The following brief remarks on the critical faculty are chiefly
intended to show that, for the most part, there is no such thing.
It is a _rara avis_; almost as rare, indeed, as the phoenix, which
appears only once in five hundred years.
When we speak of _taste_--an expression not chosen with any regard for
it--we mean the discovery, or, it may be only the recognition, of what
is _right aesthetically_, apart from the guidance of any rule; and
this, either because no rule has as yet been extended to the matter in
question, or else because, if existing, it is unknown to the artist,
or the critic, as the case may be. Instead of _taste_, we might use
the expression _aesthetic sense_, if this were not tautological.
The perceptive critical taste is, so to speak, the female analogue
to the male quality of productive talent or genius. Not capable
of _begetting_ great work itself, it consists in a capacity of
_reception_, that is to say, of recognizing as such what is right,
fit, beautiful, or the reverse; in other words, of discriminating
the good from the bad, of discovering and appreciating the one and
condemning the other.
In appreciating a genius, criticism should not deal with the errors in
his productions or with the poorer of his works, and then proceed to
rate him low; it should attend only to the qualities in which he most
excels. For in the sphere of intellect, as in other spheres, weakness
and perversity cleave so firmly to human nature that even the most
brilliant mind is not wholly and at all times free from them. Hence
the great errors to be found even in the works of the greatest men; or
as Horace puts it, _quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus_.
That which distinguishes genius, and should be the standard for
judging it, is the height to which it is able to soar when it is in
the proper mood and finds a fitting occasion--a height always out
of the reach of ordinary talent. And, in like manner, it is a very
dangerous thing to compare two great men of the same class; for
instance, two great poets, or musicians, or philosophers, or artists;
because injustice to the one or the other, at least for the moment,
can hardly be avoided. For in making a comparison of the kind the
critic looks to some particular merit of the one and at once discovers
that it is absent in the other, who is thereby disparaged. And then
if the process is reversed, and the critic begins with the latter and
discovers his peculiar merit, which is quite of a different order from
that presented by the former, with whom it may be looked for in vain,
the result is that both of them suffer undue depreciation.
There are critics who severally think that it rests with each one of
them what shall be accounted good, and what bad. They all mistake
their own toy-trumpets for the trombones of fame.
A drug does not effect its purpose if the dose is too large; and it
is the same with censure and adverse criticism when it exceeds the
measure of justice.
The disastrous thing for intellectual merit is that it must wait for
those to praise the good who have themselves produced nothing but what
is bad; nay, it is a primary misfortune that it has to receive its
crown at the hands of the critical power of mankind--a quality of
which most men possess only the weak and impotent semblance, so that
the reality may be numbered amongst the rarest gifts of nature. Hence
La Bruyère's remark is, unhappily, as true as it is neat. _Après
l'esprit de discernement_, he says, _ce qu'il y a au monde de plus
rare, ce sont les diamans et les perles_. The spirit of discernment!
the critical faculty! it is these that are lacking. Men do not know
how to distinguish the genuine from the false, the corn from the
chaff, gold from copper; or to perceive the wide gulf that separates
a genius from an ordinary man. Thus we have that bad state of things
described in an old-fashioned verse, which gives it as the lot of the
great ones here on earth to be recognized only when they are gone:
_Es ist nun das Geschick der Grossen fiier auf Erden,
Erst wann sie nicht mehr sind; von uns erkannt zu werden._
When any genuine and excellent work makes its appearance, the chief
difficulty in its way is the amount of bad work it finds already in
possession of the field, and accepted as though it were good. And
then if, after a long time, the new comer really succeeds, by a hard
struggle, in vindicating his place for himself and winning reputation,
he will soon encounter fresh difficulty from some affected, dull,
awkward imitator, whom people drag in, with the object of calmly
setting him up on the altar beside the genius; not seeing the
difference and really thinking that here they have to do with another
great man. This is what Yriarte means by the first lines of his
twenty-eighth Fable, where he declares that the ignorant rabble always
sets equal value on the good and the bad:
_Siempre acostumbra hacer el vulgo necio
De lo bueno y lo malo igual aprecio_.
So even Shakespeare's dramas had, immediately after his death, to give
place to those of Ben Jonson, Massinger, Beaumont and Fletcher, and to
yield the supremacy for a hundred years. So Kant's serious philosophy
was crowded out by the nonsense of Fichte, Schelling, Jacobi, Hegel.
And even in a sphere accessible to all, we have seen unworthy
imitators quickly diverting public attention from the incomparable
Walter Scott. For, say what you will, the public has no sense for
excellence, and therefore no notion how very rare it is to find men
really capable of doing anything great in poetry, philosophy, or art,
or that their works are alone worthy of exclusive attention. The
dabblers, whether in verse or in any other high sphere, should be
every day unsparingly reminded that neither gods, nor men, nor
booksellers have pardoned their mediocrity:
_mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Dî, non concessere columnae_.[1]
[Footnote 1: Horace, _Ars Poetica_, 372.]
Are they not the weeds that prevent the corn coming up, so that they
may cover all the ground themselves? And then there happens that which
has been well and freshly described by the lamented Feuchtersleben,[1]
who died so young: how people cry out in their haste that nothing
is being done, while all the while great work is quietly growing to
maturity; and then, when it appears, it is not seen or heard in the
clamor, but goes its way silently, in modest grief:
"_Ist doch"--rufen sie vermessen--
Nichts im Werke, nichts gethan!"
Und das Grosse, reift indessen
Still heran_.
_Es ersheint nun: niemand sieht es,
Niemand hört es im Geschrei
Mit bescheid'ner Trauer zieht es
Still vorbei_.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Ernst Freiherr von Feuchtersleben
(1806-49), an Austrian physician, philosopher, and poet, and a
specialist in medical psychology. The best known of his songs is that
beginning "_Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath_" to which Mendelssohn
composed one of his finest melodies.]
This lamentable death of the critical faculty is not less obvious in
the case of science, as is shown by the tenacious life of false and
disproved theories. If they are once accepted, they may go on bidding
defiance to truth for fifty or even a hundred years and more, as
stable as an iron pier in the midst of the waves. The Ptolemaic system
was still held a century after Copernicus had promulgated his theory.
Bacon, Descartes and Locke made their way extremely slowly and only
after a long time; as the reader may see by d'Alembert's celebrated
Preface to the _Encyclopedia_. Newton was not more successful; and
this is sufficiently proved by the bitterness and contempt with which
Leibnitz attacked his theory of gravitation in the controversy with
Clarke.[1] Although Newton lived for almost forty years after the
appearance of the _Principia_, his teaching was, when he died, only
to some extent accepted in his own country, whilst outside England he
counted scarcely twenty adherents; if we may believe the introductory
note to Voltaire's exposition of his theory. It was, indeed, chiefly
owing to this treatise of Voltaire's that the system became known in
France nearly twenty years after Newton's death. Until then a firm,
resolute, and patriotic stand was made by the Cartesian _Vortices_;
whilst only forty years previously, this same Cartesian philosophy had
been forbidden in the French schools; and now in turn d'Agnesseau, the
Chancellor, refused Voltaire the _Imprimatur_ for his treatise on the
Newtonian doctrine. On the other hand, in our day Newton's absurd
theory of color still completely holds the field, forty years after
the publication of Goethe's. Hume, too, was disregarded up to his
fiftieth year, though he began very early and wrote in a thoroughly
popular style. And Kant, in spite of having written and talked all his
life long, did not become a famous man until he was sixty.
[Footnote 1: See especially §§ 35, 113, 118, 120, 122, 128.]
Artists and poets have, to be sure, more chance than thinkers, because
their public is at least a hundred times as large. Still, what was
thought of Beethoven and Mozart during their lives? what of Dante?
what even of Shakespeare? If the latter's contemporaries had in any
way recognized his worth, at least one good and accredited portrait of
him would have come down to us from an age when the art of painting
flourished; whereas we possess only some very doubtful pictures, a
bad copperplate, and a still worse bust on his tomb.[1] And in like
manner, if he had been duly honored, specimens of his handwriting
would have been preserved to us by the hundred, instead of being
confined, as is the case, to the signatures to a few legal documents.
The Portuguese are still proud of their only poet Camoëns. He lived,
however, on alms collected every evening in the street by a black
slave whom he had brought with him from the Indies. In time, no doubt,
justice will be done everyone; _tempo è galant uomo_; but it is
as late and slow in arriving as in a court of law, and the secret
condition of it is that the recipient shall be no longer alive. The
precept of Jesus the son of Sirach is faithfully followed: _Judge none
blessed before his death._[2] He, then, who has produced immortal
works, must find comfort by applying to them the words of the Indian
myth, that the minutes of life amongst the immortals seem like years
of earthly existence; and so, too, that years upon earth are only as
the minutes of the immortals.
[Footnote 1: A. Wivell: _An Inquiry into the History, Authenticity,
and Characteristics of Shakespeare's Portraits_; with 21 engravings.
London, 1836.]
[Footnote 2: _Ecclesiasticus_, xi. 28.]
This lack of critical insight is also shown by the fact that, while
in every century the excellent work of earlier time is held in honor,
that of its own is misunderstood, and the attention which is its due
is given to bad work, such as every decade carries with it only to be
the sport of the next. That men are slow to recognize genuine merit
when it appears in their own age, also proves that they do not
understand or enjoy or really value the long-acknowledged works of
genius, which they honor only on the score of authority. The crucial
test is the fact that bad work--Fichte's philosophy, for example--if
it wins any reputation, also maintains it for one or two generations;
and only when its public is very large does its fall follow sooner.
Now, just as the sun cannot shed its light but to the eye that sees
it, nor music sound but to the hearing ear, so the value of all
masterly work in art and science is conditioned by the kinship and
capacity of the mind to which it speaks. It is only such a mind as
this that possesses the magic word to stir and call forth the spirits
that lie hidden in great work. To the ordinary mind a masterpiece is
a sealed cabinet of mystery,--an unfamiliar musical instrument from
which the player, however much he may flatter himself, can draw none
but confused tones. How different a painting looks when seen in a good
light, as compared with some dark corner! Just in the same way, the
impression made by a masterpiece varies with the capacity of the mind
to understand it.
A fine work, then, requires a mind sensitive to its beauty; a
thoughtful work, a mind that can really think, if it is to exist and
live at all. But alas! it may happen only too often that he who gives
a fine work to the world afterwards feels like a maker of fireworks,
who displays with enthusiasm the wonders that have taken him so much
time and trouble to prepare, and then learns that he has come to the
wrong place, and that the fancied spectators were one and all inmates
of an asylum for the blind. Still even that is better than if his
public had consisted entirely of men who made fireworks themselves; as
in this case, if his display had been extraordinarily good, it might
possibly have cost him his head.
The source of all pleasure and delight is the feeling of kinship. Even
with the sense of beauty it is unquestionably our own species in the
animal world, and then again our own race, that appears to us the
fairest. So, too, in intercourse with others, every man shows a
decided preference for those who resemble him; and a blockhead will
find the society of another blockhead incomparably more pleasant
than that of any number of great minds put together. Every man must
necessarily take his chief pleasure in his own work, because it is the
mirror of his own mind, the echo of his own thought; and next in order
will come the work of people like him; that is to say, a dull, shallow
and perverse man, a dealer in mere words, will give his sincere and
hearty applause only to that which is dull, shallow, perverse or
merely verbose. On the other hand, he will allow merit to the work of
great minds only on the score of authority, in other words, because
he is ashamed to speak his opinion; for in reality they give him no
pleasure at all. They do not appeal to him; nay, they repel him; and
he will not confess this even to himself. The works of genius cannot
be fully enjoyed except by those who are themselves of the privileged
order. The first recognition of them, however, when they exist without
authority to support them, demands considerable superiority of mind.
When the reader takes all this into consideration, he should be
surprised, not that great work is so late in winning reputation, but
that it wins it at all. And as a matter of fact, fame comes only by a
slow and complex process. The stupid person is by degrees forced, and
as it were, tamed, into recognizing the superiority of one who stands
immediately above him; this one in his turn bows before some one else;
and so it goes on until the weight of the votes gradually prevail over
their number; and this is just the condition of all genuine, in other
words, deserved fame. But until then, the greatest genius, even after
he has passed his time of trial, stands like a king amidst a crowd of
his own subjects, who do not know him by sight and therefore will not
do his behests; unless, indeed, his chief ministers of state are in
his train. For no subordinate official can be the direct recipient of
the royal commands, as he knows only the signature of his immediate
superior; and this is repeated all the way up into the highest ranks,
where the under-secretary attests the minister's signature, and the
minister that of the king. There are analogous stages to be passed
before a genius can attain widespread fame. This is why his reputation
most easily comes to a standstill at the very outset; because the
highest authorities, of whom there can be but few, are most frequently
not to be found; but the further down he goes in the scale the more
numerous are those who take the word from above, so that his fame is
no more arrested.
We must console ourselves for this state of things by reflecting that
it is really fortunate that the greater number of men do not form a
judgment on their own responsibility, but merely take it on authority.
For what sort of criticism should we have on Plato and Kant, Homer,
Shakespeare and Goethe, if every man were to form his opinion by what
he really has and enjoys of these writers, instead of being forced by
authority to speak of them in a fit and proper way, however little
he may really feel what he says. Unless something of this kind took
place, it would be impossible for true merit, in any high sphere, to
attain fame at all. At the same time it is also fortunate that every
man has just so much critical power of his own as is necessary for
recognizing the superiority of those who are placed immediately over
him, and for following their lead. This means that the many come in
the end to submit to the authority of the few; and there results that
hierarchy of critical judgments on which is based the possibility of a
steady, and eventually wide-reaching, fame.
The lowest class in the community is quite impervious to the merits
of a great genius; and for these people there is nothing left but the
monument raised to him, which, by the impression it produces on their
senses, awakes in them a dim idea of the man's greatness.
Literary journals should be a dam against the unconscionable
scribbling of the age, and the ever-increasing deluge of bad and
useless books. Their judgments should be uncorrupted, just and
rigorous; and every piece of bad work done by an incapable person;
every device by which the empty head tries to come to the assistance
of the empty purse, that is to say, about nine-tenths of all existing
books, should be mercilessly scourged. Literary journals would then
perform their duty, which is to keep down the craving for writing and
put a check upon the deception of the public, instead of furthering
these evils by a miserable toleration, which plays into the hands of
author and publisher, and robs the reader of his time and his money.
If there were such a paper as I mean, every bad writer, every
brainless compiler, every plagiarist from other's books, every hollow
and incapable place-hunter, every sham-philosopher, every vain and
languishing poetaster, would shudder at the prospect of the pillory
in which his bad work would inevitably have to stand soon after
publication. This would paralyze his twitching fingers, to the true
welfare of literature, in which what is bad is not only useless but
positively pernicious. Now, most books are bad and ought to have
remained unwritten. Consequently praise should be as rare as is now
the case with blame, which is withheld under the influence of personal
considerations, coupled with the maxim _accedas socius, laudes
lauderis ut absens_.
It is quite wrong to try to introduce into literature the same
toleration as must necessarily prevail in society towards those
stupid, brainless people who everywhere swarm in it. In literature
such people are impudent intruders; and to disparage the bad is here
duty towards the good; for he who thinks nothing bad will think
nothing good either. Politeness, which has its source in social
relations, is in literature an alien, and often injurious, element;
because it exacts that bad work shall be called good. In this way the
very aim of science and art is directly frustrated.
The ideal journal could, to be sure, be written only by people who
joined incorruptible honesty with rare knowledge and still rarer power
of judgment; so that perhaps there could, at the very most, be one,
and even hardly one, in the whole country; but there it would stand,
like a just Aeropagus, every member of which would have to be elected
by all the others. Under the system that prevails at present, literary
journals are carried on by a clique, and secretly perhaps also by
booksellers for the good of the trade; and they are often nothing but
coalitions of bad heads to prevent the good ones succeeding. As
Goethe once remarked to me, nowhere is there so much dishonesty as in
literature.
But, above all, anonymity, that shield of all literary rascality,
would have to disappear. It was introduced under the pretext of
protecting the honest critic, who warned the public, against the
resentment of the author and his friends. But where there is one case
of this sort, there will be a hundred where it merely serves to take
all responsibility from the man who cannot stand by what he has said,
or possibly to conceal the shame of one who has been cowardly and base
enough to recommend a book to the public for the purpose of putting
money into his own pocket. Often enough it is only a cloak for
covering the obscurity, incompetence and insignificance of the critic.
It is incredible what impudence these fellows will show, and what
literary trickery they will venture to commit, as soon as they know
they are safe under the shadow of anonymity. Let me recommend a
general _Anti-criticism_, a universal medicine or panacea, to put a
stop to all anonymous reviewing, whether it praises the bad or blames
the good: _Rascal! your name_! For a man to wrap himself up and draw
his hat over his face, and then fall upon people who are walking about
without any disguise--this is not the part of a gentleman, it is the
part of a scoundrel and a knave.
An anonymous review has no more authority than an anonymous letter;
and one should be received with the same mistrust as the other. Or
shall we take the name of the man who consents to preside over what
is, in the strict sense of the word, _une société anonyme_ as a
guarantee for the veracity of his colleagues?
Even Rousseau, in the preface to the _Nouvelle Heloïse_, declares
_tout honnête homme doit avouer les livres qu'il public_; which in
plain language means that every honorable man ought to sign his
articles, and that no one is honorable who does not do so. How much
truer this is of polemical writing, which is the general character
of reviews! Riemer was quite right in the opinion he gives in his
_Reminiscences of Goethe:[1] An overt enemy_, he says, _an enemy
who meets you face to face, is an honorable man, who will treat you
fairly, and with whom you can come to terms and be reconciled: but an
enemy who conceals himself_ is a base, cowardly scoundrel, _who has
not courage enough to avow his own judgment; it is not his opinion
that he cares about, but only the secret pleasures of wreaking his
anger without being found out or punished._ This will also have been
Goethe's opinion, as he was generally the source from which Riemer
drew his observations. And, indeed, Rousseau's maxim applies to
every line that is printed. Would a man in a mask ever be allowed to
harangue a mob, or speak in any assembly; and that, too, when he was
going to attack others and overwhelm them with abuse?
[Footnote 1: Preface, p. xxix.]
Anonymity is the refuge for all literary and journalistic rascality.
It is a practice which must be completely stopped. Every article, even
in a newspaper, should be accompanied by the name of its author; and
the editor should be made strictly responsible for the accuracy of the
signature. The freedom of the press should be thus far restricted; so
that when a man publicly proclaims through the far-sounding trumpet of
the newspaper, he should be answerable for it, at any rate with his
honor, if he has any; and if he has none, let his name neutralize the
effect of his words. And since even the most insignificant person is
known in his own circle, the result of such a measure would be to
put an end to two-thirds of the newspaper lies, and to restrain the
audacity of many a poisonous tongue.