LOVE AS A TEST OF GOODNESS.
[Greek: Erôta de, ton tyrannon andrôn,
Ton tas Aphroditas
Philtatôn thalamôn
Klêdouchon, ou sebizomen,
Perthonta.]--_Euripides._
I will again re-state, in other words than my own, the theory we are now
going to test by the actual facts of life. '_The assertion_,' says
Professor Huxley, '_that morality is in any way dependent on certain
philosophical problems, produces the same effect on my mind as if one
should say that a man's vision depends on his theory of sight, or that
he has no business to be sure that ginger is hot in his mouth, unless he
has formed definite views as to the nature of ginger_.' Or, to put the
matter in slightly different language, the sorts of happiness, we are
told, that are secured to us by moral conduct are facts, so far as
regards our own consciousness of them, as simple, as constant and as
universal, as is the perception of the outer world secured to us by our
eyesight, or as the sensation formed on the palate by the application of
ginger to it.
Love, for instance, according to this view, is as simple a delight for
men in its highest forms as it is for animals in its lowest. What George
Eliot calls '_the treasure of human affection_' depends as little for
its value on any beliefs outside itself as does the treasure of animal
appetite; and just as no want of religious faith can deprive the animals
of the last, so no want of religious faith can deprive mankind of the
first. It will remain a stable possession to us, amid the wreck of
creeds, giving life a solemn and intense value of its own. It will never
fail us as a sure test of conduct. Whatever guides us to this treasure
we shall know is moral; whatever tends to withdraw us from it we shall
know is immoral.
Such is the positivist theory as to all the higher pleasures of life, of
which affection confessedly is one of the chief, and also the most
obviously human. Let us proceed now from generalities to special
concrete facts, and see how far this theory is borne out by them. And we
can find none better than those which are now before us--the special
concrete facts of affection, and of sexual affection in particular.
The affection of man for woman--or, as it will be best to call it,
love--has been ever since time was, one of the chief elements in the
life of man. But it was not till Christianity had very fully developed
itself that it assumed the peculiar importance that is now claimed for
it. For the ancient world it was a passion sure to come to most men, and
that would bring joy or sorrow to them as the case might be. The
worldly wisdom of some convinced them that it gave more joy than sorrow;
so they took and used it as long as it chanced to please them. The
worldly wisdom of others convinced them that it gave more sorrow than
joy, so they did all they could, like Lucretius, to school themselves
into a contempt for it. But for the modern world it is on quite a
different footing, and its value does not depend on such a chance
balance of pains and pleasures. The latter are not of the same nature as
the former, and so cannot be outweighed by them. In the judgment of the
modern world,
'_Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all_.
To love, in fact, though not exactly said to be incumbent upon all men,
is yet endowed with something that is almost of the nature of a duty. If
a man cannot love, it is looked on as a sort of moral misfortune, if not
as a moral fault in him. And when a man can love, and does love
successfully, then it is held that his whole nature has burst out into
blossom. The imaginative literature of the modern world centres chiefly
about this human crisis; and its importance in literature is but a
reflection of its importance in life. It is, as it were, the sun of the
world of sentiment--the source of its lights and colours, and also of
its shadows. It is the crown of man's existence; it gives life its
highest quality; and, if we can believe what those who have known it
tell us, earth under its influence seems to be melting into, and to be
almost joined with, heaven.
All this language, however, about love, no matter how true in a certain
sense it may be, is emphatically true about it in a certain sense only,
and is by no means to be taken without reserve. It is emphatically not
true about love in general, but only about love as modified in a certain
special way. The form of the affection, so to speak, is more important
than the substance of it. It will need but little consideration to show
us that this is so. Love is a thing that can take countless forms; and
were not the form, for the modern world, the thing of the first
importance, the praise bestowed upon all forms of it would be equal, or
graduated only with reference to intensity. But the very reverse of this
is the case really. In our estimate of an affection, its intensity,
though doubtless of great importance, is yet of an importance that is
clearly secondary. Else things that the modern world regards as the most
abominable might be on a level with the things it regards as most pure
and holy; the lovers of Athens might even put to shame with their
passion the calm sacramental constancy of many a Christian pair; and the
whole fabric of modern morals would be undermined. For, according to
the modern conception of morals, love can not only give life its highest
quality, but its lowest also. If it can raise man to the angels, it can
also sink him below the beasts; and as to its intensity, it is a force
which will carry him in the one direction just as well as the other.
Kind and not degree is the first thing needful. It is the former, and
not the latter, that essentially separates David and Jonathan from
Harmodius and Aristogeiton, St. Elizabeth from Cleopatra, the beloved
disciple from Antinous. How shall we love? is the great question for us.
It comes long before, How much shall we love?
Let us imagine a bride and bridegroom of the type that would now be most
highly reverenced, and try to understand something of what their
affection is. It is, of course, impossible here to treat such a subject
adequately; for, as Mr. Carlyle says, '_except musically, and in the
language of poetry, it can hardly be so much as spoken about_.' But
enough for the present purpose can perhaps be said. In the first place,
then, the affection in question will be seen to rest mainly upon two
things--firstly, on the consciousness of their own respective characters
on the part of each; and, secondly, on the idea formed by each of the
character of the other. Each must have a faith, for instance, in his or
her own purity, and each must have a like faith, also in the purity of
the other. Thus, to begin with the first requisites, a man can only
love a woman in the highest sense when he does so with a perfectly clear
conscience. There must be no obstacle between them which shocks his
sense of right, or which, if known by the woman, would shock hers. Were
the affection indulged in, in spite of such an obstacle, its fine
quality would be injured, no matter how great its intensity; and,
instead of a moral blessing, it would become a moral curse. An exquisite
expression of the necessity of this personal sense of rightness may be
read into the well-known lines,
_I could not love thee, dear, so well,
Loved I not honour more._
Nor shall we look on _honour_ here as having reference only to external
acts and conditions. It has reference equally, if not more, to the
inward state of the heart. The man must be conscious not only that he is
loving the right woman, but that he is loving her in the right way. '_If
I loved not purity more than you_,' he would say to her, '_I were not
worthy of you_.'
And further, just as he requires to possess this taintless conscience
himself, so does he require to be assured that the like is possessed by
her. Unless he knows that she loves purity more than him, there is no
meaning in his aspiration that he may be found worthy of her. The gift
of her affection that is of such value to him, is not of value because
it is affection simply, but because it is affection of a high kind; and
its elevation is of more consequence to him than its intensity, or even
than its continuance. He would sooner that at the expense of its
intensity it remained pure, than that at the expense of its purity it
remained intense. Othello was certainly not a husband of the highest
type, and yet we see something of this even in his case. His sufferings
at his wife's supposed inconstancy have doubtless in them a large
selfish element. Much of them is caused by the mere passion of jealousy.
But the deepest sting of all does not lie here. It lies rather in the
thought of what his wife has done to herself, than of what she has done
to him. This is what overcomes him.
_The bawdy wind, that kisses all it meets,
Is hushed within the hollow mine of earth,
And will not hear it_.
He could have borne anything but a soul's tragedy like this:
_Alas! to make me
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!
Yet I could bear that too, well--very well:
But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where I must either live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in!_
Whenever he was with her, Desdemona might still be devoted to him. She
might only give to Cassio what she could not give to her husband. But to
Othello this would be no comfort. The fountain would be polluted '_from
which his current runs_'; and though its waters might still flow for
him, he would not care to touch them. If this feeling is manifest in
such a love as Othello's, much more is it manifest in love of a higher
type. It is expressed thus, for instance, by the heroine of Mrs.
Craven's '_Récit d'une Soeur_.' '_I can indeed say_,' she says, '_that
we never loved each other so much as when we saw how we both loved
God:_' and again, '_My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he
had not loved God a great deal more._' This language is of course
distinctly religious; but it embodies a meaning that is appreciated by
the positive school as well. In positivist language it might be
expressed thus: '_My husband would not have loved me as he did, if he
would not, sooner than love me in any other way, have ceased to love me
altogether._' It is clear that this sentiment is proper, nay essential,
to positivist affection, just as well as to Christian. Any pure and
exalted love would at once change its character, if, without any
further change, it merely believed it were free to change it. Its
strongest element is the consciousness, not that it is of such a
character only, but that this character is the right one. The ideal
bride and bridegroom, the ideal man and wife, would not value purity as
they are supposed to do, did they not believe that it was not only
different from impurity, but essentially and incalculably better than
it. For the positivist, just as much as the Christian, this sense of
rightness in love is interfused with the affection proper, and does as
it were give wings to it. It far more than makes good for the lovers any
loss of intensity that may be created by the chastening down of passion:
and figuratively at least, it may be said to make them conscious that
'_underneath them are the everlasting arms_.'
Here then in love, as the positive school at present offer it to us, are
all these three characteristics to which that school, as we have seen,
must renounce all right. It is characterised as conforming to some
special and absolute standard, of which no positive account can be
given; the conformity is inward, and so cannot be enforced; and for all
that positive knowledge can show us, its importance may be a dream.
We shall realise this better if we consider a love from which these
three characteristics have, as far as possible, been abstracted--a love
which professes frankly to rest upon its own attractions, and which
repudiates all such epithets as worse or better. This will at once show
us not only of what various developments the passion of love is capable,
but also how false it is to imagine that the highest kind need naturally
be the most attractive.
I have quoted Othello, and Mrs. Craven's heroine as types of love when
religionized. We will go to the modern Parisian school for the type of
love when de-religionized--a school which, starting from the same
premisses as do the positive moralists, yet come to a practical teaching
that is singularly different. And let us remember that just as the ideal
we have been considering already, is the ideal most ardently looked to
by one part of the world, so is the ideal we are going to consider now,
looked to with an equal ardour by another part of the world. The writer
in particular from whom I am about to quote has been one of the most
popular of all modern romancers; and has been hailed by men of the most
fastidious culture as a preacher to these latter generations of a bolder
and more worthy gospel. '_This_,'[15] says one of the best known of our
living poets, of the work that I select to quote from--
_This is the golden book of spirit and sense,
The holy writ of beauty._
Of this '_holy writ_' the chief theme is love. Let us go on to see how
love is there presented to us.
'_You know_,' says Théophile Gautier's best-known hero, in a letter to a
friend, '_you know the eagerness with which I have sought for physical
beauty, the importance I attach to outward form, and how the world I am
in love with is the world that the eyes can see: or to put the matter in
more conventional language, I am so corrupt and blasé that my faith in
moral beauty is gone, and my power of striving after it also. I have
lost the faculty to discern between good and evil, and this loss has
well nigh brought me back to the ignorance of the child or savage. To
tell the plain truth, nothing seems to me to be worthy either of praise
or blame, and I am but little perturbed by even the most abnormal
actions. My conscience is deaf and dumb. Adultery seems to me the most
commonplace thing possible. I see nothing shocking in a young girl
selling herself.'... 'I find that the earth is all as fair as heaven,
and virtue for me is nothing but the perfection of form.' 'Many a time
and long_,' he continues farther on, '_have I paused in some cathedral,
under the shadow of the marble foliage, when the lights were quivering
in through the stained windows, when the organ unbidden made a low
murmuring of itself, and the wind was breathing amongst the pipes; and I
have plunged my gaze far into the pale blue depths of the almond-shaped
eyes of the Madonna. I have followed with a tender reverence the curves
of that wasted figure of hers, and the arch of her eyebrows, just
visible and no more than that. I have admired her smooth and lustrous
brow, her temples with their transparent chastity, and her cheeks shaded
with a sober virginal colour, more tender than the colour of a
peach-flower. I have counted one by one the fair and golden lashes that
threw their tremulous shade upon it. I have traced out with care in the
subdued tone that surrounds her, the evanescent lines of her throat, so
fragile and inclined so modestly. I have even lifted with an adventuring
hand the folds of her tunic, and have seen unveiled that bosom, maiden
and full of milk, that has never been pressed by any except divine lips.
I have traced out the rare clear veins of it, even to their faintest
branchings. I have laid my finger on it, to draw the white drops forth,
of the draught of heaven. I have so much as touched with my lips the
very bud of the_ rosa mystica.
'_Well, and I confess it honestly, all this immaterial beauty, this
thing so winged and so aerial that one knows well enough it is soon
going to fly away from one, has never moved me to any great degree. I
love the Venus Anadyomene better, better a thousand times. These
old-world eyes, slightly raised at the corners! these lips so pure and
so firmly chiselled, so amorous, and so fit for kissing! this low,
broad brow! these tresses with the curves in them of the sea water, and
bound behind her head in a knot, negligently! these firm and shining
shoulders! this back, with its thousand alluring contours! all these
fair and rounded outlines, this air of superhuman vigour in a body so
divinely feminine--all this enraptures and enchants me in a way of which
you can have no idea--you the Christian and the philosopher._
'_Mary, despite the humble air affected by her, is a deal too haughty
for me. It is as much as her foot does, swathed in its white coverings,
if it just touches the earth, now purpling where the old serpent
writhes. Her eyes are the loveliest eyes in the world; but they are
always turned heavenwards, or else they are cast down. They never look
you straight in the face. They have never served as the mirror of a
human form.... Venus comes, from the sea to take possession of the
world, as a goddess who loves men should--quite naked and quite alone.
Earth is more to her liking than is Olympus, and amongst her lovers she
has more men than gods. She drapes herself in no faint veils of mystery.
She stands straight upright, her dolphin behind her, and her foot upon
her opal-coloured shell. The sun strikes full upon her smooth limbs, and
her white hand holds in air the waves of her fair locks, which old
father Ocean has sprinkled with his most perfect pearls. One can see
her. She hides nothing; for modesty was only made for those who have no
beauty. It is an invention of the modern world; the child of the
Christian contempt for form and matter._
'_Oh ancient world! all that you held in reverence is held in scorn by
us. Thine idols are overthrown in the dust; fleshless anchorites clad in
rags and tatters, martyrs with the blood fresh on them, and their
shoulders torn by the tigers of thy circuses, have perched themselves on
the pedestals of thy fair desirable gods. The Christ has enveloped the
whole world in his winding-sheet.... Oh purity, plant of bitterness,
born on a blood-soaked soil, and whose degenerate and sickly blossom
expands with difficulty in the dank shade of cloisters, under a chill
baptismal rain; rose without scent, and spiked all round with thorns,
thou hast taken the place for us of the glad and gracious roses, bathed
with nard and wine, of the dancing girls of Sybaris!_
'_The ancient world knew thee not, oh sterile flower! thou wast never
enwoven in its chaplets of delirious perfume. In that vigorous and
healthy society they would have spurned thee under foot disdainfully.
Purity, mysticism, melancholy--three words unknown to thee, three new
maladies brought into our life by the Christ!... For me, I look on
woman in the old world manner, like a fair slave, made only for our
pleasures. Christianity, in my eyes, has done nothing to rehabilitate
her.... To say the truth, I cannot conceive for what reason there should
be this desire in woman to be looked on as on a level with men.... I
have made some love-verses in my time, or at least something that
aspired to pass for such ... and there is not a vestige in them of the
modern feeling of love.... There is nothing there, as in all the
love-poetry since the Christian era, of a soul which, because it loves,
begs another soul to love it back again; nothing there of a blue and
shining lake, which begs a stream to pour itself into its bosom, that
both together they may mirror the stars of heaven; nothing there of a
pair of ring-doves, opening their wings together, that they may both
together fly to the same nest._'[16]
Such is the account the hero gives of the nature of his love for woman.
Nor does he give this account regretfully, or think that it shows him to
be in any diseased condition. It shows rather a return, on his part, to
a health that others have lost. As he looks round upon the modern world
and the purity that George Eliot says in her verses she would die for,
'_Woman_,' he exclaims mournfully, '_is become the symbol of moral and
physical beauty. The real fall of man was on the birthday of the babe
of Bethlehem_.'[17] It will be instructive to notice further that these
views are carried out by him to their full legitimate consequences, even
though this, to some degree, is against his will. '_Sometimes_,' he
says, '_I try to persuade myself that such passions are abominable, and
I say as much to myself in as severe a way as I can. But the words come
only from my lips. They are arguments that I make. They are not
arguments that I feel. The thing in question really seems quite natural
to me, and anyone else in my place would, it seems to me, do as I
do._'[18]
Nor is this conception of love peculiar to the hero only. The heroine's
conception is its exact counterpart, and exactly fits it. The heroine as
completely as the hero has freed herself from any discernment between
good and evil. She recoils from abnormal impurity no more than from
normal, and the climax of the book is her full indulgence in both.
Now here we have a specimen of love raised to intensity, but divested as
far as possible of the religious element. I say divested as far as
possible, because even here, as I shall prove hereafter, the process is
not complete, and something of religion is still left fermenting. But it
is quite complete enough for our present purpose. It will remind us in
the sharpest and clearest way that love is no force which is naturally
constant in its development, or which if left to itself can be in any
way a moral director to us. It will show us that many of its
developments are what the moralist calls abominable, and that the very
worst of these may perhaps be the most attractive, and be deliberately
presented to us as such by men of the most elaborate culture. We shall
thus see that love as a test of conduct, as an aim of life, or as an
object of any heroic devotion, is not love in general, but love of a
special kind, and that to fulfil this function it must not only be
selected from the rest, but also removed from them, and set above them
at a quite incalculable distance. And the kind thus chosen, let me
repeat again (for this, though less obvious, is more important still),
is not chosen because it is naturally intense, but it becomes intense
because it is the chosen one.
Here then lies the weak point in the position of the positive moralists,
when they hold up such love to us as so supreme a treasure in life. They
observe, and quite correctly, that it is looked upon as a treasure; but
the source of its preciousness is something that their system expressly
takes from it. That choice amongst the loves, so solemn and so imperious
and yet so tender, which descends like a tongue of flame upon the love
it delights to honour; which fixes on a despised and a weak affection,
taking it like Elisha from his furrows, or like David from his
pastures, setting it above all its fellows, and making it at once a
queen and prophetess--this is a choice that positivism has no power to
make; or which, if it makes, it makes only a caprice, or a listless
preference. It does not, indeed, confound pure love with impure, but it
sets them on an equal footing; and those who contend that the former
under these conditions is intrinsically more attractive to men than the
latter, betray a most naïve ignorance of what human nature is.
Supposing, for argument's sake, that to themselves it may be so, this
fact is not of the slightest use to them. It is merely the possession on
their part of a certain personal taste, which those who do not share it
may regard as disease or weakness, and which they themselves can neither
defend nor inculcate. It is true they may call their opponents hard
names if they choose; but their opponents can call them hard names back
again; but in the absence of any common standard, the recriminations on
neither side can have the least sting in them. Could, however, any
argument on such a matter be possible, it is the devotees of impurity
that would have the strongest case; for the pleasures of indulgence are
admitted by both sides, while the merits of abstention are admitted by
only one.
Let us go back, for instance, in connection with this matter, to what
Professor Huxley has told us is the grand result of education. It leads
us away, he says, from '_the rank and steaming valleys of sense_,' up to
the '_highest good_,' which is '_discerned by reason_,' '_resting in
eternal calm_.' And let us ask him again, what, as uttered by a
positivist, these words can by any possibility mean. '_The rank and
steaming valleys of sense_'! Why are they rank and steaming? Or, if they
are, why is that any condemnation of them? Or, if we do condemn them,
what else are we to praise? The entire raw material, not of our
pleasures only, but of our knowledge also, is given us, say the positive
school, by the senses. Surely then to condemn the senses must be to
condemn life. Let us imagine Professor Huxley talking in this way to
Théophile Gautier. Let us imagine him frowning grimly at the licentious
Frenchman, and urging him with all vehemence to turn to the _highest
good_. The answer will at once be, '_That is exactly, my dear Professor,
what I do turn to. And, listen_,' he might say--the following is again a
passage from his own writings--'_to the way in which I figure the
highest good to myself. It is a huge building, with its outer walls all
blind and windowless; a huge court within, surrounded by a colonnade of
white marble; in the midst a musical fountain with a jet of quick-silver
in the Arabian fashion; leaves of orange-trees and pomegranates placed
alternately; overhead the bluest of skies and the mellowest of suns;
great long-nosed greyhounds should be sleeping here and there; from time
to time barefoot negresses with golden ankle-rings, fair women servants
white and slender, and clad in rich strange garments, should pass
between the hollow arches, basket on arm, or urn poised on head._[19]
_Three things give me pleasure, gold, marble, and purple--brilliance,
mass, and colour. These are the stuffs out of which my dreams are made;
and all my ideal palaces are constructed of these materials._'[20] What
answer could Professor Huxley make to this that would not seem to the
other at once barbarous and nonsensical? The best answer he could make
would be simply, '_I do not agree with you_.' And to this again the
answer would at once be, '_That is because you are still hampered by
prejudices, whose only possible foundations we have both removed; and
because I am a man of culture, and you are not._'
Let us also consider again that other utterance of Professor Huxley's,
with which I began this chapter. According to the positive view of
morals, he says, those special sets of happiness that a moral system
selects for us, have no more to do with any theory as to the reason of
their selection, than a man's sight has to do with his theory of vision,
or than the hot taste of ginger has to do with a knowledge of its
analysis. That is a most clear and succinct statement of the whole
positive position; and we shall now be able to profit by its clearness,
and to see how all that it does is to reveal confusion. In the first
place, Professor Huxley's comparisons really illustrate the very fact
that he designs them to invalidate. It is precisely on his theory of
vision that a man's sight practically does depend. All sight, so far as
it conveys any meaning to him, is an act of inference; and though
generally this process may be so rapid that it is not perceived by him,
yet the doubt often felt about distant or unusual objects will make him
keenly conscious of it. Whilst as to ginger and the taste produced by
it, the moral question is not whether it is hot or not; but whether or
no it will be for our advantage to eat it; and this resolves itself into
two further questions; firstly, whether its heat is pleasant, and
secondly whether its heat is wholesome. On the first of these Professor
Huxley throws no light whatever; whilst as to the second, it really
hangs entirely on the very point that he cited as indifferent. We must
have some knowledge, even though it be only vague and negative, of the
nature of a food, before we know whether it will be well for us in the
long run to habitually eat it, or to abstain from it.
Let us apply this illustration to love. Professor Huxley's ginger shall
stand for the sort of love he would most approve of; and love, as a
whole, will be represented by a varied dessert, of which ginger is one
of the dishes. Now what Professor Huxley has to do is to recommend this
ginger, and to show that it is divided by an infinite gulf--say from
prunes or from Huntley and Palmer's biscuits. But how is he to do this?
To say that ginger is hot is to say nothing. To many, that may condemn
instead of recommending it: and they will have as much to say for their
own tastes if they rejoin that prunes and biscuits are sweet. If he can
prove to them that what they choose is unwholesome, and that if they eat
it they will be too unwell to say their prayers, then, supposing they
want to say their prayers, he will have gained his point. But if he
cannot prove that it is unwholesome, or if his friends have no prayers
to say, his entire recommendation dwindles to a declaration of his own
personal taste. But in this case his whole tone will be different. There
will be nothing in it of the moral imperative. He will be only laughed
at and not listened to, if he proclaims his own taste in sweetmeats with
all the thunders of Sinai. And the choice between the various kinds of
love is, on positive principles, only a choice between sweetmeats. It is
this, and nothing more, than this, avowedly; and yet the positivists
would keep for it the earnest language of the Christian, for whom it is
a choice, not between sweetmeats and sweetmeats, but between a
confectioner's wafer and the Host.
It may perhaps be urged by some that, according to this view of it,
purity is degraded into a bitter something, which we only accept
reluctantly, through fear of the consequences of its alternatives. And
it is quite true that a fear of the consequences of wrong love is
inseparably connected with our sense of the value of right love. But
this is a necessity of the case; the quality of the right love is in no
way lowered by it, and it will lead us to consider another important
point.
It is impossible to hold that one thing is incalculably better than
others, without holding also that others are incalculably worse than it.
Indeed, the surest test we can give of the praise we bestow on what we
choose, is the measure of condemnation we bestow on what we reject. If
we maintain that virtuous love constitutes its own heaven, we must also
maintain that vicious love constitutes its own hell. If we cannot do the
last we certainly cannot do the first. And the positive school can do
neither. It can neither elevate one kind of love nor depress the others;
and for this reason. The results of love in both cases are, according to
their teaching, bounded by our present consciousness; and our present
consciousness, divorced from all future expectation, has no room in it
for so vast an interval as all moral systems postulate between the
right love and the wrong. Indeed, if happiness be the test of right, it
cannot, as a general truth, be said that they are practically separable
at all. It is notorious that, as far as the present life goes, a man of
even the vilest affections may effectually elude all pain from them.
Sometimes they may injure his health, it is true; but they need not even
do that; and if they do, it necessitates no moral condemnation of them,
for many heroic labours would do just the same. Injury to the health, at
any rate, is a mere accident; so is also injury to the reputation; and
conditions are easily conceivable by which both these dangers would be
obviated. The supposed evils of impurity have but a very slight
reference to these. They depend, not on any present consciousness, but
on the expectations of a future consciousness--a consciousness that will
reveal things to us hereafter which we can only augur here.
_I do not know them now, but after death
God knows I know the faces I shall see:
Each one a murdered self with last low breath,
'I am thyself; what hast thou done to me?'
'And I, and I thyself!' lo each one saith,
'And thou thyself, to all eternity.'_[21]
Such is the expectation on which the supposed evils of impurity depend.
According to positive principles, the expectation will never be
fulfilled; the evils therefore exist only in a diseased imagination.
And with the beauty of purity the case is just the same. According to
the view which the positivists have adopted, so little counting the cost
of it, a pure human affection is a union of two things. It is not a
possession only, but a promise; not a sentiment only, but a
_pre_-sentiment; not a taste only, but a foretaste; and the chief
sweetness said to be found in the former, is dependent altogether upon
the latter. '_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God_,'
is the belief which, whether true or false as a fact, is implied in the
whole modern cultus of love, and the religious reverence with which it
has come to be regarded. In no other way can we explain either its
eclecticism or its supreme importance. Nor is the belief in question a
thing that is implied only. Continually it is expressed also, and this
even by writers who theoretically repudiate it. Goethe, for instance,
cannot present the moral aspects of Margaret's love-story without
assuming it. And George Eliot has been obliged to presuppose it in her
characters, and to exhibit the virtues she regards as noblest, on the
pedestal of a belief that she regards as most irrational. But its
completest expression is naturally to be found elsewhere. Here, for
instance, is a verse of Mr. Robert Browning's, who, however we rank him
otherwise, is perhaps unrivalled for his subtle analysis of the
emotions:
_Dear, when our one soul understands
The great soul that makes all things new,
When earth breaks up, and heaven expands,
How will the change strike me and you,
In the house not made with hands?_
Here, again, is another, in which the same sentiment is presented in a
somewhat different form:
_Is there nought better than to enjoy?
No deed which done, will make time break,
Letting us pent-up creatures through
Into eternity, our due--
No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?_
_No wise beginning, here and now,
Which cannot grow complete (earth's feat)
And heaven must finish there and then?
No tasting earth's true food for men,
Its sweet in sad, its sad in sweet?_
To the last of these verses a singular parallel may be found in the
works of a much earlier, and a very different writer, only the affection
there dealt with is filial and not marital. In spite of this difference,
however, it will still be much in point.
'_The day was fast approaching_,' says Augustine, '_whereon my mother
was to depart this life, when it happened, Lord, as I believe by thy
special ordinance, that she and I were alone together, leaning in a
certain window that looked into the garden of the house, where we were
then staying at Ostia. We were talking together alone, very sweetly, and
were wondering what the life would be of God's saints in heaven. And
when our discourse was come to that point, that the highest delight and
brightest of all the carnal senses seemed not fit to be so much as named
with that life's sweetness, we, lifting ourselves yet more ardently to
the Unchanging One, did by degrees pass through all things
bodily--beyond the heaven even, and the sun and stars. Yea, we soared
higher yet by inward musing. We came to our own minds, and we passed
beyond them, that we might reach that place of plenty, where Thou
feedest Israel for ever with the food of truth, and where life is the
Wisdom by which all these things are made. And whilst we were
discoursing and panting after her, we slightly touched on her with the
whole effort of our heart; and we sighed, and there left bound the first
fruits of the spirit, and came back again to the sounds of our own
mouths--to our own finite language. And what we then said was in this
wise: If to any the tumult of the flesh were hushed, hushed the images
of the earth and air and waters, hushed too the poles of heaven, yea the
very soul be hushed to herself, and by not thinking on self transcend
self, hushed all dreams and imaginary revelations, every tongue and
every sign, and whatever exists only in transition--if these should all
be hushed, having only roused our ears to Him that made them, and He
speak alone, not by them but by Himself, that we might hear His word,
not through any tongue of flesh, nor angel's voice, nor sound of
thunder, nor in the dark riddle of a similitude, but might hear Him,
whom in these things we love--His very self without any aid from these
(even as we two for that brief moment had touched the eternal
Wisdom)--could this be continued on, and other visions, far unlike it,
be withdrawn, and this one ravish and absorb and wrap up its beholders
amid these inward joys, so that life might be for ever like that one
moment of understanding, were not this, Enter thou into the joy of thy
Lord? And when shall that be? Shall it be when we rise again, but shall
not all be changed?_'[22]
In this exceedingly striking passage we have the whole case before us.
The belief on which modern love rests, and which makes it so single and
so sacred is, as it were, drawn for us on an enlarged scale: and we see
that it is a belief to which positivism has no right. The belief,
indeed, is by no means a modern thing. Rudiments of it on the contrary
are as old as man himself, and may represent a something that inheres in
his very nature. But none the more for this will it be of any service to
the positivist; for this something can only be of power or value if the
prophecy it inevitably developes into be regarded as a true one. In the
consciousness of the ancient world it lay undeciphered like the dark
sentence of an oracle; and though it might be revered by some, it could
not be denied by any. But its meaning is now translated for us, and
there is a new factor in the case. We now can deny it; and if we do, its
whole power is paralysed.
This when once recognised must be evident enough. But a curious
confusion of thought has prevented the positive school from seeing it.
They have imagined that what religion adds to love is the hope of
prolongation only, not of development also; and thus we find Professor
Huxley curtly dismissing the question by saying that the quality of such
a pleasure '_is obviously in no way affected by the abbreviation or
prolongation of our conscious life_.' How utterly this is beside the
point may be shown instantly by a very simple example. A painter, we
will say, inspired with some great conception, sets to work at a
picture, and finds a week of the intensest happiness in preparing his
canvas and laying his first colours. Now the happiness of that week is,
of course, a fact for him. It would not have been greater had it lasted
a whole fortnight; and it would not have been less had he died at the
week's end. But though obviously, as Professor Huxley says, it in no way
depends on its prolongation, what it does depend on is the belief that
it will be prolonged, and that in being prolonged it will change its
character. It depends on the belief on the painter's part that he will
be able to continue his painting, and that as he continues it, his
picture will advance to completion. The positivists have confused the
true saying that the pleasure of painting one picture does not depend on
the fact that we shall paint many, with the false saying that the
pleasure of beginning that one does not depend on the belief that we
shall finish it. On this last belief it is plain that the pleasure does
depend, largely if not entirely; and it is precisely this last belief
that positivism takes away.
To return again, then, to the subject of human love--we are now in a
position to see that, as offered us at present by the positive school of
moralists, it cannot, properly speaking, be called a positive pleasure
at all, but that, it is still essentially a religious one; and that when
the religious element is eradicated, its entire character will change.
It may be, of course, contended that the religious element is
ineradicable: but this is simply either to call positivism an
impossibility, or religion an incurable disease. Here, however, we are
touching on a side issue, which I shall by and by return to, but which
is at present beside the point. My aim now is not to argue either that
positivism can or cannot be accepted by humanity, but to show what, if
accepted, it will have to offer us. I wish to point out the error, for
instance, of such writers as George Eliot, who, whilst denying the
existence of any sun-god in the heavens, are yet perpetually adoring the
sunlight on the earth; who profess to extinguish all fire on principle,
and then offer us boiling water to supply its place; or who, sending
love to us as a mere Cassandra, continue to quote as Scripture the
prophecies they have just discredited.
Thus far what we have seen is this. Love as a positive pleasure, if it
be ever reduced to such, will be a very different thing from what our
positivist moralists at present see it to be. It will perform none of
those functions for which they now look to it. It will no longer supply
them, as now, with any special pinnacle on which human life may raise
itself. The one type of it that is at present on an eminence will sink
to the same level as the others. All these will be offered to us
indiscriminately, and our choice between them will have no moral value.
None of the ethical epithets by which these varieties are at present so
sharply distinguished from each other will have any virtue left in them.
Morality in this connection will be a word without a meaning.
I have as yet dealt only with one of those resources, which have been
supposed to impart to life a positive general value. This one, however,
has been the most important and the most comprehensive of all; and its
case will explain that of the others, and perhaps, with but few
exceptions, include them. One or two of these others I shall by and by
treat separately; but we will first enquire into the results on life of
the change we have been considering already.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] Mr. A.C. Swinburne.
[16] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, pp. 213-222. Ed. Paris. 1875.
[17] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, p. 223.
[18] _Ibid._, p. 225.
[19] _Mademoiselle de Maupin_, p. 222.
[20] _Ibid._, p. 211.
[21] Dante Gabriel Rosetti.
[22] Aug. Conf., lib. ix. In the earlier part of the passage the extreme
redundancy of the original has been curtailed somewhat. In the rendering
here given I have to a great extent followed Dr. Pusey.