it makes liable for the sins of the past, cannot away with the
inexhaustible indulgence proper to culture, the consideration of
circumstances, the severe judgment of actions joined to the merciful
judgment of persons. "The man of culture is in politics," cries Mr.
Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest mortals alive!" Mr. Frederic
Harrison wants to be doing business, and he complains that the man of
culture stops him with a "turn for small fault-finding, love of selfish
ease, and indecision in action." Of what use is culture, he asks, except
for "a critic of new books or a professor of _belles-lettres_?"[425]
Why, it is of use because, in presence of the fierce exasperation which
breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses through the whole production in
which Mr. Frederic Harrison asks that question, it reminds us that the
perfection of human nature is sweetness and light. It is of use,
because, like religion,--that other effort after perfection,--it
testifies that, where bitter envying and strife are, there is confusion
and every evil work.
The pursuit of perfection, then, is the pursuit of sweetness and light.
He who works for sweetness and light, works to make reason and the will
of God prevail. He who works for machinery, he who works for hatred,
works only for confusion. Culture looks beyond machinery, culture hates
hatred; culture has one great passion, the passion for sweetness and
light. It has one even yet greater!--the passion for making them
_prevail_. It is not satisfied till we _all_ come to a perfect man; it
knows that the sweetness and light of the few must be imperfect until
the raw and unkindled masses of humanity are touched with sweetness and
light. If I have not shrunk from saying that we must work for sweetness
and light, so neither have I shrunk from saying that we must have a
broad basis, must have sweetness and light for as many as possible.
Again and again I have insisted how those are the happy moments of
humanity, how those are the marking epochs of a people's life, how those
are the flowering times for literature and art and all the creative
power of genius, when there is a _national_ glow of life and thought,
when the whole of society is in the fullest measure permeated by
thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and alive. Only it must be
_real_ thought and _real_ beauty; _real_ sweetness and _real_ light.
Plenty of people will try to give the masses, as they call them, an
intellectual food prepared and adapted in the way they think proper for
the actual condition of the masses. The ordinary popular literature is
an example of this way of working on the masses. Plenty of people will
try to indoctrinate the masses with the set of ideas and judgments
constituting the creed of their own profession or party. Our religious
and political organizations give an example of this way of working on
the masses. I condemn neither way; but culture works differently. It
does not try to teach down to the level of inferior classes; it does not
try to win them for this or that sect of its own, with ready-made
judgments and watchwords. It seeks to do away with classes; to make the
best that has been thought and known in the world current everywhere; to
make all men live in an atmosphere of sweetness and light, where they
may use ideas, as it uses them itself, freely,--nourished, and not bound
by them.
This is the _social idea_; and the men of culture are the true apostles
of equality. The great men of culture are those who have had a passion
for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society
to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time; who have
labored to divest knowledge of all that was harsh, uncouth, difficult,
abstract, professional, exclusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient
outside the clique of the cultivated and learned, yet still remaining
the _best_ knowledge and thought of the time, and a true source,
therefore, of sweetness and light. Such a man was Abelard[426] in the
Middle Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and thence the boundless
emotion and enthusiasm which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing[427]
and Herder[428] in Germany, at the end of the last century; and their
services to Germany were in this way inestimably precious. Generations
will pass, and literary monuments will accumulate, and works far more
perfect than the works of Lessing and Herder will be produced in
Germany; and yet the names of these two men will fill a German with a
reverence and enthusiasm such as the names of the most gifted masters
will hardly awaken. And why? Because they _humanized_ knowledge; because
they broadened the basis of life and intelligence; because they worked
powerfully to diffuse sweetness and light, to make reason and the will
of God prevail. With Saint Augustine they said: "Let us not leave thee
alone to make in the secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst before the
creation of the firmament, the division of light from darkness; let the
children of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, make their light
shine upon the earth, mark the division of night and day, and announce
the revolution of the times; for the old order is passed, and the new
arises; the night is spent, the day is come forth; and thou shalt crown
the year with thy blessing, when thou shalt send forth laborers into thy
harvest sown by other hands than theirs; when thou shalt send forth new
laborers to new seed-times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet."[429]
HEBRAISM AND HELLENISM[430]
This fundamental ground is our preference of doing to thinking. Now this
preference is a main element in our nature and as we study it we find
ourselves opening up a number of large questions on every side.
Let me go back for a moment to Bishop Wilson,[431] who says: "First,
never go against the best light you have; secondly, take care that your
light be not darkness." We show, as a nation, laudable energy and
persistence in walking according to the best light we have, but are not
quite careful enough, perhaps, to see that our light be not darkness.
This is only another version of the old story that energy is our strong
point and favorable characteristic, rather than intelligence. But we may
give to this idea a more general form still, in which it will have a yet
larger range of application. We may regard this energy driving at
practice, this paramount sense of the obligation of duty, self-control,
and work, this earnestness in going manfully with the best light we
have, as one force. And we may regard the intelligence driving at those
ideas which are, after all, the basis of right practice, the ardent
sense for all the new and changing combinations of them which man's
development brings with it, the indomitable impulse to know and adjust
them perfectly, as another force. And these two forces we may regard as
in some sense rivals,--rivals not by the necessity of their own nature,
but as exhibited in man and his history,--and rivals dividing the empire
of the world between them. And to give these forces names from the two
races of men who have supplied the most signal and splendid
manifestations of them, we may call them respectively the forces of
Hebraism and Hellenism. Hebraism and Hellenism,--between these two
points of influence moves our world. At one time it feels more
powerfully the attraction of one of them, at another time of the other;
and it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and happily balanced
between them.
The final aim of both Hellenism and Hebraism, as of all great spiritual
disciplines, is no doubt the same: man's perfection or salvation. The
very language which they both of them use in schooling us to reach this
aim is often identical. Even when their language indicates by
variation,--sometimes a broad variation, often a but slight and subtle
variation,--the different courses of thought which are uppermost in each
discipline, even then the unity of the final end and aim is still
apparent. To employ the actual words of that discipline with which we
ourselves are all of us most familiar, and the words of which,
therefore, come most home to us, that final end and aim is "that we
might be partakers of the divine nature."[432] These are the words of a
Hebrew apostle, but of Hellenism and Hebraism alike this is, I say, the
aim. When the two are confronted, as they very often are confronted, it
is nearly always with what I may call a rhetorical purpose; the
speaker's whole design is to exalt and enthrone one of the two, and he
uses the other only as a foil and to enable him the better to give
effect to his purpose. Obviously, with us, it is usually Hellenism which
is thus reduced to minister to the triumph of Hebraism. There is a
sermon on Greece and the Greek spirit by a man never to be mentioned
without interest and respect, Frederick Robertson,[433] in which this
rhetorical use of Greece and the Greek spirit, and the inadequate
exhibition of them necessarily consequent upon this, is almost
ludicrous, and would be censurable if it were not to be explained by the
exigencies of a sermon. On the other hand, Heinrich Heine,[434] and
other writers of his sort give us the spectacle of the tables completely
turned, and of Hebraism brought in just as a foil and contrast to
Hellenism, and to make the superiority of Hellenism more manifest. In
both these cases there is injustice and misrepresentation. The aim and
end of both Hebraism and Hellenism is, as I have said, one and the same,
and this aim and end is august and admirable.
Still, they pursue this aim by very different courses. The uppermost
idea with Hellenism is to see things as they really are; the uppermost
idea with Hebraism is conduct and obedience. Nothing can do away with
this ineffaceable difference. The Greek quarrel with the body and its
desires is, that they hinder right thinking; the Hebrew quarrel with
them is, that they hinder right acting. "He that keepeth the law, happy
is he";[435] "Blessed is the man that feareth the Eternal, that
delighteth greatly in his commandments";--[436] that is the Hebrew
notion of felicity; and, pursued with passion and tenacity, this notion
would not let the Hebrew rest till, as is well known, he had at last got
out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his whole life, to
govern every moment of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion
of felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words of
a great French moralist: "_C'est le bonheur des hommes_,"--when? when
they abhor that which is evil?--no; when they exercise themselves in the
law of the Lord day and night?--no; when they die daily?--no; when they
walk about the New Jerusalem with palms in their hands?--no; but when
they think aright, when their thought hits: "_quand ils pensent juste_."
At the bottom of both the Greek and the Hebrew notion is the desire,
native in man, for reason and the will of God, the feeling after the
universal order,--in a word, the love of God. But, while Hebraism seizes
upon certain plain, capital intimations of, the universal order, and
rivets itself, one may say, with unequalled grandeur of earnestness and
intensity on the study and observance of them, the bent of Hellenism is
to follow, with flexible activity, the whole play of the universal
order, to be apprehensive of missing any part of it, of sacrificing one
part to another, to slip away from resting in this or that intimation of
it, however capital. An unclouded clearness of mind, an unimpeded play
of thought, is what this bent drives at. The governing idea of Hellenism
is _spontaneity of consciousness_; that of Hebraism, _strictness of
conscience_.
Christianity changed nothing in this essential bent of Hebraism to set
doing above knowing. Self-conquest, self-devotion, the following not our
own individual will, but the will of God, _obedience_, is the
fundamental idea of this form, also, of the discipline to which we have
attached the general name of Hebraism. Only, as the old law and the
network of prescriptions with which it enveloped human life were
evidently a motive-power not driving and searching enough to produce the
result aimed at,--patient continuance in well-doing, self-conquest,--
Christianity substituted for them boundless devotion to that inspiring
and affecting pattern of self-conquest offered by Jesus Christ; and by
the new motive-power, of which the essence was this, though the love and
admiration of Christian churches have for centuries been employed in
varying, amplifying, and adorning the plain description of it,
Christianity, as St. Paul truly says, "establishes the law,"[437] and in
the strength of the ampler power which she has thus supplied to fulfill
it, has accomplished the miracles, which we all see, of her history.
So long as we do not forget that both Hellenism and Hebraism are
profound and admirable manifestations of man's life, tendencies, and
powers, and that both of them aim at a like final result, we can hardly
insist too strongly on the divergence of line and of operation with
which they proceed. It is a divergence so great that it most truly, as
the prophet Zechariah says, "has raised up thy sons, O Zion, against thy
sons, O Greece!"[438] The difference whether it is by doing or by
knowing that we set most store, and the practical consequences which
follow from this difference, leave their mark on all the history of our
race and of its development. Language may be abundantly quoted from both
Hellenism and Hebraism to make it seem that one follows the same current
as the other towards the same goal. They are, truly, borne towards the
same goal; but the currents which bear them are infinitely different. It
is true, Solomon will praise knowing: "Understanding is a well-spring of
life unto him that hath it."[439] And in the New Testament, again, Jesus
Christ is a "light,"[440] and "truth makes us free."[441] It is true,
Aristotle will undervalue knowing: "In what concerns virtue," says he,
"three things are necessary--knowledge, deliberate will, and
perseverance; but, whereas the two last are all-important, the first is
a matter of little importance."[442] It is true that with the same
impatience with which St. James enjoins a man to be not a forgetful
hearer, but a _doer of the work_,[443] Epictetus[444] exhorts us to _do_
what we have demonstrated to ourselves we ought to do; or he taunts us
with futility, for being armed at all points to prove that lying is
wrong, yet all the time continuing to lie. It is true, Plato, in words
which are almost the words of the New Testament or the Imitation, calls
life a learning to die.[445] But underneath the superficial agreement
the fundamental divergence still subsists. The understanding of Solomon
is "the walking in the way of the commandments"; this is "the way of
peace," and it is of this that blessedness comes. In the New Testament,
the truth which gives us the peace of God and makes us free, is the love
of Christ constraining us[446] to crucify, as he did, and with a like
purpose of moral regeneration, the flesh with its affections and lusts,
and thus establishing, as we have seen, the law. The moral virtues, on
the other hand, are with Aristotle but the porch[447] and access to the
intellectual, and with these last is blessedness. That partaking of the
divine life, which both Hellenism and Hebraism, as we have said, fix as
their crowning aim, Plato expressly denies to the man of practical
virtue merely, of self-conquest with any other motive than that of
perfect intellectual vision. He reserves it for the lover of pure
knowledge, of seeing things as they really are,--the[Greek:
philomathhaes][448]
Both Hellenism and Hebraism arise out of the wants of human nature, and
address themselves to satisfying those wants. But their methods are so
different, they lay stress on such different points, and call into being
by their respective disciplines such different activities, that the face
which human nature presents when it passes from the hands of one of them
to those of the other, is no longer the same. To get rid of one's
ignorance, to see things as they are, and by seeing them as they are to
see them in their beauty, is the simple and attractive ideal which
Hellenism holds out before human nature; and from the simplicity and
charm of this ideal, Hellenism, and human life in the hands of
Hellenism, is invested with a kind of aërial ease, clearness, and
radiancy; they are full of what we call sweetness and light.
Difficulties are kept out of view, and the beauty and rationalness of
the ideal have all our thoughts. "The best man is he who most tries to
perfect himself, and the happiest man is he who most feels that he _is_
perfecting himself,"[449]--this account of the matter by Socrates, the
true Socrates of the _Memorabilia_, has something so simple,
spontaneous, and unsophisticated about it, that it seems to fill us with
clearness and hope when we hear it. But there is a saying which I have
heard attributed to Mr. Carlyle about Socrates--a very happy saying,
whether it is really Mr. Carlyle's or not,--which excellently marks the
essential point in which Hebraism differs from Hellenism. "Socrates,"
this saying goes, "is terribly _at ease in Zion_." Hebraism--and here is
the source of its wonderful strength--has always been severely
preoccupied with an awful sense of the impossibility of being at ease in
Zion; of the difficulties which oppose themselves to man's pursuit or
attainment of that perfection of which Socrates talks so hopefully, and,
as from this point of view one might almost say, so glibly. It is all
very well to talk of getting rid of one's ignorance, of seeing things in
their reality, seeing them in their beauty; but how is this to be done
when there is something which thwarts and spoils all our efforts?
This something is _sin_; and the space which sin fills in Hebraism, as
compared with Hellenism, is indeed prodigious. This obstacle to
perfection fills the whole scene, and perfection appears remote and
rising away from earth, in the background. Under the name of sin, the
difficulties of knowing oneself and conquering oneself which impede
man's passage to perfection, become, for Hebraism, a positive, active
entity hostile to man, a mysterious power which I heard Dr. Pusey[450]
the other day, in one of his impressive sermons, compare to a hideous
hunchback seated on our shoulders, and which it is the main business of
our lives to hate and oppose. The discipline of the Old Testament may be
summed up as a discipline teaching us to abhor and flee from sin; the
discipline of the New Testament, as a discipline teaching us to die to
it. As Hellenism speaks of thinking clearly, seeing things in their
essence and beauty, as a grand and precious feat for man to achieve, so
Hebraism speaks of becoming conscious of sin, of awakening to a sense of
sin, as a feat of this kind. It is obvious to what wide divergence these
differing tendencies, actively followed, must lead. As one passes and
repasses from Hellenism to Hebraism, from Plato to St. Paul, one feels
inclined to rub one's eyes and ask oneself whether man is indeed a
gentle and simple being, showing the traces of a noble and divine
nature; or an unhappy chained captive, laboring with groanings that
cannot be uttered to free himself from the body of this death.
Apparently it was the Hellenic conception of human nature which was
unsound, for the world could not live by it. Absolutely to call it
unsound, however, is to fall into the common error of its Hebraizing
enemies; but it was unsound at that particular moment of man's
development, it was premature. The indispensable basis of conduct and
self-control, the platform upon which alone the perfection aimed at by
Greece can come into bloom, was not to be reached by our race so easily;
centuries of probation and discipline were needed to bring us to it.
Therefore the bright promise of Hellenism faded, and Hebraism ruled the
world. Then was seen that astonishing spectacle, so well marked by the
often-quoted words of the prophet Zechariah, when men of all languages
and nations took hold of the skirt of him that was a Jew, saying:--"_We
will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you_."[451] And the
Hebraism which thus received and ruled a world all gone out of the way
and altogether become unprofitable, was, and could not but be, the
later, the more spiritual, the more attractive development of Hebraism.
It was Christianity; that is to say, Hebraism aiming at self-conquest
and rescue from the thrall of vile affections, not by obedience to the
letter of a law, but by conformity to the image of a self-sacrificing
example. To a world stricken with moral enervation Christianity offered
its spectacle of an inspired self-sacrifice; to men who refused
themselves nothing, it showed one who refused himself everything;--"_my
Saviour banished joy!_"[452] says George Herbert. When the _alma Venus_,
the life-giving and joy-giving power of nature, so fondly cherished by
the pagan world, could not save her followers from self-dissatisfaction
and ennui, the severe words of the apostle came bracingly and
refreshingly: "Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of
these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of
disobedience."[453] Through age after age and generation after
generation, our race, or all that part of our race which was most living
and progressive, was _baptized into a death_; and endeavored, by
suffering in the flesh, to cease from sin. Of this endeavor, the
animating labors and afflictions of early Christianity, the touching
asceticism of mediæval Christianity, are the great historical
manifestations. Literary monuments of it, each in its own way
incomparable, remain in the _Epistles_ of St. Paul, in St. Augustine's
_Confessions_, and in the two original and simplest books of the
_Imitation_.[454]
Of two disciplines laying their main stress, the one, on clear
intelligence, the other, on firm obedience; the one, on comprehensively
knowing the ground of one's duty, the other, on diligently practising
it; the one, on taking all possible care (to use Bishop Wilson's words
again) that the light we have be not darkness, the other, that according
to the best light we have we diligently walk,--the priority naturally
belongs to that discipline which braces all man's moral powers, and
founds for him an indispensable basis of character. And, therefore, it
is justly said of the Jewish people, who were charged with setting
powerfully forth that side of the divine order to which the words
_conscience_ and _self-conquest_ point, that they were "entrusted with
the oracles of God";[455] as it is justly said of Christianity, which
followed Judaism and which set forth this side with a much deeper
effectiveness and a much wider influence, that the wisdom of the old
pagan world was foolishness[456] compared to it. No words of devotion
and admiration can be too strong to render thanks to these beneficent
forces which have so borne forward humanity in its appointed work of
coming to the knowledge and possession of itself; above all, in those
great moments when their action was the wholesomest and the most
necessary.