Ethics and Character.
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Ethical Fragments.
1.
Bacon says, how wisely! that "there is often as great vanity in
withdrawing and retiring men's conceits from the world, as in obtruding
them." Extreme vanity sometimes hides under the garb of ultra modesty.
When I see people haunted by the idea of self,--spreading their hands
before their faces lest they meet the reflection of it in every other
face, as if the world were to them like a French drawing-room, panelled
with looking glass,--always fussily putting their obtrusive self behind
them, or dragging over it a scanty drapery of consciousness, miscalled
modesty,--always on their defence against compliments, or mistaking
sympathy for compliment, which is as great an error, and a more vulgar
one than mistaking flattery for sympathy,--when I see all this, as I have
seen it, I am inclined to attribute it to the immaturity of the
character, or to what is worse, a total want of simplicity. To some
characters fame is like an intoxicating cup placed to the lips,--they do
well to turn away from it, who fear it will turn their heads. But to
others, fame is "love disguised," the love that answers to love, in its
widest most exalted sense. It seems to me, that we should all bring the
best that is in us (according to the diversity of gifts which God has
given us), and lay it a reverend offering on the altar of humanity,--if
not to burn and enlighten, at least to rise in incense to heaven. So
will the pure in heart, and the unselfish do; and they will not heed if
those who _can_ bring nothing or _will_ bring nothing, unless they can
blaze like a beacon, call out "VANITY!"
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2.
There are truths which, by perpetual repetition, have subsided into
passive truisms, till, in some moment of feeling or experience, they
kindle into conviction, start to life and light, and the truism becomes
again a vital truth.
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3.
It is well that we obtain what we require at the cheapest possible rate;
yet those who cheapen goods, or beat down the price of a good article,
or buy in preference to what is good and genuine of its kind an inferior
article at an inferior price, sometimes do much mischief. Not only do
they discourage the production of a better article, but if they be
anxious about the education of the lower classes they undo with one hand
what they do with the other; they encourage the mere mechanic and the
production of what may be produced without effort of mind and without
education, and they discourage and wrong the skilled workman for whom
education has done much more and whose education has cost much more.
Every work so merely and basely mechanical, that a man can throw into it
no part of his own life and soul, does, in the long run, degrade the
human being. It is only by giving him some kind of mental and moral
interest in the labour of his hands, making it an exercise of his
understanding, and an object of his sympathy, that we can really elevate
the workman; and this is not the case with very cheap production of any
kind. (Southampton, Dec. 1849.)
Since this was written the same idea has been carried out, with far more
eloquent reasoning, in a noble passage which I have just found in Mr.
Ruskin's last volume of "The Stones of Venice" (the Sea Stories). As I
do not _always_ subscribe to his theories of Art, I am the more
delighted with this anticipation of a moral agreement between us.
"We have much studied and much perfected of late, the great civilised
invention of the division of labour, only we give it a false name. It is
not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided, but the men:--divided
into mere segments of men,--broken into small fragments and crumbs of
life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man
is not enough to make a pin or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the
point of a pin or the head of a nail. Now, it is a good and desirable
thing truly to make many pins in a day, but if we could only see with
what crystal sand their points are polished--sand of human soul, much to
be magnified before it can be discerned for what it is,--we should think
there might be some loss in it also; and the great cry that rises from
all our manufacturing cities, louder than their furnace-blast, is all in
very deed for this,--that we manufacture everything there except men,--we
blanch cotton, and strengthen steel, and refine sugar, and shape
pottery; but to brighten, to strengthen, to refine, or to form a single
living spirit, never enters into our estimate of advantages; and all the
evil to which that cry is urging our myriads, can be met only in one
way,--not by teaching nor preaching; for to teach them is but to show
them their misery; and to preach to them--if we do nothing more than
preach,--is to mock at it. It can be met only by a right understanding on
the part of all classes, of what kinds of labour are good for men,
raising them and making them happy; by a determined sacrifice of such
convenience, or beauty or cheapness, as is to be got only by the
degradation of the workman, and by equally determined demand for the
products and results of a healthy and ennobling labour." ....
"We are always in these days trying to separate the two (intellect and
work). We want one man to be always thinking, and another to be always
working; and we call one a gentleman and the other an operative;
whereas, the workman ought to be often thinking, and the thinker often
working, and both should be gentlemen in the best sense. It is only by
labour that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labour
can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity."
Wordsworth, however, had said the same thing before either of us:
"Our life is turn'd
Out of her course wherever man is made
An offering or a sacrifice,--a tool
Or implement,--a passive thing employed
As a brute mean, without acknowledgment
Of common right or interest in the end,
Used or abused as selfishness may prompt.
Say what can follow for a rational soul
Perverted thus, but weakness in all good
And strength in evil?"
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And this leads us to the consideration of another mistake, analogous
with the above, but referable in its results chiefly to the higher, or
what Mr. Ruskin calls the _thinking_, classes of the community.
It is not good for us to have all that we value of worldly material
things in the form of money. It is the most vulgar form in which value
can be invested. Not only books, pictures, and all beautiful things are
better; but even jewels and trinkets are sometimes to be preferred to
mere hard money. Lands and tenements are good, as involving duties; but
still what is valuable in the market sense should sometimes take the
ideal and the beautiful form, and be dear and lovely and valuable for
its own sake as well as for its convertible worth in hard gold. I think
the character would be apt to deteriorate when all its material
possessions take the form of money, and when money becomes valuable for
its own sake, or as the mere instrument or representative of power.
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4.
We are told in a late account of Laura Bridgeman, the blind, deaf, and
dumb girl, that her instructor once endeavoured to explain the
difference between the material and the immaterial, and used the word
"soul." She interrupted to ask, "What is soul?"
"That which thinks, feels, hopes, loves,----"
"And _aches_?" she added eagerly.
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5.
I was reading to-day in the Notes to Boswell's Life of Johnson that "it
is a theory which every one knows to be _false in fact_, that virtue in
real life is always productive of happiness, and vice of misery." I
should say that all my experience teaches me that the position is not
false but true: that virtue _does_ produce happiness, and vice _does_
produce misery. But let us settle the meaning of the words. By
_happiness_, we do not necessarily mean a state of worldly prosperity.
By _virtue_, we do not mean a series of good actions which may or may
not be rewarded, and, if done for reward, lose the essence of virtue.
Virtue, according to my idea, is the habitual sense of right, and the
habitual courage to act up to that sense of right, combined with
benevolent sympathies, the charity which thinketh no evil. This union of
the highest conscience and the highest sympathy fulfils my notion of
virtue. Strength is essential to it; weakness incompatible with it.
Where virtue is, the noblest faculties and the softest feelings are
predominant; the whole being is in that state of harmony which I call
happiness. Pain may reach it, passion may disturb it, but there is
always a glimpse of blue sky above our head; as we ascend in dignity of
being, we ascend in happiness, which is, in my sense of the word, the
feeling which connects us with the infinite and with God.
And vice is necessarily misery: for that fluctuation of principle, that
diseased craving for excitement, that weakness out of which springs
falsehood, that suspicion of others, that discord with ourselves, with
the absence of the benevolent propensities,--these constitute misery as a
state of being. The most miserable person I ever met with in my life had
12,000_l._ a year; a cunning mind, dexterous to compass its own ends;
very little conscience, not enough, one would have thought, to vex with
any retributive pang; but it was the absence of goodness that made the
misery, obvious and hourly increasing. The perpetual kicking against the
pricks, the unreasonable _exigéance_ with regard to things, without any
high standard with regard to persons,--these made the misery. I can speak
of it as misery who had it daily in my sight for five long years.
I have had arguments, if it be not presumption to call them so, with
Carlyle on this point. It appeared to me that he confounded happiness
with pleasure, with self-indulgence. He set aside with a towering scorn
the idea of living for the sake of happiness, so called: he styled this
philosophy of happiness, "the philosophy of the frying-pan." But this
was like the reasoning of a child, whose idea of happiness is plenty of
sugar-plums. Pleasure, pleasurable sensation, is, as the world goes,
something to thank God for. I should be one of the last to undervalue
it; I hope I am one of the last to live for it; and pain is pain, a
great evil, which I do not like either to inflict or suffer. But
happiness lies beyond either pain or pleasure--is as sublime a thing as
virtue itself, indivisible from it; and under this point of view it
seems a perilous mistake to separate them.
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6.
Dante places in his lowest Hell those who in life were melancholy and
repining without a cause, thus profaning and darkening God's blessed
sunshine--_Tristi fummo nel' aer dolce_; and in some of the ancient
Christian systems of virtues and vices, Melancholy is unholy, and a
vice; Cheerfulness is holy, and a virtue.
Lord Bacon also makes one of the characteristics of moral health and
goodness to consist in "a constant quick sense of felicity, and a noble
satisfaction."
What moments, hours, days of exquisite felicity must Christ, our
Redeemer, have had, though it has become too customary to place him
before us only in the attitude of pain and sorrow! Why should he be
always crowned with thorns, bleeding with wounds, weeping over the world
he was appointed to heal, to save, to reconcile with God? The radiant
head of Christ in Raphael's Transfiguration should rather be our ideal
of Him who came "to bind up the broken-hearted, to preach the acceptable
year of the Lord."
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7.
A profound intellect is weakened and narrowed in general power and
influence by a limited range of sympathies. I think this is especially
true of C----: excellent, honest, gifted as he is, he does not do half the
good he might do, because his sympathies are so confined. And then he
wants gentleness: he does not seem to acknowledge that "the wisdom that
is from above is _gentle_." He is a man who carries his bright intellect
as a light in a dark-lantern; he sees only the objects on which he
chooses to throw that blaze of light: those he sees vividly, but, as it
were, exclusively. All other things, though lying near, are dark,
because perversely he _will_ not throw the light of his mind upon them.
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8.
Wilhelm von Humboldt says, "Old letters lose their vitality."
Not true. It is because they retain their vitality that it is so
dangerous to keep some letters,--so wicked to burn others.
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9.
A Man thinks himself, and is thought by others to be insulted when
another man gives him the lie. It is an offence to be retracted at once,
or only to be effaced in blood. To give a woman the lie is not
considered in the same unpardonable light by herself or others,--is
indeed a slight thing. Now, whence this difference? Is not truth as
dear to a woman as to a man? Is the virtue itself, or the reputation of
it, less necessary to the woman than to the man? If not, what causes
this distinction,--one so injurious to the morals of both sexes?
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10.
It is good for us to look up, morally and mentally. If I were tired I
would get some help to hold my head up, as Moses got some one to hold up
his arms while he prayed.
"Ce qui est moins que moi m'éteint et m'assomme; ce qui est à côté de
moi m'ennuie et me fatigue. II n'y a que ce qui est au-dessus de moi qui
me soutienne et m'arrache à moi-même."
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11.
There is an order of writers who, with characters perverted or hardened
through long practice of iniquity, yet possess an inherent divine sense
of the good and the beautiful, and a passion for setting it forth, so
that men's hearts glow with the tenderness and the elevation which live
not in the heart of the writer,--only in his head.
And there is another class of writers who are excellent in the social
relations of life, and kindly and true in heart, yet who,
intellectually, have a perverted pleasure in the ridiculous and
distorted, the cunning, the crooked, the vicious,--who are never weary of
holding up before us finished representations of folly and rascality.
Now, which is the worst of these? the former, who do mischief by making
us mistrust the good? or the latter, who degrade us by making us
familiar with evil?
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12.
"Thought and theory," said Wordsworth, "must precede all action that
moves to salutary purposes. Yet action is nobler in itself than either
thought or theory."
Yes, and no. What we _act_ has its consequences on earth. What we
_think_, its consequences in heaven. It is not without reason that
action should be preferred before barren thought; but all action which
in its result is worth any thing, must result from thought. So the old
rhymester hath it:
"He that good thinketh good may do,
And God will help him there unto;
For was never good work wrought,
Without beginning of good thought."
The result of impulse is the positive; the result of consideration the
negative. The positive is essentially and abstractedly better than the
negative, though relatively to facts and circumstances it may not be the
most expedient.
On my observing how often I had had reason to regret not having followed
the first impulse, O. G. said, "In _good_ minds the first impulses are
generally right and true, and, when altered or relinquished from regard
to expediency arising out of complicated relations, I always feel sorry,
for they remain right. Our first impulses always lean to the positive,
our second thoughts to the negative; and I have no respect for the
negative,--it is the vulgar side of every thing."
On the other hand, it must be conceded, that one who stands endowed with
great power and with great responsibilities in the midst of a thousand
duties and interests, can no longer take things in this simple fashion;
for the good first impulse, in its flow, meets, perhaps, some rock, and
splits upon it; it recoils on the heart, and becomes abortive. Or the
impulse to do good _here_ becomes injury _there_, and we are forced to
calculate results; we cannot trust to them.
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I have not sought to deduce my principles from conventional notions of
expediency, but have believed that out of the steady adherence to
certain fixed principles, the right and the expedient _must_ ensue, and
I believe it still. The moment one begins to solder right and wrong
together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.
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It requires merely passive courage and strength to resist, and in some
cases to overcome evil. But it requires more--it needs bravery and
self-reliance and surpassing faith--to act out the true inspirations of
your intelligence and the true impulses of your heart.
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Out of the attempt to harmonise our actual life with our aspirations,
our experience with our faith, we make poetry,--or, it may be, religion.
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F---- used the phrase "_stung into heroism_" as Shelley said, "_cradled
into poetry_," by wrong.
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13.
Coleridge calls the personal existence of the Evil Principle, "a mere
fiction, or, at best, an allegory supported by a few popular phrases and
figures of speech, used incidentally or dramatically by the
Evangelists." And he says, that "the existence of a personal,
intelligent, Evil Being, the counterpart and antagonist of God, is in
direct contradiction to the most express declarations of Holy Writ.
'_Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?_'--Amos,
iii. 6. '_I make peace and create evil._'--Isaiah, xlv. 7. This is the
deep mystery of the abyss of God."
Do our theologians go with him here? I think not: yet, as a theologian,
Coleridge is constantly appealed to by Churchmen.
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14.
"We find (in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians), every where
instilled as the essence of all well-being and well-doing, (without
which the wisest public and political constitution is but a lifeless
formula, and the highest powers of individual endowment profitless or
pernicious,) the spirit of a divine sympathy with the happiness and
rights,--with the peculiarities, gifts, graces, and endowments of other
minds, which alone, whether in the family or in the Church, can impart
unity and effectual working together for good in the communities of
men."
"The Christian religion was, in fact, a charter of freedom to the whole
human race."--_Thom's Discourses on St. Paul's Epistle to the
Corinthians._
And this is the true Catholic spirit,--the spirit and the teaching of
Paul,--in contradistinction to the Roman Catholic spirit,--the spirit and
tendency of Peter, which stands upon forms, which has no respect for
individuality except in so far as it can imprison this individuality
within a creed, or use it to a purpose.
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15.
Dr. Baillie once said that "all his observation of death-beds inclined
him to believe that nature intended that we should go out of the world
as unconscious as we came into it." "In all my experience," he added, "I
have not seen one instance in fifty to the contrary."
Yet even in such a large experience the occurrence of "one instance in
fifty to the contrary" would invalidate the assumption that such was the
law of nature (or "nature's intention," which, if it means any thing,
means the same).
The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in
which it is embraced by sleep. It never, I suppose, happened to any one
to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the
sleeping state.
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16.
_Thoughts on a Sermon._
He is really sublime, this man! with his faith in "the religion of
pain," and "the deification of sorrow!" But is he therefore right? What
has he preached to us to-day with all the force of eloquence, all the
earnestness of conviction? that "pain is the life of God as shown forth
in Christ;"--"that we are to be crucified to the world and the world to
us." This perpetual presence of a crucified God between us and a pitying
redeeming Christ, leads many a mourner to the belief that this world is
all a Golgotha of pain, and that we are here to crucify each other. Is
this the law under which we are to live and strive? The missionary
Bridaine accused himself of sin in that he had preached fasting,
penance, and the chastisements of God to wretches steeped in poverty and
dying of hunger; and is there not a similar cruelty and misuse of power
in the servants of Him who came to bind up the broken-hearted, when
they preach the necessity, or at least the theory, of moral pain to
those whose hearts are aching from moral evil?
Surely there is a great difference between the resignation or the
endurance of a truthful, faithful, loving, hopeful spirit, and this
dreadful theology of suffering as the necessary and appointed state of
things! I, for one, will not accept it. Even while most miserable, I
will believe in happiness; even while I do or suffer evil, I will
believe in goodness; even while my eyes see not through tears, I will
believe in the existence of what I do not see--that God is benign, that
nature is fair, that the world is not made as a prison or a penance.
While I stand lost in utter darkness, I will yet wait for the return of
the unfailing dawn,--even though my soul be amazed into such a blind
perplexity that I know not on which side to look for it, and ask "where
is the East? and whence the dayspring?" For the East holds its wonted
place, and the light is withheld only till its appointed time.
God so strengthen me that I may think of pain and sin only as accidental
apparent discords in his great harmonious scheme of good! Then I am
ready--I will take up the cross, and hear it bravely, while I _must_; but
I will lay it down when I can, and in any case I will never lay it on
another.
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17.
If I fear God it is because I love him, and believe in his love; I
cannot conceive myself as standing in fear of any spiritual or human
being in whose love I do not entirely believe. Of that Impersonation of
Evil, who goes about seeking whom he may devour, the image brings to me
no fear, only intense disgust and aversion. Yes, it is because of his
love for me that I fear to offend against God; it is because of his love
that his displeasure must be terrible. And with regard to human beings,
only the being I love has the power to give me pain or inspire me with
fear; only those in whose love I believe, have the power to injure me.
Take away my love, and you take away my fear: take away _their_ love,
and you take away the power to do me any harm which can reach me in the
sources of life and feeling.
18.
Social opinion is like a sharp knife. There are foolish people who
regard it only with terror, and dare not touch or meddle with it. There
are more foolish people, who, in rashness or defiance, seize it by the
blade, and get cut and mangled for their pains. And there are wise
people, who grasp it discreetly and boldly by the handle, and use it to
carve out their own purposes.
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19.
While we were discussing Balzac's celebrity as a romance writer, she (O.
G.) said, with a shudder: "His laurels are steeped in the tears of
women,--every truth he tells has been wrung in tortures from some woman's
heart."
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20.
Sir Walter Scott, writing in 1831, seems to regard it as a terrible
misfortune that the whole burgher class in Scotland should be gradually
preparing for representative reform. "I mean," he says, "the middle and
respectable classes: when a borough reform comes, which, perhaps, cannot
long be delayed, ministers will no longer return a member for Scotland
from the towns." "The gentry," he adds, "will abide longer by _sound_
principles, for they are needy, and desire advancement for themselves,
and appointments for their sons and so on. But this is a very hollow
dependence, and those who sincerely hold ancient opinions are waxing
old," &c. &c.
With a great deal more, showing the strange moral confusion which his
political bias had caused in his otherwise clear head and honest mind.
The sound principles, then, by which educated people are to abide,--over
the decay of which he laments,--are such as can only be upheld by the
most vulgar self-interest! If a man should utter openly such sentiments
in these days, what should we think of him?
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In the order of absolutism lurk the elements of change and destruction.
In the unrest of freedom the spirit of change and progress.
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21.
"A single life," said Bacon, "doth well with churchmen, for charity will
hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool."
Certainly there are men whose charities are limited, if not dried up, by
their concentrated domestic anxieties and relations. But there are
others whose charities are more diffused, as well as healthier and
warmer, through the strength of their domestic affections.
Wordsworth speaks strongly of the evils of ordaining men as clergymen in
places where they had been born or brought up, or in the midst of their
own relatives: "Their habits, their manners, their talk, their
acquaintanceships, their friendships, and let me say, even their
domestic affections, naturally draw them one way, while their
professional obligations point out another." If this were true
universally, or even generally, it would be a strong argument in favour
of the celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, which certainly is one
element, and not the least, of their power.
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22.
Landor says truly: "Love is a secondary passion in those who love most,
a primary in those who love least: he who is inspired by it in the
strongest degree is inspired by honour in a greater."
"Whatever is worthy of being loved for any thing is worthy to be
preserved."
Again:--"Those are the worst of suicides who voluntarily and prepensely
stab or suffocate their own fame, when God hath commanded them to stand
on high for an example."
"Weak motives," he says, "are sufficient for weak minds; whenever we see
a mind which we believed a stronger than our own moved habitually by
what appears inadequate, we may be certain that there is--to bring a
metaphor from the forest--_more top than root_."
Here is another sentence from the same writer--rich in wise sayings:--
"Plato would make wives common to abolish selfishness; the very mischief
which, above all others, it would directly and immediately bring forth.
There is no selfishness where there is a wife and family. There the
house is lighted up by mutual charities; everything achieved for them is
a victory; everything endured a triumph. How many vices are suppressed
that there may be no _bad_ example! How many exertions made to recommend
and inculcate a _good_ one."
True: and I have much more confidence in the charity which begins in the
home and diverges into a large humanity, than in the world-wide
philanthropy which begins at the outside of our horizon to converge into
egotism, of which I could show you many and notable examples.
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All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, the safe side and the just side of a question is the
generous side and the merciful side. This your mere worldly people do
not seem to know, and therein make the sorriest and the vulgarest of all
mistakes. "_Pour être assez bon il faut l'être trop_:" we all need more
mercy than we deserve.
How often in this world the actions that we condemn are the result of
sentiments that we love and opinions that we admire!
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23.
A.---- observed in reference to some of her friends who had gone over to
the Roman Catholic Church, "that the peace and comfort which they had
sought and found in that mode of faith was like the drugged sleep in
comparison with the natural sleep: necessary, healing perhaps, where
there is disease and unrest, not otherwise."
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24.
"A poet," says Coleridge, "ought not to pick nature's pocket. Let him
borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine
nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to your
imagination than your memory."
This advice is even more applicable to the painter, but true perhaps in
its application to all artists. Raphael and Mozart were, in this sense,
great borrowers.
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25.
"What is the difference between being good and being bad? the good do
not yield to temptation and the bad do."
This is often the distinction between the good and the bad in regard to
act and deed; but it does not constitute the difference between _being_
good and _being_ bad.
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26.
The Italians say (in one of their characteristic proverbs) _Sospetto
licenzia Fede_. Lord Bacon interprets the saying "as if suspicion did
give a passport to faith," which is somewhat obscure and ambiguous. It
means, that suspicion discharges us from the duty of good faith; and in
this, its original sense, it is, like many of the old Italian proverbs,
worldly wise and profoundly immoral.
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27.
IT was well said by Themistocles to the King of Persia, that "speech was
like cloth of arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth
appear in figure, whereas in thoughts they lie but in packs" (_i. e._
rolled up or packed up). Dryden had evidently this passage in his mind
when he wrote those beautiful lines:
"Speech is the light, the morning of the mind;
It spreads the beauteous images abroad,
Which else lie furled and shrouded in the soul."
Here the comparison of Themistocles, happy in itself, is expanded into a
vivid poetical image.
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28.
"Those are the killing griefs that do not speak," is true of some, not
all characters. There are natures in which the killing grief finds
utterance while it kills; moods in which we cry aloud, "as the beast
crieth, expansive not appealing." That is my own nature: so in grief or
in joy, I say as the birds sing:
"Und wenn der Mensch in seiner Qual verstummt,
Gab mir ein Got zu sagen was ich leide!"
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29.
Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted _from_
the world!--yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have
kept themselves unspotted _in_ the world!
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30.
Everything that ever has been, from the beginning of the world till now,
belongs to us, is ours, is even a part of us. We belong to the future,
and shall be a part of it. Therefore the sympathies of _all_ are in the
past; only the poet and the prophet sympathise with the future.
When Tennyson makes Ulysses say, "I am a part of all that I have seen,"
it ought to be rather the converse,--"What I have seen becomes a part of
me."
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31.
In what regards policy--government--the interest of the many is sacrificed
to the few; in what regards society, the morals and happiness of
individuals are sacrificed to the many.
32.
We spoke to-night of the cowardice, the crime of a particular suicide:
O. G. agreed as to this instance, but added: "There is a different
aspect under which suicide might be regarded. It is not always, I think,
from a want of religion, or in a spirit of defiance, or a want of
confidence in God that we quit life. It is as if we should flee to the
feet of the Almighty and embrace his knees, and exclaim, 'O my father!
take me home! I have endured as long as it was possible; I can endure no
more, so I come to you!'"
Of an amiable man with a disagreeable expressionless face, she said:
"His countenance always gives me the idea of matter too strong, too hard
for the soul to pierce through. It is as a plaster mask which I long to
break (making the gesture with her hand), that I may see the countenance
of his heart, for that must be beautiful!"
[Illustration]
33.
Carlyle said to me: "I want to see some institution to teach a man the
truth, the worth, the beauty, the heroism of which his present existence
is capable; where's the use of sending him to study what the Greeks and
Romans did, and said, and wrote? Do ye think the Greeks and Romans would
have been what they were, if they had just only studied what the
Phoenicians did before them?" I should have answered, had I dared: "Yet
perhaps the Greeks and Romans would not have been what they were if the
Egyptians and Phoenicians had not been before them."
[Illustration]
34.
Can there be _progress_ which is not _progression_--which does not leave
a past from which to start--on which to rest our foot when we spring
forward? No wise man kicks the ladder from beneath him, or obliterates
the traces of the road through which he has travelled, or pulls down the
memorials he has built by the way side. We cannot _get on_ without
linking our present and our future with our past. All reaction is
destructive--all progress conservative. When we have destroyed that
which the past built up, what reward have we?--we are forced to fall
back, and have to begin anew. "Novelty," as Lord Bacon says, "cannot be
content to add, but it must deface." For this very reason novelty is not
progress, as the French would try to persuade themselves and us. We gain
nothing by defacing and trampling down the idols of the past to set up
new ones in their places--let it be sufficient to leave them behind us,
measuring our advance by keeping them in sight.
[Illustration]
35.
E---- was compassionating to-day the old and the invalided; those whose
life is prolonged in spite of suffering; and she seemed, even out of the
excess of her pity and sympathy, to wish them fairly out of the world;
but it is a mistake in reasoning and feeling. She does not know how much
of happiness may consist with suffering, with physical suffering, and
even with mental suffering.
[Illustration]
36.
"Renoncez dans votre âme, et renoncez y fermement, une fois pour toutes,
à vouloir vous connaître au-delà de cette existence passagère qui vous
est imposée, et vous redeviendrez agréable à Dieu, utile aux autres
hommes, tranquille avec vous-mêmes."
This does not mean "renounce hope or faith in the future." No! But
renounce that perpetual craving after a selfish interest in the
unrevealed future life which takes the true relish from the duties and
the pleasures of this. We can conceive of no future life which is not a
continuation of this: to anticipate in that _future_ life, _another_
life, a _different_ life; what is it but to call in doubt our individual
identity?
If we pray, "O teach us where and what is peace!" would not the answer
be, "In the grave ye shall have it--not before?" Yet is it not strange
that those who believe most absolutely in an after-life, yet think of
the grave as peace? Now, if we carry this life with us--and what other
life can we carry with us, unless we cease to be ourselves--how shall
there be peace?
[Illustration]
As to the future, my soul, like Cato's, "shrinks back upon herself and
startles at destruction;" but I do not think of my own destruction,
rather of that which I love. That I should cease to be is not very
intolerable; but that what I love, and do now in my soul possess, should
cease to be--there is the pang, the terror! I desire that which I love to
be immortal, whether I be so myself or not.
[Illustration]
Is not the idea which most men entertain of another, of an eternal life,
merely a continuation of this present existence under pleasanter
conditions? We cannot conceive another state of existence,--we only fancy
we do so.
[Illustration]
"I conceive that in all probability we have immortality already. Most
men seem to divide life and immortality, making them two distinct
things, when, in fact, they are one and the same. What is immortality
but a continuation of life--life which is already our own? We have, then,
begun our immortality even now."
For the same reason, or, rather, through the same want of reasoning by
which we make _life_ and _immortality_ two (distinct things), do we make
_time_ and _eternity_ two, which like the others are really one and the
same. As immortality is but the continuation of life, so eternity is but
the continuation of time; and what we call time is only that part of
eternity in which we exist _now_.--_The New Philosophy._
[Illustration]
37.
Strength does not consist only in the _more_ or the _less_. There are
different sorts of strength as well as different degrees:--The strength
of marble to resist; the strength of steel to oppose; the strength of
the fine gold, which you can twist round your finger, but which can bear
the force of innumerable pounds without breaking.
[Illustration]
38.
Goethe used to say, that while intellectual attainment is progressive,
it is difficult to be as good when we are old, as we were when young.
Dr. Johnson has expressed the same thing.
Then are we to assume, that to _do_ good effectively and wisely is the
privilege of age and experience? To _be_ good, through faith in
goodness, the privilege of the young.
To preserve our faith in goodness with an extended knowledge of evil, to
preserve the tenderness of our pity after long contemplation of pain,
and the warmth of our charity after long experience of falsehood, is to
be at once good and wise--to understand and to love each other as the
angels who look down upon us from heaven.
[Illustration]
We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible
completely to understand what we do not love.
I observe, that in our relations with the people around us, we forgive
them more readily for what they _do_, which they _can_ help, than for
what they _are_, which they _cannot_ help.
[Illustration]
39.
"Whence springs the greatest degree of moral suffering?" was a question
debated this evening, but not settled. It was argued that it would
depend on the texture of character, its more or less conscientiousness,
susceptibility, or strength. I thought from two sentiments--from
_jealousy_, that is, the sense of a wrong endured, in one class of
characters; from _remorse_, that is, from the sense of a wrong
inflicted, in another.
[Illustration]
40.
The bread of life is love; the salt of life is work; the sweetness of
life, poesy; the water of life, faith.
[Illustration]
41.
I have seen triflers attempting to draw out a deep intellect; and they
reminded me of children throwing pebbles down the well at Carisbrook,
that they might hear them sound.
[Illustration]
42.
A bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful that
the bond does not become bondage.
[Illustration]
"The secret of peace," said A. B., "is the resolution of the lesser into
the greater;" meaning, perhaps, the due relative appreciation of our
duties, and the proper placing of our affections: or, did she not rather
mean, the resolving of the lesser duties and affections into the higher?
But it is true in either sense.
[Illustration]
The love we have for Genius is to common love what the fire on the altar
is to the fire on the hearth. We cherish it not for warmth or for
service, but for an offering, as the expression of our worship.
[Illustration]
All love not responded to and accepted is a species of idolatry. It is
like the worship of a dumb beautiful image we have ourselves set up and
deified, but cannot inspire with life, nor warm with sympathy.
No!--though we should consume our own hearts on the altar. Our love of
God would be idolatry if we did not believe in his love for us--his
responsive love.
[Illustration]
In the same moment that we begin to speculate on the possibility of
cessation or change in any strong affection that we feel, even from that
moment we may date its death: it has become the _fetch_ of the living
love.
[Illustration]
"Motives," said Coleridge, "imply weakness, and the reasoning powers
imply the existence of evil and temptation. The angelic nature would act
from impulse alone." This is the sort of angel which Angelico da Fiesole
conceived and represented, and _he_ only.
Again:--"If a man's conduct can neither be ascribed to the angelic or the
bestial within him, it must be fiendish. Passion without appetite is
_fiendish_."
And, he might have added, appetite without passion, _bestial_. Love in
which is neither appetite nor passion is _angelic_. The union of all is
human; and according as one or other predominates, does the human being
approximate to the fiend, the beast, or the angel.
[Illustration]
43.
I don't mean to say that principle is not a finer thing than passion;
but passions existed before principles: they came into the world with
us; principles are superinduced.
There are bad principles as well as bad passions; and more bad
principles than bad passions. Good principles derive life, and strength,
and warmth from high and good passions; but principles do not give life,
they only bind up life into a consistent whole. One great fault in
education is, the pains taken to inculcate principles rather than to
train feelings. It is as if we took it for granted that passions could
_only_ be bad, and are to be ignored or repressed altogether,--the old
mischievous monkish doctrine.
[Illustration]
44.
It is easy to be humble where humility is a condescension--easy to
concede where we know ourselves wronged--easy to forgive where vengeance
is in our power.
[Illustration]
"You and I," said H. G., yesterday, "are alike in this:--both of us so
abhor injustice, that we are ready to fight it with a broomstick if we
can find nothing better!"
[Illustration]
45.
"The wise only _possess_ ideas--the greater part of mankind are
_possessed by_ them. When once the mind, in despite of the remonstrating
conscience, has abandoned its free power to a haunting impulse or idea,
then whatever tends to give depth and vividness to this idea or
indefinite imagination, increases its despotism, and in the same
proportion renders the reason and free will ineffectual." This paragraph
from Coleridge sounds like a _truism_ until we have felt its _truth_.
46.
"La Volonté, en se déréglant, devient passion; cette passion continuée
se change en habitude, et faute de résister à cette habitude elle se
transforme en besoin."--_St. Augustin_. Which may be rendered--"out of the
unregulated will, springs _passion_, out of passion gratified, _habit_;
out of habits unresisted, _necessity_." This, also, is one of the truths
which become, from the impossibility of disputing or refuting them,
_truisms_--and little regarded, till the truth makes itself felt.
[Illustration]
47.
I wish I could realise what you call my "_grand_ idea of being
independent of the absent." I have not a friend worthy the name, whose
absence is not pain and dread to me;--death itself is terrible only as it
is absence. At some moments, if I could, I would cease to love those who
are absent from me, or to speak more correctly, those whose path in life
diverges from mine--whose dwelling house is far off;--with whom I am
united in the strongest bonds of sympathy while separated by duties and
interests by space and time. The presence of those whom we love is as a
double life; absence, in its anxious longing, and sense of vacancy, is
as a foretaste of death.
"La mort de nos amis ne compte pas du moment où ils meurent, mais de
celui où nous cessons de vivre avec eux;" or, it might rather be said,
_pour eux_; but I think this arises from a want either of _faith_ or
_faithfulness_.
"La peur des morts est une abominable faiblesse! c'est la plus commune
et la plus barbare des profanations; _les mères ne la connaissent
pas_!"--And why? Because the most _faithful_ love is the love of the
mother for her child.
[Illustration]
48.
At dinner to-day there was an attempt made by two very clever men to
place Theodore Hook above Sydney Smith. I fought with all my might
against both. It seems to me that a mind must be strangely warped that
could ever place on a par two men with aspirations and purposes so
different, whether we consider them merely as individuals, or called
before the bar of the public as writers. I do not take to Sydney Smith
personally, because my nature feels the want of the artistic and
imaginative in _his_ nature; but see what he has done for humanity, for
society, for liberty, for truth,--for us women! What has Theodore Hook
done that has not perished with him? Even as wits--and I have been in
company with both--I could not compare them; but they say the wit of
Theodore Hook was only fitted for the company of men--the strongest proof
that it was not genuine of its kind, that when most bearable, it was
most superficial. I set aside the other obvious inference, that it
required to be excited by stimulants and those of the coarsest, grossest
kind. The wit of Sydney Smith almost always involved a thought worth
remembering for its own sake, as well as worth remembering for its
brilliant vehicle: the value of ten thousand pounds sterling of sense
concentrated into a cut and polished diamond.
It is not true, as I have heard it said, that after leaving the society
of Sydney Smith you only remembered how much you had laughed, not the
good things at which you had laughed. Few men--wits by profession--ever
said so many memorable things as those recorded of Sydney Smith.
[Illustration]
49.
"When we would show any one that he is mistaken our best course is to
observe on what side he considers the subject,--for his view of it is
generally right on _this_ side,--and admit to him that he is right so
far. He will be satisfied with this acknowledgment, that he was not
wrong in his judgment, but only inadvertent in not looking at the whole
of the case."--_Pascal._
[Illustration]
50.
"We should reflect," says Jeremy Taylor, preaching against ambition,
"that whatever tempts the pride and vanity of ambitious persons is not
so big as the smallest star which we see scattered in disorder and
unregarded on the pavement of heaven."
Very beautiful and poetical, but certainly no good argument against the
sin he denounces. The star is inaccessible, and what tempts our pride or
our ambition is only that which we consider with hope as _accessible_.
That we look up to the stars not desiring, not aspiring, but only
loving--therein lies our hearts' truest, holiest, safest _devotion_ as
contrasted with _ambition_.
It is the "_desire_ of the moth for the star," that leads to its burning
itself in the candle.
[Illustration]
51.
The brow stamped "with the hieroglyphics of an eternal sorrow," is a
strong and beautiful expression of Bishop Taylor's.
He says truly: "It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon men as
men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly." And again: "What will
not tender women suffer to hide their shame!" What indeed! And again:
"Nothing is intolerable that is necessary." And again: "Nothing is to be
esteemed evil which God and nature have fixed with eternal sanctions."
There is not one of these ethical sentences which might not be treated
as a text and expounded, opening into as many "branches" of
consideration as ever did a Presbyterian sermon. Yet several involve a
fallacy, as it seems to me;--others a deeper, wider, and more awful
signification than Taylor himself seems to have contemplated when he
uttered them.
[Illustration]
52.
The same reasons which rendered Goethe's "Werther" so popular, so
passionately admired at the time it appeared--just after the seven years'
war,--helped to render Lord Byron so popular in his time. It was not the
individuality of "Werther," nor the individuality of "Childe Harold"
which produced the effect of making them, for a time, a pervading
power,--a _part_ of the life of their contemporaries. It was because in
both cases a chord was struck which was ready to vibrate. A phase of
feeling preexistent, palpitating at the heart of society, which had
never found expression in any poetic form since the days of Dante, was
made visible and audible as if by an electric force; words and forms
were given to a diffused sentiment of pain and resistance, caused by a
long period of war, of political and social commotion, and of unhealthy
moral excitement. "Werther" and "Childe Harold" will never perish;
because, though they have ceased to be the echo of a wide despair, there
will always be, unhappily, individual minds and hearts to respond to the
individuality.
[Illustration]
Lord Byron has sometimes, to use his own expression, "curdled" a whole
world of meaning into the compass of one line:--
"The starry Galileo and his woes."
"The blind old man of Chio's rocky isle."
Here every word, almost every syllable, paints an idea. Such lines are
_picturesque_. And I remember another, from Thomson, I think:--
"Placed far amid the melancholy main."
In general, where words are used in description, the objects and ideas
flow with the words in succession. But in each of these lines the mind
takes in a wide horizon, comprising a multitude of objects at once, as
the eye takes in a picture, with scene, and action, and figures,
fore-ground and background, all at once. That is the reason I call such
lines _picturesque_.
[Illustration]
53.
I have a great admiration for power, a great terror of
weakness--especially in my own sex,--yet feel that my love is for those
who overcome the mental and moral suffering and temptation, through
excess of tenderness rather than through excess of strength; for those
whose refinement and softness of nature mingling with high intellectual
power and the capacity for strong passion, present to me a problem to
solve, which, when solved, I take to my heart. The question is not,
which of the two diversities of character be the highest and best, but
which is most sympathetic with my own.
[Illustration]
54.
C---- told me, that some time ago, when poor Bethune the Scotch poet first
became known, and was in great hardship, C---- himself had collected a
little sum (about 30_l._), and sent it to him through his publishers.
Bethune wrote back to refuse it absolutely, and to say that, while he
had head and hands, he would not accept _charity_. C---- wrote to him in
answer, still anonymously, arguing against the principle, as founded in
false pride, &c. Now poor Bethune is dead, and the money is found
untouched,--left with a friend to be returned to the donors!
This sort of disgust and terror, which all finely constituted minds feel
with regard to pecuniary obligation,--my own utter repugnance to it, even
from the hands of those I most love,--makes one sad to think of. It gives
one such a miserable impression of our social humanity!
Goethe makes the same remark in the Wilhelm Meister:--"Es ist sonderbar
welch ein wunderliches Bedenken man sich macht, Geld von Freunden und
Gönnern anzunehmen, von denen man jede andere Gabe mit Dank und Freude
empfangen würde."
[Illustration]
55.
"In the celestial hierarchy, according to Dionysius Areopageta, the
angels of Love hold the first place, the angels of Light the second, and
the Thrones and Dominations the third. Among terrestrials, the
Intellects, which act through the imagination upon the heart of man--_i.
e._ poets and artists--may be accounted first in order; the merely
scientific intellects the second; and the merely ruling intellects--those
which apply themselves to the government of mankind, without the aid of
either science or imagination--will not be disparaged if they are placed
last."
All government, all exercise of power--no matter in what form--which is
not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny. It is not of
God, and shall not stand.
"A time will come when the operations of charity will no longer be
carried on by machinery, relentless, ponderous, indiscriminate, but by
human creatures, watchful, tearful, considerate, and wise."--_Westminster
Review._
[Illustration]
56.
"Those writers who never go further into a subject than is compatible
with making what they say indisputably clear to man, woman, and child,
may be the lights of _this_ age, but they will not be the lights of
_another_."
"It is not always necessary that truth should take a bodily form,--a
material palpable form. It is sometimes better that it should dwell
around us spiritually, creating harmony,--sounding through the air like
the solemn sweet tone of a bell."
[Illustration]
57.
Women are inclined to fall in love with priests and physicians, because
of the help and comfort they derive from both in perilous moral and
physical maladies. They believe in the presence of real pity, real
sympathy, where the tone and look of each have become merely habitual
and conventional,--I may say professional. On the other hand, women are
inclined to fall in love with criminal and miserable men out of the pity
which in our sex is akin to love, and out of the power of bestowing
comfort or love. "Car les femmes out un instinct céleste pour le
malheur." So, in the first instance, they love from gratitude or faith;
in the last, from compassion or hope.
[Illustration]
58.
"Men of all countries," says Sir James Mackintosh, "appear to be more
alike in their best qualities than the pride of civilisation would be
willing to allow."
And in their _worst_. The distinction between savage and civilised
humanity lies not in the _qualities_, but the _habits_.
59.
Coleridge notices "the increase in modern times of vicious associations
with things in themselves indifferent," as a sign of unhealthiness in
taste, in feeling, in conscience.
The truth of this remark is particularly illustrated in the French
literature of the last century.
[Illustration]
60.
"And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
understanding also after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation,
a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at
the moment unpaid loss and unpayable, but the sure years reveal the deep
remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend,
wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later
assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates a
revolution in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or youth
which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a
household, or a style of living, and allows the formation of new
influences that prove of the first importance during the next
years."--_Emerson._
[Illustration]
61.
Religion, in its general sense, is properly the comprehension and
acknowledgment of an unseen spiritual power and the soul's allegiance
to it; and CHRISTIANITY, in its particular sense, is the comprehension
and appreciation of the personal character of Christ, and the heart's
allegiance to that.
[Illustration]
62.
Avarice is to the intellect what _sensuality_ is to the morals. It is an
intellectual form of sensuality, inasmuch as it is the passion for the
acquisition, the enjoyment in the possession, of a palpable, tangible,
selfish pleasure; and it would have the same tendency to unspiritualise,
to degrade, and to harden the higher faculties that a course of grosser
sensualism would have to corrupt the lower faculties. Both dull the edge
of all that is fine and tender within us.
[Illustration]
63.
A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an
artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.
[Illustration]
As what we call Genius arises out of the disproportionate power and size
of a certain faculty, so the great difficulty lies in harmonising with
it the rest of the character.
"Though it burn our house down, who does not venerate fire?" says the
Hindoo proverb.
[Illustration]
64.
An elegant mind informing a graceful person is like a spirit lamp in an
alabaster vase, shedding round its own softened radiance and heightening
the beauty of its medium. An elegant mind in a plain ungraceful person
is like the same lamp enclosed in a vase of bronze; we may, if we
approach near enough, rejoice in its influence, though we may not behold
its radiance.
[Illustration]
65.
Landor, in a passage I was reading to-day, speaks of a language of
criticism, in which qualities should be graduated by colours; "as, for
instance, _purple_ might express grandeur and majesty of thought;
_scarlet_, vigour of expression; _pink_, liveliness; _green_, elegant
and equable composition, and so on."
_Blue_, then, might express contemplative power? _yellow_, wit?
_violet_, tenderness? and so on.
[Illustration]
66.
I quoted to A. the saying of a sceptical philosopher: "The world is but
one enormous WILL, constantly rushing into life."
"Is that," she responded quickly, "another new name for God?"
[Illustration]
67.
A death-bed repentance has become proverbial for its fruitlessness, and
a death-bed forgiveness equally so. They who wait till their own
death-bed to make reparation, or till their adversary's death-bed to
grant absolution, seem to me much upon a par in regard to the moral, as
well as the religious, failure.
[Illustration]
68.
A character endued with a large, vivacious, active intellect and a
limited range of sympathies, generally remains immature. We can grow
_wise_ only through the experience which reaches us through our
sympathies and becomes a part of our life. All other experience may be
gain, but it remains in a manner extraneous, adds to our possessions
without adding to our strength, and sharpens our implements without
increasing our capacity to use them.
Not always those who have the quickest, keenest, perception of character
are the best to deal with it, and perhaps for that very reason. Before
we can influence or deal with mind, contemplation must be lost in
sympathy, observation must be merged in love.
[Illustration]
69.
Montaigne, in his eloquent tirade against melancholy, observes that the
Italians have the same word, _Tristezza_, for melancholy and for
malignity or wickedness. The noun _Tristo_, "a wretch," has the double
sense of our English word corresponding with the French noun
_misérable_. So Judas Iscariot is called _quel tristo_. Our word
"wretchedness" is not, however, used in the double sense of _tristezza_.
[Illustration]
"On ne considère pas assez les paroles comme des faits:" that was well
said!
Since for the purpose of circulation and intercommunication we are
obliged to coin truth into words, we should be careful not to adulterate
the coin, to keep it pure, and up to the original standard of
significance and value, that it may be reconvertible into the truth it
represents.
If I use a term in a sense wherein I know it is not understood by the
person I address, then I am guilty of using words (in so far as they
represent truth), if not to ensnare intentionally, yet to mislead
consciously; it is like adulterating coin.
[Illustration]
"Common people," said Johnson, "do not accurately adapt their words to
their thoughts, nor their thoughts to the objects;"--that is to say, they
neither apprehend truly nor speak truly--and in this respect children,
half-educated women, and ill-educated men, are the "common people."
It is one of the most serious mistakes in Education that we are not
sufficiently careful to habituate children to the accurate use of words.
Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. If we looked into
the matter we should probably find that all the varieties and
modifications of conscious and unconscious lying--as exaggeration,
equivocation, evasion, misrepresentation--might be traced to the early
misuse of words; therefore the contemptuous, careless tone in which
people say sometimes "words--words--mere words!" is unthinking and unwise.
It tends to debase the value of that which is the only medium of the
inner life between man and man: "Nous ne sommes hommes, et nous ne
tenons les uns aux autres, que par la parole," said Montaigne.
[Illustration]
70.
"We are happy, good, tranquil, in proportion as our inner life is
accessible to the external life, and in harmony with it. When we become
dead to the moving life of Nature around us, to the changes of day and
night (I do not speak here of the sympathetic influences of our
fellow-creatures), then we may call ourselves philosophical, but we are
surely either bad or mad."
"Or perhaps only sad?"
There are moments in the life of every contemplative being, when the
healing power of Nature is felt--even as Wordsworth describes it--felt in
the blood, in every pulse along the veins. In such moments converse,
sympathy, the faces, the presence of the dearest, come so near to us,
they make us shrink; books, pictures, music, anything, any object which
has passed through the medium of mind, and has been in a manner
humanised, is felt as an intrusive reflection of the busy, weary,
thought-worn self within us. Only Nature, speaking through no
interpreter, gently steals us out of our humanity, giving us a foretaste
of that more diffused disembodied life which may hereafter be ours.
Beautiful and genial, and not wholly untrue, were the old superstitions
which placed a haunting divinity in every grove, and heard a living
voice responsive in every murmuring stream.
This present Sunday I set off with the others to walk to church, but it
was late; I could not keep up with the pedestrians, and, not to delay
them, turned back. I wandered down the hill path to the river brink, and
crossed the little bridge and strolled along, pensive yet with no
definite or continuous subject of thought. How beautiful it was--how
tranquil! not a cloud in the blue sky, not a breath of air! "And where
the dead leaf fell there did it rest;" but so still it was that scarce a
single leaf did flutter or fall, though the narrow pathway along the
water's edge was already encumbered with heaps of decaying foliage.
Everywhere around, the autumnal tints prevailed, except in one sheltered
place under the towering cliff, where a single tree, a magnificent
lime, still flourished in summer luxuriance, with not a leaf turned or
shed. I stood still opposite, looking on it quietly for a long time. It
seemed to me a happy tree, so fresh and fair and grand, as if its
guardian Dryad would not suffer it to be defaced. Then I turned, for
close beside me sounded the soft, interrupted, half-suppressed warble of
a bird, sitting on a leafless spray, which seemed to bend with its tiny
weight. Some lines which I used to love in my childhood came into my
mind, blending softly with the presences around me.
"The little bird now to salute the morn
Upon the naked branches sets her foot,
The leaves still lying at the mossy root,
And there a silly chirruping doth keep,
As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep;
Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,
And sad for winter, too soon coming on!" _Drayton._
The river, where I stood, taking an abrupt turn, ran wimpling by; not as
I had seen it but a few days before,--rolling tumultuously, the dead
leaves whirling in its eddies, swollen and turbid with the mountain
torrents, making one think of the kelpies, the water wraiths, and such
uncanny things,--but gentle, transparent, and flashing in the low
sunlight; even the barberries, drooping with rich crimson clusters over
the little pools near the bank, and reflected in them as in a mirror, I
remember vividly as a part of the exquisite loveliness which seemed to
melt into my life. For such moments we are grateful: we feel then what
God _can_ do for us, and what man can not.--_Carolside, November 5th,
1843._
[Illustration]
71.
"In the early ages of faith, the spirit of Christianity glided into and
gave a new significance to the forms of heathenism. It was not the forms
of heathenism which encrusted and overlaid the spirit of Christianity,
for in that case the spirit would have burst through such extraneous
formulæ, and set them aside at once and for ever."
[Illustration]
72.
Questions. In the execution of the penal statutes, can the individual
interest of the convict be reconciled with the interest of society? or
must the good of the convict and the good of society be considered as
inevitably and necessarily opposed?--the one sacrificed to the other, and
at the best only a compromise possible?
This is a question pending at present, and will require wise heads to
decide it? How would Christ have decided it? When He set the poor
accused woman free, was He considering the good of the culprit or the
good of society? and how far are we bound to follow His example? If He
consigned the wicked to weeping and gnashing of teeth, was it for
atonement or retribution, punishment or penance? and how far are we
bound to follow His example?
[Illustration]
73.
I marked the following passage in Montaigne as most curiously applicable
to the present times, in so far as our religious contests are concerned;
and I leave it in his quaint old French.
"C'est un effet de la Providence divine de permettre sa saincte Eglise
être agitée, comme nous la voyons, de tant de troubles et d'orages, pour
éveiller par ce contraste les âmes pies et les ravoir de l'oisiveté et
du sommeil ou les avail plongées une si longue tranquillité. Si nous
contrepèsons la perte que nous avons faite par le nombre de ceux qui se
sont dévoyés, au gain qui nous vient par nous être remis en haleine,
ressuscité notre zêle et nos forces à l'occasion de ce combat, je ne
sais si l'utilité ne surmonte point le dommage."
[Illustration]
74.
"They (the friends of Cassius) were divided in opinion,--some holding
that servitude was the extreme of evils, and others that tyranny was
better than civil war."
Unhappy that nation, wherever it may be, where the question is yet
pending between servitude and civil war! such a nation might be driven
to solve the problem after the manner of Cassius--with the dagger's
point.
"Surely," said Moore, "it is wrong for the lovers of liberty to identify
the principle of resistance to power with such an odious person as the
devil!"
[Illustration]
75.
"Where the question is of a great deal of good to ensue from a small
injustice, men must pursue the things which are just in present, and
leave the future to Divine Providence."
This so simple rule of right is seldom attended to as a rule of life
till we are placed in some strait in which it is forced upon us.
[Illustration]
76.
A woman's patriotism is more of a sentiment than a man's,--more
passionate: it is only an extension of the domestic affections, and with
her _la patrie_ is only an enlargement of _home_. In the same manner, a
woman's idea of fame is always a more extended sympathy, and is much
more of a presence than an anticipation. To her the voice of fame is
only the echo--fainter and more distant--of the voice of love.
[Illustration]
77.
"La doute s'introduit dans l'âme qui rêve, la foi descend dans l'âme qui
souffre."
The reverse is equally true,--and judging from my own experience, I
should say oftener true.
[Illustration]
78.
"La curiosité est si voisine à la perfidie qu'elle peut enlaidir les
plus beaux visages."
[Illustration]
79.
When I told Tieck of the death of Coleridge (I had just received the sad
but not unexpected news in a letter from England), he exclaimed with
emotion, "A great spirit has passed away from the earth, and has left no
adequate memorial of its greatness." Speaking of him afterwards he said,
"Coleridge possessed the creative and inventive spirit of poetry, not
the productive; he _thought_ too much to produce,--the analytical power
interfered with the genius: Others with more active faculties seized and
worked out his magnificent hints and ideas. Walter Scott and Lord Byron
borrowed the first idea of the form and spirit of their narrative poems
from Coleridge's 'Christabelle.'" This judgment of one great poet and
critic passed on another seemed to me worth preserving.
[Illustration]
80.
Coleridge says, "In politics what begins in fear usually ends in folly."
He might have gone farther, and added: In morals what begins in fear
usually ends in wickedness. In religion what begins in fear usually ends
in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning
of all evil.
[Illustration]
In another place he says,--
"Talent lying in the understanding is often inherited; genius, being the
action of reason and imagination, rarely or never."
There seems confusion here, for genius lies not in the amount of
intellect--it is a quality of the intellect apart from quantity. And the
distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and
uses; genius combines and creates.
[Illustration]
Of Sara Coleridge, Mr. Kenyon said very truly and beautifully, "that
like her father she had the controversial _intellect_ without the
controversial _spirit_."
[Illustration]
81.
We all remember the famous _bon mot_ of Talleyrand. When seated between
Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier, and pouring forth gallantry, first
at the feet of one, then of the other, Madame de Staël suddenly asked
him if she and Madame Récamier fell into the river, which of the two he
would save first? "Madame," replied Talleyrand, "je crois que vous savez
nager!" Now we will match this pretty _bon mot_ with one far prettier,
and founded on it. Prince S., whom I knew formerly, was one day
loitering on the banks of the Isar, in the English garden at Munich, by
the side of the beautiful Madame de V., then the object of his devoted
admiration. For a while he had been speaking to her of his mother, for
whom, _vaurien_ as he was, he had ever shown the strongest filial love
and respect. Afterwards, as they wandered on, he began to pour forth his
soul to the lady of his love with all the eloquence of passion. Suddenly
she turned and said to him, "If your mother and myself were both to fall
into this river, whom would you save first?" "My mother!" he instantly
replied; and then, looking at her expressively, immediately added, "To
save _you_ first would be as if I were to save _myself_ first!"
[Illustration]
82.
If we were not always bringing ourselves into comparison with others, we
should know them better.
[Illustration]
83.
There are ways of governing every mind which lies within the circle
described by our own; the only question is, whether the means required
be such as we _can_ use? and if so, whether we shall think it right to
do so?
You think I do not know you, or that I mistake you utterly, because I am
actuated by the impulses of my own nature, rather than by my perception
of the impulses of yours? It is not so.
If we would retain our own consistency, without which there is no moral
strength, we must stand firm upon our own moral life.
"Be true unto thyself;
And it shall follow as the night to day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
But to be true to others as well as ourselves, is not merely to allow to
them the same independence, but to sympathise with it. Unhappily here
lies the chief difficulty. There are brains so large that they
unconsciously swamp all individualities which come in contact or too
near, and brains so small that they cannot take in the conception of any
other individuality as a whole, only in part or parts. As in Religion,
where there is a strong, sincere, definite faith, there is generally
more or less intolerance; so in character, where there is strong
individuality, self-assurance, and defined principles of action, there
is usually something hard and intolerant of the individuality of others.
In some characters we meet with, toleration is a principle of the
reason, and intolerance a quality of the mind, and then the whole being
strikes a discord.
[Illustration]
84.
If we can still love those who have made us suffer, we love them all the
more. It is as if the principle, that conflict is a necessary law of
progress, were applicable even to love. For there is no love like that
which has roused up the intensest feelings of our nature,--revealed us to
ourselves, like lightning suddenly disclosing an abyss,--yet has survived
all the storm and tumult of such passionate discord and all the terror
of such a revelation.
[Illustration]
85.
F has much, much to learn! Through power, through passion, through
feeling we do much, but only through observation, reflection, and
sympathy we learn much; hence it is that minds highly gifted often
remain immature. Artist minds especially, so long as they live only or
chiefly for their art, their faculties bent on creating or representing,
remain immature on one side--the reasoning and reflecting side of the
character.
[Illustration]
86.
Said a Frenchman of his adversary, "Il se croit supérieur à moi de toute
la hauteur de sa bêtise!" There is a mingled felicity, politeness, and
acrimony, in this phrase quite untranslatable.
87.
It is a pity that we have no words to express the French distinction
between _rêver_ and _rêvasser_. The one implies meditation on a definite
subject: the other the abandonment of the mind to vague discussion,
aimless thoughts.
[Illustration]
88.
It seems to me that the conversation of the first converser in the world
would _tire_ me, _pall_ on me at last, where I am not sure of the
sincerity. Talk without truth is the hollow brass; talk without love is
like the tinkling cymbal, and where it does not tinkle it gingles, and
where it does not gingle, it jars.
[Illustration]
89.
There are few things more striking, more interesting to a thoughtful
mind, than to trace through all the poetry, literature, and art of the
Middle Ages that broad ever-present distinction between the practical
and the contemplative life. This was, no doubt, suggested and kept in
view by the one grand division of the whole social community into those
who were devoted to the religious profession (an immense proportion of
both sexes) and those who were not. All through Dante, all through the
productions of mediæval art, we find this pervading idea; and we must
understand it well and keep it in mind, or we shall never be able to
apprehend the entire beauty and meaning of certain religious groups in
sculpture and painting, and the significance of the characters
introduced. Thus, in subjects from the Old Testament, Leah always
represents the practical, Rachel, the contemplative life. In the New
Testament, Martha and Mary figure in the same allegorical sense; and
among the saints we always find St. Catharine and St. Clara patronising
the religious and contemplative life, while St. Barbara and St. Ursula
preside over the military or secular existence. It was a part, and a
very important part, of that beautiful and expressive symbolism through
which art in all its forms spoke to the popular mind.
For myself, I have the strongest admiration for the _practical_, but the
strongest sympathy with the _contemplative_ life. I bow to Leah and to
Martha, but my love is for Rachel and for Mary.
[Illustration]
90.
Bettina does not describe nature, she informs it, with her own life: she
seems to live in the elements, to exist in the fire, the air, the water,
like a sylph, a gnome, an elf; she does not contemplate nature, she _is_
nature; she is like the bird in the air, the fish in the sea, the
squirrel in the wood. It is one thing to describe nature, and quite
another unconsciously so to inform nature with a portion of our own
life.
[Illustration]
91.
Joanna Baillie had a great admiration of Macaulay's Roman Ballads.
"But," said some one, "do you really account them as poetry?" She
replied, "They _are_ poetry if the sounds of the trumpet be music!"
[Illustration]
92.
All my own experience of life teaches me the _contempt_ of cunning, not
the _fear_. The phrase "profound cunning" has always seemed to me a
contradiction in terms. I never knew a cunning mind which was not either
shallow, or on some point diseased. People dissemble sometimes who yet
hate dissembling, but a "cunning mind" emphatically delights in its own
cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning. That "pleasure in deceiving
and aptness to be deceived" usually go together, was one of the wise
sayings of the wisest of men.
[Illustration]
93.
It was a saying of Paracelsus, that "Those who would understand the
course of the heavens above must first of all recognise the heaven in
man:" meaning, I suppose, that all pursuit of knowledge which is not
accompanied by praise of God and love of our fellow-creatures must turn
to bitterness, emptiness, foolishness. We must imagine him to have come
to this conclusion only late in life.
Browning, in that wonderful poem of Paracelsus,--a poem in which there is
such a profound far-seeing philosophy, set forth with such a luxuriance
of illustration and imagery, and such a wealth of glorious eloquence,
that I know nothing to be compared with it since Goethe and
Wordsworth,--represents his aspiring philosopher as at first impelled
solely by the appetite to _know_. He asks nothing of men, he despises
them; but he will serve them, raise them, after a sort of God-like
fashion, independent of their sympathy, scorning their applause, using
them like instruments, cheating them like children,--all for their good;
but it will not do. In Aprile, "who would love infinitely, and be
beloved," is figured the type of the poet-nature, desiring only beauty,
resolving all into beauty; while in Paracelsus we have the type of the
reflecting, the inquiring mind desiring only knowledge, resolving all
into knowledge, asking nothing more to crown his being. And both find
out their mistake; both come to feel that love without knowledge is
blind and weak, and knowledge without love barren and vain.
"I too have sought to KNOW as thou to LOVE,
Excluding love as thou refused'st knowledge;
Still thou hast beauty and I power. We wake!
* * * * *
"Are we not halves of one dissever'd world,
Whom this strange chance unites once more? Part?--Never!
Till thou, the lover, know, and I, the knower,
Love--until both are saved!"
After all, perhaps, only the same old world-renowned myth in another
form--the marriage of Cupid and Psyche; Love and Intelligence long
parted, long suffering, again embracing, and lighted on by Beauty to an
immortal union. But to return to our poet. Aprile, exhausted by his own
aimless, dazzling visions, expires on the bosom of him who knows; and
Paracelsus, who began with a selfsufficing scorn of his kind, dies a
baffled and degraded man in the arms of him who loves;--yet wiser in his
fall than through his aspirations, he dies trusting in the progress of
humanity so long as humanity is content to be _human_; to _love_ as well
as to _know_;--to fear, to hope, to worship, as well as to aspire.
[Illustration]
94.
Lord Bacon says: "I like a plantation (in the sense of colony) in a
_pure_ soil; that is, where people are not displanted to the end to
plant in others: for else it is rather an extirpation than a
plantation." (Bacon, who wrote this, counselled to James I. the
plantation of Ulster exactly on the principle he has here deprecated.)
He adds, "It is a shameful and unblessed thing to take the scum of
people, and wicked condemned men, to be the people with whom you plant"
(_i. e._ colonise). And it is only now that our politicians are
beginning to discover and act upon this great moral truth and obvious
fitness of things!--like Bacon, adopting practically, and from mere
motives of expediency, a principle they would theoretically abjure!
[Illustration]
95.
Because in real life we cannot, or do not, reconcile the high theory
with the low practice, we use our wit to render the theory ridiculous,
and our reason to reconcile us to the practice. We ought to do just the
reverse.
[Illustration]
Many would say, if they spoke the truth, that it had cost them a
life-long effort to unlearn what they had been taught.
For as the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so
through social conventionalism the conscience becomes blinded to
positive immorality.
It is fatal in any mind to make the moral standard for men high and the
moral standard for women low, or _vice versâ_. This has appeared to me
the very commonest of all mistakes in men and women who have lived much
in the world, but _fatal_ nevertheless, and in three ways; first, as
distorting the moral ideal, so far as it exists in the conscience;
secondly, as perplexing the bounds, practically, of right and wrong;
thirdly, as being at variance with the spirit and principles of
Christianity. Admit these premises, and it follows inevitably that such
a mistake is _fatal_ in the last degree, as disturbing the consistency
and the elevation of the character, morally, practically, religiously.
Akin to this mistake, or identical with it, is the belief that there are
essential masculine and feminine virtues and vices. It is not, in fact,
the quality itself, but the modification of the quality, which is
masculine or feminine: and on the manner or degree in which these are
balanced and combined in the individual, depends the perfection of that
individual character--its approximation to that of Christ. I firmly
believe that as the influences of religion are extended, and as
civilisation advances, those qualities which are now admired as
essentially _feminine_ will be considered as essentially _human_, such
as gentleness, purity, the more unselfish and spiritual sense of duty,
and the dominance of the affections over the passions. This is, perhaps,
what Buffon, speaking as a naturalist, meant, when he said that with
the progress of humanity, "_Les races se féminisent_;" at least I
understand the phrase in this sense.
A man who requires from his own sex manly direct truth, and laughs at
the cowardly subterfuges and small arts of women as being _feminine_;--a
woman who requires from her own sex tenderness and purity, and thinks
ruffianism and sensuality pardonable in a man as being
_masculine_,--these have repudiated the Christian standard of morals
which Christ, in his own person, bequeathed to us--that standard which we
have accepted as Christians--theoretically at least--and which makes no
distinction between "the highest, holiest manhood," and the highest,
holiest womanhood.
I might illustrate this position not only scripturally but
philosophically, by quoting the axiom of the Greek philosopher
Antisthenes, the disciple of Socrates,--"The virtue of the man and the
woman is the same;" which shows a perception of the moral truth, a sort
of anticipation of the Christian doctrine, even in the pagan times. But
I prefer an illustration which is at once practical and poetical, and
plain to the most prejudiced among men or women.
Every reader of Wordsworth will recollect, if he does not know by heart,
the poem entitled "The Happy Warrior." It has been quoted often as an
epitome of every manly, soldierly, and elevated quality. I have heard it
applied to the Duke of Wellington. Those who make the experiment of
merely substituting the word _woman_ for the word _warrior_, and
changing the feminine for the masculine pronoun, will find that it reads
equally well; that almost from beginning to end it is literally as
applicable to the one sex as to the other. As thus:--
CHARACTER OF THE HAPPY WOMAN.
Who is the happy _woman_? Who is _she_
That every _woman_ born should wish to be?
It is the generous spirit, who, when brought
Among the tasks of real life, had wrought
Upon the plan that pleased _her_ childish thought;
Whose high endeavours are an inward light,
That make the path before _her_ always bright:
Who, with a natural instinct to discern
What knowledge can perform, is diligent to learn;
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there,
But makes _her_ moral being _her_ prime care;
Who, doomed to go in company with Pain,
And Fear, and Sorrow, miserable train!
Turns _that_ necessity to glorious gain;
In face of these doth exercise a power
Which is our human nature's highest dower:
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves
Of their bad influence, and their good receives;
By objects, which might force the soul to abate
_Her_ feeling, rendered more compassionate;
Is placable--because occasions rise
So often that demand such sacrifice;
More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure
As tempted more; more able to endure,
As more exposed to suffering and distress;
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness.
'Tis _she_ whose law is reason; who depends
Upon that law as on the best of friends;
Whence in a state where men are tempted still
To evil for a guard against worse ill,
And what in quality or act is best,
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest,
_She_ fixes good on good alone, and owes
To virtue every triumph that _she_ knows.
Who, if _she_ rise to station of command,
Rises by open means; and there will stand
On honourable terms, or else retire.
* * * * *
Who comprehends _her_ trust, and to the same
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim;
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in wait
For wealth, or honours, or for worldly state;
Whom they must follow; on whose head must fall
Like showers of manna, if they come at all:
Whose powers shed round _her_ in the common strife
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if _she_ be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issue, good or bad for human kind,
Is happy as a lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like to one inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what _she_ foresaw;
Or if an unexpected call succeed,
Come when it will, is equal to the need!
In all these fifty-six lines there is only one line which cannot be
feminised in its significance,--that which I have filled up with
asterisks, and which is totally at variance with our ideal of A HAPPY
WOMAN. It is the line--
"And in himself possess his own desire."
No woman could exist happily or virtuously in such complete independence
of all external affections as these words express. "Her desire is to her
husband,"--this is the sort of subjection prophesied for the daughters of
Eve. A woman doomed to exist without this earthly rest for her
affections, does not "in herself possess her own desire;" she turns
towards God; and if she does not make her life a life of worship, she
makes it a life of charity, (which in itself is worship,) or she dies a
spiritual and a moral death. Is it much better with the man who
concentrates his aspirations in himself? I should think not.
[Illustration]
Swift, as a man and a writer, is one of those who had least sympathy
with women; and I have sometimes thought that the exaggeration, even to
morbidity, of the coarse and the cruel in his character, arose from this
want of sympathy; but his strong sense showed him the one great moral
truth as regards the two sexes, and gave him the courage to avow it.
He says, "I am ignorant of any one quality that is amiable in a woman
which is not equally so in a man. I do not except even modesty and
gentleness of nature; nor do I know one vice or folly which is not
equally detestable in both." Then, remarking that cowardice is an
_infirmity_ generally allowed to women, he wonders that they should
fancy it becoming or graceful, or think it worth improving by
affectation, particularly as it is generally allied to cruelty.
Here is a passage from one of Humboldt's letters, which I have seen
quoted with sympathy and admiration, as applied to the manly character
only:--
"Masculine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first
requisite for the formation of a character of real manly worth. The man
who suffers himself to be deceived and carried away by his own weakness,
may be a very amiable person in other respects, but cannot be called a
good man; such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a woman, for
a truly beautiful and purely feminine nature should be attracted only by
what is highest and noblest in the character of man."
Now we will take this bit of moral philosophy, and, without the
slightest alteration of the context, apply it to the female character.
"Feminine independence of mind I hold to be in reality the first
requisite for the formation of a character of real feminine worth. The
woman who allows herself to be deceived and carried away by her own
weakness may be a very amiable person in other respects, but cannot be
called a good woman; such beings should not find favour in the eyes of a
man, for the truly beautiful and purely manly nature should be attracted
only by what is highest and noblest in the character of woman."
After reading the above extracts, does it not seem clear, that by the
exclusive or emphatic use of certain phrases and epithets, as more
applicable to one sex than to the other, we have introduced a most
un-christian confusion into the conscience, and have prejudiced it early
against the acceptance of the larger truth?
It might seem, that where we reject the distinction between masculine
and feminine virtues, one and the same type of perfection should suffice
for the two sexes; yet it is clear that the moment we come to consider
the personality, the same type will not suffice: and it is worth
consideration that when we place before us the highest type of manhood,
as exemplified in Christ, we do not imagine him as the father, but as
the son; and if we think of the most perfect type of womanhood, we never
can exclude the mother.
Montaigne deals with the whole question in his own homely
straightforward fashion:--
"Je dis que les mâles et les fémelles sont jettés en même moule; sauf
l'institution et l'usage la différence n'y est pas grande. Platon
appelle indifféremment les uns et les autres à la société de touts
études, exercises, charges, et vocations guerrières et paisibles en sa
république, et le philosophe Antisthènes ôtait toute distinction entre
leur vertu et la nôtre. Il est bien plus aisé d'accuser un sexe que
d'excuser l'autre: c'est ce qu'on dit, 'le fourgon se moque de la
poële.'"
Not that I agree with Plato,--rather would leave all the fighting,
military and political, if there must be fighting, to the men.
[Illustration]
Among the absurdities talked about women, one hears, perhaps, such an
aphorism as the following quoted with a sort of ludicrous
complacency,--"The woman's strength consists in her weakness!" as if it
were not the weakness of a woman which makes her in her violence at once
so aggravating and so contemptible, in her dissimulation at once so
shallow and so dangerous, and in her vengeance at once so cowardly and
so cruel.
[Illustration]
I should not say, from my experience of my own sex, that a woman's
nature is flexible and impressible, though her feelings are. I know
very few instances of a very inferior man ruling the mind of a superior
woman, whereas I know twenty--fifty--of a very inferior woman ruling a
superior man. If he love her, the chances are that she will in the end
weaken and demoralise him. If a superior woman marry a vulgar or
inferior man he makes her miserable, but he seldom governs her mind, or
vulgarises her nature, and if there be love on his side the chances are
that in the end she will elevate and refine him.
The most dangerous man to a woman is a man of high intellectual
endowments morally perverted; for in a woman's nature there is such a
necessity to approve where she admires, and to believe where she
loves,--a devotion compounded of love and faith is so much a part of her
being,--that while the instincts remain true and the feelings
uncorrupted, the conscience and the will may both be led far astray.
Thus fell "our general mother,"--type of her sex,--overpowered, rather
than deceived, by the colossal intellect,--half serpent, half angelic.
[Illustration]
Coleridge speaks, and with a just indignant scorn, of those who consider
chastity as if it were a _thing_--a thing which might be lost or kept by
external accident--a thing of which one might be robbed, instead of a
state of being. According to law and custom, the chastity of Woman is as
the property of Man, to whom she is accountable for it, rather than to
God and her own conscience. Whatever people may say, such is the common,
the social, the legal view of the case. It is a remnant of Oriental
barbarism. It tends to much vice, or, at the best, to a low standard of
morality, in both sexes. This idea of property in the woman survives
still in our present social state, particularly among the lower orders,
and is one cause of the ill treatment of wives. All those who are
particularly acquainted with the manners and condition of the people
will testify to this; namely, that when a child or any weaker individual
is ill treated, those standing by will interfere and protect the victim;
but if the sufferer be _the wife_ of the oppressor, it is a point of
etiquette to look on, to take no part in the fray, and to leave the
brute man to do what he likes "with his own." Even the victim herself,
if she be not pummelled to death, frequently deprecates such an
interference with the dignity and the rights of her owner. Like the poor
woman in the "Médecin malgré lui:"--"Voyez un peu cet impertinent qui
vent empêcher les maris de battre leurs femmes!--et si je veux qu'il me
batte, moi?"--and so ends by giving her defender a box on the ear.
[Illustration]
"Au milieu de tous les obstacles que la nature et la société out semés
sur les pas de la femme, la seule condition de repos pour elle est de
s'entourer de barrières que les passions ne puissent franchir; incapable
de s'approprier l'existence, elle est toujours semblable a la Chinoise
dont les pieds ont été mutilés et pour laquelle toute liberté est un
leurre, toute espace ouverte une cause de chute. En attendant que
l'éducation ait donné aux femmes leur véritable place, malheur à celles
qui brisent les lisses accoutumées! pour elles l'indépendance ne sera,
comme la gloire, qu'un deuil éclatant du bonheur!"--_B. Constant._
This also is one of those common-places of well-sounding eloquence, in
which a fallacy is so wrapt up in words we have to dig it out. If this
be true, it is true only so long as you compress the feet and compress
the intellect,--no longer.