illusion? To call the vivid objects of sense illusory is to compare
them to their disadvantage with something else which we conceive as
more worthy of the title of reality. This deeper reality must be
something ideal, something permanent, something conceived by the
intellect, and which only a man having faith in the intellect could
prefer to the objects of sense or fancy. The Hindoos that our author
thinks so much akin to himself would hardly understand this rational
bias of his thought, this foregone dissatisfaction with a world of
infinite change and indefinite structure. They would accept as a
natural fact that perpetual flux which he emphasizes as a paradox and
laments as a calamity. In spite of his studied immersion in sensuous
illusion, he is still a native of the sphere of intelligible things,
and it is only the difficulty of finding the permanent beings which he
is inclined to look for and in the presence of which he could alone
rest, that makes him linger with tragic self-consciousness in the
region of fleeting shadows. Accordingly we need not be surprised by the
somewhat forced and pessimistic note of a pantheism which is really
exotic, and we may be prepared to find the plastic mind asserting
itself ultimately against that system. So Jean Lahor, after the groups
of thoughts which he puts under the title of "L'orient" and "Le ciel du
Nord," adds another group under the title of "Cosmos."
It would require a philosophical treatise of greater pretentions than
the little book before us to explain fully how this cosmos can arise
out of the chaos of mechanical forces, and how the life and the work
of reason can be superposed upon the life of sense and imagination.
Our author's vision, fixed as it is on concrete images and expressed
in detached epigrams, does not always extend to the philosophical
relations of his thoughts. Yet he offers, perhaps unconsciously, an
admirable variation of that revolution of thought which is associated
with the name of Kant. He proposes to us as the work of human
intelligence what is commonly believed to be the work of God. The
universe, apart from us, is a chaos, but it may be made a cosmos by our
efforts and in our own minds. The laws of events, apart from us, are
inhuman and irrational, but in the sphere of human activity they may be
dominated by reason. We are a part of the blind energy behind Nature,
but by virtue of that energy we impose our purposes on the part of
Nature which we constitute or control. We can turn from the stupefying
contemplation of an alien universe to the building of our own house,
knowing that, alien as it is, that universe has chanced to blow its
energy also into our will and to allow itself to be partially dominated
by our intelligence. Our mere existence and the modicum of success we
have attained in society, science, and art are the living proofs of
this human power. The exercise of this power is the task appointed for
us by the indomitable promptings of our own spirit, a task in which we
need not labour without hope.
For as the various plants and animals have found foothold and room
to grow, maintaining for long periods the life congenial to them, so
the human race may be able to achieve something like its perfection
and its ideal, maintaining for an indefinite time all that it values,
not by virtue of an alleged intentional protection of Providence, but
by its own watchful art and exceptional good fortune. The ideal is
itself a function of the reality and cannot therefore be altogether
out of harmony with the conditions of its own birth and persistence.
Civilization is precarious, but it need not be short-lived. Its
inception is already a proof that there exists an equilibrium of forces
which is favourable to its existence; and there is no reason to suppose
this equilibrium to be less stable than that which keeps the planets
revolving in their orbits. There is no impossibility, therefore, in
the hope that the human will may have time to understand itself, and,
having understood itself, to realize the objects of its rational desire.
We see that the "Cosmos" here invoked is not inconsistent with the
"Nothingness" before described. It is a triumph amid illusions, an
order within chaos, _la gloire du néant_. This hint of a reconciliation
between the practical optimism natural to an active being, and the
speculative pessimism inevitable to an intelligent one, is happier
than the muddled solutions of the same problem with which current
philosophies have made us familiar. The philosophy suggested by Jean
Lahor is that of Spinoza, if we subtract from the latter its mystical
optimism, and add a broad appreciation of human culture. Man cannot
attain his happiness by conforming to that which is hostile to himself;
he can thus attain only his dissolution. But by using what is hostile
to himself for his own ends, as far as his energy extends, he can make
an oasis for himself in Nature, and being at peace with himself, be at
peace also with her.
Such a view has some relation to the real conditions of human life and
progress. What is called the higher optimism, on the contrary, commonly
consists in recounting all the evils of existence with a radiant
countenance, and telling us that they are all divine ministers of some
glorious consummation; but what this consummation is never appears, and
we are reduced in practice to a mere glorification of impulse. We are
simply invited to accept the conditions of life as they are, and to
find in incidental successes a compensation for incidental or--as we
should say if we were sincere--for essential failures. Such an optimism
impairs by a kind of philosophic Nature-worship that moral loyalty
which consists in giving the highest honour to the highest, not to the
strongest, things. It substitutes, as pantheism must, the study of
tendencies for the study of ends, and the dignity of success for the
dignity of justice.
This moral confusion our author avoids by his greater sincerity. He has
understood how fundamentally that man is a dupe who does not begin by
settling his accounts with Despair. There is no safety in lies; there
is no safety even in "postulates." Let the worst of the truth appear,
and when it has once seen the light, let it not be immediately wrapped
up again in the swaddling clothes of an equivocal rhetoric. In such a
disingenuous course there is both temerity and cowardice: temerity in
throwing away the opportunity, always afforded by the recognition of
fact, of cultivating the real faculties of human nature; cowardice in
not being willing to face with patience and dignity the situation in
which fate appears to have put us. That Nature is immense, that her
laws are mechanical, that the existence and well-being of man upon
earth are, from the point of view of the universe, an indifferent
incident,--all this is in the first place to be clearly recognized. It
is the lesson which both poetic contemplation and practical science had
taught Jean Lahor.
Had he stopped to subject his opinion to metaphysical criticism, he
would not, I think, have found reason to change it. To subjectify
the universe is not to improve it, much less to dissolve it. The
space I call my idea has all the properties of the space I called
my environment; it has the same inevitable presence and the same
fundamental validity. Because it is a law of our intelligence that
two and two make four, and the implications of that law may be traced
by abstract thought, the world which is subject to that arithmetical
principle is not made more amenable to our higher demands than if it
had been arithmetical of its own sweet will. It is not made docile
by being called our creature. Indeed, what is less docile to us than
ourselves? what less subject to our correction than the foundations of
our own being? So when the Kantian philosophy teaches us to look upon
the enveloping universe as a figment of the understanding and on its
laws as results of mental synthesis and inference, we are still pursued
by the inevitable presence of that figment and confronted involuntarily
by that result. Nay, the conditions of our thought, like the
predispositions of our characters, are the most fatal and inexorable of
our limitations.
Why the world is as it is, whether of itself or by refraction in the
medium of our intellect, is not a question that affects the practical
moralist. What concerns him is that the laws of the world, whatever
their origin, are fixed and unchangeable conditions of our happiness.
We cannot change the world, even if we boast to have made it; we must
in any case learn to live with it, whether it be our parent or our
child. To veil its character with euphemisms or to supply its defects
with superstitious assumptions is a course unworthy of a brave man
and abhorrent to a prudent one. What we should do is to make a modest
inventory of our possessions and a just estimate of our powers in
order to apply both, with what strength we have, to the realization of
our ideals in society, in art, and in science. These will constitute
our Cosmos. In building it--for there is none other that builds it
for us--we shall be carrying on the work of the only race that has
yet seriously attempted to live rationally, the race to which we owe
the name and the idea of a Cosmos, as well as the beginnings of its
realization. We shall then be making that rare advance in wisdom which
consists in abandoning our illusions the better to attain our ideals.
X
THE ELEMENTS AND FUNCTION OF POETRY
If a critic, in despair of giving a serious definition of poetry,
should be satisfied with saying that poetry is metrical discourse,
he would no doubt be giving an inadequate account of the matter, yet
not one of which he need be ashamed or which he should regard as
superficial. Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables
upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have
for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty,
for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound
philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all
things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read
in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.
Every human architect must do likewise with his edifice; he must mould
his bricks or hew his stones into symmetrical solids and lay them over
one another in regular strata, like a poet's lines.
Measure is a condition of perfection, for perfection requires that
order should be pervasive, that not only the whole before us should
have a form, but that every part in turn should have a form of its
own, and that those parts should be coordinated among themselves as
the whole is coordinated with the other parts of some greater cosmos.
Leibnitz lighted in his speculations upon a conception of organic
nature which may be false as a fact, but which is excellent as an
ideal; he tells us that the difference between living and dead matter,
between animals and machines, is that the former are composed of parts
that are themselves organic, every portion of the body being itself
a machine, and every portion of that machine still a machine, and so
_ad infinitum_; whereas, in artificial bodies the organization is not
in this manner infinitely deep. Fine Art, in this as in all things,
imitates the method of Nature and makes its most beautiful works out of
materials that are themselves beautiful. So that even if the difference
between verse and prose consisted only in measure, that difference
would already be analogous to that between jewels and clay.
The stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words
is sound; if language therefore is to be made perfect, its materials
must be made beautiful by being themselves subjected to a measure,
and endowed with a form. It is true that language is a symbol for
intelligence rather than a stimulus to sense, and accordingly the
beauties of discourse which commonly attract attention are merely the
beauties of the objects and ideas signified; yet the symbols have a
sensible reality of their own, a euphony which appeals to our senses
if we keep them open. The tongue will choose those forms of utterance
which have a natural grace as mere sound and sensation; the memory will
retain these catches, and they will pass and repass through the mind
until they become types of instinctive speech and standards of pleasing
expression.
The highest form of such euphony is song; the singing voice gives
to the sounds it utters the thrill of tonality,--a thrill itself
dependent, as we know, on the numerical proportions of the vibrations
that it includes. But this kind of euphony and sensuous beauty, the
deepest that sounds can have, we have almost wholly surrendered in our
speech. Our intelligence has become complex, and language, to express
our thoughts, must commonly be more rapid, copious, and abstract than
is compatible with singing. Music at the same time has become complex
also, and when united with words, at one time disfigures them in the
elaboration of its melody, and at another overpowers them in the volume
of its sound. So that the art of singing is now in the same plight as
that of sculpture,--an abstract and conventional thing surviving by
force of tradition and of an innate but now impotent impulse, which
under simpler conditions would work itself out into the proper forms of
those arts. The truest kind of euphony is thus denied to our poetry. If
any verses are still set to music, they are commonly the worst only,
chosen for the purpose by musicians of specialized sensibility and
inferior intelligence, who seem to be attracted only by tawdry effects
of rhetoric and sentiment.
When song is given up, there still remains in speech a certain sensuous
quality, due to the nature and order of the vowels and consonants
that compose the sounds. This kind of euphony is not neglected by the
more dulcet poets, and is now so studied in some quarters that I have
heard it maintained by a critic of relative authority that the beauty
of poetry consists entirely in the frequent utterance of the sound
of "j" and "sh," and the consequent copious flow of saliva in the
mouth. But even if saliva is not the whole essence of poetry, there
is an unmistakable and fundamental diversity of effect in the various
vocalization of different poets, which becomes all the more evident
when we compare those who use different languages. One man's speech, or
one nation's, is compact, crowded with consonants, rugged, broken with
emphatic beats; another man's, or nation's, is open, tripping, rapid,
and even. So Byron, mingling in his boyish fashion burlesque with
exquisite sentiment, contrasts English with Italian speech:--
"I love the language, that soft bastard Latin
Which melts like kisses from a female mouth
And sounds as if it should be writ on satin
With syllables which breathe of the sweet South,
And gentle liquids gliding all so pat in
That not a single accent seems uncouth,
Like our harsh Northern whistling, granting guttural
Which we're obliged to hiss and spit and sputter all."
And yet these contrasts, strong when we compare extreme cases, fade
from our consciousness in the actual use of a mother-tongue. The
function makes us unconscious of the instrument, all the more as it
is an indispensable and almost invariable one. The sense of euphony
accordingly attaches itself rather to another and more variable
quality; the tune, or measure, or rhythm of speech. The elementary
sounds are prescribed by the language we use, and the selection we
may make among those sounds is limited; but the arrangement of words
is still undetermined, and by casting our speech into the moulds of
metre and rhyme we can give it a heightened power, apart from its
significance. A tolerable definition of poetry, on its formal side,
might be found in this: that poetry is speech in which the instrument
counts as well as the meaning--poetry is speech for its own sake and
for its own sweetness. As common windows are intended only to admit
the light, but painted windows also to dye it, and to be an object
of attention in themselves as well as a cause of visibility in other
things, so, while the purest prose is a mere vehicle of thought, verse,
like stained glass, arrests attention in its own intricacies, confuses
it in its own glories, and is even at times allowed to darken and
puzzle in the hope of casting over us a supernatural spell.
Long passages in Shelley's "Revolt of Islam" and Keats' "Endymion"
are poetical in this sense; the reader gathers, probably, no definite
meaning, but is conscious of a poetic medium, of speech euphonious
and measured, and redolent of a kind of objectless passion which is
little more than the sensation of the movement and sensuous richness
of the lines. Such poetry is not great; it has, in fact, a tedious
vacuity, and is unworthy of a mature mind; but it is poetical, and
could be produced only by a legitimate child of the Muse. It belongs to
an apprenticeship, but in this case the apprenticeship of genius. It
bears that relation to great poems which scales and aimless warblings
bear to great singing--they test the essential endowment and fineness
of the organ which is to be employed in the art. Without this sensuous
background and ingrained predisposition to beauty, no art can reach the
deepest and most exquisite effects; and even without an intelligible
superstructure these sensuous qualities suffice to give that thrill of
exaltation, that suggestion of an ideal world, which we feel in the
presence of any true beauty.
The sensuous beauty of words and their utterance in measure suffice,
therefore, for poetry of one sort--where these are there is something
unmistakably poetical, although the whole of poetry, or the best of
poetry, be not yet there. Indeed, in such works as "The Revolt of
Islam" or "Endymion" there is already more than mere metre and sound;
there is the colour and choice of words, the fanciful, rich, or
exquisite juxtaposition of phrases. The vocabulary and the texture of
the style are precious; affected, perhaps, but at any rate refined.
This quality, which is that almost exclusively exploited by the
Symbolist, we may call euphuism--the choice of coloured words and
rare and elliptical phrases. If great poets are like architects and
sculptors, the euphuists are like gold-smiths and jewellers; their work
is filigree in precious metals, encrusted with glowing stones. Now
euphuism contributes not a little to the poetic effect of the tirades
of Keats and Shelley; if we wish to see the power of versification
without euphuism we may turn to the tirades of Pope, where metre and
euphony are displayed alone, and we have the outline or skeleton of
poetry without the filling.
"In spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right."
We should hesitate to say that such writing was truly poetical; so
that some euphuism would seem to be necessary as well as metre, to the
formal essence of poetry.
An example of this sort, however, takes us out of the merely verbal
into the imaginative region; the reason that Pope is hardly poetical to
us is not that he is inharmonious,--not a defect of euphony,--but that
he is too intellectual and has an excess of mentality. It is easier for
words to be poetical without any thought, when they are felt merely
as sensuous and musical, than for them to remain so when they convey
an abstract notion,--especially if that notion be a tart and frigid
sophism, like that of the couplet just quoted. The pyrotechnics of the
intellect then take the place of the glow of sense, and the artifice
of thought chills the pleasure we might have taken in the grace of
expression.
If poetry in its higher reaches is more philosophical than history,
because it presents the memorable types of men and things apart from
unmeaning circumstances, so in its primary substance and texture
poetry is more philosophical than prose because it is nearer to our
immediate experience. Poetry breaks up the trite conceptions designated
by current words into the sensuous qualities out of which those
conceptions were originally put together. We name what we conceive and
believe in, not what we see; things, not images; souls, not voices and
silhouettes. This naming, with the whole education of the senses which
it accompanies, subserves the uses of life; in order to thread our way
through the labyrinth of objects which assault us, we must make a great
selection in our sensuous experience; half of what we see and hear we
must pass over as insignificant, while we piece out the other half with
such an ideal complement as is necessary to turn it into a fixed and
well-ordered world. This labour of perception and understanding, this
spelling of the material meaning of experience is enshrined in our
work-a-day language and ideas; ideas which are literally poetic in the
sense that they are "made" (for every conception in an adult mind is a
fiction), but which are at the same time prosaic because they are made
economically, by abstraction, and for use.
When the child of poetic genius, who has learned this intellectual and
utilitarian language in the cradle, goes afield and gathers for himself
the aspects of Nature, he begins to encumber his mind with the many
living impressions which the intellect rejected, and which the language
of the intellect can hardly convey; he labours with his nameless burden
of perception, and wastes himself in aimless impulses of emotion and
revery, until finally the method of some art offers a vent to his
inspiration, or to such part of it as can survive the test of time and
the discipline of expression.
The poet retains by nature the innocence of the eye, or recovers it
easily; he disintegrates the fictions of common perception into their
sensuous elements, gathers these together again into chance groups as
the accidents of his environment or the affinities of his temperament
may conjoin them; and this wealth of sensation and this freedom of
fancy, which make an extraordinary ferment in his ignorant heart,
presently bubble over into some kind of utterance.
The fulness and sensuousness of such effusions bring them nearer to
our actual perceptions than common discourse could come; yet they may
easily seem remote, overloaded, and obscure to those accustomed to
think entirely in symbols, and never to be interrupted in the algebraic
rapidity of their thinking by a moment's pause and examination of
heart, nor ever to plunge for a moment into that torrent of sensation
and imagery over which the bridge of prosaic associations habitually
carries us safe and dry to some conventional act. How slight that
bridge commonly is, how much an affair of trestles and wire, we can
hardly conceive until we have trained ourselves to an extreme sharpness
of introspection. But psychologists have discovered, what laymen
generally will confess, that we hurry by the procession of our mental
images as we do by the traffic of the street, intent on business,
gladly forgetting the noise and movement of the scene, and looking
only for the corner we would turn or the door we would enter. Yet in
our alertest moment the depths of the soul are still dreaming; the real
world stands drawn in bare outline against a background of chaos and
unrest. Our logical thoughts dominate experience only as the parallels
and meridians make a checker-board of the sea. They guide our voyage
without controlling the waves, which toss for ever in spite of our
ability to ride over them to our chosen ends. Sanity is a madness put
to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled.