COBWEBS OF THOUGHT
by
"ARACHNE"
London
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES
II. CONTRASTS
III. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET
IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY
V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND
MOTTO.
"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there
must be something within us which produces our thought. That something
must be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a
quintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a
number; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a
compound of the _same_ and the _other_! It is atoms which think in us,
said Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom
think? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter."
--VOLTAIRE.
I.
OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES.
Self-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded
those who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive
and desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit,
monk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result,
unless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been
the dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it,
for being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of
self, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of
self-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental
disease.
For fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a
clear, definite aim outside self--such as achieving the gain of some
special piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in
psychology, and certain systems of philosophy--Greek, English, and
German, in Plato Locke, Kant, and in the meditations of Descartes, and
many others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge,
but the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which
we obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to ourselves. When
a philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result
of introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have
contributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious
self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical
self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those
who care for thought for thought's sake--the so-called Hamlets of the
world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas
and dreams, and who never progress towards any clear issue. Amiel's
"Vie Intime" is a study of this kind. It adds nothing to any clear
knowledge of self, absorbing and interesting as the record is. It is
suggestive to a great degree, and in that lies its value, but it is as
vague, as it is sad. It appeals deeply to those who live apart in a
world of their own, in thoughtful imaginative reverie, but its effects
on the mind were deplored even by Amiel himself in words which are
acutely pathetic. The pain which consumed him arose from the
concentration of self on self. Self was monopolised by self,
self-consciousness was produced, though without a touch of selfish
egoism.
Out of this self-conscious introspection, grew that sterility of soul
and mind, that dwindling of capacity, and individuality, which Amiel
felt was taking place within him. A constant, aimless, inevitable
habit of self-introspection was killing his mental life, before the
end came physically.
Another philosophical victim to the same habit was John Stuart Mill,
at one time of his life. His father analysed almost everything, except
himself, and John Stuart Mill had grown up in this logical atmosphere
of analysis, and to much profit as his works show. But when he turned
the microscope on his own states of feeling, and on the aims of his
life, the result was melancholia--almost disease of mind. His grandly
developed faculty of analysis when devoted to definite knowledge
outside himself, produced splendid results, as in his Logic, and his
Essays, but when he analysed himself, he gained no additional
knowledge, but a strange morbid horror that all possible musical
changes might be exhausted, and that there might be no means of
creating fresh ones. He also feared that should all the reforms he,
and others, worked for, be accomplished, the lives of the reformers
would become meaningless and blank, since they were working for means,
not ends in themselves. Out of this hopeless mental condition there
was only one outlet possible, and that was to leave self-analysis of
this sort alone for ever, and to throw himself into its direct
contrary, the unconscious life of the emotions. John Stuart Mill did
this, and it saved him. In Wordsworth's poetry he found sanity and
healing. Happily for him that was not the age of Browning's "Fifine at
the Fair." Had he fallen in with dialectical analysis in the garb of
poetry, it must have killed him!
And yet "Know thyself" has always been considered supremely excellent
advice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly
is disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the
Greeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort
of self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which
can be, at the same time, of vital use? Is all self-analysis when
practised for its own sake necessarily harmful, and unprofitable? It
is time to ask these questions if we are ever to know how to analyse
ourselves with profit, if we are ever to know ourselves. And we none
of us do. As students, we are content with every other knowledge but
this. After all the self probing of the religious and philosophical,
during long centuries, what have we learned? Truly to ourselves, we
are enigmas. To know everything else except the self that knows, what
a strange position! But it is our condition. The one thing that we do
not know--that we feel as if we never could know is the Self in us.
Our characters, our powers, our natures, our being--what are they? Our
faculties--what can we do? And what can we not do? What is the reason
of this faculty, or that want of faculty? We have never reached an
understanding of ourselves, which makes us not only know, but perceive
what we are capable of knowing; which makes us aware, not only that we
can do something, but why we can do it. We are an unknown quantity to
ourselves. We can calculate on a given action in a machine, but we
cannot calculate on our own, much less on our moods. If we would but
take half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a
science or art--if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own
thoughts as an engineer can on the sequence of movements in his steam
engine--if we could dig, and penetrate into the depths of our own
being, as a miner penetrates into a seam of coal--we might then
cultivate with some profit our own special lines of thought, our own
gifts, that portion of individuality, which we each possess. But it is
so difficult to get to know it--we are always on the surface of
ourselves. What power will unearth our self and make us really know
what we are and what we can do? It is because we do not know
ourselves, that we fail so hopelessly to give the things which are of
incalculably real worth to the world, such as fresh individuality, and
reality of character. Among millions of beings how few exist who
possess strong original minds! We are _not_ individual for the most
part, and we are _not_ real. Our lives _are_ buried lives; we are
unconscious absorbers, and reproducers, under other words of that
which we have imbibed elsewhere. We need not only fresh expressions of
old statements, but actually new ideas, and new conceptions. (The
fresh _subjects_ people talk about, are really fresh _conceptions_ of
subjects.) We shall never get this bloom of freshness, and this sense
of reality and individuality of view unless we cultivate their
soil--to have fresh ideas, we must encourage the right atmosphere in
which alone they can live. We must not let our own personality,
however slight, be suppressed, or be discouraged, or interfered with
by a more powerful, or a more excellent personality.
Individuality is so weak and pliable a thing in most of us that it is
very easily checked--it requires watchfulness and care, and not to be
overborne, for the smallest individual thought of a mind of any
originality, is more worth to the world than any re-expression of the
thought of some other mind, however great.
Even the "best hundred books" may have a disastrous effect upon us.
They may kill some aspirations, if they kindle others. Persons of
mature age may surely at some time have made the discovery that much
has been lost through the dominating influence of a superior mind.
Many persons, for instance, have felt the great influence of Carlyle,
and Ruskin, in their youth. Carlyle could do incalculable good to some
minds by his ethics of work, but irremediable harm to others; minds
have actually become stunted and sterile through that part of his
teaching, which was unsuited to them. Carlyle's temperament checked
their proper development. Youth has a beautiful capacity for trust and
belief, and it accepts everything as equal in goodness and truth from
an author it reverences. The young do not know enough of themselves,
and they do not trust enough to their own instincts to discriminate.
They are dominated and unconsciously suppressed. Ruskin, in his
ethical views of art, and strange doctrines about some old masters,
has done nearly as much harm to susceptible minds as Carlyle. Ruskin
restricted and perverted their art ideals on certain lines as Carlyle
crushed ethical discrimination. Mind have been kept imprisoned for
years, and their development on the lines nature intended them to
take, has been arrested, by the want of belief in their own
initiative. What was inevitable for Ruskin's unique mind was yet wrong
for readers, who agreed to all his theories under the influence of his
fascinating personality, and through the power of his individuality.
In life, we sometimes find we have made a series of mistakes of this
sort, before at last we get glimmerings of what we were intended to
be, and we learn at last the need of having known ourselves, and the
vital necessity of cultivating the atmosphere and colour of that mind
of ours, which has been used merely as a tool to know everything else.
Spiritualists and Theosophists talk of a Dominant Self, and an Astral
body, and of gleams of heavensent insight. Gleams of insight and
dreams do come to us, and teach us truths, which "never can be
proved," and without some such intuitions the soul of man would indeed
be poor,
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
But the value of the intuitions is relative to the soul which has
them; they cannot be conveyed to any one else, or demonstrated; they
can never become Truths valid to all minds. And these last are the
truths we want if we would make some orderly progress towards a given
issue. And so we resort after all, to science, to see if it can solve
the intellectual riddle of our being. What can it do for us? If we
would really know ourselves, we want a depth of self-analysis; not a
pitiful search for motives, not the superficial probings of a
moralist, not the boundless, limitless, self-absorbed speculations on
the nature of self of the philosopher, not the sympathetic noting of
each emotion that crosses the horizon of the soul--the introspection
of the Poet; these will never teach us the reason why we think and
feel on certain lines, and not on others--these will never explain to
us what the mind is, that is in us--what that strange thing is, which
we have tried so vainly to understand. And without this knowledge how
worthless is the work of the moralist; of what practical use is it for
him to endeavour to alter a man's character, when he does not even
know the ingredients that constitute character, still less the cause
why character is good or bad. Mr. Robert Buchanan said in one of his
essays: "I can advance no scientific knowledge for seeing a great
genius in Robert Browning, or a fine painstaking talent in George
Eliot, for thinking George Meredith almost alone in his power of
expressing personal passion, and Walt Whitman supreme in his power of
conveying moral stimulation. I can take a skeleton to pieces
scientifically, but not a living soul. I am helpless before Mr.
Swinburne, or any authentic poet, but quite at my ease before Macaulay
or Professor Aytoun." Mr. Buchanan could presumably take the last two
to pieces and analyse them as if they were skeletons; but before
Swinburne, "the living soul," he is helpless. Now we want a scientific
reason for all this; we want to analyse, not the skeleton, that has
been done often enough, but "the living soul." We want to know the
ingredients of character that constituted Mr. Buchanan's preferences.
What composition gave him his special temper and character? Why did
his mind tend towards Robert Browning, and away from George Eliot? Why
in short did his mind work in the way it did? The more original the
mind, the more its investigation would repay us. But it must be
self-investigation; what we want are facts of mind, mental data and in
order to get them, we must investigate the living mind All the usual
explanations of Temperament, Nature, Heredity, Education are the same
difficulties, expressed in different words. Heredity is a
circumstance, which has to be reckoned with, but we have to
investigate, not circumstances, but results. Here is a living complex
mind, no matter how I inherit it, here it is; now then, how does it
work, what can I do with it? And then comes the further inevitable
question--What is it? What is this thing, this me, which tends to feel
and act in a certain direction--to admire spontaneously, this, and to
despise with as perfect ease, that. What we need for scientific
investigation into the ME is "to utilise minds so as to form a living
laboratory" _Mind_ vivisection without torture, cruelty or the knife.
What we want to know definitely from science is: How does this thing
which I call my mind work? Science regards mind as the sum of
sensations, which are the necessary results of antecedent causes. It
endeavours to know how and in what way these sensations can be trained
and perfected. Nearly twenty years ago, a writer in the Psychological
Journal "Mind"[1] Mr. J. Jacobs, attempted to form a Society for the
purpose of experimental psychology. Thinkers and scientific men have
carried out this work, but the general public has not been greatly
interested or interested for any length of time. No such society
exists among the English public. The greater number of enthusiastic
students is to be found in Italy and America. But Germany has
furnished great individual workers, such as Fechner, Helmholtz, and
Wundt. Collective investigation was necessary to separate individual
peculiarities from general laws. Science of course aims at changing
the study of individual minds/into "a valid science of mind." Mr. J.
Jacobs wished a Society to be organised for the purpose of measuring
mind, measuring our senses, and for testing our mental powers as
accurately as weight and height are tested now, and also for
experimenting on will practice. He believed it possible to train the
will on one thing until we got it perfectly under control, and in so
doing we should modify character immensely. If this proved possible,
we ought to persevere until conduct becomes an art, education a
principle, and mind is known as a science is known. Mr. Jacobs wanted
systematic enquiries to be made into powers of attention, such as "Can
we listen and read at the same time, and reproduce what we have read
and heard." And into the faculties of observation and memory, with
after images, and the capacity for following trains of reasoning,
&c., &c., "When we read a novel, do we actually have pictures of the
scenes before our minds?" Mr. Jacobs wished for enquiries into every
kind of intelligence ordinary and extraordinary; out of all
ingredients of character, out of early impressions, out of classified
emotions to build up an answer to the question: "Is there a science
of mind?" Since he wrote, much has been done in experiment by the
scientific. Children's minds are constantly being investigated, and
the results given to the public. Mr. Galton has to some extent
popularised this sort of investigation. But it is still generally
unpopular. Novelists, and artists, leisured people, women, everyone
could be of use, if they would investigate themselves, or offer their
minds for investigation. But after all that the scientific French,
German, American, Italian, and English workers have done, we are as
yet only on the threshold of mind knowledge--of what we might know--if
we had ardour enough to push self-analysis in to the remotest corner
of the brain, noting down, comparing, tabulating the most involuntary
and ethereal sublimities that appear to flit through the mind, the
most subtle emotion that hardly finds expression in language. We must
push on and on till we arrive at the knowledge of a mind science. Our
scientific enquirers want, as we all do, more ardour, they are dulled
by a cold, uninterested public. Psychologists now seem to despair of
obtaining any large results from the science. Mr. E.W. Scripture in
"The New Psychology" says, in 1897, "It cannot dissect the mind with a
scalpel, it cannot hope to find a startling principle of mental life."
If psychological experiment could be presented somewhat apart from its
technicalities, and if minds could play freely round its discoveries,
how much more interesting it would be felt to be by the general
public! The great experimental worker, Mr. J. Mck Cattell has given[2]
some clear idea of the results he obtained by analysing and measuring
sensations. The physical processes, which accompany sensations of
sound and light for instance, unlike as they must be to sensations,
being facts of matter in motion, yet share with them this
characteristic, that sensations also have each an _order in time_, the
mental processes can be measured, equally with the physical. Of course
measuring sensations is only measuring "the outside of the mind"--but
it produces among others one very suggestive result: "that as time is
relative, if all things moved much more slowly or quickly than at
present, we should not feel any change at all. But if our objective
measures of time moved twice as fast, whilst physiological movements
and mental processes went on at the same rate as now, the days of our
years would be seven score, instead of three score years and ten, yet
we should not be any the older, or live any the longer. If on the
other hand the rate of our physiological and mental motions was
doubled and we lived exactly as many years as before, we should feel
as if we lived twice as long and were twice as old as now." This is a
suggestion for Mr. Well's "Anticipations" Is evolution leading us in
this direction or the other? Is it retarding or "quickening the
molecular arrangements of the nervous system?" Are we becoming "more
delicately balanced so that physical changes proceed more quickly as
thoughts become more comprehensive, feelings more intense, and will,
stronger." Does the time it needs to think, feel, and will become
less? And we may add are the physical and mental processes of the
intelligent brain, quicker, or slower than the unintelligent? For if
it is the sensitive quick witted organisation, which is destined to
live twice as long as it does now, how will it bear the burden of such
added years? Leaving aside inquiries into Time, and Space Sense--(and
what enormous faculty our minds must have that can supply these)--let
us go on to Mr. J. McKeen Cattell's analysis of memory--which is
perhaps the most interesting of all to the student of mind--the
analysis of memory, attention and association of ideas. Just as the
eye can only see (attend to) a certain number of vibrations, for if
the requisite amount is added to, the result is blankness, darkness,
so the mind can only attend to a certain amount of complexity--add to
the complexity and attention ceases, but, a certain degree of
complexity is necessary to produce any conscious attention at all. In
experiments with a Metronome and the ticking of a watch, it is found
the attention at certain intervals gets weaker--from 2 to 3 seconds.
The impression produced by the ticking of the watch is less distinct,
it seems to disappear and then is heard again. "This is not from
fatigue in the sense organ," but apparently represents "a natural
rhythm in consciousness or attention," which interferes with the
accuracy of attention. What a suggestive fact this is! Have we not all
at times, felt an inexplicable difficulty in listening and attending
to certain speakers, which may perhaps be explained by a difference
between the rhythm of our own consciousness, and that of the voice of
the speaker. In Association of Ideas the time that it takes for one
idea to suggest another has been determined, but of course, it must be
the average time, for people differ enormously in the speed in which
ideas occur to them. It is impossible to allude here to more points,
but in the same interesting article Mr. Mck Cattell considers it
proved that "experimental methods can be applied to the study of mind,
and that the positive results are significant," and he hopes, "one
day, we shall have as accurate and complete a knowledge of mind as we
have of the physical world." Beyond this knowledge of mind as a
machine, the Psychologist goeth not. He ends, and what do we know more
as to what mind is? Philosophy properly so-called, begins here or
ought to begin. In science we experiment widely and constantly with
mind and arrive at some knowledge of its workings and capacities; we
learn occupation with the mind itself as a subject for observation,
and we practise a self-analysis, which adds to the sum of general
knowledge. Through this study we know more about our senses and their
faculties, more of our own tendencies and idiosyncrasies, and in what
direction they tend. We are on the way to solve some such problems as:
"the influences of early impressions, the ingredients of character,
the varying susceptibility to mental anguish, the conquest of the
will," and many another. These are beginnings--there is much more to
attain to, if we would know mind even scientifically, for we have only
attacked its breast works, but we are on the right road, as we
believe, towards this most interesting of all sciences--Mind Science.
From Philosophy we do not as yet know definitely that mind _is_, or
what it is, or why it is. The psychologist accepts the word mind, but
it is not accepted as a _philosophical_ term; it is called
Consciousness, Being, Ego, and anything else but mind. Notwithstanding,
we all feel what we mean by the word. Though the senses divide the
non-ego, the world outside us, into five separate parcels, things
seen, things heard, things smelt, things touched, things tasted,
there is a faculty of unifying, a sensation of unity in us, which
makes us conscious of all these separate sensations as forming a
whole in any object which comes into our consciousness. Kant has
given this unifying faculty, or sensation, a long name, which does
not make it any clearer. What is this inner power, which unifies
sensations and how does it come? In some way the mind supplies it to
its mental states or consciousness. And _within_ us this unifying
faculty, which we call Mind, is felt through the infinite number of
modifications of sensations or mental states, for we are aware that
what we call a mind exists in us. It is this consciousness of unity in
complexity, which makes memory and identity possible. The exploded
idea of mental substance and its attributes, held by the School men,
was probably suggested to them by the consciousness of this mental
unity. In our mentality there is something which makes each one say
"My mind," not "My minds." Now it is this unity of sensations, which
is lost, and the mind with it, if the ego is divided as Professor W.
James divides it into many egos such as--the inner self--the complex
self--the social self--the intellectual self--and so on. For how does
that help us? It is the same unknown quantity in different
circumstances. The self that ponders in thought, knows itself as the
same that talks in society. The strange power of being able to analyse
ourselves at all is one of the strangest things about us. What a world
of difference lies between the unconscious self of the animal and this
conscious self of man! Professor James' brilliantly written chapter of
investigation into the self leaves us amused rather than enlightened.
Against all arguments to the contrary, we should refuse to give up the
word mind, whether it is considered vague or defective in any or every
way. Mind in all its complexity, is what we have to investigate
scientifically. Mind in all its complexity is what the philosopher has
to explain, not mind, analysed into simple acts of consciousness. The
hypnotist talks of double, treble and quadruple personalities with
totally different characteristics "under suggestion," but it helps us
little for we have not yet defined mind on its sane and normal sides.
Considering the acuteness and the sanity of the French mind, it is
somewhat strange that the French psychologists should devote
themselves chiefly to the study of the insane and hysterical.
Philosophy, though it gives us soaring thoughts, grand speculations,
and metaphysical schemes, from Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer,
to Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Mallock, cannot give us any knowledge in
which they mutually agree. Mr. Mallock sums up philosophy as a
necessity to the mind. We _must_ believe in some theory of mind, some
religion, some philosophy, else life is dreary and unlivable. This
appears to be the result of his book "The Veil of the Temple," and
this is simply the doctrine of utility. But no philosopher, can tell
us why mind works on certain lines and not on others, because they
cannot tell us definitely that they _know_ what mind is. Mind is a
function of _Matter: Matter_ is a function of thought: Mind is
Noumenon the unseen and unknown, as contrasted with Phenomena the seen
and known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the
product of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely
differing can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;--these
contrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real
knowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated
and imagined, do we actually _know_ more than Omar Khayam knew?
"There was the door to which I found no key;
There was the veil through which I could not see;
Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee
There was--and then no more of Thee and Me."
Philosophy is still powerless to tell us what mind is; the self, the
ego always vanishes as we seem to be nearing it, it always eludes our
deepest probings--we only demonstrate our failure in regard to our
knowledge of it. All this is true, but should we therefore despair? If
we are born with the record on the brain of the inexorable desire to
_know_, the very failure should stimulate us to further, and greater,
and more fruitful questionings.
II.
CONTRASTS.
CARLYLE, GEORGE ELIOT, MAZZINI, BROWNING,
All contrasts drawn between writers, and thinkers should have for aim
the setting forth of some striking and fundamental difference in
thought, and it would be hard to find anywhere a greater and a more
vivid contrast than that between Carlyle and George Eliot. For George
Eliot's philosophy was centred in the well-being of the Race.
Carlyle's was summed up in the worth of the Individual.
George Eliot teaches in prose and still more in poetry that
Personality, with its hopes, loves, faiths, aspirations, must all be
relinquished, and its agonies and pains endured, should Humanity gain
by the sacrifice and the endurance.
She considers the Individual as part of collective humanity, and that
he does not live for himself, he has no continuance of personal life,
he has no permanence, except as a living influence on the Race. This
is the Positivist creed, the Racial Creed.
Beyond the influence that it exerts, spiritual personality is doomed.
It is not humanity in God but humanity in itself which is to exist
from age to age, solely in the memory of succeeding generations.
"Oh may I join the Choir Invisible
Of those immortal dead, who live again
In minds made better by their presence."
Permanence and continuance and immortality are in the race alone.
George Eliot's strong accentuation of the race is the Gospel of
annihilation to the individual. Yet the most personal and imaginative
of poets has treated this lofty altruism in his strange, sad,
beautiful poem of "The Pilgrims," with a fervour greater even than
that of George Eliot.
Here are two stanzas:
"And ye shall die before your thrones be won.
Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun
Shall move and shine without us and we lie
Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,
But if the old world with the old irons rent,
Laugh and give thanks, shall we not be content?
Nay we shall rather live, we shall not die,
Life being so little and Death so good to give."
"Pass on then and pass by us, and let us be.
For what life think ye after life to see?
And if the world fare better will ye know?
And if men triumph, who shall seek you and say?"
"Enough of light is this for one life's span.
That all men born are mortal, but not Man:
And we men bring death lives by night to sow,
That man may reap and eat and live by day."
--SWINBURNE.
Turning from the moral grandeur of self-abnegation that fills the
philosophy of humanity, we feel the contrast of strong human
personality, which animates us with an inspiring sensation as we
listen to the prophet of individualism.
Few can have read Carlyle's writings in their youth, without having
experienced an indescribable and irresistible stimulation, to
accomplish some real work, to make some strenuous endeavour "before
the night cometh." Carlyle's contempt for sloth, stings; his bitter
words are a tonic, they scourge, encourage, and at times plead with
poetic fervour. "Think of living. Thy life wert thou the pitifullest
of all the sons of earth is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. _It
is thy own; it is all thou hast to front Eternity with._ Work then
like a star unhasting and unresting."
The man's soul, naked through sloth, or clothed through works, has to
meet its doom, and to bear it as it best can. For Carlyle ignored the
collective view of mankind, the single soul had to prostrate itself
before the Supreme Power. This Supreme Power was almost as vague (to
him) as George Eliot's Permanent Influence is to us. For Carlyle did
not believe "that the Soul could enter into any relations with God,
and in the sight of God it was nothing." There is nothing singular in
this. The religious, but independent-minded Joubert thought "it was
not hard to know God, provided one did not force oneself to define
Him," and deprecated "bringing into the domain of reason, that which
belongs to our innermost feeling."
This very well represented Carlyle's view, but it occupies but a small
place in his writings. All his books, his letters, pamphlets,
histories, essays show his profound living belief in the worth of
individual men, as the salt of the earth, and the young are always
greatly influenced by strong personalities. But the mature mind that
struggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives
some rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett
has well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has
led with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and
inspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him
as "the idle chatter of apes" and "the talk of Fools."
Mazzini's world-wide sympathies, his life of many deaths for his
country, were unintelligible to Carlyle, who also described, as "a
sawdust kind of talk," John Stuart Mill's expression of belief and
interest in reforming and raising the whole social mass of toiling
millions.
Bracing and stimulating, as is Carlyle's strong, stern doctrine of
independence, of work, and of adherence to Truth for its own sake, we
feel the loss his character sustained, through the contempt that grew
upon him for the greater part of humanity. The Nemesis of contempt was
shown in his inability at last to see even in individuals, the
greatest things. Physical force came to be admired by him for itself.
From hero-worship, he passed "to strong rulers, and saviours of
society."
The worth of the individual, withered and changed, and Carlyle's hopes
rested finally on strength alone, just as George Eliot's thoughts
centred on the influence human beings exercised on each other, and
there is extraordinary beauty in this idea. How striking is her
conception of the good we all receive from even the simplest lives, if
they have been true lives. "The growing good of the world is partly
dependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with
you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who
lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." But some
who read her books feel an underlying tone of sadness--a melancholy
whisper as of a finality, an inevitable end to all future development,
even of the greatest personalities. Many other writers have believed
that men live in the world's memory only by what they have done in the
world, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that
personality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on
being:
"The sweet presence of a good diffused,
And in diffusion ever more intense,
So shall I join the Choir Invisible
Whose music is the gladness of the world."
Both George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other
the individual.
Mazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two.
He believed in God _and_ Collective Humanity. Humanity in God. He
said: "We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through
collective humanity. Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual; the
true sense of the unity of the race escapes him. He sympathises with
men, but it is with the separate life of each man, and not their
collective life."[3]
Collective labour, according to an educational plan, designed by
Providence, was, Mazzini believed, the only possible development of
Humanity.
He could never have trusted in any good and effective development from
Humanity alone.
Nationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced
the whole world. He said it was the mission, the special vocation of
all who felt the mutual responsibility of men. But nationality of
Italy meant to Carlyle, only "the glory of having produced Dante and
Columbus," and he cared for them not for the national thought they
interpreted, but as gigantic men. Mazzini cared for "the progressive
history of mankind," Carlyle for "the Biography of great men."
Carlyle's sadness "unending sadness," came, Mazzini thought from
looking at human life only from the individual point of view. And a
poem by Browning, "Cleon" would have afforded him another example of
"the disenchantment and discouragement of life," from individualism.
Browning was as great an individualist as Carlyle; he stood as far
apart from belief in Collective Humanity, and Democracy as Carlyle
did, though in Italy, he felt the thrill of its nationality, as
Carlyle did not. But Mazzini might have said also truly of Browning,
that, with the exception of Italy, "he sympathised with the separate
life of each man and not with their collective life." The sadness
Mazzini attributed to Carlyle's strong individualistic point of view,
ought logically then to have been the heritage of Browning also. _If_
Mazzini's explanation was the true one, it is another proof of the
difficulty of tabulating humanity, or of making a science of human
nature. For the Individualist Browning, far from being remarkable for
sadness, was the greatest of optimists amongst English poets. He had a
far wider range of sympathies, than Carlyle, for failure attracted
him, as much as victory, the Conquered equally with the Conqueror,
indeed every shade of character interested him. Perhaps he expresses
through "Cleon" some of his own strongest feelings, his insistence on
the worth of individuality, his craving for deeper joy, fuller life
than this world gives, and his horror of the destruction of
personality. Cleon, the Greek Artist, is indeed "the other side" to
the poetic altruism of "The Pilgrims" and "The Choir Invisible." Never
was the yearning for Personal Continuance more vividly and more
humanly presented. The Greek Artist, without any knowledge of, or
belief in Immortality, hungers after it. Browning represents him as
writing to and arguing with the King, who has said:
"My life......
Dies altogether with my brain, and arm,......
....triumph Thou, who dost _not_ go."
And Cleon says if Sappho and Æschylus survive because we sing her
songs, and read his plays, let them come, "drink from thy cup, speak
in my place."
Instead of rejoicing in his works surviving he feels the horror of the
contrast, the life within his works, the decay within his heart. He
compares his sense of joy growing more acute and his soul's power and
insight more enlarged and keen, while his bodily powers decay. His
hairs fall more and more, his hand shakes, and the heavy years
increase.
He realises:--
"The horror quickening....
The consummation coming past escape,
When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy--
When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men's mouths,
Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou,
I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over much,
Shall sleep in my Urn. . . It is so horrible."
He imagines in his need some future state may be revealed by Zeus.
"Unlimited in capability
For joy, as this is in desire for joy,
To seek which the joy hunger forces us:"
He speculates that this life may have been made straight, "to make
sweet the life at large."
And that we are: "freed by the throbbing impulse we call Death." But
he ends by fearing that were it possible Zeus must have revealed it.
This passionate pathetic longing for joy, and life beyond death finds
an echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of
"The Pilgrims" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After
considering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved
itself into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and
adapts to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our
Hopes and Faiths, and Despairs.
For from whence comes the real power thinkers possess over us? It is
not in their forms of thought, as Matthew Arnold said most truly, but
in the tendencies, in the spirit which led them to adopt those
formulas. Every thinker has some secret, an exact object at which he
aims, which is "the cause of all his work, and the reason of his
attraction" to some readers, and his repulsion to others.
What was the secret aim then in George Eliot which made her believe so
firmly in the permanent influence of Humanity, and in the annihilation
of personal existence? Was the tendency of temperament developed by
her life and circumstances?
What was it that developed so strong an Individualism in Carlyle and
Browning and awoke in Browning such unlimited hope, and in Carlyle
such "unending sadness?"
Why did the darkness and the storm of his life give Mazzini so
passionate a belief in Humanity, and such an intimate faith in God?
These and such-like are the problems we should have in our minds as we
study the works of Great Writers, if we would penetrate into the
innermost core of their nature, in short, if we would really
understand them.
III.
MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET.
Maeterlinck, in his first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is,
undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he
asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom
and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his
translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity
to tell what he sees." He is a Seer.
Maeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we
call Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which
exercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls.
He takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man,
said Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to
all circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his
soul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by
external events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul.
Maeterlinck asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the
evil of Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a
wise man had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul--a
Jesus--had been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of
four deaths have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the
unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet
induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in
revenge alone? And revenge never can be a duty. Hamlet thinks much,
continues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise. Destiny can withstand
lofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts. We
only triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would
have us commit. _No tragedy is inevitable_. But at Elsinore no one had
vision--no one saw--hence the catastrophe. The soul that saw would
have made others see. Because of Hamlet's pitiful blindness, Laertes,
Ophelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die. Was his blindness
inevitable? A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of
murder. Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his
shadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free.
Had there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of
Elsinore had not been shrouded in horror. All depended not on destiny,
but on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was
the centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than
himself on whom to depend.
Maeterlinck's doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very
captivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of
Hamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to
conquer fate, through lack of soul-power.
How Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty
to have given up revenge is clearly suggested. We might, perhaps, sum
up Hamlet's right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in
a sentence. Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his
uncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward
happiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced
his wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and
reformed. Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should
have had no tragedy of Hamlet. This explanation sounds rather
conventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed,
Maeterlinck's doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:--
All the wise are serene,
Hamlet was not serene,
Hamlet was not wise.
That is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature.
But Hamlet's nature cannot be packed into a syllogism. A Theorist, who
tries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to
understand that nature. The external event that froze Hamlet's soul
with horror, and deprived it of "transforming power" was a
supernatural event, not "disease, accident, or sudden death!" The
mandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb
said in a suggestive and interesting paper: "The Genuine text of
Shakespeare," October number of the "National Review, 1903," "it was
utterly impossible for that soul to perform it," or it might be added,
to cast it aside. He was betrayed by the apparition "into consequences
as deep as those into which Macbeth was betrayed by the instruments of
darkness--the witches." We cannot reason about Maeterlinck's thought
that if expressed "would have arrested all the forces of murder"
because we do not know what the thought was, nor can any one gauge or
estimate rightly the power of Hamlet's soul to conquer external
events, without taking into careful account that the Vision from
another world came to Hamlet, when he was outraged at the re-marriage
of his mother and full of emotion that the sudden death of his father
called forth in his meditative mind.[4] But Maeterlinck never refers
to anything of this sort. He does not seem to realise what the effects
of the vision must have been on a complicated character--on "a great
gentleman in whom the courtier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, were
all united." Hamlet was _not_ an example of the normal type of the
irresolute man--but the mandate laid upon his nature, it could not
perform. The vision was his destiny--for Destiny lay in the nature of
the mandate, as well as the nature of the man, and unhappiness was
inevitable; yet Maeterlinck says, "No tragedy is inevitable, the wise
man can be superior to all circumstances by the initiative of the
soul. To be able to curb the blind force of instinct is to be able to
curb external destiny." Did not Hamlet curb his instincts of love for
Ophelia, and love for books and philosophy, under pressure of the
great commandment laid upon him? He could not curb the power of his
intellect--it was too subtle and supreme, but he concealed all else.
Yet Hamlet could not escape his Destiny, by curbing his instincts. The
initiative of his soul worked against the duty he had to perform. And
it was through his "simple, tender, good," thoughts of, and love for
his father that he kept to his task, and could not "withstand his
complicated destiny." Maeterlinck is surely wrong, too, in saying
Hamlet was moved by a fanatical impulse to revenge for he spent his
life in weighing _pros_, and _cons_, and in combating the idea that he
must fulfil the duty laid upon him. So unfanatical was he that he even
doubted at times whether the apparition was his father's spirit. But
supposing there had been "one brave soul to cry out the truth"
(Maeterlinck does not say what the truth was); we will suppose that
Hamlet had resolved to forgive fully and generously, would he, then,
have gained the fortitude and serenity, which Maeterlinck evidently
means by inner happiness? Not if he kept a shred of his inner nature.
Hamlet "saw no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding."
Could such a nature be serene? But was it unwise? Judicious, wise, and
witty when at ease; he could not escape the dark moods that made him
indifferent to the visible world.