in the sunshine? No one would more readily acknowledge this
than Hawthorne. He says: “It is not, I apprehend, a healthy kind of
mental occupation to devote ourselves too exclusively to the study of
individual men and women. If the person under examination be one’s
self, the result is pretty certain to be diseased action of the heart
almost before we can snatch a second glance. Or if we take the freedom
to put a friend under the microscope, we thereby insulate him from
many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear
him into parts, and of course patch him clumsily together again. What
wonder, then, that we be frightened at such a monster, which, after
all--though we can point to every feature of his deformity in the real
personage--may be said to have been created mainly by ourselves.”
The critic of Hawthorne could not describe better the limitation of
his stories as pictures of real life. His characters, however clearly
conceived, are insulated from many of their real relations, and their
peculiarities are magnified.
In the preface to “The Scarlet Letter” he says that the tale “wears to
my eye a stern and sombre aspect, too much ungladdened by the tender
and familiar influences which soften almost every scene of Nature and
real life, and which undoubtedly should soften every picture of them.”
One who would defend Hawthorne the Author against Hawthorne the Critic
must point out the kind of literature to which his work belongs. When
we judge it by the rule of the romance or of the realistic novel,
we fail to do justice to its essential quality. The romancer, the
story-teller pure and simple, is attracted by the swift sequence of
events. His nimble fancy follows a plot as a kitten follows a string.
Now it happens that in a world constituted as ours is the sequence of
events follows a moral order. A good story has always in it an element
of poetic justice. But the romancer does not tell his story for the
sake of the moral. He professes to be as much surprised when it is
discovered as is the most innocent reader. In like manner the realistic
novel, in proportion as it is a faithful portrayal of life, has an
ethical lesson. But the writer disclaims any purpose of teaching it.
His business is to tell what the world is like. He leaves the rest to
your intelligence.
But there is another kind of literature; it is essentially allegory.
The allegorist takes a naked truth and clothes it with the garments of
the imagination. Frequently the clothes do not fit and the poor truth
wanders about awkwardly, self-conscious to the last degree. But if the
artist be a genius the abstract thought becomes a person.
Hawthorne’s work is something more than allegory, but his mind worked
allegorically. His characters were abstract before they became
concrete. He was not a realist aiming to give a comprehensive survey
of the actual world. He consciously selected the incidents and scenes
which would illustrate his theme.
In his conclusion of “The Marble Faun,” when the actors have
withdrawn, the Author comes before the curtain and says that he
designed “the story and the characters to bear, of course, a
certain relation to human nature and human life, but still to be so
artfully and airily removed from our mundane sphere that some laws
and proprieties of their own should be implicitly and insensibly
acknowledged. The idea of the modern Faun, for example, loses all the
poetry and beauty which the Author fancied in it and becomes nothing
better than a grotesque absurdity if we bring it into the actual light
of day.” This is not realism.
It is a mood in which the bounds between romance and allegory fade
away; persons become symbols and symbols have breathed into them the
breath of life. The story and the truth it shadows are one.
The mood is common in poetry. Poets like Dante and Spenser and Shelley
from it have given us
Wise and lovely songs
Of fate and God and chance and chaos old,
And love.
There is a point where “dreams begin to feel the truth and stir of
day,” where the incidents of existence assume a dream-like character,
and where dreams become transparent symbols of reality. There are
moods in which our familiar world seems strange to us, and we walk in
it as on some bewildered shore.
In such moods to meet Hawthorne is a great experience. He is no longer
shy and aloof, but he opens to us his heart, and with friendly zeal
points out each object of interest--for in this border-land he is at
home.
THE CRUELTY OF GOOD PEOPLE
The cruelty of bad people is easily explained. They are cruel because
they enjoy watching the pain of others. There are also the ignorant
and half-formed, to whom the word “inhumanity” applies literally. They
have not yet been really humanized. Before they can habitually yield
to feelings of compassion there is much to be done in developing their
higher natures. They must be urged to
Move upward, working out the beast,
And let the ape and tiger die.
The beast has a long start, and the ape and tiger die hard.
But this is only half the story. We are continually surprised at the
cruelty that is possible in those in whom there seems to be no tigerish
survival. It is intimately associated with the higher rather than with
the lower part of the nature. It is spiritual, rational, and moral. The
cruelty of women and priests is proverbial--and they are good women
and good priests.
Listen to the talk in a drawing-room when some question involving the
fate of thousands is introduced. There is a strike or lock-out. It
means that the hostile parties are struggling on a narrow ledge between
two precipices. The workmen are trying to push the employers into the
abyss of bankruptcy; the employers are exerting every means in their
power to hurl their antagonists into the abyss of starvation. It is a
battle to the death, and in many a home pale-faced women are watching
it with despairing eyes. But what says my lady who likes to talk about
current events? It is evident when she begins to speak that she is not
touched by the tragedy of it all. Nero watching the burning of Rome
could not assume an air of more complete detachment. She talks as if it
were nothing to her. Or the talk turns to the affairs of state. Issues
that involve the fate of nations awake in her only a languid curiosity.
The diplomacy of prudent statesmen who are endeavoring to keep the
peace strikes her as mere dilly-dallying. She wants to see something
doing. She enjoys a romantic sensation, and urges on those who would
give her this pleasure. Was there ever a useless war without fair faces
looking down upon it approvingly--at least at the beginning?
I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death pale were they all;
They cried, “La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall.”
Yet she who in regard to the great affairs which involve millions may
appear as “La Belle Dame sans Merci” may be to all those whom she knows
a minister of purest kindness. It is only towards those whom she does
not know that she is pitiless.
* * * * *
Philosophers are usually cruel in their judgments of the persons and
events of the passing day, and that is perhaps the reason why no nation
has been willing to take the hint from Plato and allow the philosophers
to rule. It would be too harsh a despotism. Flesh and blood could not
endure it. For the philosopher is concerned with general laws and is
intolerant of exceptions, while it is the quality of mercy to treat
each person as in some degree an exception. Fancy the misery that would
be involved in the attempt to level us all up to the cold heights
of abstract virtue on which Spinoza dwelt. One shudders to think of
the calamity that would ensue were all our lawmakers to be suddenly
Hegelianized. All the attempts to alleviate the hard conditions under
which people are living would cease. The energy that is now spent in
trying to abolish abuses would then be directed toward explaining them.
What wailings would go up from earth’s millions on the proclamation of
the rule of unlimited Spencerianism! We should look back with envy to
the good old times of Nero and Tamerlane.
As the Inquisition handed its victims over to the secular arm and
disclaimed all further responsibility, so this new tyrant would hand
over all the unfit to the unobstructed working of natural law. No
attention would be paid to our sentimental preferences for particular
persons. Those merciful interferences which have been the contrivance
of mankind for the protection of weakness must be swept aside. The
unfit must take the full penalty justly visited on their unfitness. The
moment we begin to particularize we rebel. Pity revolts against a too
cold philosophy.
It is needless to say that the theologians have often attained
refinements of cruelty unknown even to the most severely logical of
the secular philosophers. They have been able to distill out of the
purest religious affections a poison capable of producing in the
sensitive soul unutterable agony. Then they have watched the writhing
of the victim with a cold benevolence. The worst of it was that the
benevolence was real in spite of the fact that it froze all the
fountains of natural pity.
Jonathan Edwards was not merely a good man in the ordinary sense. His
goodness rose into ideal heights. He had a genius for ethics as well
as for religion. He is still a teacher of teachers. But this wonderful
man, who must ever have a high place among the leaders and inspirers
of mankind, has an equally high place among the torturers of the
spirit. To understand the kind of pain which he inflicted we must not
be content with the threatenings of torment in sermons like that on
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” The pictorial imagery which now
startles us was common enough in his day. The torments of sinners was
an ordinary theme; Edwards added appreciably to the torments of the
saints. His vivisection of the human soul was without compunction. In
the hearts and desires of the innocent he discovered guilt for which
there was no pardon. Every resting-place for natural human affection
was torn away, and when at last from the clear heaven the love of God
shone down in dazzling splendor, it shone upon a desert.
The cruelty of it all is seen in its effects on minds naturally prone
to melancholy. Read the journal of a disciple of Edwards, David
Brainerd, and remember that for several generations that journal was
esteemed a proper book to put into the hands of youth. The editor of
the Journal says, “As an example of a mind tremulously apprehensive
of sin, loathing it in every form and for its own sake, avoiding even
the appearance of evil, rising above all terrestrial considerations,
advancing rapidly in holiness, and finding its only enjoyment in the
glory of God, probably no similar work in any language can furnish a
parallel.” Poor Brainerd! Every step along the heavenly way cost him a
pang. He never could forget for more than a few hours at a time that
he was human, and to be human was to be vile. The groans follow one
another with monotonous iteration. He loved God, but he felt his guilt
in not loving him more. He was not only afraid of hell, but of a heaven
of which he was unworthy.
“I seem to be declining with respect to my life and warmth in divine
things. I deserve hell every day for not loving my Lord more.... I saw
myself very mean and vile, and wondered at those who showed me respect.”
We all feel that way sometimes, but to have the feelings set down day
by day for years at a time seems hardly profitable. We are relieved
when occasionally the editor summarizes the spiritual conflicts of
a week or two without going into details, as in the latter part
of December, 1744. “The next twelve days he was for the most part
extremely dejected, discouraged and distressed, and was evidently much
under the power of melancholy. There are from day to day most bitter
complaints of exceeding vileness, ignorance, and corruption; an amazing
load of guilt, unworthiness even to creep on God’s earth, everlasting
uselessness, fitness for nothing, etc., and sometimes expressions even
of horror at the thoughts of ever preaching again. But yet in this
time of dejection he speaks of several intervals of divine help and
comfort.”
The pitiful thing about it all was that Brainerd’s distress arose not
from the consciousness of any particular shortcoming of his own, which
after all was finite. He was endeavoring to realize the meaning of that
infinite guilt which was his as a child of Adam. That guilt must be
infinite because it was a sin against infinite purity and power. When
he had repented to the very utmost of his ability, he was conscious
that he had not repented enough.
When he went to New Jersey as a missionary to the Indians, it was this
abnormal spiritual sensitiveness which he endeavored to impart to the
aboriginal mind.
He found it difficult to bring the Indians to that degree of spiritual
anguish which, in his view, was necessary to their salvation. He could
make them understand the meaning of actual transgression, but they were
dull of comprehension when he urged them to repent of original sin.
“Another difficulty,” he says, “which I am now upon, is that it is
next to impossible to bring them to a rational conviction that they
are sinners by nature, and that their hearts are corrupt and sinful,
unless one can charge them with some gross act of immorality such as
the _light of nature_ condemns.”
One would suppose that the missionary might have found among his
untutored Indians enough actual transgressions to have brought to them
a conviction of sin and a desire for a better life. But no, that was
not enough, it would have fallen far short of what he had in mind. It
would have only convinced them that they were sinners individually
considered, and would not have overwhelmed them with the guilt of the
race. So he hit upon a device to turn their minds from the incidental
trangressions of mature life to the central fact that depravity was
innate and universal.
“The method which I take to convince them that we are sinners by nature
is to lead them to an observation of their little children: how they
will appear in a rage, fight and strike their mothers before they are
able to speak or walk, while they are so young that they are incapable
of learning such practices.... As children have never learned these
things, they must have been in their natures; and consequently they
must be allowed to be by nature the children of wrath.”
It did not seem to occur to Brainerd that in thus setting the child in
the midst of them as an illustration of the kingdom of wrath he was not
imitating the method of Jesus. Even in his treatment of the sins of
later life there is something illustrative of the cruel system which
dominated him.
“I then mention all the vices I know the Indians to be guilty of,
and so make use of these sinful _streams_ to convince them that the
_fountain_ is corrupt. This is the end for which I mention their wicked
practices to them; not because I expect to bring them to an effectual
reformation merely by inveighing against their immoralities, but hoping
that they may hereby be convinced of the corruption of their hearts,
and awakened to a sense of the depravity and misery of their fallen
state.”
Brainerd had in mind a profound truth; every great moral awakening
is accompanied by pain. But he was not content with that which
comes naturally. All specific reformation in morals and manners
was subordinated to that which he conceived to be the essential
thing,--that they should feel to its full extent the misery of being
human.
* * * * *
In every readjustment of thought or advance in the manner of life there
is involved a vast amount of unescapable pain. There is also a great
deal of pain that is gratuitously inflicted. In the contest between the
forces of conservatism and progress it is difficult to say which side
is more open to the charge of cruelty.
In reading history our sympathies are usually with the bold innovator.
He stands alone against the world and proclaims an unpopular truth.
He is misunderstood, reviled, persecuted for righteousness’ sake. The
defenders of the old order are hard-hearted persecutors who hound him
to death.
But this is only half the story. A glimpse of the other side is given
in the very term we use. We speak of the _defenders_ of the old order.
We only understand their feelings when we remember that they were
really on the defensive. The things they held most sacred were attacked
by a ruthless power which they could not understand. They flew to the
rescue of sanctuaries about to be violated. They often fought as those
in mortal agony, using blindly such weapons as came to their hands.
In “The Faerie Queene” Una, the fair symbol of Truth, wanders through
the forest protected by her lion. He is a good lion and faithful to his
lady.
The lyon would not leave her desolate,
But with her went along, as a strong gard
Of her chast person, and a faythfull mate
Of her sad troubles and misfortunes hard:
Still when she slept, he kept both watch and ward;
And when she wakt, he wayted diligent
With humble service to her will prepard;
From her fayre eyes he took commandëment
And ever by her lookes conceived her intent.
That is the picture that comes to the adherent of the old order. The
pure virgin Truth walked unharmed, with her strong protector by her
side. At length a proud Paynim attacked the gentle lady. Then it was
that
her fiers servant, full of kingly aw
And high disdaine, whenas his soveraine Dame
So rudely handled by her foe he saw,
With gaping jawes full greedy at him came,
And, ramping on his shield, did weene the same
Have reft away with his sharp rending clawes.
But it was a losing battle. The lion’s sudden fierceness was all in
vain.
O then, too weake and feeble was the forse
Of salvage beast.
Now that her defender is slain, what is to become of Lady Truth?
Who now is left to keepe the forlorn maid
From raging spoile of lawless victor’s will?
The lover of the old order does not stop to ask whether the lion may
not have made a mistake, and whether the object of his attack may not
have been, instead of a proud Paynim, only a Christian knight who
had approached to ask his way. Nor does he feel pity for the pains
inflicted by the lion’s “sharp rending clawes.” He only cries, “Poor
lion! Poor Lady Truth!”
“But,” says the careful reader, “are you not getting away from your
subject? You proposed the question, ‘Why are good people so cruel?’ You
began with the conversation of excellent ladies in the drawing-room,
and now you have wandered off into faery land, and are talking about
the Lady Truth and the noble lion who died in her defense. I fear you
are losing your way.”
On the contrary, dear reader, I think, as the children say when they
are hunting the thimble, we are “getting warm.” We started out to find
a cause for the obliviousness of good people to the pain which they
inflict on others, and we have come into the region of allegory. Now,
one of the chief reasons why good people are cruel is that it is so
easy for them to allegorize.
In an allegory virtues and vices are personified. Each is complete in
itself, and when it once has been set going it follows a preordained
course. It does not grow into something else, and it is incapable
of repentance or improvement. In the morality plays a virtue is as
virtuous and a vice as vicious at the beginning as at the end. Spenser
prefixes to “The Faerie Queene” a prose explanation of the meaning of
each important character. “The first of the Knight of the Red-crosse,
in whom I set forth Holynes; the second of Sir Guyon, in whome I sette
forth Temperance; the third of Britomartis, a lady knight, in whom I
picture Chastity.” Now, after this explanation we are relieved of all
those anxieties which beset us when we watch creatures of flesh and
blood setting out in the world to try their souls. Everything is as
much a matter of invariable law as the reactions of chemical elements.
The Knight of the Red-cross may appear to be tempted, but he is really
immune. He cannot fall from grace. From that disaster he is protected
by the definition. We have only to learn what the word holiness means
to know what he will do. As for Sir Guyon, when once we learn that he
is Temperance, we would trust him anywhere. For such characters there
is nothing possible but ultimate triumph over their foes. And what of
their foes? Being allegorical characters, they cannot be reformed.
There is nothing to do but to kill them without compunction, or if we
can catch them in the traps which they have set for others, and make
them suffer the torments they have themselves invented, so much the
better. We welcome the knight--
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the Beast,
And strips Duessa quight.
We have no compunctions as we watch the administration of poetical
justice. Whatever happens to the false Duessa and to such miscreants as
Sansfoy and Sansjoy and Sansloy, we say that it serves them right.
If we can only hold fast to the allegorical clue, and be assured that
he is dealing with sins and not with persons, we can follow Dante
through purgatory without flinching. The moral always is a good one,
and full of suggestiveness.
But the moment we mistake an allegorical character for a person of
flesh and blood we get into trouble. Even the most perfect parable
represents only a certain phase of reality. When it is forced beyond
its real intention and taken literally it shocks our sense of humanity.
It needs to be interpreted by the same wise spirit that conceived it.
We repeat the story of the symbolic virgins who had forgotten to put
oil in their lamps, or of the servant who was too timid to put his
master’s money out to usury. The child asks, “Wasn’t it cruel of those
wise virgins not to give the others just a little of their oil? And
after the door was shut and the foolish virgins knew how foolish they
were and were sorry, couldn’t the people inside have opened the door
just a little bit? And just because the servant was afraid to go to
the bank with the money, because it was so little, ought the master
to have been so hard with him as to say, ‘Cast ye the unprofitable
servant into the outer darkness; there shall be weeping and wailing
and gnashing of teeth?’ Why didn’t he give him another chance?”