We hear it maintained by people of more gravity than understanding, that
genius and taste are strictly reducible to rules, and that there is a
rule for everything. So far is it from being true that the finest breath
of fancy is a definable thing, that the plainest common sense is only
what Mr. Locke would have called a _mixed mode_, subject to a particular
sort of acquired and undefinable tact. It is asked, "If you do not know
the rule by which a thing is done, how can you be sure of doing it a
second time?" And the answer is, "If you do not know the muscles by the
help of which you walk, how is it you do not fall down at every step you
take?" In art, in taste, in life, in speech, you decide from feeling,
and not from reason; that is, from the impression of a number of things
on the mind, from which impression is true and well founded, though you
may not be able to analyse or account for it in the several particulars.
In a gesture you use, in a look you see, in a tone you hear, you judge
of the expression, propriety, and meaning from habit, not from reason
or rules; that is to say, from innumerable instances of like gestures,
looks, and tones, in innumerable other circumstances, variously
modified, which are too many and too refined to be all distinctly
recollected, but which do not therefore operate the less powerfully
upon the mind and eye of taste. Shall we say that these impressions (the
immediate stamp of nature) do not operate in a given manner till they
are classified and reduced to rules, or is not the rule itself grounded,
upon the truth and certainty of that natural operation?
How then can the distinction of the understanding as to the manner in
which they operate be necessary to their producing their due and uniform
effect upon the mind? If certain effects did not regularly arise out of
certain causes in mind as well as matter, there could be no rule given
for them: nature does not follow the rule, but suggests it. Reason is
the interpreter and critic of nature and genius, not their law-giver and
judge. He must be a poor creature indeed whose practical convictions do
not in almost all cases outrun his deliberate understanding, or who does
not feel and know much more than he can give a reason for. Hence the
distinction between eloquence and wisdom, between ingenuity and common
sense. A man may be dexterous and able in explaining the grounds of his
opinions, and yet may be a mere sophist, because he only sees one-half
of a subject. Another may feel the whole weight of a question, nothing
relating to it may be lost upon him, and yet he may be able to give no
account of the manner in which it affects him, or to drag his reasons
from their silent lurking-places. This last will be a wise man, though
neither a logician nor rhetorician. Goldsmith was a fool to Dr. Johnson
in argument; that is, in assigning the specific grounds of his opinions:
Dr. Johnson was a fool to Goldsmith in the fine tact, the airy,
intuitive faculty with which he skimmed the surfaces of things, and
unconsciously formed his Opinions. Common sense is the just result
of the sum total of such unconscious impressions in the ordinary
occurrences of life, as they are treasured up in the memory, and
called out by the occasion. Genius and taste depend much upon the same
principle exercised on loftier ground and in more unusual combinations.
I am glad to shelter myself from the charge of affectation or
singularity in this view of an often debated but ill-understood point,
by quoting a passage from Sir Joshua Reynolds's _Discourses_, which is
full, and, I think, conclusive to the purpose. He says:--
'I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the Arts with which we
have any concern in this Discourse, that they address themselves only to
two faculties of the mind, its imagination and its sensibility.
'All theories which attempt to direct or to control the Art, upon any
principles falsely called rational, which we form to ourselves upon
a supposition of what ought in reason to be the end or means of Art,
independent of the known first effect produced by objects on the
imagination, must be false and delusive. For though it may appear
bold to say it, the imagination is here the residence of truth. If the
imagination be affected, the conclusion is fairly drawn; if it be not
affected, the reasoning is erroneous, because the end is not obtained;
the effect itself being the test, and the only test, of the truth and
efficacy of the means.
'There is in the commerce of life, as in Art, a sagacity which is
far from being contradictory to right reason, and is superior to any
occasional exercise of that faculty which supersedes it and does not
wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by what
appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with this
faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his
power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and
bring before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion;
for very many and very intricate considerations may unite to form the
principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in, or dependent on,
a great many things:--though these in process of time are forgotten, the
right impression still remains fixed in his mind.
'This impression is the result of the accumulated experience of our
whole life, and has been collected, we do not always know how or when.
But this mass of collective observation, however acquired, ought to
prevail over that reason, which, however powerfully exerted on any
particular occasion, will probably comprehend but a partial view of the
subject; and our conduct in life, as well as in the arts, is or ought to
be generally governed by this habitual reason: it is our happiness that
we are enabled to draw on such funds. If we were obliged to enter into a
theoretical deliberation on every occasion before we act, life would be
at a stand, and Art would be impracticable.
'It appears to me therefore' (continues Sir Joshua) 'that our first
thoughts, that is, the effect which any thing produces on our minds on
its first appearance, is never to be forgotten; and it demands for that
reason, because it is the first, to be laid up with care. If this be not
done, the artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning;
by a cold consideration of those animated thoughts which proceed, not
perhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit), but
from the fulness of his mind, enriched with the copious stores of all
the various inventions which he had ever seen, or had ever passed in
his mind. These ideas are infused into his design, without any conscious
effort; but if he be not on his guard, he may reconsider and correct
them, till the whole matter is reduced to a commonplace invention.
'This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against;
that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling,
in favour of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories, and of
principles that seem to apply to the design in hand, without considering
those general impressions on the fancy in which real principles of
_sound reason_, and of much more weight and importance, are involved,
and, as it were, lie hid under the appearance of a sort of vulgar
sentiment. Reason, without doubt, must ultimately determine everything;
at this minute it is required to inform us when that very reason is to
give way to feeling.'(1)
Mr. Burke, by whom the foregoing train of thinking was probably
suggested, has insisted on the same thing, and made rather a
perverse use of it in several parts of his _Reflections on the French
Revolution_; and Windham in one of his _Speeches_ has clenched it into
an aphorism--'There is nothing so true as habit.' Once more I would
say, common sense is tacit reason. Conscience is the same tacit sense
of right and wrong, or the impression of our moral experience and
moral apprehensions on the mind, which, because it works unseen, yet
certainly, we suppose to be an instinct, implanted in the mind; as we
sometimes attribute the violent operations of our passions, of which we
can neither trace the source nor assign the reason, to the instigation
of the Devil!
I shall here try to go more at large into this subject, and to give such
instances and illustrations of it as occur to me.
One of the persons who had rendered themselves obnoxious to Government
and been included in a charge for high treason in the year 1794, had
retired soon after into Wales to write an epic poem and enjoy the
luxuries of a rural life. In his peregrinations through that beautiful
scenery, he had arrived one fine morning at the inn at Llangollen, in
the romantic valley of that name. He had ordered his breakfast, and was
sitting at the window in all the dalliance of expectation when a
face passed, of which he took no notice at the instant--but when his
breakfast was brought in presently after, he found his appetite for
it gone--the day had lost its freshness in his eye--he was uneasy and
spiritless; and without any cause that he could discover, a total change
had taken place in his feelings. While he was trying to account for this
odd circumstance, the same face passed again--it was the face of Taylor
the spy; and he was longer at a loss to explain the difficulty. He had
before caught only a transient glimpse, a passing side-view of the face;
but though this was not sufficient to awaken a distinct idea in his
memory, his feelings, quicker and surer, had taken the alarm; a string
had been touched that gave a jar to his whole frame, and would not let
him rest, though he could not at all tell what was the matter with him.
To the flitting, shadowy, half-distinguished profile that had glided by
his window was linked unconsciously and mysteriously, but inseparably,
the impression of the trains that had been laid for him by this
person;--in this brief moment, in this dim, illegible short-hand of
the mind he had just escaped the speeches of the Attorney and
Solicitor-General over again; the gaunt figure of Mr. Pitt glared by
him; the walls of a prison enclosed him; and he felt the hands of the
executioner near him, without knowing it till the tremor and disorder of
his nerves gave information to his reasoning faculties that all was
not well within. That is, the same state of mind was recalled by one
circumstance in the series of association that had been produced by the
whole set of circumstances at the time, though the manner in which this
was done was not immediately perceptible. In other words, the feeling of
pleasure or pain, of good or evil, is revived, and acts instantaneously
upon the mind, before we have time to recollect the precise objects
which have originally given birth to it.(2) The incident here mentioned
was merely, then, one case of what the learned understand by the
_association of ideas_: but all that is meant by feeling or common sense
is nothing but the different cases of the association of ideas, more
or less true to the impression of the original circumstances, as reason
begins with the more formal development of those circumstances, or
pretends to account for the different cases of the association of ideas.
But it does not follow that the dumb and silent pleading of the former
(though sometimes, nay often, mistaken) is less true than that of its
babbling interpreter, or that we are never to trust its dictates without
consulting the express authority of reason. Both are imperfect, both are
useful in their way, and therefore both are best together, to correct or
to confirm one another. It does not appear that in the singular instance
above mentioned, the sudden impression on the mind was superstition or
fancy, though it might have been thought so, had it not been proved by
the event to have a real physical and moral cause. Had not the same face
returned again, the doubt would never have been properly cleared up,
but would have remained a puzzle ever after, or perhaps have been soon
forgot.--By the law of association as laid down by physiologists, any
impression in a series can recall any other impression in that series
without going through the whole in order; so that the mind drops the
intermediate links, and passes on rapidly and by stealth to the more
striking effects of pleasure or pain which have naturally taken the
strongest hold of it. By doing this habitually and skillfully with
respect to the various impressions and circumstances with which our
experience makes us acquainted, it forms a series of unpremeditated
conclusions on almost all subjects that can be brought before it, as
just as they are of ready application to human life; and common sense is
the name of this body of unassuming but practical wisdom. Common sense,
however, is an impartial, instinctive result of truth and nature, and
will therefore bear the test and abide the scrutiny of the most severe
and patient reasoning. It is indeed incomplete without it. By ingrafting
reason on feeling, we 'make assurance double sure.'
'Tis the last key-stone that makes up the arch...
Then stands it a triumphal mark! Then men
Observe the strength, the height, the why and when
It was erected; and still walking under,
Meet some new matter to look up, and wonder.
But reason, not employed to interpret nature, and to improve and perfect
common sense and experience, is, for the most part, a building without a
foundation. The criticism exercised by reason, then, on common sense may
be as severe as it pleases, but it must be as patient as it is severe.
Hasty, dogmatical, self-satisfied reason is worse than idle fancy or
bigoted prejudice. It is systematic, ostentatious in error, closes up
the avenues of knowledge, and 'shuts the gates of wisdom on mankind.' It
is not enough to show that there is no reason for a thing that we do
not see the reason of it: if the common feeling, if the involuntary
prejudice sets in strong in favour of it, if, in spite of all we can do,
there is a lurking suspicion on the side of our first impressions,
we must try again, and believe that truth is mightier than we. So, in
ordering a definition of any subject, if we feel a misgiving that there
is any fact or circumstance emitted, but of which we have only a vague
apprehension, like a name we cannot recollect, we must ask for more
time, and not cut the matter short by an arrogant assumption of the
point in dispute. Common sense thus acts as a check-weight on sophistry,
and suspends our rash and superficial judgments. On the other hand, if
not only no reason can be given for a thing, but every reason is clear
against it, and we can account from ignorance, from authority, from
interest, from different causes, for the prevalence of an opinion or
sentiment, then we have a right to conclude that we have mistaken
a prejudice for an instinct, or have confounded a false and partial
impression with the fair and unavoidable inference from general
observation. Mr. Burke said that we ought not to reject every prejudice,
but should separate the husk of prejudice from the truth it encloses,
and so try to get at the kernel within; and thus far he was right. But
he was wrong in insisting that we are to cherish our prejudices 'because
they are prejudices': for if all are well founded, there is no occasion
to inquire into their origin or use; and he who sets out to philosophise
upon them, or make the separation Mr. Burke talks of in this spirit
and with this previous determination, will be very likely to mistake
a maggot or a rotten canker for the precious kernel of truth, as was
indeed the case with our Political sophist.
There is nothing more distinct than common sense and vulgar opinion.
Common sense is only a judge of things that fall under common
observation, or immediately come home to the business and bosoms of men.
This is of the very essence of its principle, the basis of its
pretensions. It rests upon the simple process of feeling,--it anchors
in experience. It is not, nor it cannot be, the test of abstract,
speculative opinions. But half the opinions and prejudices of mankind,
those which they hold in the most unqualified approbation and which
have been instilled into them under the strongest sanctions, are of this
latter kind, that is, opinions not which they have ever thought, known,
or felt one tittle about, but which they have taken up on trust from
others, which have been palmed on their understandings by fraud or
force, and which they continue to hold at the peril of life, limb,
property, and character, with as little warrant from common sense in the
first instance as appeal to reason in the last. The _ultima ratio regum_
proceeds upon a very different plea. Common sense is neither priestcraft
nor state-policy. Yet 'there's the rub that makes absurdity of so long
life,' and, at the same time, gives the sceptical philosophers the
advantage over us. Till nature has fair play allowed it, and is not
adulterated by political and polemical quacks (as it so often has been),
it is impossible to appeal to it as a defence against the errors and
extravagances of mere reason. If we talk of common sense, we are twitted
with vulgar prejudice, and asked how we distinguish the one from the
other; but common and received opinion is indeed 'a compost heap' of
crude notions, got together by the pride and passions of individuals,
and reason is itself the thrall or manumitted slave of the same lordly
and besotted masters, dragging its servile chain, or committing all
sorts of Saturnalian licenses, the moment it feels itself freed from
it.--If ten millions of Englishmen are furious in thinking themselves
right in making war upon thirty millions of Frenchmen, and if the last
are equally bent upon thinking the others always in the wrong, though it
is a common and national prejudice, both opinions cannot be the dictate
of good sense; but it may be the infatuated policy of one or both
governments to keep their subjects always at variance. If a few
centuries ago all Europe believed in the infallibility of the Pope,
this was not an opinion derived from the proper exercise or erroneous
direction of the common sense of the people; common sense had nothing to
do with it--they believed whatever their priests told them. England at
present is divided into Whigs and Tories, Churchmen and Dissenters; both
parties have numbers on their side; but common sense and party spirit
are two different things. Sects and heresies are upheld partly by
sympathy, and partly by the love of contradiction; if there was nobody
of a different way of thinking, they would fall to pieces of themselves.
If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that they think
it, but that the individual at the head of the court has said it; if a
mob agree for a while in shouting the same watchword, this is not to
me an example of the _sensus communis_, they only repeat what they have
heard repeated by others. If indeed a large proportion of the people are
in want of food, of clothing, of shelter--if they are sick, miserable,
scorned, oppressed--and if each feeling it in himself, they all say so
with one voice and one heart, and lift up their hands to second their
appeal, this I should say was but the dictate of common sense, the cry
of nature. But to waive this part of the argument, which it is needless
to push farther,--l believe that the best way to instruct mankind is
not by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching them
to think rightly on indifferent matters, where they will listen with
patience in order to be amused, and where they do not consider a
definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them.
There is no rule for expression. It is got at solely by _feeling_, that
is, on the principle of the association of ideas, and by transferring
what has been found to hold good in one case (with the necessary
modifications) to others. A certain look has been remarked strongly
indicative of a certain passion or trait of character, and we attach the
same meaning to it or are affected in the same pleasurable or painful
manner by it, where it exists in a less degree, though we can define
neither the look itself nor the modification of it. Having got the
general clue, the exact result may be left to the imagination to
vary, to extenuate or aggravate it according to circumstances. In the
admirable profile of Oliver Cromwell after ----, the drooping eyelids,
as if drawing a veil over the fixed, penetrating glance, the nostrils
somewhat distended, and lips compressed so as hardly to let the breath
escape him, denote the character of the man for high-reaching policy
and deep designs as plainly as they can be written. How is it that we
decipher this expression in the face? First, by feeling it. And how is
it that we feel it? Not by re-established rules, but by the instinct of
analogy, by the principle of association, which is subtle and sure in
proportion as it is variable and indefinite. A circumstance, apparently
of no value, shall alter the whole interpretation to be put upon an
expression or action and it shall alter it thus powerfully because
in proportion to its very insignificance it shows a strong general
principle at work that extends in its ramifications to the smallest
things. This in fact will make all the difference between minuteness
and subtlety or refinement; for a small or trivial effect may in given
circumstances imply the operation of a great power. Stillness may be the
result of a blow too powerful to be resisted; silence may be imposed
by feelings too agonising for utterance. The minute, the trifling
and insipid is that which is little in itself, in its causes and
its consequences; the subtle and refined is that which is slight and
evanescent at first sight, but which mounts up to a mighty sum in
the end, which is an essential part of an important whole, which has
consequences greater than itself, and where more is meant than meets
the eye or ear. We complain sometimes of littleness in a Dutch picture,
where there are a vast number of distinct parts and objects, each small
in itself, and leading to nothing else. A sky of Claude's cannot fall
under this censure, where one imperceptible gradation is as it were
the scale to another, where the broad arch of heaven is piled up of
endlessly intermediate gold and azure tints, and where an infinite
number of minute, scarce noticed particulars blend and melt into
universal harmony. The subtlety in Shakespear, of which there is an
immense deal scattered everywhere up and down, is always the instrument
of passion, the vehicle of character. The action of a man pulling his
hat over his forehead is indifferent enough in itself, and generally
speaking, may mean anything or nothing; but in the circumstances in
which Macduff is placed, it is neither insignificant nor equivocal.
What! man, ne'er pull your hat upon your brows, etc.
It admits but of one interpretation or inference, that which follows
it:--
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak,
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
The passage in the same play, in which Duncan and his attendants are
introduced, commenting on the beauty and situation of Macbeth's castle,
though familiar in itself, has been often praised for the striking
contrast it presents to the scenes which follow.--The same look in
different circumstances may convey a totally different expression. Thus
the eye turned round to look at you without turning the head indicates
generally slyness or suspicion; but if this is combined with large
expanded eyelids or fixed eyebrows, as we see it in Titian's pictures,
it will denote calm contemplation or piercing sagacity, without anything
of meanness or fear of being observed. In other cases it may imply
merely indolent, enticing voluptuousness, as in Lely's portraits of
women. The languor and weakness of the eyelids give the amorous turn
to the expression. How should there be a rule for all this beforehand,
seeing it depends on circumstances ever varying, and scarce discernible
but by their effect on the mind? Rules are applicable to abstractions,
but expression is concrete and individual. We know the meaning of
certain looks, and we feel how they modify one another in conjunction.
But we cannot have a separate rule to judge of all their combinations
in different degrees and circumstances, without foreseeing all those
combinations, which is impossible; or if we did foresee them, we should
only be where we are, that is, we could only make the rule as we now
judge without it, from imagination and the feeling of the moment. The
absurdity of reducing expression to a preconcerted system was perhaps
never more evidently shown than in a picture of the Judgment of Solomon
by so great a man as N. Poussin, which I once heard admired for the
skill and discrimination of the artist in making all the women, who are
ranged on one side, in the greatest alarm at the sentence of the judge,
while all the men on the opposite side see through the design of it.
Nature does not go to work or cast things in a regular mould in this
sort of way. I once heard a person remark of another, 'He has an eye
like a vicious horse.' This was a fair analogy. We all, I believe, have
noticed the look of a horse's eye just before he is going to bite or
kick. But will any one, therefore, describe to me exactly what that
look is? It was the same acute observer that said of a self-sufficient.,
prating music-master, 'He talks on all subjects _at sight_'--which
expressed the man at once by an allusion to his profession, the
coincidence was indeed perfect. Nothing else could compare with the easy
assurance with which this gentleman would volunteer an explanation of
things of which he was most ignorant, but the _nonchalance_ with which
a musician sits down to a harpsichord to play a piece he has never seen
before. My physiognomical friend would not have hit on this mode of
illustration without knowing the profession of the subject of his
criticism; but having this hint given him, it instantly suggested itself
to his 'sure trailing.' The manner of the speaker was evident; and the
association of the music-master sitting down to play at sight,
lurking in his mind, was immediately called out by the strength of his
impression of the character. The feeling of character and the felicity
of invention in explaining it were nearly allied to each other. The
first was so wrought up and running over that the transition to the last
was very easy and unavoidable. When Mr. Kean was so much praised for the
action of Richard in his last struggle with his triumphant antagonist,
where he stands, after his sword is wrested from him, with his hands
stretched out, 'as if his will could not be disarmed, and the very
phantoms of his despair had a withering power,' he said that he borrowed
it from seeing the last efforts of Painter in his fight with Oliver.
This assuredly did not lessen the merit of it. Thus it ever is with the
man of real genius. He has the feeling of truth already shrined in his
own breast, and his eye is still bent on Nature to see how she expresses
herself. When we thoroughly understand the subject it is easy to
translate from one language into another. Raphael, in muffling up the
figure of Elymas the Sorcerer in his garments, appears to have extended
the idea of blindness even to his clothes. Was this design? Probably
not; but merely the feeling of analogy thoughtlessly suggesting this
device, which being so suggested was retained and carried on, because
it flattered or fell in with the original feeling. The tide of passion,
when strong, overflows and gradually insinuates itself into all nooks
and corners of the mind. Invention (of the best kind) I therefore do not
think so distinct a thing from feeling as some are apt to imagine. The
springs of pure feeling will rise and fill the moulds of fancy that are
fit to receive it. There are some striking coincidences of colour
in well-composed pictures, as in a straggling weed in the foreground
streaked with blue or red to answer to a blue or red drapery, to the
tone of the flesh or an opening in the sky:--not that this was intended,
or done by the rule (for then it would presently become affected and
ridiculous), but the eye, being imbued with a certain colour, repeats
and varies it from a natural sense of harmony, a secret craving and
appetite for beauty, which in the same manner soothes and gratifies the
eye of taste, though the cause is not understood. _Tact, finesse_,
is nothing but the being completely aware of the feeling belonging to
certain situations, passions, etc., and the being consequently sensible
to their slightest indications or movements in others. One of the most
remarkable instances of this sort of faculty is the following story,
told of Lord Shaftesbury, the grandfather of the author of the
_Characteristics_. He had been to dine with Lady Clarendon and her
daughter, who was at that time privately married to the Duke of York
(afterwards James II.), and as he returned home with another nobleman
who had accompanied him, he suddenly turned to him, and said, 'Depend
upon it, the Duke has married Hyde's daughter.' His companion could
not comprehend what he meant; but on explaining himself, he said, 'Her
mother behaved to her with an attention and a marked respect that it is
impossible to account for in any other way; and I am sure of it.' His
conjecture shortly afterwards proved to be the truth. This was carrying
the prophetic spirit of common sense as far as it could go.