work, and discipline yourselves nobly, you will come to like the Greta
and Tees; if not, you will come to like _this_. The one is what a strong
man likes; the other what a weak one likes: that is modest, full of true
αἰδὼς, noble restraint, noble reverence;--this has no αἰδὼς, no fear, no
measure;--not even purpose, except, by accumulation of whatever it can
see or snatch, to move the vile apathy of the public ἀφροσύνη into
sensation.
72. The apathy of ἀφροσύνη--note the expression! You might think that it
was σωφροσύνη, which was apathetic, and that intemperance was full of
passion. No; the exact contrary is the fact. It is death in ourselves
which seeks the exaggerated external stimulus. I must return for a
moment to the art of modern France.
The most complete rest and refreshment I can get, when I am overworked,
in London (for if I try to rest in the fields, I find them turned into
villas in the course of the week before) is in seeing a French play. But
the French act so perfectly that I am obliged to make sure beforehand
that all is to end well, or it is as bad as being helplessly present at
some real misery.
I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a "Comédie,"
into going to see "Frou-Frou." Most of you probably know that the three
first of its five acts _are_ comedy, or at least playful drama, and that
it plunges down, in the two last, to the sorrowfullest catastrophe of
all conceivable--though too frequent in daily life--in which
irretrievable grief is brought about by the passion of a moment, and the
ruin of all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely
good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly ill, and I
was not myself again for a week.
But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it to a lady who knew
French character well; and asked her how it was possible for a people so
quick in feeling to endure the action before them of a sorrow so
poignant. She said, "It is because they have not sympathy enough: they
are interested only by the external scene, and are, in truth, at
present, dull, not quick in feeling. My own French maid went the other
evening to see that very play: when she came home, and I asked her what
she thought of it, she said 'it was charming, and she had amused herself
immensely.' 'Amused! but is not the story very sad?' 'Oh, yes,
mademoiselle, it is bien triste, but it is charming; and then, how
pretty Frou-Frou looks in her silk dress!'"
73. Gentlemen, the French maid's mode of regarding the tragedy is, if
you think of it, a most true image of the way in which fashionable
society regards the world-suffering, in the midst of which, so long as
it can amuse itself, all seems to it well. If the ball-room is bright,
and the dresses pretty, what matter how much horror is beneath or
around? Nay, this apathy checks us in our highest spheres of thought,
and chills our most solemn purposes. You know that I never join in the
common outcries against Ritualism; yet it is too painfully manifest to
me that the English Church itself has withdrawn her eyes from the
tragedy of all churches, to perk herself up anew with casement and
vestment, and say of herself, complacently, in her sacred ποικιλία, "How
pretty Frou-Frou is, in her silk dress!"
74. We recognize, however, without difficulty, the peril of
insatiableness and immodesty in the pleasures of Art. Less recognized,
but therefore more perilous, the insatiableness and immodesty of Science
tempt us through our very virtues. The fatallest furies of scientific
ἀφροσύνη are consistent with the most noble powers of self-restraint and
self-sacrifice. It is not the lower passions, but the loftier hopes and
most honourable desires which become deadliest when the charm of them is
exalted by the vanity of science. The patience of the wisest of Greek
heroes never fails, when the trial is by danger or pain; but do you
recollect that, before his trial by the song of the Sirens, the sea
becomes calm? And in the few words which Homer has told you of their
song, you have not perhaps yet with enough care observed that the form
of temptation is precisely that to which a man victorious over every
fleshly trial would be likely to yield. The promise is not that his body
shall be gratified, but that his soul shall rise into rapture; he is not
urged, as by the subtlety of Comus, to disdain the precepts of wisdom,
but invited, on the contrary, to learn,--as you are all now invited by
the ἀφροσύνη of your age,--better wisdom from the wise.
"For we know all" (they say) "that was done in Troy according to the
will of the gods, and we know everything that is upon the all-nourishing
earth."
All heavenly and earthly knowledge, you see. I will read you Pope's
expansion of the verses; for Pope never alters idly, but always
illustrates when he expands.
"Oh stay, oh pride of Greece!
(You hear, they begin by flattery).
Ulysses, stay,
Oh cease thy course, and listen to our lay.
Blest is the man ordained our voice to hear,
The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear.
Approach! Thy soul shall into raptures rise;
Approach! and learn new wisdom from the wise.
We know whate'er the kings of mighty name
Achieved at Ilion in the field of Fame,
Whate'er beneath the Sun's bright journey lies.
Oh, stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise."
Is it not singular that so long ago the danger of this novelty of wisdom
should have been completely discerned? Is it not stranger still that
three thousand years have passed by, and we have not yet been able to
learn the lesson, but are still eager to add to our knowledge, rather
than to use it; and every day more passionate in discovering,--more
violent in competition,--are every day more cold in admiration, and more
dull in reverence?
75. But, gentlemen, Homer's Ulysses, bound to the mast, survives.
Dante's Ulysses is bound to the mast in another fashion. He,
notwithstanding the protection of Athena, and after all his victories
over fate, is still restless under the temptation to seek new wisdom. He
goes forth past the Pillars of Hercules, cheers his crew amidst the
uncompassed solitudes of the Atlantic, and perishes in sudden Charybdis
of the infinite sea. In hell, the restless flame in which he is wrapt
continually, among the advisers of evil, is seen, from the rocks above,
like the firefly's flitting to and fro; and the waving garment of
torture, which quivers as he speaks, and aspires as he moves, condemns
him to be led in eternal temptation, and to be delivered from evil
nevermore.
LECTURE V.
THE POWER OF CONTENTMENT IN SCIENCE AND ART.
_22nd February, 1872._
76. I must ask you, in order to make these lectures of any permanent
use, to be careful in keeping note of the main conclusion at which we
arrive in the course of each, and of the sequence of such results. In
the first, I tried to show you that Art was only wise when unselfish in
her labour; in the second, that Science was only wise when unselfish in
her statement; in the third, that wise Art was the shadow, or visible
reflection, of wise Science; and in the fourth, that all these
conditions of good must be pursued temperately and peacefully. I have
now farther to tell you that they must be pursued independently.
77. You have not often heard me use that word "independence." And, in
the sense in which of late it has been accepted, you have never heard
me use it but with contempt. For the true strength of every human soul
is to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be
depended upon, by as many inferior as it can reach.
But to-day I use the word in a widely different sense. I think you must
have felt, in what amplification I was able to give you of the idea of
wisdom as an unselfish influence in Art and Science, how the highest
skill and knowledge were founded in human tenderness, and that the
kindly Art-wisdom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, is
only another form of the lofty Scientific charity, which rejoices 'in
the truth.' And as the first order of Wisdom is to know thyself--though
the least creature that can be known--so the first order of Charity is
to be sufficient for thyself, though the least creature that can be
sufficed; and thus contented and appeased, to be girded and strong for
the ministry to others. If sufficient to thy day is the evil thereof,
how much more should be the good!
78. I have asked you to recollect one aphorism respecting Science, one
respecting Art; let me--and I will ask no more at this time of
asking--press you to learn, farther, by heart, those lines of the Song
of the Sirens: six lines of Homer, I trust, will not be a weariness to
you--
οὐ γάρ πώ τις τῇδε παρήλασε νηι μελαἰνῃ,
πρίν γ' ἡμέων μελίγηρυν ἀπὸ στομάτων ὄπ' ἀκοῦσαι;
ἀλλ' ὅγε τερψάμενος νεῖται, καὶ πλεἰονα εἰδώς.
ἴδμεν γάρ τοι πάνθ', ὄς' ἐνὶ Τροίῃ εὐρείῃ
Ἀργεῖοι Τρῶές τε θεῶν ἰὄτητι μόγησαν;
ἴδμεν δ', ὅσσα γένηται ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.
HOM., _Od._, xii. 186.
"No one ever rowed past this way in his black ship, before he had
listened to the honey-sweet singing of our lips. But he stays pleased,
though he may know much. For we know all things which the Greeks and
Trojans did in the wide Trojan plain, by the will of the gods, and we
know what things take place in the much nourishing earth." And this,
remember, is absolutely true. No man ever went past in the black
ship,--obeying the grave and sad law of life by which it is appointed
for mortals to be victors on the ocean,--but he was tempted, as he drew
near that deadly island, wise as he might be, (καὶ πλεἰονα εἰδώς,) by
the voices of those who told him that they knew everything which had
been done by the will of God, and everything which took place in earth
for the service of man.
79. Now observe those two great temptations. You are to know everything
that has been done by the will of God: and to know everything that is
_vital_ in the earth. And try to realize to yourselves, for a little
while, the way in which these two siren promises have hitherto troubled
the paths of men. Think of the books that have been written in false
explanation of Divine Providence: think of the efforts that have been
made to show that the particular conduct which we approve in others, or
wish ourselves to follow, is according to the will of God. Think what
ghastly convulsions in thought, and vileness in action, have been fallen
into by the sects which thought they had adopted, for their patronage,
the perfect purposes of Heaven. Think of the vain research, the wasted
centuries of those who have tried to penetrate the secrets of life, or
of its support. The elixir vitæ, the philosopher's stone, the germ-cells
in meteoric iron, 'ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ.' But at this day, when we
have loosed the last band from the masts of the black ship, and when,
instead of plying every oar to escape, as the crew of Homer's Ulysses,
we row like the crew of Dante's Ulysses, and of our oars make wings for
our foolish flight,
E, volta nostra poppe nel mattino
De' remi facemmo ale al folle volo--
the song of the sirens becomes fatal as never yet it has been in time.
We think ourselves privileged, first among men, to know the secrets of
Heaven, and fulfil the economy of earth; and the result is, that of all
the races that yet have been put to shame by their false wisdom or false
art,--which have given their labour for that which is not bread, and
their strength for that which satisfieth not,--we have most madly
abandoned the charity which is for itself sufficing, and for others
serviceable, and have become of all creatures the most insufficient to
ourselves, and the most malignant to our neighbours. Granted a given
degree of knowledge--granted the 'καὶ πλεἰονα εἰδώς' in science, in art,
and in literature,--and the present relations of feeling between France
and Germany, between England and America, are the most horrible at once
in their stupidity and malignity, that have ever taken place on the
globe we inhabit, even though all its great histories, are of sin, and
all its great songs, of death.
80. Gentlemen, I pray you very solemnly to put that idea of knowing all
things in Heaven and Earth out of your hearts and heads. It is very
little that we can ever know, either of the ways of Providence, or the
laws of existence. But that little is enough, and exactly enough: to
strive for more than that little is evil for us; and be assured that
beyond the need of our narrow being,--beyond the range of the kingdom
over which it is ordained for each of us to rule in serene αὐτάρκεια and
self-possession, he that increaseth toil, increaseth folly; and he that
increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow.
81. My endeavour, therefore, to-day will be to point out to you how in
the best wisdom, that there may be happy advance, there must first be
happy contentment; that, in one sense, we must always be entering its
kingdom as a little child, and pleased yet for a time _not_ to put away
childish things. And while I hitherto have endeavoured only to show how
modesty and gentleness of disposition purified Art and Science, by
permitting us to recognize the superiority of the work of others to our
own--to-day, on the contrary, I wish to indicate for you the uses of
infantine self-satisfaction; and to show you that it is by no error or
excess in our nature, by no corruption or distortion of our being, that
we are disposed to take delight in the little things that we can do
ourselves, more than in the great things done by other people. So only
that we recognize the littleness and the greatness, it is as much a part
of true Temperance to be pleased with the little we know, and the little
we can do, as with the little that we have. On the one side Indolence,
on the other Covetousness, are as much to be blamed, with respect to our
Arts, as our possessions; and every man is intended to find an exquisite
personal happiness in his own small skill, just as he is intended to
find happiness in his own small house or garden, while he respects,
without coveting, the grandeur of larger domains.
82. Nay, more than this: by the wisdom of Nature, it has been appointed
that more pleasure may be taken in small things than in great, and more
in rude Art than in the finest. Were it otherwise, we might be disposed
to complain of the narrow limits which have been set to the perfection
of human skill.
I pointed out to you, in a former lecture, that the excellence of
sculpture had been confined in past time to the Athenian and Etrurian
vales. The absolute excellence of painting has been reached only by the
inhabitants of a single city in the whole world; and the faultless
manner of religious architecture holds only for a period of fifty years
out of six thousand. We are at present tormenting ourselves with the
vain effort to teach men everywhere to rival Venice and Athens,--with
the practical result of having lost the enjoyment of Art
altogether;--instead of being content to amuse ourselves still with the
painting and carving which were possible once, and would be pleasant
always, in Paris, and London, at Strasbourg, and at York.
I do not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying that greater
pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than from the finest. But
what do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood
with so much regret, (if their childhood has been, in any moderate
degree, healthy or peaceful)? That rich charm, which the least
possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our
treasures. That miraculous aspect of the nature around us, was because
we had seen little, and knew less. Every increased possession loads us
with a new weariness; every piece of new knowledge diminishes the
faculty of admiration; and Death is at last appointed to take us from a
scene in which, if we were to stay longer, no gift could satisfy us, and
no miracle surprise.
83. Little as I myself know, or can do, as compared with any man of
essential power, my life has chanced to be one of gradual progress in
the things which I began in childish choice; so that I can measure with
almost mathematical exactitude the degree of feeling with which less and
greater degrees of wealth or skill affect my mind.
I well remember the delight with which, when I was beginning mineralogy,
I received from a friend, who had made a voyage to Peru, a little bit of
limestone about the size of a hazel nut, with a small film of native
silver adhering to its surface. I was never weary of contemplating my
treasure, and could not have felt myself richer had I been master of the
mines of Copiapo.
I am now about to use as models for your rock drawings stones which my
year's income, when I was a boy, would not have bought. But I have long
ceased to take any pleasure in their possession; and am only thinking,
now, to whom else they can be of use, since they can be of no more to
me.
84. But the loss of pleasure to me caused by advance in knowledge of
drawings has been far greater than that induced by my riches in
minerals.
I have placed, in your reference series, one or two drawings of
architecture, made when I was a youth of twenty, with perfect ease to
myself, and some pleasure to other people. A day spent in sketching then
brought with it no weariness, and infinite complacency. I know better
now what drawing should be; the effort to do my work rightly fatigues me
in an hour, and I never care to look at it again from that day forward.
85. It is true that men of great and real power do the best things with
comparative ease; but you will never hear them express the complacency
which simple persons feel in partial success. There is nothing to be
regretted in this; it is appointed for all men to enjoy, but for few to
achieve.
And do not think that I am wasting your time in dwelling on these simple
moralities. From the facts I have been stating we must derive this great
principle for all effort. That we must endeavour to _do_, not what is
absolutely best, but what is easily within our power and adapted to our
temper and condition.
86. In your educational series is a lithographic drawing, by Prout, of
an old house in Strasbourg. The carvings of its woodwork are in a style
altogether provincial, yet of which the origin is very distant. The
delicate Renaissance architecture of Italy was affected, even in its
finest periods, by a tendency to throw out convex masses at the bases of
its pillars; the wood-carvers of the 16th century adopted this bulged
form as their first element of ornamentation, and these windows of
Strasbourg are only imitations by the German peasantry of what, in its
finest type, you must seek as far away as the Duomo of Bergamo.
But the burgher, or peasant, of Alsace enjoyed his rude imitation,
adapted, as it was, boldly and frankly to the size of his house and the
grain of the larch logs of which he built it, infinitely more than the
refined Italian enjoyed the floral luxuriance of his marble; and all the
treasures of a great exhibition could not have given him the tenth part
of the exultation with which he saw the gable of his roof completed over
its jutting fret-work; and wrote among the rude intricacies of its
sculpture, in flourished black letter, that "He and his wife had built
their house with God's help, and prayed Him to let them live long in
it,--they, and their children."
87. But it is not only the rustic method of architecture which I wish
you to note in this plate; it is the rustic method of drawing also. The
manner in which these blunt timber carvings are drawn by Prout is just
as provincial as the carvings themselves. Born in a faraway district of
England, and learning to draw, unhelped, with fishing-boats for his
models; making his way instinctively until he had command of his pencil
enough to secure a small income by lithographic drawing; and finding
picturesque character in buildings from which all the finest lines of
their carving had been effaced by time; possessing also an instinct in
the expression of such subjects so peculiar as to win for him a
satisfying popularity, and, far better, to enable him to derive
perpetual pleasure in the seclusion of country hamlets, and the quiet
streets of deserted cities,--Prout had never any motive to acquaint
himself with the refinements, or contend with the difficulties, of a
more accomplished art. So far from this, his manner of work was, by its
very imperfection, in the most perfect sympathy with the subjects he
enjoyed. The broad chalk touches in which he has represented to us this
house at Strasbourg are entirely sufficient to give true idea of its
effect. To have drawn its ornaments with subtlety of Leonardesque
delineation would only have exposed their faults, and mocked their
rusticity. The drawing would have become painful to you from the sense
of the time which it had taken to represent what was not worth the
labour, and to direct your attention to what could only, if closely
examined, be matter of offence. But here you have a simple and
provincial draughtsman happily and adequately expressing a simple and
provincial architecture; nor could either builder or painter have become
wiser, but to their loss.
88. Is it then, you will ask me, seriously to be recommended, and,
however recommendable, is it possible, that men should remain contented
with attainments which they know to be imperfect? and that now, as in
former times, large districts of country, and generations of men, should
be enriched or amused by the products of a clumsy ignorance? I do not
know how far it is possible, but I know that wherever you desire to have
true art, it is necessary. Ignorance, which is contented and clumsy,
will produce what is imperfect, but not offensive. But ignorance
_dis_contented and dexterous, learning what it cannot understand, and
imitating what it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of
manufacture that can disgrace or mislead humanity. Some years since, as
I was looking through the modern gallery at the quite provincial German
School of Düsseldorf, I was fain to leave all their epic and religious
designs, that I might stay long before a little painting of a shepherd
boy carving his dog out of a bit of deal. The dog was sitting by, with
the satisfied and dignified air of a personage about for the first time
in his life to be worthily represented in sculpture; and his master was
evidently succeeding to his mind in expressing the features of his
friend. The little scene was one which, as you know, must take place
continually among the cottage artists who supply the toys of Nuremberg
and Berne. Happy, these! so long as, undisturbed by ambition, they spend
their leisure time in work pretending only to amuse, yet capable, in its
own way, of showing accomplished dexterity, and vivid perception of
nature. We, in the hope of doing great things, have surrounded our
workmen with Italian models, and tempted them with prizes into
competitive mimicry of all that is best, or that we imagine to be best,
in the work of every people under the sun. And the result of our
instruction is only that we are able to produce--I am now quoting the
statement I made last May, "the most perfectly and roundly ill-done
things" that ever came from human hands. I should thankfully put upon my
chimney-piece the wooden dog cut by the shepherd boy; but I should be
willing to forfeit a large sum rather than keep in my room the number 1
of the Kensington Museum--thus described in its catalogue--"Statue in
black and white marble, of a Newfoundland dog standing on a serpent,
which rests on a marble cushion;--the pedestal ornamented with Pietra
Dura fruits in relief."
89. You will, however, I fear, imagine me indulging in my usual paradox,
when I assure you that all the efforts we have been making to surround
ourselves with heterogeneous means of instruction, will have the exactly
reverse effect from that which we intend;--and that, whereas formerly we
were able only to do a little well, we are qualifying ourselves now to
do everything ill. Nor is the result confined to our workmen only. The
introduction of French dexterity and of German erudition has been
harmful chiefly to our most accomplished artists--and in the last
Exhibition of our Royal Academy there was, I think, no exception to the
manifest fact that every painter of reputation painted worse than he did
ten years ago.
90. Admitting, however, (not that I suppose you will at once admit, but
for the sake of argument, supposing,) that this is true, what, we have
further to ask, can be done to discourage ourselves from calamitous
emulation, and withdraw our workmen from the sight of what is too good
to be of use to them?