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MADAME ROLAND. After a Portrait Engraved by Hopwood, and Published by Eurne, Paris.
ROYAL EDITION
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TEN VOLUMES VOL. IX.
ST. LOUIS
ir FERD. p. KAISER
1900
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Department of English Literature, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y.
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Professor of Oriental Languages,
Columbia University, in the City of New York.
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Author « Swallow Flights, » « Bed-Time Stories, » etc. Boston, Mass.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS VOLUME IX
LIVED PAGE
Roland, Madame i754-i793 3265
Liberty — Its Meaning and Its Cost Pensees
On Happiness
Doing Good
Borrowed Ideas
The Gift of Silence
Virtue an Inspiration
Character and Association
Intellect and Progress
Rousseau, Jean Jacques 1712-1778 3275
That Men Are Bom Free The Social Contract Nature and Education Christ and Socrates
RusKiN, John 1819-1900 3285
The Sky Principles of Art Work Sibylline Leaves
Want of Self-Knowledge
The Responsibility of a Rich Man
Art and Decadence
Infinity
The Society of Nature
All Carving and No Meat
Modern Greatness
The Coronation of the Whirlwind
Sacrifices that Make Ashamed
Oppression under the Sun
Mercantile Panics
Immortality of the Bible
Dissectors and Dreamers
VI
LIVED PAGE
RUSKIN, John — Continued
Sibylline Leaves — Continued The Use of Beauty Respectability of Art Opinions
The Necessity of Work On War Base Criticism Education
Sainte-Beuve, Charles Augustin 1804-1869 3320
A Typical Man of the World
Saintsbury, George Edward Bateman 1845- 3336
On Parton's « Voltaire"
SCHELLING, FRIEDRICH WiLHELM JOSEPH VON 1775-1854 3340
Nature and Art
Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 1759-1805 3348
Man and the Universe The Impulse to Play as the Cause of Progress
Schlegel, August Wilhelm von 1767-1845 3358
The Greek Theatre
Schopenhauer. Arthur 1788-1860 3365
Books and Authorship The Vanity of Existence Parables
The Apple Tree and the Fir
The Young Oak
The Balloon Mystery
The Varnish of Nature
The Cathedral in Mayence
The Fate of Samson
Enlightened Rationalists
Co-operation among Porcupines
Schreiner, Olive c. 1863- 3379
In a Ruined Chapel The Gardens of Pleasure In a Far-Off World The Artist's Secret
Scott. Sir Walter 1 771-1832 3388
The Character and Habits of Swift Lord Byron
Vll
LIVED PAGE
Selden, John 1584-1654 3398
Table-Talk
Changing Sides
Contracts
Evil Speaking
The Measure of Things
Wisdom
Wit
Women
Seneca, Lucius Ann^eus r. 4 B. C.-65 A. D. 3403
On Anger
S6vign4 Madame de 1626-1696 3410
A Bit of Parisian Gossip An Artistic Funeral To Madame de Grignan
Shaftesbury, The Earl of 1671-1713 3415
Degeneracy and the Passions
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 1792-1822 3419
Benevolence
On Good and Bad Actions
Ancient Literature and Modern Progress
Sidney, Sir Philip i 554-1 586 3426
The Uses of Poetry
The Universe No Chance Medley
Sigourney, Lydia H, 1791-1865 3433
The End of All Perfection
SiSMONDi, Jean Charles Leonard de 1773-1842 3436
Romantic Love and Petrarch's Poetry
Smiles, Samuel 18 12- 3439
Men Who Cannot Be Bought
Smith, Adam 1723- 1790 3449
Judging Others by Ourselves The Division of Labor
VIU
|
LIVED |
PAGE |
|
|
Smith, Horace |
1779-1849 |
3455 |
|
The Dignity of a True Joke |
||
|
Ugly Women |
Smith, Sydney 1771-1845 3468
Wit and Humor Edgeworth on Bulls Table-Talk
On a Habitual Bore
Monk Lewis's Tragedy of « Alfonso »
A Dinner Party
Classical Glory
Official Dress
Pulpit Eloquence
Impertinence of Opinion
Parasites
The Theatre
SoMERViLLE, Mary Fairfax 1780-1872 3479
The Laws of Music
Southey, Robert i 774-1 843 3488
Fame
The Doctor's Wise Sayings
School Learning
Lovers of Literature
Vanity of Human Fame
Retirement
Preaching to the Poor
Voluminous Trifling
Parliamentary Jokes
Book Madness
SOUVESTRE, EmILE 1806-1854 3497
Misanthropy and Repentance
Spencer, Herbert 1820- 3505
Evolution of the Professions Meddlesome and Coddling Paternalism Education — What Knowledge Is of Most Worth ?
Spinoza, Baruch 1632-1677 3525
That in a Free State Every Man May Think What He Likes and Say What He Thinks
LIVED PAGE
Stael, Madame de 1766-1817 3534
Of the General Spirit of Modern Literature Of Spanish and Italian Literature
Steele, Sir Richard 1672-1729 3549
The Character of Isaac Bickerstaff Bickerstaff and Maria Sir Roger and the Widow The Coverley Family Portraits On Certain Symptoms of Greatness How to Be Happy though Married Paetus and Arria The Ring of Gyges The Art of Pleasing Benignity
The Dream of Fame Of Patriotism and Public Spirit Of Men Who are not their Own Masters
Stephen, Sir James i 789-1 859 3599'
Christianity and Progress
Sterne, Laurence 1713-1768 3603
A Chapter on Sleep A Peasant's Philosophy
Stevenson, Robert Louis i 850-1 894 3608
El Dorado Old Mortality
Books and Tombstones
The Haunter of Graves
The Heaven of Noble Failure
The Door of Immortality
Stewart, Balfour i 828-1 887 3621
The Conservation of Energy
Sturleson, Snorre c. II 79- 1 24 1 3629-
Gefjon's Ploughing Gylfi's Journey to Asgard Of the Supreme Deity Of the Primordial State of the Universe Of the Way that Leads to Heaven Of the Ash Yggdrasill, Mimir's Well, and the Norns or Destinies
LIVED
PAGE
Sturleson, Snorre — Cotitinued
Of the Norns and the Urdar-fount Of Loki and His Progeny Of the Joys of Valhalla
Swift, Jonathan
The Art of Political Lying
A Meditation upon a Broomstick
Thoughts on Various Subjects
Against Abolishing Christianity in England
Against Bad English
1667-1745
3640
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Chaucer and the Italian Poets A Poet's Haughty Patience
Symonds, John Addington
Morning Rambles in Venice
1837-
1840-1893
3659
3666
FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME IX
PAGE
Madame Roland (Portrait, Photogravure) Frontispiece Johann Christ oph Friedrich von Schiller (Portrait, Photogravure) 3348
Abbotsford from the River (Photogravure) 3388
Sir Philip Sidney (Portrait, Photogravure) 3426
A Dinner Party (Photogravure) 3468
In the Interests of Literary Morals (Photogravure) 3488
Madame de Stael (Portrait, Photogravure) 3534
Algernon Charles Swinburne (Portrait, Photogravure) 3659
3265
MADAME ROLAND (Manon Jeanne Phlipon Roland de la Platiere)
(1754-1793)
^N INTELLECT, Madame Roland was one of the most remarkable women of the eighteenth century, and in the romantic in- terest of her life, she is second among the heroines of the French Revolution only to Charlotte Corday. Her <^ Philosophical and Literary Essays,'^ published soon after her death and republished in London in 1800, fully sustain the historical and traditional theory of her ability. It was the remarkable power of her intellect which en- ergized her husband and enabled the Girondist party to keep a foot- hold in the stormy politics of the Revolution at a time when to be accused of moderation was almost equivalent to a conviction of capi- tal crime. Gratien Phlipon, Madame Roland's father, was an engraver by profession and it is from him that she seems to have received the speculative impulses which enabled her to break away from the political conventionality of her time and become a leader in revolu- tion. Her earliest reading was of the great classical writers from whom she imbibed the republican principles which animated her work for the overthrow of the royalty in France. In M. Roland, whom she married in 1781, she found a kindred spirit. He was nearly twenty- two years her senior and no doubt greatly her superior in thorough- ness, but he lacked her quickness of intellect and was always ready to rely rather upon the intuitions of her genius than on his own com- mon sense. When they appeared together at Paris in 1791, they soon became one of the potent influences against royalty. Roland became a member of the Jacobin Club and acted with them until their radi- calism resulted in the formation of a more conservative party, — the Girondists, — which in the crisis of 1792 made him Minister of the In- terior. He used this position to force issues with the king. A letter written by Madame Roland, and addressed by her husband to the king, led to a Cabinet crisis and to the dismissal of Roland. This was the prelude to the overthrow of royalty, but instead of being the Aspasia of a great and world-reforming republic as she had hoped, Madame Roland found herself at first the sport and then the victim of forces too violent to be checked or directed by any power of in- tellect or of combination. After the death of the king and the Sep- tember massacres, the Girondists fearlessly devoted themselves to IX — 205
32 66 MADAME ROLAND
inevitable destruction. Hated alike by Royalists and Jacobins, they had no refuge except in honorable death ; and this, with Vergniaud and Roland at their head, they challenged by impeaching Robespierre when he was at the height of his power. On June ist, 1793, Madame Roland was arrested, and on November 8th, 1793, was carried to the guillotine in the Place de la Revolution, where the scaffold was over- looked by a statue of Liberty, which she addressed in her celebrated apostrophe, ^' O Liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name ! " On hearing of her death, her husband, then at Rouen, pinned on his breast a paper declaring his unwillingness to survive her, g,nd killed himself by falling on the point of the stiletto he carried in his walking cane.
LIBERTY — ITS MEANING AND ITS COST
INSULATED and tranquil, in the stillness of the night and in that of the passions, I dare think, I dare write, without presump- tion and without fear. Silence, son of repose, it is in thy profound bosom that my wandering ideas are heaped up and collected. The shades spread on the theatre of illusion stop its prestiges; all is confounded; all is silent . . . even to my heart: this is the moment when victorious reason commands, and acts with liberty. What have I said ? What implies that great name, whose imposing and confused object by turns astonishes, misleads, and inflames the imagination? What is liberty?*
I cannot consider it so generally; I distinguish, liberty of the will, that of the mind. I doubt whether the first exists; the sec- ond appears to me very uncommon, and the third belongs but to sages. Metaphysical liberty is a problem on which I endeavor to exercise my ideas; political liberty is a blessing the image and utility of which I love to recall to mind; philosophical liberty, the only liberty, perhaps, that it is my province to know, is a treasure which I wish to acquire.
Political liberty, for each individual of a society, consists in doing everything that he judges proper for his own happiness, in what does not injure others. It is the power of being happy, without doing harm to any one. Is there an advantage that can be compared to it ? Nothing in the world can supply its place : delicious fruit of the laws, it gives the human soul all the energy of which it is susceptible.
* This paragraph follows exactly the text of 1800 as do all the articles by Madame Roland here given.
MADAME ROLAND 3267
The reign of the general will is the only reign that maintains public felicity; from the moment when power secures independ- ence to some parts of the state, corruption introduces itself, and soon becomes manifest by the misery of the oppressed.
Slavery and virtue are incompatible. Slavery breaks all the ties that connect man with his fellow-creature; it relaxes and destroys the two springs that contribute most to the development of our faculties, the esteem of ourselves, and glory, which is only the result of public esteem; it suffers nothing to subsist but odious force and degrading fear.
Tyranny equally debases him who exercises it and those whom it enslaves; with it all lose the sentiment of truth, the idea of justice, and the taste of good.
It is to him who knows the extent and the limits of his rights, that we may look for a respect for those of others, a generous intrepidity in their defense, and the noble care of their preser- vation.
True courage belongs only to the free man. Of what can those be capable who are nothing except by the will of the mas- ter ? And to what obligations would he believe himself restricted, who must fancy himself of a nature superior to that of the peo- ple he commands ?
The enjoyment and the inviolability of the first rights of so- cial man, — personal safety and property, — with the power of claim- ing them in case of an accidental injury, properly constitute the essence of liberty. This is the masterpiece of legislation; but so many things prevent its being carried into execution, or counter- act its being brought to perfection and concur in its ruin, that very seldom is it seen to subsist, even for a short time, unimpaired.
All nations are not capable of enjoying liberty ; the same nation cannot support it equally at all times.
The climate, the soil, and the species of its productions, the situation of the places, their extent, etc., pave the way to it or estrange it from its inhabitants, according to the spirit, the wants, and the resources which it affords them. Liberty is for the most part the companion of poverty; the fertility of a country abound- ing in superfluities, stifles it in a manner by its richness. And, indeed, it is pretty generally true, that the finest countries are those which have the worst governments.
Bare competence, or comfort acquired by labor, makes men honest and the state happy ; in this, it is with the nation as with
3268 MADAME ROLAND
the individual, too many wants excite cupidity and engender corruption.
The English are said to be free, and I believe they are so more than their neighbors, — more than most of the nations of Europe, except the Swiss; but commerce and the love of gain, riches, and luxury, by weakening their morals, insensibly sap their constitution, or render useless a great part of its effects.
People are often mistaken respecting the word liberty. I give not this name to the anarchy into which fell again certain re- publics; such, for instance, as Syracuse, after the death or ex- pulsion of the tyrants who had governed them by intrigue or by violence, and whom they had given themselves through weakness. Liberty suits none but simple men, who have few wants. When we consider the infinite care, the continual vigilance, which the maintenance of the laws demand in a free state, the time re- quired for the acts of sovereignty which regard each of the citizens, we are sensible how few of them remain for other occupations. If we reflect, besides, that industry and the arts open the first door to inequality, insulate those who profess them by affording them extraordinary means of acquiring property, and offering them resources independent of the common good, we shall perceive how great was the wisdom of the legislators who banished them from their states.
The Lacedaemonians were nothing else than husbandmen and soldiers ; but they had helots ? It would be very astonishing if, in the same government, the slavery of one part of the species should be absolutely necessary to the perfect happiness of the other. This idea makes me shudder; I dare not investi- gate it.
I hasten to arrive at what suits me much better; I leave metaphysical reveries and political speculations to the more able; I prefer what more nearly concerns action, and I think that is my element. I understand by liberty of mind, not only that sound view of an enlightened judgment which is not disturbed by prejudices or by passions, but also that firm and tranquil temper of a strong soul, superior to events. I call it philosophy, because it is the fruit of wisdom and one of its most unequivocal proofs; it is under these titles that I regard it as a treasure. I add that I am determined to labor to acquire it ; nothing is more true nor more easy. With reason sufficient to appreciate things at what they are worth, we may suffer ourselves to be affected
MADAME ROLAND 3269
too warmly by some of them, for want of having contracted the habit of conquering ourselves by courageous and daily exercise. The same vivacity of feeling which on many occasions elevates us above ourselves, often sinks us again below our level by the frequent revolutions of which it renders us the sport.
The empire over ourselves is the finest of empires, that of which the conquest costs us most, and the possession of which is the sweetest. We think we have done much when we have fa- miliarized ourselves with austerity, — let us speak more correctly, with grief; it seems that it is it which, acting on our organs in the most immediate manner, must principally disturb the liberty of the mind. Yet if it be true that the value which we attach to things makes almost their whole importance, and that the force of ideas and the power of imagination are capable of diverting us from the actual impressions which they make on our senses, it must be acknowledged that physical evils are not the most dangerous for an elevated and delicate soul. It is not precisely in undergoing such and such trials that our courage is manifested, but it is in supporting the loss of what is dearest to us, and this, too, is where it generally fails. Alas ! we are so constituted for pain, that all the efforts employed to bear us up against it, serve only to render it more acute in certain parts. The better we have known the variety of those things which fix the desires of the misled vulgar, and the more we have diminished the objects of our esteem, the more, too, do we remain violently attached to those which we preserve and which we think we ought to dis- tinguish. Reason, virtue, everything draws these ties the closer; if cruel necessity chance to break them, what dreadful torments! the disorder of the body is nothing; the rigors of fate scarcely deserved to be mentioned; but in the pains which proceed from the heart, or which strike at it, I can do no more than wrap up my head and waste away in silence. O sensibility! delight and torment of our days, how much do thy sacrifices exercise and fa- tigue our philosophy ! it is with the greatest justice that has been established, as the first principle of happiness, that secret enjoyment of virtue, which consists in the recollection of having done well, and in the resolution of continuing to do so; beyond that, every thing is full of illusions and falsehoods, and the sweetest acces- sories to this first pleasure arc crossed by poignant and bitter afflictions. Where is the man who has learned to content himself with this satisfaction and dispense with every other ? His felicity
3270
MADAME ROLAND
is independent and unchangeable; that is the true sage and my hero; he alone can preserve perfect liberty of mind.
We have so perverted the use of the blessings bestowed on us by nature, that we have reduced ourselves no longer to find, but in their voluntary privation, the peace that ought to accom- pany them.
We must love mankind sufficiently to concern ourselves about their welfare, and esteem them so little as not to expect any re- turn on their part.
Judgment appears to me to consist in discovering that we can accomplish our own happiness only in laboring at that of others; reason seems to me the firm resolution of acting always agreeably to this principle; the highest degree of virtue is to do good with enthusiasm, because it is honorable and delightful. Sublime delirium, by which the exalted soul finds unheard-of strength, and puts itself on a footing with the gods! Happy he who knows its transports and renders himself worthy of ever enjoying them ! Exact calculation and cold reasoning never make us capable of doing so; it belongs to feelings alone to inspire us with them. Reflection sometimes damps the ardor of our efforts, as repose cools courage; in point of morals, as soon as we are certain of having adopted the best, we must follow them blindfold. But it is to the fascination, to the enchantment of virtue alone, that it is allowable to subject the liberty of the mind.
I touch lightly on these subjects; how many things concerning
each of them do I perceive confusedly in my mind, and which a
little application would draw forth! But I will not labor: I
rapidly sketch the most prominent ideas, and I wait for the others
to become clear.
Complete. From the works of Mme. Roland. London, 1800.
PENSfeES On Happiness
Happiness! , . . every one talks of it, few know it, and those who feel it, waste not their time in describing it. I, who am meditating on it I enjoy it not at this moment. Feeling fills the soul; every enjoyment absorbs profound re- flections; he, whose mind discusses matters coolly, is certainly
MADAME ROLAND 3271
not affected in a warm and touching manner. Such never wrote but from the want of something to divert his mind: how many- others would have thought little had not active grief unfolded
their faculties ?
Complete.
Doing Good
BENEFICENCE has this peculiarity, that the more we exercise it, the more pleasure we find in its exercise. We attach our- selves to the unfortunate object that we relieve, and the assistance we give him becomes a want to those by whom it is administered.
He who has once caused the tears of gratitude to flow, and who can afterwards seek a pleasure sweeter than that, is not worthy of feeling all the charm of doing good.
Complete.
Borrowed Ideas
IT IS useful to borrow the ideas of others; but the habit of con- sulting them, makes the mind contract a sort of sloth and dullness, which renders it incapable of ever determining by its own powers. Reading extends the judgment; to form it, is the province of meditation.
There are some people who are stupid from dint of science; so many names, facts, and experiences are heaped up in their head, that natural genius has been smothered by them; their con- versation is a repertory of what they have read, without ever being the expression of what they have reasoned upon; it does very well to make use of them as of a dictionary, but the think- ing, contemplative being must be sought for elsewhere.
Too much reading overloads the memory, and dulls the imag- ination; meditation, on the contrary, carried to excess, heats, exalts, and leads to madness.
Complete.
3272 MADAME ROLAND
The Gift of Silence
I HAVE often remarked, that the persons who passed for the most discreet were not the most happy in the choice of their confi- dants.
There is a strength of mind, by no means common, in burying in silence what strongly affects us. Yet prudence imposes on us a law almost equal, to conceal the secrets of others and our own violent feelings; the passions mislead us to such a degree, that, blushing, after their crisis is over, at the blindness into which they have plunged us, we almost always regret our having com- municated the opinions with which they inspired us. Besides, an excessive reserve, at least with friends, bespeaks a mistrust of ourselves, and a fear of examination, which are not very honor- able to him who entertains them. Honest souls are unreserved; dissimulation, on the contrary, serves as a mask to bad inten- tions; it is the cloak of the courtier and the virtue of intrigue.
In affairs, there must be inviolable secrecy; in the ordinary commerce of life, a prudent reserve; and in the connections of the heart, an unlimited confidence.
The last part of my precept is not without inconvenience, I
know; but for myself, I rather choose to run the risk of its
observation, than to deprive myself of the pleasures that must
thence result.
Complete.
Virtue an Inspiration
VIRTUE is not to be demonstrated, it is calculated to be felt; we must inspire it, and not preach it up; it is by far the best thing in the world, but it is for those who love it. Some one has said, with a deal of justness, that we attach ourselves still less to virtue from the charms that we find in it, than from the sacrifices that we make to it. I like this idea; it touches, flatters, and penetrates me.
In a constitution of things where natural order is perverted, where consequence, esteem, distinctions, — exterior advantages, in short, — are the reward of factitious merit, it would be a very im- proper idea to wish to cause virtue to be adopted because it is useful; we must cause it to be cherished, because it is amiable;
MADAME ROLAND 3273
it belongs to those who possess it, to know all its utility, and to congratulate themselves on their choice.
Our morals are such, that it amounts almost to audacity, to undertake to rear new citizens; we must hope for many circum- stances, and rely still more on the example that we feel our- selves capable of affording.
Complete.
Character and Association
THE commerce of the world affords us the facility of expressing ourselves readily and gracefully concerning the objects which present themselves; but it cannot contribute to improve the judgment, except of those who have theirs already well formed.
Men, in general, lose part of their natural character by being in continual company, and we are never less ourselves than in living much with others. It is hardly anywhere but in solitude that we learn to think strongly; there it is that the mind is im- proved and enlightened, that the ideas are extended and strength- ened, that the feelings become refined and fortified, that the moral man acquires a consistency, and assumes those qualities which he afterwards exercises among his fellows.
There are persons who cannot endure solitude; and it is so much the worse for them; I know some of these; I see only the more reason to pity them.
We may cherish solitude without becoming misanthropes; none are less susceptible of attachment than dissipated people; feeling souls withdraw from the crowd.
I am tired of those amphibious beings whom we cannot de- fine, who do not know themselves, and whom we find everywhere dragging their incapacity; they make me impatient for retire- ment.
Complete.
Intellect and Progress
IF WE understand by thinking, the action of the mind, inasmuch as it considers its own ideas, combines and rectifies them, I state it as a fact that the most contemplative man has not thought the quarter of his life.
33 74 MADAME ROLAND
Our wants are so numerous, the necessity of satisfying them occurs so frequently, engages so much of our attention, — continued sensations occupying us in such a manner, by the mere images of objects, or tyrannizing over us so much by their presence, that it is still surprising that we can employ ourselves about so many things. What a considerable portion of time lost to the mind ! In representing to ourselves the species as a great individual being, ought we to be astonished at the slowness of its progress in every way, and at the almost eternal infancy in which it seems to re- main ? I am frightened at the immensity of time that has been required to bring us only where we are.
Enter into details: see every man, always confused by varied and successive impressions, — he acquires without enjoying, adopts without examining, and judges mechanically. Inattention and habit maintain and encourage ignorance and error; every thing counteracts the discovery of truth, and dilatory experience cannot cause it to be admitted but in the process of time.
Complete.
3275
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
[erhaps if an impartial jury were called upon to decide on the evidence what thousand words of modern prose have made the most history, the verdict would be for (or against !) the sixth chapter of Rousseau's first book on the <* Social Contract.** It is the most definite formulation made, prior to 1776, of the idea that *^all men are created equal; that they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the con- sent of the governed.** The problem of government, as Rousseau stated it, is "to find a form of association which may defend and protect with the whole force of the community the person and prop- erty of every associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may, nevertheless, obey only himself and remain as free as before.**
John Locke in England and Rousseau in France, gave the intel- lectual impulse to the movement which resulted in the two great revolutions of the eighteenth century. The Republic of America and the Republic of France might have come without them through evo- lution, had it been possible for evolution to do its work against the obstructive forces of eighteenth-century "Toryism.** With the eight- eenth century as it was, however, nothing might have been accom- plished except through the power of great intellects moved to radicalism by such uncompromising analyses of fundamental princi- ples as those in which Rousseau swept away the claim that one class of men can rightly assert a title from Heaven to rule. Since the "Social Contract** appeared, "Divine Right,** as a title to govern, has been abandoned by all publicists who make any serious pretension to logic. When "Higher Civilization** is substituted for "Divine Right** in later times, Rousseau's definition is evaded rather than combated. Indeed, the corollary from his definition, " that govern- ments are instituted to secure rights rather than to support privilege,** and that "they derive their just powers from the governed,** has not been met with any other logic than that of the status quo afite, in the presence of which it remains still to the minds of many practical- juinded men what it was called by Rufus Choate, — " a glittering gen-
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erality.^* It is one of those definitions, however, which, when once formulated, become to thousands who do not possess the power of analysis in their own intellectual right, as sacred as a religious creed. The American Revolution of 1776, the French Revolution which fol- lowed it, and the American Civil War, alike testify the terrible power of a definition which first and finally reduces a great, world- moving idea to its simplest terms. Had Rousseau not impregnated the mind of civilization with the idea that <<just government *> must be representative in order to be just, the plea that American slavery made the slave contented and happy might have been accepted by the public opinion of the world, — which, however, could not enter- tain it when Rousseau was represented in the nineteenth century by Garrison and Lincoln, as he had been in the eighteenth by Jefferson, Danton, and Wilberforce. It is singular that this remarkable man should not only dominate thus the politics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but that the theories of education which he formulated in his <* Emile '* should, at the opening of the twentieth century, still remain the governing impulse in all that is most dis- tinctively modern in the training of youth for citizenship. He in- spired Frobel in Germany, as he did the founders of the public school system in America. It is hard to find in history any one who, by purely intellectual force, has exerted a power over the course of events which can be compared to that attributable with certainty to Rousseau. It is impossible to account for his possession of it on any other theory than that his genuine benevolence overcame weaknesses and vices which otherwise would have vitiated his influence and nullified his work. No life was ever more unequal to the demand of a great intellect than his. The highest benevolence seemed not in- compatible in him with moral weakness verging close on depravity, — as when, while writing on Virtue and Philosophy, he sent his own children one after another to the foundling asylum. Perhaps what often verges on <* moral idiocy >^ in him may be accounted for to a very great extent by the circumstances of his birth and early educa- tion. At Geneva, where he was born (June 28th, 171 2), his father was without social standing, and, as his mother died in giving him birth, he was left without the training which gives intellectual power its stimulus and complement of moral force. His father "mended watches and taught dancing » for a living, and Jean Jacques himself « was successively an engraver's apprentice, a lackey, a student in a seminary, a clerk, a private tutor, and a music copyist, » before he became a great author. Where the least said about his morals is the soonest mended, this, perhaps, is sufficient to suggest the lack of stability of character which seems to be the radical infirmity of his nature. The astonishing versatility of his genius, the powerful analyt-
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ical faculty which characterized his intellect, and the incessant activity of his mind, — these are rather to be wondered at than accounted for. Of the scores of books and pamphlets he left behind, his <* Confes- sions >^ and the «New Heloise >* are the most generally read, while the " Social Contract '* and the " Emile ** are the most influential. Of the great power both these works have exerted for progress there can be no question. There is a reasonable question, however, if writing in the spirit which comes only of a virtuous life, Rousseau might not have accomplished far greater results through the same intellectual energy exerted in modes which would have made those he influenced more willing to trust the power of demonstrated truth, than to tri- umph suddenly and violently at the expense of those whose weak- ness or selfishness made them its opponents.
W. V. B.
THAT MEN ARE BORN FREE
MAN is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave than they. How has this change come about ? I do not know. What can render it legitimate ? I be- lieve that I can settle this question.
If I considered only force and the results that proceed from it, I should say that so long as a people is compelled to obey and does obey, it does well; but that, so soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does better; for, if men re- cover their freedom by virtue of the same right by which it was taken away, either they are justified in resuming it, or there was no justification for depriving them of it. But the social order is a sacred right which serves as a foundation for all others. This right, however, does not come from nature. It is, therefore, based on conventions. The question is to know what these conventions
are.
« Social Contract," Book I., Chap. i.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
1 ASSUME that men have reached a point at which the obstacles that endanger their preservation in the state of nature over- come by their resistance the forces which each individual can exert with a view to maintaining himself in that state. Then
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this primitive condition can no longer subsist, and the human race would perish unless it changed its mode of existenq^.
Now, as men cannot create any new forces, but only combine and direct those that exist, they have no other means of self- preservation than to form by aggregation a sum of forces which nTay overcome the resistance, to put them in action by a single motive power, and to make them work in concert.
The sum of forces can be produced only by the combination of many; but the strength and freedom of each man being the chief instruments of his preservation, how can he pledge them without injuring himself, and without neglecting the cares which he owes to himself ? This difficulty, applied to my subject, may be expressed in these terms: —
" To find a form of association which may defend and protect, with the whole force of the community, the person and property of every associate, and by means of which each, coalescing with all, may, nevertheless, obey only himself, and remain as free as before.** Such is the fundamental problem of which the social contract furnishes the solution.
The clauses of this contract are so determined by the nature of the act that the slightest modification would render them vain and ineffectual; so that, although they have never perhaps been formally enunciated, they are everywhere the same, everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized, until, the social pact being vio- lated, each man regains his original rights and recovers his na- tural liberty, whilst losing the conventional liberty for which he renounced it.
These clauses, rightly understood, are reducible to one only, viz.^ the total alienation to the whole community of each asso- ciate with all his rights; for, in the first place, since each gives himself up entirely, the conditions are equal for all ; and, the con- ditions being equal for all, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others.
Further, the alienation being made without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be, and an individual associate can no longer claim anything; for, if rights were left to individuals, since there would be no common superior who could judge be- tween them and the public, each, being on some point his own judge, would soon claim to be so on all; the state of nature would still subsist, and the association would necessarily become tyrannical or useless.
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In short, each giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is not one associate over whom we do not acquire the same rights which we concede to him over ourselves, we gain the equivalent of all that we lose, and more power to pre- serve what we have.
If, then, we set aside what is not of the essence of the social contract, we shall find that it is reducible to the following terms: ^* Each of us puts in common his person and his whole power under the supreme direction of the general will; and in return we receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole."
Forthwith, instead of the individual personalities of all the contracting parties, this act of association produces a moral and collective body, which is composed of as many members as the assembly has voices, and which receives from this same act its unity, its common self {mot), its life, and its will. This public person, which is thus formed by the union of all the individual members, formerly took the name of city, and now takes that of republic or body politic, which is called by its members state when it is passive, sovereign when it is active, power when it is compared to similar bodies. With regard to the associates, they take collectively the name of people, and are called individually citizens, as participating in the sovereign power, and subjects, as subjected to the laws of the state. But these terms are often confused and are mistaken for one another; it is sufficient to know how to distinguish them when they are used with complete precision.
Complete. "Social Contract,*' Book I., Chap. vi.
NATURE AND EDUCATION
EVERYTHING is perfect, coming from the hands of the Creator; everything degenerates in the hands of man. He forces a spot of ground to nourish the productions of a foreign soil; or a tree to bear fruit by the insition of another; he mixes and confounds climates, elements, seasons; he mutilates his dog, his horse, his slave; he inverts the nature of things, only to disfig- ure them; he is fond of deformity and monstrous productions; he is pleased with nothing, as it is framed by nature, not even with man; we must break him to his mind, like a managed
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horse; we must fashion him to his taste, hke the trees or plants of his garden.
Were it not for this culture, things would stilf be worse; for our species will not bear being fashioned by halves. In the present constitution of things, man abandoned from his birth to his own guidance among the rest of society, would be a mon- stroiis animal. Prejudices, authority, necessity, example, and all the social institutions with which we are surrounded, would stifle the voice of nature, and substitute nothing else in its place. Na- ture would be to him like a plant or shrub, that shoots up spon- taneously in the highway, but is soon trodden down and destroyed by travelers.
To thee do I therefore address my discourse, O fond and careful mother, whose sense has led thee out of the common tract, and taught thee to preserve the tender plant from the in- jurious blast of human opinions! Be sure to water the young sprig before it dies; it will one day yield such fruit as must afford thee infinite delight. Take care to erect an early enclo- sure around the infant's mind; others may mark out the circum- ference, but to thee alone it belongs to fix the barrier.
Plants are fashioned by culture, and men by education. Were man to be born of full size and strength, these would avail him nought, till he learnt to make use of them; nay, they would rather resound to his prejudice, by preventing others from lend- ing him assistance; so that, being left to himself, he would die miserably before he knew his wants. We are apt to complain of the state of infancy; not reflecting, that if man had not com- menced an infant, the human species must have perished.
We are all brought into the world feeble and weak, yet we stand in need of strength; we are destitute of everything, yet we want assistance; we are senseless and stupid, yet we have occa- sion for judgment. All that we have not at our birth, and that we stand in need of at the years of maturity, is the gift of edu- cation.
Education is either from nature, from men, or from things. The developing of our faculties and organs, is the education of nature; that of men, is the application we learn to make of this very developing; and that of things is the experience we acquire in regard to the different objects by which we are affected.
Mankind are all formed by three sorts of masters. The pupil, in whom their instructions contradict each other, is ill-educated,
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and will never be self-consistent. He, in whom they all coincide on the same point, and tend to the same end, he alone may be said to hit his aim, and to live consistently. In short, he alone is well educated.
Now, of those three different educations, that of nature is in- dependent in us; that of things depends on us only in particular respects, and this in a hypothetical sense; for who can pretend to direct every word and action of those who have the care of an infant ?
No sooner, therefore, does education become an art, than it is almost impossible it should succeed; since the concurrence of cir- cumstances necessary for its success is in no man's power. All that we can possibly do, by dint of care, is to come near the mark, more or less; but he must be very fortunate indeed who hits it.
But what mark is this ? you will say ; the very same that na- ture has in view. This we have just now proved; for since the concurrence of the three educations is necessary for their com- pletion, the other two must be directed towards that which is no way subject to our control. But, perhaps, the word nature may bear, on this occasion, to indeterminate a sense; we shall, there- fore, endeavor to fix it.
Nature, you will say, is nothing more than a habit. But what do you mean by that ? Are not habits contracted by mere force, which cannot be said, however, to stifle nature ? Such, for instance, is the habit of plants, constrained in their vertical direction. Restored to their liberty, they still retain the direc- tion they have been forced to assume; yet the sap has not changed its original impression; and if the plant continues to vegetate, its prolongation once more becomes vertical. It is the same in regard to human inclinations. So long as we continue in the same state, we may retain such inclinations as result from habit, and are least natural to us; but as soon as the situation changes, the habit ceases, and nature revives. Education surely is nothing more than habit. And yet are there not some people who altogether forget, and others who retain, their education ? Whence this difference ? If we are to confine the word nature to habits conformable to nature, surely we may spare ourselves the trouble of this nonsensical expression.
We are all born with a certain degree of sensibility, and from the very first instant of our existence we are differently affected IX — 206
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by the objects that surround us. As soon as we acquire, if I may so speak, a consciousness of our sensations, we are disposed either to pursue or to flee from the objects that produce them; at first, as they are agreeable or displeasing to us; in the next place, in proportion to the agreement or disagreement we find between ourselves and the objects; and lastly, pursuant to the judgment we form of them, from the idea of happiness or per- fection acquired by reason. These dispositions are enlarged and strengthened, in proportion as we become more sensible and in- telligent; but restrained by habit, they are altered more or less by opinion. Before this alteration, they are what I distinguish in man by the name of nature.
To these primitive dispositions every thing must, therefore, be referred; and this might easily be done, were the three sorts of education no more than different; but what are we to do, when they happen to be opposite ? When, instead of educating a man for himself, you want to educate him for others, the harmony or agreement is then impossible. Being obliged either to combat nature or social institutions, you must make your option, whether you are to form the man or the citizen ; for you cannot do both.
Every partial society, when it is close and compact, deviates greatly from the general link; great lovers of their country are rude and uncivil to strangers; they look upon them only in the common light as men, and as unworthy of their regard. This inconveniency is inevitable, but of no great consequence. The point is, to behave kindly towards our fellow-subjects. Abroad, the Spartans were ambitious, avaricious, and unjust; while disin- terestedness, equity, and concord reigned within their walls. Be- ware of those cosmopolites who pore over old books in search of duties, which they neglect to fulfill within their own communi- ties. Thus you will see a philosopher admiring the Tartars, in order to be excused from loving his neighbors.
Man in his natural state is all for himself; he is the numer- ical unit or the absolute integer, that refers only to himself, or to his likeness. Man in the civil state is a fractionary unit, who depends on the denominator, and whose value consists in his re- lation to the integer, namely, the body politic. Among social institutions, those are the best, which are best adapted for divest- ing man of his natural state; for depriving him of his absolute, to give him a relative, existence; in short, for transferring self to a common unit; to the end, that each individual may no
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longer consider himself as one, but as part of a unit, and have no sense or feeling but in conjunction with the whole. A Roman citizen was neither Caius nor Lucius, — he was a Roman; but he loved his country exclusive of himself. Regulus pretended to be a Carthaginian, as he was become the property of his masters. In the quality of a stranger, he refused to take his seat in the Roman senate; and before he would comply, he insisted upon receiving orders from a Carthaginian. With indignation he be- held the endeavors used to save his life. He carried his point, and returned triumphant to Carthage, to resign his last breath amidst the most exquisite tortures. Here we behold a man of quite a different stamp from those of the present age.
From « Emile.» Translated by N. Nugent.
CHRIST AND SOCRATES
I WILL confess that the majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the Gospel hath its influence
on my heart. Peruse the works of our philosophers with all their pomp of diction: how mean, how contemptible are they compared with the Scriptures ! Is it possible that a book, at once so simple and sublime, should be merely the work of man ? Is it possible that the sacred personage, whose history it contains, should be himself a mere man ? Do we find that he assumed the tone of an enthusiast or ambitious sectary ? What sweetness, what purity in his manner! What an affecting gracefulness in his delivery ' What sublimity in his maxims ! what profound v/is- dom in his discourses! What presence of mind, what subtlety, what truth in his replies! How great the command over his passions! Where is the man, where the philosopher, who could so live, and so die, without weakness, and without ostentation ? When Plato described his imaginary good man loaded with all the shame of guilt, yet meriting the highest rewards of virtue, he describes exactly the character of Jesus Christ: the resemblance was so striking, that all the Fathers perceived it.
What prepossession, what blindness must it be to compare the son of Sophronicus to the son of Mary! What an infinite dis- proportion there is between them ! Socrates dying without pain or ignominy, easily supported his character to the last; and if his death, however easy, had not crowned his life, it might have
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been doubted whether Socrates, with all his wisdom, was anything more than a vain sophist. He invented, it is said, the theory of morals. ^ Others, however, had before put them in practice ; he had only to say, therefore, what they had done, and to reduce their examples to precepts. Aristides had been just before Socrates defined justice; Leonidas had given up his life for his country before Socrates declared patriotism to be a duty; the Spartans were a sober people before Socrates recommended sobriety; be- fore he had even defined virtue, Greece abounded in virtuous men. But where could Jesus learn, among his competitors, that pure and sublime morality, of which he only hath given us both precept and example ? The greatest wisdom was made known amongst the most bigoted fanaticism, and the simplicity of the most heroic virtues did honor to the vilest people on earth. The death of Socrates, peaceably philosophizing with his friends, appears the most agreeable that could be wished for; that of Jesus, expiring in the midst of agonizing pains, abused, insulted, and accused by a whole nation, is the most horrible that could be feared. Socrates, in receiving the cup of poison, blessed, in- deed, the weeping executioner who administered it; but Jesus, in the midst of excruciating torments, prayed for his merciless tormentors. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a God. Shall we suppose the evangelic history a mere fiction ? Indeed, my friend, it bears not the marks of fiction ; on the contrary, the his- tory of Socrates, which nobody presumes to doubt, is not so well attested as that of Jesus Christ. Such a supposition, in fact, only shifts the difficulty without obviating it : it is more inconceivable that a number of persons should agree to write such a history, than that one only should furnish the subject of it. The Jewish authors were incapable of the diction, and strangers to the mo- rality, contained in the Gospel, the marks of whose truth are so striking and inimitable, that the inventor would be a more aston- ishing character than the hero.
3285
JOHN RUSKIN
(18 1 9- 1 900)
Jmong English prose writers of the second half of the nineteenth century, John Ruskin was scarcely equaled in the attract- iveness of his style, and he was not equaled at all in the range of his thought and the variety of his productions. He is pe- culiarly identified with the second half of the century, for, with the exception of the first and minor edition of his << Modern Painters,** nearly all his great works were published between 1849 and 1900. As an « art critic,** he has had no equal among English writers. But it is with <<art** as the expression of the whole idea impressed on hu- manity by nature that he deals, rather than with art in the limited sense in which it is generally understood. Students of any single art, as of painting or sculpture, are apt to dissent from his conclusions and to question the practical usefulness of his methods; and in the sense in which a professional painter criticizes technique, Ruskin is hardly to be classed as an art critic at all. He represents in Eng- land more nearly than any one else the larger view of art which Hegel in Germany did so much to make possible. It was from Car- lyle, however, rather than from any German master, that Ruskin re- ceived his most potent inspiration. He may be called Carlyle's greatest pupil. Indeed in many things he is Carlyle's superior. His prose style shows traces of Carlyle's mannerisms, but it is more fluent, more melodious, and more persuasive, than that of Carlyle, whose intensity of expression is often more apt to excite admiration than to carry conviction. Like Carlyle, Ruskin was, in his political views, dis- trustful of freedom as a mode of progress. He defined his distrust in the assertion that men are only fit for freedom in the inverse ratio of their desire for it. In his later life, he developed an ideal of aesthetic culture for the masses, depending on socialism as a mode of aristocratic control and tutelage. He was deeply moved by beauty in art and nature. The old Greek « beauty worship ** has had no greater disciple than he. He himself looked on beauty as a revela- tion of divine goodness. And his message was one of reverence for the good and true not less than for the beautiful. He seems not to have considered, however, that physiological laws which made the Greeks what they were, operate against substituting the Greek for the Puritan ideal among « Anglo-Saxons.** Pericles and Aspasia, lis- tening to a recitation from Homer with an «ear** which enabled
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them to co-ordinate perfectly the relation of every vowel to every other in a period of melody as easily as a trained com"f)oser does in listening to his own opera, — such finely-organized beings as these were not fitted to serve as saints of progress for the race which produced John Milton and John Bunyan, — which in their spirit must seek its salvation by pressing through the <^ Valley of the Shadow of Death, >^ with the smoke of hell coming up through the grass-roots and a leather-winged Apolyon hovering over it. ^<Sin'> was something the Greeks knew nothing about, and when Phidias worked, the self-consciousness of the world had not advanced far enough to make possible the conception of a Devil as it is present in the subconsciousness of English-speaking peoples. The world of the old Saxons was a ^< Midgard *^ — a <* middle enclosure, >' with heaven on one side and hell on the other. The world of the primitive Greeks was thronged with genially human gods and demigods. Heaven was no further away than the top of Mount Olympus, and the idea of hell, of the progressive and finally climacteric punitive reactions of evil, was not sufiiciently developed to cause alarm. Neither Ruskin nor any other prophet of art could have transferred to nineteenth- century England the artistic cult developed by such conditions as these. But Ruskin in attempting it, achieved all that was possible.
He was born in London, February 8th, 18 19. His father was a wine merchant who had accumulated a large fortune. On his death it descended to Ruskin, who was thus enabled to gratify without great sacrifices the desire for the study of art, which early in life became his ruling passion. After graduating from Christ Church College, Oxford, in 1842, he studied painting under Copley, Fielding, and Harding, and afterwards spent much of his time in Italy, — especially in Venice where he found everything he most needed to inspire him. He held professorships both at Cambridge and Oxford, and utilized his lectures as material for a number of the remarkable volumes which during the last twenty-five years of his life he pub- lished with such astonishing rapidity. The completion of his *< Modern Painters" established his standing as the leading English authority on the philosophy of art, and, in consequence, the public demands on his energies were incessant and remorseless. In endeavoring to meet them, he wrecked his nervous system and for several years be- fore he died (January 20th, 1900) he was insane. His life was a tragedy. The beautiful woman whom he loved and married did not love him. Finding that she did love his friend, the painter, Millais, Ruskin secured a divorce for her and brought about her marriage to Millais. Deprived thus of domestic happiness, he devoted himself wholly to his work, and in it found " every good and perfect gift *^ except that consummation and sum of all, without v/hich all is fruitless — peace. W. V. B.
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THE SKY
IT IS a Strange thing how little in general people know about the sky. It is the part of creation in which nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man — more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him, and teaching him — than in any other of her works; and it is just the part in which we least attend to her. There are not many of her other works in which some more material or essential purpose than the mere pleasing of man is not answered by every part of their organization; but every essential purpose of the sky might, so far as we know, be answered if once in three days, or thereabouts, a great, ugly, black rain cloud were brought up over the blue, and everything well watered, and so all left blue again till next time, with per- haps a film of morning and evening mist for dew — and instead of this, there is not a moment of any day of our lives, when nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after picture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and con- stant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite cer- tain * it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this doing for him constantly. The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few; it is not intended that man should live always in the midst of them; he injures them by his presence, he ceases to feel them if he is always with them; but the sky is for all: bright as it is, it is not
" too bright nor good For human nature's daily food'*;
it is fitted in all its functions for the perpetual comfort and ex- alting of the heart, — for soothing it, and purifying it from its dross and dust. Sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious, some- times awful — never the same for two moments together; almost human in its passions, almost spiritual in its tenderness, almost divine in its infinity, its appeal to what is immortal in us is as distinct as its ministry of chastisement or of blessing to what is
* At least, I thought so, when I was four-and-twenty. At five-and-twenty
I fancy that it is just possible there may be other creatures in the universe,
to be pleased, or, — it may be, — displeased by the weather.
J.R.
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mortal is essential. And yet we never attendf to it, we never make it a subject of thought, but as it has to do with our animal sensations, we look upon all by which it speaks to us more clearly than to brutes, upon all which bears witness to the intention of the Supreme that we are to receive more from the covering vault than the light and the dew which we share with the weed and the worm, only as a succession of meaningless and monotonous accident, too common and too vain to be worthy of a moment of watchfulness, or a glance of admiration. If in our moments of utter idleness and insipidity, we turn to the sky as a last resource, which of its phenomena do we speak of ? One says, it has been wet; and another, it has been windy; and another, it has been warm. Who among the whole chattering crowd can tell me of the forms and the precipices of the chain of tall white mountains that girded the horizon at noon yesterday ? Who saw the narrow sunbeam that came out of the south, and smote upon their sum- mits until they melted and moldered away in the dust of blue rain ? Who saw the dance of the dead clouds where the sunlight left them last night, and the west wind blew them before it like withered leaves ? All has passed unregretted as unseen ; or if the apathy be ever shaken off even for an instant, it is only by what is gross, or what is extraordinary. And yet it is not in the broad and fierce manifestations of the elemental energies, nor in the clash of the hail, nor the drift of the whirlwind, that the highest characters of the sublime are developed. God is not in the earthquake, nor in the fire, but in the still small voice. They are but the blunt and the low faculties of our nature, which can only be addressed through lampblack and lightning. It is in quiet and unsubdued passages of unobtrusive majesty, the deep and the calm, and the perpetual; that which must be sought ere it is seen, and loved ere it is understood; things which the angels work out for us daily, and yet vary eternally; which are never wanting, and never repeated, which are to be found always, yet each found but once ; it is through these that the lesson of devo- tion is chiefly taught, and the blessing of beauty given.
We habitually think of the rain cloud only as dark and gray; not knowing that we owe to it perhaps the fairest, though not the most dazzling, of the hues of heaven. Often in our English mornings, the rain clouds in the dawn form soft, level fields, which melt imperceptibly into the blue; or, when of less extent, gather into apparent bars, crossing the sheets of broader clouds
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above; and all these bathed throughout in an unspeakable light of pure rose-color, and purple, and amber, and blue; not shining, but misty-soft; the barred masses, when seen nearer, composed of clusters or tresses of cloud, like floss silk; looking as if each knot were a little swathe or sheaf of lighted rain.
Aqueous vapor or mist, suspended in the atmosphere, becomes visible exactly as dust does in the air of a room. In the shad- ows, you not only cannot see the dust itself, because unillum- ined, but you can see other objects through the dust, without obscurity; the air being thus actually rendered more transparent by a deprivation of light. Where a sunbeam enters, every par- ticle of dust becomes visible, and a palpable interruption to the sight; so that a transverse sunbeam is a real obstacle to the vision — you cannot see things clearly through it. In the same way, wherever vapor is illuminated by transverse rays, there it becomes visible as a whiteness more or less affecting the purity of the blue, and destroying it exactly in proportion to the degree of illumination. But where vapor is in shade, it has very little effect on the sky, perhaps making it a little deeper and grayer than it otherwise would be, but not, itself, unless very dense, distinguishable, or felt as mist.
Has the reader any distinct idea of what clouds are ?
That mist which lies in the morning so softly in the valley, level and white, through which the tops of the trees rise as if through an inundation — why is it so heavy, and why does it lie so low, being yet so thin and frail that it will melt away utterly into splendor of morning when the sun has shone on it but a few moments more ? Those colossal pyramids, huge and firm, with outlines as of rocks, and strength to bear the beating of the high sun full on their fiery flanks, — why are they so light, their bases high over our heads, high over the heads of Alps ? Why will these melt away, not as the sun rises, but as he descends, and leave the stars of twilight clear; while the valley vapor gains again upon the earth, like a shroud ? Or that ghost of a cloud, which steals by yonder clump of pines; nay, which does not steal by them, but haunts them, wreathing yet round them, and yet, — and yet, — slowly; now falling in a fair waved line like a woman's veil; now fading, now gone; we look away for an in- stant, and look back, and it is again there. What has it to do with that clump of pines, that it broods by them, and waves itself among their branches, to and fro ? Has it hidden a cloudy
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treasure among the moss at their roots, which it watches thus ? Or has some strong enchanter charmed it into fond returning, or bound it fast within those bars of bough ? And yonder filmy crescent, bent like an archer's bow above the snowy summit, the hio-hest of all the hills — that white arch which never forms but over the supreme crest, — how it is stayed there, repelled appar- ently from the snow, — nowhere touching it, the clear sky seen between it and the mountain edge, yet never leaving it — poised as a white bird hovers over its nest! Or those war clouds that gather on the horizon, dragon-crested, tongued with fire, — how is their barbed strength bridled ? What bits are those they are champing with their vaporous lips, flinging off flakes of black foam? Leagued leviathans of the Sea of Heaven, — out of their nostrils goeth smoke, and their eyes are like the eyelids of the morning; the sword of him that layeth at them cannot hold the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon. Where ride the captains of their armies ? Where are set the measures of their march ? Fierce murmurers, answering each other from morning until even- ing— what rebuke is this which has awed them into peace; — what hand has reined them back by the way in which they came ?
I know not if the reader will think at first that questions like these are easily answered. So far from it, I rather believe that some of the mysteries of the clouds never will be understood by us at all. " Knowest thou the balancing of the clouds ? '^ Is the answer ever to be one of pride ? The wondrous works of him, which is perfect in knowledge ? Is our knowledge ever to be so ?
For my own part, I enjoy the mystery, and perhaps the reader may. I think he ought. He should not be less grateful for summer rain, or see less beauty in the clouds of morning, because they come to prove him with hard questions; to which, perhaps, if we look close at the heavenly scroll, we may find also a syllable or two of answer, illuminated here and there.
And though the climates of the south and east may be com- paratively clear, they are no more absolutely clear than our own northern air. Intense clearness, whether in the north, after or before rain, or in some moments of twilight in the south, is al- ways, as far as I am acquainted with natural phenomena, a not- able thing. Mist of some sort, or mirage, or confusion of light or of cloud, are the general facts; the distance may vary in dif- ferent chmates at which the effects of mist begin, but they are
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always present; and therefore, in all probability, it is meant that we should enjoy them. . . . We surely need not wonder that mist and all its phenomena have been made delightful to us, since our happiness as thinking beings must depend on our being content to accept only partial knowledge even in those mat- ters which chiefly concern us. If we insist upon perfect intelli- gibility and complete declaration in every moral subject, we shall instantly fall into misery of unbelief. Our whole happiness and power of energetic action depend upon our being able to breathe and live in the cloud; content to see it opening here, and clos- ing there; rejoicing to catch through the thinnest films of it glimpses of stable and substantial things; but yet perceiving a nobleness even in the concealment, and rejoicing that the kindly veil is spread where the untempered light might have scorched us, or the infinite clearness wearied. And I believe that the re- sentment of this interference of the mist is one of the forms of proud error which are too easily mistaken for virtues. To be content in utter darkn-ess and ignorance is indeed unmanly, and therefore we think that to love light and find knowledge must always be right. Yet (as in all matters before observed), wher- ever pride has any share in the work, even knowledge and light may be ill pursued. Knowledge is good, and light is good; yet man perished in seeking knowledge, and moths perish in seeking light; and if we, who are crushed before the moth, will not accept such mystery as is needful to us, we shall perish in like manner. But, accepted in humbleness, it instantly becomes an element of pleasure ; and I think that every rightly constituted mind ought to rejoice, not so much in knowing anything clearly, as in feeling that there is infinitely more which it cannot know. None but proud or weak men would mourn over this, for we may always know more if we choose by working on; but the pleasure is, I think, to humble people, in knowing that the jour- ney is endless, the treasure inexhaustible, — watching the cloud still march before them with its summitless pillar, and being sure that, to the end of time, and to the length of eternity, the mysteries of its infinity will still open further and further, their dimness being the sign and necessary adjunct of their inexhaust- ibleness. I know there arc an evil mystery and a deathful dim- ness,— the mystery of a great Babylon — the dimness of the sealed eye and soul; but do not let us confuse these with the glorious mystery of the things which the angels ^^ desire to look
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into,* or with the dimness which, even before" the clear eye and open soul, still rests on sealed pages of the eternal volume.
On some isolated mountain at daybreak,* when the night mists first rise from off the plain, watch their white and lake- like fields, as they float in level bays, and winding gulfs about the islanded summits of the lower hills, untouched yet by more than dawn, colder and more quiet than a windless sea under the moon of midnight; watch when the first sunbeam is sent upon the silver channels, how the foam of their undulating surface parts, and passes away, and down under their depths the glitter- ing city and green pasture lie like Atlantas, between the white paths of winding rivers; the flakes of light falling every moment faster and broader among the starry spires, as the wreathed surges break and vanish above them, and the confused crests and ridges of the dark hills shorten their gray shadows upon the plain. Wait a little longer, and you shall see those scattered mists rallying in the ravines, and floating up towards you, along the winding valleys, till they couch in quiet masses, iridescent with the morning light, upon the broad breasts of the higher hills, whose leagues of massy undulation will melt back, back into that robe of material light, until they fade away, and set in its lustre, to appear again above in the serene heaven like a wild, bright, impossible dream, foundationless, and inaccessible, their very base vanishing in the unsubstantial, and making blue of the deep lake below. Wait yet a little longer, and you shall see those mists gather themselves into white towers, and stand like fortresses along the promontories, massy and motionless, only piled with every instant higher and higher into the sky, and casting longer shadows athwart the rocks; and out of the pale blue of the horizon you will see forming and advancing a troop of narrow, dark, pointed vapors, which will cover the sky, inch by inch, with their gray network, and take the light off the land- scape with an eclipse which will stop the singing of the birds, and the motion of the leaves, together ; — and then you will see horizontal bars of black shadow forming under them, and lurid
*I forget now what all this is about. It seems to be a recollection of the Rigi, with assumption that the enthusiastic spectator is to stand for a day and night in observation ; to suffer the effects of a severe thimder storm, and to get neither breakfast nor dinner. I have seen such a storm on the Rigi, however, and more than one such sunrise; and I much doubt if its present visitors by rail will see more.
J.R.
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wreaths create themselves, you know not how, among the shoul- ders of the hills; you never see them form, but when you look back to a place which was clear an instant ago, there is a cloud on it, hanging by the precipice as a hawk pauses over his prey; — and then you will hear the sudden rush of the awakened wind, and you will see those watchtowers of vapor swept away from their foundations, and waving curtains of opaque rain let down to the valley, swinging from the burdened clouds in black bending fringes, or, pacing in pale columns along the lake level, grazing its surface into foam as they go. And then as the sun sinks you shall see the storm drift for an instant from off the hills, leaving their broad sides smoking and loaded yet with snow- white, torn, steam-like rags of capricious vapor, now gone, now gathered again, — while the smoldering sun, seeming not far away, but burning like a red hot-ball beside you, and as if you could reach it, plunges through the rushing wind and rolling cloud with headlong fall, as if it meant to rise no more, dyeing all the air about it with blood; — and then you shall hear the fainting tempest die in the hollow of the night, and you shall see a green halo kindling on the summit of the eastern hills, brighter, brighter yet, till the large white circle of the slow moon is lifted up among the barred clouds, step by step, line by line; star after star she quenches with her kindling light, setting in their stead an army of pale, penetrable fleecy wreaths in the heaven, to give light upon the earth, which move together hand in hand, company by company, troop by troop, so measured in their unity of motion that the whole heaven seems to roll with them, and the earth to reel under them. And then wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning; watch the white glaciers blaze in their winding paths about the moun- tains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kindling downwards chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning — their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each his tribute of driven snow, like altar smoke up to heaven, the rose light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them, and above them, piercing with purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath, as it passes by, until the whole heaven one scarlet canopy is interwoven with
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a roof of waving flame, and tossing vault beyend vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of angels: and then when vou can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best delivered this his message unto men!
* The account given of the stages of creation in the first chap- ter of Genesis is in every respect clear and intelligible to the simplest reader, except in the statement of the work of the sec- ond day. I suppose that this statement is passed over by care- less readers without any endeavor to understand it, and contem- plated by simple and faithful readers as a sublime mystery which was not intended to be understood. But there is no mystery in any other part of the chapter, and it seems to me unjust to con- clude that any was intended here. And the passage ought to be peculiarly interesting to us, as being the first in the Bible in which the heavens are named, and the only one in which the word " heaven, ^^ all important as that word is to our understand- ing of the most precious promises of Scripture, receives a defi- nite explanation. Let us therefore see whether, by a little careful comparison of the verse with other passages in which the word occurs, we may not be able to arrive at as clear an understand- ing of this portion of the chapter as of the rest. In the first place the English word ^* firmament ^* itself is obscure and use- less ; because we never employ it but as a synonym of heaven, it conveys no other distinct idea to us; and the verse, though from our familiarity with it we imagine that it possesses meaning, has in reality no more point nor value than if it were written, ** God said, Let there be a something in the midst of the waters, and God called the something, Heaven.** But the marginal reading, " Expansion,'* has definite value; and the statement that God said, Let there be an expansion in the midst of the waters, and ** God called the expansion, Heaven," has an apprehensible meaning. Accepting this expression as the one intended, we have next to ask what expansion there is, between two waters, describable by the term ^Hieaven.** Milton adopts the term " expanse,** but he understands it of the whole volume of the air which surrounds the earth. Whereas, so far as we can tell, there is no water be-
* This passage, to the end of the section, is one of the last, and best, which 1 wrote in the temper of my youth ; and I can still ratify it, thus far, that the texts referred to in it must either be received as it explains them, or neg- lected altogether. J. R.
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yond the air, in the fields of space; and the whole expression of division of waters from waters is thus rendered valueless. Now with respect to this whole chapter, we must remember always that it is intended for the instruction of all mankind, not for the learned reader only; and that therefore the most simple and natural interruption is the likeliest in general to be the true one. An unscientific reader knows little about the manner in which the volume of the atmosphere surrounds the earth; but I imagine that he could hardly glance at the sky when rain was falling in the distance, and see the level line of the bases of the clouds from which the shower descended, without being able to attach an instant and easy meaning to the words, ^^ expansion in the midst of the waters '^ ; and if, having once seized this idea, he pro- ceeded to examine it more accurately, he would perceive at once, if he had ever noticed anything of the nature of clouds, that the level line of their bases did indeed most severely and stringently divide " waters from waters *^ — that is to say, divide water in its collective and tangible state, from water in its aerial state; or the waters which fall and flow, from those which rise and float. Next, if we try this interpretation in the theological sense of the word Heaven, and examine whether the clouds are spoken of as God's dwelling place, we find God going before the Israelites in a pillar of cloud ; revealing himself in a cloud on the mercy seat, filling the temple of Solomon with the cloud when its dedication is accepted; ap.pearing in a great cloud to Ezekiel; ascending into a cloud before the eyes of the disciples on Mount Olivet; and in like manner returning to judgment : ^* Behold he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him.^* " Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." While further the "clouds" and ** heavens " are used as interchangeable words in those Psalms which most distinctly set forth the power of God : ** He bowed the heavens also, and came down; he made darkness pavilions round about him, dark waters, and thick clouds of the skies. " And again, " Thy mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds." And again, ** His excellency is over Israel, and his strength is in the clouds. " And again, " The clouds poured out water, the skies sent out a sound, the voice of thy thunder was in the heaven." Again, " Clouds and darkness are round about him, righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne; the heavens de- clare his righteousness, and all the people see his glory." In all
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these passages the meaning is unmistakable if they possess defi- nite meaning at all. We are too apt to take them merely for sublime and vague imagery, and therefore gradually to lose the apprehension of their life and power. The expression, * He bowed the heavens,** for instance, is, I suppose, received by most readers as a magnificent hyperbole, having reference to some peculiar and fearful manifestation of God's power to the writer of the Psalm in which the words occur. But the expression either has plain meaning, or it has no meaning. Understand by the term ** heavens ** the compass of infinite space around the earth, and the expression ** bowed the heavens, ** however sublime, is wholly without meaning: infinite space cannot be bent or bowed. But understand by the ^'heavens** the veil of clouds above the earth, and the expression is neither hyperbolical nor obscure ; it is pure, plain, accurate truth, and it describes God, not as revealing himself in any peculiar way to David, but doing what he is still doing before our own eyes, day by day. By ac- cepting the words in their simple sense, we are thus lead to ap- prehend the immediate presence of the Deity, and his purpose of manifesting himself as near us whenever the storm cloud stoops upon its course ; while by our vague and inaccurate acceptance of the words, we remove the idea of his presence far from us, into a region which we can neither see nor know: and gradually, from the close realization of a living God, who " maketh the clouds his chariot,** we define and explain ourselves into dim and distant suspicion of an inactive God inhabiting inconceivable places, and fading into the multitudinous formalisms of the laws of nature. All errors of this kind — and in the present day we are in constant and grievous danger of falling into them — arise from the originally mistaken idea that man can, ** by searching, find out God — find out the Almighty to perfection** — that is to say, by help of courses of reasoning and accumulations of science, apprehend the nature of the Deity, in a more exalted and more accurate manner than in a state of comparative ignorance ; whereas it is clearly necessary, from the beginning to the end of time, that God's way of revealing himself to his creatures should be a simple way, which all those creatures may understand. Whether taught or untaught, whether of mean capacity or enlarged, it is necessary that communion with their Creator should be possible to all ; and the admission to such communion must be rested, not on their having a knowledge of astronomy, but on their having
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a human soul. In order to render this communion possible, the Deity has stooped from his throne, and has, not only in the per son of the Son, taken upon him the veil of our human flesh, but, in the person of the Father, taken upon him the veil of our human thoughts, and permitted us, by his own spoken authority, to conceive him simply and clearly as a loving father and friend; a being to be walked with and reasoned with, to be moved by our entreaties, angered by our rebellion, alienated by our coldness, pleased by our love, and glorified by our labor; and finally to be beheld in immediate and active presence in all the powers and changes of creation. This conception of God, which is the child's, is evidently the only one which can be universal, and, therefore, the only one which for us can be true. The moment that, in our pride of heart, we refuse to accept the condescension of the Al- mighty, and desire him, instead of stooping to hold our hands, to rise up before us into his glory, we, hoping that, by standing on a grain of dust or two of human knowledge higher than our fellows, we may behold the Creator as he rises, — God takes us at our word. He rises, into his own invisible and inconceivable majesty, he goes forth upon the ways which are not our ways, and retires into the thoughts which are not our thoughts; and we are left alone. And presently we say in our vain hearts, « There is no God.»
I would desire, therefore, to receive God's account of his own creation as under the ordinary limits of human knowledge and imagination it would be received by a simple-minded man; and finding that the " heavens and the earth ** are spoken of always as having something like equal relation to each other ( " Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them*^), I reject at once all idea of the term "heavens*^ being intended to signify the infinity of space inhabited by countless worlds; for between those infinite heavens and the particle of sand, which not the earth only, but the sun itself, with all the solar system, is, in relation to them, no relation of equality or comparison could ^be inferred. But I suppose the heavens to mean that part of creation which holds equal companionship with our globe; I understand the ^^ rolling of these heavens together as a scroll,** to be an equal and relative destruction with the melting of the elements in fervent heat; and I understand the making of the firmament to signify that, so far as man is con- cerned, most magnificent ordinance of the clouds; — the ordinance IX — 207
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that as the great plain of waters was formed on the face of the earth, so also a plain of waters should be stretched along the height of air, and the face of the cloud answer the face of the ocean; and that this upper and heavenly plain should be of waters, as it were, glorified in their nature, no longer quenching the fire, but now bearing fire in their own bosoms; no longer murmuring only when the winds raise them or rocks divide, but answering each other with their own voices, from pole to pole; no longer restrained by established shores, and guided through unchanging channels; but going forth at their pleasure like the armies of the angels, and choosing their encampments upon the heights of the hills; no longer hurried ^downwards forever, moving but to fall, nor lost in the lightless accumulation of the abyss, but covering the east and west with the waving of their wings, and robing the gloom of the further infinite with a vesture of diverse colors, of which the threads are purple and scarlet, and the embroideries flame.
This, I believe, is the ordinance of the firmament; and it seems to me that in the midst of the material nearness of these heavens, God means us to acknowledge his own immediate pres- ence as visiting, judging, and blessing us: ^^ The earth shook, the heavens also dropped at the presence of God. '^ ^* He doth set his bow in the clouds,*^ and thus renews, in the sound of every drooping swathe of rain, his promises of everlasting love. ^* In them he hath set a tabernacle for the sun '^ ; whose burning ball, which, without the firmament, would be seen but as an intolerable and scorching circle in blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial ministries: by the firmament of clouds the temple is built, for his presence to fill with light at noon; by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed at evening, round the sanctuary of his rest; by the mists of the firmament his implacable light is divided, and its separated fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of distance with its bloom, and the flush with which the mountains burn, as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring. And in this tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the shadows of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of his own Majesty to men, upon the throne of the firmament. As the Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of eternity, we cannot behold him; but as the Judge of the earth and the Preserver of men, those heavens are
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indeed his dwelling place : " Swear not, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by the earth, for it is his footstool!^* And all of those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about the hori- zon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories of colored robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness, of the simple words, *^ Our Father, which art in heaven. '^
Complete as edited from <^ Modern Painters * in "Frondes Agrestes.*^
PRINCIPLES OF ART
PERFECT taste is the faculty of receiving the greatest possible pleasure from those material sources which are attractive to our moral nature in its purity and perfection; but why we receive pleasure from some forms and colors and not from others is no more to be asked or answered than why we like sugar and dislike wormwood.
The temper by which right taste is formed is characteristic- ally patent. It dwells upon what is submitted to it. It does not trample upon it, — lest it should be pearls, even though it look like husks. It is good ground, penetrable, retentive; it does not send up thorns of unkind thoughts, to choke the weak seed; it is hungry and thirsty too, and drinks all the dew that falls on it. It is an honest and good heart, that shows no too ready springing before the sun be up, but fails not afterwards; it is distrustful of itself, so as to be ready to believe and to try all things, and yet so trustful of itself, that it will neither quit what it has tried, nor take anything without trying. And the pleasure which it has in things that it finds true and good is so great, that it cannot possibly be led aside by any tricks of fashion, or diseases of vanity; it cannot be cramped in its con- clusions by partialities and hypocrisies; its visions and its de- lights are too penetrating, — too living, — for any whitewashed object or shallow fountain long to endure or supply. It clasps all that it loves so hard that it crushes it if it be hollow.
It is the common consent of men that whatever branch of any pursuit ministers to the bodily comforts, and regards material uses, is ignoble, and whatever part is addressed to the mind only, is noble; and that geology does better in reclothing dry bones
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and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; botany better in displaying structure than in expressing juices; surgery better in investigat- ing organization than in setting limbs. Only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in the more exalted rano-e of science adds something also to its practical applicabili- ties; that all the great phenomena of nature, the knowledge of which is desired by the angels only, by us partly, as it reveals to further vision the being and the glory of him in whom they re- joice and we live, dispense yet such kind influences and so much of material blessing as to be joyfully felt by all inferior creatures, and to be desired by them with such single desire as the imper- fection of their nature may admit; that the strong torrents, which, in their own gladness, fill the hills with hollow thunder, and the vales with winding light, have yet their bounden charge of field to feed, and barge to bear; that the fierce flames to which the Alp owes its upheaval and the volcano its terror, temper for us the metal vein, and warm the quickening spring; and that for our excitement, I say, not our reward, — for knowledge is its own reward, — herbs have their healing, stones their preciousness, and stars their times.
Had it been ordained by the Almighty * that the highest pleasures of sight should be those of most difficult attainment, and that to arrive at them it should be necessary to accumulate gilded palaces, tower over tower, and pile artificial mountains around insinuated lakes, there would never have been a direct contradiction between the unselfish duties and the inherent de- sires of every individual. But no such contradiction exists in the system of Divine Providence; which, leaving it open to us if we will, as creatures in probation, to abuse this sense like every other, and pamper it with selfish and thoughtless vanities, as we pamper the palate with deadly meats, until the appetite of taste- ful cruelty is lost in its sickened satiety, incapable of pleasure, unless, Caligula like, it concentrates the labor of a million of lives into the sensation of an hour, leaves it also open to us, — by hum-
*Tlie reader must observe that, having been thoroughly disciplined in the evangelical schools, I supposed myself, at four-and-twenty, to know all about the ordinances of the Almighty. Nevertheless, the practical contents of the sentence are good if only they are intelligible, which I doubt.
J. R.
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ble and loving ways, to make ourselves susceptible of deep de- light, which shall not separate us from our fellows, nor require the sacrifice of any duty or occupation, but which shall bind us closer to men and to God, and be with us always, harmonized with every action, consistent with every claim, unchanging and eternal.
A great idealist never can be egotistic. The whole of his power depends upon his losing sight and feeling of his own ex- istence, and becoming a mere witness and mirror of truth, and a scribe of visions — always passive in sight, passive in utterance, lamenting continually that he cannot completely reflect nor clearly utter all he has seen — not by any means a proud state for a man to be in. But the man who has no invention is al- ways setting things in order,* and putting the world to rights, and mending, and beautifying, and pluming himself on his do- ings, as supreme in all ways.
So far as education does indeed tend to make the senses del- icate, and the perceptions accurate, and thus enables people to be pleased with quiet instead of gaudy color; and with graceful instead of coarse form; and by long acquaintance with the best things, to discern quickly what is fine from what is common — so far acquired taste is an honorable faculty, and it is true praise of anything to say, it is " in good taste. '^ But so far as this higher education has a tendency to narrow the sympathies and harden the heart, diminishing the interest of all beautiful things by familiarity, until even what is best can hardly please, and what is brightest hardly entertain — so far as it fosters pride, and leads men to found the pleasure they take in any- thing, not on the worthiness of the thing, but on the degree in which it indicates some greatness of their own (as people build marble porticoes, and inlay marble floors, not so much because they like the colors of marble, or find it pleasant to the foot, as because such porches and floors are costly, and separated in all human eyes from plain entrances of stone and timber), — so far as it leads people to prefer gracefulness of dress, manner, and aspect, to value of substance and heart, liking a well-said thing better than a true thing, and a well-trained manner better than a sincere one, and a delicately-formed face better than a good-
* I am now a comic illustration of this sentence, myself. I have not a ray of invention in all my brains; but am intensely rational and orderly, and have resolutely begun to set the world to rights.
J.R.
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natured one — and in all other ways and things setting custom and semblance above everlasting truth — so far, finally, as it in- duces a sense of inherent distinction between class and class, and causes everything to be more or less despised which has no social rank, so that the affection, pleasure, or grief of a clown are looked upon as of no interest compared with the affection and o-rief of a well-bred man — just so far in all these several ways, the feeling induced by what is called " a liberal education ^^ is utterly adverse to the understanding of noble art.
He who habituates himself in his daily life to seek for the stern facts in whatever he hears or sees will have these facts again brought before him by the involuntary imaginative power, in their noblest associations; and he who seeks for frivolities and fallacies will have frivolities and fallacies again presented to him in his dreams.*
All the histories of the Bible are yet waiting to be painted, Moses has never been painted; Elijah never; David never (ex- cept as a mere ruddy stripling); Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never. f What single example does the reader remember of painting which suggested so much as the faintest shadow of their deeds ? Strong men in armor, or aged men with flowing beards, he may remember, who, when he looked at his Louvre or Uffizii catalogue, he found were intended to stand for David or Moses. But does he suppose that, if these pictures had sug- gested to him the feeblest image of the presence of such men, he would have passed on, as he assuredly did, to the next pic- ture representing, doubtless, Diana and Actaeon, or Cupid and the Graces, or a gambling quarrel in a pothouse — with no sense of pain or surprise ? Let him meditate over the matter, and he will find ultimately that what I say is true, and that religious art at once complete and sincere never yet has existed.
*Very good. Few people have any idea how much more important the
government of the mind is than the force of its exertion. Nearly all the
world flog their horses, without ever looking where they are going.
J. R.
1 1 knew nothing, when I wrote this passage, of Luini, Filippo Lippi, or Sandro Botticelli ; and had not capacity to enter into the deeper feelings even of the men whom I was chiefly studying, — Tintoret and Fra Angelico. But the British public is at present as little acquainted with the greater Floren- tines as I was then, and the passage, for them, remains true.
J. R.
Complete as edited in « Frondes Agrestes>> from « Modern Painters.'^ The
notes are Ruskin's own.
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WORK
WISE work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work is work against God, And work done with God, which he will help, may be briefly described as *^ Putting in Order, ^^ — that is, enforcing God's law of order, spiritual and material, over men and things. The first thing you have to do, essentially; the real ^' good work *^ is, with respect to men, to enforce justice, and, with respect to things, to enforce tidiness and fruitfulness. And against these two great human deeds, justice and order, there are perpetually two great demons contending, — the devil of in- iquity, or inequity, and the devil of disorder, or of death; for death is only consummation of disorder. You have to fight these two fiends daily. So far as you don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, you work for him. You ^^ work iniquity,** and the judg- ment upon you, for all your ^* Lord, Lord's,** will be "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity." And so far as you do not re- sist the fiend of disorder, you work disorder, and you yourself do the work of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages. Death himself.
Observe, then, all wise work is mainly threefold in character. It is honest, useful, and cheerful.
It is honest. I hardly know anything more strange than that you recognize honesty in play, and you do not in work. In your lightest games, you have always some one to see what you call **fair play.** In boxing you must hit fair; in racing, start fair. Your English watchword is Fair play; your English hatred. Foul play. Did it ever strike you that you wanted another watch- word also, Fair work, and another hatred also. Foul work ? Your prize fighter has some honor in him yet; and so have the men in the ring round him: they will judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But your prize merchant gains his match by foul selling, and no one cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of the gambling room who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing business who loads scales! For ob- serve, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. What does it mat- ter whether I get short weight, adulterate substance, or dishonest fabric ? The fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two. Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you; but give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here, then, is your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen — to be true to
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yourselves, and to us who would help you. We can do nothing for you, nor you for yourselves, without honesty. Get that, you get all; without that, your suffrages, your reforms, your free-trade measures, your institutions of science, are all in vain. It is use- less to put your heads together, if you can't put your hearts to- gether. Shoulder to shoulder, right hand to right hand, among yourselves, and no wrong hand to anybody else, and you'll win the world yet.
Then, secondly, wise work is useful. No man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it comes to something: but when it is hard and comes to nothing; when all our bees' business turns to spiders', and for honeycomb we have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the next breeze — that is the cruel thing for the worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, or even nationally, whether our work is coming to anything or not ? We don't care to keep what has been nobly done; still less do we care to do nobly what others would keep; and, least of all, to make the work itself useful instead of deadly to the doer, so as to use his life indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes the greatest waste that you can commit is the waste of labor. If you went down in the morning into your dairy, and you found that your youngest child had got down before you, and that he and the cat were at play together, and that he had poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you would scold the child and be sorry the milk was wasted. But if, in- stead of wooden bowls with milk in them, there are golden bowls with human life in them, and instead of the cat to play with — the devil to play with; and you yourself the player; and instead of leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you break it in the dust yourself, and pour the human blood out on the ground for the fiend to lick up — that is no waste! What! you perhaps think, "to waste the labor of men is not to kill them. ^^ Is it not ? I should like to know how you could kill them more utterly — kill them with second deaths? It is the slightest way of killing to stop a man's breath. Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the little whistling bullets — our love messengers between nation and nation — have brought pleasant messages from us to many a man before now; orders of sweet release, and leave at last to go where he will be most welcome and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you put him to base labor, if you
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bind his thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much as to reap the poor fruit of his degradation, but gather that for yourself, and dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him, having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave everlasting (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults will hold closer in the resurrection day than the sod over the laborer's head), this you think is no waste, and no sin!
Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, as a child's work is. And now I want you to take one thought home with you, and let it stay with you.
Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, <'Thy kingdom come.*' Now, if we hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he " takes God's name in vain. ** But there's a twenty times worse way of taking his name in vain than that. It is to ask God for what we don't want. He doesn't like that sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it; such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can mock him with; the soldiers striking him on the head with the reed was nothing to that. If you do not wish for his king dom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. And, to work for it, you must know what it is: we have all prayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the living. Also, it is not to come all at once, but quietly : nobody knows how : ^< the kingdom of God cometh not with observation.*' Also, it is not to come outside of us, but in the hearts of us : " the kingdom of God is within you. '* And being within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; and though it brings all substance of good with it, it does not con- sist in that: "the kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost,*' — joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's just one condition to be first accepted. You must enter it as children, or not at all; *^ Whosoever will not receive it as a little child shall not enter therein. " And again, " Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven."
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Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but of such as children. I believe most mothers who read that text think that all heaven is to be full of babies. But that's not so. There will be children there, but the hoary head is the crown. " Length of days, and long life and peace," that is the blessing', not to die in babyhood. Children die but for their parents' sins; God means them to live, but he can't let them always; then they have their earlier place in heaven, and the little child of David, vainly prayed for; — the little child of Jeroboam, killed by its mother's step on its own threshold, — they will be there. But weary old David, and weary old Barzillai, having learned chil= dren's lessons at last, will be there too; and the one question for us all, young or old, is, Have we learned our child's lesson ? It is the character of children we want, and must gain at our peril; let us see, briefly, in what it consists.
The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. A well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, or that it knows everything. It may think its father and mother know everything, — perhaps that all grown-up people know everything; very certainly it is sure that it does not. And it is always ask- ing questions, and wanting to know more. Well, that is the first character of a good and wise man at his work. To know that he knows very little; — to perceive that there are many above him wiser than he; and to be always asking questions, wanting to learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern; it is an old saying (Plato's, but I know not if his first), and as wise as old.
Then, the second character of right childhood is to be Faith- ful. Perceiving that its father knows best what is good for it, and having found always, when it has tried its own way against his, that he was right and it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand, and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that is the true character of all good men also, as obedient workers, or soldiers under captains. They must trust their captains; — they are bound for their lives to choose none but those whom they can trust. Then, they are not always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, or wrong in what they are desired to do, is strange or wrong. They know their captain: where he leads they must follow, what he bids they must do; and without this trust and faith, without this captainship and soldiership, no great deed, no great salvation, is
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possible to man. Among all the nations it is only when this faith is attained by them that they become great; the Jew, the Greek, and the Mahometan agree at least in testifying to this. It was a deed of this absolute trust which made Abraham the father of the faithful; it was the declaration of the power of God as captain over all men, and the acceptance of a leader ap- pointed by him as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation of whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the deed of the Greeks, which has become the type of unselfish and noble soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was com- memorated, on the tomb of those who gave their lives to do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of all human utterances : ^^ O stranger, go and tell our people that we are lying here, having obeyed their words.**
Then the third character of right childhood is to be Loving and Generous. Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right kind of child — would hurt nothing, would give the best it has away, always, if you need it — does not lay plans for getting every- thing in the house for itself, and delights in helping people; you cannot please it so much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in ever so little a way.
And because of all these characters, lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for nothing — being full of love to every creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's character also. Taking no thought for the morrow; taking thought only for the duty of the day; trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow; knowing, indeed, what labor is, but not what sorrow is; and always ready for play, — beautiful play, — for lovely human play is like the play of the Sun. There's a worker for you. He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but, also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. See how he plays in the morning, with the mists below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere; — that's the Sun's play; and great human play is like his — all various — all full of light and life, and ten- der, as the dew of the morning.
So then, you have the child's character in these four things: Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. That's what you have got to be converted to. " Except ye be converted and be- come as little children** — You hear much of conversion nowa-
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days; but people always seem to think you have got to be made wretched by conversion, — to be converted to long faces. No, friends, you have got to be converted to short ones; you have to repent into childhood, to repent into delight, and delightsome- ness. You can't go into a conventicle but you'll hear plenty of talk of backsliding. Backsliding, indeed! I can tell you, on the ways most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. Slide back into the cradle, if going on is into the grave — back, I tell you; back — out of your long faces, and into your long clothes. It is among children only, and as children only, that you will find medicine for your healing and true wisdom for your teach- ing. There is poison in the counsels of the man of this world; the words they speak are all bitterness, <^ the poison of asps is under their lips,'^ but "the sucking child shall play by the hole of the asp. " There is death in the looks of men. « Their eyes are privily set against the poor >^ ; they are as the uncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But " the weaned child shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den. '^ There is death in the steps of men ; " their feet are swift to shed blood ; they have compassed us in our steps like the lion that is greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking in secret places,*^ but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with the lion, and "a little child shall lead them.'* There is death in the thoughts of men; the world is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to a close; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the Lord of heaven and earth is most to be thanked in that "he has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them unto babes.'* Yes, and there is death — infinitude of death in the principalities and pow- ers of men As far as the east is from the west, so far our sins are — not set from us, but multiplied around us: the Sun himself, think you he now " rejoices *' to run his course, when he plunges westward to the horizon, so widely red, not with clouds, but blood ? And it will be red more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and latter rain may be, there will be none of that red rain. You fortify yourselves against it in vain ; the enemy and avenger will be upon you also, unless you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, but ** out of the mouths of babes and sucklings '* that the strength is ordained, which shall "still the enemy and avenger.'*
From «The Crown of Wild 01ives.» Conclusion of the first lecture.
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SIBYLLINE LEAVES Want of Self-Knowledge
HALF the evil in this world comes from people not knowing what they do like, not deliberately setting themselves to find out what they really enjoy. All people enjoy giving away money, for instance: they don't know that, — they rather think they like keeping it; and they do keep it under this false im- pression, often to their great discomfort. Everybody likes to do good; but not one in a hundred finds this out.
The Responsibility of a Rich Man
A RICH man ought to be continually examining how he may spend his money for the advantage of others; at present, others are continually plotting how they may beguile him into spending it apparently for his own. The aspect which he pre- sents to the eyes of the world is generally that of a person holding a bag of money with a stanch grasp, and resolved to part with none of it unless he is forced, and all the people about him are plotting how they may force him; that is to say, how they may persuade him that he wants this thing or that; or how they may produce things that he will covet and buy. One man tries to persuade him that he wants perfumes; another that he wants jewelry; another that he wants sugarplums; another that he wants roses at Christmas. Anybody who can invent a new want for him is supposed to be a benefactor to society; and thus the energies of the poorer people about him are continually directed to the production of covetable, instead of serviceable things; and the rich man has the general aspect of a fool, plot- ted against by all the world. Whereas the real aspect which he ought to have is that of a person wiser than others, in- trusted with the management of a larger quantity of capital, which he administers for the profit of all, directing each man to the labor which is most healthy for him, and most serviceable for the community.
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Art and Decadence
WE don't want either the life or the decorations of the thir- teenth century back again; and the circumstances with which you must surround your workmen are those simply of happy modern English life, because the designs you have now to ask for from your workmen are such as will make modern Enghsh life beautiful. All that gorgeousness of the Middle Ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many respects it was in reality, had, nevertheless, for foundation and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of the so-called superior classes; a pride which supported itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to the destruction both of the arts themselves and the States in which they flourished.
The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto — having been supported by the selfish power of the nobless, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people — the arts, I say, thus practiced, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the States they adorned; and at the moment when, in any kingdom, you point to the triumphs of its greatest artists, you point also to the determined hour of the kingdom's decline.
Infinity
THAT which we foolishly call vastness is, rightly considered, not more wonderful, not more impressive, than that which we insolently call littleness, and the infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable, not concealed, but incompre- hensible ; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure unsearch- able sea.
The Society of Nature
To the mediaeval knight, from Scottish moor to Syrian sand, the world was one great exercise ground, or field of ad- venture; the stanch pacing of his charger penetrated the pathlessness of outmost forest, and sustained the sultriness of the most secret desert. Frequently alone, — or if accompanied,
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for the most part only by retainers of lower rank, incapable of entering into complete sympathy with any of his thoughts, — he must have been compelled often to enter into dim companion- ship with the silent nature around him, and must assuredly some- times have talked to the wayside flowers of his love, and to the fading clouds of his ambition.
All Carving and No Meat
THE divisions of a church are much like the divisions of a ser- mon; they are always right so long as they are necessary to edification, and always wrong when they are thrust upon the attention as divisions only. There may be neatness in carving when there is richness in feasting ; but I have heard many a dis- course, and seen many a church wall, in which it was all carv- ing and no meat.
Modern Greatness
THE simple fact, that we are, in some strange way, different from all the great races that have existed before us, cannot at once be received as the proof of our own greatness; nor can it be granted, without any question, that we have a legiti- mate subject of complacency in being under the influence of feel- ings, with which neither Miltiades nor the Black Prince, neither Homer nor Dante, neither Socrates nor St. Francis, could for an instant have sympathized.
Whether, however, this fact be one to excite our pride or not, it is assuredly one to excite our deepest interest. The fact it- self is certain. For nearly six thousand years the energies of man have pursued certain beaten paths, manifesting some con- stancy of feeling throughout all that period, and involving some fellowship at heart, among the various nations who by turns suc- ceeded or surpassed each other in the several aims of art or policy. So that, for these thousands of years, the whole human race might be to some extent described in general terms. Man was a creature separated from all others by his instinctive sense of an Existence superior to his own, invariably manifesting this sense of the being of a God more strongly in proportion to his
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own perfectness of mind and body; and** making enormous and self-denying efforts, in order to obtain some persuasion of the immediate presence or approval of the Divinity.
The Coronation of the Whirlwind
MUCH of the love of mystery in our romances, our poetry, our art, and, above all, in our metaphysics, must come under that definition so long ago given by the great Greek, ** speaking ingeniously concerning smoke. '^ And much of the in- stinct, which, partially developed in painting, may be now seen throughout every mode of exertion of mind, — the easily en- couraged doubt, easily excited curiosity, habitual agitation, and delight in the changing and the marvelous, as opposed to the old quiet serenity of social custom and religious faith, is again deeply defined in those few words, the "dethroning of Jupiter," the ** coronation of the whirlwind. "
Sacrifices that Make Ashamed
THE vain and haughty projects of youth for future life ; the giddy reveries of insatiable self-exaltation; the discontented dreams of what might have been or should be, instead of the thankful understanding of what is; the casting about for sources of interest in senseless fiction, instead of the real human histories of the people round us; the prolongation from age to age of romantic historical deceptions instead of sifted truth; the pleasures taken in fanciful portraits of rural or romantic life in poetry and on the stage, without the smallest effort to rescue the living rural population of the world from its ignorance or misery; the excite- ment of the feelings by labored imagination of spirits, fairies, monsters, and demons, issuing in total blindness of heart and sight to the true presences of beneficent or destructive spiritual powers around us; in fine, the constant abandonment of all the straightforward paths of sense and duty, for fear of losing some of the enticement of ghostly joys, or trampling somewhat " sopra lor vanita, che par perso?ta " ; all these various forms of false idealism have so entangled the modern mind, often called, I suppose ironically, practical, that truly I believe there never yet was idolatry of stock or staff so utterly unholy as this our idol-
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atry of shadows; nor can I think that, of those who burnt incense under oaks, and poplars, and elms, because ^^ the shadow thereof was good, ^* it could in any wise be more justly or sternly declared than of us — " The wind hath bound them up in her wing, and they shall be ashamed because of their sacrifices.*^
Oppression under the Sun
You cannot but have noticed how often in those parts of the Bible which are likely to be oftenest opened when people look for guidance, comfort, or help in the aflfairs of daily life, namely, the Psalms and Proverbs, mention is made of the guilt attaching to the Oppression of the poor. Observe: not the neg- lect of them, but the Oppression of them; the word is as fre- quent as it is strange. You can hardly open either of those books, but somewhere in their pages you will find a description of the wicked man's attempts against the poor, such as, " He doth ravish the poor when he getteth him into his net."
** His mouth is full of deceit and fraud; in the secret places doth he murder the innocent.**
" They are corrupt, and speak wickedly concerning oppres- sion. **
" Their poison is like the poison of a serpent. Ye weigh the violence of your hands in the earth.*'
Yes : ^^ Ye weigh the violence of your hands ** ; weigh these words as well. The last things we usually think of weighing are Bible words. We like to dream and dispute over them, but to weigh them and see what their true contents are — anything but that' Yet weigh them; for I have purposely taken these verses, perhaps more strikingly to you read in this connection, than separately in their places out of the Psalms, because, for all people belonging to the Established Church of this country these Psalms are appointed lessons, portioned out to them by their clergy to be read once through every month. Presumably, there- fore, whatever portions of Scripture we may pass by or forget, these, at all events, must be brought continually to our observ- ance as useful for the direction of daily life. Now, do we ever ask ourselves what the real meaning of these passages may be, and who these wicked people are, who are ^' murdering the innocent ** ? You know it is rather singular language this ! — rather strong IX — 208
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language, we might, perhaps, call it — hearing it for the first time. Murder! and murder of innocent people! — nay, even a sort of cannibalism. Eating people, — yes, and God's people, too — eating my people as if they were bread! swords drawn, bows bent, poison of serpents mixed! violence of hands weighed, meas- ured, and trafficked with as so much coin ! where is all this going on ? Do you suppose it was only going on in the time of David, and that nobody but Jews ever murder the poor ? If so, it would surely be wiser not to mutter and mumble for our daily lessons what does not concern us; but if there be any chance that it may concern us, and if this description, in the Psalms, of human guilt is at all generally applicable, as the descriptions in the Psalms of human sorrow are, may it not be advisable to know wherein this guilt is being committed round about us, or by our- selves ? And when we take the words of the Bible into our mouths in a congregational way, to be sure whether we mean sincerely to chant a piece of melodious poetry relating to other people (we know not exactly whom) — or to assert our belief in facts bearing somewhat astringently on ourselves and our daily business. And if you make up your minds to do this no longer, and take pains to examine into the matter, you will find that these strange words, occurring as they do, not in a few places only, but almost in every alternate Psalm, and every alternate chapter of Proverbs or Prophecy, with tremendous reiteration, were not written for one nation or one time only, but for all nations and languages, for all places and all centuries; and it is as true of the wicked man now as ever it was of Nabal or Dives, that "his eyes are set against the poor.*^
Mercantile Panics
No MERCHANT dcscrviug the name ought to be more liable to a " panic ** than a soldier should ; for his name should never be on more paper than he could at any instant meet the call of, happen what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same time how difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Some- thing of the same temper which makes the English soldier do always all that is possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influence with that of mere avarice in tempting the
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English merchant into risks which he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot sustain; and the same passion for adventure which our travelers gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths and cloud-encompassed precipices surrounds with a romantic fascination the glittering of a hollow investment, and gilds the clouds that curl round gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more serious feeling frequently mingles in the motley temptation; and men apply themselves to the task of growing rich as to a labor of providential appointment, from which they cannot pause without culpability, nor retire without dishonor. Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music, and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety: the merchant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expi- ating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. But, with every allowance that can be made for these conscientious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by far the greater number of the transactions which lead to these times of commercial embarrassment may be ranged simply under two great heads, — gambling and stealing; and both of these in their most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive that a well-educated man who steals a hundred thousand pounds, in- volving the entire means of subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, on the whole, as severe a punishment as an ill-educated man who steals a purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry.
Immortality of the Bible
You are not philosophers of the kind who suppose that the Bible is a superannuated book; neither are you of those who think the Bible is dishonored by being referred to for judgment in small matters. The very divinity of the Book seems to me, on the contrary, to justify us in referring every- thing to it, with respect to which any conclusion can be gathered from its pages. Assuming, then, that the Bible is neither super-
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oo
annuated now, nor ever likely to be so/it will follow that the illustrations which the Bible employs are likely to be clear and intelligible illustrations to the end of time. I do not mean that everything spoken of in the Bible histories must continue to endure for all time, but that the things which the Bible uses for illustration of eternal truths are likely to remain eternally intelligible illustrations.
Dissectors and Dreamers
ALL experience goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most useful members of society are the dissec- tors, not the dreamers. It is not that they love nature or beauty less, but that they love result, effect, and progress more; and when we glance broadly along the starry crowd of benefac- tors to the human race, and guides of human thought, we shall find that this dreaming love of natural beauty — or at least its expression — has been more or less checked by them all, and subordinated either to hard work or watching of human nature.
The Use of Beauty
BEAUTY has been appointed by the Deity to be one of the ele- ments by which the human soul is continually sustained; it is therefore to be found more or less in all natural objects, but in order that we may not satiate ourselves with it, and weary of it, it is rarely granted to us in its utmost degrees. When we see it in those utmost degrees, we are attracted to it strongly, and remember it long, as in the case of singularly beautiful scenery, or a beautiful countenance. On the other hand, absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the na- ture of virtue and of life.
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Respectability of Art
I BELIEVE that there is no chance of art truly flourishing in any- country, until you make it a simple and plain business, pro- viding its masters with an easy competence, but rarely with anything more. And I say this, not because I despise the great painter, but because I honor him; and I should no more think of adding to his respectability or happiness by giving him riches, than, if Shakespeare or Milton were alive, I should think we added to their respectability, or were likely to get better work from them, by making them millionaires.
Opinions
IN MANY matters of opinion, our first and last coincide, though on different grounds; it is the middle stage which is furthest from the truth. Childhood often holds a truth with its feeble fingers, which the grasp of manhood cannot retain,— which it is the pride of utmost age to recover.
The Necessity of Work
BY FAR the greater part of the suffering and crime which exist at this moment in civilized Europe arises simply from people not understanding this truism, — not knowing that produce or wealth is eternally connected by the laws of heaven and earth with resolute labor ; but hoping in some way to cheat or abrogate this everlasting law of life, and to feed where they have not fur- rowed, and be warm where they have not woven.
I repeat^ nearly all our misery and crime result from this one misapprehension- The law of nature is, that a certain quantity of work is necessary to produce a certain quantity of good, of any kind whatever. If you want knowledge, you must toil for it; if food, you must toil for it; and if pleasure, you must toil for it, But men do not acknowledge this law, or strive to evade it, hoping to get their knowledge, and food, and pleasure for nothing, and in this effort they either fail of getting them, and remain ignorant and miserable, or they obtain them by making ether men work for their benefit; and then they are tyrants and robbers. Yes, and worse than robbers, I am not one who in
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the least doubts or disputes the progress of this century in many things useful to mankind; but it seems to me a very dark sign respecting us that we look with so much indifference upon dis- honesty and cruelty in the pursuit of wealth. In the dream of Nebuchadnezzar it was only the feet that were part of iron and part of clay; but many of us are now getting so cruel in our avarice, that it seems as if, in us, the heart were part of iron, and part of clay.
On War
WHEREVER there is war, there must be injustice on one side or the other, or on both. There have been wars which were little more than trials of strength between friendly nations, and in which the injustice was not to each other, but to the God who gave them life. But in a malignant war of these present ages there is injustice of ignobler kind, at once to God and man, which must be stemmed for both their sakes.
Base Criticism
IT MAY perhaps be said that I attach too much importance to the evil of base criticism; but those who think so have never rightly understood its scope, nor the reach of that stern saying of Johnson's (Idler, No. 3, April 29th, 1758): "Little does he (who assumes the character of a critic) think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand. >^ And truly not in this kind only, but in all things whatsoever, there is not. to my mind, a more woeful or wonder- ful matter of thought than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take twenty wise men to help it forward a few inches, and a single fool can stop it: there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multitude of counselors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine, and the sword are given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on his cap, passing bells; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and his bauble, a sexton's spade.
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Education
THE most helpless and sacred work which can at present be done for humanity is to teach people (chiefly by example, as all best teaching must be done) not how to ** better them- selves, * but how to ^' satisfy themselves. '^ It is the curse of every evil nature and creature to eat and not be satisfied. The words of blessing are, that they shall eat and be satisfied; and as there is only one kind of water which quenches all thirst, so there is only one kind of bread which satisfies all hunger, — the bread of justice or righteousness, which, hungering after, men shall always be filled, that being the bread of heaven; but hungering after the bread of wages of unrighteousness shall not be filled, that being the bread of Sodom. And in order to teach men how to be satisfied, it is necessary fully to understand the art of joy and humble life — this, at present, of all arts or sciences, being the one most needing study. Humble life, that is to say, proposing to itself no future exaltation, but only a sweet continuance; not excluding the idea of foresight, but wholly of fore-sorrow, and taking no troublous thought for coming days; so also not ex- cluding the idea of providence or provision, but wholly of ac- cumulation ; — the life of domestic affection and domestic peace, full of sensitiveness to all elements of costless and kind pleasure; — therefore, chiefly to the loveliness of the natural world.
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CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
(I 804-1 869)
^HARLES AuGUSTiN Sainte-Beuve, one of the most admired crit- ical essayists of France, was born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, December 23d, 1804. He began life as a physician, but he had been carefully educated in general literature, and his tastes drew him away from his profession. He began writing critical es- says, chiefly book reviews, which soon brought him reputation. He became a contributor to La Revue de Paris, La Revue des Deux Mondes, and other leading periodicals. He published several vol- umes of poems between 1829 and 1837, and in 1832 "Volupte,*^ a novel. His <* Literary Portraits '^ and " Portraits of Women " appeared between 1832 and 1844, and his << Causeries du Lundi* from 1851 to 1857. He was elected to the French Academy in 1845, and to the Senate in 1865. He interested himself in education as well as in lit- erature and politics. Besides lecturing in the smaller French cities, he taught in the College de France as professor of Latin Poetry, and from 1857 to 1 86 1 was a lecturer in the Ecole Normale. He died at Paris, October 13th, 1869.
A TYPICAL MAN OF THE WORLD
EACH epoch has produced its treatise intended for the forma- tion of the polite man, the man of the world, the courtier, when men only lived for courts, and the accomplished gen- tleman. In these various treatises on knowledge of life and politeness, if opened after a lapse of ages, we at once see portions which are as antiquated as the cut and fashion of our fore- fathers' coats; the model has evidently changed. But looking into it carefully as a whole, if the book has been written by a sensible man with a true knowledge of mankind, we shall still find profit in studying those models which have been placed be- fore preceding generations. The letters that Lord Chesterfield wrote to his son, and which contain a whole school of savoir vivre and worldly science, are interesting in this particular, that there has been no idea of forming a model for imitation, but
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they are simply intended to bring up a pupil in the closest in- timacy. They are confidential letters, which, suddenly produced in the light of day, have betrayed all the secrets and ingenious artifices of paternal solicitude. If, in reading them nowadays, we are struck with the excessive importance attached to acciden- tal and promiscuous circumstances, with pure details of costume, we are not less struck with the durable part, with that which be- longs to human observation in all ages; and this last part is much more considerable than at a superficial glance would be imagined. In applying himself to the formation of his son as a polite man in society, Lord Chesterfield has not given us a treatise on duty as Cicero has; but he has left letters which, by their mixture of justness and lightness, by certain lightsome airs which insensibly mingle with the serious graces, preserve the medium be- tween the ^^ Memoires of the Chevalier de Grammont *^ and ^* Tele- maque. *^
Before going into detail, it will be necessary to know a little about Lord Chesterfield, one of the most brilliant English wits of his time, and one most closely allied to France. Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield, was born in London, on the twenty- second of September, 1694, the same year as Voltaire. The descend- ant of an illustrious race, he knew the value of birth, and wished to sustain its honor; nevertheless, it was difficult for him not to laugh at genealogical pretensions when carried too far. To keep him- self from this folly, he had placed amongst the portraits of his ancestors two old figures of a man and woman; beneath one was written, " Adam de Stanhope, ^^ and beneath the other, ^' Eve de Stanhope. ^^ Thus, while upholding the honor of race, he put his veto upon chimerical vanities arising from it.
His father paid no attention whatever to his education; he was placed under the care of his grandmother. Lady Halifax. From a very early age he manifested a desire to excel in every- thing, a desire which later he did his utmost to excite in the breast of his son, and which for good or ill is the principle of all that is great. Like himself in his early youth, he was with- out guidance, he was deceived more than once in the objects of his emulation, and followed some ridiculous chimera. He con- fesses that at one period of inexperience he gave himself up to wine, and other excesses, for which he was not at all inclined by nature, but it flattered his vanity to hear himself cited as a man of pleasure. In this way he plunged into play (which he
332 2 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
considered a necessary ingredient in the composition of a young- man of fashion), at first without passion, but afterwards without being able to withdraw himself from it, and by that means com- promised his fortune for years. ** Take warning by my conduct, ** said he to his son, " choose your own pleasures, and do not let others choose them for you.^^
This desire to excel and to distinguish himself did not always lead him astray, and he often applied it rightly; his first studies were the best. Placed at the University of Cambridge, he studied all that was there taught, civil law and philosophy; he attended the mathematical classes of Saunderson, the blind pro- fessor. He read Greek fluently, and sent accounts of his progress in French to his old tutor, M. Jouneau, a French clergyman and refugee. Lord Chesterfield had, when a child, learned our tongue from a Norman nurse who attended him. When he visited Paris the last time, in 1744, M. de Fontenelle having remarked a slight Norman accent in his pronunciation, spoke of it to him, and asked him if he had not first been taught French by a person from Normandy, — which turned out to be the case.
After two years of university life, he made his continental tour, according to the custom of young Englishmen. He visited Holland, Italy, and France. He wrote from Paris to M. Jouneau, on the seventh of December, 1714, as follows: —
^^ I shall not tell you what I think of the French, because I am being often taken for a Frenchman, and more than one of them has paid me the highest possible compliment, by saying : * Monsieur, you are quite one of ourselves.* I shall only tell you that I am impu- dent; that I talk a great deal very loudly, and with an air of author- ity; that I sing; that I dance in my walk; and, finally, that I spend immense sums in powder, feathers, white gloves, etc.*'
In this extract one recognizes the mocking, satirical, and slightly insolent wit, who makes his mark for the first time at the expense of the French ; he will do justice later to our serious qualities. In his letters to his son, he has pictured himself the first day he made his entree into good society, still covered with the rust of Cambridge, shamefaced, embarrassed, silent; and, finally, forcing his courage with both hands to say to a beauti- ful woman near him, ^< Madame, don't you find it very warm to-day ?» But Lord Chesterfield told his son that to encourage him, and to show what it is necessary to pass through. He
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makes himself an example to enbolden him, and to draw the boy- more readily to him. I shall be careful not to take his word for this anecdote. If he was for a moment embarrassed in the world, the moment was assuredly very short, nor was he much concerned with it.
Immediately on the death of Queen Anne, Chesterfield hailed the accession of the House of Hanover, of which he became an avowed champion. He had at first a seat in the House of Com- mons, and made his debut there with fair credit. But a circum- stance, in appearance frivolous, kept him, it is said, in check, and in some measure paralyzed his eloquence. One of the members of the House, who was distinguished by no talent of a superior order, had that of imitating and counterfeiting to perfection the orators to whom he replied. Chesterfield was afraid of ridicule; it was one of his weaknesses, and he kept silence more than he otherwise would have done for fear of giving occasion for the ex- ercise of his colleague and opponent's talent. He inherited a large property on the death of his father, and was raised to the Upper House, which was, perhaps, a better setting for the grace, finish, and urbanity of his eloquence. He found no comparison between the two scenes with regard to the importance of the debates and the political influence to be acquired.
" It is surprising, *^ he said later of Pitt, at the time when that great orator consented to enter the Upper House as Lord Chat- ham, " it is surprising that a man in the plenitude of his power, at the very moment when his ambition has obtained the most complete triumph, should leave the House which procured him that power, and which alone could ensure its maintenance, to re- tire into that Hospital for Incurables, the House of Lords.'*
It is not my intention here to estimate the political career of Lord Chesterfield. Nevertheless, if I hazarded a judgment upon it as a whole, I should say that his ambition was never wholly satisfied, and that the brilliant distinctions with which his public life was filled, covered, at bottom, many lost desires and the de- cay of many hopes. Twice, in the two decisive circumstances of his political life, he failed. Young, and in the first heat of ambi tion, he took an early opportunity of staking his odds on the side of the heir presumptive to the throne, who became George II. He was one of those who, at the accession of that prince, counted most surely upon his favor, and upon enjoying a share of power. But this clever man, wishing to turn himself to the rising sun,
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knew not how to accomplish it with perfect justice; he had played court to the prince's mistress, believing in her destined influence, and he had neglected the legitimate wife, the future queen, who alone had the real power. Queen Caroline never pardoned him, and this was the first check in the political fortune of Lord Ches- terfield, then thirty-three years old, and in the full flush of hope. He was in too great a hurry and took the wrong road. Robert Walpole, less active, and with less apparent skill, took his meas- ures and made his calculations better.
Thrown with eclat into the opposition, especially from 1732, the time when he had to cease his court duties. Lord Chesterfield worked with all his might for ten years for the downfall of Wal- pole, which did not take place until 1742. But even then he inherited none of his power, and he remained out of the new ministries. When two years afterwards, in 1744, he became one of the administration, first as embassador to The Hague and Viceroy of Ireland, then as Secretary of State and member of the Cabinet (1746-48), the honor was more nominal than real. In a word, Lord Chesterfield, at all times a noted politician in his own country, whether as one of the chiefs of the opposition, or as a clever diplomatist, was never a powerful, or even a very in- fluential minister.
In politics he certainly possessed that far-sightedness and those glimpses into the future which belong to very wide intel- ligence, but he possessed those qualities to a much greater de- gree than the patient perseverance and constant practical firmness that are so necessary to the members of a government. It may truly be said of him, as of Rochefoucauld, that politics served to make an accomplished moralist of the imperfect man of action.
In 1744, when he was only fifty years of age, his political ambition seemed, in part, to have died out, and the indifferent state of his health left him to choose a private life. And then the object of his secret ideal and his real ambition we know now. Before his marriage he had, about the year 1732, by a French lady (Mdme. du Bouchet) whom he met in Holland, a natural son, to whom he was tenderly attached. He wrote to this son, in all sincerity, " From the first day of your life, the dearest object of mine has been to make you as perfect as the weakness of human nature will allow. '^ Towards the education of this son all his wishes, all his affectionate and worldly predi- lections tended. And whether Viceroy of Ireland or Secretary of
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 3325
State in London, he found time to write long letters full of min- ute details to him to instruct him in small matters and to per- fect him in mind and manner.
The Chesterfield, then, that we love especially to study is the man of wit and experience, who knew all the affairs and passed through all phases of political and public life only to find out its smallest resources, and to tell us the last mot; he who from his youth was the friend of Pope and Bolingbroke, the introducer into England of Montesquieu and Voltaire, the correspondent of Fontenelle and Mdme. de Teucin, he whom the Academy of In- scriptions placed among its members, who united the wit of the two nations, and who, in more than one intellectual essay, but particularly in his letters to his son, shows himself to us as a moralist as amiable as he is consummate, and one of the masters of life. It is the Rochefoucauld of England of whom we speak. Montesquieu, after the publication of L' Esprit des Lois, wrote to the Abbe de Guasco, who was then in England — ^^ Tell my Lord Chesterfield that nothing is so flattering to me as his ap- probation; but that, though he is reading my work for the third time, he will only be in a better position to point out to me what wants correcting and rectifying in it; nothing could be more instructive to me than his observations and his critique." It was Chesterfield who, speaking to Montesquieu one day of the readiness of the French for revolutions, and their impatience at slow reforms, spoke this sentence, which is a resume of our whole history : <^ You French know how to make barricades, but you never raise barriers."
Lord Chesterfield certainly appreciated Voltaire; he remarked, h propos of the "^ Si^cle de Louis XIV. , " ^* Lord Bolingbroke had taught me how to read history, Voltaire teaches me how it should be written." But, at the same time, with that practical sense which rarely abandons men of wit on the other side of the straits, he felt the imprudences of Voltaire, and disapproved of them. When he was old, and living in retirement, he wrote to a French lady on the subject thus: —
<< Your good authors are my principal resource : Voltaire especially charms me, with the exception of his impiety, with which he cannot help seasoning all that he writes, and which he would do better care- fully to suppress, for one ought not to disturb established order. < Let every one think as he will, or rather as he can, but let him not com- municate his ideas if they are of a nature to trouble the peace of society. > "
^^26 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
What he said then, in 1768, Chesterfield had already said more than twenty years previously, writing to the younger Cr^billon, a sino-ular correspondent and a singular confidant in point of mo- rality. Voltaire was under consideration, on account of his trag- edy of ** Mahomet, '^ and the daring ideas it contains : —
"What I do not pardon him for, and that which is not de- serving of pardon in him,^* wrote Chesterfield to Crebillon, ^Ms his desire to propagate a doctrine as pernicious to domestic so- ciety as contrary to the common religion of all countries. I strongly doubt whether it is permissible for a man to write against the worship and belief of his country, even if he be fully persuaded of its error, on account of the trouble and disorder it might cause; but I am sure that it is in no wise allowable to attack the foundations of true morality, and to break necessary bonds which are already too weak to keep men in the path of duty. »
Chesterfield, in speaking thus, was not mistaken as to the great inconsistency of Voltaire. His inconsistency, in a few words, was this: Voltaire, who looked upon men as fools or children, and who could never laugh at them enough, at the same time put loaded firearms into their hands, without troubling himself as to the use they would put them to.
Lord Chesterfield himself, in the eyes of the Puritans of his country, has been accused, I should state here, of a breach of morality in the letters addressed to his son. The strict Johnson, who was not impartial on the subject, and who thought he had cause of complaint against Chesterfield, said, when the letters were published, that " they taught the morals of a courtesan, and the manners of a dancing master."
Such a judgment is supremely unjust, and if Cnesterfield, in particular instances, insists upon graces of manner at any price, it is because he has already provided for the more solid parts of education, and because his pupil is not in the least danger of sin- ning on the side which makes man respectable, but rather on that which renders him agreeable. Although more than one passage in these letters may seem very strange, coming from a father to a son, the whole is animated with a true spirit of tenderness and wasdom. If Horace had had a son, I imagine he would not have written to him very differently.
The letters begin with the A B C of education and instruc- tion. Chesterfield teaches his son in French the rudiments of mythology and history. I do not regret the publication of these
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 3327
first letters. He lets slip some very excellent advice in those early pages. The little Stanhope is no more than eight years old when his father suits a little rhetoric to his juvenile under- standing, and tries to show him how to use good language, and to express himself well. He especially recommends to him at- tention in all that he does, and he gives the word its full value. It is attention alone, he says, which fixes objects in the memory. " There is no surer mark of a mean and meagre intellect in the world than inattention. All that is worth the trouble of doing at all deserves to be done well, and nothing can be well done without attention.'* This precept he incessantly repeats, and varies the application of it as his pupil grows, and is in a con- dition to comprehend it to its fullest extent. Whether pleasure or study, everything one does must be well done, done entirely and at its proper time, without allowing any distraction to inter- vene. " When you read Horace pay attention to the accuracy of his thoughts, to the elegance of his diction, and to the beauty of his poetry, and do not think of the * De Homine et Give * of Puffendorf; and when you read Puffendorf do not think of Mdme. de St. Germain; nor of Puffendorf when you speak to Mdme. de St. Germain.'* But this strong and easy subjugation of the order of thought to the will only belongs to great or very good intellects. M. Royer-Collard used to say that *Svhat was most wanting in our day was respect in the moral disposition, and attention in the intellectual." Lord Chesterfield, in a less grave manner, might have said the same thing. He was not long in finding out what was wanting in this child whom he wished to bring up; whose bringing up was, indeed, the end and aim of his life. ^^ On sounding your character to its very depths,** he said to him, " I have not, thank God, discovered any vice of heart or weakness of head so far; but I have discovered idleness, inattention, and indifference, defects which are only pardonable in the aged, who, in the decline of life, when health and spirits give way, have a sort of right to that kind of tran- quillity. But a young man ought to be ambitious to shine and excel.** And it is precisely this sacred fire, this lightning, that makes the Achilles, the Alexanders, and the Caesars to be the first in every undertaking, this motto of noble hearts and of em- inent men of all kinds, that nature had primarily neglected to place in the honest but thoroughly mediocre soul of the younger Stanhope: ^* You appear to want,** said his father, "that vivida
--28 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
vis iDiiini which excites the majority of young men to please, to strive, and to outdo others.^* "When I was your age,*^ he says ao-ain " I should have been ashamed for another to know his lesson better, or to have been before me in a game, and I should have had no rest till I had regained the advantage. " All this little course of education by letters offers a sort of continuous dramatic interest; we follow the efforts of a fine distinguished energetic nature as Lord Chesterfield's was, engaged in a contest with a disposition honest but indolent, with an easy and dilatory temperament, from which it would, at any expense, form a mas- terpiece accomplished, amiable, and original, and with which it only succeeded in making a sort of estimable copy. What sus- tains and almost touches the reader in this strife, where so much art is used, and where the inevitable counsel is the same be- neath all metamorphoses, is the true fatherly affection which an- imates and inspires the delicate and excellent master, as patient as he is full of vigor, lavish in resources and skill, never dis- couraged, untiring in sowing elegances and graces on this infer- tile soil. Not that this son, the object of so much culture and zeal, was in any way unworthy of his father. It has been pre- tended that there could be no one duller or more sullen than he was, and Johnson is quoted in support of the statement. There are caricatures which surpass the truth. It appears from the best authorities, that Mr. Stanhope, without being a model of grace, had the air of a man who had been well brought up, and was polite and agreeable. But do you not think that that is the most grievous part of all ? It would have been better worth while, almost, to have totally failed, and to have only succeeded in making an original in the inverse sense, rather than with so much care and expense to have produced nothing more than an ordinary and insignificant man of the world, one of those about whom it suffices to say, there is nothing to be said of them; he had cause to be truly grieved and pity himself for his work, if he were not a father.
Lord Chesterfield had early thought of France to polish his son, and to give him that courtesy which cannot be acquired late in life. In private letters written to a lady at Paris, whom I believe to be Mdme. de Monconseil, we see that he had thought of sending him to France from his childhood.
** I have a boy,'^ he wrote to this friend, "who is now thirteen years old: I freely confess to you that he is not legitimate; but
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 3329
his mother was well bom and was kinder to me than I deserved. As to the boy, perhaps it is partiality, but I think him amiable: he has a pretty face; he has much sprightliness, and I think in- telligence, for his age. He speaks French perfectly; he knows a good deal of Latin and Greek, and he has ancient and modem history at his fingers' ends. He is at school at present, but as they never dream here of forming the manners of young people, and they are almost all foolish, awkward, and unpolished, in short such as you see them when they come to Paris at the age of twenty or twenty-one, I do not wish my boy to remain here to acquire such bad habits; for this reason, when he is fourteen I think of sending him to Paris. As I love the child dearly, and have set myself to make something good of him, as I believe he has the stuff in him, my idea is to unite in him what has never been found in one person before — I mean the best qualities of the two nations.'^
And he enters into the details of his plan, and the means he thinks of using; a learned Englishman every morning, a French teacher after dinner, but above all the help of the fashionable world and good society. The war which broke out between France and England postponed this plan, and the young man did not make his debut in Paris until 1751, when he was nineteen years old, and had finished his tour through Switzerland, Ger- many, and Italy.
Everything has been arranged by the most attentive of fathers for his success and well-being upon this novel scene. The young man is placed at the Academy with M. de la Gu6rini^re; the morning he devotes to study, and the rest of the time is to be consecrated to the world. " Pleasure is now the last branch of your education,'* this indulgent father writes; **it will soften and polish your manners, it will incite you to seek and finally to ac- quire graces.* Upon this last point he is exacting, and shows no quarter. Graces! he returns continually to them, for without them all effort is vain. ^* If they are not natural to you, cul- tivate them,** he cries. He indeed speaks confidently; as if to cultivate graces, it is not necessary to have them already!
Three ladies, friends of his father, are especially charged to watch over and guide the young man at his d6but; they are his gouvernantes; Mdme. de Monconseil, Lady Hervey, and Mdme. du Bocage. But these introducers appear essential for the first time only; the young man must afterwards depend upon himself, and IX — 209
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choose some charming and more familiar guide. Upon this del- icate subject of woman, Lord Chesterfield breaks the ice : *^ I shall not talk to you on this subject like a theologian, or a mor- alist, or a father," he says: ** I set aside my age, and only take yours into consideration. I wish to speak to you as one man of pleasure would to another if he has taste and spirit.*^ And he expresses himself in consequence, stimulating the young man as much as possible towards polite arrangements and delicate pleas- ures, to draw him from common and coarse habits. His princi- ple is that "a polite arrangement becomes a gallant man." All his morality on this point is summed up in a line of Voltaire : —
**y/ 7i' est jamais de fnal en bonne cojnpagnie?'*
It is at these sentences more especially that the modesty of the grave Johnson is put to the blush; ours is content to smile at them.
The serious and frivolous are perpetually mingling in these letters. Marcel, the dancing master, is very often recommended; Montesquieu no less. The Abbe de Guasco, a sort of toady to Mon- tesquieu, is a useful personage for introductions. " Between you and me, " writes Chesterfield, ** he has more knowledge than gen- ius; but a clever man knows how to make use of everything, and every man is good for something. As to the President of Montesquieu, he is in all respects a precious acquaintance; he has genius, with the most extensive reading in the world. Drink of this fountain as much as possible."
Of authors, those whom Chesterfield particularly recommends at this time, and those whose names occur most frequently in his counsels, are La Rochefoucauld and La Bruy^re. " If you read some of La Rochefoucauld's mi xims in the morning, con- sider them, examine them well, and compare them with the originals you meet in the evening. Read La Bruyfere in the morning, and see in the evening if his portraits are correct." But these guides, excellent as they are, have no other use by themselves than that of a map. Without personal observation and experience, they would be useless, and would even be con- ducive to error, as a map might be if one thought to get from it a complete knowledge of towns and provinces. Better read one man than ten books. *' The world is a country that no one has ever known by means of descriptions; each of us must trav- erse it in person to be thoroughly initiated into its ways."
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Here are some precepts or remarks which are worthy of those masters of human morality : —
** The most essential of all knowledge, I mean the knowledge of the world, is never acquired without great attention, and I know a great many aged persons who, after having had an ex- tensive acquaintance, are still mere children in the knowledge of the world.'*
^* Human nature is the same all over the world ; but its opera- tions are so varied by education and custom that we ought to see it in all its aspects to get an intimate knowledge of it.'*
^< Almost all men are born with every passion to some extent, but there is hardly a man who has not a dominant passion to which the others are subordinate. Discover this governing pas- sion in every individual ; search into the recesses of his heart, and observe the different effects of the same passion in different people. And when you have found the master passion of a man, remember never to trust to him where that passion is concerned. '*
*^If you wish particularly to gain the good graces and affec- tion of certain people, men or women, try to discover their most striking merit, if they have one, and their dominant weak- ness, for every one has his own, then do justice to the one, and a little more than justice to the other.*'
"Women, in general, have only one object, which is their beauty, upon which subject hardly any flattery can be too gross to please them."
" The flattery which is most pleasing to really beautiful or decidedly ugly women, is that which is addressed to the intellect. "
On the subject of women, again, if he seems disdainful now and then, he makes reparation elsewhere; and, above all, what- ever he thinks of them, he never allows his son to slander them too much. <*You appear to think that from the days of Eve to the present time they have done much harm: as regards that lady I agree with you; but from her time history teaches you that men have done more harm in the world than women; and to speak truly, I would warn you not to trust either sex more than is absolutely necessary. But what I particularly advise you is this; never to attack whole bodies, whatever they may be.'*
** Individuals occasionally forgive, but bodies and societies never do."
In general, Chesterfield counsels his son to be circumspect and to preserve a sort of prudent neutrality, even in the case of
3332 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
the knaves and fools with which the world abounds. *^ After their friendship there is nothing more dangerous than to have them for enemies. '* It is not the morality of Cato nor of Zeno, but that of Alcibiades, of Aristippus, or Atticus.
Upon religion he shall speak, in reply to some trenchant opinions that his son had expressed : " The reason of every man is and ought to be his guide; and I should have as much right to expect every man to be of my height and temperament as to wish that he should reason precisely as I do.'*
In everything he is of the opinion that the good and the best should be known and loved, but that it is not necessary to make oneself a champion for or against everything. One must know even in literature how to tolerate the weaknesses of others: ** Let them enjoy quietly their errors both in taste and religion." Oh! how far from such wisdom is the bitter trade of criticism, as we do it!
He does not, however, advise lying; he is precise in this par- ticular. His precept always runs thus, do not tell all, but never tell a lie. ^* I have always observed,** he frequently repeats, *^ that the greatest fools are the greatest liars. For my part, I judge of the truth of a man by the extent of his intellect."
We see how easily he mixes the useful and the agreeable. He is perpetually demanding from the intellect something reso- lute and subtle, sweetness in the manner, energy at bottom.
Lord Chesterfield thoroughly appreciated the serious state of France and the dread events that the eighteenth century brought to light. According to him, Duclos, in his "Reflections," is right when he says that " a germ of reason is beginning to ap- pear in France. " " What I can confidently predict, " adds Ches- terfield, ** is that before the end of this century the trades of king and priest will have lost half their power."
Our revolution has been clearly predicted by him since 1750.
He warned his son from the beginning against the idea that the French are entirely frivolous. "The cold inhabitants of the North look upon the French as a frivolous people who sing and whistle and dance perpetually; this is very far from being the truth, though the army of fops seems to justify it. But these fops, ripened by age and experience, often turn into very able men." The ideal, according to him, would be to unite the merits of the two nations; but in this mixture he still seems to lean towards France : " I have said many times, and I really think.
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 3333
that a Frenchman who joins to a good foundation of virtue, learning, and good sense, the manners and politeness of his coun- try, has attained the perfection of human nature." He unites sufficiently well in himself the advantages of the two nations, with one characteristic which belongs exclusively to his race, there is imagination even in his wit. Hamilton himself has this distinctive characteristic, and introduces it into French wit. Bacon, the great moralist, is almost a poet by expression, one cannot say so much of Lord Chesterfield; nevertheless, he has more imagination in his sallies and in the expression of his wit than one meets with in St. Evremond and our acute moralists in general. He resembles his friend Montesquieu in this respect.
If in the letters to his son we can, without being severe, lay hold of some cases of slightly damaged morality, we should have to point out, by way of compensation, some very serious and really admirable passages, where he speaks of the Cardinal de Retz, of Mazarin, of Bolingbroke, of Marlborough, and of many others. It is a rich book. One cannot read a page without find- ing some happy observation worthy of being remembered.
Lord Chesterfield intended this beloved son for a diplomatic life; he at first found some difficulties in the way on account of his illegitimacy. To cut short these objections, he sent his son to parliament; it was the surest method of conquering the scru- ples of the court. Mr. Stanhope, in his maiden speech, hesitated a moment, and was obliged to have recourse to notes. He did not make a second attempt at speaking in public. It appears that he succeeded better in diplomacy, in those second-rate places where solid merit is sufficient. He filled the post of embassador extraordinary to the court of Dresden. But his health, always delicate, failed before he was old, and his father had the misfor- tune to see him die before him when he was scarcely thirty-six years old (1768). Lord Chesterfield at that time lived entirely retired from the world, on account of his infirmities, the most painful of which was complete deafness. Montesquieu, whose sight failed, said to him once, "I know how to be blind. '^ But he was not able to say as much ; he did not know how to be deaf. He wrote of it to his friends, even to those in France, thus : ** The exchange of letters, " he remarked, '^ is the conversa- tion of deaf people, and the only link which connects them with society." He found his latest consolations in his pretty country house at Blackheath, which he had called by the French name
3334 CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE
of Babiole. He employed his time there in gardening and culti- vating his melons and pineapples; he amused himself by vege- tating in company with them: —
^^ I have vegetated here all this year, ** he wrote to a French friend (September, 1753), "without pleasures and without troubles; my age and deafness prevented the first ; my philosophy, or rather my temperament (for one often confounds them), guaranteed me against the last. I always get as much as I can of the quiet pleasures of gardening, walking, and reading, and in the meantime I await death without desiring or fearing it.*'
He never undertook long works, not feeling himself sufficiently strong, but he sometimes sent agreeable essays to a periodical publication, the World. These essays are quite worthy of his reputation for skill and urbanity. Nevertheless, nothing ap- proaches the work — which was no work to him — of those letters, which he never imagined any one would read, and which are yet the foundation of his literary success.
His old age, which was an early one, lasted a long time. His wit gave a hundred turns to this sad theme. Speaking of him- self and of one of his friends. Lord Tyrawley, equally old and infirm, "Tyrawley and I,*' he said, "have been dead two years, but we do not wish it to be known.*'
Voltaire, who under the pretense of being always dying, had preserved his youth much better, wrote to him on the twenty- fourth of October, 1771, this pretty letter, signed, "Z^ vieux tnalade de Ferney ** .• —
"Enjoy an honorable and happy old age, after having passed through the trials of life. Enjoy your wit and preserve the health of your body. Of the five senses with which we are provided, you have only one enfeebled, and Lord Huntingdon assures me that you have a good stomach, which is worth a pair of ears. It will be per- haps my place to decide which is the most sorrowful, to be deaf or blind, or have no digestion. I can judge of all these three conditions with a knowledge of the cause; but it is a long time since I ven- tured to decide upon trifles, least of all upon things so important, I confine myself to the belief that, if you have sun in the beautiful house that you have built, you will spend some tolerable moments; that is all we can hope for at our age. Cicero wrote a beautiful treatise upon old age, but he did not verify his words by deeds; his last years were very unhappy. You have lived longer and more happily than he did. You have had to do neither with perpetual dictators nor with triumvirs. Your lot has been, and still is, one of
CHARLES AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE 3335
the most desirable in that great lottery where good tickets are so scarce, and where the Great Prize of continual happiness has never been gained by any one. Your philosophy has never been upset by chimeras which have sometimes perplexed tolerably good brains. You have never been in any sense a charlatan, nor the dupe of charlatans, and that I reckon as a rare merit, which adds something to the shadow of happiness that we are allowed to taste of in this short life.**
Lord Chesterfield died on the twenty-fourth of March, 1773. In pointing out his charming course of wordly education, we have not thought it out of place even in a democracy, to take lessons of savior vivre and politeness, and to receive them from a man whose name is so closely connected with those of Montes- quieu and Voltaire, who, more than any of his countrymen in his own time, showed singular fondness for our nation ; who delighted, more than was right, perhaps, in our amiable qualities; who ap- preciated our solid virtues, and of whom it might be said, as his greatest praise, that he was a French wit, if he had not intro- duced into the verve and vivacity of his sallies that inexplicable something of imagination and color that bears the impress of his
race.
Complete.
3336
GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY
(1 845-)
^OR nearly two decades past, Saintsbury has been a favorite contributor to the English reviews. Much of his work as an essayist has been in the form of literary biographies and book reviews. As a book reviewer, he is much less aggressive than the slashing critics of the first half of the century. The change of style is as marked as the improvement of literary morality which made it possible. Saintsbury was born at Southampton, England, October 23d, 1845. After graduating from Merton College, Oxford, he taught the Classics at Elizabeth College in Guernsey, and was head master of the Elgin Educational Institute (1874-76). In 1876 he began in London the work as an editor and essayist he has since continued. Among his works are <^ English Worthies," " History of Elizabethan Literature," and "Essays on English Literature."
ON PARTON'S « VOLTAIRE*
OF NEARLY all the events of this remarkable life Mr. Parton has given an account, sometimes faulty in form, but suf- ficient and complete in substance. His book, though it may give some new facts, will, of course, not materially alter the idea of Voltaire to those who have previously studied his life and his works; but to those who do not already possess much knowl- edge of him it furnishes a convenient means of informing them- selves. A book of thirteen hundred pages, deformed by American misspelling of the English tongue, and by references to "infla- tionists " and such-like irrelevances, not to mention constant ex- pressions of the author's sentiments, which are, to say the least, unimportant, may seem a formidable undertaking. But its co- piousness of incident and anecdote and its abundant quotations lighten the task of reading very considerably. At the end of it he must be a somewhat thoughtless reader (if, indeed, any such be likely to reach the end) who does not endeavor to make up for himself, assisted by the critical comments of those of Mr. Par- ton's predecessors to whom Pallas has been more kind, some no-
GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY 3337
tion of the singular personality here portrayed. Mr, Parton's own notion of that personality is decided enough. In his own mar- velous language he tells us that Voltaire's empty sepulchre " is vocal, it is resonant, it booms and thunders over the earth.** The superstition-crusher pushes everything and everybody else aside in his estimate. I think, for my own part, that from such a stand- point it is as difficult to judge Voltaire rightly as from that of my friend who called him a wretch, from that of Johnson, or from that of George III.
The truth seems to be that Voltaire was an extremely com- plicated character; the wonderful diversity of his literary work only reflects this complexity in part, though the one, no doubt, is the reason of the other. As I can hardly think of any man who displayed so many different forms of the literary faculty, so I can hardly think of any man, whether of letters or of business, who united the capacity and in a way the actual performance of so many different parts. Of his varied ability in practical ad- ministrative business there is proof almost as ample as of his varied ability in literary work. If he failed anywhere in what he undertook it was in diplomacy, and it is fair to remember that he had an antagonist to contend with there by whom it was no shame to be beaten. He has not, like Wordsworth, left us explicit intimations that in his own opinion his mission was to be Prime Minister, or Archbishop of Canterbury, or Commander in Chief, or Lord Chancellor, or all of them together. But I have no doubt that if the opportunity of any or all of these posts had come in his way he would have accepted it cheerfully, and would have performed the duties on the whole very well. The complementary defect of the quality of jack of all trades is well known. Voltaire suffered from it less than most people, but he did suffer from it. In no literary style, except in that of satirical prose fiction, or allegory of the social kind, can he be said to have attained the highest mastery. In work requiring research of any kind he was rather rapid than thorough, and he carried to excess the national habit of hasty deduction from in- sufficiently investigated premises. His moral and intellectual character, with which we are here more specially concerned, shows inconsistencies and blemishes of all kinds. Let us try and sum up what the devil's advocates say against him. He was an unscrupulous liar; he was extraordinarily vain; he was utterly destitute of reverence; he had an impure imagination which was
3338 GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY
not checked by the slightest sense of even external decency; he was given to filthy lucre; he was spiteful and revengeful in the extreme toward his personal enemies. This is an ugly catalogue, and it is unfortunately true that no single article in it can be struck out entirely by the most uncompromising defender who knows and respects the facts. Mitigating pleas are all that is possible. His lying, which is a very unpleasant feature to Eng- lish examiners of his character, has to be taken in conjunction with the fact that it was, so to speak, official and professional lying for the most part. The absurd and iniquitous political and social system of the time and country necessitated and in a man- ner recognized it. It was little more than the conventional ^* not guilty, ** not so much as the equally conventional ** not at home.** The charge of vanity must be admitted sans phrase, but it is not a very damning one. The lack of reverence also is not contestable, though there are some circumstances on the other side, notably the mountain-top story, which I have not noticed in Mr. Parton, and his lifelong cult of the starry heavens. This was, however, a distinct and inevitable consequence of his pecu- liar faculty of ridicule, which must also excuse as far as it can (and that is not very far) the uncleanness of his writings. I shall frankly own that that uncleanness is to me the most un- pleasant variety of the disease that I know, with the possible exception of Dryden's. His carrying out of the maxim non olet is another blot on his character. There is nothing inexcusable, though perhaps there is something rather undignified, in a poet's making money by stockbroking and money changing; but the Hirsch matter, as to which something has been said already, cannot be defended, and the persistent way in which the author of " L'Homme aux Quarante Ecus ** and a hundred other pro- tests against financial mismanagement allowed himself to profit by contracts, loans, and so forth, where the profit was due to corrupt administration, is a still greater blot. With respect to Fr6ron, Desfontaines, et Cie., perhaps the worst thing that can be said about Voltaire is that in point of malignity there is sometimes nothing and generally very little to choose between himself and his adversaries.
And yet I have not the least intention of admitting that Vol- taire was a wretch, or anything of the kind. All the worst of his faults were emphatically the faults of his time and his edu- cation. His merits, on the other hand, were personal and his
GEORGE EDWARD BATEMAN SAINTSBURY 3339
own, a distinction which, however hackneyed it may be, is al- most the only one available in this world of ours. These merits Mr. Parton's book ought to make clear to everybody who is not hopelessly prejudiced. One of the chief of them was an extraor- dinary kindness of heart and affection for his friends, relations, and, indeed, everybody with whom he was not brought into vio- lent collision. Madame du Chatelet and Madame Denis, the feminine plagues of the greater part of his long life, certainly had nothing to complain of in him. Notwithstanding his occa- sional fits of ill temper, all his servants and dependants were fond of him, and even the passionate Collini did not find those fits intolerable. His friendship for Thieriot, a person of very doubt- ful merit, and not unfrequently, as in the Desfontaines affair, and in the matter of the employments which Voltaire sought to procure for him from Richelieu, a troublesome and even treach- erous friend, was unwearying. No one, even of his enemies, fails to acknowledge his remarkable benevolence to oppressed or unfortunate persons of every degree of merit, from Calas and Lally to La Barre and Desfontaines. Something, perhaps, must be allowed for his love of playing the grand seigneur in estimat- ing his good deeds at Ferney; but even when that allowance is made, a solid amount will remain to his credit. Unscrupulous as he was in some ways in the getting of money, he neither spent it unworthily nor hoarded it for the mere sake of hoarding; his object being, as has been said, the securing of independence, which in his time and country no man, who was neither a priest nor a noble, could hope for without a competent estate. These things are, of course, perfectly well known to students of French literature and French history; but the general reader is less likely to be acquainted with them. Such a reader will find in Mr. Parton's book a good deal to amuse him, and a good deal to correct and heighten his idea of Voltaire as a man. It has been hinted that the merits of the book, as a literary commentary, are hardly equal to its merits as a repository of fact. In the former respect, however, as has also been suggested, more than one scriptor haud paulo inelior qiiam ego aut, Mr. Parton has sup- plied the deficiency in English by anticipation, and it is therefore superfluous to say any more on that score.
From a review of Parton's «Life of Voltaire.*
3340
FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING
(1775-1854)
Ihe "highest relation of Art and Nature, >' writes Schelling, "is shown in this, that Art makes Nature the medium of mani- festing the soul it contains.*^ This strongly suggests, if it does not define, the central thought of the philosophical system he attempted to elaborate, progressively, in a series of works which when collected (1856-61) make fourteen volumes. It is the idea that nature and spirit are both realities, each distinct, but that both are the correlated parts of a whole which cannot exist in its completeness without both. Spirit is not considered in this system as distinct from, but rather as the inspiration of. Nature — as its " reason for ex- istence *^ {ratio essendi). "Art*^ becomes thus the mode by which the human mind expresses the correlated harmony of the mind in nature. The thought thus developed by the philosophy of Schelling will do much to make intelligible the view of art which inspired Ruskin and his school in England.
Schelling was born in Wiirtemberg, January 27th, 1775. Receiving his own university education at Tiibingen, he became a Professor at Jena (1798) and later at Wiirzberg, Munich, and Berlin. His university associations brought him into close relations with Hegel and the Schle- gels, by whom he was influenced as he was, perhaps to a greater extent, by Fichte. Among his more notable works are " First Plan of a System of the Philosophy of Nature,** "Transcendental Ideal- ism,** "Exposition of My System of Philosophy,** "Philosophy and Religion,** and "Human Freedom.** He died in Switzerland, August 20th, 1854.
NATURE AND ART
NATURE in her wide circumference ever exhibits the higher with the lewder: creating in Man the godlike, she elaborates in all her other productions only its material and founda- tion, which must exist in order that in contrast with it the Es- sence as such may appear. And even in the higher world of Man the great mass serves again as the basis upon which the godlike that is preserved pure in the few manifests itself in legis-
FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 3341
lation, government, and the establishment of Religion, So that wherever Art works with more of the complexity of Nature, it may and must display together with the highest measure of Beauty also its groundwork and raw material as it were, in distinct ap- propriate forms.
Here first prominently unfolds itself the difference in Nature of the forms of Art.
Plastic Art, in the more exact sense of the term, disdains to give Space outwardly to the object, but bears it within itself. This, however, narrows its field; it is compelled, indeed, to dis- play the beauty of the Universe almost in a single point. It must therefore aim immediately at the highest, and can attain complexity only separately and in the strictest exclusion of all conflicting elements. By isolating the purely animal in human nature it succeeds in forming inferior creations too, harmonious and even beautiful, as we are taught by the beauty of numerous Fauns preserved from Antiquity; it can, indeed, parodying itself like the merry spirit of Nature, reverse its own Ideal, and for in- stance, in the extravagance of the Silenic figures, by light and sportive treatment, appear freed again from the pressure of mat- ter.
But in all cases it is compelled strictly to isolate the work, in ■order to make it self-consistent and a world in itself; since for this form of Art there is no higher unity, in which the disso- nance of particulars should be melted into harmony.
Painting, on the contrary, in the very extent of its sphere, can better measure itself with the Universe, and create with epic profusion. In an " Iliad '* there is room even for a Thersites, .and what does not find a place in the great epic of Nature and History!
Here the Particular scarcely counts anything by itself; the Universe takes its place, and that, which by itself would not be beautiful, becomes so in the harmony of the whole. If in an ex- tensive painting, uniting forms by the allotted space, by light, by shade, by reflection, the highest measure of Beauty were every- where employed, the result would be the most unnatural monotony; for, as Winckelmann says, the highest idea of Beauty is every- where one and the same, and scarce admits of variation. The detail would be preferred to the whole, where, as in every case in which the whole is formed by multiplicity, the detail must be subordinate to it.
3342 FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING
In such a work, therefore, a gradation of Beauty must be ob- served, by which alone the full Beauty concentrated in the focus becomes visible; and from an exaggeration of particulars pro- ceeds an equipoise of the whole. Here, then, the limited and characteristic finds its place ; and theory at least should direct the painter, not so much to the narrow space in which the entire Beauty is concentrically collected, as to the characteristic com- plexity of Nature, through which alone he can impart to an ex- tensive work the full measure of living significance.
Thus thought, among the founders of modern art, the noble Leonardo ; thus Raphael, the master of high Beauty, who shunned not to exhibit it in smaller measure rather than to appear mo- notonous, lifeless, and unreal — though he understood not only how to produce it, but also how to break up uniformity by vari- ety of expression.
For, although Character can show itself also in rest and equi- librium of form, yet it is only in action that it becomes truly alive.
By Character we understand a unity of several forces, operat- ing constantly to produce among them a certain equipoise and determinate proportion, to which, if undisturbed, a like equipoise in the symmetry of the forms corresponds. But if this vital Unity is to display itself in act and operation, this can only be when the forces, excited by some cause to rebellion, forsake their equilibrium. Every one sees that this is the case in the Pas- sions.
But here we are met by the well-known maxim of the theor- ists, which demands that Passion should be moderated as far as possible, in its actual outburst, that Beauty of Form may not be injured. But we think this maxim should rather be reversed, and read thus : — that Passion should be moderated by Beauty it- self. For it is much to be feared that this desired moderation too may be taken in a negative sense — whereas, what is really requisite is, to oppose to Passion a positive force. For as Virtue consists, not in the absence of passions, but in the mastery of the spirit over them, so Beauty is preserved, not by their removal or abatement, but by the mastery of Beauty over them.
The forces of Passion must actually show themselves — it must be seen that they are prepared to rise in mutiny, but are kept down by the power of Character, and break against the forms of firmly founded Beauty, as the waves of a stream that just fills.
FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 3343
but cannot overflow its banks. Otherwise, this striving after mod- eration would resemble only those shallow moralists, who, the more readily to dispose of Man, prefer to mutilate his nature; and who have so entirely removed every positive element from actions, that the people gloat over the spectacle of great crimes, in order to refresh themselves at last with the view of something posi- tive.
In Nature and Art the Essence strives first after actualization, or exhibition of itself in the Particular. Thus in each the utmost severity is manifested at the commencement; for without bound, the boundless could not appear; without severity, gentleness could not exist; and if unity is to be perceptible, it can only be through particularity, detachment, and opposition. In the begin- ning, therefore, the creative spirit shows itself entirely lost in its form, inaccessibly shut up, and even in its grandeur still harsh. But the more it succeeds in uniting its entire fullness in one product, the more it gradually relaxes from its severity; and where it has fully developed the form, so as to rest contented and self-collected in it, it seems to become cheerful, and begins to move in gentle lines. This is the period of its fairest maturity and blossom, in which the pure vessel has arrived at perfection; the spirit of Nature becomes free from its bonds, and feels its relationship to the soul. As by a gentle morning blush stealing over the whole form, the coming soul announces itself; it is not yet present, but everything prepares for its reception, by the deli- cate play of gentle movements; the rigid outlines melt and tem- per themselves into flexibility; a lovely essence, neither sensuous nor spiritual, but which cannot be grasped, diffuses itself over the form, and entwines itself with every outline, every vibration of the frame.
This essence, not to be seized, as we have already remarked, but yet perceptible to all, is what the language of the Greeks designated by the name Charis, ours as Grace.
Wherever, in a fully developed form, Grace appears, the work is complete on the side of Nature; nothing more is wanting; all demands are satisfied. Here, already, soul and body are in com- plete harmony; Body is Form, Grace is Soul, although not Soul in itself, but the Soul of Form, or the Soul of Nature.
Art may linger, and remain stationary at this point; for, al- ready, on one side at least, its whole task is finished. The pure image of Beauty arrested at this point is the Goddess of Love,
3344 FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING
But the beauty of the Soul in itself, joined to sensuous Grace, is the highest apotheosis of Nature.
The spirit of Nature is only in appearance opposed to the Soul; essentially, it is the instrument of its revelation; it brings about indeed the antagonism that exists in all things, but only that the one essence may come forth, as the utmost benignity, and the reconciliation of all the forces.
All other creatures are driven by the mere force of Nature, and through it maintain their individuality; in Man alone, as the central point, arises the soul, without which the world would be like the natural universe without the sun.
The Soul in Man, therefore, is not the principle of individual- ity, but that whereby he raises himself above all egoism, where- by he becomes capable of self-sacrifice, and of disinterested love, and (which is the highest) of the contemplation and knowledge of the Essence of things; and thus of Art.
In him it is no longer employed about Matter, nor has to do with it immediately, but only with the spirit (as the life) of things. Even while appearing in the body, it is yet free from the body, the consciousness of which hovers in the Soul in the most beauteous shapes only as a light, undisturbing dream. It is no quality, no faculty, nor anything special of the sort; it knows not, but is Science; it is not good, but Goodness; it is not beau- tiful, as body even may be, but Beauty itself.
Most readily, or most immediately, indeed, in a work of art, the soul of the artist is seen as invention, in the detail, and in the total result, as the unity that hovers over it in serene still- ness. But the Soul must be visible in objective representation, as the primeval energy of thought, in portraitures of human be- ings, altogether filled by an idea, by a noble contemplation ; or as indwelling essential Goodness.
Each of these finds its distinct expression even in the com- pletest repose, but a more living one where the Soul can reveal itself in activity and antagonism; and since it is by the passions mainly that the force of life is interrupted, it is the generally received opinion, that the beauty of the Soul shows itself espe- cially in its quiet supremacy amid the storm of the passions.
But here an important distinction is to be made. For the Soul must not be called upon to moderate those passions which are only an outbreak of the lower spirits of Nature, nor can it be displayed in antithesis with these ; for where calm considerate-
FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 3345
ness is still in contention with them, the Soul has not yet ap- peared: they must be moderated by unassisted Nature in Man, by the might of the Spirit. But there are cases of a higher sort, in which, not a single force alone, but the intelligent Spirit it- self, breaks down all barriers; cases, indeed, where the Soul is subjected by the bond that connects it with sensuous existence, to pain, which should be foreign to its divine nature; where Man feels himself invaded and attacked in the root of his exist- ence, not by mere powers of Nature, but by moral forces; where innocent error hurries him into crime, and thus into misery; where deep-felt injustice excites to rebellion the holiest feelings of humanity.
This is the case in all situations, truly, and in a high sense, tragical, such as the Tragedy of the Ancients brings before our eyes. Where blindly passionate forces are aroused, the collected Spirit is present as the guardian of Beauty; but if the Spirit itself be hurried away, as by an irresistible might, what power shall watch over and protect sacred Beauty ? Or, if the Soul participate in the struggle, how shall it save itself from pain and from desecration ?
Arbitrarily to limit the power of pain, of excited feeling, would be to sin against the very meaning and aim of Art, and would betray a want of feeling and Soul in the artist himself.
Already therein, that Beauty, based on grand and firmly es- tablished forms has become Character, Art has provided the means of displaying without injury to symmetry the whole in- tensity of Feeling. For where Beauty rests on mighty forms, as upon immovable pillars, a slight change in its relations, scarcely touching the form, causes us to infer the great force that was necessary in order to effect it. Still more does Grace sanctify pain. It is the essential nature of Grace that it does not know itself; but not being willfully acquired, it also cannot be willfully lost. When intolerable anguish, when even madness, sent by avenging Gods, takes away consciousness and reflection, Grace stands as a protecting demon by the suffering form, and prevents it from manifesting anything unseemly, anything dis- cordant to Humanity; but if it fall, to fall at least a pure and unspotted victim.
Not yet the Soul itself, but the prophecy of it; Grace accom- plishes by natural means, what the Soul does by a divine power, in transforming pain, torpor, even death itself, into Beauty. IX — 210
3346 FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING
Yet Grace thus preserved amid the extremest discordance would be dead, without a transfig-uration by the Soul. But what expression can belong to the Soul in this situation ? It delivers itself from pain, and comes forth conquering, not conquered, by- relinquishing its connection with sensuous existence.
It is for the natural Spirit to exert its energies for the pres- ervation of sensuous existence, the Soul enters not into this contest; but its presence moderates even the storms of painfully struggling life. Outward force can take away only outward goods, but not reach the Soul; it can tear asunder a temporal bond, not dissolve the eternal one of a truly divine love. Not hard and unfeeling, nor wanting in love itself, the Soul, on the contrary, displays in pain this alone, as the sentiment that out- lasts sensuous existence, and thus raises itself above the ruins of outward life or fortune in divine glory.
It is this expression of the Soul that the creator of the Niobe has shown us in this statue. All the means by which Art tem- pers even the Terrible, are here made use of. Mightiness of form, sensuous Grace, nay, even the nature of the subject-matter itself, softens the expression, since pain, transcending all expres- sion, annihilates itself, and Beauty, which it seemed impossible to preserve from destruction, is protected from injury by the com- mencing torpor.
But what would it all be without the Soul, and how shall this manifest itself ?
We see on the countenance of the mother, not grief alone for the already prostrated flower of her children; not alone deadly anxiety for the preservation of those yet remaining, and of the youngest daughter, who has fled for safety to her bosom • nor resentment against the cruel deities; least of all, as is pre- tended, cool defiance: all these we see, indeed, but not these alone, for, through grief, anxiety, and resentment streams, like a divine light, eternal love, as that which alone remains; and in this is preserved the mother, as one who was not, but now is a mother, and who remains united with the beloved ones by an eternal bond.
Every one acknowledges that greatness, purity, and goodness of soul have also their sensuous expressions. But how is this conceivable, unless the principle that acts in Matter be itself cognate and similar to Soul ?
For the representation of the Soul there are again gradations
FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH VON SCHELLING 3347
in Art according as it is joined with the merely Characteristic, or in visible union with the Charming and Graceful.
Who perceives not, in the tragedies of ^schylus, that lofty morality already predominant, which is at home in the works of Sophocles ? But in the former it is enveloped in a bitter rind, and passes less into the whole work, since the bond of sensuous Grace is yet wanting. But out of this severity, and the still terrible charms of earlier Art, could yet proceed the grace of Sophocles, and with it the complete fusion of the two elements, which leaves us doubtful whether it is more moral or sensuous Grace that enchants us in the works of this poet.
The same is true of the plastic productions of the early and severe style, in comparison with the gentleness of the later.
If Grace, besides being the transfiguration of the spirit of Nature, is