way, that to generalize is to be an idiot, that direct perception is
all, and the slow process of the inductive reason a devil's
machination. This method of intuition is to the more sober method of
science as the romantic to the classical spirit in literature,
permitting to the individual mind a licence of noble vagrancy. But it
must be a law for the ordinary intelligence to exercise the two apart,
else it will fall into sick fancies of excitement, and by abuse of wild
analogies lose the vital art of balance and sane comparison. Only the
greatest minds, endowed as it were with some divine genius of
extrication, may dare to practise the two together. So Leonardo da Vinci
drove inference and intuition abreast without disaster, and gathered
from purple distances of thought their wildest and most splendid
flowers. To him, as has been well said, philosophy was something giving
strange swiftness and double sight, clairvoyant of occult gifts in
common or uncommon things. The doom of Phaeton awaits those who now would
follow that marvellous course; but the poetic observation of
resemblances in things remote, which lent so rich a colour to the
science of the Renaissance, may yet be trained in all our minds; and
the philosophy which trusts in the slow suffusion of the worlds with
intellectual light will bless and encourage its reasonable growth.
Such a philosophy brings also a living sympathy with art. For the artist
ever sees a perfection of truth beyond his rendering, yet always calling
for expression; there is something eternally missed by his highest
effort, and he can never know complacency. The philosophy which
conceives the gradual growth of form through consciousness towards a
perfection infinitely removed, yet in its remoteness drawing up our life
as the moon sways the tides--this surely is the artist's wisdom.
Idealism is like love, {apora porimos}, holding us as it were in touch
with the intangible: it will have us conceive the Absolute without that
helpless absorption in thought which changed Amiel's life from a
fountain to a vapour: it would keep us near the surf and confluence of
things. Its function is not to give any mysterious transcendental
knowledge, but to serve culture "by suggesting questions which help to
detect the passion, and strangeness and dramatic contrasts of life."
And not only to bring suggestions, but repose, by granting to eyes
wearied with minute concerns the contrasts of vast times and spaces, the
majestic idea of the Whole; to change the focus and variously dispose
the perspectives of familiar things.
An old watchmaker, whose window overlooked a wide meadow, used ever and
again to lay down his instruments to gaze out upon the expanse of green,
pasturing upon it a wandering vague regard, and absorbing from it an
assuagement of his wearied senses which, he said, served him more
effectually after these bright interludes. The province of Metaphysics
should be to us as to this wise workman his field; not a place to dream
our days away in, but for occasional resort; in which we may forget the
infinitesimal in healing visions of broad space and colour. I counsel
every lonely man to satisfy what has been described as the common
metaphysical instinct, and according to his powers to become a
metaphysician. There is no discipline which so well consists with
solitude, none which so instantly enfranchises the mind from the
tyranny of mean self-interest or vain and envious polemics. Men do not
grow sour and quarrelsome about the Absolute: everything that is
polemical is inspired, as Michelet once said, by some temporal and
momentary interest. The man who has climbed to the Idalian spring comes
down benevolent. He does not grudge this toiling ant his grain, that
snarling dog his bone, but is content to live serene, in the certainty
that his soul has great provision, and that though all human things are
small, each is worth its while. Into his hand there is given a scale by
which life is known in its fair proportions; a tranquil joy, disturbed
neither by dirges nor Epinician odes, is poured into his heart and
exalts him above distraction. He respects himself as akin to that great
Self whose perfection shall one day be known; he understands the passion
for the ideal through which men die young; he wonders at envy and in the
happiness of enfranchisement would have all men free.
The pages of this Almagest are for the exceptional hour; but daily, as
one bookish from the nursery, I read much in many directions. For if
books are called the best friends of happy men, to the sad they are
saviours also. And when I remember too clearly what I am, I turn perhaps
most often to Lucretius. For of all those who have taken up the pen to
assuage the miseries of men, it is he who sings most bravely of the
great endurance. This austere enthusiast, whose soul was never fused in
the fire of friendship; who went apart, as it were, amid thunders upon
the lonely heights; who, without any lover, yet loved his kind so well
that all the years of his maturity, how short and splendid a period,
were poured forth in one song of human consolation,--this man for all
the madness of his creed, was yet aflame with a wisdom to be called
divine. That calm face, lit with one desire--to drive the furies from
the way and soothe the frightened children of men, is ever among the
nobler countenances which fancy summons about my bed. Over the anxious
heart they flow, those slow cadences, so vibrant yet so magnificently
passionless, until the nerves of pain cease to throb, and fear shrinks
as a taint impossible to the patient of such a physician. It is not his
to intimidate or denounce, to evoke visions of lurid hell, to linger
over dire vaticinations, or apportion to each his grade of torment, but
with cool fingers to smooth the hair back from the forehead, and in
grave, tender accents to say: Sleep now, for it was a dream.
Landor, in a fine passage, compared the merciful tolerance of the Roman
poet with the pitiless ire of Dante, contrasting in respect of the
quality of mercy these two poets, one in their austere perfection, but
so different in their vision of death, and judgment, and ultimate
reward. The seer of lost worlds has written his own defence, and was
indeed but attacked to point the sharp antithesis; but Lucretius, though
he owes it to a literary feint, is very finely praised. And to me it
seems that his compassionate mood increased upon him just because he was
not emulous of the world's gifts or earnest for its pleasures, but
withdrew from the press, and lived out his few great years
contemplating apart the vicissitudes of orbs and men. He did not wait in
ante-chambers or sit at wedding feasts; but severing all entangling and
intricate threads of observance, followed the voice which called him to
solitary places of illimitable prospect. It was not through disillusion
or injustice, or wounded pride, that he walked aloof; but loneliness was
his birthright, and from the hills and headlands to which solitude
allured his steps he saw the dust of mad encounters rise to heaven, and
the rent sails of foundering galleys. He saw, and could not but be wrung
with pity for man deafened to wise counsel by the noise of vanities, and
fiercely conspiring to precipitate his doom. As he went by shore and
upland, there gathered in his mind those resonant hexameters of warning
or consolation, those similes from the life of husbandry and dumb
things, which, set like diamonds in clay, lend to the most arid
arguments their own incomparable splendour, or that homelier beauty
which instantly pierces the defences of the heart. Not diffident as we,
but of a nature so infinitely absent and reserved that in the legend
his wife must concoct a philter to remind him of his love, he is of all
the pagans the best companion for our angrier moods. An archaic and
elemental serenity is upon his language and thought, rebuking our
unprofitable petulance; if emotion gains him he finds utterance in those
tremendous periods "where single words seem to gather out of the deep
and to reverberate like thunder." As the reverberation dies away and the
clouds are pierced by the sun, the world is seen in new lights through
an air clear as upon rain-swept mountains.
As my reading is incessant, so also is my writing. For the happiness of
man is in his fertility, and of barrenness comes the worst despair. To
be happy is to have issue--children, or books written, or things
beautifully wrought, or monuments of goodness to live after you, if only
in the memory of some tiny hamlet of the folded hills. This is the law
of life that Diotima knew, by which flower and tree, animal and man,
fulfil the end of their creation; and man in nothing more surely proves
his lordship than by his many-handed hold upon posterity. For the lower
creation is procreant in one way, but man in many; who may have
offspring not of body alone but of mind and heart, and be so redeemed
from the grim dismay of childlessness. The greatest human happiness is
to be fertile in every way, a thing granted rarely in the world we know;
the next, perhaps, is that of the parent who gives all of himself to his
family, not tilling any field beyond the charmed walls confining his
desire. The author sure of his fame, the born artist, the benefactor of
his kind, are also happy, seeing their offspring grow in years and in
the power of making a brighter world.
But he is miserable who, aspiring to follow these, feels his force wane
within him while he remains yet fatherless; or who has sons stillborn,
or weakly, or dishonoured. I question whether sheer degradation into
evil brings more pain to man than such sense of sterility or frustrate
parentage. But it is no small part of human redemption that none need
know the interminable misery. A man may have neither sons nor genius,
but in the dark hour he can go out and give, if it be only a penny or a
kind word, and on that foundation build a temple to receive his
thanksgiving. To give of yourself is good. This is that grand agreement
and oecumenical consent to which those words _quod ab omnibus quod
ubique_ in deed and truth may be applied. For this reason meanness is of
the deeps, and avarice groans in the lowest zone of hell. And if there
are faces of blank and permanent despair upon your path, be sure that
these are not masks of whole men, but of those who wilfully abstained
from joy and have received the greater damnation. My children are mostly
writings, poor weakly creatures dying inarticulate and unchristened,
tenderly remembered by myself only, but at least no nuisance to the
world. I loved them at their birth, I hold them in remembrance, though
they were ever of a hectic and uncertain beauty.
The comparison of children with branches of the olive is not the mere
ornament of a Bible verse, but the wisdom of one who knew both tree and
child. For as children are bright creatures of swiftly changing moods,
so are the olive leaves in the blue southern air. I once read of an
artist who essayed to paint a group of olives and a cypress growing
before them. Against their silvery leaves its dark burnished form stood
finely mysterious, the contrasting grey lending it a depth of almost
sable colour; all was propitious for his work. Then suddenly, the air
being to all seeming quite still, the grey-green leaves began to shake
and quiver, until each olive tree was like a silver bonfire, tremulous
with a thousand waves of white flame flowing and following along the
branches. It was a revelation and swift effluence of life, perplexing
and full of charm. The brush was laid down, the moment of inspiration
gone, before the capricious leaves ceased their quivering to be robed
once more in grey, casting on the ground that translucent shadow which
tempers the sunlight only, and does not spoil it of its gold. In the end
the canvas was covered, but with a sketch far less true and beautiful
than the painter's first happy vision. Even so of all our children few
attain the perfection of our dreams. While we look, some influence comes
upon them and they are changed, some breeze, born we know not where,
stirs them to their heart of joy while we stand perplexed; innumerable
laughter of leaves, a rushing and a shivering in quick answer to a mere
breath, silence as swift when unperceived it dies away--these are their
replies to our silent invocations. We cannot follow the swift course,
but are quickened with a glad rejuvenescence, the true prize and guerdon
of parentage. They may grow old or die, or bring us sorrow; it is enough
that once they so lived and stirred a pride within us. Let Hedonist and
idealist dispute, let one worship pleasure and another wait on the
intangible joy, but in the fathering and mothering and the bringing up
of young children, of the flesh, the mind, or the spirit, lies the
natural happiness of men and women. It is a joy which outlasts
disillusions; it rests surely upon achievement and deserts which lie
ponderable in the archangel's scales. For it is certain that he who
creates as best he knows best serves God, the world and himself, and
what system of Ethics has conceived a more perfect rule?
All young life is instinct with such a beauty and trustfulness, that
though he himself may have no part or lot in its creation, and be dumb
or awkward in its presence, a man will be the brighter for having
passed, if but for a moment, out of the darkness of his own course into
the radiance within its orbit. To the diffident this is an especial
grace. For children by some deeper intuition understand us as their
parents cannot do; and when all the world is cold will often smile upon
us with happy upturned faces. It is one of my consolations that the
little players in the parks come running to me rather than to others
with their eternal question after the exact hour of day. For I reflect
that though my face grows wrinkled and drawn with years, there must yet
hover something about its ugly surface which tells of a good will
within. There was a time when I found the children's question
importunate, and drew out my watch ungraciously; but now I feel
disappointment if during their hours of play I can walk my mile without
answering one of these high-pitched inquiries.
To have the confidence of children is indeed a thing of which a poor
wanderer may be proud, a credential confirming his self-respect, and
worthy one day to be presented at the gate of heaven. Once during one of
my worst hours of desolation, when I was tramping across the fields, I
found a little maid of seven picking primroses on the edge of an old
orchard. For some time I stood watching, so charmed with the grace of
her movements and the beauty of the spring sunlight on her golden mane,
that I lost all consciousness of present trouble, and beyond her fairy
form began to see vague visions of lost happiness returning. As I stood
thus forgetful and looking absently before me, I suddenly felt a touch
which recalled my scattered thoughts: she had come to me and put her
hand in mine. I think in all my lonely life I never felt so swift a
thankfulness as that which suffused me then: the memory of it is always
with me, and now I never see a happy child engrossed in its little task
of duty or pleasure without thinking to myself there is one of those who
truly have power to remit sins. I will not repeat the fond things often
written about children. Not all of them are like the infant angels of
Bellini or Filippino Lippi or Carpaccio; some indeed are strident, pert,
without charm or candour, not doves but little jays; but for the
loveliness of those who have smiled upon me, whether rich or poor,
whether wild or tended flowers, I shall ever hold the whole company
dear.
Whether I read or write, or go painfully upon difficult paths of
thought, like many other men whom the world dismays, I win a larger
tranquillity and a clearer vision from an increased simplicity of life.
I know that to use the word asceticism of one's daily practice is to
incur the judgment of all those whom the world calls good fellows, whose
motto is live and let live, or any other aphorism of convenient and
universal remission. To them asceticism is the deterrent saintliness
which renounces all joy, and with a hard thin voice condemns the
leanings of mankind to reasonable indulgence. The ill-favour drawn down
by ecclesiastical exaggeration upon the good Greek word {askesis}, which
means nothing more than the practice of fitness, has prejudiced men
against all system of conduct bold enough to include it in their
terminology.
Kant's chapter on the Ascetic Exercise of Ethics is a fine defence of
that training of the heart and mind which has no affinity with the
morbid discipline of hair shirt and scourge. "The ascetic exercise of
the monasteries," he says, "inspired by superstitious fear and the
hypocritical disesteem of a man's own self, sets to work with
self-reproaches, whimpering compunction and a torturing of the body. It
is intended not to result in virtue but to make expiation for sins, and
by self-imposed punishment the sinners expect to do penance, instead of
ethically repenting." And again--"All ethical gymnastics consist
therefore singly in subjugating the instincts and appetites of our
physical system ... a gymnastic exercise rendering the will hardy and
robust, which by the consciousness of regained freedom makes the heart
glad."
This is sound doctrine, neither ungodly nor inhuman, the word of a man
in whose veins the warm blood yet flowed. Few pictures of venerable age
please more than that of the old philosopher of Koenigsberg drawn for us
by de Quincey in one of his miscellaneous Essays. There we see Immanuel
Kant, leading his tranquil sane existence, giving his friends sober
entertainment, talking brightly of mundane things, practising "the
hilarity which goes hand in hand with virtue." For me the very
eccentricities of his daily routine have a fascination, and I read them
as a devout Catholic reads many a quaint passage in the _Acta
Sanctorum_. How wise was his nightly habit, as he settled himself in bed
before falling asleep, to asseverate with a sigh of thankfulness that no
man living was more contented and healthier than he! Here is the true
asceticism, the child's glad abandonment to nature maintained and grown
articulate in philosophic age.
To this beauty of plain life I cannot attain. But my own life is as far
removed as may be from brilliant or luxurious pleasures, and I divide my
time between the country and the town. This I do from obedience to
reason rather than fashion; for while the country has my love, the city
is more remedial to my peculiar pain. There the shy man may have what
Lamb called the perfect and sympathetic solitude, as opposed to the
"inhuman and cavern-haunting solitariness," to which his infirmity
inclines. There he and those who rub shoulders with him on the pavement
can "enjoy each other's want of conversation." No creature with a heart
can jostle daily with his kind, but he wins some consciousness of kindly
feeling. The very annoyances and constraints of propinquity are in their
own way disciplinary, and insistent, uncongenial persons, like glaring
red buoys with clanging bells, serve at least to keep us in the fairway
of navigation. And in a city there are voices of cheerful exhortation
always echoing in the higher air above the roar and the trampling, which
in the interludes of coarser sound, or by our removal into some quiet
court or garden, may be heard repeating their stirring watchwords of
endeavour. We are told that no word spoken ever dies, but goes
reverberating through space for ever. It is my fancy that only evil
words escape into the outer void, which eternally engulfs their
profitless message, while words of hope and helpfulness are not thus
lightly sundered from the world that needs them, but hover still near
above us, descending with every lull of the tumult into those ears which
are strained towards them. The laden air of towns carries not the rumour
of the battle only, but by the presence of these fair echoes held within
it, gives back to the soul more health than ever it drew from the body.
With this thought I am often consoled as I go my way through gloom and
clamour and unloveliness, finding a Providence in places which else seem
abandoned in the outer desolation.
Nor is the vast city to be valued only for what it gives, but for its
own wonderful self, an obvious point which need not be expanded into a
tedious circle. The shy will naturally draw more advantage from so rich
a field of contemplation than those who seldom walk alone. In London I
often map out a course of wandering which in its varied stages shall
remind me of the change in progress or decay of particular arts or
industries or different quarters of the town. Reading their meaning in
the light of history, I make bare walls speak to me with a personal
voice. Let any one but acquaint himself with the styles of
ecclesiastical or domestic architecture, or of monuments of the dead, or
with the history of the thoroughfares he frequents, and he will be
pleasantly constrained to reflection upon those who have gone before
him. As he stands in the shadow of an ancient church he will think to
himself: "By this very wall Chaucer may have stood." As he walks amid
the reverberating ravines which are city streets he will say: "Here
along green and silent paths the Roman legionary marched when Hadrian
ruled the world." When once the faculty of observation has been awakened
to a permanent alertness, the desire to be widely read in history of men
and their arts will become irresistible; and through the knowledge
gradually amassed it will be thought a sorry chance if any ramble of
wider compass yield no vision which in comeliness or deformity tells its
tale of changing fortune. To appreciate human work, and the conditions
under which it is born, is to exult in abounding sympathy with this
man's conquest over things poor in promise, or to condole with that
man's failure to do the best that in him lay.
As I walk by the strand of Thames, my fancy sees upon one flood the gay
barge gliding upward to green fields, and the black hull bearing down
the prisoner to the Traitors' Gate. If I go up Holborn, I remember that
where this traffic now thunders John Gerard tended his Physic Garden
when Elizabeth was queen. I know where Sarah Siddons lived; and where
William Blake died; and my curious wanderings are now so far extended,
that when I turn to the great book of London I seldom find a tedious
page. The places where people strove and suffered evoke before me the
forms of men and women dead but unforgotten, and if I am alone I am not
aware of loneliness.
London is the central wonder, but wonderful also in spirit and
suggestion are those old places which ring it round: these I often
frequent at every season, and carry their portraits over my heart. Let a
man once learn to know them, and his memory shall never starve; he will
never forget the hour when first they yielded him up their secret. Many
moments of intimate delight do I treasure in remembrance, moments when I
was suddenly aware that all previous impressions were the poor
gatherings of purblind eyes; but I will only tell you of one, which may
suffice to show what riches lie ever open to those who roam in solitude.