"Of man's first Disobedience and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World and all our woe,
With loss of Eden"?
What would Milton make of Adam in his sheltered Paradise? And what would
one whose whole life had been a passionate protest against the idea of
submission to mere arbitrary power do with the element of arbitrariness
which the theology of his day attributed to the Divine Ruler? And what
of Satan?
"One who brings
A mind not to be changed by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same?"
There is a note in that proud creed that could not be altogether
uncongenial to one who in his blindness could--
"still bear up and steer
Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask?
The Conscience, Friend, t' have lost them overplied
In liberty's defense, my noble task;
Of which all Europe rings from side to side.
This thought might lead me through this World's vain mask
Content though blind, had I no better Guide."
In its ostensible plot "Paradise Lost" is a tragedy; but did Milton
really feel it to be so? One fancies--though he may be mistaken--that as
Adam and Eve leave Paradise he hears a sigh of relief from the poet,
who was himself ever a lover of "the Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty." At
any rate, there is an undertone of cheer.
"Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon,
The World was all before them where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide."
Adam, when the old sheltered life is over, and the possibilities of the
new life of struggle were revealed,--
"Replete with joy and wonder thus replied.
O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Than that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned or rejoice
Much more that much more good thereof shall spring."
That Adam should treat the loss of Eden in such a casual manner, and
that he should express a doubt as to whether the estate into which his
fall plunged the race was not better than one in which no moral struggle
was necessary, was not characteristic of seventeenth-century
theology,--but it was just like Milton.
There is no knowledge so intimate as that possessed by the reader of one
book. It is an esoteric joy. The wisdom of the ages concentrated into
one personality and then graciously communicated to the disciple has a
flavor of which the multitudes of mere scholars know nothing. To them
Wisdom is a public character.
"Doth not Wisdom cry,
And understanding put forth her voice?
In the top of high places
Where the paths meet she standeth."
But the disciple is not content with such publicity. He shuns the
crowded highways, and delights to hear wisdom speaking in confidential
tones.
In a little settlement in the far West I once met a somewhat
depressed-looking man who remained silent till a chance remark brought a
glow of enthusiasm to his eyes.
"Oh," he cried, "you have been reading the Ruins."
My remark had been of a kind that needed no special reading to account
for it. It merely expressed one of those obvious truths which are likely
to occur to the majority of persons. But to him it seemed so reasonable
that it could only come from the one source of wise thought with which
he was acquainted.
"The Ruins" proved to be a translation of Volney's "Ruins of Empire." I
fear that I must have given the impression of greater familiarity with
that work than was warranted by the facts, for my new-found friend
received me as a member of the true brotherhood. His tongue was
unloosed, and his intellectual passions, so long pent up, were freed.
Had we not both read "The Ruins"! It was to him more than a book; it was
a symbol of the unutterable things of the mind. It was a passionate
protest against the narrow opinions of his neighbors. It stood for all
that was lifted above the petty gossip of the little community, and for
all that united him to an intellectual world of which he dreamed.
As we talked I marveled at the amount of sound philosophy this lonely
reader had extracted from "The Ruins." Or had it been that he had
brought the wisdom from his own meditation and deposited it at this
shrine? One can never be sure whether a text has suggested the thought
or the thought has illuminated the text.
When it happens that the man of one book has chosen a work of intrinsic
value, the result is a kind of knowledge which is of inestimable worth.
It is deeply interfused with the whole imaginative life, it is involved
in every personal experience.
The supreme example of such intimate knowledge was that which
generations of English speaking men had of the Bible. Apart from any
religious theory, this familiarity was a wonderful fact in the history
of culture. It meant that the ordinary man was not simply in his youth
but throughout his life brought into direct contact with great poetry,
sublime philosophy, vivid history. These were not reserved for state
occasions; they were the daily food of the mind. Into the plain fabric
of western thought was woven a thread of Oriental sentiment. Children
were as familiar with the names and incidents of remote ages and lands
as with their own neighborhood.
The important things about this culture of the common people was that it
came through mere reading. The Bible was printed "without note or
comment." The lack of critical apparatus and of preliminary training
was the cause of many incidental mistakes; but it prevented the greatest
mistake of all,--that of obscuring the text by the commentary.
In these days there has been a great advance in critical scholarship.
Much more is known about the Bible, at least by those who have made it
the object of special study; but there is a suspicion that fewer persons
know the Bible than in the days when there were no "study classes," but
only the habit of daily reading.
The Protestant insistence upon publishing the Scriptures without note or
comment was an effort to do away with the middle-men who stood between
the Book and its readers. Private judgment, it was declared, was a
sufficient interpreter even of the profoundest utterances. This is a
doctrine that needs to be revived and extended till it takes in all
great literature.
To come to a book as to a friend, to allow it to speak for itself,
without the intrusion of a third person, this is the substance of the
whole matter. There must be no hard and fast rules, no preconceived
opinions. Because the author has a reputation as a humorist, let him not
be received with an expectant smile. Nothing can be more disconcerting
to his sensitive spirit; and besides, how can you know that he has not a
very serious message to communicate? Because he is said to be capable of
sublimity, do not await him with overstrained sensibilities. Perhaps you
may find him much less sublime and much more entertaining than you had
anticipated. If the sublime vision does come, you will appreciate it all
the more if it comes upon you unawares.
"As cloud on cloud, as snow on snow, as the bird on the air, and the
planet on space in its flight, so do nations of men and their
institutions rest on thoughts."
If this be so, can there be any knowledge more important than the
knowledge of what a man actually thinks. "A penny for your thoughts," we
say lightly, knowing well that this hidden treasure cannot be bought.
The world may be described in formal fashion as if it were an unchanging
reality; but how the world appears to each inhabitant of it he alone can
declare. Or perhaps he cannot declare it, for most of us find it
impossible to tell what we really think or feel. In attempting to do it
we fall into conventionality, and succeed only in telling what we think
other people would like to have us think. Only now and then is one born
with the gift of true self-expression. In his speech we recognize a real
person, and not the confused murmur of a multitude. Institutions and
traditions do not account for him; this thought is the more fundamental
fact. Here is a unique bit of knowledge. There is no other way of
getting at it than that of the Gentle Reader,--to shut out the rest of
the world and listen to the man himself.
* * * * *
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
* * * * *
The following typographical error was corrected by the etext
transcriber:
the surprise of the Frenchman over the pirate's immaculate attire.=>the
surprise of the Frenchman over the pirates' immaculate attire.