[Footnote: 1865]
By Polish I mean a certain well-known and immediately recognizable
condition of surface. But I must request my reader to consider well what
this condition really is. For the definition of it appears to us to be,
that condition of surface which allows the inner structure of the
material to manifest itself. Polish is, as it were, a translucent skin,
in which the life of the inorganic comes to the surface, as in the
animal skin the animal life. Once clothed in this, the inner glories of
the marble rock, of the jasper, of the porphyry, leave the darkness
behind, and glow into the day. From the heart of the agate the mossy
landscape comes dreaming out. From the depth of the green chrysolite
looks up the eye of its gold. The “goings on of life” hidden for ages
under the rough bark of the patient forest-trees, are brought to light;
the rings of lovely shadow which the creature went on making in the
dark, as the oyster its opaline laminations, and its tree-pearls of
beautiful knots, where a beneficent disease has broken the geometrical
perfection of its structure, gloom out in their infinite variousness.
Nor are the revelations of polish confined to things having variety in
their internal construction; they operate equally in things of
homogeneous structure. It is the polished ebony or jet which gives the
true blank, the material darkness. It is the polished steel that shines
keen and remorseless and cold, like that human justice whose symbol it
is. And in the polished diamond the distinctive purity is most evident;
while from it, I presume, will the light absorbed from the sun gleam
forth on the dark most plentifully.
But the mere fact that the end of polish is revelation, can hardly be
worth setting forth except for some ulterior object, some further
revelation in the fact itself.--I wish to show that in the symbolic use
of the word the same truth is involved, or, if not involved, at least
suggested. But let me first make another remark on the preceding
definition of the word.
There is no denying that the first notion suggested by the word polish
is that of smoothness, which will indeed be the sole idea associated
with it before we begin to contemplate the matter. But when we consider
what things are chosen to be “clothed upon” with this smoothness, then
we find that the smoothness is scarcely desired for its own sake, and
remember besides that in many materials and situations it is elaborately
avoided. We find that here it is sought because of its faculty of
enabling other things to show themselves--to come to the surface.
I proceed then to examine how far my pregnant interpretation of the word
will apply to its figurative use in two cases--_Polish of Style_, and
_Polish of Manners_. The two might be treated together, seeing that
_Style_ may be called the manners of intellectual utterance, and
_Manners_ the style of social utterance; but it is more convenient to
treat them separately.