to those who would explore it. We distinguish between divine love and
human love, but have yet to decide whether Love absolute is divine or
human; for this deity is known to us from all time in two opposite
shapes,--as a destructive and as a constructive god. He unmakes the man,
he unmakes the woman, sucks up precious years of human life like a
sponge, sets Troy ablaze, maddens harmless Io with a stinging gad-fly.
On the other hand, where Love is not, nothing is. Luxurious Solomon
praises a dinner of herbs enriched by his presence. All poetry, all
doctrine, is founded upon human affection assumed as essential to life,
nay, as life itself; for when love of life and its objects exists not,
the vital flame flickers feebly, and expires early. In ethics, social
and religious, what contradictions do we encounter under this head! From
all inordinate and sinful affections, good Lord, deliver us! is a good
prayer. But how shall we treat the case when there are no affections at
all? We might add a clause to our litany,--From lovelessness and all
manner of indifference, good Lord, deliver us! What more direful
sentence than to say that a person has no heart? What sin more severely
punished than any extravagant action of this same heart?
These wonders of lofty sentiment and high imagination are precious
subjects of study. The construction of a great poem, of which the
interest is at once intense, various, and sustained, seems to us a work
more appropriate to other days than to our own. I remember in my youth a
fluent critic who was fond of saying that if Milton had lived in this
day of the world, he would not have thought of writing an epic poem. To
which another of the same stripe would reply: "If he did write such a
poem in these days, nobody would read it." I wonder how long the frisky
impatience of our youth will think it worth while to follow even Homer
in his long narratives.
More than this sustained power of the imagination, does the heroic in
sentiment seem to decrease and to be wanting among us. Those lofty views
of human affection and relation which we find in the great poets seem
almost foreign to the civilization of to-day. I find in modern
scepticism this same impatience of weighty thoughts. He who believes
only in the phenomenal universe does not follow a conviction. A fatal
indolence of mind prevents him from following any lead which threatens
fatigue and difficult labor. Instead of a temple for the Divine, our man
of to-day builds a commodious house for himself,--at best, a club-house
for his set or circle. And the worst of it is, that he teaches his son
to do the same thing.
The social change which I notice to-day as a decline in attachments
simply personal is partly the result of a political change which I, for
one, cannot deplore. The idea of the state and of society as bodies in
which each individual has a direct interest gives to men and women of
to-day an enlarged sphere of action and of instruction. The absolutely
universal coincidence of the real advantage of the individual with that
of the community, always true in itself, and neither now nor at any time
fully comprehended, gives the fundamental tone to thought and education
to-day. The result is a tendency to generality, to publicity, and a
neglect of those relations into which external power and influence do
not enter. The action of mind upon mind, of character upon character,
outside of public life, is intense, intimate, insensible. Temperament is
most valued nowadays for its effect upon multitudes. We wish to be
recognized as moving in a wide and exalted sphere. The belle in the
ball-room is glad to have it reported that the Prince of Wales admires
her. The lady who should grace a lady's sphere pines for the stage and
the footlights. Actions and appearances are calculated to be seen of
men.
I say no harm of this tendency, which has enfranchised me and many
others from the cruel fetters of a narrow and personal judgment. It is
safe and happy to have the public for a final court of appeal, and to be
able, when an issue is misjudged or distorted, to call upon its great
heart to say where the right is, and where the wrong. But let us, in our
panorama of wide activities, keep with all the more care these pictures
of spirits that have been so finely touched within the limits of
Nature's deepest reserve and modesty. This mediæval did not go to
dancing-school nor to Harvard College. He could not talk of the fellows
and the girls. But from his early childhood, he holds fast the tender
remembrance of a beautiful and gracious face. The thought of it, and of
the high type of woman which it images, is to him more fruitful of joy
and satisfaction than the amusements of youth or the gaieties of the
great world. Death removes this beloved object from his sight, but not
from his thoughts. Years pass. His genius reaches its sublime maturity.
He becomes acquainted with camps and courts, with the learning and the
world of his day. But when, with all his powers, he would build a
perfect monument to Truth, he takes her perfect measure from the hand of
his child-love. The world keeps that work, and will keep it while
literature shall last. It has many a subtle passage, many a wonderful
picture, but at its height, crowned with all names divine, he has
written, as worthy to be remembered with these, the name of Beatrice.
PRINTED AT THE EVERETT PRESS BOSTON MASS.
End of Project Gutenberg's Is Polite Society Polite?, by Julia Ward Howe