OUR last conversation broke off abruptly on the entrance of a visitor: we
forgot to name a time for our next meeting; and when I came again, I
found Milverton alone in his study. He was reading Count Rumford’s
essays.
_Dunsford_. So you are reading Count Rumford. What is it that interests
you there?
_Milverton_. Everything he writes about. He is to me a delightful
writer. He throws so much life into all his writings. Whether they are
about making the most of food or fuel, or propounding the benefits of
bathing, or inveighing against smoke, it is that he went and saw and did
and experimented himself upon himself. His proceedings at Munich to feed
the poor are more interesting than many a novel. It is surprising, too,
how far he was before the world in all the things he gave his mind to.
Here Ellesmere entered.
_Ellesmere_. I heard you were come, Dunsford: I hope we shall have an
essay to-day. My critical faculties have been dormant for some days, and
want to be roused a little. Milverton was talking to you about Count
Rumford when I came in, was he not? Ah, the Count is a great favourite
with Milverton when he is down here; but there is a book upstairs which
is Milverton’s real favourite just now, a portentous-looking book; some
relation to a blue-book, something about sewerage, or health of towns, or
public improvements, over which said book our friend here goes into
enthusiasms. I am sure if it could be reduced to the size of that
tatterdemalion Horace that he carries about, the poor little Horace would
be quite supplanted.
_Milverton_. Now, I must tell you, Dunsford, that Ellesmere himself took
up this book he talks about, and it was a long time before he put it
down.
_Ellesmere_. Yes, there is something in real life, even though it is in
the unheroic part of it, that interests one. I mean to get through the
book.
_Dunsford_. What are we to have to-day for our essay?
Milverton. Let us adjourn to the garden, and I will read you an essay on
Greatness, if I can find it.
* * * * *
We went to our favourite place, and Milverton read us the following
essay.
GREATNESS.
You cannot substitute any epithet for great, when you are talking of
great men. Greatness is not general dexterity carried to any extent; nor
proficiency in any one subject of human endeavour. There are great
astronomers, great scholars, great painters, even great poets who are
very far from great men. Greatness can do without success and with it.
William is greater in his retreats than Marlborough in his victories. On
the other hand, the uniformity of Cæsar’s success does not dull his
greatness. Greatness is not in the circumstances, but in the man.
What does this greatness then consist in? Not in a nice balance of
qualities, purposes, and powers. That will make a man happy, a
successful man, a man always in his right depth. Nor does it consist in
absence of errors. We need only glance back at any list that can be made
of great men, to be convinced of that. Neither does greatness consist in
energy, though often accompanied by it. Indeed, it is rather the breadth
of the waters than the force of the current that we look to, to fulfil
our idea of greatness. There is no doubt that energy acting upon a
nature endowed with the qualities that we sum up in the word cleverness,
and directed to a few clear purposes, produces a great effect, and may
sometimes be mistaken for greatness. If a man is mainly bent upon his
own advancement, it cuts many a difficult knot of policy for him, and
gives a force and distinctness to his mode of going on which looks grand.
The same happens if he has one pre-eminent idea of any kind, even though
it should be a narrow one. Indeed, success in life is mostly gained by
unity of purpose; whereas greatness often fails by reason of its having
manifold purposes, but it does not cease to be greatness on that account.
If greatness can be shut up in qualities, it will be found to consist in
courage and in openness of mind and soul. These qualities may not seem
at first to be so potent. But see what growth there is in them. The
education of a man of open mind is never ended. Then, with openness of
soul, a man sees some way into all other souls that come near him, feels
with them, has their experience, is in himself a people. Sympathy is the
universal solvent. Nothing is understood without it. The capacity of a
man, at least for understanding, may almost be said to vary according to
his powers of sympathy. Again, what is there that can counteract
selfishness like sympathy? Selfishness may be hedged in by minute
watchfulness and self-denial, but it is counteracted by the nature being
encouraged to grow out and fix its tendrils upon foreign objects.
The immense defect that want of sympathy is, may be strikingly seen in
the failure of the many attempts that have been made in all ages to
construct the Christian character, omitting sympathy. It has produced
numbers of people walking up and down one narrow plank of self-restraint,
pondering over their own merits and demerits, keeping out, not the world
exactly, but their fellow-creatures from their hearts, and caring only to
drive their neighbours before them on this plank of theirs, or to push
them headlong. Thus, with many virtues, and much hard work at the
formation of character, we have had splendid bigots or censorious small
people.
But sympathy is warmth and light too. It is, as it were, the moral
atmosphere connecting all animated natures. Putting aside, for a moment,
the large differences that opinions, language, and education make between
men, look at the innate diversity of character. Natural philosophers
were amazed when they thought they had found a new-created species. But
what is each man but a creature such as the world has not before seen?
Then think how they pour forth in multitudinous masses, from princes
delicately nurtured to little boys on scrubby commons, or in dark
cellars. How are these people to be understood, to be taught to
understand each other, but by those who have the deepest sympathies with
all? There cannot be a great man without large sympathy. There may be
men who play loud-sounding parts in life without it, as on the stage,
where kings and great people sometimes enter who are only characters of
secondary import—deputy great men. But the interest and the instruction
lie with those who have to feel and suffer most.
* * * * *
Add courage to this openness we have been considering, and you have a man
who can own himself in the wrong, can forgive, can trust, can adventure,
can, in short, use all the means that insight and sympathy endow him
with.
* * * * *
I see no other essential characteristics in the greatness of nations than
there are in the greatness of individuals. Extraneous circumstances
largely influence nations as individuals; and make a larger part of the
show of the former than of the latter; as we are wont to consider no
nation great that is not great in extent or resources, as well as in
character. But of two nations, equal in other respects, the superiority
must belong to the one which excels in courage and openness of mind and
soul.
Again, in estimating the relative merits of different periods of the
world, we must employ the same tests of greatness that we use to
individuals. To compare, for instance, the present and the past. What
astounds us most in the past is the wonderful intolerance and cruelty: a
cruelty constantly turning upon the inventors: an intolerance provoking
ruin to the thing it would foster. The most admirable precepts are
thrown from time to time upon this cauldron of human affairs, and
oftentimes they only seem to make it blaze the higher. We find men
devoting the best part of their intellects to the invariable annoyance
and persecution of their fellows. You might think that the earth brought
forth with more abundant fruitfulness in the past than now, seeing that
men found so much time for cruelty, but that you read of famines and
privations which these latter days cannot equal. The recorded violent
deaths amount to millions. And this is but a small part of the matter.
Consider the modes of justice; the use of torture, for instance. What
must have been the blinded state of the wise persons (wise for their day)
who used torture? Did they ever think themselves, “What should we not
say if we were subjected to this?” Many times they must really have
desired to get at the truth; and such was their mode of doing it. Now,
at the risk of being thought “a laudator” of time present, I would say,
here is the element of greatness we have made progress in. We are more
open in mind and soul. We have arrived (some of us at least) at the
conclusion that men may honestly differ without offence. We have learned
to pity each other more. There is a greatness in modern toleration which
our ancestors knew not.
Then comes the other element of greatness, courage. Have we made
progress in that? This is a much more dubious question. The subjects of
terror vary so much in different times that it is difficult to estimate
the different degrees of courage shown in resisting them. Men fear
public opinion now as they did in former times the Star Chamber; and
those awful goddesses, Appearances, are to us what the Fates were to the
Greeks. It is hardly possible to measure the courage of a modern against
that of an ancient; but I am unwilling to believe but that enlightenment
must strengthen courage.
The application of the tests of greatness, as in the above instance, is a
matter of detail and of nice appreciation, as to the results of which men
must be expected to differ largely: the tests themselves remain
invariable—openness of nature to admit the light of love and reason, and
courage to pursue it.
* * * * *
_Ellesmere_. I agree to your theory, as far as openness of nature is
concerned; but I do not much like to put that half-brute thing, courage,
so high.
_Milverton_. Well, you cannot have greatness without it: you may have
well-intentioned people and far-seeing people; but if they have no
stoutness of heart, they will only be shifty or remonstrant, nothing like
great.
_Ellesmere_. You mean will, not courage. Without will, your
open-minded, open-hearted man may be like a great, rudderless vessel
driven about by all winds: not a small craft, but a most uncertain one.
_Milverton_. No, I mean both: both will and courage. Courage is the
body to will.
_Ellesmere_. I believe you are right in that; but do not omit will. It
amused me to see how you brought in one of your old notions—that this age
is not contemptible. You scribbling people are generally on the other
side.
_Milverton_. You malign us. If I must give any account for my personal
predilection for modern times, it consists perhaps in this, that we may
now speak our mind. What Tennyson says of his own land,
“The land where, girt with friend or foe,
A man may say the thing he will,”—
may be said, in some measure, of the age in which we live. This is an
inexpressible comfort. This doubles life. These things surely may be
said in favour of the present age, not with a view to puff it up, but so
far to encourage ourselves, as we may by seeing that the world does not
go on for nothing, that all the misery, blood, and toil that have been
spent, were not poured out in vain. Could we have our ancestors again
before us, would they not rejoice at seeing what they had purchased for
us: would they think it any compliment to them to extol their times at
the expense of the present, and so to intimate that their efforts had led
to nothing?
_Ellesmere_. “I doubt,” as Lord Eldon would have said; no, upon second
thoughts, I do not doubt. I feel assured that a good many of these said
ancestors you are calling up would be much discomforted at finding that
all their suffering had led to no sure basis of persecution of the other
side.
_Dunsford_. I wonder, Ellesmere, what you would have done in persecuting
times. What escape would your sarcasm have found for itself?
_Milverton_. Some orthodox way, I daresay. I do not think he would have
been particularly fond of martyrdom.
_Ellesmere_. No. I have no taste for making torches for truth, or being
one: I prefer humane darkness to such illumination. At the same time one
cannot tell lies; and if one had been questioned about the
incomprehensibilities which men in former days were so fierce upon, one
must have shown that one disagreed with all parties.
_Dunsford_. Do not say “one:” _I_ should not have disagreed with the
great Protestant leaders in the Reformation, for instance.
_Ellesmere_. Humph.
_Milverton_. If we get aground upon the Reformation, we shall never push
off again—else would I say something far from complimentary to those
Protestant proceedings which we may rather hope were Tudoresque than
Protestant.
_Ellesmere_. No, that is not fair. The Tudors were a coarse, fierce
race; but it will not do to lay the faults of their times upon them only.
Look at Elizabeth’s ministers. They had about as much notion of
religious tolerance as they had of Professor Wheatstone’s telegraph. It
was not a growth of that age.
_Milverton_. I do not know. You have Cardinal Pole and the Earl of
Essex, both tolerant men in the midst of bigots.
_Ellesmere_. Well, as you said, Milverton, we shall never push off, if
we once get aground on this subject.
_Dunsford_. I am in fault: so I will take upon myself to bring you quite
away from the Reformation. I have been thinking of that comparison in
the essay of the present with the past. Such comparisons seem to me very
useful, as they best enable us to understand our own times. And, then,
when we have ascertained the state and tendency of our own age, we ought
to strive to enrich it with those qualities which are complementary to
its own. Now with all this toleration, which delights you so much, dear
Milverton, is it not an age rather deficient in caring about great
matters?
_Milverton_. If you mean great speculative matters, I might agree with
you; but if you mean what I should call the greatest matters, such as
charity, humanity, and the like, I should venture to differ with you,
Dunsford.
_Dunsford_. I do not like to see the world indifferent to great
speculative matters. I then fear shallowness and earthiness.
_Milverton_. It is very difficult to say what the world is thinking of
now. It is certainly wrong to suppose that this is a shallow age because
it is not driven by one impulse. As civilisation advances, it becomes
more difficult to estimate what is going on, and we set it all down as
confusion. Now there is not one “great antique heart,” whose beatings we
can count, but many impulses, many circles of thought in which men are
moving many objects. Men are not all in the same state of progress, so
cannot be moved in masses as of old. At one time chivalry urged all men,
then the Church, and the phenomena were few, simple, and broad, or at
least they seem so in history.
_Ellesmere_. Very true; still I agree somewhat with Dunsford, that men
are not agitated as they used to be by the great speculative questions.
I account for it in this way, that the material world has opened out
before us, and we cannot but look at that, and must play with it and work
at it. I would say, too, that philosophy had been found out, and there
is something in that. Still, I think if it were not for the interest now
attaching to material things, great intellectual questions, not exactly
of the old kind, would arise and agitate the world.
_Milverton_. There is one thing in my mind that may confirm your view.
I cannot but think that the enlarged view we have of the universe must in
some measure damp personal ambition. What is it to be a King, Sheik,
Tetrarch, or Emperor, over a bit of a little bit? Macbeth’s speech,
“we’d jump the life to come,” is a thing a man with modern lights,
however madly ambitious, would hardly utter.
_Dunsford_. Religious lights, Milverton.
_Milverton_. Of course not, if he had them; but I meant scientific
lights. Sway over our fellow-creatures, at any rate anything but mental
sway, has shrunk into less proportions.
_Ellesmere_. I have been looking over the essay. I think you may put in
somewhere—that that age would probably be the greatest in which there was
the least difference between great men and the people in general—when the
former were only neglected, not hunted down.
_Milverton_. Yes.
_Ellesmere_. You are rather lengthy here about the cruelties to be found
in history; but we are apt to forget these matters.
_Milverton_. They always press upon my mind.
_Dunsford_. And on mine. I do not like to read much of history for that
very reason. I get so sick at heart about it all.
_Milverton_. Ah, yes, history is a stupendous thing. To read it is like
looking at the stars; we turn away in awe and perplexity. Yet there is
some method running through the little affairs of man as through the
multitude of suns, seemingly to us as confused as routed armies in full
flight.
_Dunsford_. Some law of love.
_Ellesmere_. I am afraid it is not in the past alone that we should be
awestruck with horrors: we, who have a slave-trade still on earth. But,
to go back to the essay, I like what you say about the theory of
constructing the Christian character without geniality; only you do not
go far enough. You are afraid. People are for ever talking, especially
you philanthropical people, about making others happy. I do not know any
way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with.
I do not mean that people are to be self-absorbed; but they are to drink
in nature and life a little. From a genial, wisely-developed man good
things radiate; whereas you must allow, Milverton, that benevolent people
are very apt to be one-sided and fussy, and not of the sweetest temper if
others will not be good and happy in their way.
_Milverton_. That is really not fair. Of course, acid, small-minded
people carry their narrow notions and their acidity into their
benevolence. Benevolence is no abstract perfection. Men will express
their benevolence according to their other gifts or want of gifts. If it
is strong, it overcomes other things in the character which would be
hindrances to it; but it must speak in the language of the soul it is in.
_Ellesmere_. Come, let us go and see the pigs. I hear them grunting
over their dinners in the farmyard. I like to see creatures who can be
happy without a theory.