Literature and Art.
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Notes from Books.
1.
"A great advantage is derived from the occasional practice of reading
together, for each person selects different beauties and starts
different objections: while the same passage perhaps awakens in each
mind a different train of associated ideas, or raises different images
for the purposes of illustration."--_Francis Horner._
2.
"C'est ainsi que je poursuis la communication de quelque esprit fameux,
non afin qu'il m'enseigne mais afin que je le connaisse, et que le
connaissant, s'il le faut, je l'imite."--_Montaigne._
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DR. ARNOLD.
3.
I sat up till half-past two this morning reading Dr. Arnold's "Life and
Letters," and have my soul full of him to-day.
On the whole I cannot say that the perusal of this admirable book has
changed any notion in my mind, or added greatly to my stock of ideas.
There was no height of inspiration, or eloquence, or power, to which I
looked _up_; no profound depth of thought or feeling into which I looked
_down_; no _new_ lights; no _new_ guides; no absolutely _new_ aspects of
things human or spiritual.
On the other hand, I never read a book of the kind with a more
harmonious sense of pleasure and _approbation_,--if the word be not from
me presumptuous. While I read page after page, the mind which was
unfolded before me seemed to me a brother's mind--the spirit, a kindred
spirit. It was the improved, the elevated, the enlarged, the enriched,
the every-way superior reflection of my own intelligence, but it was
certainly _that_. I felt it so from beginning to end. Exactly the
reverse was the feeling with which I laid down the Life and Letters of
Southey. I was instructed, amused, interested; I profited and admired;
but with the _man_ Southey I had no sympathies: my mind stood off from
his; the poetical intellect attracted, the material of the character
repelled me. I liked the embroidery, but the texture was disagreeable,
repugnant. Now with regard to Dr. Arnold, my entire sympathy with the
character, with the _material_ of the character, did not extend to all
its manifestations. I liked the texture better than the
embroidery;--perhaps, because of my feminine organisation.
Nor did my admiration of the intellect extend to the acceptance of _all_
the opinions which emanated from it; perhaps because from the manner
these were enunciated, or merely touched upon (in letters chiefly), I
did not comprehend clearly the reasoning on which they may have been
founded. Perhaps, if I had done so, I must have respected them more,
perhaps have been convinced by them; so large, so candid, so rich in
knowledge, and apparently so logical, was the mind which admitted them.
And yet this excellent, admirable man, seems to have _feared_ God, in
the common-place sense of the word fear. He considered the Jews as out
of the pale of equality; he was against their political emancipation
from a hatred of Judaism. He subscribed to the Athanasian Creed, which
stuck even in George the Third's orthodox throat. He believed in what
Coleridge could not admit, in the existence of the spirit of evil as a
person. He had an idea that the Church _of God_ may be destroyed by an
Antichrist; he speaks of such a consummation as possible, as probable,
as impending; as if any institution really from God could be destroyed
by an adverse power!--and he thought that a lawyer could not be a
Christian.
4.
Certain passages filled me with astonishment as coming from a churchman,
particularly what he says of the sacraments (vol. ii. pp. 75. 113.); and
in another place, where he speaks of "the _pestilent_ distinction
between clergy and laity;" and where he says, "I hold that one form of
Church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as
another." And in another place he speaks of the Anglican Church (with
reference to Henry VIII. as its father, and Elizabeth as its
foster-mother), as "the child of regal and aristocratical selfishness
and unprincipled tyranny, who has never dared to speak boldly to the
great, but has contented herself with lecturing the poor;" but he forgot
at the moment the trial of the bishops in James's time, and their noble
stand against regal authority.
5.
With regard to conservatism (vol. ii. pp. 19. 62.), he seems to mean--as
I understand the whole passage,--that it is a good _instinct_ but a bad
_principle_. Yet as a principle is it, as he says, "always wrong?"
Though as the adversary of progress, it must be always wrong, yet as the
adversary of change it _may_ be sometimes right.
6.
He remarks that most of those who are above sectarianism are in general
indifferent to Christianity, while almost all who profess to value
Christianity seem, when they are brought to the test, to care only for
their own sect. "Now," he adds, "it is manifest to me, that all our
education must be Christian, and not be sectarian." Yet the whole aim of
education up to this time has been, in this country, eminently
sectarian, and every statesman who has attempted to place it on a
broader basis has been either wrecked or stranded.
"All sects," he says in another place, "have had among them marks of
Christ's Catholic Church in the graces of his Spirit and the confession
of his name," and he seems to wish that some one would compile a book
showing side by side what professors of all sects have done for the good
of Christ's Church,--the martyrdoms, the missionary labours of
Catholics, Protestants, Arians, &c.; "a grand field," he calls it,--and
so it were; but it lies fallow up to this time.
7.
"the philosophy of medicine, I imagine, is at zero; our practice is
empirical, and seems hardly more than a course of guessing, more or less
happy." In another place (vol. ii. p. 72.), he says, "yet I honour
medicine as the most beneficent of all professions."
8.
He says (vol. ii. p. 42.), "Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness,
because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral
nature." "Thus, a man may have one or more virtues, such as are
according to his favourite ideas, in great perfection; and still be
nothing, because these ideas are his idols, and, worshipping them with
all his heart, there is a portion of his heart, more or less
considerable, left without its proper object, guide, and nourishment;
and so this portion is left to the dominion of evil," &c.
(One might ask _how_, if a man worship these ideas with _all_ his heart,
a portion could be left? but the sense is so excellent, I cannot quarrel
with a slight inaccuracy in the expression. I never quite understood
before why it is difficult to subscribe to the truth of the phrase "He
is a good but a narrow-minded man," but _felt_ the incompatibility.)
9.
He says "the word _useful_ implies the idea of good robbed of its
nobleness." Is this true? the _useful_ is the _good_ applied to
practical purposes; it need not, therefore, be less noble. The nobleness
lies in the spirit in which it is so applied.
10.
Benthamism (what _is_ it?), Puritanism, Judaism, how he hates them! I
suppose, because he _fears_ God and _fears_ for the Church of God.
Hatred of all kinds seems to originate in fear.
11.
What he says of conscience, very remarkable!
"Men get embarrassed by the common cases of a misguided conscience: but
a compass may be out of order as well as a conscience; and you can trace
the deranging influence on the latter quite as surely as on the former.
The needle may point due south if you hold a powerful magnet in that
direction; still the compass, generally speaking, is a true and sure
guide," &c.; and then he adds, "he who believes his conscience to be
God's law, by obeying it obeys God."
I think there would be much to say about all this passage relating to
conscience, nor am I sure that I quite understand it. Derangement of the
intellect is madness; is not derangement of the conscience also madness?
might it not be induced, as we bring on a morbid state of the other
faculties, by over use and abuse? by giving it more than its due share
of power in the commonwealth of the mind? It should preside, not
tyrannise; rule, not exercise a petty cramping despotism. A healthy
courageous conscience gives to the powers, instincts, impulses, fair
play; and having once settled the order of government with a strong
hand, is not always meddling though always watchful.
Then again, how is conscience "God's law?" Conscience is not the law,
but the interpreter of the law; it does not teach the difference between
right and wrong, it only impels us to do what we believe to be right,
and smites us when we _think_ we have been wrong. How is it that many
have done wrong, and every day do wrong for conscience' sake?--and does
that sanctify the wrong in the eyes of God, as well as in those of John
Huss?[1]
12.
"Prayer," he says, "and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two
great safeguards of spiritual life--its more than food and raiment."
True; but there is something higher than this fed and clothed spiritual
life; something more difficult, yet less conscious.
13.
In allusion to Coleridge, he says very truly, that the power of
contemplation becomes diseased and perverted when it is the main
employment of life. But to the same great intellect he does beautiful
justice in another passage. "Coleridge seemed to me to love truth
really, and, therefore, truth presented herself to him, not negatively,
as she does to many minds, who can see that the objections against her
are unfounded, and therefore that she is to be received; but she filled
him, as it were, heart and mind, imbuing him with her very self, so that
all his being comprehended her fully, and loved her ardently; and that
seems to me to be true wisdom."
14.
Very fine is a passage wherein he speaks against meeting what is wrong
and bad with negatives, with merely proving the wrong to be wrong, and
the false to be false, without substituting for either the positively
good and true.
15.
He contrasts as the two forms of the present danger to the Church and to
society, the prevalent epicurean atheism, and the lying and formal
spirit of priestcraft. He seems to have had an impression that the
Church of God may be "utterly destroyed"(?), or, he asks, "must we look
forward for centuries to come to the mere alternations of infidelity and
superstition, scepticism, and Newmanism?" It is very curious to see two
such men as Arnold and Carlyle both overwhelmed with a terror of the
magnitude of the mischiefs they see impending over us. They are
oppressed with the anticipation of evil as with a sense of personal
calamity. Something alike, perhaps, in the temperaments of these two
extraordinary men;--large conscientiousness, large destructiveness, and
small hope: there was great mutual sympathy and admiration.
16.
Very admirable what he says in favour of comprehensive reading, against
exclusive reading in one line of study. He says, "Preserve proportion in
your reading, keep your view of men and things extensive, and depend
upon it a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one; as far as it goes
the views that it gives are true; but he who reads deeply in one class
of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, and
which are not only _narrow but false_."
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17.
All his descriptions of natural scenery and beauty show his intense
sensibility to them, but nowhere is there a trace of the love or the
comprehension of art, as the reflection from the mind of man of the
nature and the beauty he so loved. Thus, after dwelling on a scene of
exquisite natural beauty, he says, "Much more beautiful, because made
truly after God's own image, are the forms and colours of kind, and
wise, and holy thoughts, words, and actions;" that is to say--although he
knew not or made not the application--ART, in the high sense of the word,
for that is the embodying in beautiful hues and forms, what is kind,
wise, and holy; in one word--_good_. In fact, he says himself, art,
physical science, and natural history, were not included within the
reach of his mind; the first for want of taste, the second for want of
time, and the third for want of inclination.
18.
He says, "The whole subject of the brute creation is to me one of such
painful mystery, that I dare not approach it." This is very striking
from such a man. How deep, consciously or unconsciously, does this
feeling lie in many minds!
Bayle had already termed the acts, motives, and feelings of the lower
order of animals, "un des plus profonds abîmes sur quoi notre raison
peut s'exerciser."
There is nothing, as I have sometimes thought, in which men so blindly
sin as in their appreciation and treatment of the whole lower order of
creatures. It is affirmed that love and mercy towards animals are not
inculcated by any direct precept of Christianity, but surely they are
included in its spirit; yet it has been remarked that cruelty towards
animals is far more common in Western Christendom than in the East. With
the Mahometan and Brahminical races humanity to animals, and the
sacredness of life in all its forms, is much more of a religious
principle than among ourselves.
Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," does not think it beneath his
philosophy to point out as a part of human morals, and a condition of
human improvement, justice and mercy to the lower animals--"the extension
of a noble and excellent principle of compassion to the creatures
subject to man." "The Turks," he says, "though a cruel and sanguinary
nation both in descent and discipline, give alms to brutes, and suffer
them not to be tortured."
It should seem as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress
upon a future life in contradistinction to this life, and placing the
lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time
out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter
disregard of animals in the light of our fellow creatures. The
definition of virtue among the early Christians was the same as
Paley's--that it was good performed for the sake of ensuring everlasting
happiness--which of course excluded all the so-called brute creatures.
Kind, loving, submissive, conscientious, much enduring, we know them to
be; but because we deprive them of all stake in the future, because they
have no selfish calculated aim, these are not virtues; yet if we say "a
_vicious_ horse," why not say a _virtuous_ horse?
The following passage, bearing curiously enough on the most abstruse
part of the question, I found in Hallam's Literature of the Middle
Ages:--"Few," he says, "at present, who believe in the immateriality of
the human soul, would deny the same to an elephant; but it must be owned
that the discoveries of zoology have pushed this to consequences which
some might not readily adopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a
little our prejudices; yet there is no resting-place, and we must admit
this, or be content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fibre.
Brutes have been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes of
mankind have been in civil polity; their souls, we see, were almost
universally disputed to them at the end of the seventeenth century, even
by those who did not absolutely bring them down to machinery. Even
within the recollection of many, it was common to deny them any kind of
reasoning faculty, and to solve their most sagacious actions by the
vague word instinct. We have come of late years to think better of our
humble companions; and, as usual in similar cases, the preponderant bias
seems rather too much of a levelling character."
When natural philosophers speak of "the higher reason and more limited
instincts of man," as compared with animals, do they mean savage man or
cultivated man? In the savage man the instincts have a power, a range, a
certitude, like those of animals. As the mental faculties become
expanded and refined the instincts become subordinate. In tame animals
are the instincts as strong as in wild animals? Can we not, by a process
of training, substitute an entirely different set of motives and habits?
Why, in managing animals, do men in general make brutes of themselves to
address what is most _brute_ in the lower creature, as if it had not
been demonstrated that in using our higher faculties, our reason and
benevolence, we develop sympathetically higher powers in _them_, and in
subduing them through what is best within us, raise them and bring them
nearer to ourselves?
In general the more we can gather of facts, the nearer we are to the
elucidation of theoretic truth. But with regard to animals, the
multiplication of facts only increases our difficulties and puts us to
confusion.
"Can we otherwise explain animal instincts than by supposing that the
Deity himself is virtually the active and present moving principle
within them? If we deny them _soul_, we must admit that they have some
spirit direct from God, what we call _unerring_ instinct, which holds
the place of it." This is the opinion which Newton adopts. Then are we
to infer that the reason of man removes him further from God than the
animals, since we cannot offend God in our instincts, only in our
reason? and that the superiority of the human animal lies in the power
of sinning? Terrible power! terrible privilege! out of which we deduce
the law of progress and the necessity for a future life.
The following passage bearing on the subject is from Bentham:--
"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those
rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand
of tyranny. It may come one day to be recognised that the number of
legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the _os sacrum_,
are reasons insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the caprice
of a tormentor. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line?
is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But
a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational as well
as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or even a
month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The
question is not, 'can they reason?' nor 'can they speak?' but 'can they
suffer?'"
I do not remember ever to have heard the kind and just treatment of
animals enforced upon Christian principles or made the subject of a
sermon.
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19.
Once, when I was at Vienna, there was a dread of hydrophobia, and orders
were given to massacre all the dogs which were found unclaimed or
uncollared in the city or suburbs. Men were employed for this purpose,
and they generally carried a short heavy stick, which they flung at the
poor proscribed animal with such certain aim as either to kill or maim
it mortally at one blow. It happened one day that, close to the edge of
the river, near the Ferdinand's-Brücke, one of these men flung his stick
at a wretched dog, but with such bad aim that it fell into the river.
The poor animal, following his instinct or his teaching, immediately
plunged in, redeemed the stick, and laid it down at the feet of its
owner, who, snatching it up, dashed out the creature's brains.
I wonder what the Athenians would have done to such a man? they who
banished the judge of the Areopagus because he flung away the bird which
had sought shelter in his bosom?
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20.
I return to Dr. Arnold. He laments the neglect of our cathedrals and the
absurd confusion in so many men's minds "between what is really Popery,
and what is but wisdom and beauty adopted by the Roman Catholics and
neglected by us."
21.
He says, "Then, only, can opportunities of evil be taken from us, when
we lose also all opportunity of doing or becoming good." An obvious,
even common place thought, well and tersely expressed. The inextricable
co-relation and apparent antagonism of good and evil were never more
strongly put.
22.
The defeat of Varus by the Germans, and the defeat of the moors by
Charles Martel, he ranked as the two most important battles in the
history of the world. I see why. The first, because it decided whether
the north of Europe was to be completely Latinised; the second, because
it decided whether all Europe was to be completely Mahomedanised.
23.
"How can he who labours hard for his daily bread--hardly and with
doubtful success--be made wise and good, and therefore how can he be made
happy? This question undoubtedly the Church was meant to solve; for
Christ's kingdom was to undo the evil of Adam's sin; but the Church has
not solved it nor attempted to do so, and no one else has gone about it
rightly. How shall the poor man find time to be educated?"
This question, which "the Church has not yet solved," men have now set
their wits to solve for themselves.
24.
When in Italy he writes:--"It is almost awful to look at the beauty which
surrounds me and then think of moral evil. It seems as if heaven and
hell, instead of being separated by a great gulf from us and from each
other, were close at hand and on each other's confines."
"Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight
in external beauty!"
A prayer I echo, Amen! if by the _sense_ he mean the abhorrence of it;
otherwise, to be perpetually haunted with the perception of moral evil
were dreadful; yet, on the other hand, I am half ashamed sometimes of a
conscious shrinking within myself from the sense of moral evil, merely
as I should shrink from external filth and deformity, as hateful to
perception and recollection, rather than as hateful to God and
subversive of goodness.
25.
Here is a very striking passage. He says, "A great school is very
trying; it never can present images of rest and peace; and when the
spring and activity of youth are altogether unsanctified by anything
pure and elevated in its desires, it becomes a spectacle that is
dizzying and almost more morally distressing than the shouts and gambols
of a set of lunatics. It is very startling to see so much of sin
combined with so little of sorrow. In a parish, amongst the poor,
whatever of sin exists there is sure also to be enough of suffering:
poverty, sickness, and old age are mighty tamers and chastisers. But,
with boys of the richer classes, one sees nothing but plenty, health,
and youth; and these are really awful to behold, when one must feel that
they are unblessed. On the other hand, few things are more beautiful
than when one does see all holy and noble thoughts and principles, not
the forced growth of pain, or infirmity, or privation, but springing up
as by God's immediate planting, in a sort of garden of all that is fresh
and beautiful; full of so much hope for this world as well as for
heaven."
To this testimony of a schoolmaster let us add the testimony of a
schoolboy. De Quincey thus describes in himself the transition from
boyhood to manhood: "Then first and suddenly were brought powerfully
before me the change which was worked in the aspects of society by the
presence of woman; woman, pure, thoughtful, noble, coming before me as
Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this ennobling
spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of
schoolboy society--no matter in what region of the earth,--schoolboy
society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in
the manner; so childish and yet so remote from simplicity; so foolishly
careless, and yet so revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to
learning, and yet beyond any section of human beings so conspicuously
ignorant."
There is a reverse to this picture, as I hope and believe. If I have met
with those who looked back on their school-days with horror, as having
first contaminated them with "evil communication," I have met with
others whose remembrances were all of sunshine, of early friendships, of
joyous sports.
Nor do I think that a large school composed wholly of girls is in any
respect better. In the low languid tone of mind, the petulant tempers,
the small spitefulnesses, the cowardly concealments, the compressed or
ill-directed energies, the precocious vanities and affectations, many
such congregations of _Femmelettes_ would form a worthy pendant to the
picture of boyish turbulence and vulgarity drawn by De Quincey.
I am convinced from my own recollections, and from all I have learned
from experienced teachers in large schools, that one of the most fatal
mistakes in the training of children has been the too early separation
of the sexes. I say, _has been_, because I find that everywhere this
most dangerous prejudice has been giving way before the light of truth
and a more general acquaintance with that primal law of nature, which
ought to teach us that the more we can assimilate on a large scale the
public to the domestic training, the better for all. There exists still,
the impression--in the higher classes especially--that in early education,
the mixture of the two sexes would tend to make the girls masculine and
the boys effeminate, but experience shows us that it is all the other
way. Boys learn a manly and protecting tenderness, and the girls become
at once more feminine and more truthful. Where this association has
begun early enough, that is, before five years old, and has been
continued till about ten or twelve, it has uniformly worked well; on
this point the evidence is unanimous and decisive. So long ago as 1812,
Francis Horner, in describing a school he visited at Enmore, near
Bridgewater, speaks with approbation of the boys and the girls standing
up together in the same class: it is the first mention, I find, of this
innovation on the old collegiate, or charity-school plan,--itself a
continuation of the monkish discipline. He says, "I liked much the
placing the boys and girls together at an early age; it gave the boys a
new spur to emulation." When I have seen a class of girls stand up
together, there has been a sort of empty tittering, a vacancy in the
faces, an inertness, which made it, as I thought, very up-hill work for
the teacher; so when it was a class of boys, there has been often a
sluggishness--a tendency to ruffian tricks--requiring perpetual effort on
the part of the master. In teaching a class of boys and girls,
accustomed to stand up together, there is little or nothing of this.
They are brighter, readier, better behaved; there is a kind of mutual
influence working for good; and if there be emulation, it is not mingled
with envy or jealousy. Mischief, such as might be apprehended, is in
this case far less likely to arise than where boys and girls, habitually
separated from infancy, are first thrown together, just at the age when
the feelings are first awakened and the association has all the
excitement of novelty. A very intelligent schoolmaster assured me that
he had had more trouble with a class of fifty boys, than with a school
of three hundred boys and girls together (in the midst of whom I found
him); and that there were no inconveniences resulting which a wise and
careful and efficient superintendence could not control. "There is,"
said he, "not only more emulation, more quickness of brain, but
altogether a superior healthiness of tone, body and mind, where the boys
and girls are trained together till about ten years old; and it extends
into their after life:--I should say because it is in accordance with the
laws of God in forming us with mutual sympathies, moral and
intellectual, and mutual dependence for help from the very beginning of
life."
What is curious enough, I find many people--fathers, mothers,
teachers,--who are agreed that in the schools for the lower classes, the
two sexes may be safely and advantageously associated, yet have a sort
of horror of the idea of such an innovation in schools for the higher
classes. One would like to know the reason for such a distinction,
instead of being encountered, as is usual, by a sneer or a vile
innuendo.
[Illustration]
NIEBUHR.
LIFE AND LETTERS, 1852.
26.
In a letter to a young student in philology there are noble passages in
which I truly sympathise. He says, among other things: "I wish you had
less pleasure in satires, not excepting those of Horace. Turn to the
works which elevate the heart, in which you contemplate great men and
great events, and live in a higher world. Turn away from those which
represent the mean and contemptible side of ordinary circumstances and
degenerate days: they are not suitable for the young, who in ancient
times would not have been suffered to have them in their hands. Homer,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Pindar,--these are the poets for youth." And again:
"Do not read the ancient authors in order to make æsthetic reflections
on them, but in order to drink in their spirit and to fill your soul
with their thoughts; and in order to gain that by reading which you
would have gained by reverently listening to the discourses of great
men."
We should turn to works of art with the same feeling.
On the whole, all my own educational experience has shown me the
dangerous--in some cases fatal--effects on the childish intellect, where
precocious criticism was encouraged, and where caricatures and ugly
disproportioned figures, expressing vile or ridiculous emotions, were
placed before the eyes of children, as a means of amusement.
If I were a legislator I would forbid travesties and ridiculous
burlesques of Shakspeare's finest and most serious dramas to be acted
in our theatres. That this has been done and recently (as in the case of
the Merchant of Venice) seems to me a national disgrace.
27.
It is strange, confounding, to hear Niebuhr speak thus of Goethe:--
"I am inclined to think that Goethe is utterly destitute of
susceptibility to impressions from the fine arts."(!!) He afterwards
does more justice to Goethe--certainly one of the profoundest critics in
art who ever lived; although I am inclined to think that his was an
educated perception rather than a natural sensibility. Niebuhr's
criticism on Goethe's Italian travels,--on Goethe's want of sympathy with
the people,--his regarding the whole country and nation simply as a sort
of bazaar of art and antiquities, an exhibition of beauty and a
recreation for himself: his habit of surveying all moral and
intellectual greatness, all that speaks to the heart, with a kind of
patronising superiority, as if created for his use,--and finding
amusement in the folly, degeneracy, and corruption of the people;--all
this appears to me admirable, and so far I had strong sympathy with
Niebuhr; for I well remember that in reading Goethe's "Italianische
Reise," I had the same perception of the artless and the superficial in
point of feeling, in the midst of so much that was fine and valuable in
criticism. It is well to be artistic in art, but not to walk about the
world _en artiste_, studying humanity, and the deepest human interests,
as if they were _art_.
Niebuhr afterwards says, in speaking of Rome, "I am sickened here of
art, as I should be of sweetmeats instead of bread." So it _must_ be
where art is separated wholly from morals.
28.
He speaks of the "wretched superstition," and the "utter incapacity for
piety" in the people of the Roman States.
Superstition and the want of piety go together; and the combination is
not peculiar to the Italians, nor to the Roman Catholic faith.
29.
In speaking of the education of his son, he deprecates the learning by
rote of hymns. "To a happy child, hymns deploring the misery of human
life are without meaning." (And worse.) "So likewise to a good child are
those expressing self-accusation and contrition." (He might have added,
and self-applause.)
I am quite sure, from my own experience of children who have been
allowed to learn penitential psalms and hymns, that they think of
wickedness as a sort of thing which gives them self-importance.
30.
"Only what the mind takes in willingly can it assimilate with itself,
and make its own, part of its life."
A truism of the greatest value in education; but who thinks of it when
cramming children's minds with all sorts of distasteful heterogeneous
things?
31.
"When reflection has become too one-sided and too domineering over a
deeply feeling heart, it is apt to lead us into errors in our treatment
of others."
And all that follows--very wise! for the want of this reflection leaves
us stranded and wrecked through feeling and perception merely.
32.
Very curious and interesting, as a trait of character and feeling, is
the passage in which he represents himself, in the dangerous confinement
of his second wife, as praying to his first wife for succour. "In my
terrible anxiety," he says, "I prayed most earnestly, and entreated my
Milly, too, for help. I comforted Gretchen by telling her that Milly
would send help. When she was at the worst, she sighed out, 'Ah, cannot
your Amelia send me a blessing?'"
This is curious from a Protestant and a philosopher. It shows that there
may be something nearly allied to our common nature in the Roman
Catholic invocation to the saints, and to the souls of the dead.
33.
Niebuhr, speaking of a lady (Madame von der Recke, I think,--the "Elise"
of Goethe) who had patronised him, says, "I will receive roses and
myrtles from female hands, but no laurels."
This makes one smile; for most of the laurels which Niebuhr will receive
in this country will be through female hands--through the admirable
translation and arrangement of his life and letters by Susanna
Winkworth.
34.
The following I read with cordial agreement:--"While I am ready to adopt
any well-grounded opinion" (regarding, I suppose, mere facts, or
speculations as to things), "my inmost soul revolts against receiving
the judgment of others respecting persons; and whenever I have done so I
have bitterly repented of it."
35.
He says, "I cannot worship the abstraction of Virtue. She only charms me
when she addresses herself to my heart, and speaks thus the love from
which she springs. I really love nothing but what actually exists."
What _does_ actually exist to us but that which we believe in? and where
we strongly love do we not believe sometimes in the _unreal_? is it not
_then_ the existing and the actual to us?
36.
"A faculty of a quite peculiar kind, and for which we have no word, is
the recognition of the incomprehensible. It is something which
distinguishes the seer from the ordinary learned man."
But in religion this is _faith_. Does Niebuhr admit this kind of faith,
"the recognition of the incomprehensible," in philosophy, and not in
religion? for he often complains of the want in himself of any faith but
an historic faith.
37.
"In times of good fortune it is easy to appear great--nay, even to act
greatly; but in misfortune very difficult. The greatest man will commit
blunders in misfortune, because the want of proportion between his means
and his ends progressively increases, and his inward strength is
exhausted in fruitless efforts."
This is true; but under all extremes of good or evil fortune we are apt
to commit mistakes, because the tide of the mind does not flow equally,
but rushes along impetuously in a flood, or brokenly and distractedly in
a rocky channel, where its strength is exhausted in conflict and pain.
The extreme pressure of circumstances will produce extremes of feeling
in minds of a sensitive rather than a firm cast.
38.
This next passage is curious as a scholar's opinion of "free trade" in
the year 1810; though I believe the phrase "free trade" was not even
invented at that time--certainly not in use in the statesman's
vocabulary.
"I presume you will admit that commerce is a good thing, and the first
requisite in the life of any nation. It appears to me, that this much
has now been palpably demonstrated, namely, that an advanced and
complicated social condition like this in which we live can only be
maintained by establishing mutual relationships between the most remote
nations; and that the limitation of commerce would, like the sapping of
a main pillar, inevitably occasion the fall of the whole edifice; and
also that commerce is so essentially beneficial and in accordance with
man's nature, that the well-being of each nation is an advantage to all
the nations that stand in connection with it."
It is strange how long we have been (forty years, and more) in
recognising these simple principles; and in Germany, where they were
first enunciated, they are not recognised yet.
[Illustration]
CHARACTER OF DEMADES.
(FROM NIEBUHR's LECTURES.)
39.
"By his wit and his talent, and more especially by his gift as an
improvisatore, he rose so high that he exercised a great influence upon
the people, and sometimes was more popular even than Demosthenes. With a
shamelessness amounting to honesty, he bluntly told the people
everything he felt and what all the populace felt with him. When hearing
such a man the populace felt at their ease: he gave them the feeling
that they might be wicked without being disgraced, and this excites with
such people a feeling of gratitude. There is a remarkable passage in
Plato, where he shows that those who deliver hollow speeches, without
being in earnest, have no power or influence; whereas others, who are
devoid of mental culture, but say in a straightforward manner what they
think and feel, exercise great power. It was this which in the
eighteenth century gave the materialist philosophy in France such
enormous influence with the higher classes; for they were told there was
no need to be ashamed of the vulgarest sensuality; formerly people had
been ashamed, but now a man learned that he might be a brutal
sensualist, provided he did not offend against elegant manners and
social conventionalism. People rejoiced at hearing a man openly and
honestly say what they themselves felt. Demades was a remarkable
character. He was not a bad man; and I like him much better than
Eschines."
What an excuse, what a sanction is here for the demagogues who direct
the worst passions of men to the worst and the most selfish purposes,
and the most debasing consequences! Demades "not a bad man?" then what
_is_ a bad man?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
LORD BACON.
(1849.)
40.
"It was not the pure knowledge of nature and universality, but it was
the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give the
law unto himself, which was the form of the first temptation."
But, in this sense, the first temptation is only the type of the
perpetual and ever-present temptation--the temptation into which we are
to fall through necessity, that we may rise through love.
41.
Here is an excellent passage--a severe commentary on the unsound,
un-christian, unphilosophical distinction between morals and politics in
government:--
"Although men bred in learning are perhaps to seek in points of
convenience and reasons of state and accommodations for the present,
yet, on the other hand, to recompense this they are perfect in those
same plain grounds of religion, justice, honour, and moral virtue which,
if they be well and watchfully pursued, there will be seldom use of
those other expedients, no more than of physic in a sound, well-directed
body."
42.
"Now (in the time of Lord Bacon, that is,) now sciences are delivered to
be believed and accepted, and not to be farther discovered; and
therefore, sciences stand at a clog, and have done for many ages."
In the present time, this is true only, or especially, of theology as an
art, and divinity as a science; so made by the schoolmen of former ages,
and not yet emancipated.
43.
"Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion, that
the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into
which man is not to press too boldly."
God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given
us on this side of the grave. But not the less will he keep his own
secrets from us. Has he not proved it? who has opened that door to the
knowledge of a future being which it has pleased him to keep shut fast,
though watched by hope and by faith?
44.
The Christian philosophy of these latter times appears to be
foreshadowed in the following sentence, where he speaks of such as have
ventured to deduce and confirm the truth of the Christian religion from
the principles and authorities of philosophers: "Thus with great pomp
and solemnity celebrating the intermarriage of faith and sense as a
lawful conjunction, and soothing the minds of men with a pleasing
variety of matter, though, at the same time, rashly and unequally
intermixing things divine and things human."
This last common-place distinction seems to me, however, unworthy of
Bacon. It should be banished--utterly set aside. Things which are divine
should be human, and things which are human, divine; not as a mixture,
"a medley," in the sense of Bacon's words, but an interfusion; for
nothing that we esteem divine can be anything to us but as we make it
_ours_, _i. e._ humanise it; and our humanity were a poor thing but for
"the divinity that stirs within us." We do injury to our own nature--we
misconceive our relations to the Creator, to his universe, and to each
other, so long as we separate and studiously keep wide apart the
_divine_ and the _human_.
45.
"Let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied
moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too
well studied either in the book of God's word or the book of God's
works." Well advised! But then he goes on to warn men that they do not
"unwisely mingle or confound their learnings together:" mischievous this
contradistinction between God's word and God's works; since both, if
emanating from him, must be equally true. And if there be one truth,
then, to borrow his own words in another place, "the voice of nature
will consent, whether the voice of man do so or not."
46.
Apropos to education--here is a good illustration: "Were it not better
for a man in a fair room to set up one great light or branching
candlestick of lights, than to go about with a rushlight into every dark
corner?"
And here is another: "It is one thing to set forth what ground lieth
unmanured, and another to correct ill husbandry in that which _is_
manured."
47.
"It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men
gentle and generous, amiable, and pliant to government, whereas
ignorance maketh them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous."
48.
"An impatience of doubt and an unadvised haste to assertion without due
and mature suspension of the judgment, is an error in the conduct of the
understanding."
"In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties he shall end in
doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in
certainties." Well said and profoundly true.
This is a celebrated and often-cited passage; an admitted principle in
theory. I wish it were oftener applied in practice,--more especially in
education. For it seems to me that in teaching children we ought not to
be perpetually dogmatising. We ought not to be ever placing before them
only the known and the definite; but to allow the unknown, the
uncertain, the indefinite, to be suggested to their minds: it would do
more for the growth of a truly religious feeling than all the catechisms
of scientific facts and creeds of theological definitions that ever were
taught in cut and dried question and answer. Why should not the young
candid mind be allowed to reflect on the unknown, as such? on the
doubtful, as such--open to inquiry and liable to discussion? Why will
teachers suppose that in confessing their own ignorance or admitting
uncertainties they must diminish the respect of their pupils, or their
faith in truth? I should say from my own experience that the effect is
just the reverse. I remember, when a child, hearing a very celebrated
man profess his ignorance on some particular subject, and I felt
awe-struck--it gave me a perception of the infinite,--as when looking up
at the starry sky. What we unadvisedly cram into a child's mind in the
same form it has taken in our own, does not always healthily or
immediately assimilate; it dissolves away in doubts, or it hardens into
prejudice, instead of mingling with the life as truth ought to do. It is
the early and habitual surrendering of the mind to authority, which
makes it afterwards so ready for deception of all kinds.
49.
He speaks of "legends and narrations of miracles wrought by martyrs,
hermits, monks, which, though they have had passage for a time by the
ignorance of the people, the superstitious simplicity of some, and the
politic toleration of others, holding them but as divine poesies; yet
after a time they grew up to be esteemed but as old wives' fables, to
the great scandal and detriment of religion."
Very ambiguous, surely. Does he mean that it was to the great scandal
and detriment of religion that they existed at all? or that they came to
be regarded as old wives' fables?
50.
He says, farther on, "though truth and error are carefully to be
separated, yet rarities and reports that seem incredible are not to be
suppressed or denied to the memory of men."
"For it is not yet known in what cases and how far effects attributed to
superstition do participate of natural causes."
51.
"To be speculative with another man to the end to know how to work him
or wind him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not
entire and ingenuous; which, as in friendship, it is a want of
_integrity_, so towards princes or superiors it is a want of _duty_."
(No occasion, surely, for the distinction here drawn; inasmuch as the
want of integrity involves the want of _every_ duty.)
Then he speaks of "the stooping to points of necessity and convenience
and outward basenesses," as to be accounted "submission to the occasion,
not to the person." Vile distinction! an excuse to himself for his
dedication to the King, and his flattery of Carr and Villiers.
52.
Our English Universities are only now beginning to show some sign
(reluctant sign) of submitting to that re-examination which the great
philosopher recommended two hundred and fifty years ago, when he says:
"Inasmuch as most of the usages and orders of the universities were
derived from more obscure times, it is the more requisite they be
reexamined"--and more to the same purpose.
53.
"If that great Workmaster (God) had been of a human disposition, he
would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and
orders like the frets in the roofs of houses; whereas, one can scarce
find a posture in square or triangle or straight line amongst such an
infinite number, so differing an harmony there is between the spirit of
man and the spirit of nature."
Perhaps if our human vision could be removed to a sufficient distance to
contemplate the whole of what we now see in part, what appears disorder
might appear beautiful order. The stars which now appear as if flung
about at random, would perhaps be resolved into some exquisitely
beautiful and regular edifice. The fly on the cornice, "whose feeble ray
scarce spreads an inch around," might as well discuss the proportions of
the Parthenon as we the true figure and frame of God's universe.
I remember seeing, through Lord Rosse's telescope, one of those nebulæ
which have hitherto appeared like small masses of vapour floating about
in space. I saw it composed of thousands upon thousands of brilliant
stars, and the effect to the eye--to mine at least--was as if I had had my
hand full of diamonds, and suddenly unclosing it, and flinging them
forth, they were dispersed as from a centre, in a kind of partly
irregular, partly fan-like form; and I had a strange feeling of suspense
and amazement while I looked, because they did not change their relative
position, did not fall--though in act to fall--but seemed fixed in the
very attitude of being flung forth into space;--it was most wondrous and
beautiful to see!
[Illustration]
54.
It is pleasant to me to think that Bacon's stupendous intellect believed
in the moral progress of human societies, because it is my own belief,
and one that I would not for worlds resign. I indeed believe that each
human being must here (or hereafter?) work out his own peculiar moral
life: but also that the whole race has a progressive moral life: just as
in our solar system every individual planet moves in its own orbit,
while the whole system moves on together; we know not whither, we know
not round what centre--"_ma pur si muove!_"
55.
Yet he says in another place, with equal wit and sublimity, "Every
obtaining of a desire hath a _show_ of advancement, as motion in a
circle hath a _show_ of progression." Perhaps our movement may be
_spiral_? and every revolution may bring us nearer and nearer to some
divine centre in which we may be absorbed at last?
56.
He refers in this following passage to that theory of the angelic
existences which we see expressed in ancient symbolic Art, first by
variation of colour only, and later, by variety of expression and form.
He says,--"We find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial
hierarchy of that supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, that the
first place or degree is given to the Angels of Love, which are called
Seraphim; the second to the Angels of Light, which are termed Cherubim;
and the third, and so following, to Thrones, Principalities, and the
rest (which are all angels of power and ministry); so as the angels of
knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and
domination."
--But the Angels of LOVE are first and over all. In other words, we have
here in due order of precedence, 1. LOVE, 2. KNOWLEDGE, 3. POWER,--the
angelic Trinity, which, in unity, is our idea of GOD.
[Illustration]
CHATEAUBRIAND.
("MEMOIRES D'OUTRE TOMBE." 1851.)
57.
Chateaubriand tells us that when his mother and sisters urged him to
marry, he resisted strongly--he thought it too early; he says, with a
peculiar naïveté, "Je ne me sentais aucune qualité de mari: toutes mes
illusions étaient vivantes, rien n'était épuisé en moi, l'énergie même
de mon existence avait doublé par mes courses," &c.
So then the "_existence épuisé_" is to be kept for the wife! "_la vie
usée_"--"_la jeunesse abusée_," is good enough to make a husband!
Chateaubriand, who in many passages of his book piques himself on his
morality, seems quite unconscious that he has here given utterance to a
sentiment the most profoundly immoral, the most fatal to both sexes,
that even his immoral age had ever the effrontery to set forth.
58.
"Il paraît qu'on n'apprend pas à mourir en tuant les autres."
Nor do we learn to suffer by inflicting pain: nothing so patient as
pity.
59.
"Le cynisme des moeurs ramène dans la société, en annihilant le sens
moral, une sorte de barbares; ces barbares de la civilisation, propres à
détruire comme les Goths, n'ont pas la puissance de fonder comme eux;
ceux-ci étaient les énormes enfants d'une nature vierge; ceux-là sont
les avortons monstrueux d'une nature dépravée."
We too often make the vulgar mistake that undisciplined or overgrown
passions are a sign of strength; they are the signs of immaturity, of
"enormous childhood."--And the distinction (above) is well drawn and
true. The real savage is that monstrous, malignant, abject thing,
generated out of the rottenness and ferment of civilisation. And yet
extremes meet: I remember seeing on the shores of Lake Huron some
Indians of a distant tribe of Chippawas, who in appearance were just
like those fearful abortions of humanity which crawl out of the
darkness, filth, and ignorance of our great towns, just so miserable, so
stupid, so cruel,--only, perhaps, less _wicked_.
60.
Chateaubriand was always comparing himself with Lord Byron--he hints more
than once, that Lord Byron owed some of his inspiration to the perusal
of his works--more especially to Renée. In this he was altogether
mistaken.
61.
"Une intelligence supérieure n'enfante pas le mal sans douleur, parceque
ce n'est pas son fruit naturel, et qu'elle ne devait pas le porter."
62.
Madame de Coeslin (whom he describes as an impersonation of aristocratic
_morgue_ and all the pretension and prejudices of the _ancien régime_),
"lisant dans un journal la mort de plusieurs rois, elle ôta ses lunettes
et dit en se mouchant, 'Il y a donc une _épizootie sur ces bêtes à
couronne_!"
I once counted among my friends an elderly lady of high rank, who had
spent the whole of a long life in intimacy with royal and princely
personages. In three different courts she had filled offices of trust
and offices of dignity. In referring to her experience she never either
moralised or generalised; but her scorn of "ces bêtes à couronne," was
habitually expressed with just such a cool epigrammatic bluntness as
that of Madame de Coeslin.
63.
"L'aristocratie a trois âges successifs; l'âge des supériorités, l'âge
des priviléges, l'âge des vanités; sortie du premier, elle dégénère dans
le second et s'éteint dans le dernier."
In Germany they are still in the first epoch. In England we seem to have
arrived at the second. In France they are verging on the third.
64.
Chateaubriand says of himself:--
"Dans le premier moment d'une offense je la sens à peine; mais elle se
grave dans ma mémoire; son souvenir au lieu de décroître, s'augmente
avec le temps. Il dort dans mon coeur des mois, des années entières,
puis il se réveille à la moindre circonstance avec une force nouvelle,
et ma blessure devient plus vive que le prémier jour: mais si je ne
pardonne point à mes ennemis je ne leur fais aucun mal; je suis
_rancunier_ et ne suis point _vindicatif_."
A very nice and true distinction in point of feeling and character, yet
hardly to be expressed in English. We always attach the idea of
malignity to the word _rancour_, whereas the French words _rancune_,
_rancunier_, express the relentless without the vengeful or malignant
spirit.
Such characters make me turn pale, as I have done at sight of a tomb in
which an offending wretch had been buried alive. There is in them always
something acute and deep and indomitable in the internal and exciting
emotion; slow, scrupulous, and timid in the external demonstration.
Cordelia is such a character.
65.
Chateaubriand says of his friend Pelletrie,--"Il n'avait pas précisément
des vices, mais il était rongé d'une vermine de petits défauts dont on
ne pouvait l'épurer." I know such a man; and if he had committed a
murder every morning, and a highway robbery every night,--if he had
killed his father and eaten him with any possible sauce, he could not
be more intolerable, more detestable than he is!
66.
"Un homme nous protège par ce qu'il vaut; une femme par ce que vous
valez: voilà pourquoi de ces deux empires l'un est si odieux, l'autre si
doux."
67.
He says of Madame Roland, "Elle avait du caractère plutôt que du génie;
le premier peut donner le second, le second ne peut donner le premier."
What does the man mean? this is a mistake surely. What the French call
_caractère_ never could give genius, nor genius, _caractère_. _Au
reste_, I am not sure that Madame Roland--admirable creature!--had genius;
but for talent, and _caractère_--first rate.
68.
"Soyons doux si nous voulons être regrettés. La hauteur du génie et les
qualités supérieures ne sont pleurées que des anges."
"Veillons bien sur notre caractère. Songeons que nous pouvons avec un
attachement profond n'en pas moins empoisonner des jours que nous
rachéterions au prix de tout notre sang. Quand nos amis sont descendus
dans la tombe, quels moyens avons nous de réparer nos torts? nos
inutiles regrets, nos vains repentirs, sont ils un remède aux peines que
nous leurs avons faites? Ils auraient mieux aimé de nous un sourire
pendant leur vie que toutes nos larmes après leur mort."
69.
"L'amour est si bien la félicité qu'il est poursuivi de la chimère
d'être toujours; il ne veut prononcer que des serments irrévocables; au
défaut de ses joies, il cherche à éterniser ses douleurs; ange tombé, il
parle encore le langage qu'il parlait au séjour incorruptible; son
espérance est de ne cesser jamais. Dans sa double nature et dans sa
double illusion, ici-bas il prétend se perpétuer par d'immortelles
pensées et par des générations intarissables."
70.
Madame d'Houdetot, after the death of Saint Lambert, always before she
went to bed used to rap three times with her slipper on the floor,
saying,--"Bon soir, mon ami; bon soir, bon soir!"
So then, she thought of her lover as gone _down_--not _up_?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
BISHOP CUMBERLAND.
BISHOP OF PETERBOROUGH IN 1691.
71.
Bishop Cumberland founds the law of God, as revealed in the Scriptures,
upon the general law of nature. He does not attempt to found the laws of
nature upon the Bible. "We believe," he says, "in the truth of
Scripture, because it promotes and illustrates the fundamental laws of
nature in the government of the world."
Then does the Bishop mean here that the Bible is not the WORD nor the
WILL of God, but the exposition of the WORD and the record of the WILL,
so far as either could be rendered communicable to human comprehension
through the medium of human language and intelligence?
There is a striking passage in Bunsen's Hippolytus, which may be
considered with reference to this opinion of the Bishop.
He (Bunsen) says, that "what relates the history of 'the word of God'
in his humanity, and in this world, and what records its teachings, and
warnings, and promises (that is, the Bible?) was mistaken for 'the word
of God' itself, in its proper sense."
Does he mean that we deem erroneously the collection of writings we call
the Bible to be "the word of God;" whereas, in fact, it is "the history,
the record of the word of God?" that is, of all that God has spoken to
man--in various revelations--through human life--by human deeds?--because
this is surely a most important and momentous distinction.
72.
According to Bishop Cumberland, _benevolence_, in its large sense,--that
is, a regard for all GOOD, universal and particular,--is the primary law
of nature; and _justice_ is one form, and a secondary form, of this law:
a moral virtue, not a law of nature,--if I understand his meaning
rightly.
Then which would he place _highest_, the law of nature or the moral law?
If you place them in contradistinction, then are we to conclude that the
law of nature _precedes_ the moral law, but that the moral law
_supersedes_ the law of nature? Yet no law of nature (as I understand
the word) _can_ be superseded, though the moral law may be based upon
it, and in that sense may be _above_ it.
73.
In this following passage the Bishop seems to have anticipated what in
more modern times has been called the "_greatest happiness principle_."
He says:--
"The good of all rational beings is a complex whole, being nothing but
the aggregate of good enjoyed by each." "We can only act in our proper
spheres, labouring to do good, but this labour will be fruitless, or
rather mischievous, if we do not keep in mind the higher gradations
which terminate in universal benevolence. Thus, no man must seek his own
pleasure or advantage otherwise than as his family permits; or provide
for his family to the detriment of his country; or promote the good of
his country at the expense of mankind; or serve mankind, if it were
possible, without regard to the majesty of God."
74.
Paley deems the recognition of a future state so essential that he even
makes the definition of virtue to consist in this, that it is good
performed for the sake of everlasting happiness. That is to say, he
makes it a sort of bargain between God and man, a contract, or a
covenant, instead of that obedience to a primal law, from which if we
stray in will, we do so at the necessary expense of our happiness.
Bishop Cumberland has no reference to this doctrine of Paley's;--seems,
indeed, to set it aside altogether, as contrary to the essence of
virtue.
On the whole, this good Bishop appears to have treated ethics not as an
ecclesiastic, but as Bacon treated natural philosophy;--the pervading
spirit is the perpetual appeal to experience, and not to authority.
[Illustration]
COMTE'S PHILOSOPHY.
1852.
75.
Comte makes out three elements of progress, "les philosophes, les
prolétaires, et les femmes;"--types of intellect, material activity, and
sentiment.
From Woman, he says, is to proceed the preponderance of the social
duties and affections over egotism and ambition. (La prépondérance de la
sociabilité sur la personalité.) He adds:--"Ce sexe est certainement
supérieure au notre quant à l'attribut le plus fondamentale de l'espèce
humaine, la tendence de faire prévaloir la _sociabilité_ sur la_
personalité_."
76.
"S'il ne fallait _qu'aimer_ comme dans l'Utopie Chrétienne, sur une vie
future affranchie de toute égoïste necessité matérielle, la femme
régnerait; mais il faut surtout _agir_ et _penser_ pour combattre contre
les rigueurs de notre vraie destinée: dès-lors l'homme doit commander
malgré sa moindre moralité."
"Malgré?" Sometimes man commands _because_ of the "moindre moralité:"--it
spares much time in scruples.
77.
"L'influence feminine devient l'auxiliaire indispensable de tout pouvoir
spirituel, comme le moyen âge l'a tant montré."
"Au moyen âge la Catholicisme occidentale ébaucha la systématisation de
la puissance morale en superposant à l'ordre pratique une libre autorité
spirituelle, habituellement secondée par les femmes."
78.
"La Force, proprement dite, c'est ce qui régit les actes, sans régler
les volontés."
Herein lies a distinction between Force and Power; for Power, properly
so called, does both.
79.
He insists throughout on the predominance of _sociabilité_ over
_personalité_--and what is that but the Christian law philosophised?
and again, "Il n'y a de directement morale dans notre nature que
l'amour." Where did he get this, if not in the Epistle of St. John?
"Celui qui se croirait indépendant des autres dans ses affections, ses
pensées, ou ses actes, ne pourrait même formuler un tel blasphème sans
une contradiction immédiate--puisque son langage même ne lui appartient
pas."
80.
He says that if the women regret the age of chivalry, it is not for the
external homage then paid to them, but because "l'élément le plus moral
de l'humanité" (woman, to wit), "doit préférer à tout autre le seul
régime qui érigea directement en principe la préponderance de la morale
sur la politique. Si elles regrettent leur douce influence antérieure,
c'est surtout comme s'effaçant aujourd'hui sous un grossier égoïsme.
"Leurs voeux spontanés seconderont toujours les efforts directes des
philosophes et des prolétaires pour transformer enfin les débats
politiques en transactions sociales en faisant prévaloir les _dévoirs_
sur les _droits_."
This is admirable; for we are all inclined to think more about our
_rights_ (and our wrongs too) than about our _duties_.
81.
"Si donc aimer nous satisfait mieux que d'être aimé, cela constate la
supériorité naturelle des affections désintéressées."
Meaning--what is true--that the love we bear to another, much more fills
the whole soul and is more a possession of an actuating principle, than
the love of another for us:--but both are necessary to the complement of
our moral life. The first is as the air we breathe; the last is as our
daily bread.
82.
He says that the only true and firm friendship is that between man and
woman, because it is the only affection "exempte de toute concurrence
actuelle ou possible."
In this I am inclined to agree with him, and to regret that our
conventional morality or immorality, and the too early severance of the
two sexes in education, place men and women in such a relation to each
other, socially, as to render such friendships difficult and rare.
83.
"En vérité l'amour ne saurait être profond, s'il n'est pas pur."
Christianity, he says, "a favorisé l'essor de la véritable passion,
tandisque le polythéisme consacrait surtout les appétits."
He is speaking here as teacher, philosopher, and legislator, not as poet
or sentimentalist. Perhaps it will come to be recognised sooner or
later, that what people are pleased to call the _romance_ of life is
founded on the deepest and most immutable laws of our being, and that
any system of ecclesiastical polity, or civil legislation, or moral
philosophy, which takes no account of the primal instincts and
affections, which are the springs of life and on which God made the
continuation of his world to depend, _must_ of necessity fail.
I have just read a volume of Psychological Essays by one of the most
celebrated of living surgeons, and closed the book with a feeling of
amazement: a long life spent in physiological experiences, dissecting
dead bodies, and mending broken bones, has then led him, at last, to
some of the most obvious, most commonly known facts in mental
philosophy? So some of our profound politicians, after a long life spent
in governing and reforming men, may arrive, _at last_, at some of the
commonest facts in social morals.
84.
He contends for the indissolubility of marriage, and against divorce;
and he thinks that education should be in the hands of women to the age
of ten or twelve, "Afin que le coeur y prévale toujours sur l'esprit:"
all very excellent principles, but supposing a _hypothetical_ social and
moral state, from which we are as yet far removed. What he says,
however, of the indissolubility of the marriage bond is so beautiful and
eloquent, and so in accordance with my own moral theories, that I cannot
help extracting it from a mass of heavy and sometimes unintelligible
matter. He begins by laying it down as a principle that the
"amélioration morale de l'homme constitue la principale mission de la
femme," and that "une telle destination indique aussitôt que le lien
conjugal doit être unique et indissoluble, afin que les relations
domestiques puissent acquérir la plénitude et la fixité qu'exige leur
efficacité morale." This, however, supposes the holiest and completest
of all bonds to be sealed on terms of equality, not that the latter end
of a man's life, _la vie usée et la jeunesse épuisée_, are to be tacked
on to the beginning of a woman's fresh and innocent existence; for then
influences are reversed, and instead of the amelioration of the
masculine, we have the demoralisation of the feminine, nature. He
supposes the possibility of circumstances which demand a personal
separation, but even then _sans permettre un nouveau mariage_. In such a
case his religion imposes on the innocent victim (whether man or woman)
"une chasteté compatible d'ailleurs avec la plus profonde tendresse. Si
cette condition lui semble rigoureuse, il doit l'accepter, d'abord, en
vue de l'ordre général; puis, comme une juste conséquence de son erreur
primitive."
There would be much to say upon all this, if it were worth while to
discuss a theory which it is not possible to reduce to general practice.
We cannot imagine the possibility of a second marriage where the first,
though perhaps unhappy or early ruptured, has been, not a personal
relation only, but an interfusion of our moral being,--of the deepest
impulses of life--with those of another; _these_ we cannot have a second
time to surrender to a second object;--but this might be left to Nature
and her holy instincts to settle. However, he goes on in a strain of
eloquence and dignity, quite unusual with him, to this effect:--"Ce n'est
que par l'assurance d'une inaltérable perpetuité que les liens intimes
peuvent acquérir la consistance et la plénitude indispensable à leur
efficacité morale. La plus méprisable des sectes éphémères que suscita
l'anarchie moderne (the Mormons, for instance?) me parait être celle qui
voulut ériger l'inconstance en condition de bonheur.".... "Entre deux
êtres aussi complexes et aussi divers que l'homme et la femme, ce n'est
pas trop de toute la vie pour se bien connaître et s'aimer dignement.
Loin de taxer d'illusion la haute idée que deux vrais époux se forment
souvent l'un de l'autre, je l'ai presque toujours attribuée à
l'appréciation plus profonde que procure seule une pleine intimité, que
d'ailleurs développe des qualités inconnues aux indifférents. On doit
même regarder comme très-honorable pour notre espèce, cette grande
estime que ses membres s'inspirent mutuellement quand ils s'étudient
beaucoup. _Car la haine et l'indifférence mériteraient seules le
reproche d'aveuglement qu'une appréciation superficielle applique à
l'amour._ Il faut donc juger pleinement conforme à la nature humaine
l'institution qui prolonge au-delà du tombeau l'indentification de deux
dignes époux."
He lays down as one of the primal instincts of human kind "_l'homme doit
nourrir la femme_." This may have been, as he says, a universal
_instinct_; perhaps it ought to be one of our social ordinations;
perhaps it may be so at some future time; but we know that it is not a
present fact; that the woman must in many cases maintain herself or
perish, and she asks nothing more than to be allowed to do so.
However, I agree with Comte that the position of a woman, enriched and
independent by her own labour, is anomalous and seldom happy. It is a
remark I have heard somewhere, and it appears to me true, that there
exists no being so hard, so keen, so calculating, so unscrupulous, so
merciless in money matters as the wife of a Parisian shopkeeper, where
she holds the purse and manages the concern, as is generally the case.
85.
Here is a passage wherein he attacks that egotism which with many good
people enters so largely into the notion of another world:--which Paley
inculcated, and which Coleridge ridiculed, when he spoke of "_this_
worldliness," and the "_other_ worldliness."
"La sagesse sacerdotale, digne organe de l'instinct public, y avait
intimement rattaché les principales obligations sociales à titre de
condition indispensable du salut personnel: mais la récompense infinie
promise ainsi à tous les sacrifices ne pouvait jamais permettre une
affection pleinement désinteressée."
This perpetual iteration of a system of future reward and punishment, as
a principle of our religion and a motive of action, has in some sort
demoralised Christianity; especially in minds where love is not a chief
element, and which do not love Christ for his love's sake, but for his
power's sake, and because judgment and punishment are supposed to be in
his hand.
86.
Putting the test of revelation out of the question, and dealing with the
philosopher philosophically, the best refutation of Comte's system is
contained in the following criticism: it seems to me final.
"In limiting religion to the relations in which we stand to each other,
and towards _Humanity_, Comte omits one very important consideration.
Even upon his own showing, this _Humanity_ can only be the _supreme
being_ of _our_ planet, it cannot be the _Supreme Being_ of the
Universe. Now, although in this our terrestrial sojourn, all we can
distinctly know must be limited to the sphere of our planet; yet,
standing on this ball and looking forth into infinitude, we know that it
is but an atom of the infinitude, and that the humanity we worship
_here_, cannot extend its dominion _there_. If our relations to humanity
may be systematised into a cultus, and made a religion as they have
formerly been made a morality, and if the whole of our practical
priesthood be limited to this religion, there will, nevertheless remain
for us, outlying this terrestrial sphere,--the sphere of the infinite, in
which our thoughts must wander, and our emotions will follow our
thoughts; so that besides the religion of humanity there must ever be a
religion of the Universe. Or, to bring this conception within ordinary
language, there must ever remain the old distinctions between _religion_
and _morality_, our relations to God, and our relations towards man. The
only difference being, that in the _old_ theology moral precepts were
inculcated with a view to a celestial habitat; in the _new_, the moral
precepts are inculcated with a view to the general progress of the
race."--_Westminster Review._
In fact the doctrine of the non-plurality of worlds as recently set
forth by an eminent professor and D. D. would exactly harmonise with
Comte's "Culte du Positif," as not merely limiting our sympathies to
this one form of intellectual being, but our religious notions to this
one habitable orb.
But to those who take other views, the argument above contains the
_philosophical_ objection to Comte's _system_, as such; and I repeat,
that it seems to me unanswerable; but there are excellent things in his
theory, notwithstanding;--things that make us pause and think. In some
parts it is like Christianity with Christ, as a _personalité_, omitted.
For Christ the humanised divine, he substitutes an abstract deified
humanity. 1854.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
GOETHE.
(DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT.)
87.
"As a man embraces the determination to become a soldier and go to the
wars, bravely resolved to bear dangers, and difficulties, and wounds,
and death itself, but at the same time never anticipating the particular
form in which those evils may surprise us in an extremely unpleasant
manner;--just so we rush into authorship!"
88.
Goethe says of Lavater, "that the conception of humanity which had been
formed in himself, and in his own humanity, was so akin to the living
image of Christ, that it was impossible for him to conceive how a man
could live and breathe without being a Christian. He had, so to speak, a
physical affinity with Christianity; it was to him a necessity, not
only morally, but from organisation."
Lavater's individual feeling was, perhaps, but an anticipation of that
which may become general, universal. As we rise in the scale of being,
as we become more gentle, spiritualised, refined, and intelligent, will
not our "physical affinity" with the religion of Christ become more and
more apparent, till it is less a doctrine than a principle of life? So
its Divine Author knew, who prepared it for us, and is preparing and
moulding us through progressive improvement to comprehend and receive
it.
89.
Goethe speaks of "polishing up life with the varnish of fiction;" the
artistic turn of the man's mind showed itself in this love of creating
an effect in his own eyes and in the eyes of others. But what can
fiction--what can poetry do for life, but present some one or two out of
the multitudinous aspects of that grand, beautiful, terrible, and
infinite mystery? or by _life_, does he mean here the mere external
forms of society?--for it is not clear.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
HAZLITT'S "LIBER AMORIS."
1827.
90.
Is love, like faith, ennobled through its own depth and fervour and
sincerity? or is it ennobled through the nobility, and degraded through
the degradation of its object? Is it with love as with worship? Is it a
_religion_, and holy when the object is pure and good? Is it a
_superstition_, and unholy when the object is impure and unworthy?
Of all the histories I have read of the aberrations of human passion,
nothing ever so struck me with a sort of amazed and painful pity as
Hazlitt's "Liber Amoris." The man was in love with a servant girl, who
in the eyes of others possessed no particular charms of mind or person,
yet did the mighty love of this strong, masculine, and gifted being,
lift her into a sort of goddess-ship; and make his idolatry in its
intense earnestness and reality assume something of the sublimity of an
act of faith, and in its expression take a flight equal to anything that
poetry or fiction have left us. It was all so terribly real, he sued
with such a vehemence, he suffered with such resistance, that the
powerful intellect reeled, tempest-tost, and might have foundered but
for the gift of expression. He might have said like Tasso--like Goethe
rather--"Gab mir ein Gott zu sagen was ich leide!" And this faculty of
utterance, eloquent utterance, was perhaps the only thing which saved
life, or reason, or both. In such moods of passion, the poor uneducated
man, dumb in the midst of the strife and the storm, unable to comprehend
his intolerable pain or make it comprehended, throws himself in a blind
fury on the cause of his torture, or hangs himself in his neckcloth.
91.
Hazlitt takes up his pen, dips it in fire and thus he writes:--
"Perfect love has this advantage in it, that it leaves the possessor of
it nothing farther to desire. There is one object (at least), in which
the soul finds absolute content;--for which it seeks to live or dares to
die. The heart has, as it were, filled up the moulds of the
imagination; the truth of passion keeps pace with, and outvies, the
extravagance of mere language. There are no words so fine, no flattery
so soft, that there is not a sentiment beyond them that it is impossible
to express, at the bottom of the heart where true love is. What idle
sounds the common phrases _adorable creature_, _divinity_, _angel_, are!
What a proud reflection it is to have a feeling answering to all these,
rooted in the breast, unalterable, unutterable, to which all other
feelings are light and vain! Perfect love reposes on the object of its
choice, like the halcyon on the wave, and the air of heaven is around
it!"
92.
"She stood (while I pleaded my cause before her with all the earnestness
and fondness in the world) with the tears trickling from her eye-lashes,
her head drooping, her attitude fixed, with the finest expression that
ever was seen of mixed regret, pity, and stubborn resolution, but
without speaking a word--without altering a feature. _It was like a
petrifaction of a human face in the softest moment of passion._"
93.
"Shall I not love her," he exclaims, "for herself alone, in spite of
fickleness and folly? to love her for her regard for me, is not to love
her but myself. She has robbed me of herself, shall she also rob me of
my love of her? did I not live on her smile? is it less sweet because it
is withdrawn from me? Did I not adore her every grace? and does she bend
less enchantingly because she has turned from me to another? Is my love
then in the power of fortune or of her caprice? No, I will have it
lasting as it is pure; and I will make a goddess of her, and build a
temple to her in my heart, and worship her on indestructible altars, and
raise statues to her, and my homage shall be unblemished as her
unrivalled symmetry of form. And when that fails, the memory of it shall
survive, and my bosom shall be proof to scorn as hers has been to pity;
and I will pursue her with an unrelenting love, and sue to be her slave
and tend her steps without notice, and without reward; and serve her
living, and mourn for her when dead; and thus my love will have shown
itself superior to her hate, and I shall triumph and then die. This is
my idea of the only true and heroic love, and such is mine for her."
Hazlitt, when he wrote all this, seemed to himself full of high and calm
resolve. The hand did not fail, the pen did not stagger over the paper
in a formless scrawl, yet the brain was reeling like a tower in an
earthquake. "Passion," as it has been well said, "when in a state of
solemn and omnipotent vehemence, always appears to be calmness to him
whom it domineers;" not unfrequently to others also, as the tide at its
highest flood looks tranquil, and "neither way inclines."
[Illustration]
THE NIGHTINGALE.
94.
Reading the Life and Letters of Francis Horner, in the midst of a
correspondence about Statistics and Bullion, and Political Economy, and
the Balance of Parties, I came upon the following exquisite passage in a
letter to his friend Mrs. Spencer:--
"I was amused by your interrogatory to me about the Nightingale's note.
You meant to put me in a dilemma with my politics on one side and my
gallantry on the other. Of course you consider it as a plaintive note,
and you were in hopes that no idolater of Charles Fox would venture to
agree with that opinion. In this difficulty I must make the best escape
I can by saying, that it seems to me neither cheerful nor
melancholy,--but always according to the circumstances in which you hear
it, the scenery, your own temper of mind, and so on. I settled it so
with myself early in this month, when I heard them every night and all
day long at Wells. In daylight, when all the other birds are in active
concert, the Nightingale only strikes you as the most active, emulous,
and successful of the whole band. At night, especially if it is a calm
one, with light enough to give you a wide indistinct view, the solitary
music of this bird takes quite another character, from all the
associations of the scene, from the languor one feels at the close of
the day, and from the stillness of spirits and elevation of mind which
comes upon one when walking out at that time. But it is not always
so--different circumstances will vary in every possible way the effect.
Will the Nightingale's note sound alike to the man who is going on an
adventure to meet his mistress (supposing he heeds it at all), and when
he loiters along upon his return? The last time I heard the Nightingale
it was an experiment of another sort. It was after a thunderstorm in a
mild night, while there was silent lightning opening every few minutes,
first on one side of the heavens then on the other. The careless little
fellow was piping away in the midst of all this terror. To _me_, there
was no melancholy in his note, but a sort of sublimity; yet it was the
same song which I had heard in the morning, and which then seemed
nothing but bustle."
And in the same spirit Portia moralises:--
The nightingale, if she should sing by day,
When every goose is cackling, would be thought
No better a musician than the wren.
How many things by season, seasoned are
To their right praise and true perfection!
Nor will Coleridge allow the song of the nightingale to be always
plaintive,--"most musical, most _melancholy_;" he defies the epithet
though it be Milton's.
'Tis the _merry_ nightingale,
That crowds and hurries and precipitates
With thick fast warble his delicious notes,
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chaunt, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music.
As a poetical commentary on these beautiful passages, every reader of
Joanna Baillie will remember the night scene in De Montfort, where the
cry of the Owl suggests such different feelings and associations to the
two men who listen to it, under such different circumstances. To De
Montfort it is the screech-owl, foreboding death and horror,--and he
stands and shudders at the "instinctive wailing." To Rezenvelt it is the
sound which recalls his boyish days, when he merrily mimicked the
night-bird till it returned him cry for cry,--and he pauses to listen
with a fanciful delight.
[Illustration]
THACKERAY'S LECTURES ON THE ENGLISH HUMORISTS
(1833.)
95.
A Lecture should not read like an essay; and, therefore, it surprises me
that these lectures so carefully prepared, so skilfully adapted to meet
the requirements of oral delivery, should be such agreeable reading. As
_lectures_, they wanted only a little more point, and emphasis and
animation on the part of the speaker: as _essays_, they atone in
eloquence and earnestness for what they want in finish and purity of
style.
Genius and sunshine have this in common that they are the two most
precious gifts of heaven to earth, and are dispensed equally to the just
and the unjust. What struck me most in these lectures, when I heard
them, (and it strikes me now in turning over the written pages,) is
this: we deal here with writers and artists, yet the purpose, from
beginning to end, is not artistic nor critical, but moral. Thackeray
tells us himself that he has not assembled his hearers to bring them
better acquainted with the writings of these writers, or to illustrate
the wit of these wits, or to enhance the humour of these humourists;--no;
but to deal justice on the men as _men_--to tell us how _they_ lived, and
loved, suffered and made suffer, who still have power to pain or to
please; to settle _their_ claims to our praise or blame, our love or
hate, whose right to fame was settled long ago, and remains undisputed.
This is his purpose. Thus then he has laid down and acted on the
principle that "morals have something to do with art;" that there is a
moral account to be settled with men of genius; that the power and the
right remains with us to do justice on those who being dead yet rule our
spirits from their urns; to try them by a standard which perhaps neither
themselves, nor those around them, would have admitted. Did Swift when
he bullied men, lampooned women, trampled over decency and humanity,
flung round him filth and fire, did he anticipate the time when before a
company of intellectual men, and thinking, feeling women, in both
hemispheres, he should be called up to judgment, hands bound,
tongue-tied? Where be now his gibes? and where his terrors? Thackeray
turns him forth, a spectacle, a lesson, a warning; probes the lacerated
self-love, holds up to scorn, or pity more intolerable, the miserable
egotism, the half-distempered brain. O Stella! O Vanessa! are you not
avenged?
Then Sterne--how he takes to pieces his feigned originality, his feigned
benevolence, his feigned misanthropy--all feigned!--the licentious parson,
the trader in sentiment, the fashionable lion of his day, the man
without a heart for those who loved him, without a conscience for those
who trusted him! yet the same man who gave us the pathos of "Le Fevre,"
and the humours of "Uncle Toby!" Sad is it? ungrateful is it? ungracious
is it?--well, it cannot be helped; you cannot stifle the conscience of
humanity. You might as well exclaim against any natural result of any
natural law. Fancy a hundred years hence some brave, honest,
human-hearted Thackeray standing up to discourse before our
great-great-grandchildren in the same spirit, with the same stern truth,
on the wits, and the poets and the artists of the present time! Hard is
your fate, O ye men and women of genius! very hard and pitiful, if ye
must be subjected to the scalpel of such a dissector! You, gifted
sinner, whoever you may be, walking among us now in all the impunity of
conventional forbearance, dealing in oracles and sentimentalisms,
performing great things, teaching good things, you are set up as one of
the lights of the world:--Lo! another time comes; the torch is taken out
of your hand, and held up to your face. What! is it a mask, and not a
face? "Off, off ye lendings!" O God! how much wiser, as well as better,
not to study how to _seem_, but how to _be_! How much wiser and better,
not to have to shudder before the truth as it oozes out from a thousand
unguessed, unguarded apertures, staining your lawn or your ermine; not
to have to tremble at the thought of that future Thackeray, who "shall
pluck out the heart of your mystery," and shall anatomise you, and
deliver lectures upon you, to illustrate the standard of morals and
manners in Queen Victoria's reign!
In these lectures, some fine and feeling and discriminative passages on
character, make amends for certain offences and inconsistencies in the
novels; I mean especially in regard to the female portraits. No woman
resents his Rebecca--inimitable Becky!--no woman but feels and
acknowledges with a shiver the completeness of that wonderful and
finished artistic creation; but every woman resents the selfish inane
Amelia, and would be inclined to quote and to apply the author's own
words when speaking of 'Tom Jones:'--"I can't say that I think Amelia a
virtuous character. I can't say but I think Mr. Thackeray's evident
liking and admiration for his Amelia shows that the great humourist's
moral sense was blunted by his life, and that here in art and ethics
there is a great error. If it be right to have a heroine whom we are to
admire, let us take care at least that she is admirable."
Laura, in 'Pendennis,' is a yet more fatal mistake. She is drawn with
every generous feeling, every good gift. We do not complain that she
loves that poor creature Pendennis, for she loved him in her childhood.
She grew up with that love in her heart; it came between her and the
perception of his faults; it is a necessity indivisible from her nature.
Hallowed, through its constancy, therein alone would lie its best
excuse, its beauty and its truth. But Laura, faithless to that first
affection; Laura, waked up to the appreciation of a far more manly and
noble nature, in love with Warrington, and then going back to Pendennis,
and marrying _him_! Such infirmity might be true of some women, but not
of such a woman as Laura; we resent the inconsistency, the indelicacy of
the portrait.
And then Lady Castlewood,--so evidently a favourite of the author, what
shall we say of her? The virtuous woman, _par excellence_, who "never
sins and never forgives," who never resents, nor relents, nor repents;
the mother, who is the rival of her daughter; the mother, who for years
is the _confidante_ of a man's delirious passion for her own child, and
then consoles him by marrying him herself! O Mr. Thackeray! this will
never do! such women _may_ exist, but to hold them up as examples of
excellence, and fit objects of our best sympathies, is a fault, and
proves a low standard in ethics and in art. "When an author presents to
us a heroine whom we are called upon to admire, let him at least take
care that she is admirable." If in these, and in some other instances,
Thackeray has given us cause of offence, in the lectures we may thank
him for some amends: he has shown us what he conceives true womanhood
and true manliness ought to be; so with this expression of gratitude,
and a far deeper debt of gratitude left unexpressed, I close his book,
and say, good night!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Notes on Art.
96.
Sometimes, in thoughtful moments, I am struck by those beautiful
analogies between things apparently dissimilar--those awful
approximations between things apparently far asunder--which many people
would call fanciful and imaginary, but they seem to bring all God's
creation, spiritual and material, into one comprehensive whole; they
give me, thus associated, a glimpse, a perception of that overwhelming
unity which we call the universe, the multitudinous ONE.
Thus the principle of the highest ideal in art, as conceived by the
Greeks, and unsurpassed in its purity and beauty, lay in considering
well the characteristics which distinguish the _human_ form from the
brute form; and then, in rendering the human form, the first aim was to
soften down, or, if possible, throw out wholly, those characteristics
which belong to the brute nature, or are common to the brute and the
man; and the next, to bring into prominence and even enlarge the
proportions of those manifestations of forms which distinguish humanity;
till, at last, the _human_ merged into the _divine_, and the God in
look, in limb, in feature, stood revealed.
Let us now suppose this broad principle which the Greeks applied to
form, ethically carried out, and made the basis of all education--the
training of men as a race. Suppose we started with the general axiom
that all propensities which we have in common with the lower animals are
to be kept subordinate, and so far as is consistent with the truth of
nature refined away; and that all the qualities which elevate, all the
aspirations which ally us with the spiritual, are to be cultivated and
rendered more and more prominent, till at last the human being, in
faculties as well as form, approaches the God-like--I only
say--suppose?----
Again: it has been said of natural philosophy (Zoology) that in order to
make any real progress in the science, as such, we must more and more
disregard _differences_, and more and more attend to the obscured but
essential conditions which are revealed in _resemblances_, in the
constant and similar relations of primitive structure. Now if the same
principle were carried out in theology, in morals, in art, as well as in
science, should we not come nearer to the essential truth in _all_?
[Illustration]
97.
"There is an instinctive sense of propriety and reality in every mind;
and it is not true, as some great authority has said, that in art we are
satisfied with contemplating the work without thinking of the artist. On
the contrary, the artist himself is one great object in the work. It is
as embodying the energies and excellences of the human mind, as
exhibiting the efforts of genius, as symbolising high feeling, that we
most value the creations of art; without design the representations of
art are merely fantastical, and without the thought of a design acting
upon fixed principles in accordance with a high standard of goodness and
truth, half the charm of design is lost."
[Illustration]
98.
"Art, used collectively for painting, sculpture, architecture, and
music, is the mediatress between, and reconciler of, nature and man. It
is, therefore, the power of humanising nature, of infusing the thoughts
and passions of man into everything which is the object of his
contemplation. Colour, form, motion, sound, are the elements which it
combines, and it stamps them into unity in the mould of a _moral_ idea."
This is Coleridge's definition:--Art then is nature, _humanised_; and in
proportion as humanity is elevated by the interfusion into our life of
noble aims and pure affections will art be spiritualised and moralised.
[Illustration]
99.
If faith has elevated art, superstition has everywhere debased it.
[Illustration]
100.
Goethe observes that there is no patriotic art and no patriotic
science--that both are universal.
There is, however, _national_ art, but not _national_ science: we say
"national art," "natural science."
[Illustration]
101.
"Verse is in itself music, and the natural symbol of that union of
passion with thought and pleasure, which constitutes the essence of all
poetry as contradistinguished from history civil or
natural."--_Coleridge._
In the arts of design, colour is to form what verse is to prose--a more
harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought.
[Illustration]
102.
Subjects and representations in art not elevated nor interesting in
themselves, become instructive and interesting to higher minds from the
_manner_ in which they have been treated; perhaps because they have
passed through the medium of a higher mind in taking form.
This is one reason, though we are not always conscious of it, that the
Dutch pictures of common and vulgar life give us a pleasure apart from
their wonderful finish and truth of detail. In the mind of the artist
there must have been the power to throw himself into a sphere _above_
what he represents. Adrian Brouwer, for instance, must have been
something far better than a sot; Ostade something higher than a boor;
though the habits of both led them into companionship with sots and
boors. In the most farcical pictures of Jan Steen there is a depth of
feeling and observation which remind me of the humour of Goldsmith; and
Teniers, we know, was in his habits a refined gentleman; the brilliant
elegance of his pencil contrasting with the grotesque vulgarity of his
subjects. To a thinking mind, some of these Dutch pictures of character
are full of material for thought, pathetic even where least sympathetic:
no doubt, because of a latent sympathy with the artist, apart from his
subject.
[Illustration]