Project Gutenberg's The Intellectual Life, by =Philip Gilbert Hamerton
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Title: The Intellectual Life
Author: Philip Gilbert Hamerton
Release Date: April 27, 2010 [EBook #32151]
Language: English
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Transcriber's note:
The following typographical errors have been corrected:
Page 86: "We bring ourselves, by its help, to face petty details that
are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are almost appalling."
'appalling' amended from 'appaling'.
Page 153: "That which is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury
to our intellectual life, is the foolishness of the too common
vanity." 'too' amended from 'two'.
Page 161: "the child had the defects of children, but of children
born in the different countries where he lived." 'lived' amended from
'live'.
Page 294: "The girl was uneducated: it seems hopeless to try to
educate the woman". 'educate' amended from 'educated'.
Page 364: "I am sure that my modern artillery captain,
notwithstanding his bad manners." 'notwithstanding' amended from
'notwithstand'.
Page 377: "I know a distinguished Englishman who is quite remarkable
for the talent with which he arranges his intellectual friendships,
so as never to be dependent on any one." 'intellectual' amended from
'inintellectual'.
Page 383: "The truth is, that to succeed well in fashionable society
the higher intellectual attainments are not so useful as
distinguished skill in those amusements which are the real business
of the fashionable world." 'business of' amended from 'busiof'.
Page 387: "To me it appears the perfect type of that preoccupation
about appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true
nobility of life." 'preoccupation' amended from 'pre-occupation'.
Page 417: "She moves; movement is the law of her life; yet she is as
tranquil in her little cabin as any goodwife on shore." 'she' amended
from 'see'.
Page 489: "I certainly think that if a good curé has an exceptional
genius for sanctity." 'sanctity' amended from 'sancitity'.
Page 558 (index): "Dullness of general conversation." 'Dullness'
amended from 'Dulness'.
THE
INTELLECTUAL LIFE,
BY
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON,
AUTHOR OF "A PAINTER'S CAMP," "THOUGHTS ABOUT ART," "THE UNKNOWN
RIVER," ETC.
NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
TO EUGÈNIE H.
We have shared together many hours of study, and you have been willing,
at the cost of much patient labor, to cheer the difficult paths of
intellectual toil by the unfailing sweetness of your beloved
companionship. It seems to me that all those things which we have
learned together are doubly my own; whilst those other studies which I
have pursued in solitude have never yielded me more than a maimed and
imperfect satisfaction. The dream of my life would be to associate you
with all I do if that were possible; but since the ideal can never be
wholly realized, let me at least rejoice that we have been so little
separated, and that the subtle influence of your finer taste and more
delicate perception is ever, like some penetrating perfume, in the whole
atmosphere around me.
PREFACE.
I propose, in the following pages, to consider the possibilities of a
satisfactory intellectual life under various conditions of ordinary
human existence. It will form a part of my plan to take into account
favorable and unfavorable influences of many kinds; and my chief
purpose, so far as any effect upon others may be hoped for, will be to
guard some who may read the book alike against the loss of time caused
by unnecessary discouragement, and the waste of effort which is the
consequence of misdirected energies.
I have adopted the form of letters addressed to persons of very
different position in order that every reader may have a chance of
finding what concerns him. The letters, it is unnecessary to observe,
are in one sense as fictitious as those we find in novels, for they have
never been sent to anybody by the post, yet the persons to whom they are
addressed are not imaginary. I made it a rule, from the beginning, to
think of a real person when writing, from an apprehension that by
dwelling in a world too exclusively ideal I might lose sight of many
impediments which beset all actual lives, even the most exceptional and
fortunate.
The essence of the book may be expressed in a few sentences, the rest
being little more than evidence or illustration. First, it appears that
all who are born with considerable intellectual faculties are urged
towards the intellectual life by irresistible instincts, as water-fowl
are urged to an aquatic life; but the lower animals have this advantage
over man, that as their purposes are simpler, so they attain them more
completely than he does. The life of a wild duck is in perfect
accordance with its instincts, but the life of an intellectual man is
never on all points perfectly in accordance with _his_ instincts. Many
of the best intellectual lives known to us have been hampered by
vexatious impediments of the most various and complicated kinds; and
when we come to have accurate and intimate knowledge of the lives led by
our intellectual contemporaries, we are always quite sure to find that
each of them has some great thwarting difficulty to contend against. Nor
is it too much to say that if a man were so placed and endowed in every
way that all his work should be made as easy as the ignorant imagine it
to be, that man would find in that very facility itself a condition most
unfavorable to his intellectual growth. So that, however circumstances
may help us or hinder us, the intellectual life is always a contest or a
discipline, and the art or skill of living intellectually does not so
much consist in surrounding ourselves with what is reputed to be
advantageous as in compelling every circumstance and condition of our
lives to yield us some tribute of intellectual benefit and force. The
needs of the intellect are as various as intellects themselves are
various: and if a man has got high mental culture during his passage
through life it is of little consequence where he acquired it, or how.
The school of the intellectual man is the place where he happens to be,
and his teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones, and
earth round about him. The feeling almost always predominant in the
minds of intellectual men as they grow older, is not so much one of
regret that their opportunities were not more abundant, as of regret
that they so often missed opportunities which they might have turned to
better account.
I have written for all classes, in the conviction that the intellectual
life is really within the reach of every one who earnestly desires it.
The highest culture can never be within the reach of those who cannot
give the years of labor which it costs; and if we cultivate ourselves to
shine in the eyes of others, to become famous in literature or science,
then of course we must give many more hours of labor than can be spared
from a life of practical industry. But I am fully convinced of this,
convinced by the observation of living instances in all classes, that
any man or woman of large natural capacity may reach the tone of
thinking which may justly be called intellectual, even though that
thinking may not be expressed in the most perfect language. The essence
of intellectual living does not reside in extent of science or in
perfection of expression, but in a constant preference for higher
thoughts over lower thoughts, and this preference may be the habit of a
mind which has not any very considerable amount of information. This may
be very easily demonstrated by a reference to men who lived
intellectually in ages when science had scarcely begun to exist, and
when there was but little literature that could be of use as an aid to
culture. The humblest subscriber to a mechanics' institute has easier
access to sound learning than had either Solomon or Aristotle, yet both
Solomon and Aristotle lived the intellectual life. Whoever reads English
is richer in the aids to culture than Plato was, yet Plato _thought_
intellectually. It is not erudition that makes the intellectual man, but
a sort of virtue which delights in vigorous and beautiful thinking, just
as moral virtue delights in vigorous and beautiful conduct. Intellectual
living is not so much an accomplishment as a state or condition of the
mind in which it seeks earnestly for the highest and purest truth. It is
the continual exercise of a firmly noble choice between the larger truth
and the lesser, between that which is perfectly just and that which
falls a little short of justice. The ideal life would be to choose thus
firmly and delicately always, yet if we often blunder and fail for want
of perfect wisdom and clear light, have we not the inward assurance that
our aspiration has not been all in vain, that it has brought us a
little nearer to the Supreme Intellect whose effulgence draws us whilst
it dazzles? Here is the true secret of that fascination which belongs to
intellectual pursuits, that they reveal to us a little more, and yet a
little more, of the eternal order of the Universe, establishing us so
firmly in what is known, that we acquire an unshakable confidence in the
laws which govern what is not, and never can be, known.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE PHYSICAL BASIS.
LETTER PAGE
I. To a young man of letters who worked excessively 17
II. To the same 22
III. To a student in uncertain health 27
IV. To a muscular Christian 42
V. To a student who neglected bodily exercise 47
VI. To an author in mortal disease 53
VII. To a young man of brilliant ability, who had just taken his
degree 57
PART II.
THE MORAL BASIS.
I. To a moralist who had said that there was a want of moral
fibre in the intellectual, especially in poets and artists 67
II. To an undisciplined writer 80
III. To a friend who suggested the speculation "which of the moral
virtues was most essential to the intellectual life" 91
IV. To a moralist who said that intellectual culture was not
conducive to sexual morality 98
PART III.
OF EDUCATION.
I. To a friend who recommended the author to learn this thing
and that 104
II. To a friend who studied many things 110
III. To the same 120
IV. To a student of literature 130
V. To a country gentleman who regretted that his son had the
tendencies of a dilettant 134
VI. To the principal of a French college 137
VII. To the same 143
VIII. To a student of modern languages 149
IX. To the same 153
X. To a student who lamented his defective memory 165
XI. To a master of arts who said that a certain distinguished
painter was half-educated 170
PART IV.
THE POWER OF TIME.
I. To a man of leisure who complained of want of time 176
II. To a young man of great talent and energy who had
magnificent plans for the future 185
III. To a man of business who desired to make himself better
acquainted with literature, but whose time for reading
was limited 200
IV. To a student who felt hurried and driven 207
V. To a friend who, though he had no profession, could not
find time for his various intellectual pursuits 212
PART V.
THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY.
I. To a very rich student 216
II. To a genius careless in money matters 224
III. To a student in great poverty 239
PART VI.
CUSTOM AND TRADITION.
I. To a young gentleman who had firmly resolved never to wear
anything but a gray coat 246
II. To a conservative who had accused the author of a want of
respect for tradition 254
III. To a lady who lamented that her son had intellectual doubts
concerning the dogmas of the church 263
IV. To the son of the lady to whom the preceding letter was
addressed 269
V. To a friend who seemed to take credit to himself,
intellectually, from the nature of his religious belief 276
VI. To a Roman Catholic friend who accused the intellectual
class of a want of reverence for authority 280
PART VII.
WOMEN AND MARRIAGE.
I. To a young gentleman of intellectual tastes, who, without
having as yet any particular lady in view, had
expressed, in a general way, his determination to get
married 285
II. To a young gentleman who contemplated marriage 291
III. To the same 299
IV. To the same 306
V. To the same 312
VI. To a solitary student 322
VII. To a lady of high culture who found it difficult to associate
with persons of her own sex 325
VIII. To a lady of high culture 330
IX. To a young man of the middle class, well educated, who
complained that it was difficult for him to live agreeably
with his mother, a person of somewhat authoritative
disposition, but uneducated 333
PART VIII.
ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY.
I. To a young English nobleman 341
II. To an English democrat 358
PART IX.
SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE.
I. To a lady who doubted the reality of intellectual
friendships 374
II. To a young gentleman who lived much in fashionable society 379
III. To the same 384
IV. To the same 391
V. To a young gentleman who kept entirely out of company 397
VI. To a friend who kindly warned the author of the bad effects
of solitude 402
PART X.
INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS.
I. To a young author whilst he was writing his first book 415
II. To a student in the first ardor of intellectual ambition 422
III. To an intellectual man who desired an outlet for his
energies 431
IV. To the friend of a man of high culture who produced nothing 441
V. To a student who felt hurried and driven 446
VI. To an ardent friend who took no rest 451
VII. To the same 456
VIII. To a friend (highly cultivated) who congratulated himself
on having entirely abandoned the habit of reading
newspapers 466
IX. To an author who appreciated contemporary literature 470
X. To an author who kept very irregular hours 476
PART XI.
TRADES AND PROFESSIONS.
I. To a young gentleman of ability and culture who had not
decided about his profession 488
II. To a young gentleman who had literary and artistic tastes,
but no profession 499
III. To a young gentleman who wished to devote himself to
literature as a profession 504
IV. To an energetic and successful cotton manufacturer 513
V. To a young Etonian who thought of becoming a cotton-spinner 522
PART XII.
SURROUNDINGS.
I. To a friend who often changed his place of residence 530
II. To a friend who maintained that surroundings were a matter
of indifference to a thoroughly occupied mind 539
III. To an artist who was fitting up a magnificent new studio 546
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE.
PART I.
_THE PHYSICAL BASIS._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY.
Mental labor believed to be innocuous to healthy persons--Difficulty
of testing this--Case of the poet Wordsworth--Case of an eminent
living author--Case of a literary clergyman--Case of an energetic
tradesman--Instances of two Londoners who wrote
professionally--Scott's paralysis--Byron's death--All intellectual
labor proceeds on a physical basis.
So little is really known about the action of the nervous system, that
to go into the subject from the physiological point of view would be to
undertake a most difficult investigation, entirely beyond the competence
of an unscientific person like your present correspondent. You will,
therefore, permit me, in reference to this, to leave you to the teaching
of the most advanced physiologists of the time; but I may be able to
offer a few practical suggestions, based on the experience of
intellectual workers, which may be of use to a man whose career is
likely to be one of severe and almost uninterrupted intellectual labor.
A paper was read several years ago before the members of a society in
London, in which the author maintained that mental labor was never
injurious to a perfectly healthy human organization, and that the
numerous cases of break-down, which are commonly attributed to excessive
brain-work, are due, in reality, to the previous operation of disease.
This is one of those assertions which cannot be answered in a sentence.
Concentrated within the briefest expression it comes to this, that
mental labor cannot produce disease, but may aggravate the consequences
of disease which already exists.
The difficulty of testing this is obvious; for so long as health remains
quite perfect, it remains perfect, of course, whether the brain is used
or not; and when failure of health becomes manifest, it is not always
easy to decide in what degree mental labor may have been the cause of
it. Again, the accuracy of so general a statement cannot be proved by
any number of instances in its favor, since it is universally admitted
that brain-work is not the only cause of disease, and no one affirms
that it is more than one amongst many causes which may impede the bodily
functions.
When the poet Wordsworth was engaged in composing the "White Doe of
Rylstone," he received a wound in his foot, and he observed that the
continuation of the literary labor increased the irritation of the
wound; whereas by suspending his work he could diminish it, and absolute
mental rest produced a perfect cure. In connection with this incident he
remarked that poetic excitement, accompanied by protracted labor in
composition, always brought on more or less of bodily derangement. He
preserved himself from permanently injurious consequences by his
excellent habits of life.
A very eminent living author, whose name I do not feel at liberty to
mention, is always prostrated by severe illness at the conclusion of
each of his works; another is unwell every Sunday, because he does not
write on that day, and the recoil after the mental stretch of the week
is too much for him.
In the case of Wordsworth, the physical constitution is believed to have
been sound. His health at seventy-two was excellent; the two other
instances are more doubtful in this respect, yet both these writers
enjoy very fair health, after the pressure of brain-work has been
removed for any considerable time. A clergyman of robust organization,
who does a good deal of literary work at intervals, told me that,
whenever he had attempted to make it regular, the consequence had always
been distressing nervous sensations, from which at other times he was
perfectly free. A tradesman, whose business affords an excellent outlet
for energetic bodily activity, told me that having attempted, in
addition to his ordinary work, to acquire a foreign language which
seemed likely to be useful to him, he had been obliged to abandon it on
account of alarming cerebral symptoms. This man has immense vigor and
energy, but the digestive functions, in this instance, are sluggish.
However, when he abandoned study, the cerebral inconveniences
disappeared, and have never returned since.
Two Londoners who followed literature as a profession, and who both
worked to excess, had cerebral attacks of a still more decided kind. One
of them, after his recovery, resolved to regulate his work in future, so
that it might never pass the limits of moderation. He is now living, and
in possession of a remarkably clear and richly furnished intellect. The
other, who returned to his old habits, died in two years from softening
of the brain. I am not aware that in these cases there was any other
disease than that produced by an immoderate use of the mental powers.
The health of Sir Walter Scott--we have this on his own testimony--was
uncommonly robust, and there is every reason to believe that his
paralysis was brought on by the excessive labor which resulted from his
pecuniary embarrassments, and that without such excessive mental labor
and anxiety he would have preserved his health much longer. The death of
Byron was due, no doubt, quite as much to habits of dissipation as to
poetical excitement; still it is probable that he would have borne
either of these evil influences if it had not been accompanied by the
other; and that to a man whose way of life was so exhausting as Byron's
was, the addition of constant poetical excitement and hard work in
production, may be said without exaggeration to have killed him. We know
that Scott, with all his facility, had a dread of that kind of
excitement, and withdrew from the poetical arena to avoid it. We know,
too, that the brain of Southey proved ultimately unable to endure the
burden of the tasks he laid upon it.
Difficult as it may be in some instances to ascertain quite accurately
whether an overworked man had perfectly sound bodily health to begin
with, obvious as it may be that in many breakdowns the final failure has
been accelerated by diseases independent of mental work, the facts
remain, that the excessive exercise of the mental powers is injurious to
bodily health and that all intellectual labor proceeds upon a physical
basis. No man can safely forget this, and act as if he were a pure
spirit, superior to physical considerations. Let me then, in other
letters on this subject, direct your attention to the close connection
which exists between intellectual production and the state of the body
and the brain; not with the authority of a physician, but with the
sympathy of a fellow-laborer, who has learned something from his own
experience, and still more from the more varied experience of his
friends.
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF LETTERS WHO WORKED EXCESSIVELY.
Mental labor rarely compatible with the best physical
conditions--Wordsworth's manner of composition--Mr. W. F. A.
Delane--George Sand working under pressure--Sir Walter Scott's
field-sports--Physical exercise the best tranquillizer of the nervous
system--Eugène Sue--Shelley's love of boating--Nervousness the
affliction of brain-workers--Nature's kindly warning--Working by
spurts--Beckford--Byron--Indolence of men of genius
fortunate--Distressing nature of cerebral fatigue.
It is possible that many of the worst results of intellectual labor may
be nothing more than indirect results. We may suffer, not from the work
itself, but from sedentary confinement, from want of exercise, from
insufficient variety and amusement.
Mental labor is seldom compatible with the best physical conditions; it
is so sometimes, however, or may be made so by an effort of will and
resolution. Wordsworth composed his poetry in the open air, as he
walked, and so preserved himself from the evil of close confinement to
the desk. Mr. W. F. A. Delane, who did so much for the organization of
the _Times_ newspaper when it was under his management, began by doing
law reports for that paper, in London and on circuit. His appearance of
rude health surprised other members of his profession, but he accounted
for it by the care he took to compensate for the bad air and sedentary
labor in the courts of law by travelling between the assize towns on
horseback, and also by a more than commonly temperate way of life, since
he carefully avoided the bar dinners, eating and drinking for health
alone. It is possible to endure the most unhealthy labor when there are
frequent intervals of invigorating exercise, accompanied by habits of
strict sobriety. The plan, so commonly resorted to, of trying to get
health in stock for the rest of the year by a fortnight's hurried
travelling in the autumn, is not so good as Mr. Delane's way of getting
the week's supply of health during the course of the week itself.
It happened once that George Sand was hurried by the proprietor of a
newspaper who wanted one of her novels as a _feuilleton_. She has always
been a careful and deliberate worker, very anxious to give all necessary
labor in preparation, and, like all such conscientious laborers, she can
scarcely endure to be pushed. However, on this occasion she worked
overtime, as they say in Lancashire, and to enable herself to bear the
extra pressure she did part of the work at night in order to keep
several hours of daylight clear for her walks in the country, where she
lived. Many writers, in the same situation, would have temporarily
abandoned exercise, but George Sand clung to it all the more at a time
when it was especially necessary that she should be well. In the same
way Sir Walter Scott counterbalanced the effects of sedentary occupation
by his hearty enjoyment of field-sports. It has been supposed that his
outdoor exercise, which to weaker persons appears excessive, may have
helped to bring on the stroke of paralysis which finally disabled him;
but the fact is, that when the stroke arrived Sir Walter had altered his
habits of life in obedience to what he believed to be his duty, and had
abandoned, or nearly so, the active amusements of his happier years. I
believe rather that whilst he took so much exercise his robust
constitution not only enabled him to endure it without injury, but
required it to keep the nervous system healthy, in spite of his hard
work in literary composition. Physical exercise, when the constitution
is strong enough to endure it, is by far the best tranquillizer of the
nervous system which has yet been discovered, and Sir Walter's life at
Abbotsford was, in this respect at least, grounded on the true
philosophy of conduct. The French romancer, Eugene Sue, wrote till ten
o'clock every morning, and passed the rest of the day, when at his
country house, either in horse-exercise, or field-sports, or gardening,
for all of which he had a liking which amounted to passion. Shelley's
delight was boating, which at once exercised his muscles and relieved
his mind from the weariness of incessant invention or speculation. It
will generally be found, that whenever a man of much intellectual
distinction has maintained his powers in full activity, it has been by
avoiding the bad effects of an entirely sedentary life.
I well believe that a person naturally robust, with a clear and powerful
brain, could bear twelve or fourteen hours' work every day for years
together so far as the work itself is concerned, if only so large an
expenditure of time left a sufficient margin for amusement, and
exercise, and sleep. But the privation of exercise, by weakening the
digestive and assimilative powers, reduces the flow of healthy and rich
blood to the brain--the brain requires an enormous quantity of blood,
especially when the cerebral matter is rapidly destroyed by intellectual
labor--and usually brings on nervousness, the peculiar affliction of the
over-driven mental laborer. This nervousness is Nature's kindly warning,
preserving us, if we attend to it in time, from much more serious
consequences. The best preventive of it, and often the only cure, is
plenty of moderate exercise. The customs of the upper classes in England
happily provide this in the best shape, that of amusement enjoyed in
society, but our middle classes in large towns do not get nearly enough
of it, and the most studious are always strongly tempted to neglect it
altogether.
Men of great imaginative power are commonly addicted to a habit which is
peculiarly dangerous. They work as race-horses work, with the utmost
intensity of effort during short spaces of time, taxing all their
powers whilst the brilliant effort lasts. When Beckford wrote the
wonderful tale "Vathek" in his twentieth year, he did it at a single
sitting, which lasted for three days and two nights, and it cost him a
serious illness. Several of the best poems by Byron were written, if not
quite with equal rapidity, still on the same principle of composition at
white heat. In cases of this kind, Nature provides her own remedy in the
indolence of the imaginative temperament, which leaves large spaces of
time for the action of the recuperative processes. The same law governs
the physical energies of the carnivora, which maintain, or recover,
their capacity for extraordinary effort by intervals of absolute repose.
In its long spaces of mental rest the imaginative temperament recruits
itself by amusement, which in England usually includes physical exercise
of some kind.
This fortunate indolence of men of genius would in most instances ensure
their safety if they were not impelled by necessity to labor beyond the
suggestions of inclination. The exhausted brain never of itself seeks
the additional exhaustion of hard work. You know very well when you are
tired, and at such times the natural man in you asks plainly enough for
rest and recreation. The art is so to arrange our lives that the natural
man may sometimes have his way, and forget, if only for a time, the
labors which lead to weariness--not to that pleasant weariness of the
body which promises soundest sleep, but the distressing fatigue of the
exhausted spirit which is tortured by the importunity of ideas which it
is unable to express, and apprehensions that it cannot dismiss, which
fights through the sleepless night the phantoms of unconquerable horror.
NOTE.--The bad effect of literary composition on the physical state
which was observed by Wordsworth in his own case was also noticed by
Shelley during the composition of the "Cenci," which, he said, had
been a fine antidote to nervous medicines, and kept, he believed, the
pain in his side "as sticks do a fire." These influences are best
observed in people whose health is delicate. Although Joubert, for
example, had an extremely clear intellect, he could scarcely write at
all on account of the physical consequences. I have come to the
conclusion that literary work _acts simply as a strong stimulant_. In
moderate quantities it is not only innocent, but decidedly beneficial;
in excess it acts like poison on the nervous system. What constitutes
excess every man has to find out by his own experience. A page was
excess to Joubert, a chapter was moderation to Alexandre Dumas.
LETTER III.
TO A STUDENT IN UNCERTAIN HEALTH.
Habits of Kant, the philosopher--Objection to an over-minute
regularity of habit--Value of independence of character--Case of an
English author--Case of an English resident in Paris--Scott an
abundant eater and drinker--Goethe also--An eminent French
publisher--Turgot--Importance of good cookery--Wine drinking--Ale--The
aid of stimulants treacherous--The various effects of tobacco--Tea and
coffee--Case of an English clergyman--Balzac--The Arabia custom of
coffee-drinking--Wisdom of occasionally using stimulants.
IMMANUEL KANT, who was a master in the art of taking care of himself,
had by practice acquired a dexterous mode of folding himself up in the
bed-clothes, by passing them over and under his shoulders, so that, when
the operation was complete, he was shut up like the silkworm in his
cocoon. "When I am thus snugly folded up in my bed," he would say to his
friends, "I say to myself, can any man be in better health than I am?"
There is nothing in the lives of philosophers more satisfactory than
this little passage. If Kant had said to himself, "Can anybody be wiser,
more learned, more justly deserving of immortal fame than I am?" we
should have felt, that however agreeable this opinion might have been to
the philosopher who held it, his private satisfaction stood in need of
confirmation from without; and even if he had really been all this, we
might have reflected that wisdom and learning still leave their
possessor exposed to the acutest kinds of suffering. But when a
philosopher rolls himself up at night, and congratulates himself on the
possession of perfect health, we only think what a happy man he was to
possess that first of blessings, and what a sensible man to know the
value of it! And Kant had a deeper happiness in this reflection than any
which could spring from the mere consciousness of possessing one of the
unearned gifts of nature. The excellence of his health was due in part
to a sufficiently good constitution, but it was due also to his own
extreme carefulness about his habits. By an unceasing observation of his
own bodily life, as far as possible removed from the anxiety of
hypochondriacs, he managed to keep the physical machine in such regular
order, that for more than thirty years he always rose precisely at the
same minute. If his object had been health for health's sake, the result
would still have been well worth any sacrifices of momentary inclination
that it cost him; but Kant had a higher purpose. He well knew that the
regularity of the intellectual life depended entirely on the regularity
of the bodily functions, and, unlike the foolish men alluded to by
Goethe who pass the day in complaining of headache, and the night in
drinking the wine that produces it, Kant not only knew that regular
health was necessary to his work as a philosopher, but did everything in
his power to preserve it. Few intellectual laborers have in this respect
given evidence of such persistent strength of will.
In his manner of living he did not consult custom, but the needs of his
individual nature. It is not always easy for great brain-workers to
follow with perfect fidelity the customs of the people about them. These
usages have been gradually formed by the majority to suit the needs of
the majority; but there are cases where a close adherence to them would
be a serious hindrance to the highest and best activity. A good example
of this is Kant's intense antipathy to beer. It did not suit him, and he
was right in his non-conformity to German usage on this point, but he
was mistaken in believing beer to be universally injurious. There is a
very general belief in England that what is called a good breakfast is
the foundation of the labor of the day. Kant's breakfast, which he took
at five in the morning at all seasons of the year, consisted of a cup of
tea and a pipe of tobacco. On this he worked eight hours, either in
lecturing or writing--a long stretch of uninterrupted labor. He dined at
one, and this was his only meal, for he had no supper. The single repast
was a deviation from ordinary usage, but Kant found that it suited him,
probably because he read in the evening from six till a quarter to ten,
and a second meal might have interfered with this by diminishing his
power of attention. There exists a strong medical objection to this
habit of taking only one meal in twenty-four hours, which indeed is
almost unknown in England, though not extremely rare on the Continent. I
know an old gentleman who for forty years has lived as Kant did, and
enjoys excellent health and uncommon mental clearness.
A detail which illustrates Kant's attention to whatever could affect his
physical life, is his rule to withdraw his mind from everything
requiring effort fifteen minutes before he went to bed. His theory,
which is fully confirmed by the experience of others, was, that there
was a risk of missing sleep if the brain was not tranquillized before
bed-time. He knew that the intellectual life of the day depended on the
night's rest, and he took this precaution to secure it. The regularity
of his daily walk, taken during the afternoon in all weathers, and the
strict limitation of the hours of rest, also helped the soundness of his
sleep.
He would not walk out in company, for the whimsical reason that if he
opened his mouth a colder air would reach his lungs than that which
passed through the nostrils; and he would not eat alone, but always had
guests to dinner. There are good physiological reasons in favor of
pleasant society at table, and, besides these, there are good
intellectual reasons also.
By attention to these rules of his, Kant managed to keep both body and
mind in a working order, more uninterrupted than is usual with men who
go through much intellectual labor. The solitary objection to his system
is the excessive regularity of habit to which it bound him by chains of
his own forging. He found a quiet happiness in this regularity; indeed,
happiness is said to be more commonly found in habit that in anything
else, so deeply does it satisfy a great permanent instinct of our
nature. But a _minute_ regularity of habit is objectionable, because it
can only be practicable at home, and is compatible only with an
existence of the most absolute tranquillity. Kant did not travel, and
never could have travelled. He was a bachelor, and could not have ceased
to be a bachelor, without a disturbance that would have been intolerable
to him. He enjoyed the full benefits of his system without experiencing
its disadvantages, but any considerable change of situation would have
made the disadvantages apparent. Few lives can be so minutely regulated
without risk of future inconvenience.
Kant's example is a good one so far as this, that it proved a sort of
independence of character which would be valuable to every student. All
who need to keep their minds in the best possible condition ought to
have resolution enough to regulate their living in a manner which
experience, in their case, proves to be most favorable. Whatever may be
the authority of custom, a wise man makes himself independent of usages
which are impediments to his best activity. I know an author who was
always unwell about eleven o'clock in the morning--so unwell that he
could do nothing but lament his miserable fate. Knowing by experience
the powerful effect of regimen, I inquired whether he enjoyed his
breakfast. "No, he did not." "Then why did he attempt to eat any
breakfast?" It turned out that this foolish man swallowed every morning
two cups of bad coffee and a quantity of greasy food, from a patriotic
deference to the customs of his country. He was persuaded to abandon
this unsuitable habit and to eat nothing till half-past ten, when his
adviser prescribed a well-cooked little _déjeuner à la fourchette_,
accompanied by half a bottle of sound Bordeaux. The effect was magical.
My friend felt light and cheerful before _déjeuner_, and worked quite
happily and well, whilst after _déjeuner_ he felt like a horse that has
eaten his corn. Nor was the good effect a transitory one; the bad
symptoms never returned and he still adheres to his new arrangement.
This little reform made a wretched existence happy, and has had for its
result an increase in production with a diminution of fatigue. The
explanation is that the stomach did not ask for the early breakfast, and
had a hard fight to overcome it, after which came exhaustion and a
distaste both for food and work. There are cases where an opposite rule
is the right one. An Englishman living in Paris found the French
_déjeuner_ unsuitable for him, and discovered that he worked best on a
substantial English breakfast, with strong tea, at eight in the morning,
after which he went on working all day without any further nourishment
till dinner at six in the evening. A friend of Sir Walter Scott's, who
had stayed with him at Abbotsford, told me that Sir Walter ate and drank
like everybody else as to times and seasons, but much more abundantly
than people of less vigorous organization. Goethe used to work till
eleven without taking anything, then he drank a cup of chocolate and
worked till one. "At two he dined. This meal was the important meal of
the day. His appetite was immense. Even on the days when he complained
of not being hungry he ate much more than most men. Puddings, sweets,
and cakes were always welcome. He sat a long while over his wine. He was
fond of wine, and drank daily his two or three bottles." An eminent
French publisher, one of the most clear-headed and hard-working men of
his generation, never touched food or drink till six in the evening,
when he ate an excellent dinner with his guests. He found this system
favorable to his work, but a man of less robust constitution would have
felt exhausted in the course of the day.
Turgot could not work well till after he had dined copiously, but many
men cannot think after a substantial meal; and here, in spite of the
example set by Scott and Goethe, let me observe that nothing interferes
so much with brainwork as over-eating. The intellectual workman requires
nourishment of the best possible quality, but the quantity ought always
to be well within the capacity of his digestive powers. The truth
appears to be, that whilst the intellectual life makes very large
demands upon nutrition--for cerebral activity cannot go forward without
constant supplies of force, which must come ultimately from what we have
eaten--this kind of life, being sedentary, is unfavorable to the work of
digestion. Brain-workers cannot eat like sportsmen and farmers without
losing many hours in torpor, and yet they need nutrition as much as if
they led active lives. The only way out of this difficulty is to take
care that the food is good enough for a moderate quantity of it to
maintain the physical and mental powers. The importance of scientific
cookery can hardly be exaggerated. Intellectual labor is, in its
origin, as dependent upon the art of cookery as the dissemination of its
results is dependent upon paper-making and printing. This is one of
those matters which people cannot be brought to consider seriously; but
cookery in its perfection--the great science of preparing food in the
way best suited to our use--is really the most important of all
sciences, and the mother of the arts. The wonderful theory that the most
ignorant cookery is the most favorable to health is only fit for the
dark ages. It is grossly and stupidly untrue. A scientific cook will
keep you in regular health, when an ignorant one will offer you the
daily alternative of starving or indigestion.
The great question of drinks is scarcely less important. Sound natural
wines, not strengthened by any addition of alcohol, are known to supply
both stimulus and nourishment to the brain. Goethe's practice was not
irrational, though he drank fifty thousand bottles in his lifetime.
Still it is not necessary to imitate him to this extent. The
wine-drinking populations have keener and livelier wits than those who
use other beverages. It is proved by long experience that the pure juice
of the grape sustains the force and activity of the brain. The poets who
from age to age have sung the praise of wine were not wholly either
deceivers or deceived. In the lands of the vine, where the plant is
looked upon as a nursing mother, men do not injure their health by
drinking; but in the colder North, where the grape can never ripen, the
deaths from intemperance are frequent. Bread and wine are almost pure
gifts of nature, though both are prepared by man after the old
traditional ways. These are not poisons, but gin and absinthe are
poisons, madness poured out from a bottle! Kant and Goethe loved the
pure Rhine wine, and their brains were clear and vigorous to the utmost
span of life. It was not wine that ruined Burns and Byron, or
Baudelaire, or Alfred de Musset.
Notwithstanding Kant's horror of beer, that honest northern drink
deserves our friendly recognition. It has quite a peculiar effect upon
the nervous system, giving a rest and calm which no other drink can
procure for it so safely. It is said that beer drinkers are slow, and a
little stupid; that they have an ox-like placidity not quite favorable
to any brilliant intellectual display. But there are times when this
placidity is what the laboring brain most needs. After the agitations of
too active thinking there is safety in a tankard of ale. The wine
drinkers are agile, but they are excitable; the beer drinkers are heavy,
but in their heaviness there is peace. In that clear golden drink which
England has brewed for more than a thousand Octobers, and will brew for
a thousand more, we may find perhaps some explanation of that absence of
irritability which is the safe-guard of the national character, which
makes it faithful in its affections, easy to govern, not easy to excite
to violence.
If I have spoken favorably of beer and wine as having certain
intellectual uses, please remember that I recommend only the habitual
use of them, not mad rites of Bacchus, and even the habitual use only
just so far as it may suit the individual constitution. The liberal
regimen of Scott and Goethe would not answer in every case, and there
are organizations, often very robust, in which intoxicating drinks of
all kinds, even in the most moderate quantity, impede the brain's action
instead of aiding it. Two of the most able men I have ever known could
not drink pure wine of any kind because it sent the blood to the head,
with consequent cerebral oppression. And whilst on this subject I ought
to observe, that the aid which these stimulants afford, even when the
body gratefully accepts them, is often treacherous from its very
acceptability. Men who are over-driven--and the number of such men is
unhappily very great in these days--say that without stimulants they
could not get through their labor; but the stimulants often delude us as
to the limits of our natural powers and encourage us to attempt too
much. The help they give us is not altogether illusory; under certain
limitations it is real, but many have gone farther than the reality of
the assistance warranted. The ally brings to us an increase of forces,
but he comes with appearances of power surpassing the reality, and we
undertake tasks beyond our strength. In drinking, as in eating, the best
rule for the intellectual is moderation in quantity with good quality,
a sound wine, and not enough of it to foster self-delusion.
The use of tobacco has so much extended itself in the present generation
that we are all obliged to make a decision for ourselves on the ancient
controversy between its friends and enemies. We cannot form a reasonable
opinion about tobacco without bearing in mind that it produces,
according to circumstances, one of two entirely distinct and even
opposite classes of effects. In certain states of the body it acts as a
stimulant, in other states as a narcotic. People who have a dislike to
smoking affirm that it stupefies; but this assertion, at least so far as
the temporary consequences are concerned, is not supported by
experience. Most of the really brilliant conversations that I have
listened to have been accompanied by clouds of tobacco-smoke; and a
great deal of the best literary composition that is produced by
contemporary authors is wrought by men who are actually smoking whilst
they work. My own experience is that very moderate smoking acts as a
pleasant stimulus upon the brain, whilst it produces a temporary
lassitude of the muscular system, not perceptible in times of rest, but
an appreciable hindrance in times of muscular exertion. It is better
therefore for men who feel these effects from tobacco to avoid it when
they are in exercise, and to use it only when the body rests and the
mind labors. Pray remember, however, that this is the experience of an
exceedingly moderate smoker, who has not yet got himself into the
general condition of body which is brought on by a larger indulgence in
tobacco. On the other hand, it is evident that men engaged in physical
labor find a muscular stimulus in occasional smoking, and not a
temporary lassitude. It is probable that the effect varies with
individual cases, and is never precisely what our own experience would
lead us to imagine. For excessive smokers, it appears to be little more
than the tranquillizing of a sort of uneasiness, the continual
satisfaction of a continual craving. I have never been able to ascertain
that moderate smoking diminished intellectual force; but I have observed
in excessive smokers a decided weakening of the will, and a preference
for talking about work to the effort of actual labor. The opinions of
medical men on this subject are so much at variance that their science
only adds to our uncertainty. One doctor tells me that the most moderate
smoking is unquestionably injurious, whilst others affirm that it is
innocent. Speaking simply from self-observation, I find that in my own
case tea and coffee are far more perilous than tobacco.
Almost all English people are habitual tea-drinkers, and as the tea they
drink is very strong, they may be said to use it in excess. The
unpleasant symptoms which tea-poisoning produces in a patient not inured
by habit, disappear in the seasoned tea-drinker, leaving only a certain
exhilaration, which appears to be perfectly innocuous. If tea is a safe
stimulant, it is certainly an agreeable one, and there seems to be no
valid reason why brain-workers should refuse themselves that solace. I
knew a worthy clergyman many years ago who from the most conscientious
motives denied himself ale and wine, but found a fountain of consolation
in the tea-pot. His usual allowance was sixteen cups, all of heroic
strength, and the effect upon his brain seems to have been altogether
favorable, for his sermons were both long and eloquent, and to this day
he is preaching still, without any diminution of his powers. French
people find in coffee the most efficacious remedy for the temporary
torpor of the mind which results from the processes of digestion. Balzac
drank great quantities of coffee whilst he wrote; and this, it is
believed, brought on the terrible nervous disease that accelerated his
end. The best proof that tea and coffee are favorable to intellectual
expression is that all nations use one or the other as aids to
conversation. In Mr. Palgrave's Travels in Arabia there is never any
talk without the inevitable coffee, that fragrant Arabian berry prepared
with such delicate cunning that it yields the perfect aroma.
The wisdom of occasionally using these various stimulants for
intellectual purposes is proved by a single consideration. Each of us
has a little cleverness and a great deal of sluggish stupidity. There
are certain occasions when we absolutely need the little cleverness
that we possess. The orator needs it when he speaks, the poet when he
versifies, but neither cares how stupid he may become when the oration
is delivered and the lyric set down on paper. The stimulant serves to
bring out the talent when it is wanted, like the wind in the pipes of an
organ. "What will it matter if I am even a little duller afterwards?"
says the genius; "I can afford to be dull when I have done." But the
truth still remains that there are stimulants and stimulants. Not the
nectar of the gods themselves were worth the dash of a wave upon the
beach, and the pure cool air of the morning.
NOTE.--What is said in the above letter about the employment of
stimulants is intended to apply only to cases in which there is no
organic disease. The harm which diseased persons do to themselves by
conforming to customs which are innocent for others is as lamentable
as it is easily avoidable. Two bottles of any natural wine grown above
the latitude of Lyons are a permissible daily allowance to a man whose
organs are all sound; but the doctors in the wine districts
unanimously forbid pure wine when there is a chronic inflammatory
tendency. In these cases even the most honest Bordeaux ought to be
diluted with twice its volume of water. There are many chronic
diseases which tobacco irritates and accelerates. Both wine and
tobacco are injurious to weak eyes.
LETTER IV.
TO A MUSCULAR CHRISTIAN.
Muscular and intellectual tendencies in two boys--Difficulty of
finding time to satisfy both--Plato on the influences of music and
gymnastics--Somnolence and digestion--Neglect of literature--Natural
restlessness of the active temperament--Case of a Garibaldian
officer--Difficulty of taking a sufficient interest in exercise--A
boar hunt.
I know two little boys, sons of a near neighbor, who have from,
childhood exhibited opposite tendencies. One of them is incessantly
active, always out of doors in any weather, busy about horses, and
farming, and game, heedless of his books, and studying only under
positive compulsion. The other sits at home with his lessons or a story
book, and only goes out because he is incited by the fraternal example.
The two lads represent two distinct varieties of human life, the active
and the intellectual. The elder is happiest during physical exertion;
the younger is happiest when his brain is fully occupied. Left entirely
to themselves, without the equalizing influence of the outside world and
the ways of living which general custom has established, they would lead
the most opposite lives. The elder would inevitably become a farmer,
that he might live in the country and take exercise all day long, or
else he would seek adventure in wild travel, or in romantic warfare; but
the younger would very quickly be taken possession of by some engrossing
intellectual pursuit, and lead the life of a sedentary student. The
problem which these two young lives have before them is the
reconciliation of their tendencies. Since they come of cultivated
parents, the intellectual lad has the better chance of following his own
bent. Both will have to take their University degrees, and the younger
has the advantage there. Still there are powerful influences in favor of
the elder. His activity will be encouraged by the admiration of his
companions, and by the example of the country gentlemen who are his
neighbors. He can ride, and row, and swim; he is beginning to shoot; at
twenty he will be a sportsman. When once he has taken his degree, I
wonder what will be the advances in his intellectual culture. Fraternal
and social influences will preserve the younger from absolute physical
inaction; but there are not any influences powerful enough to keep the
elder safe from intellectual rust.
If you, who are a distinguished sportsman and athlete, would kindly
inform us with perfect frankness of the line which your studies have
followed since you quitted Eton, we should be the wiser for your
experience. Have gymnastic exercises hardened you, as Plato said they
did, when pursued excessively? and do you need the musical studies which
he both valued and dreaded as the most powerful of softening influences?
If you have energy enough to lead both lives, pray how do you find the
time?
As to Plato's musical influence, you invite it, and yet you
treacherously elude its power. After being out all day in the pursuit of
sylvan pleasures (if shooting on treeless wastes can be called a sylvan
pleasure), you come home at nightfall ravenous. Then you do ample
justice to your dinner, and having satisfied your _faim de chasseur_,
you go into the drawing-room, and ask your wife to play and sing to you.
If Plato could witness that pretty scene, he would approve your
obedience to his counsels. He would behold an athletic Englishman
stretching his mighty limbs on a couch of soft repose, and letting his
soul grow tender as his ears drank ravishing harmonies. If, however, the
ancient sage, delighted with so sweet a picture of strength refined by
song, were to dwell upon the sight as I have done, he would perceive too
soon that, although your body was present indeed, your soul had become
deaf in sleep's oblivion. So it happens to you night after night, and
the music reaches you no more than the songs of choristers reach the
dead in the graves below.
And the elevating influences of literature? You have books, of course,
in abundance. There is a library, amongst other luxuries of your home.
But the literature your intellect feeds upon is in the columns of the
_Field_, your newspaper. Yet this neglect of the means of culture is not
due to any natural feebleness of the mind. Your brain, by its nature, is
as vigorous as your vigorous body. It is sleep, and weariness, and the
great necessary business of digestion, that drown your intellectual
energies. The work of repairing so great a destruction of muscle is
nature's chief concern. Since you became the mighty hunter that you are,
the wear and tear have been enormous, and the necessary rapidity of
reconstruction has absorbed your rich vitality.
I will not question the wisdom of your choice, if there has been any
deliberate choice, though perhaps the life of action that you lead may
have grown rather out of circumstances determining habit than from any
conscious resolution. Health is so much more necessary to happiness than
culture, that few who could choose between them would sacrifice it for
learning, unless they were impelled by irresistible instincts. And
beyond the great delight of health and strength there is a restlessness
in men born to be active which must have its outlet in activity. I knew
a brave Italian who had followed Garibaldi in all his romantic
enterprises, who had suffered from privation and from wounds, who had
not only faced death in the wildest adventures, but, what is even more
terrible to the active temperament, had risked health from frequent
exposure; and when I asked him whether it was affection to his famous
chief, or faith in a political creed, or some more personal motive that
had led him to this scorn of prudence, he answered that, after honest
self-examination, he believed the most powerful motive to be the
passion for an active life. The active temperament likes physical
action for its own sake, and not as a means of health. Activity renews
itself and claims larger and larger satisfaction, till at last the habit
of it absorbs the whole energy of the man.
Although such a life as yours would be incompatible with the work I have
to do, it would be an unmixed benefit to me to take a greater interest
in exercise. If you could but communicate that interest, how willingly
would I become your pupil! The fatal law of the studious temperament is,
that in exercise itself it must find some intellectual charm, so that we
quit our books in the library only to go and read the infinite book of
nature. We cannot go out in the country without incessantly thinking
about either botany, or geology, or landscape painting, and it is
difficult for us to find a refuge from the importunate habit of
investigation. Sport is the only refuge, but the difficulty is to care
about it sufficiently to avoid _ennui_. When you have not the natural
instinct, how are you to supply its place by any make-believe
excitement? There is no position in the world more wearisome than that
of a man inwardly indifferent to the amusement in which he is trying to
take part. _You_ can watch for game with an invincible patience, for you
have the natural instinct, but after the first ten minutes on the skirts
of the wood I lay my gun down and begin to botanize. Last week a
friendly neighbor invited me to a boar-hunt. The boar was supposed to
be in the middle of a great impenetrable plantation, and all I did
during the whole morning was to sit in my saddle awaiting the exit of
the beast, cantering from one point of the wood's circumference to
another, as the cry of the dogs guided me. Was it pleasure? A true
hunter would have found interest enough in expectation, but I felt like
a man on a railway-platform who is waiting for a train that is late.
LETTER V.
TO A STUDENT WHO NEGLECTED BODILY EXERCISE.
Difficulty of conciliating the animal and the intellectual
lives--Bodily activity sometimes preserved by an effort of the
will--Necessity of faith in exercise--Incompatibility between physical
and intellectual living disappears in large spaces of time--Franklin's
theory about concentration in exercise--Time an essential
factor--Health of a rural postman--Pedestrian habits of
Wordsworth--Pedestrian and equestrian habits of Sir Walter
Scott--Goethe's wild delight in physical exercise--Alexander Humboldt
combated early delicacy by exercise--Intellectual utilities of
physical action.
"We have done those things which we ought not to have done; we have left
undone those things which we ought to have done, and there is no health
in us."
How applicable, my dear brother, are these words which the Church, in
her wisdom, has seen to be adapted to all sinners--how applicable, I
say, are they to students most especially! They have quite a personal
applicability to you and me. We have read all day long, and written till
three o'clock in the morning; we have taken no exercise for weeks, and
there is no health in us. The doctor scrutinizes our wearied eyes, and
knows that our brains are weary. Little do we need his warnings, for
does not Nature herself remind us of our disobedience, and tell us in
language not to be misinterpreted, to amend the error of our ways? Our
digestion is sluggish and imperfect; we are as nervous as delicate
ladies, and there is no health in us.
How easy it is to follow one of the two lives--the animal or the
intellectual! how difficult to conciliate the two! In every one of us
there exists an animal which might have been as vigorous as wolves and
foxes, if it had been left to develop itself in freedom. But besides the
animal, there existed also a mind, and the mental activity restrained
the bodily activity, till at last there is a serious danger of putting
an end to it altogether.
I know two men, about fifty-five years old both of them, and both of
them admirably active. They tell me that their bodily activity has been
preserved by an effort of the will; that if they had not resolutely kept
up the habit of using legs and arms in daily work or amusement their
limbs would have stiffened into uselessness, and their constitutions
would have been unable to bear the call of any sudden emergency. One of
them has four residences in different parts of the same county, and yet
he will not keep a carriage, but is a pedestrian terrible to his
friends; the other is at the head of a great business, and gives an
example of physical activity to his workpeople. Both have an absolute
faith in habitual exercise; and both affirm that if the habit were once
broken they could never afterwards resume it.
We need this faith in exercise--this firm conviction of its
necessity--the sort of conviction that makes a man go out in all
weathers, and leave the most urgent intellectual labor for the mere
discipline and hardening of the body. Few students possess this faith in
its purity. It is hard to believe that we shall get any good from
exercise proportionate to the sacrifice of time.
The incompatibility between the physical and the intellectual lives is
often very marked if you look at small spaces of time only; but if you
consider broader spaces, such as a lifetime, then the incompatibility is
not so marked, and gives place to a manifest conciliation. The brain is
clearer in vigorous health than it can be in the gloom and misery of
sickness; and although health may last for a while without renewal from
exercise, so that if you are working under pressure for a month the time
given to exercise is so much deducted from the result, it is not so for
the life's performance. Health sustained for many years is so useful to
the realization of all considerable intellectual undertakings, that the
sacrifice to the bodily well-being is the best of all possible
investments.
Franklin's theory about concentrating his exercise for the economy of
time was founded upon a mistake. Violent exertion for minutes is _not_
equivalent to moderate exercise for hours. The desire to concentrate
good of various kinds into the smallest possible space is one of the
commonest of _human_ wishes, but it is not encouraged by the broader
economy of nature. In the exercise of the mind every teacher is well
aware that time is an essential factor. It is necessary to _live_ with a
study for hundreds or thousands of hours before the mind can assimilate
as much of the subject as it may need; and so it is necessary to live in
exercise during a thousand hours of every year to make sure of the
physical benefits. Even the fresh air itself requires time to renovate
our blood. The fresh air cannot be concentrated; and to breathe the
prodigious quantities of it which are needed for perfect energy, we must
be out in it frequently and long.
The inhabitants of great cities have recourse to gymnastics as a
substitute for the sports of the country. These exercises have one
advantage--they can be directed scientifically so as to strengthen the
limbs that need development; but no city gymnasium can offer the
invigorating breezes of the mountain. We require not only exercise but
exposure--daily exposure to the health-giving inclemencies of the
weather. The postman who brings my letters walks eight thousand miles a
year, and enjoys the most perfect regularity of health. There are
operatives in factories who go through quite as much bodily exertion,
but they have not his fine condition. He is as merry as a lark, and
announces himself every morning like a bearer of joyful tidings. What
the postman does from necessity an old gentleman did as regularly,
though more moderately, for the preservation of his health and
faculties. He went out every day; and as he never consulted the weather,
so he never had to consult the physicians.
Nothing in the habits of Wordsworth--that model of excellent habits--can
be better as an example to men of letters than his love of pedestrian
excursions. Wherever he happened to be, he explored the whole
neighborhood on foot, looking into every nook and cranny of it; and not
merely the immediate neighborhood, but extended tracts of country; and
in this way he met with much of his best material. Scott was both a
pedestrian and an equestrian traveller, having often, as he tells us,
walked thirty miles or ridden a hundred in those rich and beautiful
districts which afterwards proved to him such a mine of literary wealth.
Goethe took a wild delight in all sorts of physical exercise--swimming
in the Ilm by moonlight, skating with the merry little Weimar court on
the Schwansee, riding about the country on horseback, and becoming at
times quite outrageous in the rich exuberance of his energy. Alexander
Humboldt was delicate in his youth, but the longing for great
enterprises made him dread the hindrances of physical insufficiency, so
he accustomed his body to exercise and fatigue, and prepared himself for
those wonderful explorations which opened his great career. Here are
intellectual lives which were forwarded in their special aims by habits
of physical exercise; and, in an earlier age, have we not also the
example of the greatest intellect of a great epoch, the astonishing
Leonardo da Vinci, who took such a delight in horsemanship that
although, as Vasari tells us, poverty visited him often, he never could
sell his horses or dismiss his grooms?
The physical and intellectual lives are not incompatible. I may go
farther, and affirm that the physical activity of men eminent in
literature has added abundance to their material and energy to their
style; that the activity of scientific men has led them to innumerable
discoveries; and that even the more sensitive and contemplative study of
the fine arts has been carried to a higher perfection by artists who
painted action in which they had had their part, or natural beauty,
which they had travelled far to see. Even philosophy itself owes much to
mere physical courage and endurance. How much that is noblest in ancient
thinking may be due to the hardy health of Socrates!
LETTER VI.
TO AN AUTHOR IN MORTAL DISEASE.
Considering death as a certainty--The wisdom learned from
suffering--Employment of happier intervals--The teaching of the
diseased not to be rejected--Their double experience--Ignorance of
Nature's spoiled children--Benefit of disinterested thought--Reasons
for pursuing intellectual labors to the last--Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire.
When Alexandre Bixio lay on his death-bed, his friend Labrousse visited
him, and exclaimed on entering the room, "How well you are looking
to-day!" To this, Bixio, who was clearly aware of his condition,
answered in these words:--"Voyons, mon pauvre Labrousse; tu viens voir
un homme qui n'a plus qu'un quart d'heure a vivre, et tu veux lui faire
croire qu'il a bonne mine; allons, une poignée de main, cela vaut mieux
pour un homme que tous ces petits mensonges-lá."
I will vex you with none of these well-meant but wearisome little
falsehoods. We both of us know your state; we both know that your
malady, though it may be alleviated, can never be cured; and that the
fatal termination of it, though delayed by all the artifices of science,
will certainly arrive at last. The cheerful courage which enables you to
look this certainty in the face has also enabled you to extract from
years of suffering that profoundest wisdom which (as one of the wisest
of living Englishmen has told us) can be learned from suffering alone.
The admirable elasticity of your intellectual and moral nature has
enabled you, in the intervals of physical uneasiness or pain, to cast
aside every morbid thought, to enter quite fully and heartily into the
healthy life of others, and to enjoy the magnificent spectacle of the
universe with contented submission to its laws--those beneficent yet
relentless laws which to you bring debility and death. You have
continued to write notwithstanding the progress of your malady; and yet,
since it has so pitilessly held you, there is no other change in the
spirit of your compositions than the deepening of a graver beauty, the
addition of a sweeter seriousness. Not one sentence that you have
written betrays either the injustice of the invalid, or his
irritability. Your mind is not clouded by any mist from the fever
marshes, but its sympathies are far more active than they were. Your
pain has taught you a tender pity for all the pain that is outside of
you, and a patient gentleness which was wanting to your nature in its
days of barbarian health.
Surely it would be a lamentable error if mankind were to carry out the
recommendation of certain ruthless philosophers, and reject the help and
teaching of the diseased. Without undervaluing the robust performance of
healthy natures, and without encouraging literature that is morbid, that
is fevered, impatient, and perverse, we may still prize the noble
teaching which is the testament of sufferers to the world. The diseased
have a peculiar and mysterious experience; they have known the
sensations of health, and then, in addition to this knowledge, they have
gained another knowledge which enables them to think more accurately
even of health itself. A life without suffering would be like a picture
without shade. The pets of Nature, who do not know what suffering is,
and cannot realize it, have always a certain rawness, like foolish
landsmen who laugh at the terrors of the ocean, because they have
neither experience enough to know what those terrors are, nor brains
enough to imagine them.
You who are borne along, slowly but irresistibly, to that Niagara which
plunges into the gulf of death,--you who, with perfect self-possession
and heroic cheerfulness, are counting the last miles of the
voyage,--find leisure to study and think as the boat glides onwards
silently to the inevitable end. It is one of the happiest privileges of
the high intellectual life that it can elevate us--at least in the
intervals of relief from complete prostration or acute pain--to regions
of disinterested thought, where all personal anxieties are forgotten. To
feel that he is still able, even in days of physical weakness and
decline, to add something to the world's inheritance of knowledge, or to
bequeath to it some new and noble thought in the pearl of complete
expression, is a profound satisfaction to the active mind that is lodged
in a perishing body. Many diseases fortunately permit this activity to
the last; and I do not hesitate to affirm, that the work done in the
time of physical decline has in not a few instances been the most
perfect and the most permanently valuable. It is not accurately true
that the mind and the body invariably fail together. Physicians who know
how prevalent chronic diseases are, and how many eminent men are
physically inconvenienced by them, know also that minds of great
spiritual energy possess the wonderful faculty of indefinitely improving
themselves whilst the body steadily deteriorates. Nor is there anything
irrational in this persistent improvement of the mind, even to the
extremest limit of material decay; for the mind of every intellectual
human being is part and parcel of the great permanent mind of humanity;
and even if its influence soon ceases to be traceable--if the spoken
words are forgotten--if the written volume is not reprinted or even
quoted, it has not worked in vain. The intellectual light of Europe in
this century is not only due to great luminaries whom every one can
name, but to millions of thoughtful persons, now utterly forgotten, who
in their time loved the light, and guarded it, and increased it, and
carried it into many lands, and bequeathed it as a sacred trust. He who
labors only for his personal pleasure may well be discouraged by the
shortness and uncertainty of life, and cease from his selfish toil on
the first approaches of disease; but whoever has fully realized the
grand continuity of intellectual tradition, and taken his own place in
it between the future and the past, will work till he can work no more,
and then gaze hopefully on the world's great future, like Geoffroy
Saint-Hilaire, when his blind eyes beheld the future of zoology.
LETTER VII.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF BRILLIANT ABILITY, WHO HAD JUST TAKEN HIS DEGREE.
A domestic picture--Thoughts suggested by it--Importance of the senses
in intellectual pursuits--Importance of hearing to Madame de
Stael--Importance of seeing to Mr. Buskin--Mr. Prescott, the
historian--How blindness retarded his work--Value of all the five
senses--Self-government indispensable to their perfection--Great value
of longevity to the intellectual life.
It is always a great pleasure to me to pass an evening at your father's
house; but on the last occasion that pleasure was very much enhanced
because you were once more with us. I watched your mother's eyes as she
sat in her place in the drawing-room. They followed you almost without
ceasing, and there was the sweetest, happiest expression on her dear
face, that betrayed her tender maternal love for you and her legitimate
maternal pride. Your father was equally happy in his own way; he was
much more gay and talkative than I have seen him for two or three
anxious years; he told amusing stories; he entered playfully into the
jests of others; he had pleasant projects for the future, and spoke of
them with facetious exaggeration. I sat quietly in my corner, slyly
observing my old friends, and amusing myself by discovering (it did not
need much perspicacity for that) the hidden sources of the happiness
that was so clearly visible. They were gladdened by the first successes
of your manhood; by the evidence of your strength; by the realization of
hopes long cherished.
Watching this charming picture with a perfect sympathy, I began to have
certain thoughts of my own which it is my present purpose to communicate
to you without disguise. I thought, first, how agreeable it was to be
the spectator of so pretty a picture; but then my eyes wandered to a
painting that hung upon the walls, in which also there were a mother and
her son, and this led me a long way. The painting was a hundred years
old; but although the colors were not quite so fresh as when they left
the palette of the artist, the beautiful youth who stood radiant like a
young Apollo in the centre of the composition had not lost one of the
great gifts with which his cunning human creator had endowed him. The
fire of his eye had not been quenched by time; the bloom of his cheek
still flushed with faint vermilion; his lip was full and imperious; his
limbs athletic; his bearing haughty and dauntless. All life seemed
spread before him like a beautiful rich estate of which every acre was
his own. How easily will he conquer fame! how easily kindle passion. Who
shall withstand this pink and perfection of aristocracy--this ideal of
the age of fine gentlemen, with all the gifts of nature helped by all
the inventions of art?
Then I thought farther: "That splendid young nobleman in the picture
will look just as young as he does now when we shall be either
superannuated or dead." And I looked at you and your mother again and
thought: "It is just five minutes since I saw these two living beings,
and in this little space of time they have both of them aged a little,
though no human observer has enough delicacy of perception to detect so
inappreciable an alteration." I went gradually on and on into the
future, trying to imagine the changes which would come over yourself
more especially (for it was you who were the centre of my reverie), till
at last I imagined pretty accurately what you might be at sixty; but
there it became necessary to stop, because it was too difficult to
conceive the processes of decay.
After this, one thought grew upon me and became dominant. I thought, at
present he has all the senses in their perfection, and they serve him
without a hitch. He is an intelligence served by organs, and the organs
are all doing their duty as faithfully as a postman who brings letters.
When the postman becomes too infirm to do his work he will retire on his
little pension, and another will take his place and bring the letters
just as regularly; but when the human organs become infirm they cannot
be taken out and replaced by new ones, so that we must content ourselves
to the end, with their service, such as it may be. Then I reflected how
useful the senses are to the high intellectual life, and how wise it is,
even for intellectual purposes, to preserve them as long as possible in
their perfection.
To be able to see and hear well--to feel healthy sensations--even to
taste and smell properly, are most important qualifications for the
pursuit of literature, and art, and science. If you read attentively the
work of any truly illustrious poet, you will find that the whole of the
imagery which gives power and splendor to his verse is derived from
nature through one or other of these ordinary channels. Some
philosophers have gone much farther than this, and have affirmed that
the entire intellectual life is based ultimately upon remembered
physical sensations; that we have no mental conception that is really
independent of sensuous experience; and that the most abstract thought
is only removed from sensation by successive processes of substitution,
I have not space to enter into so great and mysterious a subject as
this; but I desire to draw your attention to a truth very commonly
overlooked by intellectual people, which is the enormous importance of
the organs of sense in the highest intellectual pursuits. I will couple
together two names which have owed their celebrity, one chiefly to the
use of her ears, the other to the use of his eyes. Madame de Stael
obtained her literary material almost exclusively by means of
conversation. She directed, systematically, the talk of the learned and
brilliant men amongst whom she lived to the subject which for the moment
happened to occupy her thoughts. Her literary process (which is known to
us in detail through the revelations of her friends) was purposely
invented to catch everything that she heard, as a net catches fish in a
river. First, she threw down on paper a very brief rough draft of the
intended literary project. This she showed to few, but from it she made
a second "state" (as an engraver would say), which she exhibited to some
of her trusted friends, profiting by their hints and suggestions. Her
secretary copied the corrected manuscript, incorporating the new matter,
on paper with a very broad margin for farther additions. During all the
time that it took to carry her work through these successive states,
that ingenious woman made the best possible use of her ears, which were
her natural providers. She made everybody talk who was likely to be of
any use to her, and then immediately added what she had caught on the
wide margin reserved for that purpose. She used her eyes so little that
she might almost as well have been blind. We have it on her own
authority, that were it not out of respect to custom, she would not open
her window to see the Bay of Naples for the first time, whereas she
would travel five hundred leagues to talk with a clever man whom she had
never met.
Now since Madame de Stael's genius fed itself exclusively through the
faculty of hearing, what an enormous difference it would have made to
her if she had been deaf! It is probable that the whole of her literary
reputation was dependent on the condition of her ears. Even a very
moderate degree of deafness (just enough to make listening irksome)
might have kept her in perpetual obscurity.
The next instance I intend to give is that of a distinguished
contemporary, Mr. Ruskin. His peculiar position in literature is due to
his being able to see as cultivated artists see. Everything that is best
and most original in his writings is invariably either an account of
what he has seen in his own independent inimitable way, or else a
criticism of the accurate or defective sight of others. His method of
study, by drawing and taking written memoranda of what he has seen, is
entirely different from Madame de Stael's method, but refers always, as
hers did, to the testimony of the predominant sense. Every one whose
attention has been attracted to the subject is aware that, amongst
people who are commonly supposed, to see equally well, and who are not
suspected of any tendency to blindness, the degrees of perfection in
this sense vary to infinity. Suppose that Mr. Ruskin (to our great
misfortune) had been endowed with no better eyes than many persons who
see fairly well in the ordinary sense, his enjoyment and use of sight
would have been so much diminished that he would have had little
enthusiasm about seeing, and yet that kind of enthusiasm was quite
essential to his work.
The well-known instance of Mr. Prescott, the historian, is no doubt a
striking proof what _may_ be accomplished by a man of remarkable
intellectual ability without the help of sight, or rather helped by the
sight of others. We have also heard of a blind traveller, and even of a
blind entomologist; but in all cases of this kind they are executive
difficulties to be overcome, such that only the most resolute natures
would ever dream of encountering them. When the materials for the "Reign
of Ferdinand and Isabella" arrived in Prescott's house from Europe, his
remaining eye had just suffered from over-exertion to such a degree that
he could not use it again for years. "I well remember," he wrote in a
letter to a friend, "the blank despair which I felt when my literary
treasures arrived, and I saw the mine of wealth lying around me which I
was forbidden to explore." And although, by a most tedious process,
which would have worn out the patience of any other author, Mr. Prescott
did at last arrive at the conclusion of his work, it cost him ten years
of labor--probably thrice as much time as would have been needed by an
author of equal intellectual ability without any infirmity of sight.
Although, of the five senses which God has given us, sight and hearing
are the most necessary to the intellectual life, it may easily be
demonstrated that the lower ones are not without their intellectual
uses. Perfect literature and art can only he produced by men who are
perfect in all their natural faculties. The great creative intellects
have never been ascetics; they have been rightly and healthily sensitive
to every kind of pleasure. The taste of fruits and wines, the perfume of
flowers are a part of the means by which the spirit of Nature influences
our most secret thoughts, and conveys to us suggestions, or carries us
into states of feeling which have an enormous effect upon our thinking,
though the manner in which the effect is produced is one of the deepest
mysteries of our mysterious being. When the Caliph Vathek added five
wings to the palace of Alkoremmi, on the hill of Pied Horses, for the
particular gratification of each of his five senses, he only did on a
uselessly large scale what every properly-endowed human being does, when
he can afford it, on a small one.
You will not suspect me of preaching unlimited indulgence. The very
object of this letter is to recommend, for intellectual purposes, the
careful preservation of the senses in the freshness of their perfection,
and this is altogether incompatible with every species of excess. If you
are to see clearly all your life, you must not sacrifice eyesight by
over-straining it; and the same law of moderation is the condition of
preserving every other faculty. I want you to know the exquisite taste
of common dry bread; to enjoy the perfume of a larch wood at a distance;
to feel delight when a sea-wave dashes over you. I want your eye to be
so sensitive that it shall discern the faintest tones of a gray cloud,
and yet so strong that it shall bear to gaze on a white one in the
dazzling glory of sunshine. I would have your hearing sharp enough to
detect the music of the spheres, if it were but audible, and yet your
nervous system robust enough to endure the shock of the guns on an
ironclad. To have and keep these powers we need a firmness of
self-government that is rare.
Young men are careless of longevity; but how precious are added years to
the fulness of the intellectual life! There are lives, such as that of
Major Pendennis, which only diminish in value as they advance--when the
man of fashion is no longer fashionable, and the sportsman can no longer
stride over the ploughed fields. The old age of the Major Pendennises is
assuredly not to be envied: but how rich is the age of the Hunboldts! I
compare the life of the intellectual to a long wedge of gold--the thin
end of it begins at birth, and the depth and value of it go on
indefinitely increasing till at last comes Death (a personage for whom
Nathaniel Hawthorne had a peculiar dislike, for his unmannerly habit of
interruption), who stops the auriferous processes. Oh, the mystery of
the nameless ones who have died when the wedge was thin and looked so
poor and light! Oh, the happiness of the fortunate old men whose
thoughts went deeper and deeper like a wall that runs out into the sea!
NOTE.--One of the most painful cases of interruption caused by death
is that of Cuvier. His paralysis came upon him whilst he was still in
full activity, and death prevented him from arranging a great
accumulation of scientific material. He said to M. Pasquier, "I had
great things still to do; all was ready in my head. After thirty years
of labor and research, there remained but to write, and now the hands
fail, and carry with them the head." But the most lamentable instances
of this kind of interruption are, from the nature of things, unknown
to us. Even the friends of the deceased cannot estimate the extent of
the loss, for a man's immediate neighbors are generally the very last
persons to become aware of the nature of his powers or the value of
his acquirements.
PART II.
THE MORAL BASIS.
LETTER I.
TO A MORALIST WHO HAD SAID THAT THERE WAS A WANT OF MORAL FIBRE IN THE
INTELLECTUAL, ESPECIALLY IN POETS AND ARTISTS.
The love of intellectual pleasure--The seeking for a
stimulus--Intoxication of poetry and oratory--Other mental
intoxications--The Bishop of Exeter on drudgery--The labor of
composition in poetry--Wordsworth's dread of it--Moore--His trouble
with "Lalla Rookh"--His painstaking in preparation--Necessity of
patient industry in other arts--John Lewis, Meissonier,
Mulready--Drudgery in struggling against technical
difficulties--Water-color painting, etching, oil-painting, fresco,
line-engraving--Labor undergone for mere discipline--Moral strength of
students--Giordano Bruno.
You told me the other day that you believed the inducement to what I
called intellectual living to be merely the love of pleasure--pleasure
of a higher kind, no doubt, than that which we derive from wine, yet
fairly comparable to it. You went on to say that you could not, from the
moral point of view, discern any appreciable difference between
intoxicating oneself by means of literature or art and getting tipsy on
port wine or brandy; that the reading of poetry, most especially was
clearly self-intoxication--a service of Venus and Bacchus, in which the
suggestions of artfully-ordered words were used as substitutes for the
harem and the wine-flask. Completing the expression of this idea, you
said that the excitement produced by oratory was exactly of the same
nature as the excitement produced by gin, so that Mr. Bright and M.
Gambetta--nay, even a gentleman so respectable as the late Lord
Derby--belonged strictly to the same profession as the publicans, being
dealers in stimulants, and no more. The habitual student was, in your
view, nothing better than the helpless victim of unresisted appetite, to
whom intellectual intoxication, having been at first a pleasure, had
finally become a necessity. You added that any rational person who found
himself sinking into such a deplorable condition as this, would have
recourse to some severe discipline as a preservative--a discipline
requiring close attention to common things, and rigorously excluding
every variety of thought which could possibly be considered
intellectual.
It is strictly true that the three intellectual pursuits--literature,
science, and the fine arts--are all of them strong stimulants, and that
men are attracted to them by the stimulus they give. But these
occupations are morally much nearer to the common level of other
occupations than you suppose. There is no doubt a certain intoxication
in poetry and painting; but I have seen a tradesman find a fully
equivalent intoxication in an addition of figures showing a delightful
balance at his banker's. I have seen a young poet intoxicated with the
love of poetry; but I have also seen a young mechanical genius on whom
the sight of a locomotive acted exactly like a bottle of champagne.
Everything that is capable of exciting or moving man, everything that
fires him with enthusiasm, everything that sustains his energies above
the dead level of merely animal existence, may be compared, and not very
untruly, to the action of generous wine. The two most powerful mental
stimulants--since they overcome even the fear of death--are
unquestionably religion and patriotism: ardent states of feeling both of
them when they are genuine; yet this ardor has a great utility. It
enables men to bear much, to perform much which would be beyond their
natural force if it were not sustained by powerful mental stimulants.
And so it is in the intellectual life. It is because its labors are so
severe that its pleasures are so glorious. The Creator of intellectual
man set him the most arduous tasks--tasks that required the utmost
possible patience, courage, self-discipline, and which at the same time
were for the most part, from their very nature, likely to receive only
the most meagre and precarious pecuniary reward. Therefore, in order
that so poor and weak a creature might execute its gigantic works with
the energy necessary to their permanence, the labor itself was made
intensely attractive and interesting to the few who were fitted for it
by their constitution. Since their courage could not be maintained by
any of the common motives which carry men through ordinary
drudgery--since neither wealth nor worldly position was in their
prospects, the drudgery they had to go through was to be rewarded by the
triumphs of scientific discovery, by the felicities of artistic
expression. A divine drunkenness was given to them for their
encouragement, surpassing the gift of the grape.
But now that I have acknowledged, not ungratefully, the necessity of
that noble excitement which is the life of life, it is time for me to
add that, in the daily labor of all intellectual workers, much has to be
done which requires a robustness of the moral constitution beyond what
you appear to be aware of. It is not long since the present Bishop of
Exeter truly affirmed, in an address to a body of students, that if
there were not weariness in work, that work was not so thorough-going as
it ought to be. "Of all work," the Bishop said, "that produces results,
nine-tenths must be drudgery. There is no work, from the highest to the
lowest, which can be done well by any man who is unwilling to make that
sacrifice. Part of the very nobility of the devotion of the true workman
to his work consists in the fact that a man is not daunted by finding
that drudgery must be done; and no man can really succeed in any walk of
life without a good deal of what in ordinary English is called pluck.
That is the condition of all work whatever, and it is the condition of
all success. And there is nothing which so truly repays itself as this
very perseverance against weariness."
You understand, no doubt, that there is drudgery in the work of a lawyer
or an accountant, but you imagine that there is no drudgery in that of
an artist, or author, or man of science. In these cases you fancy that
there is nothing but a pleasant intoxication, like the puffing of
tobacco or the sipping of claret after dinner. The Bishop sees more
accurately. He knows that "of _all_ work that produces results
nine-tenths must be drudgery." He makes no exceptions in favor of the
arts and sciences; if he had made any such exceptions, they would have
proved the absence of culture in himself. Real work of all descriptions,
even including the composition of poetry (the most intoxicating of all
human pursuits), contains drudgery in so large a proportion that
considerable moral courage is necessary to carry it to a successful
issue. Some of the most popular writers of verse have dreaded the labor
of composition. Wordsworth shrank from it much more sensitively than he
did from his prosaic labors as a distributor of stamps. He had that
_horreur de la plume_ which is a frequent malady amongst literary men.
But we feel, in reading Wordsworth, that composition was a serious toil
to him--the drudgery is often visible. Let me take, then, the case of a
writer of verse distinguished especially for fluency and ease--the
lightest, gayest, apparently most thoughtless of modern minstrels--the
author of "The Irish Melodies" and "Lalla Rookh." Moore said--I quote
from memory and may not give the precise words, but they were to this
effect--that although the first shadowy imagining of a new poem was a
delicious fool's paradise, the labor of actual composition was something
altogether different. He did not, I believe, exactly use the word
"drudgery," but his expression implied that there was painful drudgery
in the work. When he began to write "Lalla Rookh" the task was anything
but easy to him. He said that he was "at all times a far more slow and
painstaking workman than would ever be guessed from the result." For a
long time after the conclusion of the agreement with Messrs. Longman,
"though generally at work with a view to this task, he made but very
little real progress in it." After many unsatisfactory attempts, finding
that his subjects were so slow in kindling his own sympathies, he began
to despair of their ever touching the hearts of others. "Had this series
of disheartening experiments been carried on much further, I must have
thrown aside the work in despair." He took the greatest pains in long
and laboriously preparing himself by reading. "To form a storehouse, as
it were, of illustrations purely Oriental, and so familiarize myself
with its various treasures that, quick as Fancy required the aid of
fact in her spiritings, the memory was ready to furnish materials for
the spell-work; such was, for a long while, the sole object of my
studies." After quoting some opinions favorable to the truth of his
Oriental coloring, he says: "Whatever of vanity there may be in citing
such tributes, they show, at least, of what great value, even in poetry,
is that prosaic quality, industry, since it was in a slow and laborious
collection of small facts that the first foundations of this fanciful
romance were laid."
Other fine arts make equally large claims upon the industry of their
professors. We see the charming result, which looks as if it were
nothing but pleasure--the mere sensuous gratification of an appetite for
melody or color; but no one ever eminently succeeded in music or
painting without patient submission to a discipline far from attractive
or entertaining. An idea was very prevalent amongst the upper classes in
England, between twenty and thirty years ago, that art was not a serious
pursuit, and that Frenchmen were too frivolous to apply themselves
seriously to anything. When, however, the different schools of art in
Europe came to be exhibited together, the truth began to dawn upon
people's minds that the French and Belgian schools of painting had a
certain superiority over the rest--a superiority of quite a peculiar
sort; and when the critics applied themselves to discover the hidden
causes of this generally perceived superiority, they found out that it
was due in great measure to the patient drudgery submitted to by those
foreign artists in their youth. English painters who have attained
distinction have gone through a like drudgery, if not in the public
_atelier_ at least in secrecy and solitude. Mr. John Lewis, in reply to
an application for a drawing to be reproduced by the autotype process,
and published in the _Portfolio_, said that his sketches and studies
were all in color, but if we liked to examine them we were welcome to
select anything that might be successfully photographed. Not being in
London at the time, I charged an experienced friend to go and see if
there were anything that would answer our purpose. Soon afterward he
wrote: "I have just been to see John Lewis, and have come away
_astounded_." He had seen the vast foundations of private industry on
which the artist's public work had been erected,--innumerable studies in
color, wrought with the most perfect care and finish, and all for
self-education merely, not for any direct reward in fame. We have all
admired the extraordinary power of representation in the little pictures
of Meissonier; that power was acquired by painting studies _life-size_
for self-instruction, and the artist has sustained his knowledge by
persistence in that practice. Mulready, between the conception of a new
picture and the execution of it, used to give himself a special training
for the intended work by painting a study in color of every separate
thing that was to form part of the composition. It is useless to go on
multiplying these examples, since all great artists, without exception,
have been distinguished for their firm faith in steady well-directed
labor. This faith was so strong in Reynolds that it limited his
reasoning powers, and prevented him from assigning their due importance
to the inborn natural gifts.
Not only in their preparations for work, but even in the work itself, do
artists undergo drudgery. It is the peculiarity of their work that, more
than any other human work, it displays whatever there may be in it of
pleasure and felicity, putting the drudgery as much out of sight as
possible; but all who know the secrets of the studio are aware of the
ceaseless struggles against technical difficulty which are the price of
the charms that pleasantly deceive us. The amateur tries to paint in
water-color, and finds that the gradation of his sky will not come
right; instead of being a sound gradation like that of the heavenly
blue, it is all in spots and patches. Then he goes to some clever artist
who seems to get the right thing with enviable ease. "Is my paper good?
have my colors been properly ground?" The materials are sound enough,
but the artist confesses one of the discouraging little secrets of his
craft. "The fact is," he says, "those spots that you complain of happen
to all of us, and very troublesome they are, especially in dark tints;
the only way is to remove them as patiently as we can, and it sometimes
takes several days. If one or two of them remain in spite of us, we
turn them into birds." In etching, the most famous practitioners get
into messes with the treacherous chemistry of their acids, and need an
invincible patience. Even Méryon was always very anxious when the time
came for confiding his work to what he called the _traitresse liqueur_;
and whenever I give a commission to an etcher, I am always expecting
some such despatch as the following: "Plate utterly ruined in the
biting. Very sorry. Will begin another immediately." We know what a
dreadful series of mishaps attended our fresco-painters at Westminster,
and now even the promising water-glass process, in which Maclise
trusted, shows the bloom of premature decay. The safest and best known
of modern processes, simple oil-painting has its own dangers also. The
colors sink and alter; they lose their relative values; they lose their
pearly purity, their glowing transparence--they turn to buff and black.
The fine arts bristle all over with technical difficulties, and are, I
will not say the best school of patience in the world, for many other
pursuits are also very good schools of patience; but I will say, without
much fear of contradiction from anybody acquainted with the subject,
that the fine arts offer drudgery enough, and disappointment enough, to
be a training both in patience and in humility.
In the labor of the line-engraver both these qualities are developed to
the pitch of perfect heroism. He sits down to a great surface of steel
or copper, and day by day, week after week, month after month, ploughs
slowly his marvellous lines. Sometimes the picture before him is an
agreeable companion; he is in sympathy with the painter; he enjoys every
touch that he has to translate. But sometimes, on the contrary, he hates
the picture, and engraves it as a professional duty. I happened to call
upon a distinguished English engraver--a man of the greatest taste and
knowledge, a refined and cultivated critic--and I found him seated at
work before a thing which had nothing to do with fine art--a medley of
ugly portraits of temperance celebrities on a platform. "Ah!" he said to
me sadly, "you see the dark side of our profession; fancy sitting down
to a desk all day long for two years together with that thing to occupy
your thoughts!" How much moral fibre was needed to carry to a successful
issue so repulsive a task as that! You may answer that a stone-breaker
on the roadside surpasses my line-engraver both in patience and in
humility; but whereas the sensitiveness of the stone-breaker has been
deadened by his mode of life, the sensitiveness of the engraver has been
continually fostered and increased. An ugly picture was torture to his
cultivated eye, and he had to bear the torture all day long, like the
pain of an irritating disease.
Still even the line-engraver has secret sources of entertainment to
relieve the mortal tedium of his task-work. The picture may be hideous,
but the engraver has hidden consolations in the exercise of his
wonderful art. He can at least entertain himself with feats of
interpretative skill, with the gentle treacheries of improving here and
there upon the hatefulness of the intolerable original. He may
congratulate himself in the evening, that one more frightful hat or coat
has been got rid of; that the tiresome task has been reduced by a space
measurable in eights of an inch. The heaviest work which shows progress
is not without _one_ element of cheerfulness.
There is a great deal of intellectual labor, undergone simply for
discipline, which shows no present result that is appreciable, and which
therefore requires, in addition to patience and humility, one of the
noblest of the moral virtues, faith. Of all the toils in which men
engage, none are nobler in their origin or their aim than those by which
they endeavor to become more wise. Pray observe that whenever the desire
for greater wisdom is earnest enough to sustain men in these high
endeavors, there must be both humility and faith--the humility which
acknowledges present insufficiency, the faith that relies upon the
mysterious laws which govern our intellectual being. Be sure that there
has been great moral strength in all who have come to intellectual
greatness. During some brief moments of insight the mist has rolled away
and they have beheld, like a celestial city, the home of their highest
aspirations; but the cloud has gathered round them again, and still in
the gloom they have gone steadily forwards, stumbling often, yet
maintaining their unconquerable resolution. It is to this sublime
persistence of the intellectual in other ages that the world owes the
treasures which they won; it is by a like persistence that we may hope
to hand them down, augmented, to the future. Their intellectual purposes
did not weaken their moral nature, but exercised and exalted it. All
that was best and highest in the imperfect moral nature of Giordano
Bruno had its source in that noble passion for Philosophy, which made
him declare that for her sake it was easy to endure labor and pain and
exile, since he had found "in brevi labore diuturnam requiem, in levi
dolore immensum gaudium, in angusto exilio patriam amplissimam."
LETTER II.
TO AN UNDISCIPLINED WRITER.
Early indocility of great workers--External discipline only a
substitute for inward discipline--Necessity for inward
discipline--Origin of the idea of discipline--Authors peculiarly
liable to overlook its uses--Good examples--Sir Arthur
Helps--Sainte-Beuve--The central authority in the mind--Locke's
opinion--Even the creative faculty may be commanded--Charles
Baudelaire--Discipline in common trades and professions--Lawyers and
surgeons--Haller--Mental refusals not to be altogether
disregarded--The idea of discipline the moral basis of the
intellectual life--Alexander Humboldt.
Sir Arthur Helps, in that wise book of his "Thoughts upon Government,"
says that "much of the best and greatest work in the world has been done
by those who were anything but docile in their youth." He believes that
"this bold statement applies not only to the greatest men in Science,
Literature, and Art, but also to the greatest men in official life, in
diplomacy, and in the general business of the world."
Many of us who were remarkable for our indocility in boyhood, and
remarkable for nothing else, have found much consolation in this
passage. It is most agreeable to be told, by a writer very eminent both
for wisdom and for culture, that our untowardness was a hopeful sign.
Another popular modern writer has also encouraged us by giving a long
list of dunces who have become illustrious.
Yet, however flattering it may be to find ourselves in such excellent
company, at least so far as the earlier half of life may be concerned,
we cannot quite forget the very numerous instances of distinguished
persons who began by submitting to the discipline of school and college,
and gained honors and reputation there, before encountering the
competition of the world.
The external discipline applied by schoolmasters is a substitute for
that inward discipline which we all so greatly need, and which is
absolutely indispensable to culture. Whether a boy happens to be a dunce
at school or a youth of brilliant promise, his future intellectual
career will depend very much on his moral force. The distinguished men
who derived so little benefit from early discipline have invariably
subjected themselves to a discipline of another kind which prepared them
for the labor of their manhood. It may be a pure assumption to say this,
but the assumption is confirmed by every instance that is known to me.
Many eminent men have undergone the discipline of business, many like
Franklin have been self-disciplined, but I have never heard of a person
who had risen to intellectual eminence without voluntary submission to
an intellectual discipline of some kind.
There are, no doubt, great pleasures attached to the intellectual life,
and quite peculiar to it; but these pleasures are the support of
discipline and not its negation. They give us the cheerfulness necessary
for our work, but they do not excuse us from the work. They are like
the cup of coffee served to a soldier on duty, not like the opium which
incapacitates for everything but dreaming.
I have been led into these observations by a perusal of the new book
which you sent me. It has many qualities which in a young writer are
full of promise. It is earnest, and lively, and exuberant, but at the
same time it is undisciplined.
Now I believe it may be affirmed, that although there has been much
literature in former ages which was both vigorous and undisciplined,
still when an age presents, as ours does, living examples of perfect
intellectual discipline, whoever falls below them in this respect
contents himself with the very kind of inferiority which of all
inferiorities is the easiest to avoid. You cannot, by an effort of the
will, hope to rival the brilliance of a genius, but you may quite
reasonably expect to obtain as complete a control over your own
faculties and your own work as any other highly-cultivated person.
The origin of discipline is the desire to do not merely our best with
the degree of power and knowledge which at the time we do actually
happen to possess, but with that which we _might_ possess if we
submitted to the necessary training. The powers given to us by Nature
are little more than a power to become, and this becoming is always
conditional on some sort of exercise--what sort we have to discover for
ourselves.
No class of persons are so liable to overlook the uses of discipline as
authors are. Anybody can write a book, though few can write that which
deserves the name of literature. There are great technical differences
between literature and book-making, but few can clearly explain these
differences, or detect, in their own case, the absence of the necessary
qualities. In painting, the most perfect finish is recognized at a
glance, but the mind only can perceive it in the book. It was an odd
notion of the authorities to exhibit literature in the international
exhibitions; but if they could have made people see the difference
between sound and unsound workmanship in the literary craft, they would
have rendered a great service to the higher intellectual discipline. Sir
Arthur Helps might have served as an example to English writers, because
he has certain qualities in which we are grievously deficient. He can
say a thing in the words that are most fit and necessary, and then leave
it. Sainte-Beuve would have been another admirable example of
self-discipline, especially to Frenchmen, who would do well to imitate
him in his horror of the _á peu près_. He never began to write about
anything until he had cleared the ground well before him. He never spoke
about any character or doctrine that he had not bottomed (to use Locke's
word) as far as he was able. He had an extraordinary aptitude for
collecting exactly the sort of material that he needed, for arranging
and classifying material, for perceiving its mutual relations. Very few
Frenchmen have had Sainte-Beuve's intense repugnance to insufficiency
of information and inaccuracy of language. Few indeed are the French
journalists of whom it might be said, as it may be truly said of
Sainte-Beuve, that he never wrote even an article for a newspaper
without having subjected his mind to a special training for that
particular article. The preparations for one of his _Lundis_ were the
serious occupation of several laborious days; and before beginning the
actual composition, his mind had been disciplined into a state of the
most complete readiness, like the fingers of a musician who has been
practising a piece before he executes it.
The object of intellectual discipline is the establishment of a strong
central authority in the mind by which all its powers are regulated and
directed as the military forces of a nation are directed by the
strategist who arranges the operations of a war. The presence of this
strong central authority is made manifest in the unity and proportion of
the results; when this authority is absent (it is frequently entirely
absent from the minds of undisciplined persons, especially of the female
sex), you have a chaos of complete confusion; when the authority without
being absent is not strong enough to regulate the lively activity of the
intellectual forces, you have too much energy in one direction, too
little in another, a brigade where a regiment could have done the work,
and light artillery where you want guns of the heaviest calibre.
To establish this central authority it is only necessary, in any
vigorous and sound mind, to exercise it. Without such a central power
there is neither liberty of action nor security of possession. "The
mind," says Locke, "should always be free and ready to turn itself to
the variety of objects that occur, and allow them as much consideration
as shall, for that time, be thought fit. To be engrossed so by one
subject as not to be prevailed on to leave it for another that we judge
fitter for our contemplation, is to make it of no use to us. Did this
state of mind always remain so, every one would, without scruple, give
it the name of perfect madness; and whilst it does last, at whatever
intervals it returns, such a rotation of thoughts about the same object
no more carries us forward toward the attainment of knowledge, than
getting upon a mill-horse whilst he jogs on his circular track, would
carry a man on a journey."
Writers of imaginative literature have found in practice that even the
creative faculty might be commanded. Charles Baudelaire, who had the
poetical organization with all its worst inconveniencies, said
nevertheless that "inspiration is decidedly the sister of daily labor.
These two contraries do not exclude each other more than all the other
contraries which constitute nature. Inspiration obeys like hunger, like
digestion, like sleep. There is, no doubt, in the mind a sort of
celestial mechanism, of which we need not be ashamed, but we ought to
make the best use of it. If we will only live in a resolute
contemplation of next day's work, the daily labor will serve
inspiration." In cases where discipline is felt to be very difficult, it
is generally at the same time felt to be very desirable. George Sand
complains that although "to overcome the indiscipline of her brain, she
had imposed upon herself a regular way of living, and a daily labor,
still twenty times out of thirty she catches herself reading or
dreaming, or writing something entirely apart from the work in hand."
She adds that without this frequent intellectual _flânerie_, she would
have acquired information which has been her perpetual but unrealized
desire.
It is the triumph of discipline to overcome both small and great
repugnances. We bring ourselves, by its help, to face petty details that
are wearisome, and heavy tasks that are almost appalling. Nothing shows
the power of discipline more than the application of the mind in the
common trades and professions to subjects which have hardly any interest
in themselves. Lawyers are especially admirable for this. They acquire
the faculty of resolutely applying their minds to the dryest documents,
with tenacity enough to end in the perfect mastery of their contents; a
feat which is utterly beyond the capacity of any undisciplined
intellect, however gifted by Nature. In the case of lawyers there are
frequent intellectual repugnances to be overcome; but surgeons and other
men of science have to vanquish a class of repugnances even less within
the power of the will--the instinctive physical repugnances. These are
often so strong as to seem apparently insurmountable, but they yield to
persevering discipline. Although Haller surpassed his contemporaries in
anatomy, and published several important anatomical works, he was
troubled at the outset with a horror of dissection beyond what is usual
with the inexperienced, and it was only by firm self-discipline that he
became an anatomist at all.
There is, however, one reserve to be made about discipline, which is
this: We ought not to disregard altogether the mind's preferences and
refusals, because in most cases they are the indication of our natural
powers. They are not so always; many have felt attracted to pursuits for
which they had no capacity (this happens continually in literature and
the fine arts), whilst others have greatly distinguished themselves in
careers which were not of their own choosing, and for which they felt no
vocation in their youth. Still there exists a certain relation between
preference and capacity, which may often safely be relied upon when
there are not extrinsic circumstances to attract men or repel them.
Discipline becomes an evil, and a very serious evil, causing immense
losses of special talents to the community, when it overrides the
personal preferences entirely. We are less in danger of this evil,
however, from the discipline which we impose upon ourselves than from
that which is imposed upon us by the opinion of the society in which we
live. The intellectual life has this remarkable peculiarity as to
discipline, that whilst very severe discipline is indispensable to it,
that which it really needs is the obedience to an inward law, an
obedience which is not only compatible with revolt against other
people's notions of what the intellectual man ought to think and do, but
which often directly leads to such revolt as its own inevitable result.
In the attempt to subject ourselves to the inward law, we may encounter
a class of mental refusals which indicate no congenital incapacity, but
prove that the mind has been incapacitated by its acquired habits and
its ordinary occupations. I think that it is particularly important to
pay attention to this class of mental refusals, and to give them the
fullest consideration. Suppose the case of a man who has a fine natural
capacity for painting, but whose time has been taken up by some
profession which has formed in him mental habits entirely different from
the mental habits of an artist. The inborn capacity for art might
whisper to this man, "What if you were to abandon your profession and
turn painter?" But to this suggestion of the inborn capacity the
acquired unfitness would, in a man of sense, most probably reply, "No;
painting is an art bristling all over with the most alarming technical
difficulties, which I am too lazy to overcome; let younger men attack
them if they like." Here is a mental refusal of a kind which the
severest self-disciplinarian ought to listen to. This is Nature's way
of keeping us to our specialities; she protects us by means of what
superficial moralists condemn as one of the minor vices--the
disinclination to trouble ourselves without necessity, when the work
involves the acquisition of new habits.
The moral basis of the intellectual life appears to be the idea of
discipline; but the discipline is of a very peculiar kind, and varies
with every individual. People of original power have to discover the
original discipline that they need. They pass their lives in
thoughtfully altering this private rule of conduct as their needs alter,
as the legislature of a progressive State makes unceasing alterations in
its laws. When we look back upon the years that are gone, this is our
bitterest regret, that whilst the precious time, the irrecoverable, was
passing by so rapidly, we were intellectually too undisciplined to make
the best personal use of all the opportunities that it brought. Those
men may be truly esteemed happy and fortunate who can say to themselves
in the evening of their days--"I had so prepared myself for every
successive enterprise, that when the time came for it to be carried into
execution my training ensured success."
I had thought of some examples, and there are several great men who have
left us noble examples of self-discipline; but, in the range and
completeness of that discipline, in the foresight to discern what would
be wanted, in the humility to perceive that it was wanting, in the
resolution that it should _not_ be wanting when the time came that such
knowledge or faculty should be called for, one colossal figure so far
excels all others that I cannot write down their names with that of
Alexander Humboldt. The world sees the intellectual greatness of such a
man, but does not see the substantial moral basis on which the towering
structure rose. When I think of his noble dissatisfaction with what he
knew; his ceaseless eagerness to know more, and know it better; of the
rare combination of teachableness that despised no help (for he accepted
without jealousy the aid of everybody who could assist him), with
self-reliance that kept him always calm and observant in the midst of
personal danger, I know not which is the more magnificent spectacle, the
splendor of intellectual light, or the beauty and solidity of the moral
constitution that sustained it.
LETTER III.
TO A FRIEND WHO SUGGESTED THE SPECULATION "WHICH OF THE MORAL VIRTUES
WAS MOST ESSENTIAL TO THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE."
The most essential virtue is disinterestedness--The other virtues
possessed by the opponents of intellectual liberty--The Ultramontane
party--Difficulty of thinking disinterestedly even about the affairs
of another nation--English newspapers do not write disinterestedly
about foreign affairs--Difficulty of disinterestedness in recent
history--Poets and their readers feel it--Fine subjects for poetry in
recent events not yet available--Even history of past times rarely
disinterested--Advantages of the study of the dead languages in this
respect--Physicians do not trust their own judgment about their
personal health--The virtue consists in endeavoring to be
disinterested.
I think there cannot be a doubt that the most essential virtue is
disinterestedness.
Let me tell you, after this decided answer, what are the considerations
which have led me to it. I began by taking the other important virtues
one by one--industry, perseverance, courage, discipline, humility, and
the rest; and then asked myself whether any class of persons possessed
and cultivated these virtues who were nevertheless opposed to
intellectual liberty. The answer came immediately, that there have in
every age been men deservedly respected for these virtues who did all in
their power to repress the free action of the intellect. What is called
the Ultramontane party in the present day includes great numbers of
talented adherents who are most industrious, most persevering, who
willingly submit to the severest discipline--who are learned,
self-denying, and humble enough to accept the most obscure and
ill-requited duties. Some of these men possess nine-tenths of the
qualifications that are necessary to the highest intellectual life--they
have brilliant gifts of nature; they are well-educated; they take a
delight in the exercise of noble faculties, and yet instead of employing
their time and talents to help the intellectual advancement of mankind,
they do all in their power to retard it. They have many most respectable
virtues, but one is wanting. They have industry, perseverance,
discipline, but they have _not_ disinterestedness.
I do not mean disinterestedness in its ordinary sense as the absence of
selfish care about money. The Church of Rome has thousands of devoted
servants who are content to labor in her cause for stipends so miserable
that it is clear they have no selfish aim; whilst they abandon all those
possibilities of fortune which exist for every active and enterprising
layman. But their thinking can never be disinterested so long as their
ruling motive is devotion to the interests of their Church. Some of them
are personally known to me, and we have discussed together many of the
greatest questions which agitate the continental nations at the present
time. They have plenty of intellectual acumen; but whenever the
discussion touches, however remotely, the ecclesiastical interests that
are dear to them, they cease to be observers--they become passionate
advocates. It is this habit of advocacy which debars them from all
elevated speculation about the future of the human race, and which so
often induces them to take a side with incapable and retrograde
governments, too willingly overlooking their deficiencies in the
expectation of services to the cause. Their predecessors have impeded,
as far as they were able, the early growth of science--not for
intellectual reasons, but because they instinctively felt that there was
something in the scientific spirit not favorable to those interests
which they placed far above the knowledge of mere matter.
I have selected the Ultramontane party in the Church of Rome as the most
prominent example of a party eminent for many intellectual virtues, and
yet opposed to the intellectual life from its own want of
disinterestedness. But the same defect exists, to some degree, in every
partisan--exists in you and me so far as we are partisans. Let us
suppose, for example, that we desired to find out the truth about a
question much agitated in a neighboring country at the present time--the
question whether it would be better for that country to attempt the
restoration of its ancient Monarchy or to try to consolidate a
Republican form of government. How difficult it is to think out such a
problem disinterestedly, and yet how necessary to the justice of our
conclusions that we should think disinterestedly if we pretend to think
at all! It is true that we have one circumstance in our favor--we are
not French subjects, and this is much. Still we are not disinterested,
since we know that the settlement of a great political problem such as
this, even though on foreign soil, cannot fail to have a powerful
influence on opinion in our own country, and consequently upon the
institutions of our native land. We are spectators only, it is true; but
we are far from being disinterested spectators. And if you desire to
measure the exact degree to which we are interested in the result, you
need only look at the newspapers. The English newspapers always treat
French affairs from the standpoint of their own party. The Conservative
journalist in England is a Monarchist in France, and has no hopes for
the Republic; the Liberal journalist in England believes that the French
dynasties are used up, and sees no chance of tranquillity outside of
republican institutions. In both cases there is an impediment to the
intellectual appreciation of the problem.
This difficulty is so strongly felt by those who write and read the sort
of literature which aspires to permanence, and which, therefore, ought
to have a substantial intellectual basis, that either our distinguished
poets choose their subjects in actions long past and half-forgotten, or
else, when tempted by present excitement, they produce work which is
artistically far inferior to their best. Our own generation has
witnessed three remarkable events which are poetical in the highest
degree. The conquest of the Two Sicilies by Garibaldi is a most perfect
subject for a heroic poem; the events which led to the execution of the
Emperor Maximilian and deprived his Empress of reason, would, in the
hands of a great dramatist, afford the finest possible material for a
tragedy; the invasion of France by the Germans, the overthrow of
Napoleon III., the siege of Paris, are an epic ready to hand that only
awaits its Homer; yet, with the exception of Victor Hugo, who is far
gone in intellectual decadence, no great poet has sung of these things
yet. The subjects are as good as can be, but too near. Neither poet nor
reader is disinterested enough for the intellectual enjoyment of these
subjects: the poet would not see his way clearly, the reader would not
follow unreservedly.
It may be added, however, in this connection, that even past history is
hardly ever written disinterestedly. Historians write with one eye on
the past and the other on the pre-occupations of the present. So far as
they do this they fall short of the intellectual standard. An ideally
perfect history would tell the pure truth, and all the truth, so far as
it was ascertainable.
Artists are seldom good critics of art, because their own practice
biasses them, and they are not disinterested. The few artists who have
written soundly about art have succeeded in the difficult task of
detaching saying from doing; they have, in fact, become two distinct
persons, each oblivious of the other.
The strongest of all the reasons in favor of the study of the dead
languages and the literatures preserved in them, has always appeared to
me to consist in the more perfect disinterestedness with which we
moderns can approach them. The men and events are separated from us by
so wide an interval, not only of time and locality, but especially of
modes of thought, that our passions are not often enlisted, and the
intellect is sufficiently free.
It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific class, and
therefore more than commonly aware of the great importance of
disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment
when they feel the approaches of disease. They know that it is difficult
for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate
conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly
as his own, even although the person who suffers has the advantage of
actually experiencing the morbid sensations.
To all this you may answer that intellectual disinterestedness seems
more an accident of situation than a virtue. The virtue is not to have
it, but to seek it in all earnestness; to be ready to accept the truth
even when it is most unfavorable to ourselves. I can illustrate my
meaning by a reference to a matter of everyday experience. There are
people who cannot bear to look into their own accounts from a dread
that the clear revelation of figures may be less agreeable to them than
the illusions which they cherish. There are others who possess a kind of
virtue which enables them to see their own affairs as clearly as if they
had no personal interest in them. The weakness of the first is one of
the most fatal of intellectual weaknesses; the mental independence of
the second is one of the most desirable of intellectual qualities. The
endeavor to attain it, or to strengthen it, is a great virtue, and of
all the virtues the one most indispensable to the nobility of the
intellectual life.
NOTE.--The reader may feel some surprise that I have not mentioned
honesty as an important intellectual virtue. Honesty is of great
importance, no doubt, but it appears to be (as to practical effects)
included in disinterestedness, and to be less comprehensively useful.
There is no reason to suspect the honesty of many political and
theological partisans, yet their honesty does not preserve them from
the worst intellectual habits, such as the habit of "begging the
question," of misrepresenting the arguments on the opposite side, of
shutting their eyes to every fact which is not perfectly agreeable to
them. The truth is, that mere honesty, though a most respectable and
necessary virtue, goes a very little way toward the forming of an
effective intellectual character. It is valuable rather in the
relations of the intellectual man to the outer world around him, and
even here it is dangerous unless tempered by discretion. A perfect
disinterestedness would ensure the best effects of honesty, and yet
avoid some serious evils, against which honesty is not, in itself, a
safeguard.
LETTER IV.
TO A MORALIST WHO SAID THAT INTELLECTUAL CULTURE WAS NOT CONDUCIVE TO
SEXUAL MORALITY.
That the Author does not write in the spirit of advocacy--Two
different kinds of immorality--Byron and Shelley--A peculiar
temptation for the intellectual--A distinguished foreign
writer--Reaction to coarseness from over-refinement--Danger of
intellectual excesses--Moral utility of culture--The most cultivated
classes at the same time the most moral--That men of high intellectual
aims have an especially strong reason for morality--M. Taine's
opinion.
A critic in one of the quarterlies once treated me as a feeble defender
of my opinions, because I gave due consideration to both sides of a
question. He said that, like a wise commander, I capitulated beforehand
in case my arguments did not come up for my relief; nay, more, that I
gave up my arms in unconditional surrender. To this let me answer, that
I have nothing to do with the polemical method, that I do not look upon
an opponent as an enemy to be repelled, but as a torch-bearer to be
welcomed for any light that he may bring; that I defend nothing, but try
to explore everything that lies near enough.
You need not expect me, therefore, to defend very vigorously the
morality of the intellectual life. An advocate could do it brilliantly;
there are plenty of materials, but so clumsy an advocate as your present
correspondent would damage the best of causes by unseasonable
indiscretions. So I begin by admitting that your accusations are most
of them well founded. Many intellectual people have led immoral lives,
others have led lives which, although in strict conformity to their own
theories of morality, were in opposition to the morality of their
country and their age. Byron is a good instance of the first, and
Shelley of the second. Byron was really and knowingly immoral; Shelley,
on the other hand, hated what he considered to be immorality, and lived
a life as nearly as possible in accordance with the moral ideal in his
own conscience; still he did not respect the moral rule of his country,
but lived with Mary Godwin, whilst Harriet, his first wife, was still
alive. There is a clear distinction between the two cases; yet both have
the defect that the person takes in hand the regulation of his own
morality, which it is hardly safe for any one to do, considering the
prodigious force of passion.
I find even in the lives of intellectual people a peculiar temptation to
immorality from which others are exempt. It is in their nature to feel
an eager desire for intellectual companionship, and yet at the same time
to exhaust very rapidly whatever is congenial to them in the intellect
of their friends. They feel a strong intellectual attraction to persons
of the opposite sex; and the idea of living with a person whose
conversation is believed at the time to promise an increasing interest,
is attractive in ways of which those who have no such wants can scarcely
form a conception. A most distinguished foreign writer, of the female
sex, has made a succession of domestic arrangements which, if generally
imitated by others, would be subversive of any conceivable system of
morality; and yet it is clear in this case that the temptation was
chiefly, if not entirely, intellectual. The successive companions of
this remarkable woman were all of them men of exceptional intellectual
power, and her motive for changing them was an unbridled intellectual
curiosity.
This is the sort of immorality to which cultivated people are most
exposed. It is dangerous to the well-being of a community because it
destroys the sense of security on which the idea of the family is
founded. If we are to leave our wives when their conversation ceases to
be interesting, the foundations of the home will be unsafe. If they are
to abandon, us when we are dull, to go away with some livelier and more
talkative companion, can we ever hope to retain them permanently?
There is another danger which must be looked fairly in the face. When
the lives of men are refined beyond the real needs of their
organization, Nature is very apt to bring about the most extraordinary
reactions. Thus the most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and
painting have frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. Within
the Châteaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene Châteaubriand that
would burst forth occasionally in talk that no biographer could repeat.
I have heard the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know that
Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the pleasures of a sailor
on the spree. A friend said to me of one of the most exquisite living
geniuses: "You can have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes;
he associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their rough
brutality."
These cases only prove, what I have always willingly admitted, that the
intellectual life is not free from certain dangers if we lead it too
exclusively. Intellectual excesses, by the excitement which they
communicate to the whole system, have a direct tendency to drive men
into other excesses, and a too great refinement in one direction may
produce degrading reactions in another. Still the cultivation of the
mind, reasonably pursued, is, on the whole, decidedly favorable to
morality; and we may easily understand that it should be so, when we
remember that people have recourse to sensual indulgences simply from a
desire for excitement, whilst intellectual pursuits supply excitement of
a more innocent kind and in the utmost variety and abundance. If,
instead of taking a few individual instances, you broadly observe whole
classes, you will recognize the moral utility of culture. The most
cultivated classes in our own country are also the most moral, and these
classes have advanced in morality at the same time that they have
advanced in culture. English gentlemen of the present day are superior
to their forefathers whom Fielding described; they are better educated,
and they read more; they are at the same time both more sober and more
chaste.
I may add that intellectual men have peculiar and most powerful reasons
for avoiding the excesses of immorality, reasons which to any one who
has a noble ambition are quite enough to encourage him in self-control.
Those excesses are the gradual self-destruction of the intellectual
forces, for they weaken the spring of the mind, not leaving it well
enough to face the drudgery that is inevitable in every career. Even in
cases where they do not immediately lead to visible imbecility, they
make the man less efficient and less capable than he might have been;
and all experienced wrestlers with fate and fortune know well that
success has often, at the critical time, depended upon some very
trifling advantage which the slightest diminution of power would have
lost to them. No one knows the full immensity of the difference between
having power enough to make a little headway against obstacles, and just
falling short of the power which is necessary at the time. In every
great intellectual career there are situations like that of a steamer
with a storm-wind directly against her and an iron-bound coast behind.
If the engines are strong enough to gain an inch an hour she is safe,
but if they lose there is no hope. Intellectual successes are so
rewarding that they are worth any sacrifice of pleasure; the sense of
defeat is so humiliating that fair Venus herself could not offer a
consolation for it. An ambitious man will govern himself for the sake of
his ambition, and withstand the seductions of the senses. Can he be ever
strong enough, can his brain ever be lucid enough for the immensity of
the task before him?
"Le jeune homme," says M. Taine, "ignore qu'il n'y a pas de pire
déperdition de forces, que de tels commerces abaissent le coeur,
qu'après dix ans d'une vie pareille il aura perdu la moitié de sa
volonté, que ses pensées auront un arrière-goût habituel d'amertume et
de tristesse, que son ressort intérieur sera amolli ou faussé. Il
s'excuse à ses propres yeux, en se disant qu'un homme doit tout toucher
pour tout connaître. De fait, il apprend la vie, mais bien souvent aussi
il perd l'énergie, la chaleur d'âme, la capacité d'agir, et à trente ans
il n'est plus bon qu'à faire un employé, un dilettante, ou un rentier."
PART III.
_OF EDUCATION._
LETTER I.
TO A FRIEND WHO RECOMMENDED THE AUTHOR TO LEARN THIS THING AND THAT.
Lesson learned from a cook--The ingredients of knowledge--Importance
of proportion in the ingredients--Case of an English author--Two
landscape painters--The unity and charm of character often dependent
upon the limitations of culture--The burden of knowledge may diminish
the energy of action--Difficulty of suggesting a safe rule for the
selection of our knowledge--Men qualified for their work by ignorance
as well as by knowledge--Men remarkable for the extent of their
studies--Franz Woepke--Goethe--Hebrew proverb.
I happened one day to converse with an excellent French cook about the
delicate art which he professed, and he comprised the whole of it under
two heads--the knowledge of the mutual influences of ingredients, and
the judicious management of heat. It struck me that there existed a very
close analogy between cookery and education; and, on following out the
subject in my own way, I found that what he told me suggested several
considerations of the very highest importance in the culture of the
human intellect.
Amongst the dishes for which my friend had a deserved reputation was a
certain _gâteau de foie_ which had a very exquisite flavor. The
principal ingredient, not in quantity hut in power, was the liver of a
fowl; but there were several other ingredients also, and amongst these a
leaf or two of parsley. He told me that the influence of the parsley was
a good illustration of his theory about his art. If the parsley were
omitted, the flavor he aimed at was not produced at all; but, on the
other hand, if the quantity of parsley was in the least excessive, then
the _gâteau_ instead of being a delicacy for _gourmets_ became an
uneatable mess. Perceiving that I was really interested in the subject,
he kindly promised a practical evidence of his doctrine, and the next
day intentionally spoiled his dish by a trifling addition of parsley. He
had not exaggerated the consequences; the delicate flavor entirely
departed, and left a nauseous bitterness in its place, like the
remembrance of an ill-spent youth.
And so it is, I thought, with the different ingredients of knowledge
which are so eagerly and indiscriminately recommended. We are told that
we ought to learn this thing and that, as if every new ingredient did
not affect the whole flavor of the mind. There is a sort of intellectual
chemistry which is quite as marvellous as material chemistry, and a
thousand times more difficult to observe. One general truth may,
however, be relied upon as surely and permanently our own. It is true
that everything we learn affects the _whole_ character of the mind.
Consider how incalculably important becomes the question of proportion
in our knowledge, and how that which we are is dependent as much upon
our ignorance as our science. What we call ignorance is only a smaller
proportion--what we call science only a larger. The larger quantity is
recommended as an unquestionable good, but the goodness of it is
entirely dependent on the mental product that we want. Aristocracies
have always instinctively felt this, and have decided that a gentleman
ought not to know too much of certain arts and sciences. The character
which they had accepted as their ideal would have been destroyed by
indiscriminate additions to those ingredients of which long experience
had fixed the exact proportions. The same feeling is strong in the
various professions: there is an apprehension that the disproportionate
knowledge may destroy the professional nature. The less intelligent
members of the profession will tell you that they dread an
unprofessional use of time; but the more thoughtful are not so
apprehensive about hours and days, _they_ dread that sure transformation
of the whole intellect which follows every increase of knowledge.
I knew an English author who by great care and labor had succeeded in
forming a style which harmonized quite perfectly with the character of
his thinking, and served as an unfailing means of communication with
his readers. Every one recognized its simple ease and charm, and he
might have gone on writing with that enviable facility had he not
determined to study Locke's philosophical compositions. Shortly
afterwards my friend's style suddenly lost its grace; he began to write
with difficulty, and what he wrote was unpleasantly difficult to read.
Even the thinking was no longer his own thinking. Having been in too
close communication with a writer who was not a literary artist, his own
art had deteriorated in consequence.
I could mention an English landscape painter who diminished the
pictorial excellence of his works by taking too much interest in
geology. His landscapes became geological illustrations, and no longer
held together pictorially. Another landscape painter, who began by
taking a healthy delight in the beauty of natural scenery, became
morbidly religious after an illness, and thenceforth passed by the
loveliest European scenery as comparatively unworthy of his attention,
to go and make ugly pictures of places that had sacred associations.
For people who produce nothing these risks appear to be less serious;
and yet there have been admirable characters, not productive, whose
admirableness might have been lessened by the addition of certain kinds
of learning. The last generation of the English country aristocracy was
particularly rich in characters whose unity and charm was dependent
upon the limitations of their culture, and which would have been
entirely altered, perhaps not for the better, by simply knowing a
science or a literature that was closed to them.
Abundant illustrations might be collected in evidence of the well-known
truth that the burden of knowledge may diminish the energy of action;
but this is rather outside of what we are considering, which is the
influence of knowledge upon the intellectual and not the active life.
I regret very much not to be able to suggest anything like a safe rule
for the selection of our knowledge. The most rational one which has been
hit upon as yet appears to be a simple confidence in the feeling that we
inwardly want to know. If I feel the inward want for a certain kind of
knowledge, it may perhaps be presumed that it would be good for me; but
even this feeling is not perfectly reliable, since people are often
curious about things that do not closely concern them, whilst they
neglect what it is most important for them to ascertain. All that I
venture to insist upon is, that we cannot learn any new thing without
changing our whole intellectual composition as a chemical compound is
changed by another ingredient; that the mere addition of knowledge may
be good for us or bad for us; and that whether it will be good or bad is
usually a more obscure problem than the enthusiasm of educators will
allow. That depends entirely on the work we have to do. Men are
qualified for their work by knowledge, but they are also negatively
qualified for it by their ignorance. Nature herself appears to take care
that the workman shall not know too much--she keeps him steadily to his
task; fixes him in one place mentally if not corporeally, and conquers
his restlessness by fatigue. As we are bound to a little planet, and
hindered by impassable gulfs of space from wandering in stars where we
have no business, so we are kept by the force of circumstances to the
limited studies that belong to us. If we have any kind of efficiency,
very much of it is owing to our narrowness, which is favorable to a
powerful individuality.
Sometimes, it is true, we meet with instances of men remarkable for the
extent of their studies. Franz Woepke, who died in 1864, was an
extraordinary example of this kind. In the course of a short life he
became, although unknown, a prodigy of various learning. His friend M.
Taine says that he was erudite in many eruditions. His favorite pursuit
was the history of mathematics, but as auxiliaries he had learned
Arabic, and Persian, and Sanskrit. He was classically educated, he wrote
and spoke the principal modern languages easily and correctly;[1] his
printed works are in three languages. He had lived in several nations,
and known their leading men of science. And yet this astonishing list of
acquirements may be reduced to the exercise of two decided and natural
tastes. Franz Woepke had the gift of the linguist and an interest in
mathematics, the first serving as auxiliary to the second.
Goethe said that "a vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we
can think upon them." Woepke felt the need of this abundance, but he
did not go out of his way to find it. The objectionable seeking after
knowledge is the seeking after the knowledge which does not belong to
us. In vain you urge me to go in quest of sciences for which I have no
natural aptitude. Would you have me act like that foolish camel in the
Hebrew proverb, which in going to seek horns lost his ears?
LETTER II.
TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS.
Men cannot restrict themselves in learning--Description of a Latin
scholar of two generations since--What is attempted by a cultivated
contemporary--Advantages of a more restricted field--Privilege of
instant admission--Many pursuits cannot be kept up simultaneously--The
deterioration of knowledge through neglect--What it really is--The
only available knowledge that which we habitually use--Difficulty in
modern education--That it is inevitably a beginning of many things and
no more--The simpler education of an ancient Greek--That of
Alcibiades--How the Romans were situated as to this--The privilege of
limited studies belongs to the earlier ages--They learned and we
attempt to learn.
It appears to be henceforth inevitable that men should be unable to
restrict themselves to one or two pursuits, and you who are in most
respects a very perfect specimen of what the age naturally produces in
the way of culture, have studied subjects so many and so various that a
mere catalogue of them would astonish your grandfather if his shade
could revisit his old home. And yet your grandfather was considered a
very highly cultivated gentleman according to the ideas and requirements
of his time. He was an elegant scholar, but in Latin chiefly, for he
said that he never read Greek easily, and indeed he abandoned that
language entirely on leaving the University. But his Latin, from daily
use and practice (for he let no day slip by without reading some ancient
author) and from the thoroughness and accuracy of his scholarship, was
always as ready for service as the saddled steeds of Branksome. I think
he got more culture, more of the best effects of good literature, out of
that one language than some polyglots get out of a dozen. He knew no
modern tongue, he had not even the common pretension to read a little
French, and in his day hardly anybody studied German. He had no
scientific training of any kind except mathematics, in which I have
heard him say that he had never been proficient. Of the fine arts his
ignorance was complete, so complete that I doubt if he could have
distinguished Rigaud from Reynolds, and he had never played upon any
musical instrument. The leisure which he enjoyed during a long and
tranquil existence he gave entirely to Latin and English literature, but
of the two he enjoyed Latin the more, not with the preference of a
pedant, but because it carried him more completely out of the present,
and gave him the refreshment of a more perfect change. He produced on
all who knew him the impression of a cultivated gentleman, which he was.
There is only an interval of one generation between you and that good
Latinist, but how wide is the difference in your intellectual regimen?
You have studied--well, here is a little list of what you have studied,
and probably even this is not complete:--
Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, mathematics, chemistry,
mineralogy, geology, botany, the theory of music, the practice of music
on two instruments, much theory about painting, the practice of painting
in oil and water-color, photography, etching on copper, etc., etc., etc.
That is to say, six literatures (including English), six sciences
(counting mineralogy and geology as one), and five branches or
departments of the fine arts.
Omitting English literature from our total, as that may be considered to
come by nature to an Englishman, though any real proficiency in it costs
the leisure of years, we have here no less than sixteen different
pursuits. If you like to merge the theory of music and painting in the
practice of those arts, though as a branch of study the theory is really
distinct, we have still fourteen pursuits, any one of which is enough to
occupy the whole of one man's time. If you gave some time daily to each
of these pursuits, you could scarcely give more than half an hour, even
supposing that you had no professional occupation, and that you had no
favorite study, absorbing time to the detriment of the rest.
Now your grandfather, though he would be considered quite an ignorant
country gentleman in these days, had in reality certain intellectual
advantages over his more accomplished descendant. In the first place, he
entirely escaped the sense of pressure, the feeling of not having time
enough to do what he wanted to do. He accumulated his learning as
quietly as a stout lady accumulates her fat, by the daily satisfaction
of his appetite. And at the same time that he escaped the sense of
pressure, he escaped also the miserable sense of imperfection. Of course
he did not know Latin like an ancient Roman, but then he never met with
any ancient Romans to humiliate him by too rapid and half-intelligible
conversation. He met the best Latinists of his day; and felt himself a
master amongst masters. Every time he went into his study, to pass
delightful hours with the noble authors that he loved, he knew that his
admission into that august society would be immediate and complete. He
had to wait in no antechamber of mere linguistic difficulty, but passed
at once into the atmosphere of ancient thought, and breathed its
delicate perfume. In this great privilege of instant admission the man
of one study has always the advantage of men more variously cultivated.
Their misfortune is to be perpetually waiting in antechambers, and
losing time in them. Grammars and dictionaries are antechambers, bad
drawing and bad coloring are antechambers, musical practice with
imperfect intonation is an antechamber. And the worst is that even when
a man, like yourself for instance, of very various culture, has at one
time fairly penetrated beyond the antechamber, he is not sure of
admittance a year hence, because in the mean time the door may have been
closed against him. The rule of each separate hall or saloon of
knowledge is that he alone is to be instantly admitted who calls there
every day.
The man of various pursuits does not, in any case, keep them up
simultaneously; he is led by inclination or compelled by necessity to
give predominance to one or another. If you have fifteen different
pursuits, ten of them, at any given time, will be lying by neglected.
The metaphor commonly used in reference to neglected pursuits is
borrowed from the oxidation of metal; it is said that they become rusty.
This metaphor is too mild to be exact. Rust on metal, even on polished
steel, is easily guarded against by care, and a gun or a knife does not
need to be constantly used to keep it from being pitted. The gunsmith
and the cutler know how to keep these things, in great quantity, without
using them at all. But no one can retain knowledge without using it.
The metaphor fails still more seriously in perpetuating a false
conception of the deterioration of knowledge through neglect. It is not
simply a loss of polish which takes place, not a loss of mere
surface-beauty, but absolute disorganization, like the disorganization
of a carriage when the axle-tree is taken away. A rusty thing may still
be used, but a disorganized thing cannot be used until the lost organ
has been replaced. There is no equivalent, amongst ordinary material
losses, to the intellectual loss that we incur by ceasing from a
pursuit. But we may consider neglect as an enemy who carries away the
girths from our saddles, the bits from our bridles, the oars from our
boats, and one wheel from each of our carriages, leaving us indeed still
nominally possessors of all these aids to locomotion, but practically in
the same position as if we were entirely without them. And as an enemy
counts upon the delays caused by these vexations to execute his designs
whilst we are helpless, so whilst we are laboring to replace the lost
parts of our knowledge the occasion slips by when we most need it. The
only knowledge which is available when it is wanted is that which we
habitually use. Studies which from their nature cannot be commonly used
are always retained with great difficulty. The study of anatomy is
perhaps the best instance of this; every one who has attempted it knows
with what difficulty it is kept by the memory. Anatomists say that it
has to be learned and forgotten six times before it can be counted as a
possession. This is because anatomy lies so much outside of what is
needed for ordinary life that very few people are ever called upon to
use it except during the hours when they are actually studying it. The
few who need it every day remember is as easily as a man remembers the
language of the country which he inhabits. The workmen in the
establishment at Saint Aubin d'Écroville, where Dr. Auzoux manufactures
his wonderful anatomical models, are as familiar with anatomy as a
painter is with the colors on his palette. _They_ never forget it.
_Their_ knowledge is never made practically valueless by some yawning
hiatus, causing temporary incompetence and delay.
To have one favorite study and live in it with happy familiarity, and
cultivate every portion of it diligently and lovingly, as a small yeoman
proprietor cultivates his own land, this, as to study, at least, is the
most enviable intellectual life. But there is another side to the
question which has to be considered.
The first difficulty for us is in our education. Modern education is a
beginning of many things, and it is little more than a beginning. "My
notion of educating my boy," said a rich Englishman, "is not to make him
particularly clever at anything during his minority, but to make him
overcome the rudimentary difficulties of many things, so that when he
selects for himself his own line of culture in the future, it cannot be
altogether strange to him, whatever line he may happen to select." A
modern father usually allows his son to learn many things from a feeling
of timidity about making a choice, if only one thing had to be chosen.
He might so easily make a wrong choice! When the inheritance of the
human race was less rich, there was no embarrassment of that kind. Look
at the education of an ancient Greek, at the education of one of the
most celebrated Athenians, a man living in the most refined and
intellectual society, himself mentally and bodily the perfect type of
his splendid race, an eloquent and powerful speaker, a most capable
commander both by sea and land--look at the education of the brilliant
Alcibiades! When Socrates gave the list of the things that Alcibiades
had learned, Alcibiades could add to it no other even nominal
accomplishment, and what a meagre, short catalogue it was! "But indeed I
also pretty accurately know what thou hast learned; thou wilt tell me if
anything has escaped my notice. Thou hast learned then thy letters
([Greek: grammata]), to play on the cithara ([Greek: kitharizein]) and
to wrestle ([Greek: palaiein]), for thou hast not cared to learn to play
upon the flute. This is all that thou hast learned, unless something has
escaped me." The [Greek: grammata] which Alcibiades had learned with a
master meant reading and writing, for he expressly says later on, that
as for speaking Greek, [Greek: hellênizein], he learned that of no other
master than the people. An English education equivalent to that of
Alcibiades would therefore consist of reading and writing, wrestling and
guitar-playing, the last accomplishment being limited to very simple
music. Such an education was possible to an Athenian (though it is fair
to add that Socrates does not seem to have thought much of it) because a
man situated as Alcibiades was situated in the intellectual history of
the world, had no past behind him which deserved his attention more than
the present which surrounded him. Simply to speak Greek, [Greek:
hellênizein], was really then the most precious of all accomplishments,
and the fact that Alcibiades came by it easily does not lessen its
value. Amongst a people like the Athenians, fond of intellectual talk,
conversation was one of the best and readiest means of informing the
mind, and certainly the very best means of developing it. It was not a
slight advantage to speak the language of Socrates, and have him for a
companion.
The cleverest and most accomplished Romans were situated rather more
like ourselves, or at least as we should be situated if we had not to
learn Latin and Greek, and if there were no modern language worth
studying except French. They went to Greece to perfect themselves in
Greek, and improve their accent, just as our young gentlemen go to Paris
or Touraine. Still, the burden of the past was comparatively light upon
their shoulders. An Englishman who had attempted no more than they were
bound to attempt might be a scholar, but he would not be considered so
He might be a thorough scholar in French and English,--that is, he
might possess the cream of two great literatures,--but he would be
spoken of as a person of defective education. It is the fashion, for
example, to speak of Sir Walter Scott as a half-educated man, because he
did not know much Greek, yet Sir Walter had studied German with success,
and with his habit of extensive reading, and his immense memory,
certainly knew incomparably more about the generations which preceded
him than Horace knew of those which preceded the Augustan era.
The privilege of limiting their studies, from the beginning, to one or
two branches of knowledge, belonged to earlier ages, and every
successive accumulation of the world's knowledge has gradually lessened
it. Schoolboys in our time are expected to know more, or to have
attempted to learn more, than the most brilliant intellectual leaders of
former times. What English parent, in easy circumstances, would be
content that his son should have the education of Alcibiades, or an
education accurately corresponding to that of Horace, or to that which
sufficed for Shakespeare? Yet although the burdens laid upon the memory
have been steadily augmented, its powers have not increased. Our brains
are not better constituted than those of our forefathers, although where
they learned one thing we attempt to learn six. They learned and we
attempt to learn. The only hope for us is to make a selection from the
attempts of our too heavily burdened youth, and in those selected
studies to emulate in after-life the thoroughness of our forefathers.
LETTER III
TO A FRIEND WHO STUDIED MANY THINGS.
An idealized portrait--The scholars of the sixteenth century--Isolated
students--French students of English when isolated from
Englishmen--How one of them read Tennyson--Importance of
sounds--Illusions of scholarship--Difficulty of appreciating the
sense--That Latin may still be made a spoken language--The early
education of Montaigne--A contemporary instance--Dream of a Latin
island--Rapid corruption of a language taught artificially.
In your answer to my letter about the multiplicity of modern studies you
tell me that my portrait of your grandfather is considerably idealized,
and that, notwithstanding all the respect which you owe to his memory,
you have convincing proof in his manuscript annotations to Latin authors
that his scholarship cannot have been quite so thorough as I represented
it. You convey, moreover, though with perfect modesty in form, the idea
that you believe your own Latin superior to your grandfather's,
notwithstanding the far greater variety of your studies. Let me confess
that I _did_ somewhat idealize that description of your grandfather's
intellectual life. I described rather a life which might have been than
a life which actually was. And even this "might have been" is
problematical. It may be doubted whether any modern has ever really
mastered Latin. The most that can be said is that a man situated like
your grandfather, without a profession, without our present temptation
to scatter effort in many pursuits, and who made Latin scholarship his
unique intellectual purpose, would probably go nearer to a satisfactory
degree of attainment than we whose time and strength have been divided
into so many fragments. But the picture of a perfect modern Latinist is
purely ideal, and the prevalent notion of high attainment in a dead
language is not fixed enough to be a standard, whilst if it were fixed
it would certainly be a very low standard. The scholars of this century
do not write Latin except as a mere exercise; they do not write books in
Latin, and they never speak it at all. They do not use the language
actively; they only read it, which is not really using it, but only
seeing how other men have used it. There is the same difference between
reading a language and writing or speaking it that there is between
looking at pictures intelligently and painting them. The scholars of the
sixteenth century spoke Latin habitually, and wrote it with ease and
fluency. "Nicholas Grouchy," says Montaigne, "who wrote a book _de
Comitiis Romanorum_; William Guerente, who has written a commentary upon
Aristotle; George Buchanan, that great Scotch poet; and Marc Anthony
Muret, whom both France and Italy have acknowledged for the best orator
of his time, my domestic tutors (at college), have all of them often
told me that I had in my infancy that language so very fluent and ready
that they were afraid to enter into discourse with me." This passage is
interesting for two reasons; it shows that the scholars of that age
spoke Latin; but it proves at the same time that they cannot have been
really masters of the language, since they were "afraid to enter into
discourse" with a clever child. Fancy an Englishman who professed to be
a French scholar and yet "was afraid to enter into discourse" with a
French boy, for fear he should speak too quickly! The position of these
scholars relatively to Latin was in fact too isolated for it to have
been possible that they should reach the point of mastery. Suppose a
society of Frenchmen, in some secluded little French village where no
Englishman ever penetrates, and that these Frenchmen learn English from
dictionaries, and set themselves to speak English with each other,
without anybody to teach them the colloquial language or its
pronunciation, without ever once hearing the sound of it from English
lips, what sort of English would they create amongst themselves? This is
a question that I happen to be able to answer very accurately, because I
have known two Frenchmen who studied English literature just as the
Frenchmen of the sixteenth century studied the literature of ancient
Rome. One of them, especially, had attained what would certainly in the
case of a dead language be considered a very high degree of scholarship
indeed. Most of our great authors were known to him, even down to the
close critical comparison of different readings. Aided by the most
powerful memory I ever knew, he had amassed such stores that the
acquisitions, even of cultivated Englishmen, would in many cases have
appeared inconsiderable beside them. But he could not write or speak
English in a manner tolerable to an Englishman; and although he knew
nearly all the words in the language, it was dictionary knowledge, and
so different from an Englishman's apprehension of the same words that it
was only a sort of pseudo-English that he knew, and not our living
tongue. His appreciation of our authors, especially of our poets,
differed so widely from English criticism and English feeling that it
was evident he did not understand them as we understand them. Two things
especially proved this: he frequently mistook declamatory versification
of the most mediocre quality for poetry of an elevated order; whilst, on
the other hand, his ear failed to perceive the music of the musical
poets, as Byron and Tennyson. How _could_ he hear their music, he to
whom our English sounds were all unknown? Here, for example, is the way
he read "Claribel:"--
"At ev ze bittle bommess
Azvart ze zeeket lon
At none ze veeld be ommess
Aboot ze most edston
At meedneeg ze mon commess
An lokez dovn alon
Ere songg ze lintveet svelless
Ze clirvoic-ed mavi dvelless
Ze fledgling srost lispess
Ze slombroos vav ootvelless
Ze babblang ronnel creespess
Ze ollov grot replee-ess
Vere Claribel lovlee-ess."
This, as nearly as I have been able to render it in English spelling,
was the way in which a French gentleman of really high culture was
accustomed to read English poetry to himself. Is it surprising that he
should have failed to appreciate the music of our musical verse? He did
not, however, seem to be aware that there existed any obstacle to the
accuracy of his decisions, but gave his opinion with a good deal of
authority, which might have surprised me had I not so frequently heard
Latin scholars do exactly the same thing. My French friend read
"Claribel" in a ridiculous manner; but English scholars all read Latin
poetry in a manner not less ridiculous. You laugh to hear "Claribel"
read with a foreign pronunciation, and you see at once the absurdity of
affecting to judge of it as poetry before the reader has learned to
pronounce the sounds; but you do not laugh to hear Latin poetry read
with a foreign pronunciation, and you do not perceive that we are all of
us disqualified, by our profound ignorance of the pronunciation of the
ancient Romans, for any competent criticism of their verse. In all
poetry, in all oratory, in much of the best and most artistic
prose-writing also, sound has a great influence upon sense: a great
deal is conveyed by it, especially in the way of feeling. If we do not
thoroughly know and practise the right pronunciation (and by the right
pronunciation I mean that which the author himself _thought in_ whilst
he wrote), we miss those delicate tones and cadences which are in
literature like the modulations of the voice in speech. Nor can we
properly appreciate the artistic choice of beautiful names for persons
and places unless we know the sounds of them quite accurately, and have
already in our minds the associations belonging to the sounds. Names
which are selected with the greatest care by our English poets, and
which hold their place like jewels on the finely-wrought texture of the
verse, lose all their value when they are read with a vicious foreign
pronunciation. So it must be with Latin poetry when read by an
Englishman, and it is probable that we are really quite insensible to
the delicate art of verbal selection as it was practised by the most
consummate masters of antiquity.
I know that scholars think that they hear the Roman music still; but
this is one of the illusions of scholarship. In each country Latin
scholars have adopted a conventional style of reading, and the sounds
which are in conformity with that style seem to them to be musical,
whilst other than the accepted sounds seem ridiculous, and grate harshly
on the unaccustomed ear. The music which the Englishman hears, or
imagines that he hears, in the language of ancient Rome, is certainly
not the music which the Roman authors intended to note in words. It is
as if my Frenchman, having read "Claribel" in his own way, had affirmed
that he heard the music of the verse. If he heard music at all, it was
not Tennyson's.
Permit me to add a few observations about sense. My French friend
certainly understood English in a very remarkable manner for a student
who had never visited our country; he knew the dictionary meaning of
every word he encountered, and yet there ever remained between him and
our English tongue a barrier or wall of separation, hard to define, but
easy to perceive. In the true deep sense he never understood the
language. He studied it, laid regular siege to it, mastered it to all
appearance, yet remained, to the end, outside of it. His observations,
and especially his unfavorable criticisms, proved this quite
conclusively. Expressions often appeared to him faulty, in which no
English reader would see anything to remark upon; it may be added that
(by way of compensation) he was unable to appreciate the oddity of those
intentionally quaint turns of expression which are invented by the craft
of humorists. It may even be doubted whether his English was of any
ascertainable use to him. He might probably have come as near to an
understanding of our authors by the help of translations, and he could
not converse in English, for the spoken language was entirely
unintelligible to him. An acquisition of this kind seems scarcely an
adequate reward for the labor that it costs. Compared with living
Englishmen my French friend was nowhere, but if English had been a dead
language, he would have been looked up to as a very eminent scholar, and
would have occupied a professor's chair in the university.
A little more life might be given to the study of Latin by making it a
spoken language. Boys might be taught to speak Latin in their schooldays
with the modern Roman pronunciation, which, though probably a deviation
from the ancient, is certainly nearer to it than our own. If colloquial
Latin were made a subject of special research, it is likely that a
sufficiently rich phrase-book might be constructed from the plays. If
this plan were pursued throughout Europe (always adopting the Roman
pronunciation) all educated men would possess a common tongue which
might be enriched to suit modern requirements without any serious
departure from classical construction. The want of such a system as this
was painfully felt at the council of the Vatican, where the assembled
prelates discovered that their Latin was of no practical use, although
the Roman Catholic clergy employ Latin more habitually than any other
body of men in the world. That a modern may be taught to think in Latin,
is proved by the early education of Montaigne, and I may mention a much
more recent instance. My brother-in-law told me that, in the spring of
1871, a friend of his had come to stay with him accompanied by his
little son, a boy seven years old. This child spoke Latin with the
utmost fluency, and he spoke nothing else. What I am going to suggest is
a Utopian dream, but let us suppose that a hundred fathers could be
found in Europe, all of this way of thinking, all resolved to submit to
some inconvenience in order that their sons might speak Latin as a
living language. A small island might be rented near the coast of Italy,
and in that island Latin alone might be permitted. Just as the
successive governments of France maintain the establishments of Sèvres
and the Gobelins to keep the manufactures of porcelain and tapestry up
to a recognized high standard of excellence, so this Latin island might
be maintained to give more vivacity to scholarship. If there were but
one little corner of ground on the wide earth where pure Latin was
constantly spoken, our knowledge of the classic writers would become far
more sympathetically intimate. After living in the Latin island we
should think in Latin as we read, and read without translating.
But this is dreaming. It is too certain that on returning from the Latin
island into the atmosphere of modern colleges an evil change would come
over our young Latinists like that which came upon the young Montaigne
when his father sent him to the college of Guienne, "at that time the
best and most flourishing in France." Montaigne tells us that,
notwithstanding all his father's precautions, the place "was a college
still." "My Latin," he adds, "_immediately grew corrupt, and by
discontinuance I have since lost all manner of use of it._" If it were
the custom to speak Latin, it would be the custom to speak it badly; and
a master of the language would have to conform to the evil usages around
him. Our present state of ignorance has the charm of being silent,
except when old-fashioned gentlemen in the House of Commons quote poetry
which they cannot pronounce to hearers who cannot understand it.
NOTE.--An English orator quoted from Cicero the sentence "Non
intelligunt homines quam magnum vectigal sit parsimonia." He made the
second vowel in _vectigal_ short, and the House laughed at him; he
tried again and pronounced it with the long sound of the English _i_,
on which the critical body he addressed was perfectly satisfied. But
if a Roman had been present it is probable that, of the two, the short
English _i_ would have astonished his ears the less, for our short _i_
does bear some resemblance to the southern _i_ whereas our long i
resembles no single letter in any alphabet of the Latin family of
languages. We are scrupulously careful to avoid what we call false
quantities, we are quite utterly and ignorantly unscrupulous about
false sounds. One of the best instances is the well-known "veni, vidi,
vici," which we pronounce very much as if it had been written _vinai_,
_vaidai_, _vaisai_, in Italian letters.
LETTER IV.
TO A STUDENT OF LITERATURE.
Studies, whatever they may be, always considered, by some a waste of
time--The classical languages--The higher mathematics--The
accomplishments--Indirect uses of different studies--Influence of
music--Studies indirectly useful to authors--What induced Mr. Roscoe
to write the lives of Lorenzo de' Medici and Leo X.
Whatever you study, some one will consider that particular study a
foolish waste of time.
If you were to abandon successively every subject of intellectual labor
which had, in its turn, been condemned by some adviser as useless, the
result would be simple intellectual nakedness. The classical languages,
to begin with, have long been considered useless by the majority of
practical people--and pray, what to shopkeepers, doctors, attorneys,
artists, can be the use of the higher mathematics? And if these studies,
which have been conventionally classed as serious studies, are
considered unnecessary notwithstanding the tremendous authority of
custom, how much the more are those studies exposed to a like contempt
which belong to the category of accomplishments! What is the use of
drawing, for it ends in a worthless sketch? Why should we study music
when after wasting a thousand hours the amateur cannot satisfy the ear?
A _quoi bon_ modern languages when the accomplishment only enables us to
call a waiter in French or German who is sure to answer us in English?
And what, when it is not your trade, can be the good of dissecting
animals or plants?
To all questionings of this kind there is but one reply. We work for
culture. We work to enlarge the intelligence, and to make it a better
and more effective instrument. This is our main purpose; but it may be
added that even for our special labors it is always difficult to say
beforehand exactly what will turn out in the end to be most useful.
What, in appearance, can be more entirely outside the work of a
landscape painter than the study of ancient history? and yet I can show
you how an interest in ancient history might indirectly be of great
service to a landscape painter. It would make him profoundly feel the
human associations of many localities which to an ignorant man would be
devoid of interest or meaning; and this human interest in the scenes
where great events have taken place, or which have been distinguished by
the habitation of illustrious men in other ages, is in fact one of the
great fundamental motives of landscape painting. It has been very much
questioned, especially by foreign critics, whether the interest in
botany which is taken by some of the more cultivated English landscape
painters is not for them a false direction and wrong employment of the
mind; but a landscape painter may feel his interest in vegetation
infinitely increased by the accurate knowledge of its laws, and such an
increase of interest would make him work more zealously, and with less
danger of weariness and _ennui_, besides being a very useful help to the
memory in retaining the authentic vegetable forms. It may seem more
difficult to show the possible utility of a study apparently so entirely
outside of other studies as music is: and yet music has an important
influence on the whole of our emotional nature, and indirectly upon
expression of all kinds. He who has once learned the self-control of the
musician, the use of _piano_ and _forte_, each in its right place, when
to be lightly swift or majestically slow, and especially how to keep to
the key once chosen till the right time has come for changing it; he who
has once learned this knows the secret of the arts. No painter, writer,
orator, who had the power and judgment of a thoroughly cultivated
musician, could sin against the broad principles of taste.
More than all other men have authors reason to appreciate the indirect
utilities of knowledge that is apparently irrelevant. Who can tell what
knowledge will be of most use to _them_? Even the very greatest of
authors are indebted to miscellaneous reading, often in several
different languages, for the suggestion of their most original works,
and for the light which has kindled many a shining thought of their own.
And authors who seem to have less need than others of an outward help,
poets whose compositions might appear to be chiefly inventive and
emotional, novelists who are free from the restraints and the
researches of the historian, work up what they know into what they
write; so that if you could remove every line which is based on studies
outside the strict limits of their art, you would blot out half their
compositions. Take the antiquarian element out of Scott, and see how
many of his works could never have been written. Remove from Goldsmith's
brain the recollection of his wayward studies and strange experiences,
and you would remove the rich material of the "Traveller" and the
Essays, and mutilate even the immortal "Vicar of Wakefield." Without a
classical education and foreign travel, Byron would not have composed
"Childe Harold;" without the most catholic interest in the literature of
all the ages, and of many different peoples from the North Sea to the
Mediterranean, our contemporary William Morris would never have
conceived, and could not have executed, that strong work "The Earthly
Paradise." It may not seem necessary to learn Italian, yet Mr. Roscoe's
celebrity as an author was due in the first place to his private
fondness for Italian literature. He did not learn Italian in order that
he might write his biographies, but he wrote about Lorenzo and Leo
because he had mastered Italian, and because the language led him to
take an interest in the greatest house of Florence. The way in which
authors are led by their favorite studies indirectly to the great
performance of their lives has never been more clearly illustrated than
in this instance.
When William Roscoe was a young man he had for his friend Francis
Holden, nephew of Mr. Richard Holden, a schoolmaster in Liverpool.
Francis Holden was a young man of uncommon culture, having at the same
time really sound scholarship in several languages, and an ardent
enthusiasm for literature. He urged Roscoe to study languages, and used
especially, in their evening walks together, to repeat to him passages
from the noblest poets of Italy. In this way Roscoe was led to attempt
Italian, and, having once begun, went on till he had mastered it. "It
was in the course of these studies," says his biographer, "that he first
formed the idea of writing the Life of Lorenzo de' Medici."
LETTER V.
TO A COUNTRY GENTLEMAN WHO REGRETTED THAT HIS SON HAD THE TENDENCIES OF
A DILETTANT.
Inaccuracy of the common distinction between amateur pursuits and more
serious studies--All of us are amateurs in many things--Prince
Albert--The Emperor Napoleon III.--Contrast between general and
professional education--The price of high accomplishment.
I agree with you that amateurship, as generally practised, may be a
waste of time, but the common distinction between amateur pursuits and
serious studies is inconsistent. A painter whose art is imperfect and
who does not work for money is called an amateur; a scholar who writes
imperfect Latin, not for money, escapes the imputation of amateurship,
and is called a learned man. Surely we have been blinded by custom in
these things. Ideas of frivolity are attached to imperfect acquirement
in certain directions, and ideas of gravity to equally imperfect
acquirement in others. To write bad Latin poetry is not thought to be
frivolous, but it is considered frivolous to compose imperfectly and
unprofessionally in other fine arts.
Yet are we not all of us amateurs in those pursuits which constituted
our education--amateurs at the best, if we loved them, and even inferior
to amateurs if we disliked them? We have not sounder knowledge or more
perfect skill in the ancient languages than Prince Albert had in music.
We know something of them, yet in comparison with perfect mastery such
as that of a cultivated old Greek or Roman, our scholarship is at the
best on a level with the musical scholarship of a cultivated amateur
like the Prince Consort.
If the essence of dilettantism is to be contented with imperfect
attainment, I fear that all educated people must be considered
dilettants.
It is narrated of the Emperor Napoleon III. that in answer to some one
who inquired of his Majesty whether the Prince Imperial was a musician,
he replied that he discouraged dilettantism, and "did not wish his son
to be a Coburg." But the Emperor himself was quite as much a dilettant
as Prince Albert; though their dilettantism did not lie in the same
directions. The Prince was an amateur musician and artist; the Emperor
was an amateur historian, an amateur scholar, and antiquary. It may be
added that Napoleon III. indulged in another and more dangerous kind of
amateurship. He had a taste for amateur generalship, and the
consequences of his indulgence of this taste are known to every one.
The variety of modern education encourages a scattered dilettantism. It
is only in professional life that the energies of young men are
powerfully concentrated. There is a steadying effect in thorough
professional training which school education does not supply. Our boys
receive praise and prizes for doing many things most imperfectly, and it
is not their fault if they remain ignorant of what perfection really is,
and of the immensity of the labor which it costs. I think that you would
do well, perhaps, without discouraging your son too much by chillingly
accurate estimates of the value of what he has done, to make him on all
proper occasions feel and see the difference between half-knowledge and
thorough mastery. It would be a good thing for a youth to be made
clearly aware how enormous a price of labor Nature has set upon high
accomplishment in everything that is really worthy of his pursuit. It is
this persuasion, which men usually arrive at only in their maturity,
that operates as the most effectual tranquillizer of frivolous
activities.
LETTER VI.
TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.
The Author's dread of protection in intellectual pursuits--Example
from the Fine Arts--Prize poems--Governmental encouragement of
learning--The bad effects of it--Pet pursuits--Objection to the
interference of Ministers--A project for separate examinations.
What I am going to say will seem very strange to you, and is not
unlikely to arouse as much professional animosity as you are capable of
feeling against an old friend. You who are a dignitary of the
University, and have earned your various titles in a fair field, as a
soldier wins his epaulettes before the enemy, are not the likeliest
person to hear with patience the unauthorized theories of an innovator.
Take them, then, as mere speculations, if you will--not altogether
unworthy of consideration, for they are suggested by a sincere anxiety
for the best interests of learning, and yet not very dangerous to vested
interests of any kind, since they can have little influence on the
practice or opinion of the world.
I feel a great dread of what may be called _protection_ in intellectual
pursuits. It seems to me that when the Government of a country applies
an artificial stimulus to certain branches of study for their
encouragement by the offer of rewards in honor or in money beyond the
rewards inherent in the studies themselves, or coming naturally from
their usefulness to mankind, there is a great danger that men may give a
disproportionate attention to those favored branches of study. Let me
take an example from the practice of the Fine Arts. A Government, by
medals and crosses, or by money, can easily create and foster a school
of painting which is entirely out of relation to the century in which it
exists, and quite incapable of working harmoniously with the
contemporary national life. This has actually been done to a
considerable extent in various countries, especially in France and in
Bavaria. A sort of classicism which had scarcely any foundation in
sincerity of feeling was kept up artificially by a system of
encouragement which offered inducements outside the genuine ambition of
an artist. The true enthusiasm which is the life of art impels the
artist to express his own feeling for the delight of others. The offer
of a medal or a pension induces him to make the sort of picture which is
likely to satisfy the authorities. He first ascertains what is according
to the rule, and then follows it as nearly as he is able. He works in a
temper of simple conformity, remote indeed from the passionate
enthusiasm of creation. It is so with prize poems. We all know the sort
of poetry which is composed in order to gain prizes. The anxiety of the
versifier is to be safe: he tries to compose what will escape censure;
he dreads the originality that may give offence. But all powerful
pictures and poems have been wrought in the energy of individual
feeling, not in conformity to a pattern.
Now, suppose that, instead of encouraging poetry or painting, a
Government resolves to encourage learning. It will patronize certain
pursuits to the neglect of others, or it will encourage certain pursuits
more liberally than others. The subjects of such a Government will not
follow learning exclusively for its delightfulness or its utility;
another consideration will affect their choice. They will inquire which
pursuits are rewarded by prizes in honor or money, and they will be
strongly tempted to select them. Therefore, unless the Government has
exercised extraordinary wisdom, men will learn what they do not really
care for and may never practically want, merely in order to win some
academical grade. So soon as this object has been attained, they will
immediately abandon the studies by which they attained it.
Can it be said that in these cases the purposes of the Government were
fulfilled? Clearly not, if it desired to form a permanent taste for
learning. But it may have done worse than fail in this merely negative
way; it may have diverted its youth from pursuits to which Nature called
them, and in which they might have effectually aided the advancement and
the prosperity of the State.
Let us suppose that a Government were to have a pet study, and offer
great artificial inducements for success in it. Suppose that the pet
study were entomology. All the most promising youth of the country would
spend ten years in emulating Messrs. Kirby and Spence, and take their
degrees as entomological bachelors. But might it not easily happen that
to a majority of the young gentlemen this pursuit would have acted
positively as a hindrance by keeping them from other pursuits more
likely to help them in their professions? It would not only cost a great
deal of valuable time, it would absorb a quantity of youthful energy
which the country can ill afford to lose. The Government would probably
affirm that entomology, if not always practically useful in itself, was
an invaluable intellectual training; but what if this training used up
the early vigor which might be needed for other pursuits, and of which
every human being has only a limited supply? We should be told, no
doubt, that this powerful encouragement was necessary to the advancement
of science, and it is true that under such a system the rudiments of
entomology would be more generally known. But the vulgarization of
rudiments is not the advancement of knowledge. Entomology has gone quite
as far in discovery, though pursued simply for its own sake, as it would
have gone if it had been made necessary to a bachelor's degree.
You will ask whether I would go so far as to abolish degrees of all
kinds, Certainly not; that is not my project. But I believe that no
Government is competent to make a selection amongst intellectual
pursuits and say, "This or that pursuit shall be encouraged by
university degrees, whilst other pursuits of intellectual men shall have
no encouragement whatever." I may mention by name your present autocrat
of Public Instruction, Jules Simon. He is a literary man of some
eminence; he has written several interesting books, and on the whole he
is probably more competent to deal with these questions than many of his
predecessors. But however capable a man may be, he is sure to be biassed
by the feeling common to all intellectual men which attributes a
peculiar importance to their own pursuits. I do not like to see any
Minister, or any Cabinet of Ministers, settling what all the young men
of a country are to learn under penalty of exclusion from all the
liberal professions.
What I should think more reasonable would be some such arrangement as
the following. There might be a board of thoroughly competent examiners
for each branch of study separately, authorized to confer certificates
of competence. When a man believed himself to have mastered a branch of
study, he would go and try to get a certificate for that. The various
studies would then be followed according to the public sense of their
importance, and would fall quite naturally into the rank which they
ought to occupy at any given period of the national history. These
separate examinations should be severe enough to ensure a serviceable
degree of proficiency. Nobody should be allowed to teach anything who
had not got a certificate for the particular thing he intended to
profess. In the confusion of your present system, not only do you fail
to insure the thoroughness of pupils, but the teachers themselves are
too frequently incompetent in some speciality which accidentally fails
to their share. I think that a Greek master ought to be a complete
Hellenist, but surely it is not necessary that he should be half a
mathematician.
To sum up. It seems to me that a Government has no business to favor
some intellectual pursuits more than others, but that it ought to
recognize competent attainment in every one of them by a sort of diploma
or certificate, leaving the relative rank of different pursuits to be
settled by public opinion. And as to the educators themselves, I think
that when a man has proved his competence in one thing, he ought to be
allowed to teach that one thing in the University without being required
to pass an examination in any other thing.
LETTER VII.
TO THE PRINCIPAL OF A FRENCH COLLEGE.
Loss of time to acquire an ancient language too imperfectly for it to
be useful--Dr. Arnold--Mature life leaves little time for
culture--Modern indifference to ancient thinking--Larger experience of
the moderns--The moderns older than the ancients--The Author's regret
that Latin has ceased to be a living language--The shortest way to
learn to read a language--The recent interest in modern languages--A
French student of Hebrew.
I was happy to learn your opinion of the reform so recently introduced
by the Minister of Public Instruction, and the more so that I was glad
to find the views of so inexperienced a person as myself confirmed by
your wider knowledge. You went even farther than M. Jules Simon, for you
openly expressed a desire for the complete withdrawal of Greek from the
ordinary school curriculum. Not that you undervalue Greek,--no one of
your scholarship would be likely to undervalue a great literature,--but
you thought it a loss of time to acquire a language so imperfectly that
the literature still remained practically closed whilst thousands of
valuable hours had been wasted on the details of grammar. The truth is,
that although the principle of beginning many things in school education
with the idea that the pupil will in maturer life pursue them to fuller
accomplishment may in some instances be justified by the prolonged
studies of men who have a natural taste for erudition, it is idle to
shut one's eyes to the fact that most men have no inclination for
school-work after they have left school, and if they had the inclination
they have not the time. Our own Dr. Arnold, the model English
schoolmaster, said, "It is so hard to begin anything in after-life, and
so comparatively easy to continue what has been begun, that I think we
are bound to break ground, as it were, into several of the mines of
knowledge with our pupils; that the first difficulties may be overcome
by them whilst there is yet a power from without to aid their own
faltering resolution, and that so they may be enabled, if they will, to
go on with the study hereafter." The principle here expressed is no
doubt one of the important principles of all early education, and yet I
think that it cannot be safely followed without taking account of human
nature, such as it is. Everything hangs on that little parenthesis "if
they will." And if they will _not_, how then? The time spent in breaking
the ground has been wasted, except so far as the exercise of breaking
the ground may have been useful in mental gymnastics.
Mature life brings so many professional or social duties that it leaves
scant time for culture; and those who care for culture most earnestly
and sincerely, are the very persons who will economize time to the
utmost. Now, to read a language that has been very imperfectly mastered
is felt to be a bad economy of time. Suppose the case of a man occupied
in business who has studied Greek rather assiduously in youth and yet
not enough to read it with facility. Suppose that this man wants to get
at the mind of Plato. He can read the original, but he reads it so
slowly that it would cost him more hours than he can spare, and this is
why he has recourse to a translation. In this case there is no
indifference to Greek culture; on the contrary, the reader desires to
assimilate what he can of it, but the very earnestness of his wish to
have free access to ancient thought makes him prefer it in modern
language.
This is the most favorable instance that can be imagined, except, of
course, those exceedingly rare cases where a man has leisure enough, and
enthusiasm enough, to become a Hellenist. The great majority of our
contemporaries do not care for ancient thought at all, it is so remote
from them, it belongs to conditions of civilization so different from
their own, it is encumbered with so many lengthy discussions of
questions which have been settled by the subsequent experience of the
world, that the modern mind prefers to occupy itself with its own
anxieties and its own speculations. It is a great error to suppose that
indifference to ancient thinking is peculiar to the spirit of
Philistinism; for the most cultivated contemporary intellects seek light
from each other rather than from the ancients. One of the most
distinguished of modern thinkers, a scholar of the rarest classical
attainments, said to me in reference to some scheme of mine for renewing
my classical studies, that they would be of no more use to me than
numismatics. It is this feeling, the feeling that Greek speculation is
of less consequence to the modern world than German and French
speculation, which causes so many of us, rightly or wrongly, to regard
it as a palæontological curiosity, interesting for those who are curious
as to the past of the human mind, but not likely to be influential upon
its future.
This estimate of ancient thinking is not often expressed quite so openly
as I have just expressed it, and yet it is very generally prevalent even
amongst the most thoughtful people, especially if modern science has had
any conspicuous influence in the formation of their minds. Tho truth is,
as Sydney Smith observed many years ago, that there is a confusion of
language in the use of the word "ancient." We say "the ancients," as if
they were older and more experienced men than we are, whereas the age
and experience are entirely on our side. They were the clever children,
"and we only are the white-bearded, silver-headed ancients, who have
treasured up, and are prepared to profit by, all the experience which
human life can supply." The sense of our larger experience, as it grows
in us and becomes more distinctly conscious, produces a corresponding
decline in our feelings of reverence for classic times. The past has
bequeathed to us its results, and we have incorporated them into our own
edifice, but we have used them rather as materials than as models.
In your practical desire to retain in education only what is likely to
be used, you are willing to preserve Latin. M. Jules Simon says that
Latin ought to be studied only to be read. On this point permit me to
offer an observation. The one thing I regret about Latin is that we have
ceased to speak it. The natural method, and by far the most rapid and
sure method of learning a language, is to begin by acquiring words in
order to use them to ask for what we want; after that we acquire other
words for narration and the expression of our sentiments. By far the
shortest way to learn to read a language is to begin by speaking it. The
colloquial tongue is the basis of the literary tongue. This is so true
that with all the pains and trouble you give to the Latin education of
your pupils, you cannot teach them as much Latin, for reading only, in
the course of ten years, as a living foreigner will give them of his own
language in ten months. I seriously believe that if your object is to
make boys read Latin easily, you begin at the wrong end. It is
deplorable that the learned should ever have allowed Latin to become a
dead language, since in permitting this they have enormously increased
the difficulty of acquiring it, even for the purposes of scholarship.
No foreigner who knows the French people will disapprove of the novel
desire to know the modern languages, which has been one of the most
unexpected consequences of the war. Their extreme ignorance of the
literature of other nations has been the cause of enormous evils.
Notwithstanding her central position, France has been a very isolated
country intellectually, much more isolated than England, more isolated
even than Transylvania, where foreign literatures are familiar to the
cultivated classes. This isolation has produced very lamentable effects,
not only on the national culture but most especially on the national
character. No modern nation, however important, can safely remain in
ignorance of its contemporaries. The Frenchman was like a gentleman shut
up within his own park-wall, having no intercourse with his neighbors,
and reading nothing but the history of his own ancestors--for the Romans
were your ancestors, intellectually. It is only by the study of living
languages, and their continual use, that we can learn our true place in
the world. A Frenchman was studying Hebrew; I ventured to suggest that
German might possibly be more useful. To this he answered, _that there
was no literature in German_. "_Vous avez Goethe, vous avez Schiller, et
vous avez Lessing, mais en dehors de ces trois noms il n'y a rien._"
This meant simply that my student of Hebrew measured German literature
by his own knowledge of it. Three names had reached him, only names, and
only three of them. As to the men who were unknown to him he had decided
that they did not exist. Certainly if there are many Frenchmen in this
condition, it is time that they learned a little German.
LETTER VIII.
TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.
Standard of attainment in living languages higher than in ancient
ones--Difficulty of maintaining high pretensions--Prevalent illusion
about the facility of modern languages--Easy to speak them badly--Some
propositions based upon experience--Expectations and disappointments.
Had your main purpose in the education of yourself (I do not say
self-education, for you wisely accept all help from others) been the
attainment of classical scholarship, I might have observed that as the
received standard in that kind of learning is not a very elevated one,
you might reasonably hope to reach it with a certain calculable quantity
of effort. The classical student has only to contend against other
students who are and have been situated very much as he is situated
himself. They have learned Latin and Greek from grammars and
dictionaries as he is learning them, and the only natural advantages
which any of his predecessors may have possessed are superiorities of
memory which may be compensated by his greater perseverance, or
superiorities of sympathy to which he may "level up" by that acquired
and artificial interest which comes from protracted application. But the
student of modern languages has to contend against advantages of
situation, as the gardeners of an inhospitable climate contend against
the natural sunshine of the south. How easy it is to have a fruitful
date-tree in Arabia, how difficult in England! How easy for the
Florentine to speak Italian, how difficult for us! The modern linguist
can never fence himself behind that stately unquestionableness which
shields the classical scholar. His knowledge may at any time be put to
the severest of all tests, to a test incomparably more severe than the
strictest university examination. The first _native_ that he meets is
his examiner, the first foreign city is his Oxford. And this is probably
one reason why accomplishment in modern languages has been rather a
matter of utility than of dignity, for it is difficult to keep up great
pretensions in the face of a multitude of critics. What would the most
learned-looking gown avail, if a malicious foreigner were laughing at
us?
But there is a deep satisfaction in the severity of the test. An honest
and courageous student likes to be clearly aware of the exact value of
his acquisitions. He takes his French to Paris and has it tested there
as we take our plate to the silversmith, and after that he knows, or may
know, quite accurately what it is worth. He has not the dignity of
scholarship, he is not held to be a learned man, but he has acquired
something which may be of daily use to him in society, or in commerce,
or in literature; and there are thousands of educated natives who can
accurately estimate his attainment and help him to a higher perfection.
All this is deeply satisfying to a lover of intellectual realities. The
modern linguist is always on firm ground, and in broad daylight. He may
impede his own progress by the illusions of solitary self-conceit, but
the atmosphere outside is not favorable to such illusions. It is well
for him that the temptations to charlatanism are so few, that the risks
of exposure are so frequent.
Still there _are_ illusions, and the commonest of them is that a modern
language may be very easily mastered. There is a popular idea that
French is easy, that Italian is easy, that German is more difficult, yet
by no means insuperably difficult. It is believed that when an
Englishman has spent all the best years of his youth in attempting to
learn Latin and Greek, he may acquire one or two modern languages with
little effort during a brief residence on the Continent. It is certainly
true that we may learn any number of foreign languages so as to speak
them badly, but it surely cannot be easy to speak them well. It may be
inferred that this is not easy because the accomplishment is so rare.
The inducements are common, the accomplishment is rare. Thousands of
English people have very strong reasons for learning French, thousands
of French people could improve their position by learning English; but
rare indeed are the men and women who know both languages thoroughly.
The following propositions, based on much observation of a kind wholly
unprejudiced and tested by a not inconsiderable experience will be
found, I believe, unassailable.
1. _Whenever a foreign language is perfectly acquired there are peculiar
family conditions. The person has either married a person of the other
nation, or is of mixed blood._
2. _When a foreign language has been acquired (there are instances of
this) in quite absolute perfection, there is almost always some loss in
the native tongue. Either the native tongue is not spoken correctly, or
it is not spoken with perfect ease._
3. _A man sometimes speaks two languages correctly, his father's and his
mother's, or his own and his wife's, but never three._
4. _Children can speak several languages exactly like natives, but in
succession, never simultaneously. They forget the first in acquiring the
second, and so on._
5. _A language cannot be learned by an adult without five years'
residence in the country where it is spoken, and without habits of close
observation a residence of twenty years is insufficient._
This is not encouraging, but it is the truth. Happily, a knowledge which
falls far short of mastery may be of much practical use in the common
affairs of life, and may even afford some initiation into foreign
literatures. I do not argue that because perfection is denied of us by
the circumstances of our lives or the necessities of our organization we
are therefore to abandon the study to every language but the mother
tongue. It may be of use to us to know several languages imperfectly,
if only we confess the hopelessness of absolute attainment. That which
is truly, and deeply, and seriously an injury to our intellectual life,
is the foolishness of the too common vanity which first deludes itself
with childish expectations and then tortures itself with late regret for
failure which might have been easily foreseen.
LETTER IX.
TO A STUDENT OF MODERN LANGUAGES.
Cases known to the Author--Opinion of an English linguist--Family
conditions--An Englishman who lived forty years in France--Influence
of children--An Italian in France--Displacement of one language by
another. English lady married to a Frenchman--An Italian in
Garibaldi's army--Corruption of languages by the uneducated when they
learn more than one--Neapolitan servant of an English gentleman--A
Scotch servant-woman--The author's eldest boy--Substitution of one
language for another--In mature life we lose facility--The resisting
power of adults--Seen in international marriages--Case of a retired
English officer--Two Germans in France--Germans in London--The
innocence of the ear--Imperfect attainment of little intellectual
use--Too many languages attempted in education--Polyglot
waiters--Indirect benefits.
My five propositions about learning modern languages appear from your
answer to have rather surprised you, and you ask for some instances in
illustration. I am aware that my last letter was dogmatic, so let me
begin by begging your pardon for its dogmatism. The present
communication may steer clear of that rock of offence, for it shall
confine itself to an account of cases that I have known.
One of the most accomplished of English linguists remarked to me that
after much observation of the labors of others, and a fair estimate of
his own, he had come to the rather discouraging conclusion that it was
not possible to learn a foreign language. He did not take account of the
one exceptional class of cases where the family conditions make the use
of two languages habitual. The most favorable family conditions are not
in themselves sufficient to _ensure_ the acquisition of a language, but
wherever an instance of perfect acquisition is to be found, these family
conditions are always found along with it. My friend W., an English
artist living in Paris, speaks French with quite absolute accuracy as to
grammar and choice of expression, and with accuracy of pronunciation so
nearly absolute that the best French ears can detect nothing wrong but
the pronunciation of the letter "_r_." He has lived in France for the
space of forty years, but it may be doubted whether in forty years he
could have mastered the language as he has done if he had not married a
native. French has been his home language for 30 years and more, and the
perfect ease and naturalness of his diction are due to the powerful home
influences, especially to the influence of children. A child is born
that speaks the foreign tongue from the first inarticulate beginnings
It makes its own child language, and the father as he hears it is born
over again in the foreign land by tender paternal sympathy. Gradually
the sweet child-talk gives place to the perfect tongue and the father
follows it by insensible gradations, himself the most docile of pupils,
led onward rather than instructed by the winning and playful little
master, incomparably the best of masters. The process here is nature's
own inimitable process. Every new child that is born to a man so
situated carries him through a repetition of that marvellous course of
teaching. The language _grows_ in his brain from the first
rudiments--the real natural rudiments, not the hard rudiments of the
grammarian--just as plants grow naturally from their seeds. It has not
been built by human processes of piecing together, but has developed
itself like a living creature. This way of learning a language possesses
over the dictionary process exactly the kind of superiority which a
living man, developed naturally from the foetus, possesses over the
elastic anatomical man-model of the ingenious doctor Auzoux. The
doctor's models are remarkably perfect in construction, they have all
the organs, but they have not life.
When, however, this natural process of growth is allowed to go forward
without watchful care, it is likely to displace the mother tongue. It is
sometimes affirmed that the impressions of childhood are never effaced,
that the mother tongue is _never_ forgotten. It may be that it is never
wholly forgotten, except in the case of young children, but it may
become so imperfect as to be practically of little use. I knew an
Italian who came to France as a young man and learned his profession
there. He was afterwards naturalized, married a French lady, had several
children, pursued a very successful career in Paris, and became
ultimately French Ambassador at the court of Victor Emmanuel. His French
was so perfect that it was quite impossible for any one to detect the
usual Italian accents. I used to count him as a remarkable and almost
solitary instance of a man speaking two languages in their perfection,
but I learned since then that his French had displaced his Italian, and
so completely that he was quite unable to speak Italian correctly, and
made use of French invariably when in Italy. The risk of this
displacement is always greatest in cases where the native tongue is not
kept up by means of literature. Byron and Shelley, or our contemporary
Charles Lever, would run little risk of losing English by continental
residence, but people not accustomed to reading and writing often forget
the mother tongue in a few years, even when the foreign one which has
displaced it is still in a state of imperfection. Madame L. is an
English lady who married a Frenchman; neither her husband nor her
children speak English, and as her relatives live in one of our most
distant colonies, she has been separated from them for many years.
Isolated thus from English society, living in a part of France rarely
visited by her countrymen, never reading English, and writing it little
and at long intervals, she speaks it now with much difficulty and
diffidence. Her French is not grammatical, though she has lived for many
years with people who speak grammatically; but then her French is fluent
and alive, truly her own living language now, whilst English is, if not
wholly forgotten, dead almost as our Latin is dead. She and I always
speak French together when we meet, because it is easier for her than
English, and a more natural expression. I have known some other cases of
displacement of the native tongue, and have lately had the opportunity
of watching a case of such displacement during its progress. A sergeant
in the Italian army deserted to join Garibaldi in the campaign of 1870.
On the conclusion of peace it was impossible for him to return to Italy,
so he settled in France and married there. I found some work for him,
and for some months saw him frequently. Up to the date of his marriage
he spoke no language but Italian, which he could read and write
correctly, but after his marriage the process of displacement of the
native tongue began immediately by the corruption of it. He did not keep
his Italian safely by itself, putting the French in a place of its own
as he gradually acquired it, but he mixed the two inextricably together.
Imagine the case of a man who, having a bottle half full of wine, gets
some beer given him and pours it immediately into the wine-bottle. The
beer will never be pure beer, but it will effectually spoil the wine.
This process is not so much one of displacement as of corruption, it
takes place readily in uncultivated minds, with feeble separating
powers. Another example of this was a Neapolitan servant of an English
gentleman, who mixed his Italian twice, first with French and afterwards
with English, producing a compound intelligible to nobody but himself,
if indeed he himself understood it. At the time I knew him, the man had
no means of communication with his species. When his master told him to
do anything, he made a guess at what was likely to be for the moment his
master's most probable want, and sometimes hit the mark, but more
generally missed it. The man's name was Alberino, and I remember on one
occasion profiting by a mistaken guess of his. After a visit to
Alberino's master, my servant brought forth a magnificent basket of
trout, which surprised me, as nothing had been said about them. However,
we ate them, and only discovered afterwards that the present was due to
an illusion of Alberino's. His master had never told him to give me the
trout, but he had interpreted some other order in that sense. When you
asked him for mustard, he would first touch the salt, and then the
pepper, etc., looking at you inquiringly till you nodded assent. Any
attempt at conversation with Alberino was sure to lead to a perfect
comedy of misunderstandings. He never had the remotest idea of what his
interlocutor was talking about; but he pretended to catch your meaning,
and answered at haphazard. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself,
"but in a tongue no man could understand."
It is a law that cultivated people can keep languages apart, and in
their purity, better than persons who have not habits of intellectual
analysis. When I lived in Scotland three languages were spoken in my
house all day long, and a housemaid came to us from the Lowlands who
spoke nothing but Lowland Scotch. She used to ask what was the French
for this thing or that, and then what was the Gaelic for it. Having been
answered, she invariably asked the farther question which of the three
words, French, Gaelic, or English, _was the right word_. She remained,
to the last, entirely incapable of conceiving how all the three could be
right. Had she learned another language, it must have been by
substitution for her own. This is exactly the natural process which
takes place in the brains of children who are transferred from one
country to another. My eldest boy spoke English in childhood as well as
any other English child of his age. He was taken to the south of France,
and in three months he replaced his English with Provençal, which he
learned from the servants about him. There were two ladies in the house
who spoke English well, and did all in their power, in compliance with
my urgent entreaties, to preserve the boy's native language; but the
substitution took place too rapidly, and was beyond control. He began by
an unwillingness to use English words whenever he could use Provençal
instead, and in a remarkably short time this unwillingness was succeeded
by inability. The native language was as completely taken out of his
brain as a violin is taken out of its case: nothing remained, _nothing_,
not one word, not any echo of an accent. And as a violinist may put a
new instrument into the case from which he has removed the old one, so
the new language occupied the whole space which had been occupied by
English. When I saw the child again, there was no means of communication
between us.
After that, he was removed to the north of France, and the same process
began again. As Provençal had pushed out English, so French began to
push out Provençal. The process was wonderfully rapid. The child heard
people speak French, and he began to speak French like them without any
formal teaching. He spoke the language as he breathed the air. In a few
weeks he did not retain the least remnant of his Provençal; it was gone
after his English into the limbo of the utterly forgotten.
Novelists have occasionally made use of cases similar to this, but they
speak of the forgotten language as being forgotten in the manner that
Scott forgot the manuscript of "Waverley," which he found afterwards in
the drawers of an old writing-desk when he was seeking for
fishing-tackle. They assume (conveniently for the purposes of their art)
that the first language we learn is never really lost, but may be as it
were under certain circumstances _mislaid_, to be found again at some
future period. Now, although something of this kind may be possible when
the first language has been spoken in rather advanced boyhood, I am
convinced that in childhood a considerable number of languages might
succeed each other without leaving any trace whatever. I might have
remarked that in addition to English, Provençal, and French, my boy had
understood Gaelic in his infancy, at least to some extent, though he did
not speak it. The languages in his case succeeded each other without any
cost of effort, and without any appreciable effect on health. The
pronunciation of each language was quite faultless so far as foreign
accent went; the child had the defects of children, but of children born
in the different countries where he lived.
As we grow older this facility of acquisition gradually leaves us. M.
Philarète Chasles says that it is quite impossible for any adult to
learn German: an adult may learn German as Dr. Arnold did for purposes
of erudition, for which it is enough to know a language as we know
Latin, but this is not mastery. You have met with many foreign residents
in England, who after staying in the country for many years can barely
make themselves intelligible, and must certainly be incapable of
appreciating those beauties of our literature which are dependent upon
arrangements of sound. The resisting power of the adult brain is quite
as remarkable as the assimilating power of the immature brain. A child
hears a sound, and repeats it with perfect accuracy; a man hears a
sound, and by way of imitation utters something altogether different,
being nevertheless persuaded that it is at least a close and
satisfactory approximation. Children imitate well, but adults badly, and
the acquisition of languages depends mainly on imitation. The resisting
power of adults is often seen very remarkably in international
marriages. In those classes of society where there is not much culture,
or leisure or disposition for culture, the one will not learn the
other's language from opportunity or from affection, but only under
absolute necessity. It seems as if two people living always together
would gain each other's languages as a matter of course, but the fact is
that they do not. French people who marry foreigners do not usually
acquire the foreign language if the pair remain in France; English
people under similar conditions make the attempt more frequently, but
they rest contented with imperfect attainment.
If the power of resistance is so great in people who being wedded
together for life have peculiarly strong inducements for learning each
other's languages, it need surprise us little to find a like power of
resistance in cases where motives of affection are altogether absent.
Englishmen who go to France as adults, and settle there, frequently
remain for many years in a state of half-knowledge which, though it may
carry them through the little difficulties of life at railway stations
and restaurants, is for any intellectual purpose of no conceivable
utility. I knew a retired English officer, a bachelor, who for many
years had lived in Paris without any intention of returning to England.
His French just barely carried him through the small transactions of his
daily life, but was so limited and so incorrect that he could not
maintain a conversation. His vocabulary was very meagre; his genders
were all wrong, and he did not know one single verb, literally not one.
His pronunciation was so foreign as to be very nearly unintelligible,
and he hesitated so much that it was painful to have to listen to him. I
could mention a celebrated German, who has lived in or near Paris for
the last twenty years, and who can neither speak nor write the language
with any approach to accuracy. Another German, who settled in France as
a master of languages, wrote French tolerably, but spoke it
_in_tolerably. There are Germans in London, who have lived there long
enough to have families and make fortunes, yet who continue to repeat
the ordinary German faults of pronunciation, the same faults which they
committed years ago, when first they landed on our shores.
The child hears and repeats the true sound, the adult misleads himself
by the spelling. Seldom indeed can the adult recover the innocence of
the ear. It is like the innocence of the eye, which has to be recovered
before we can paint from nature, and which belongs only to infancy and
to art.
Let me observe, in conclusion, that although to know a foreign language
perfectly is a most valuable aid to the intellectual life, I have never
known an instance of very imperfect attainment which seemed to enrich
the student intellectually. Until you can really feel the refinements of
a language, your mental culture can get little help or furtherance from
it of any kind, nothing but an interminable series of misunderstandings.
I think that in the education of our boys too many languages are
attempted, and that their minds would profit more by the perfect
acquisition of a single language in addition to the native tongue. This,
of course, is looking at the matter simply from the intellectual point
of view. There may be practical reasons for knowing several languages
imperfectly. It may be of use to many men in commercial situations to
know a little of several languages, even a few words and phrases are
valuable to a traveller, but all intellectual labor of the higher kind
requires much more than that. It is of use to society that there should
be polyglot waiters who can tell us when the train starts in four or
five languages; but the polyglot waiters themselves are not
intellectually advanced by their accomplishment; for, after all, the
facts of the railway time-table are always the same small facts, in
however many languages they may be announced. True culture ought to
strengthen the faculty of thinking, and to provide the material upon
which that noble faculty may operate. An accomplishment which does
neither of these two things for us is useless for our culture, though it
may be of considerable practical convenience in the affairs of ordinary
life. It is right to add, however, that there is sometimes an _indirect_
intellectual benefit from such accomplishments. To be able to order
dinner in Spanish is not in itself an intellectual advantage; but if the
dinner, when you have eaten it, enables you to visit a cathedral whose
architecture you are qualified to appreciate, there is a clear
intellectual gain, though an indirect one.
LETTER X.
TO A STUDENT WHO LAMENTED HIS DEFECTIVE MEMORY.
The author rather inclined to congratulation than to condolence--Value
of a selecting memory--Studies of the young Goethe--His great faculty
of assimilation--A good literary memory like a well-edited
periodical--The selecting memory in art--Treacherous memories--Cures
suggested for them--The mnemotechnic art contrary to the true
discipline of the mind--Two instances--The memory safely aided only by
right association.
So far from writing, as you seem to expect me to do, a letter of
condolence on the subject of what you are pleased to call your
"miserable memory," I feel disposed rather to indite a letter of
congratulation. It is possible that you may be blessed with a selecting
memory, which is not only useful for what it retains but for what it
rejects. In the immense mass of facts which come before you in
literature and in life, it is well that you should suffer from as little
bewilderment as possible. The nature of your memory saves you from this
by unconsciously selecting what has interested you, and letting the rest
go by. What interests you is what concerns you.
In saying this I speak simply from the intellectual point of view, and
suppose you to be an intellectual man by the natural organization of
your brain, to begin with. In saying that what interests you is what
concerns you, I mean intellectually, not materially. It may concern you,
in the pecuniary sense, to take an interest in the law; yet your mind,
left to itself, would take little or no interest in law, but an
absorbing interest in botany. The passionate studies of the young
Goethe, in many different directions, always in obedience to the
predominant interests of the moment, are the best example of the way in
which a great intellect, with remarkable powers of acquisition and
liberty to grow in free luxuriance, sends its roots into various soils
and draws from them the constituents of its sap. As a student of law, as
a university student even, he was not of the type which parents and
professors consider satisfactory. He neglected jurisprudence, he
neglected even his college studies, but took an interest in so many
other pursuits that his mind became rich indeed. Yet the wealth which
his mind acquired seems to have been due to that liberty of ranging by
which it was permitted to him to seek his own everywhere, according to
the maxim of French law, _chacun prend son bien où il le trouve_. Had he
been a poor student, bound down to the exclusively legal studies, which
did not greatly interest him, it is likely that no one would ever have
suspected his immense faculty of assimilation. In this way men who are
set by others to load their memories with what is not their proper
intellectual food, never get the credit of having any memory at all, and
end by themselves believing that they have none. These bad memories are
often the best, they are often the selecting memories. They seldom win
distinction in examinations, but in literature and art. They are quite
incomparably superior to the miscellaneous memories that receive only as
boxes and drawers receive what is put into them. A good literary or
artistic memory is not like a post-office that takes in everything, but
like a very well-edited periodical which prints nothing that does not
harmonize with its intellectual life. A well-known author gave me this
piece of advice: "Take as many notes as you like, but when you write do
not look at them--what you remember is what you must write, and you
ought to give things exactly the degree of relative importance that
they have in your memory. If you forget much, it is well, it will only
save beforehand the labor of erasure." This advice would not be suitable
to every author; an author who dealt much in minute facts ought to be
allowed to refer to his memoranda; but from the artistic point of view
in literature the advice was wise indeed. In painting, our preferences
select whilst we are in the presence of nature, and our memory selects
when we are away from nature. The most beautiful compositions are
produced by the selecting office of the memory, which retains some
features, and even greatly exaggerates them, whilst it diminishes others
and often altogether omits them. An artist who blamed himself for these
exaggerations and omissions would blame himself for being an artist.
Let me add a protest against the common methods of curing what are
called treacherous memories. They are generally founded upon the
association of ideas, which is so far rational, but then the sort of
association which they have recourse to is unnatural, and produces
precisely the sort of disorder which would be produced in dress if a man
were insane enough to tie, let us say, a frying-pan to one of his
coat-tails and a child's kite to the other. The true discipline of the
mind is to be effected only by associating those things together which
have a real relation of some kind, and the profounder the relation, the
more it is based upon the natural constitution of things, and the less
it concerns trifling external details, the better will be the order of
the intellect. The mnemotechnic art wholly disregards this, and is
therefore unsuited for intellectual persons, though it may be of some
practical use in ordinary life. A little book on memory, of which many
editions have been sold, suggests to men who forget their umbrellas that
they ought always to associate the image of an umbrella with that of an
open door, so that they could never leave any house without thinking of
one. But would it not be preferable to lose two or three guineas
annually rather than see a spectral umbrella in every doorway? The same
writer suggests an idea which appears even more objectionable. Because
we are apt to lose time, we ought, he says, to imagine a skeleton
clock-face on the visage of every man we talk with; that is to say, we
ought systematically to set about producing in our brains an absurd
association of ideas, which is quite closely allied to one of the most
common forms of insanity. It is better to forget umbrellas and lose
hours than fill our minds with associations of a kind which every
disciplined intellect does all it can to get rid of. The rational art of
memory is that used in natural science. We remember anatomy and botany
because, although the facts they teach are infinitely numerous, they are
arranged according to the constructive order of nature. Unless there
were a clear relation between the anatomy of one animal and that of
others, the memory would refuse to burden itself with the details of
their structure. So in the study of languages we learn several languages
by perceiving their true structural relations, and remembering these.
Association of this kind, and the maintenance of order in the mind, are
the only arts of memory compatible with the right government of the
intellect. Incongruous, and even superficial associations ought to be
systematically discouraged, and we ought to value the negative or
rejecting power of the memory. The finest intellects are as remarkable
for the ease with which they resist and throw off what does not concern
them as for the permanence with which their own truths engrave
themselves. They are like clear glass, which fluoric acid etches
indelibly, but which comes out of vitriol intact.
LETTER XI.
TO A MASTER OF ARTS WHO SAID THAT A CERTAIN DISTINGUISHED PAINTER WAS
HALF-EDUCATED.
Conventional idea about the completeness of education--The estimate of
a schoolmaster--No one can be fully educated--Even Leonardo da Vinci
fell short of the complete expression of his faculties--The word
"education" used in two different senses--The acquisition of
knowledge--Who are the learned?--Quotation from Sydney Smith--What a
"half-educated" painter had learned--What faculties he had developed.
An intelligent lady was lamenting to me the other day that when she
heard anything she did not quite agree with, it only set her thinking,
and did not suggest any immediate reply. "Three hours afterwards," she
added, "I arrive at the answer which ought to have been given, but then
it is exactly three hours too late."
Being afflicted with precisely the same pitiable infirmity, I said
nothing in reply to a statement you made yesterday evening at dinner,
but it occupied me in the hansom as it rolled between the monotonous
lines of houses, and followed me even into my bed-room. I should like to
answer it this morning, as one answers a letter.
You said that our friend the painter was "half-educated." This made me
try to understand what it is to be three-quarters educated, and
seven-eighths educated, and finally what must be that quite perfect
state of the man who is whole-educated.
I fear that you must have adopted some conventional idea about
completeness of education, since you believe that there is any such
thing as completeness, and that education can be measured by fractions,
like the divisions of a two-foot rule.
Is not such an idea just a little arbitrary? It seems to be the idea of
a schoolmaster, with his little list of subjects and his professional
habit of estimating the progress of his boys by the good marks they are
likely to obtain from their examiners. The half-educated schoolboy would
be a schoolboy half-way towards his bachelor's degree--is that it?
In the estimates of school and college this may be so, and it may be
well to keep up the illusion, during boyhood, that there is such a thing
attainable as the complete education that you assume. But the wider
experience of manhood tends rather to convince us that no one can be
fully educated, and that the more rich and various the natural talents,
the greater will be the difficulty of educating the whole of them.
Indeed it does not appear that in a state of society so advanced in the
different specialities as ours is, men were ever intended to do more
than develop by education a few of their natural gifts. The only man who
came near to a complete education was Leonardo da Vinci, but such a
personage would be impossible to-day. No contemporary Leonardo could be
at the same time a leader in fine art, a great military and civil
engineer, and a discoverer in theoretical science; the specialists have
gone too far for him. Born in our day, Leonardo would have been either a
specialist or an amateur. Situated even as he was, in a time and country
so remarkably favorable to the general development of a variously gifted
man, he still fell short of the complete expansion of all his
extraordinary faculties. He was a great artist, and yet his artistic
power was never developed beyond the point of elaborately careful labor;
he never attained the assured manipulation of Titian and Paul Veronese,
not to mention the free facility of Velasquez, or the splendid audacity
of Rubens. His natural gifts were grand enough to have taken him to a
pitch of mastery that he never reached, but his mechanical and
scientific tendencies would have their development also, and withdrew so
much time from art that every renewal of his artistic labor was
accompanied by long and anxious reflection.
The word "education" is used in senses so different that confusion is
not always avoided. Some people mean by it the acquisition of knowledge,
others the development of faculty. If you mean the first, then the
half-educated man would be a man who knew half what he ought to know, or
who only half knew the different sciences, which the wholly educated
know thoroughly. Who is to fix the subjects? Is it the opinion of the
learned?--if so, who are the learned? "A learned man!--a scholar!--a man
of erudition! Upon whom are these epithets of approbation bestowed? Are
they given to men acquainted with the science of government? thoroughly
masters of the geographical and commercial relations of Europe? to men
who know the properties of bodies, and their action upon each other? No:
this is not learning; it is chemistry, or political economy, not
learning. The distinguishing abstract term, the epithet of Scholar, is
reserved for him who writes on the Æolic reduplication, and is familiar
with the Sylburgian method of arranging defectives in [Greek: ô] and
[Greek: mi]. The picture which a young Englishman, addicted to the
pursuit of knowledge, draws--his _beau idéal_ of human nature--his top
and consummation of man's powers--is a knowledge of the Greek language.
His object is not to reason, to imagine, or to invent; but to conjugate,
decline, and derive. The situations of imaginary glory which he draws
for himself, are the detection of an anapæst in the wrong place, or the
restoration of a dative case which Cranzius had passed over, and the
never-dying Ernesti failed to observe."
By the help of the above passage from an article written sixty-three
years ago by Sydney Smith, and by the help of another passage in the
same paper where he tells us that the English clergy bring up the first
young men of the country as if they were all to keep grammar schools in
little country towns, I begin to understand what you mean by a
half-educated person. You mean a person who is only half qualified for
keeping a grammar school. In this sense it is very possible that our
friend the painter possesses nothing beyond a miserable fraction of
education. And yet he has picked up a good deal of valuable knowledge
outside the technical acquirement of a most difficult profession. He
studied two years in Paris, and four years in Florence and Rome. He
speaks French and Italian quite fluently, and with a fair degree of
correctness. His knowledge of those two languages is incomparably more
complete, in the sense of practical possession, than our fossilized
knowledge of Latin, and he reads them almost as we read English,
currently, and without translating. He has the heartiest enjoyment of
good literature; there is evidence in his pictures of a most intelligent
sympathy with the greatest inventive writers. Without having a
scientific nature, he knows a good deal about anatomy. He has not read
Greek poetry, but he has studied the old Greek mind in its architecture
and sculpture. Nature has also endowed him with a just appreciation of
music, and he knows the immortal masterpieces of the most illustrious
composers. All these things would not qualify him to teach a grammar
school, and yet what Greek of the age of Pericles ever knew half so
much?
This for the acquisition of knowledge; now for the development of
faculty. In this respect he excels us as performing athletes excel the
people in the streets. Consider the marvellous accuracy of his eye, the
precision of his hand, the closeness of his observation, the vigor of
his memory and invention! How clumsy and rude is the most learned pedant
in comparison with the refinement of this delicate organization! Try to
imagine what a disciplined creature he has become, how obedient are all
his faculties to the commands of the central will! The brain conceives
some image of beauty or wit, and immediately that clear conception is
telegraphed to the well-trained fingers. Surely, if the results of
education may be estimated from the evidences of skill, here are some of
the most wonderful of such results.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] According to M. Taine. I have elsewhere expressed a doubt about
polyglots.
PART IV.
THE POWER OF TIME.
LETTER I.
TO A MAN OF LEISURE WHO COMPLAINED OF WANT OF TIME.
Necessity for time-thrift in all cases--Serious men not much in danger
from mere frivolity--Greater danger of losing time in our serious
pursuits themselves--Time thrown away when we do not attain
proficiency--Soundness of former scholarship a good
example--Browning's Grammarian--Knowledge an organic whole--Soundness
the possession of essential parts--Necessity of fixed limits in our
projects of study--Limitation of purpose in the fine arts--In
languages--Instance of M. Louis Énault--In music--Time saved by
following kindred pursuits--Order and proportion the true secrets of
time-thrift--A waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in our rear.
You complain of want of time--you, with your boundless leisure!
It is true that the most absolute master of his own hours still needs
thrift if he would turn them to account, and that too many _never_ learn
this thrift, whilst others learn it late. Will you permit me to offer
briefly a few observations on time-thrift which have been suggested to
me by my own experience and by the experience of intellectual friends?
It may be accepted for certain, to begin with, that men who like
yourself seriously care for culture, and make it, next to moral duty,
the principal object of their lives, are but little exposed to waste
time in downright frivolity of any kind. You may be perfectly idle at
your own times, and perfectly frivolous even, whenever you have a mind
to be frivolous, but then you will be clearly aware how the time is
passing, and you will throw it away knowingly, as the most careful of
money-economists will throw away a few sovereigns in a confessedly
foolish amusement, merely for the relief of a break in the habit of his
life. To a man of your tastes and temper there is no danger of wasting
too much time so long as the waste is intentional; but you are exposed
to time-losses of a much more insidious character.
It is in our pursuits themselves that we throw away our most valuable
time. Few intellectual men have the art of economizing the hours of
study. The very necessity, which every one acknowledges, of giving vast
portions of life to attain proficiency in anything makes us prodigal
where we ought to be parsimonious, and careless where we have need of
unceasing vigilance. The best time-savers are the love of soundness in
all we learn or do, and a cheerful acceptance of inevitable limitations.
There is a certain point of proficiency at which an acquisition begins
to be of use, and unless we have the time and resolution necessary to
reach that point, our labor is as completely thrown away as that of a
mechanic who began to make an engine but never finished it. Each of us
has acquisitions which remain permanently unavailable from their
unsoundness, a language or two that we can neither speak nor write, a
science of which the elements have not been mastered, an art which we
cannot practice with satisfaction either to others or to ourselves. Now
the time spent on these unsound accomplishments has been in great
measure wasted, not quite absolutely wasted, since the mere labor of
trying to learn has been a discipline for the mind, but wasted so far as
the accomplishments themselves are concerned. And even this mental
discipline, on which so much stress is laid by those whose interest it
is to encourage unsound accomplishment, might be obtained more perfectly
if the subjects of study were less numerous and more thoroughly
understood. Let us not therefore in the studies of our maturity repeat
the error of our youth. Let us determine to have soundness, that is,
accurately organized knowledge in the studies we continue to pursue, and
let us resign ourselves to the necessity for abandoning those pursuits
in which soundness is not to be hoped for.
The old-fashioned idea about scholarship in Latin and Greek, that it
ought to be based upon thorough grammatical knowledge, is a good
example, so far as it goes, of what soundness really is. That ideal of
scholarship failed only because it fell short of soundness in other
directions and was not conscious of its failure. But there existed, in
the minds of the old scholars, a fine resolution to be accurate, and a
determination to give however much labor might be necessary for the
attainment of accuracy, in which there was much grandeur. Like Mr.
Browning's Grammarian, they said--
"Let me know all! Prate not of most or least
Painful or easy!"
and so at least they came to know the ancient tongues grammatically,
which few of us do in these days.
I should define each kind of knowledge as an organic whole and soundness
as the complete possession of all the essential parts. For example,
soundness in violin-playing consists in being able to play the notes in
all the positions, in tune, and with a pure intonation, whatever may be
the degree of rapidity indicated by the musical composer. Soundness in
painting consists in being able to lay a patch of color having exactly
the right shape and tint. Soundness in the use of language consists in
being able to put the right word in the right place. In each of the
sciences, there are certain elementary notions without which sound
knowledge is not possible, but these elementary notions are more easily
and rapidly acquired than the elaborate knowledge or confirmed skill
necessary to the artist or the linguist. A man may be a sound botanist
without knowing a very great number of plants, and the elements of
sound botanical knowledge may be printed in a portable volume. And so it
is with all the physical sciences; the elementary notions which are
necessary to soundness of knowledge may be acquired rapidly and at any
age. Hence it follows that all whose leisure for culture is limited, and
who value soundness of knowledge, do wisely to pursue some branch of
natural history rather than languages or the fine arts.
It is well for every one who desires to attain a perfect economy of
time, to make a list of the different pursuits to which he has devoted
himself, and to put a note opposite to each of them indicating the
degree of its unsoundness with as little self-delusion as may be. After
having done this, he may easily ascertain in how many of these pursuits
a sufficient degree of soundness is attainable for him, and when this
has been decided he may at once effect a great saving by the total
renunciation of the rest. With regard to those which remain, and which
are to be carried farther, the next thing to be settled is the exact
limit of their cultivation. Nothing is so favorable to sound culture as
the definite fixing of limits. Suppose, for example, that the student
said to himself "I desire to know the flora of the valley I live in,"
and then set to work systematically to make a herbarium illustrating
that flora, it is probable that his labor would be more thorough, his
temper more watchful and hopeful, than if he set himself to the
boundless task of the illimitable flora of the world. Or in the pursuit
of fine art, an amateur discouraged by the glaring unsoundness of the
kind of art taught by ordinary drawing-masters, would find the basis of
a more substantial superstructure on a narrower but firmer ground.
Suppose that instead of the usual messes of bad color and bad form, the
student produced work having some definite and not unattainable purpose,
would there not be, here also, an assured economy of time? Accurate
drawing is the basis of soundness in the fine arts, and an amateur, by
perseverance, may reach accuracy in drawing; this, at least, has been
proved by some examples--not by many, certainly, but by some. In
languages we may have a limited purpose also. That charming and most
intelligent traveller, Louis Énault, tells us that he regularly gave a
week to the study of each new language that he needed, and found that
week sufficient. The assertion is not so presumptuous as it appears. For
the practical necessities of travelling M. Énault found that he required
about four hundred words, and that, having a good memory, he was able to
learn about seventy words a day. The secret of his success was the
invaluable art of selection, and the strict limitation of effort in
accordance with a preconceived design. A traveller not so well skilled
in selection might have learned a thousand words with less advantage to
his travels, and a traveller less decided in purpose might have wasted
several months on the frontier of every new country in hopeless efforts
to master the intricacies of grammatical form. It is evident that in the
strictest sense M. Énault's knowledge of Norwegian cannot have been
sound, since he did not master the grammar, but it was sound in its own
strictly limited way, since he got possession of the four hundred words
which were to serve him as current coin. On the same principle it is a
good plan for students of Latin and Greek who have not time to reach
true scholarship (half a lifetime is necessary for that), to propose to
themselves simply the reading of the original authors with the help of a
literal translation. In this way they may attain a closer acquaintance
with ancient literature than would be possible by translation alone,
whilst on the other hand their reading will be much more extensive on
account of its greater rapidity. It is, for most of us, a waste of time
to read Latin and Greek without a translation, on account of the
comparative slowness of the process; but it is always an advantage to
know what was really said in the original, and to test the exactness of
the translator by continual reference to the _ipsissima verba_ of the
author. When the knowledge of the ancient language is not sufficient
even for this, it may still be of use for occasional comparison, even
though the passage has to be fought through _à coupes de dictionnaire_.
What most of us need in reference to the ancient languages is a frank
resignation to a restriction of some kind. It is simply impossible for
men occupied as most of us are in other pursuits to reach perfect
scholarship in those languages, and if we reached it we should not have
time to maintain it.
In modern languages it is not so easy to fix limits satisfactorily. You
may resolve to read French or German without either writing or speaking
them, and that would be an effectual limit, certainly. But in practice
it is found difficult to keep within that boundary if ever you travel or
have intercourse with foreigners. And when once you begin to speak, it
is so humiliating to speak badly, that a lover of soundness in
accomplishment will never rest perfectly satisfied until he speaks like
a cultivated native, which nobody ever did except under peculiar family
conditions.
In music the limits are found more easily. The amateur musician is
frequently not inferior in feeling and taste to the more accomplished
professional, and by selecting those compositions which require much
feeling and taste for their interpretation, but not so much manual
skill, he may reach a sufficient success. The art is to choose the very
simplest music (provided of course that it is beautiful, which it
frequently is), and to avoid all technical difficulties which are not
really necessary to the expression of feeling. The amateur ought also to
select the easiest instrument, an instrument in which the notes are made
for him already, rather than one which compels him to fix the notes as
he is playing. The violin tempts amateurs who have a deep feeling for
music because it renders feeling as no other instrument can render it,
but the difficulty of just intonation is almost insuperable unless the
whole time is given to that one instrument. It is a fatal error to
perform on several different instruments, and an amateur who has done so
may find a desirable limitation in restricting himself to one.
Much time is saved by following pursuits which help each other. It is a
great help to a landscape painter to know the botany of the country he
works in, for botany gives the greatest possible distinctness to his
memory of all kinds of vegetation. Therefore, if a landscape painter
takes to the study of science at all, he would do well to study botany,
which would be of use in his painting, rather than chemistry or
mathematics, which would be entirely disconnected from it. The memory
easily retains the studies which are auxiliary to the chief pursuit.
Entomologists remember plants well, the reason being that they find
insects in them, just as Leslie the painter had an excellent memory for
houses where there were any good pictures to be found.
The secret of order and proportion in our studies is the true secret of
economy in time. To have one main pursuit and several auxiliaries, but
none that are not auxiliary, is the true principle of arrangement. Many
hard workers have followed pursuits as widely disconnected as possible,
but this was for the refreshment of absolute change, not for the
economy of time.
Lastly, it is a deplorable waste of time to leave fortresses untaken in
our rear. Whatever has to be mastered ought to be mastered so thoroughly
that we shall not have to come back to it when we ought to be carrying
the war far into the enemy's country. But to study on this sound
principle, we require not to be hurried. And this is why, to a sincere
student, all external pressure, whether of examiners, or poverty, or
business engagements, which causes him to leave work behind him which
was not done as it ought to have been done, is so grievously, so
intolerably vexatious.
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF GREAT TALENT AND ENERGY WHO HAD MAGNIFICENT PLANS FOR
THE FUTURE.
Mistaken estimates about time and occasion--The Unknown
Element--Procrastination often time's best preserver--Napoleon's
advice to do nothing at all--Use of deliberation and of intervals of
leisure--Artistic advantages of calculating time--Prevalent
childishness about time--Illusions about reading--Bad economy of
reading in languages we have not mastered--That we ought to be thrifty
of time, but not avaricious--Time necessary in production--Men who
work best under the sense of pressure--Rossini--That these cases prove
nothing against time-thrift--The waste of tune from
miscalculation--People calculate accurately for short spaces, but do
not calculate so well for long ones--Reason for this--Stupidity of
the Philistines about wasted time--Töpffer and Claude
Tillier--Retrospective miscalculations, and the regrets that result
from them.
Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage
when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author? On the
same principle, people will give a higher price to a picture-dealer than
they would have given to the painter himself. The picture that has been
once bought has a recommendation, and the quoted passage is both
recommended and isolated from the context.
Trusting to this well-known principle, although I am aware that you have
read everything that Sir Arthur Helps has published, I proceed to make
the following quotation from one of his wisest books.
"Time and occasion are the two important circumstances in human life, as
regards which the most mistaken estimates are made. And the error is
universal. It besets even the most studious and philosophic men. This
may notably be seen in the present day, when many most distinguished men
have laid down projects for literature and philosophy, to be
accomplished by them in their own lifetime, which would require several
men and many lifetimes to complete; and, generally speaking, if any
person, who has passed the meridian of life, looks back upon his career,
he will probably own that his greatest errors have arisen from his not
having made sufficient allowance for the length of time which his
various schemes required for their fulfilment."
There are many traditional maxims about time which insist upon its
brevity, upon the necessity of using it whilst it is there, upon the
impossibility of recovering what is lost; but the practical effect of
these maxims upon conduct can scarcely be said to answer to their
undeniable importance. The truth is, that although they tell us to
economize our time, they cannot, in the nature of things, instruct us as
to the methods by which it is to be economized. Human life is so
extremely various and complicated, whilst it tends every day to still
greater variety and complication, that all maxims of a general nature
require a far higher degree of intelligence in their application to
individual cases than it ever cost originally to invent them. Any person
gifted with ordinary common sense can perceive that life is short, that
time flies, that we ought to make good use of the present; but it needs
the union of much experience, with the most consummate wisdom, to know
exactly what ought to be done and what ought to be left undone--the
latter being frequently by far the more important of the two.
Amongst the favorable influences of my early life was the kindness of a
venerable country gentleman, who had seen a great deal of the world and
passed many years, before he inherited his estates, in the practice of
a laborious profession. I remember a theory of his, that experience was
much less valuable than is generally supposed, because, except in
matters of simple routine, the problems that present themselves to us
for solution are nearly always dangerous from the presence of some
unknown element. The unknown element he regarded as a hidden pitfall,
and he warned me that in my progress through life I might always expect
to tumble into it. This saying of his has been so often confirmed since
then, that I now count upon the pitfall quite as a matter of certainty.
Very frequently I have escaped it, but more by good luck than good
management. Sometimes I have tumbled into it, and when this misfortune
occurred it has not unfrequently been in consequence of having acted
upon the advice of some very knowing and experienced person indeed. We
have all read, when we were boys, Captain Marryat's "Midshipman Easy."
There is a passage in that story which may serve as an illustration of
what is constantly happening in actual life. The boats of the _Harpy_
were ordered to board one of the enemy's vessels; young Easy was in
command of one of these boats, and as they had to wait he began to fish.
After they had received the order to advance, he delayed a little to
catch his fish, and this delay not only saved him from being sunk by the
enemy's broadside, but enabled him to board the Frenchman. Here the
pitfall was avoided by idling away a minute of time on an occasion when
minutes were like hours; yet it was mere luck, not wisdom, which led to
the good result. There was a sad railway accident on one of the
continental lines last autumn; a notable personage would have been in
the train if he had arrived in time for it, but his miscalculation saved
him. In matters where there is no risk of the loss of life, but only of
the waste of a portion of it in unprofitable employment, it frequently
happens that procrastination, which is reputed to be the thief of time,
becomes its best preserver. Suppose that you undertake an enterprise,
but defer the execution of it from day to day: it is quite possible that
in the interval some fact may accidentally come to your knowledge which
would cause a great modification of your plan, or even its complete
abandonment. Every thinking person is well aware that the enormous loss
of time caused by the friction of our legislative machinery has
preserved the country from a great deal of crude and ill-digested
legislation. Even Napoleon the Great who had a rapidity of conception
and of action so far surpassing that of other kings and commanders that
it seems to us almost supernatural, said that when you did not quite
know what ought to be done it was best to do nothing at all. One of the
most distinguished of living painters said exactly the same thing with
reference to the practice of his art, and added that very little time
would be needed for the actual execution of a picture if only the artist
knew beforehand how and where to lay the color. It so often happens
that mere activity is a waste of time, that people who have a morbid
habit of being busy are often terrible time-wasters, whilst, on the
contrary, those who are judiciously deliberate, and allow themselves
intervals of leisure, see the way before them in those intervals, and
save time by the accuracy of their calculations.
A largely intelligent thrift of time is necessary to all great
works--and many works are very great indeed relatively to the energies
of a single individual, which pass unperceived in the tumult of the
world. The advantages of calculating time are artistic as well as
economical. I think that, in this respect, magnificent as are the
cathedrals which the Gothic builders have left us, they committed an
artistic error in the very immensity of their plans. They do not appear
to have reflected that from the continual changes of fashion in
architecture, incongruous work would be sure to intrude itself before
their gigantic projects could be realized by the generations that were
to succeed them. For a work of that kind to possess artistic unity, it
ought to be completely realized within the space of forty years. How
great is the charm of those perfect edifices which, like the Sainte
Chapelle, are the realization of one sublime idea? And those changes in
national thought which have made the old cathedrals a jumble of
incongruous styles, have their parallel in the life of every individual
workman. We change from year to year, and any work which occupies us
for very long will be wanting in unity of manner.
Men are apt enough of themselves to fall into the most astonishing
delusions about the opportunities which time affords, but they are even
more deluded by the talk of the people about them. When children hear
that a new carriage has been ordered of the builder, they expect to see
it driven up to the door in a fortnight, with the paint quite dry on the
panels. All people are children in this respect, except the workman, who
knows the endless details of production; and the workman himself,
notwithstanding the lessons of experience, makes light of the future
task. What gigantic plans we scheme, and how little we advance in the
labor of a day! Three pages of the book (to be half erased to-morrow), a
bit of drapery in the picture that will probably have to be done over
again, the imperceptible removal of an ounce of marble-dust from the
statue that seems as if it never would be finished; so much from dawn to
twilight has been the accomplishment of the golden hours. If there is
one lesson which experience teaches, surely it is this, to make plans
that are strictly limited, and to arrange our work in a practicable way
within the limits that we must accept. Others expect so much from us
that it seems as if we had accomplished nothing. "What! have you done
only that?" they say, or we know by their looks that they are thinking
it.
The most illusory of all the work that we propose to ourselves is
reading. It seems so easy to read, that we intend, in the indefinite
future, to master the vastest literatures. We cannot bring ourselves to
admit that the library we have collected is in great part closed to us
simply by want of time. A dear friend of mine, who was a solicitor with
a large practice, indulged in wonderful illusions about reading, and
collected several thousand volumes, all fine editions, but he died
without having cut their leaves. I like the university habit of making
reading a business, and estimating the mastery of a few authors as a
just title to consideration for scholarship. I should like very well to
be shut up in a garden for a whole summer with no literature but the
"Faëry Queene," and one year I very nearly realized that project, but
publishers and the postman interfered with it. After all, this business
of reading ought to be less illusory than most others, for printers
divide books into pages, which they number, so that, with a moderate
skill in arithmetic, one ought to be able to foresee the limits of his
possibilities. There is another observation which may be suggested, and
that is to take note of the time required for reading different
languages. We read very slowly when the language is imperfectly
mastered, and we need the dictionary, whereas in the native tongue we
see the whole page almost at a glance, as if it were a picture. People
whose time for reading is limited ought not to waste it in grammars and
dictionaries, but to confine themselves resolutely to a couple of
languages, or three at the very utmost, notwithstanding the contempt of
polyglots, who estimate your learning by the variety of your tongues. It
is a fearful throwing away of time, from the literary point of view, to
begin more languages than you can master or retain, and to be always
puzzling yourself about irregular verbs.
All plans for sparing time in intellectual matters ought, however, to
proceed upon the principle of thrift, and not upon the principle of
avarice. The object of the thrifty man in money matters is so to lay out
his money as to get the best possible result from his expenditure; the
object of the avaricious man is to spend no more money than he can help.
An artist who taught me painting often repeated a piece of advice which
is valuable in other things than art, and which I try to remember
whenever patience fails. He used to say to me, "_Give it time._" The
mere length of time that we bestow upon our work is in itself a most
important element of success, and if I object to the use of languages
that we only half know, it is not because it takes us a long time to get
through a chapter, but because we are compelled to think about syntax
and conjugations which did not in the least occupy the mind of the
author, when we ought rather to be thinking about those things which
_did_ occupy his mind, about the events which he narrated, or the
characters that he imagined or described. There are, in truth, only two
ways of impressing anything on the memory, either intensity or duration.
If you saw a man struck down by an assassin, you would remember the
occurrence all your life; but to remember with equal vividness a picture
of the assassination, you would probably be obliged to spend a month or
two in copying it. The subjects of our studies rarely produce an
intensity of emotion sufficient to ensure perfect recollection without
the expenditure of time. And when your object is not to learn, but to
produce, it is well to bear in mind that everything requires a certain
definite time-outlay, which _cannot_ be reduced without an inevitable
injury to quality. A most experienced artist, a man of the very rarest
executive ability, wrote to me the other day about a set of designs I
had suggested. "If I could but get the TIME,"--the large capitals are
his own,--"for, somehow or other, let a design be never so studiously
simple in the masses, it _will_ fill itself as it goes on, like the
weasel in the fable who got into the meal-tub; and when the pleasure
begins in attempting tone and mystery and intricacy, _away go the hours
at a gallop_." A well-known and very successful English dramatist wrote
to me: "When I am hurried, and have undertaken more work than I can
execute in the time at my disposal, I am always perfectly paralyzed."
There is another side to this subject which deserves attention. Some men
work best under the sense of pressure. Simple compression evolves heat
from iron, so that there is a flash of fire when a ball hits the side
of an ironclad. The same law seems to hold good in the intellectual life
of man, whenever he needs the stimulus of extraordinary excitement.
Rossini positively advised a young composer never to write his overture
until the evening before the first performance. "Nothing," he said,
"excites inspiration like necessity; the presence of a copyist waiting
for your work, and the view of a manager in despair tearing out his hair
by handfuls. In Italy in my time all the managers were bald at thirty. I
composed the overture to 'Othello' in a small room in the Barbaja
Palace, where the baldest and most ferocious of managers had shut me up
by force with nothing but a dish of maccaroni, and the threat that I
should not leave the place alive until I had written the last note. I
wrote the overture to the 'Gazza Ladra' on the day of the first
performance, in the upper loft of the La Scala, where I had been
confined by the manager, under the guard of four scene-shifters who had
orders to throw my text out of the window bit by bit to copyists, who
were waiting below to transcribe it. In default of music I was to be
thrown out myself."
I have quoted the best instance known to me of this voluntary seeking
after pressure, but striking as it is, even this instance does not
weaken what I said before. For observe, that although Rossini deferred
the composition of his overture till the evening before the first
performance, he knew very well that he could do it thoroughly in the
time. He was like a clever schoolboy who knows that he can learn his
lesson in the quarter of an hour before the class begins; or he was like
an orator who knows that he can deliver a passage and compose at the
same time the one which is to follow, so that he prefers to arrange his
speech in the presence of his audience. Since Rossini always allowed
himself all the time that was necessary for what he had to do, it is
clear that he did not sin against the great time-necessity. The express
which can travel from London to Edinburgh in a night may leave the
English metropolis on Saturday evening although it is due in Scotland on
Sunday, and still act with the strictest consideration about time. The
blameable error lies in miscalculation, and not in rapidity of
performance.
Nothing _wastes_ time like miscalculation. It negatives all results. It
is the parent of incompleteness, the great author of the Unfinished and
the Unserviceable. Almost every intellectual man has laid out great
masses of time on five or six different branches of knowledge which are
not of the least use to him, simply because he has not carried them far
enough, and could not carry them far enough in the time he had to give.
Yet this might have been ascertained at the beginning by the simplest
arithmetical calculation. The experience of students in all departments
of knowledge has quite definitely ascertained the amount of time that is
necessary for success in them, and the successful student can at once
inform the aspirant how far he is likely to travel along the road. What
is the use, to anybody, of having just enough skill to feel vexed with
himself that he has no more, and yet angry at other people for not
admiring the little that he possesses?
I wish to direct your attention to a cause which more than any other
produces disappointment in ordinary intellectual pursuits. It is this.
People can often calculate with the utmost accuracy what they can
accomplish in ten minutes or even in ten hours, and yet the very same
persons will make the most absurd miscalculations about what they can
accomplish in ten years. There is of course a reason for this: if there
were not, so many sensible people would not suffer from the delusion.
The reason is, that owing to the habits of human life there is a certain
elasticity in large spaces of time that include nights, and mealtimes,
and holidays. We fancy that we shall be able, by working harder than we
have been accustomed to work, and by stealing hours from all the
different kinds of rest and amusement, to accomplish far more in the ten
years that are to come than we have ever actually accomplished in the
same space. And to a certain extent this may be very true. No doubt a
man whose mind has become seriously aware of the vast importance of
economizing his time will economize it better than he did in the days
before the new conviction came to him. No doubt, after skill in our work
has been confirmed, we shall perform it with increased speed. But the
elasticity of time is rather that of leather than that of india-rubber.
There is certainly a degree of elasticity, but the degree is strictly
limited. The true master of time-thrift would be no more liable to
illusion about years than about hours, and would act as prudently when
working for remote results as for near ones.
Not that we ought to work as if we were always under severe pressure.
Little books are occasionally published in which we are told that it is
a sin to lose a minute. From the intellectual point of view this
doctrine is simply stupid. What the Philistines call wasted time is
often rich in the most varied experience to the intelligent. If all that
we have learned in idle moments could be suddenly expelled from our
minds by some chemical process, it is probable that they would be worth
very little afterwards. What, after such a process, would have remained
to Shakespeare, Scott, Cervantes, Thackeray, Dickens, Hogarth,
Goldsmith, Molière? When these great students of human nature were
learning most, the sort of people who write the foolish little books
just alluded to would have wanted to send them home to the dictionary or
the desk. Töpffer and Claude Tillier, both men of delicate and observant
genius, attached the greatest importance to hours of idleness. Töpffer
said that a year of downright loitering was a desirable element in a
liberal education; whilst Claude Tillier went even farther, and boldly
affirmed that "le temps le mieux employé est celui que l'on perd."
Let us not think too contemptuously of the miscalculators of time, since
not one of us is exempt from their folly. We have all made
miscalculations, or more frequently have simply omitted calculation
altogether, preferring childish illusion to a manly examination of
realities; and afterwards as life advances another illusion steals over
us not less vain than the early one, but bitter as that was sweet. We
now begin to reproach ourselves with all the opportunities that have
been neglected, and now our folly is to imagine that we might have done
impossible wonders if we had only exercised a little resolution. We
might have been thorough classical scholars, and spoken all the great
modern languages, and written immortal books, and made a colossal
fortune. Miscalculations again, and these the most imbecile of all; for
the youth who forgets to reason in the glow of happiness and hope, is
wiser than the man who overestimates what was once possible that he may
embitter the days which remain to him.
LETTER III.
TO A MAN OF BUSINESS WHO DESIRED TO MAKE HIMSELF BETTER ACQUAINTED WITH
LITERATURE, BUT WHOSE TIME FOR READING WAS LIMITED.
Victor Jacquemont on the intellectual labors of the Germans--Business
may be set off as the equivalent to one of their pursuits--Necessity
for regularity in the economy of time--What may be done in two hours a
day--Evils of interruption--Florence Nightingale--Real nature of
interruption--Instance from the Apology of Socrates.
In the charming and precious letters of Victor Jacquemont, a man whose
life was dedicated to culture, and who not only lived for it, but died
for it, there is a passage about the intellectual labors of Germans,
which takes due account of the expenditure of time. "Comme j'étais
étonné," he says, "de la prodigieuse variété et de l'étendue de
connaissances des Allemands, je demandai un jour à l'un de mes amis,
Saxon de naissance et l'un des premiers géologues de l'Europe, comment
ses compatriotes s'y prenaient pour savoir tant de choses. Voici sa
réponse, à peu près: 'Un Allemand (moi excepté qui suis le plus
paresseux des hommes) se lève de bonne heure, été et hiver, à cinq
heures environ. Il travaille quatre heures avant le déjeuner, fumant
quelquefois pendant tout ce temps, sans que cela nuise à son
application. Son déjeuner dure une demi-heure, et il reste, après, une
autre demi-heure à causer avec sa femme et à faire jouer ses enfants.
Il retourne au travail pour six heures; dîne sans se presser; fume une
heure après le dîner, jouant encore avec ses enfants; et avant de se
coucher il travaille encore quatre heures. Il recommence tous les jours,
ne sortant jamais.--Voilà,' me dit mon ami, 'comment Oersted, le plus
grand physicien de l'Allemagne, en est aussi le plus grand médecin;
voilà comment Kant le métaphysicien était un des plus savants astronomes
de l'Europe, et comment Goethe, qui en est actuellement le premier
littérateur, dans presque tous les genres, et le plus fécond, est
excellent botaniste, minéralogiste, physicien.'"[2]
Here is something to encourage, and something to discourage you at the
same time. The number of hours which these men have given in order to
become what they were, is so great as to be past all possibility of
imitation by a man occupied in business. It is clear that, with your
counting-house to occupy you during the best hours of every day, you can
never labor for your intellectual culture with that unremitting
application which these men have given for theirs. But, on the other
hand, you will perceive that these extraordinary workers have hardly
ever been wholly dedicated to one pursuit, and the reason for this in
most cases is clear. Men who go through a prodigious amount of work feel
the necessity for varying it. The greatest intellectual workers I have
known personally have varied their studies as Kant and Goethe did, often
taking up subjects of the most opposite kinds, as for instance
imaginative literature and the higher mathematics, the critical and
practical study of fine art and the natural sciences, music, and
political economy. The class of intellects which arrogate to themselves
the epithet "practical," but which we call _Philistine_, always oppose
this love of variety, and have an unaffected contempt for it, but these
are matters beyond their power of judgment. They cannot know the needs
of the intellectual life, because they have never lived it. The practice
of all the greatest intellects has been to cultivate themselves
variously, and if they have always done so, it must be because they have
felt the need of it.
The encouraging inference which you may draw from this in reference to
your own case is that, since all intellectual men have had more than one
pursuit, you may set off your business against the most absorbing of
their pursuits, and for the rest be still almost as rich in time as they
have been. You may study literature as some painters have studied it, or
science as some literary men have studied it.
The first step is to establish a regulated economy of your time, so
that, without interfering with a due attention to business and to
health, you may get two clear hours every day for reading of the best
kind. It is not much, some men would tell you that it is not enough, but
I purposely fix the expenditure of time at a low figure because I want
it to be always practicable consistently with all the duties and
necessary pleasures of your life. If I told you to read four hours every
day, I know beforehand what would be the consequence. You would keep the
rule for three days, by an effort, then some engagement would occur to
break it, and you would have no rule at all. And please observe that the
two hours are to be given quite regularly, because, when the time given
is not much, regularity is quite essential. Two hours a day, regularly,
make more than seven hundred hours in a year, and in seven hundred
hours, wisely and uninterruptedly occupied, much may be done in
anything.
Permit me to insist upon that word _uninterruptedly_. Few people realize
the full evil of an interruption, few people know all that is implied
by it. After warning nurses against the evils of interruption, Florence
Nightingale says:--
"These things are not fancy. If we consider that, with sick as with
well, every thought decomposes some nervous matter--that decomposition
as well as re-composition of nervous matter is always going on, and more
quickly with the sick than with the well,--that to obtrude another
thought upon the brain whilst it is in the act of destroying nervous
matter by thinking, is calling upon it to make a new exertion--if we
consider these things, which are facts, not fancies, we shall remember
that we are doing positive injury by interrupting, by startling a
'fanciful' person, as it is called. Alas, it is no fancy.
"If the invalid is forced by his avocations to continue occupations
requiring much thinking, the injury is doubly great. In feeding a
patient suffering under delirium or stupor you may suffocate him by
giving him his food suddenly, but if you rub his lips gently with a
spoon and thus attract his attention, he will swallow the food
unconsciously, but with perfect safety. Thus it is with the brain. If
you offer it a thought, especially one requiring a decision, abruptly,
you do it a real, not fanciful, injury. Never speak to a sick person
suddenly; but, at the same time, do not keep his expectation on the
tiptoe."
To this you will already have answered, mentally, that you are not a
patient suffering under either delirium or stupor, and that nobody
needs to rub your lips gently with a spoon. But Miss Nightingale does
not consider interruption baneful to sick persons only.
"This rule indeed," she continues, "applies to the well quite as much as
to the sick. _I have never known persons who exposed themselves for
years to constant interruption who did not muddle away their intellects
by it at last._ The process, with them, may be accomplished without
pain. With the sick, pain gives warning of the injury."
Interruption is an evil to the reader which must be estimated very
differently from ordinary business interruptions. The great question
about interruption is not whether it compels you to divert your
attention to other facts, but whether it compels you to tune your whole
mind to another diapason. Shopkeepers are incessantly compelled to
change the subject; a stationer is asked for notepaper one minute, for
sealing-wax the next, and immediately afterwards for a particular sort
of steel pen. The subjects of his thoughts are changed very rapidly, but
the general state of his mind is not changed; he is always strictly in
his shop, as much mentally as physically. When an attorney is
interrupted in the study of a case by the arrival of a client who asks
him questions about another case, the change is more difficult to bear;
yet even here the general state of mind, the legal state of mind, is not
interfered with. But now suppose a reader perfectly absorbed in his
author, an author belonging very likely to another age and another
civilization entirely different from ours. Suppose that you are reading
the Defence of Socrates in Plato, and have the whole scene before you as
in a picture: the tribunal of the Five Hundred, the pure Greek
architecture, the interested Athenian public, the odious Melitus, the
envious enemies, the beloved and grieving friends whose names are dear
to us, and immortal; and in the centre you see one figure draped like a
poor man, in cheap and common cloth, that he wears winter and summer,
with a face plain to downright ugliness, but an air of such genuine
courage and self-possession that no acting could imitate it; and you
hear the firm voice saying--
[Greek: Timatai d' oun moi hanêr thanatou
Eien.][3]
You are just beginning the splendid paragraph where Socrates condemns
himself to maintenance in the Prytaneum, and if you can only be safe
from interruption till it is finished, you will have one of those
minutes of noble pleasure which are the rewards of intellectual toil.
But if you are reading in the daytime in a house where there are women
and children, or where people can fasten upon you for pottering details
of business, you may be sure that you will _not_ be able to get to the
end of the passage without in some way or other being rudely awakened
from your dream, and suddenly brought back into the common world. The
loss intellectually is greater than any one who had not suffered from it
could imagine. People think that an interruption is merely the unhooking
of an electric chain, and that the current will flow, when the chain is
hooked on again, just as it did before. To the intellectual and
imaginative student an interruption is not that; it is the destruction
of a picture.
LETTER IV.
TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.
People who like to be hurried--Sluggish temperaments gain vivacity
under pressure--Routine work may be done at increased speed--The
higher intellectual work cannot be done hurriedly--The art of avoiding
hurry consists in Selection--How it was practised by a good landscape
painter--Selection in reading and writing--Some studies allow the play
of selection more than others do--Languages permit it less than
natural sciences--Difficulty of using selection in the fulfilment of
literary engagements.
So you have got yourself into that pleasant condition which is about as
agreeable, and as favorable to fruitful study and observation, as the
condition of an over-driven cab-horse!
Very indolent men, who will not work at all unless under the pressure of
immediate urgency, sometimes tell us that they actually like to be
hurried; but although certain kinds of practical work which have become
perfectly easy from habit may be got through at a great pace when the
workman feels that there is an immediate necessity for effort, it is
certainly not true that hurry is favorable to sound study of any kind.
Work which merely runs in a fixed groove may be urged on occasionally at
express speed without any perceptible injury to the quality of it. A
clever violinist can play a passage _prestissimo_ as correctly as if he
played it _adagio_; a banker's clerk can count money very rapidly with
positively less risk of error than if he counted it as you and I do. A
person of sluggish temperament really gains in vivacity when he is
pressed for time, and becomes during those moments of excited energy a
clearer-headed and more able person than he is under ordinary
circumstances. It is therefore not surprising that he should find
himself able to accomplish more under the great stimulus of an immediate
necessity than he is able to do in the dulness of his every-day
existence. Great prodigies of labor have been performed in this way to
avert impending calamity, especially by military officers in critical
times like those of the Sepoy rebellion; and in the obscurer lives of
tradesmen, immense exertions are often made to avert the danger of
bankruptcy, when without the excitement of a serious anxiety of that
kind the tradesman would not feel capable of more than a moderate and
reasonable degree of attention to his affairs. But notwithstanding the
many instances of this kind which might be cited, and the many more
which might easily be collected, the truth remains that the highest
kinds of intellectual labor can hardly ever be properly performed when
the degree of pressure is in the least excessive. You may, for example,
if you have the kind of ability which makes a good journalist, write an
effective leader with your watch lying on the table, and finish it
exactly when the time is up; but if you had the kind of ability which
makes a good poet, you could not write anything like highly-finished
poetry against time. It is equally clear that scientific discovery,
which, though it may flash suddenly upon the mind of the discoverer, is
always the result of long brooding over the most patient observations,
must come at its own moments, and cannot be commanded. The activity of
poets and discoverers would be paralyzed by exigencies which stimulate
the activity of soldiers and men of business. The truth is, that
intelligence and energy are beneficially stimulated by pressure from
without, whereas the working of the higher intellect is impeded by it,
and that to such a degree that in times of the greatest pressure the
high intellectual life is altogether suspended, to leave free play to
the lower but more immediately serviceable intelligence.
This being so, it becomes a necessary part of the art of intellectual
living so to order our work as to shield ourselves if possible, at least
during a certain portion of our time, from the evil consequences of
hurry. The whole secret lies in a single word--Selection.
An excellent landscape painter told me that whatever he had to do, he
always took the greatest pains to arrange his work so as never to have
his tranquillity disturbed by haste. His system, which is quite
applicable to many other things than landscape painting, was based on
the principle of selection. He always took care to determine beforehand
how much time he could devote to each sketch or study, and then, from
the mass of natural facts before him, selected the most valuable facts
which could be recorded in the time at his disposal. But however short
that time might be, he was always perfectly cool and deliberate in the
employment of it. Indeed this coolness and his skill in selection helped
each other mutually, for he chose wisely because he was cool, and he had
time to be cool by reason of the wisdom of his selection. In his little
memoranda, done in five minutes, the lines were laid just as
deliberately as the tints on an elaborate picture; the difference being
in choice only, not in speed.
Now if we apply this art of selection to all our labors it will give us
much of that landscape painter's enviable coolness, and enable us to
work more satisfactorily. Suppose that instead of painting and sketching
we have to do a great deal of reading and writing: the art is to select
the reading which will be most useful to our purpose, and, in writing,
to select the words which will express our meaning with the greatest
clearness in a little space. The art of reading is to skip judiciously.
Whole libraries may be skipped in these days, when we have the results
of them in our modern culture without going over the ground again. And
even of the books we decide to read, there are almost always large
portions which do not concern us, and which we are sure to forget the
day after we have read them. The art is to skip all that does not
concern us, whilst missing nothing that we really need. No external
guidance can teach us this; for nobody but ourselves can guess what the
needs of our intellect may be. But let us select with decisive firmness,
independently of other people's advice, independently of the authority
of custom. In every newspaper that comes to hand there is a little bit
that we ought to read; the art is to find that little bit, and waste no
time over the rest.
Some studies permit the exercise of selection better than others do. A
language, once undertaken, permits very little selection indeed, since
you must know the whole vocabulary, or nearly so, to be able to read and
speak. On the other hand, the natural sciences permit the most prudent
exercise of selection. For example, in botany you may study as few
plants as you choose.
In writing, the art of selection consists in giving the utmost effect to
expression in the fewest words; but of this art I say little, for who
can contend against an inevitable trade-necessity? Almost every author
of ordinary skill could, when pressed for time, find a briefer
expression for his thoughts, but the real difficulty in fulfilling
literary engagements does not lie in the expression of the thought, it
lies in the sufficiently rapid production of a certain quantity of copy.
For this purpose I fear that selection would be of very little use--of
no more use, in fact, than in any other branch of manufacture where (if
a certain standard is kept up to) quantity in sale is more important
than quality of material.
LETTER V.
TO A FRIEND WHO, THOUGH HE HAD NO PROFESSION, COULD NOT FIND TIME FOR
HIS VARIOUS INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS.
Compensations resulting from the necessity for time--Opportunity only
exists for us so far as we have time to make use of it--This _or_
that, not this _and_ that--Danger of apparently unlimited
opportunities--The intellectual training of our ancestors--Montaigne
the Essayist--Reliance upon the compensations.
It has always seemed to me that the great and beautiful principle of
compensation is more clearly seen in the distribution and effects of
time than in anything else within the scope of our experience. The good
use of one opportunity very frequently compensates us for the absence of
another, and it does so because opportunity is itself so dependent upon
time that, although the best opportunities may apparently be presented
to us, we can make no use of them unless we are able to give them the
time that they require. You, who have the best possible opportunities
for culture, find a certain sadness and disappointment because you
cannot avail yourself of all of them; but the truth is, that opportunity
only exists for us just so far as we are able to make use of it, and our
power to do so is often nothing but a question of time. If our days are
well employed we are sure to have done some good thing which we should
have been compelled to neglect if we had been occupied about anything
else. Hence every genuine worker has rich compensations which ought to
console him amply for his shortcomings, and to enable him to meet
comparisons without fear.
Those who aspire to the intellectual life, but have no experience of its
difficulties, very frequently envy men so favorably situated as you are.
It seems to them that all the world's knowledge is accessible to you,
and that you have simply to cull its fruits as we gather grapes in a
vineyard. They forget the power of Time, and the restrictions which Time
imposes. "This _or_ that, not this _and_ that," is the rule to which all
of us have to submit, and it strangely equalizes the destinies of men.
The time given to the study of one thing is withdrawn from the study of
another, and the hours of the day are limited alike for all of us. How
difficult it is to reconcile the interests of our different pursuits!
Indeed it seems like a sort of polygamy to _have_ different pursuits.
It is natural to think of them as jealous wives tormenting some Mormon
prophet.
There is great danger in apparently unlimited opportunities, and a
splendid compensation for those who are confined by circumstances to a
narrow but fruitful field. The Englishman gets more civilization out of
a farm and a garden than the Red Indian out of the space encircled by
his horizon. Our culture gains in thoroughness what it loses in extent.
This consideration goes far to explain the fact that although our
ancestors were so much less favorably situated than we are, they often
got as good an intellectual training from the literature that was
accessible to them, as we from our vaster stores. We live in an age of
essayists, and yet what modern essayist writes better than old
Montaigne? All that a thoughtful and witty writer needs for the
sharpening of his intellect, Montaigne found in the ancient literature
that was accessible to him, and in the life of the age he lived in. Born
in our own century, he would have learned many other things, no doubt,
and read many other books, but these would have absorbed the hours that
he employed not less fruitfully with the authors that he loved in the
little library up in the third story of his tower, as he tells us, where
he could see all his books at once, set upon five rows of shelves round
about him. In earlier life he bought "this sort of furniture" for
"ornament and outward show," but afterwards quite abandoned that, and
procured such volumes only "as supplied his own need."
To supply our own need, within the narrow limits of the few and
transient hours that we can call our own, is enough for the wise
everywhere, as it was for Montaigne in his tower. Let us resolve to do
as much as that, not more, and then rely upon the golden compensations.
NOTE.--"Supposing that the executive and critical powers always exist
in some correspondent degree in the same person, still they cannot be
cultivated to the same extent. The attention required for the
development of a theory is necessarily withdrawn from the design of a
drawing, and the time devoted to the realization of a form is lost to
the solution of a problem."--MR. RUSKIN, _in the preface to the third
volume of_ "_Modern Painters_."
In the case of Mr. Ruskin, in that of Mr. Dante Rossetti, and in all
cases where the literary and artistic gifts are naturally pretty
evenly balanced, the preponderance of an hour a day given to one or
the other class of studies may have settled the question whether the
student was to be chiefly artist or chiefly author. The enormous
importance of the distribution of time is never more clearly
manifested than in cases of this kind. Mr. Ruskin might certainly have
attained rank as a painter, Rossetti might have been as prolific in
poetry as he is excellent. What these gifted men are now is not so
much a question of talent as of time. In like manner the question
whether Ingres was to be known as a painter or as a violinist was
settled by the employment of hours rather than by any preponderance of
faculty.
FOOTNOTES:
[2] "Being astonished at the prodigious variety and at the extent of
knowledge possessed by the Germans, I begged one of my friends, Saxon
by birth, and one of the foremost geologists in Europe, to tell me
how his countrymen managed to know so many things. Here is his
answer, nearly in his own words:--'A German (except myself, who am
the idlest of men) gets up early, summer and winter, at about five
o'clock. He works four hours before breakfast, sometimes smoking all
the time, which does not interfere with his application. His
breakfast lasts half an hour, and he remains, afterwards, another
half-hour talking with his wife and playing with his children. He
returns to his work for six hours, dines without hurrying himself,
smokes an hour after dinner, playing again with his children, and
before he goes to bed he works four hours more. He begins again every
day, and never goes out. This is how it comes to pass that Oersted,
the greatest natural philosopher in Germany, is at the same time the
greatest physician; this is how Kant the metaphysician was one of the
most learned astronomers in Europe, and how Goethe, who is at present
the first and most fertile author in Germany in almost all kinds of
literature, is an excellent botanist, mineralogist, and natural
philosopher.'"
[3] The man, then, judges me worthy of death. Be it so.
PART V.
_THE INFLUENCES OF MONEY._
LETTER I.
TO A VERY RICH STUDENT.
The author of "Vathek"--The double temptation of wealth--Rich men
tempted to follow occupations in which their wealth is
useful--Pressure of social duties on the rich--The Duchess of
Orleans--The rich man's time not his own--The rich may help the
general intellectual advancement by the exercise of patronage--Dr.
Carpenter--Franz Woepke.
It has always seemed to me a very remarkable and noteworthy circumstance
that although Mr. Beckford, the author of "Vathek," produced in his
youth a story which bears all the signs of true inventive genius, he
never produced anything in after-life which posterity cares to preserve.
I read "Vathek" again quite recently, to see how far my early enthusiasm
for it might have been due to that passion for orientalism which reigned
amongst us many years ago, but this fresh perusal left an impression
which only genius leaves. Beckford really had invention, and an
extraordinary narrative power. That such faculties, after having once
revealed themselves, should contentedly have remained dormant ever
afterwards, is one of the most curious facts in the history of the
human mind, and it is the more curious that Beckford lived to a very
advanced age.
Beckford's case appears to have been one of those in which great wealth
diminishes or wholly paralyzes the highest energy of the intellect,
leaving the lower energies free to exert less noble kinds of activity. A
refined self-indulgence became the habit of his life, and he developed
simply into a dilettant. Even his love for the fine arts did not rise
above the indulgence of an elegant and cultivated taste. Although he
lived at the very time most favorable to the appearance of a great
critic in architecture and painting, the time of a great architectural
revival and of the growth of a vigorous and independent school of
contemporary art, he exercised no influence beyond that of a wealthy
virtuoso. His love of the beautiful began and ended in simple personal
gratification; it led to no noble labor, to no elevating severity of
discipline. Englishman though he was, he filled his Oriental tower with
masterpieces from Italy and Holland, only to add form and color to the
luxuries of his reverie, behind his gilded lattices.
And when he raised that other tower at Fonthill, and the slaves of the
lamp toiled at it by torchlight to gratify his Oriental impatience, he
exercised no influence upon the confusion of his epoch more durable than
that hundred yards of masonry which sank into a shapeless heap whilst as
yet Azrael spared its author. He to whom Nature and Fortune had been so
prodigal of their gifts, he whom Reynolds painted and Mozart instructed,
who knew the poets of seven literatures, culling their jewels like
flowers in seven enchanted gardens--he to whom the palaces of knowledge
all opened their golden gates even in his earliest youth, to whom were
also given riches and length of days, for whom a thousand craftsmen
toiled in Europe and a thousand slaves beyond the sea,[4]--what has this
gifted mortal left as the testimony of his power, as the trace of his
fourscore years upon the earth? Only the reminiscence of a vague
splendor, like the fast-fading recollection of a cloud that burned at
sunset, and one small gem of intellectual creation that lives like a
tiny star.
If wealth had only pleasure to offer as a temptation from intellectual
labor, its influence would be easier to resist. Men of the English race
are often grandly strong in resistance to every form of voluptuousness;
the race is fond of comfort and convenience, but it does not sacrifice
its energy to enervating self-indulgence. There is, however, another
order of temptations in great wealth, to which Englishmen not only
yield, but yield with a satisfied conscience, even with a sense of
obedience to duty. Wealth carries pleasure in her left hand, but in her
right she bears honor and power. The rich man feels that he can do so
much by the mere exercise of his command over the labor of others, and
so little by any unaided labor of his own, that he is always strongly
tempted to become, not only physically but intellectually, a director of
work rather that a workman. Even his modesty, when he is modest, tends
to foster his reliance on others rather than himself. All that he tries
to do is done so much better by those who make it their profession, that
he is always tempted to fall back upon his paying power as his most
satisfactory and effective force. There are cases in which this
temptation is gloriously overcome, where men of great wealth compel
every one to acknowledge that their money is nothing more than a help to
their higher life, like the charger that bore Wellington at Waterloo,
serving him indeed usefully, but not detracting from the honor which is
his due. But in these cases the life is usually active or administrative
rather than intellectual. The rich man does not generally feel tempted
to enter upon careers in which his command over labor is not an evident
advantage, and this because men naturally seek those fields in which
_all_ their superiorities tell. Even the well known instance of Lord
Rosse can scarcely be considered an exception to this rule, for although
he was eminent in a science which has been followed by poor men with
great distinction, his wealth was of use in the construction of his
colossal telescope, which gave him a clear advantage over merely
professional contemporaries.
Besides this natural desire to pursue careers in which their money may
lessen the number of competitors, the rich are often diverted from
purely intellectual pursuits by the social duties of their station,
duties which it is impossible to avoid and difficult to keep within
limits. The Duchess of Orleans (mother of the present Count of Paris)
arranged her time with the greatest care so as to reserve a little of it
for her own culture in uninterrupted solitude. By an exact system, and
the exercise of the rarest firmness, she contrived to steal half an hour
here and an hour there--enough no doubt, when employed as she employed
them, to maintain her character as a very distinguished lady, yet still
far from sufficient for the satisfactory pursuit of any great art or
science. If it be difficult for the rich man to enter into the kingdom
of heaven, it is also difficult for him to secure that freedom from
interruption which is necessary to fit him for his entrance into the
Intellectual Kingdom. He can scarcely allow himself to be absorbed in
any great study, when he reflects on all the powerful means of social
influence which he is suffering to lie idle. He is sure to possess by
inheritance, or to have acquired in obedience to custom, a complicated
and expensive machinery for the pleasures and purposes of society. There
is game to be shot; there are hunters to be exercised; great houses to
be filled with guests. So much is expected of the rich man, both in
business and in pleasure, that his time is not his own, and he could not
quit his station if he would. And yet the Intellectual Life, in its
fruitful perfection, requires, I do not say the complete abandonment of
the world, but it assuredly requires free and frequent spaces of labor
in tranquil solitude, "retreats" like those commanded by the Church of
Rome, but with more of study and less of contemplation.
It would be useless to ask you to abdicate your power, and retreat into
some hermitage with a library and a laboratory, without a thought of
returning to your pleasant hall in Yorkshire and your house in Mayfair.
You will not sell all and follow the Light, but there is a life which
you may powerfully encourage, yet only partially share. Notwithstanding
the increased facilities for earning a living which this age offers to
the intellectual, the time that they are often compelled to give to the
satisfaction of common material necessities is so much time withdrawn
from the work which they alone can do. It is a lamentable waste of the
highest and rarest kind of energy to compel minds that are capable of
original investigation, of discovery, to occupy themselves in that mere
vulgarization of knowledge, in popular lecturing and literature, which
could be done just as efficiently by minds of a common order. It is an
error of the present age to believe that the time for what is called
patronage is altogether passed away. Let me mention two instances to
the contrary: one in which kindly help would have saved fifteen years of
a noble life; another in which that kindly help did actually permit a
man of exceptional endowment and equally exceptional industry to pursue
investigations for which no other human being was so well qualified, and
which were entirely incompatible with the earning of the daily bread.
Dr. Carpenter has lately told us that, finding it impossible to unite
the work of a general practitioner with the scientific researches upon
which his heart was set, he gave up nine-tenths of his time for twenty
years to popular lecturing and writing, in order that he might exist and
devote the other tenth to science. "Just as he was breaking down from
the excessive strain upon mind and body which this life involved, an
appointment was offered to Dr. Carpenter which gave him competence and
sufficient leisure for the investigations which he has conducted to such
important issues." Suppose that during those twenty years of struggle he
_had_ broken down like many another only a little less robust--what
then? A mind lost to his country and the world. And would it not have
been happier for him and for us if some of those men (of whom there are
more in England than in any other land), who are so wealthy that their
gold is positively a burden and an encumbrance, like too many coats in
summer, had helped Dr. Carpenter at least a few years earlier, in some
form that a man of high feeling might honorably accept? The other
example that I shall mention is that of Franz Woepke, the
mathematician and orientalist. A modest pension, supplied by an Italian
prince who was interested in the history of mathematics, gave Woepke
that peace which is incompatible with poverty, and enabled him to live
grandly in his narrow lodging the noble intellectual life. Was not this
rightly and well done, and probably a much more effectual employment of
the power of gold than if that Italian prince had added some rare
manuscripts to his own library without having time or knowledge to
decipher them? I cannot but think that the rich may serve the cause of
culture best by a judicious exercise of patronage--unless, indeed, they
have within themselves the sense of that irresistible vocation which
made Humboldt use his fortune as the servant of his high ambition. The
Humboldts never are too rich; they possess their gold and are not
possessed by it, and they are exempt from the duty of aiding others
because they themselves have a use for all their powers.
LETTER II
TO A GENIUS CARELESS IN MONEY MATTERS.
Danger of carelessness--Inconveniences of poverty unfavorable to the
Intellectual Life--Necessity advances men in industrial occupations,
but disturbs and interrupts the higher intellectual life--Instances in
science, literature, and art--Careers aided by wealth--Mr. Ruskin--De
Saussure--Work spoiled by poverty in the doing--The central passion of
men of ability is to do their work well--The want of money the most
common hindrance to excellence of work--De Sénancour--Bossuet--
Sainte-Beuve--Shelley-- Wordsworth--Scott--Kepler--Tycho
Brahe--Schiller--Goethe--Case of an eminent English philosopher, and of
a French writer of school-primers--Loss of time in making experiments
on public taste--_Surtout ne pas trop écrire_--Auguste Comte--The
reaction of the intellectual against money-making--Money the protector
of the intellectual life.
I have been anxious for you lately, and venture to write to you about
the reasons for this anxiety.
You are neither extravagant nor self-indulgent, yet it seems to me that
your entire absorption in the higher intellectual pursuits has produced
in you, as it frequently does, a carelessness about material interests
of all kinds which is by far the most dangerous of all tempers to the
pecuniary well-being of a man. Sydney Smith declared that no fortune
could stand that temper long, and that we are on the high road to ruin
the moment we think ourselves rich enough to be careless.
Let me observe, to begin with, that although the pursuit of wealth is
not favorable to the intellectual life, the inconveniences of poverty
are even less favorable to it. We are sometimes lectured on the great
benefits of necessity as a stimulant to exertion, and it is implied that
comfortable people would go much farther on the road to distinction if
they were made uncomfortable by having to think perpetually about money.
Those who say this confound together the industry of the industrial and
professional classes, and the labors of the more purely intellectual. It
is clear that when the labor a man does is of such a nature that he will
be paid for it in strict proportion to the time and effort he bestows,
the need of money will be a direct stimulus to the best exertion he may
be capable of. In all simple industrial occupations the need of money
_does_ drive a man forwards, and is often, when he feels it in early
life, the very origin and foundation of his fortune. There exists, in
such occupations, a perfect harmony between the present necessity and
the ultimate purpose of the life. Wealth is the object of industry, and
the first steps towards the possession of it are steps on the chosen
path. The future captain of industry, who will employ thousands of
workpeople and accumulate millions of money, is going straight to his
splendid future when he gets up at five in the morning to work in
another person's factory. To learn to be a builder of steam-vessels, it
is necessary, even when you begin with capital, to pass through the
manual trades, and you will only learn them the better if the wages are
necessary to your existence. Poverty in these cases only makes an
intelligent man ground himself all the better in that stern practical
training which is the basis of his future career. Well, therefore, may
those who have reached distinguished success in fields of practical
activity extol the teachings of adversity. If it is a necessary part of
your education that you should hammer rivets inside a steam-boiler, it
is as well that your early habits should not be over-dainty. So it is
observed that horny hands, in the colonies, get gold into them sooner
than white ones.
Even in the liberal professions young men get on all the better for not
being too comfortably off. If you have a comfortable private income to
begin with, the meagre early rewards of professional life will seem too
paltry to be worth hard striving, and so you will very likely miss the
more ample rewards of maturity, since the common road to success is
nothing but a gradual increase. And you miss education at the same time,
for practice is the best of professional educators, and many successful
lawyers and artists have had scarcely any other training. The daily
habit of affairs trains men for the active business of the world, and if
the purpose of their lives is merely to do what they are doing or to
command others to do the same things, the more closely circumstances tie
them down to their work, the better.
But in the higher intellectual pursuits the necessity for immediate
earning has an entirely different result. It comes, not as an educator,
but as an interruption or suspension of education. All intellectual
lives, however much they may differ in the variety of their purposes,
have at least this purpose in common, that they are mainly devoted to
self-education of one kind or another. An intellectual man who is forty
years old is as much at school as an Etonian of fourteen, and if you set
him to earn more money than that which comes to him without especial
care about it, you interrupt his schooling, exactly as selfish parents
used to do when they sent their young children to the factory and
prevented them from learning to read. The idea of the intellectual life
is an existence passed almost entirely in study, yet preserving the
results of its investigations. A day's writing will usually suffice to
record the outcome of a month's research.
Necessity, instead of advancing your studies, stops them. Whenever her
harsh voice speaks it becomes your duty to shut your books, put aside
your instruments, and do something that will fetch a price in the
market. The man of science has to abandon the pursuit of a discovery to
go and deliver a popular lecture a hundred miles off, for which he gets
five pounds and his railway fare. The student of ancient literature has
to read some feeble novel, and give three days of a valuable life to
write an anonymous review which will bring him two pounds ten. The
artist has to leave his serious picture to manufacture "pot-boilers,"
which will teach him nothing, but only spoil his hands and vitiate the
public taste. The poet suspends his poem (which is promised to a
publisher for Christmas, and will be spoiled in consequence by hurry at
the last) in order to write newspaper articles on subjects of which he
has little knowledge and in which he takes no interest. And yet these
are instances of those comparatively happy and fortunate needy who are
only compelled to suspend their intellectual life, and who can cheer
themselves in their enforced labor with the hope of shortly renewing it.
What of those others who are pushed out of their path forever by the
buffets of unkindly fortune? Many a fine intellect has been driven into
the deep quagmire, and has struggled in it vainly till death came, which
but for that grim necessity might have scaled the immortal mountains.
This metaphor of the mountains has led me, by a natural association of
ideas, to think of a writer who has added to our enjoyment of their
beauty, and I think of him the more readily that his career will serve
as an illustration--far better than any imaginary career--of the very
subject which just now occupies my mind. Mr. Ruskin is not only one of
the best instances, but he is positively the very best instance except
the two Humboldts, of an intellectual career which has been greatly
aided by material prosperity, and which would not have been possible
without it. This does not in the least detract from the merit of the
author of "Modern Painters," for it needed a rare force of resolution,
or a powerful instinct of genius, to lead the life of a severe student
under every temptation to indolence. Still it is true that Mr. Ruskin's
career would have been impossible for a poor man, however gifted. A poor
man would not have had access to Mr. Ruskin's materials, and one of his
chief superiorities has always been an abundant wealth of material. And
if we go so far as to suppose that the poor man might have found other
materials perhaps equivalent to these, we know that he could not have
turned them to that noble use. The poor critic would be immediately
absorbed in the ocean of anonymous periodical literature; he could not
find time for the incubation of great works. "Modern Painters," the
result of seventeen years of study, is not simply a work of genius but
of genius seconded by wealth. Close to it on my shelves stand four
volumes which are the monument of another intellectual life devoted to
the investigation of nature. De Saussure, whom Mr. Ruskin reverences as
one of his ablest teachers, and whom all sincere students of nature
regard as a model observer, pursued for many laborious years a kind of
life which was not, and could not be, self-supporting in the pecuniary
sense. Many other patient laborers, who have not the celebrity of these,
work steadily in the same way, and are enabled to do so by the
possession of independent fortune. I know one such who gives a whole
summer to the examination of three or four acres of mountain-ground,
the tangible result being comprised in a few memoranda, which,
considered as literary material, might (in the hands of a skilled
professional writer) just possibly be worth five pounds.
Not only do narrow pecuniary means often render high intellectual
enterprises absolutely impossible, but they do what is frequently even
more trying to the health and character, they permit you to undertake
work that would be worthy of you if you might only have time and
materials for the execution of it, and then spoil it in the doing. An
intellectual laborer will bear anything except that. You may take away
the very table he is writing upon, if you let him have a deal board for
his books and papers; you may take away all his fine editions, if you
leave him common copies that are legible; you may remove his very
candlestick, if you leave him a bottle-neck to stick his candle in, and
he will go on working cheerfully still. But the moment you do anything
to spoil the quality of the work itself, you make him irritable and
miserable. "You think," says Sir Arthur Helps, "to gain a good man to
manage your affairs because he happens to have a small share in your
undertaking. It is a great error. You want him to do something well
which you are going to tell him to do. If he has been wisely chosen, and
is an able man, his pecuniary interest in the matter will be mere dust
in the balance, when compared with the desire which belongs to all such
men to do their work well." Yes, this is the central passion of all men
of true ability, _to do their work well_; their happiness lies in that,
and not in the amount of their profits, or even in their reputation. But
then, on the other hand, they suffer indescribable mental misery when
circumstances compel them to do their work less well than they know
that, under more favorable circumstances, they would be capable of doing
it. The want of money is, in the higher intellectual pursuits, the most
common hindrance to thoroughness and excellence of work. De Sénancour,
who, in consequence of a strange concatenation of misfortunes, was all
his life struggling in shallows, suffered not from the privations
themselves, but from the vague feeling that they stunted his
intellectual growth; and any experienced student of human nature must be
aware that De Sénancour was right. With larger means he would have seen
more of the world, and known it better, and written of it with riper
wisdom. He said that the man "who only saw in poverty the direct effect
of the money-privation, and only compared, for instance, an eight-penny
dinner to one that cost ten shillings, would have no conception of the
true nature of misfortune, for not to spend money is the least of the
evils of poverty." Bossuet said that he "had no attachment to riches,
and still if he had only what is barely necessary, if he felt himself
narrowed, he would lose more than half his talents." Sainte-Beuve said,
"Only think a little what a difference there is in the starting point
and in the employment of the faculties between a Duc de Luynes and a
Sénancour." How many of the most distinguished authors have been
dependent upon private means, not simply for physical sustenance, but
for the opportunities which they afforded of gaining that experience of
life which was absolutely essential to the full growth of their mental
faculties. Shelley's writings brought him no profit whatever, and
without a private income he could not have produced them, for he had not
a hundred buyers. Yet his _whole time_ was employed in study or in
travel, which for him was study of another kind, or else in the actual
labor of composition. Wordsworth tried to become a London journalist and
failed. A young man called Raisley Calvert died and left him 900_l._;
this saved the poet in Wordsworth, as it kept him till the publication
of the "Lyrical Ballads," and afterwards other pieces of good luck
happened to him, so that he could think and compose at leisure. Scott
would not venture to devote himself to literature until he had first
secured a comfortable income outside of it. Poor Kepler struggled with
constant anxieties, and told fortunes by astrology for a livelihood,
saying that astrology as the daughter of astronomy ought to keep her
mother; but fancy a man of science wasting precious time over
horoscopes! "I supplicate you," he writes to Moestlin, "if there is a
situation vacant at Tübingen, do what you can to obtain it for me, and
let me know the prices of bread and wine and other necessaries of life,
for my wife is not accustomed to live on beans." He had to accept all
sorts of jobs; he made almanacs, and served any one who would pay him.
His only tranquil time for study was when he lived in Styria, on his
wife's income, a tranquillity that did not last for long, and never
returned. How different is this from the princely ease of Tycho Brahe,
who labored for science alone, with all the help that the ingenuity of
his age could furnish! There is the same contrast, in a later
generation, between Schiller and Goethe. Poor Schiller "wasting so much
of his precious life in literary hack-work, translating French books for
a miserable pittance;" Goethe, fortunate in his pecuniary independence
as in all the other great circumstances of his life, and this at a time
when the pay of authors was so miserable that they could hardly exist by
the pen. Schiller got a shilling a page for his translations. Merck the
publisher offered three pounds sterling for a drama of Goethe. "If
Europe praised me," Goethe said, "what has Europe done for me? Nothing.
_Even my works have been an expense to me._"
The pecuniary rewards which men receive for their labor are so absurdly
(yet inevitably) disproportionate to the intellectual power that is
needed for the task, and also to the toil involved, that no one can
safely rely upon the higher intellectual pursuits as a protection from
money-anxieties. I will give you two instances of this disproportion,
real instances, of men who are known to me personally. One of them is an
eminent Englishman of most remarkable intellectual force, who for many
years past has occupied his leisure in the composition of works that are
valued by the thinking public to a degree which it would be difficult to
exaggerate. But this thinking public is not numerous, and so in the year
1866 this eminent philosopher, "unable to continue losing money in
endeavoring to enlighten his contemporaries, was compelled to announce
the termination of his series." On the other hand, a Frenchman, also
known to me personally, one day conceived the fortunate idea that a new
primer might possibly be a saleable commodity. So he composed a little
primer, beginning with the alphabet, advancing to a, b, _ab_; b, a,
_ba_; and even going so far in history as to affirm that Adam was the
first man and Abraham the father of the faithful. He had the wisdom to
keep the copyright of this little publication, which employed (in the
easiest of all imaginable literary labor) the evenings of a single week.
It has brought him in, ever since, a regular income of 120_l._ a year,
which, so far from showing any signs of diminution, is positively
improving. This success encouraged the same intelligent gentleman to
compose more literature of the same order, and he is now the enviable
owner of several other such copyrights, all of them very valuable; in
fact as good properties as house-leases in London. Here is an author
who, from the pecuniary point of view, was incomparably more successful
than Milton, or Shelley, or Goethe. If every intellectual man could
shield his higher life by writing primers for children which should be
as good as house-leases, if the proverb _Qui peut le plus peut le moins_
were a true proverb, which it is not, then of course all men of culture
would be perfectly safe, since they all certainly know the contents of a
primer. But you may be able to write the most learned philosophical
treatise and still not be able to earn your daily bread.
Consider, too, the lamentable loss of time which people of high culture
incur in making experiments on public taste, when money becomes one of
their main objects. Whilst they are writing stories for children, or
elementary educational books which people of far inferior attainment
could probably do much better, their own self-improvement comes to a
standstill. If it could only be ascertained without delay what sort of
work would bring in the money they require, then there would be some
chance of apportioning time so as to make reserves for self-improvement;
but when they have to write a score of volumes merely to ascertain the
humor of the public, there is little chance of leisure. The life of the
professional author who has no reputation is much less favorable to high
culture than the life of a tradesman in moderately easy circumstances
who can reserve an hour or two every day for some beloved intellectual
pursuit.
Sainte-Beuve tells us that during certain years of his life he had
endeavored, and had been able, so to arrange his existence that it
should have both sweetness and dignity, writing from time to time what
was agreeable, reading what was both agreeable and serious, cultivating
friendships, throwing much of his mind into the intimate relations of
every day, giving more to his friends than to the public, reserving what
was most tender and delicate for the inner life, enjoying with
moderation; such for him was the dream of an intellectual existence in
which things truly precious were valued according to their worth. And
"_above all_," he said, above all his desire was not to write too much,
"_surtout ne pas trop écrire_." And then comes the regret for this wise,
well-ordered life enjoyed by him only for a time. "La nécessité depuis
m'a saisi et m'a contraint de renoncer à ce que je considérais comme le
seul bonheur ou la consolation exquise du mélancolique et du sage."
Auguste Comte lamented in like manner the evil intellectual consequences
of anxieties about material needs. "There is nothing," he said, "more
mortal to my mind than the necessity, pushed to a certain degree, to
have to think each day about a provision for the next. Happily I think
little and rarely about all that; but whenever this happens to me I pass
through moments of discouragement and positive despair, which if the
influence of them became habitual _would make me renounce all my
labors, all my philosophical projects, to end my days like an ass_."
There are a hundred rules for getting rich, but the instinct of
accumulation is worth all such rules put together. This instinct is
rarely found in combination with high intellectual gifts, and the reason
is evident. To advance from a hundred pounds to a thousand is not an
intellectual advance, and there is no intellectual interest in the
addition of a cipher at the bankers'. Simply to accumulate money that
you are never to use is, from the intellectual point of view, as stupid
an operation as can be imagined. We observe, too, that the great
accumulators, the men who are gifted by nature with the true instinct,
are not usually such persons as we feel any ambition to become. Their
faculties are concentrated on one point, and that point, as it seems to
us, of infinitely little importance. We cannot see that it signifies
much to the intellectual well-being of humanity that John Smith should
be worth his million when he dies, since we know quite well that John
Smith's mind will be just as ill-furnished then as it is now. In places
where much money is made we easily acquire a positive disgust for it,
and the curate seems the most distinguished gentleman in the community,
with his old black coat and his seventy pounds a year. We come to hate
money-matters when we find that they exclude all thoughtful and
disinterested conversation, and we fly to the society of people with
fixed incomes, not large enough for much saving, to escape the perpetual
talk about investments. Our happiest hours have been spent with poor
scholars, and artists, and men of science, whose words remain in the
memory and make us rich indeed. Then we dislike money because it rules
and restrains us, and because it is unintelligent and seems hostile, so
far as that which is unintelligent can be hostile. And yet the real
truth is that money is the strong protector of the intellectual life.
The student sits and studies, too often despising the power that
shelters him from the wintry night, that gives him roof and walls, and
lamp, and books, and fire. For money is simply the accumulated labor of
the past, guarding our peace as fleets and armies guard the industry of
England, or like some mighty fortress-wall within which men follow the
most peaceful avocations. The art is to use money so that it shall be
the protector and not the scatterer of our time, the body-guard of the
sovereign Intellect and Will.
LETTER III.
TO A STUDENT IN GREAT POVERTY.
Poverty really a great obstacle--Difference between a thousand rich
men and a thousand poor men taken from persons of average natural
gifts--The Houses of Parliament--The English recognize the natural
connection between wealth and culture--Connection between ignorance
and parsimony in expenditure--What may be honestly said for the
encouragement of a very poor student.
As it seems to me that to make light of the difficulties which lie in
the path of another is not to show true sympathy for him, even though it
is done sometimes out of a sort of awkward kindness and for his
encouragement, I will not begin by pretending that poverty is not a
great obstacle to the perfection of the intellectual life. It _is_ a
great obstacle; it is one of the very greatest of all obstacles. Only
observe how riches and poverty operate upon mankind in the mass. Here
and there no doubt a very poor man attains intellectual distinction when
he has exceptional strength of will, and health enough to bear a great
strain of extra labor that he imposes upon himself, and natural gifts so
brilliant that he can learn in an hour what common men learn in a day.
But consider mankind in the mass. Look, for instance, at our two Houses
of Parliament. They are composed of men taken from the average run of
Englishmen with very little reference to ability, but almost all of them
are rich men; not one of them is poor, as you are poor; not one of them
has to contend against the stern realities of poverty. Then consider the
very high general level of intellectual attainment which distinguishes
those two assemblies, and ask yourself candidly whether a thousand men
taken from the beggars in the streets, or even from the far superior
class of our manufacturing operatives, would be likely to understand, as
the two Houses of Parliament understand, the many complicated questions
of legislation and of policy which are continually brought before them.
We all know that the poor are too limited in knowledge and experience,
from the want of the necessary opportunities, and too little accustomed
to exercise their minds in the tranquil investigations of great
questions, to be competent for the work of Parliament. It is scarcely
necessary to insist upon this fact to an Englishman, because the English
have always recognized the natural connection between wealth and
culture, and have preferred to be governed by the rich from the belief
that they are likely to be better informed, and better situated for
intellectual activity of a disinterested kind, than those members of the
community whose time and thoughts are almost entirely occupied in
winning their daily bread by the incessant labor of their hands. And if
you go out into the world, if you mix with men of very different
classes, you will find that in a broad average way (I am not speaking
just now of the exceptions) the richer classes are much more capable of
entering into the sort of thinking which may be called intellectual
than those whose money is less plentiful, and whose opportunities have
therefore been less abundant. Indeed it may be asserted, roughly and
generally, that the narrowness of men's ideas is in direct proportion to
their parsimony in expenditure. I do not mean to affirm that all who
spend largely attain large intellectual results, for of course we know
that a man may spend vast sums on pursuits which do not educate him in
anything worth knowing, but the advantage is that with habits of free
expenditure the germs of thought are well tilled and watered, whereas
parsimony denies them every external help. The most spending class in
Europe is the English gentry, it is also the class most strikingly
characterized by a high general average of information;[5] the most
parsimonious class in Europe is the French peasantry; it is also the
class most strikingly characterized by ignorance and intellectual
apathy. The English gentleman has cultivated himself by various reading
and extensive travel, but the French peasant will not go anywhere except
to the market-town, and could not pardon the extravagance of buying a
book, or a candle to read it by in the evening. Between these extremes
we have various grades of the middle classes in which culture usually
increases very much in proportion to the expenditure. The rule is not
without its exceptions; there are rich vulgar people who spend a great
deal without improving themselves at all--who only, by unlimited
self-indulgence, succeed in making themselves so uncomfortably sensitive
to every bodily inconvenience that they have no leisure, even in the
midst of an unoccupied life, to think of anything but their own bellies
and their own skins--people whose power of attention is so feeble that
the smallest external incident distracts it, and who remember nothing of
their travels but a catalogue of trivial annoyances. But people of this
kind do not generally belong to families on whom wealth has had time to
produce its best effects. What I mean is, that a family which has been
for generations in the habit of spending four thousand a year will
usually be found to have a more cultivated one than one that has only
spent four hundred.
I have come to the recognition of this truth very reluctantly indeed,
not because I dislike rich people, but merely because they are
necessarily a very small minority, and I should like every human being
to have the best benefits of culture if it were only possible. The plain
living and high thinking that Wordsworth so much valued is a cheering
ideal, for most men have to live plainly, and if they could only think
with a certain elevation we might hope to solve the great problem of
human life, the reconciliation of poverty and the soul. There certainly
is a slow movement in that direction, and the shortening of the hours of
labor may afford some margin of leisure; but we who work for culture
every day and all day long, and still feel that we know very little, and
have hardly skill enough to make any effective use of the little that we
know, can scarcely indulge in very enthusiastic anticipations of the
future culture of the poor.
Still, there are some things that may be rationally and truly said to a
poor man who desires culture, and which are not without a sort of
Spartan encouragement. You are restricted by your poverty, but it is not
always a bad thing to be restricted, even from the intellectual point of
view. The intellectual powers of well-to-do people are very commonly
made ineffective by the enormous multiplicity of objects that are
presented to their attention, and which claim from them a sort of polite
notice like the greeting of a great lady to each of her thousand guests.
It requires the very rarest strength of mind, in a rich man, to
concentrate his attention on anything there are so many things that he
is expected to make a pretence of knowing; but nobody expects _you_ to
know anything, and this is an incalculable advantage. I think that all
poor men who have risen to subsequent distinction have been greatly
indebted to this independence of public opinion as to what they ought to
know. In trying to satisfy that public opinion by getting up a pretence
of various sorts of knowledge, which is only a sham, we sacrifice not
only much precious time, but we blunt our natural interest in things.
That interest you preserve in all its virgin force, and this force
carries a man far. Then, again, although the opportunities of rich
people are very superior to yours, they are not altogether so superior
as they seem. There exists a great equalizing power, the limitation of
human energy. A rich man may sit down to an enormous banquet, but he can
only make a good use of the little that he is able to digest. So it is
with the splendid intellectual banquet that is spread before the rich
man's eyes. He can only possess what he has energy to master, and too
frequently the manifest impossibility of mastering everything produces a
feeling of discouragement that ends in his mastering nothing. A poor
student, especially if he lives in an out-of-the-way place where there
are no big libraries to bewilder him, may apply his energy with effect
in the study of a few authors.
I used to believe a great deal more in opportunities and less in
application than I do now. Time and health are needed, but with these
there are always opportunities. Rich people have a fancy for spending
money very uselessly on their culture because it seems to them more
valuable when it has been costly; but the truth is, that by the blessing
of good and cheap literature, intellectual light has become almost as
accessible as daylight. I have a rich friend who travels more, and buys
more costly things, than I do, but he does not really learn more or
advance farther in the twelvemonth. If my days are fully occupied, what
has he to set against them? only other well-occupied days, no more. If
he is getting benefit at St. Petersburg he is missing the benefit I am
getting round my house, and in it. The sum of the year's benefit seems
to be surprisingly alike in both cases. So if you are reading a piece of
thoroughly good literature, Baron Rothschild may possibly be as well
occupied as you--he is certainly not better occupied. When I open a
noble volume I say to myself, "Now the only Croesus that I envy is he
who is reading a better book than this."
FOOTNOTES:
[4] This sounds like a poetical exaggeration, but it is less than the
bare truth. There were fifteen hundred slaves on two West Indian
estates that Beckford lost in a lawsuit. It is quite certain,
considering his lavish expenditure, that fully a thousand men must
have worked for the maintenance of his luxury in Europe. So much for
his command of labor.
[5] The reader will please to bear in mind that I am speaking here of
broad effects on great numbers. I do not think that aristocracy, in
its spirit, is quite favorable to the exceptionally highest
intellectual life.
PART VI.
CUSTOM AND TRADITION.
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD FIRMLY RESOLVED NEVER TO WEAR ANYTHING BUT
A GRAY COAT.[6]
Secret enjoyment of rebellion against custom, and of the disabilities
resulting from it--Penalties imposed by Society and by Nature out of
proportion to the offence--Instances--What we consider penalties not
really penalties, but only consequences--Society likes harmony, and is
offended by dissonance--Utility of rebels against custom--That they
ought to reserve their power of rebellion for great occasions--Uses of
custom--Duty of the intellectual class--Best way to procure the
abolition of a custom we disapprove--Bad customs--Eccentricity
sometimes a duty.
When I had the pleasure of staying at your father's house, you told me,
rather to my surprise, that it was impossible for you to go to balls and
dinner-parties because you did not possess such a thing as a dress-coat.
The reason struck me as being scarcely a valid one, considering the
rather high scale of expenditure adopted in the paternal mansion. It
seemed clear that the eldest son of a family which lived after the
liberal fashion of Yorkshire country gentlemen could afford himself a
dress-coat if he liked. Then I wondered whether you disliked dress-coats
from a belief that they were unbecoming to your person; but a very
little observation of your character convinced me that, whatever might
be your weaknesses (for everybody has some weaknesses), anxiety about
personal appearance was not one of them.
The truth is, that you secretly enjoy this little piece of disobedience
to custom, and all the disabilities which result from it. This little
rebellion is connected with a larger rebellion, and it is agreeable to
you to demonstrate the unreasonableness of society by incurring a very
severe penalty for a very trifling offence. You are always dressed
decently, you offend against no moral rule, you have cultivated your
mind by study and reflection, and it rather pleases you to think that a
young gentleman so well qualified for society in everything of real
importance should be excluded from it because he has not purchased a
permission from his tailor.
The penalties imposed by society for the infraction of very trifling
details of custom are often, as it seems, out of all proportion to the
offence; but so are the penalties of nature. Only three days before the
date of this letter, an intimate friend of mine was coming home from a
day's shooting. His nephew, a fine young man in the full enjoyment of
existence, was walking ten paces in advance. A covey of partridges
suddenly cross the road: my friend in shouldering his gun touches the
trigger just a second too soon, and kills his nephew. Now, think of the
long years of mental misery that will be the punishment of that very
trifling piece of carelessness! My poor friend has passed, in the space
of a single instant, from a joyous life to a life that is permanently
and irremediably saddened. It is as if he had left the summer sunshine
to enter a gloomy dungeon and begin a perpetual imprisonment. And for
what? For having touched a trigger, without evil intention, a little too
precipitately. It seems harder still for the victim, who is sent out of
the world in the bloom of perfect manhood because his uncle was not
quite so cool as he ought to have been. Again, not far from where I
live, thirty-five men were killed last week in a coal-pit from an
explosion of fire-damp. One of their number had struck a lucifer to
light his pipe: for doing this in a place where he ought not to have
done it, the man suffers the penalty of death, and thirty-four others
with him. The fact is simply that Nature _will_ be obeyed, and makes no
attempt to proportion punishments to offences: indeed, what in our human
way we call punishments are not punishments, but simple consequences. So
it is with the great social penalties. Society _will be obeyed_: if you
refuse obedience, you must take the consequences. Society has only one
law, and that is custom. Even religion itself is socially powerful only
just so far as it has custom on its side.
Nature does not desire that thirty-five men should be destroyed because
one could not resist the temptation of a pipe; but fire-damp is highly
inflammable, and the explosion is a simple consequence. Society does not
desire to exclude you because you will not wear evening dress; but the
dress is customary, and your exclusion is merely a consequence of your
nonconformity. The view of society goes no farther in this than the
artistic conception (not very delicately artistic, perhaps) that it is
prettier to see men in black coats regularly placed between ladies round
a dinner-table than men in gray coats or brown coats. The uniformity of
costume appears to represent uniformity of sentiment and to ensure a
sort of harmony amongst the _convives_. What society really cares for is
harmony; what it dislikes is dissent and nonconformity. It wants peace
in the dining-room, peace in the drawing-room, peace everywhere in its
realm of tranquil pleasure. You come in your shooting-coat, which was in
tune upon the moors, but is a dissonance amongst ladies in full dress.
Do you not perceive that fustian and velveteen, which were natural
amongst gamekeepers, are not so natural on gilded chairs covered with
silk, with lace and diamonds at a distance of three feet? You don't
perceive it? Very well: society does not argue the point with you, but
only excludes you.
It has been said that in the life of every intellectual man there comes
a time when he questions custom at all points. This seems to be a
provision of nature for the reform and progress of custom itself, which
without such questioning would remain absolutely stationary and
irresistibly despotic. You rebels against the established custom have
your place in the great work of progressive civilization. Without you,
Western Europe would have been a second China. It is to the continual
rebellion of such persons as yourself that we owe whatever progress has
been accomplished since the times of our remotest forefathers. There
have been rebels always, and the rebels have not been, generally
speaking, the most stupid part of the nation.
But what is the use of wasting this beneficial power of rebellion on
matters too trivial to be worth attention? Does it hurt your conscience
to appear in a dress-coat? Certainly not, and you would be as
good-looking in it as you are in your velveteen shooting-jacket with the
pointers on the bronze buttons. Let us conform in these trivial matters,
which nobody except a tailor ought to consider worth a moment's
attention, in order to reserve our strength for the protection of
intellectual liberty. Let society arrange your dress for you (it will
save you infinite trouble), but never permit it to stifle the expression
of your thought. You find it convenient, because you are timid, to
exclude yourself from the world by refusing to wear its costume; but a
bolder man would let the tailor do his worst, and then go into the world
and courageously defend there the persons and causes that are
misunderstood and slanderously misrepresented. The fables of Spenser
are fables only in form, and a noble knight may at any time go forth,
armed in the panoply of a tail-coat, a dress waistcoat, and a manly
moral courage, to do battle across the dinner-table and in the
drawing-room for those who have none to defend them.
It is unphilosophical to set ourselves obstinately against custom in the
mass, for it multiplies the power of men by settling useless discussion
and clearing the ground for our best and most prolific activity. The
business of the world could not be carried forward one day without a
most complex code of customs; and law itself is little more than custom
slightly improved upon by men reflecting together at their leisure, and
reduced to codes and systems. We ought to think of custom as a most
precious legacy of the past, saving us infinite perplexity, yet not as
an infallible rule. The most intelligent community would be conservative
in its habits, yet not obstinately conservative, but willing to hear and
adopt the suggestions of advancing reason. The great duty of the
intellectual class, and its especial function, is to confirm what is
reasonable in the customs that have been handed down to us, and so
maintain their authority, yet at the same time to show that custom is
not final, but merely a form suited to the world's convenience. And
whenever you are convinced that a custom is no longer serviceable, the
way to procure the abolition of it is to lead men very gradually away
from it, by offering a substitute at first very slightly different from
what they have been long used to. If the English had been in the habit
of tattooing, the best way to procure its abolition would have been to
admit that it was quite necessary to cover the face with elaborate
patterns, yet gently to suggest that these patterns would be still more
elegant if delicately painted in water-colors. Then you might have gone
on arguing--still admitting, of course, the absolute necessity for
ornament of some kind--that good taste demanded only a moderate amount
of it; and so you would have brought people gradually to a little
flourish on the nose or forehead, when the most advanced reformers might
have set the example of dispensing with ornament altogether. Many of our
contemporaries have abandoned shaving in this gradual way, allowing the
whiskers to encroach imperceptibly, till at last the razor lay in the
dressing-case unused. The abominable black cylinders that covered our
heads a few years ago were vainly resisted by radicals in custom, but
the moderate reformers gradually reduced their elevation, and now they
are things of the past.
Though I think we ought to submit to custom in matters of indifference,
and to reform it gradually, whilst affecting submission in matters
altogether indifferent, still there are other matters on which the only
attitude worthy of a man is the most bold and open resistance to its
dictates. Custom may have a right to authority over your wardrobe, but
it cannot have any right to ruin your self-respect. Not only the virtues
most advantageous to well-being, but also the most contemptible and
degrading vices, have at various periods of the world's history been
sustained by the full authority of custom. There are places where forty
years ago drunkenness was conformity to custom, and sobriety an
eccentricity. There are societies, even at the present day, where
licentiousness is the rule of custom, and chastity the sign of weakness
or want of spirit. There are communities (it cannot be necessary to name
them) in which successful fraud, especially on a large scale, is
respected as the proof of smartness, whilst a man who remains poor
because he is honest is despised for slowness and incapacity. There are
whole nations in which religious hypocrisy is strongly approved by
custom, and honesty severely condemned. The Wahabee Arabs may be
mentioned as an instance of this, but the Wahabee Arabs are not the only
people, nor is Nejed the only place, where it is held to be more
virtuous to lie on the side of custom than to be an honorable man in
independence of it. In all communities where vice and hypocrisy are
sustained by the authority of custom, eccentricity is a moral duty. In
all communities where a low standard of thinking is received as
infallible common sense, eccentricity becomes an intellectual duty.
There are hundreds of places in the provinces where it is impossible for
any man to lead the intellectual life without being condemned as an
eccentric. It is the duty of intellectual men who are thus isolated to
set the example of that which their neighbors call eccentricity, but
which may be more accurately described as superiority.
LETTER II.
TO A CONSERVATIVE WHO HAD ACCUSED THE AUTHOR OF A WANT OF RESPECT FOR
TRADITION.
Transition from the ages of tradition to that of
experiment--Attraction of the future--Joubert--Saint-Marc
Girardin--Solved and unsolved problems--The introduction of a new
element--Inapplicability of past experience--An argument against
Republics--The lessons of history--Mistaken predictions that have been
based on them--Morality and ecclesiastical authority--Compatibility of
hopes for the future with gratitude to the past--That we are more
respectful to the past than previous ages have been--Our feelings
towards tradition--An incident at Warsaw--The reconstruction of the
navy.
The astonishing revolution in thought and practice which is taking place
amongst the intelligent Japanese, the throwing away of a traditional
system of living in order to establish in its stead a system which, for
an Asiatic people, is nothing more than a vast experiment, has its
counterpart in many an individual life in Europe. We are like travellers
crossing an isthmus between two seas, who have left one ship behind
them, who have not yet seen the vessel that waits on the distant shore,
and who experience to the full all the discomforts and inconveniences of
the passage from one sea to the other. There is a break between the
existence of our forefathers and that of our posterity, and it is we who
have the misfortune to be situated exactly where the break occurs. We
are leaving behind us the security, I do not say the safety, but the
feeling of tranquillity which belonged to the ages of tradition; we are
entering upon ages whose spirit we foresee but dimly, whose institutions
are the subject of guesses and conjectures. And yet this future, of
which we know so little, attracts us more by the very vastness of its
enigma than the rich history of the past, so full of various incident,
of powerful personages, of grandeur, and suffering, and sorrow. Joubert
already noticed this forward-looking of the modern mind. "The ancients,"
he observed, "said, 'Our ancestors;' we say, 'Posterity.' We do not love
as they did _la patrie_, the country and laws of our forefathers; we
love rather the laws and the country of our children. It is the magic of
the future, and not that of the past, which seduces us." Commenting on
this thought of Joubert's, Saint-Marc Girardin said that we loved the
future because we loved ourselves, and fashioned the future in our own
image; and he added, with partial but not complete injustice, that our
ignorance of the past was a cause of this tendency in our minds, since
it is shorter to despise the past than to study it. These critics and
accusers of the modern spirit are not, however, altogether fair to it.
If the modern spirit looks so much to the future, it is because the
problems of the past are solved problems, whilst those of the future
have the interest of a game that is only just begun. We know what became
of feudalism, we know the work that it accomplished and the services
that it rendered, but we do not yet know what will be the effects of
modern democracy and of the scientific and industrial spirit. It is the
novelty of this element, the scientific spirit and the industrial
development which is a part (but only a part) of its results, that makes
the past so much less reliable as a guide than it would have been if no
new element had intervened, and therefore so much less interesting for
us. As an example of the inapplicability of past experience, I may
mention an argument against Republics which has been much used of late
by the partisans of monarchy in France. They have frequently told us
that Republics had only succeeded in very small States, and this is true
of ancient democracies; but it is not less true that railways, and
telegraphs, and the newspaper press have made great countries like
France and the United States just as capable of feeling and acting
simultaneously as the smallest Republics of antiquity. The parties which
rely on what are called the lessons of history are continually exposed
to great deceptions. In France, what may be called the historical party
would not believe in the possibility of a united Germany, because fifty
years ago, with the imperfect means of communication which then
existed, Germany was not and could not be united. The same historical
party refused to believe that the Italian kingdom could ever hold
together. In England, the historical party predicted the dismemberment
of the United States, and in some other countries it has been a favorite
article of faith that England could not keep her possessions. But
theories of this kind are always of very doubtful applicability to the
present, and their applicability to the future is even more doubtful
still. Steam and electricity have made great modern States practically
like so many great cities, so that Manchester is like a suburb of
London, and Havre the Piræus of Paris, whilst the most trifling
occasions bring the Sovereign of Italy to any of the Italian capitals.
In the intellectual sphere the experience of the past is at least
equally unreliable. If the power of the Catholic Church had been
suddenly removed from the Europe of the fourteenth century, the
consequence would have been a moral anarchy difficult to conceive; but
in our own day the real regulator of morality is not the Church, but
public opinion, in the formation of which the Church has a share, but
only a share. It would therefore be unsafe to conclude that the
weakening of ecclesiastical authority must of necessity, in the future,
be followed by moral anarchy, since it is possible, and even probable,
that the other great influences upon public opinion may gain strength as
this declines. And in point of fact we have already lived long enough
to witness a remarkable decline of ecclesiastical authority, which is
proved by the avowed independence of scientific writers and thinkers,
and by the open opposition of almost all the European Governments. The
secular power resists the ecclesiastical in Germany and Spain. In France
it establishes a form of government which the Church detests. In Ireland
it disestablishes and disendows a hierarchy. In Switzerland it resists
the whole power of the Papacy. In Italy it seizes the sacred territory
and plants itself within the very walls of Rome. And yet the time which
has witnessed this unprecedented self-assertion of the laity has
witnessed a positive increase in the morality of public sentiment,
especially in the love of justice and the willingness to hear truth,
even when truth is not altogether agreeable to the listener, and in the
respect paid by opponents to able and sincere men, merely for their
ability and sincerity. This love of justice, this patient and tolerant
hearing of new truth, in which our age immeasurably exceeds all the ages
that have preceded it, are the direct results of the scientific spirit,
and are not only in themselves eminently moral, but conducive to moral
health generally. And this advancement may be observed in countries
which were least supposed to be capable of it. Even the French, of whose
immorality we have heard so much, have a public opinion which is
gradually gaining a salutary strength, an increasing dislike for
barbarity and injustice, and a more earnest desire that no citizen,
except by his own fault, should be excluded from the benefits of
civilization. The throne which has lately fallen was undermined by the
currents of this public opinion before it sank in military disaster.
"Aussi me contenterai-je," says Littré, "d'appeler l'attention sur la
guerre, dont l'opinion publique ne tolère plus les antiques barbaries;
sur la magistrature, qui répudie avec horreur les tortures et la
question; sur la tolérance, qui a banni les persécutions religieuses;
sur l'équite, qui soumet tout le monde aux charges communes; sur le
sentiment de solidarité qui du sort des classes pauvres fait le plus
pressant et le plus noble problème du temps présent. Pour moi, je ne
sais caractériser ce spectacle si hautement moral qu'en disant que
l'humanité, améliorée, accepte de plus en plus le devoir et la tâche
d'étendre le domaine de la justice et de la bonté."
Yet this partial and comparative satisfaction that we find in the
present, and our larger hopes for the future, are quite compatible with
gratitude to all who in the past have rendered such improvement possible
for us, and the higher improvement that we hope for possible to those
who will come after us. I cannot think that the present age may be
accused with justice of exceptional ignorance or scorn of its
predecessors. We have been told that we scorn our forefathers because
old buildings are removed to suit modern conveniences, because the
walls of old York have been pierced for the railway, and a tower of
Conway Castle has been undermined that the Holyhead mail may pass. But
the truth is, that whilst we care a little for our predecessors, they
cared still less for theirs. The mediæval builders not only used as
quarries any Roman remains that happened to come in their way, but they
spoiled the work of their own fathers and grandfathers by intruding
their new fashions on buildings originally designed in a different style
of art. When an architect in the present day has to restore some
venerable church, he endeavors to do so in harmony with the design of
the first builder; but such humility as this was utterly foreign to the
mediæval mind, which often destroyed the most lovely and necessary
details to replace them with erections in the fashion of the day, but
artistically unsuitable. The same disdain for the labors of other ages
has prevailed until within the memory of living men, and our age is
really the first that has made any attempt to conform itself, in these
things, to the intentions of the dead. I may also observe, that although
history is less relied upon as a guide to the future than it was
formerly, it is more carefully and thoroughly investigated from an
intellectual interest in itself.
To conclude. It seems to me that tradition has much less influence of an
authoritative kind than it had formerly, and that the authority which it
still possesses is everywhere steadily declining; that as a guide to
the future of the world it is more likely to mislead than to enlighten
us, and still that all intellectual and educated people must always take
a great interest in tradition, and have a certain sentiment of respect
for it. Consider what our feelings are towards the Church of Rome, the
living embodiment of tradition. No well-informed person can forget the
immense services that in former ages she has rendered to European
civilization, and yet at the same time such a person would scarcely wish
to place modern thought under her direction, nor would he consult the
Pope about the tendencies of the modern world. When in 1829 the city of
Warsaw erected a monument to Copernicus, a scientific society there
waited in the Church of the Holy Cross for a service that was to have
added solemnity to their commemoration. They waited vainly. Not a single
priest appeared. The clergy did not feel authorized to countenance a
scientific discovery which, in a former age, had been condemned by the
authority of the Church. This incident is delicately and accurately
typical of the relation between the modern and the traditional spirit.
The modern spirit is not hostile to tradition, and would not object to
receive any consecration which tradition might be able to confer, but
there are difficulties in bringing the two elements together.
We need not, however, go so far as Warsaw, or back to the year 1829,
for examples of an unwillingness on the part of the modern mind to break
entirely with the traditional spirit. Our own country is remarkable both
for the steadiness of its advance towards a future widely different from
the past, and for an affectionate respect for the ideas and institutions
that it gradually abandons, as it is forced out of them by new
conditions of existence, I may mention, as one example out of very many,
our feeling about the reconstruction of the navy. Here is a matter in
which science has compelled us to break with tradition absolutely and
irrevocably; we have done so, but we have done so with the greatest
regret. The ships of the line that our hearts and imaginations love are
the ships of Nelson and Collingwood and Cochrane. We think of the
British fleets that bore down upon the enemy with the breeze in their
white sails; we think of the fine qualities of seamanship that were
fostered in our _Agamemnons_, and _Victories_, and _Téméraires_. Will
the navies of the future ever so clothe their dreadful powers with
beauty, as did the ordered columns of Nelson, when they came with a fair
wind and all sails set, at eleven o'clock in the morning into Trafalgar
Bay? We see the smoke of their broadsides rising up to their sails like
mists to the snowy Alps, and high above, against heaven's blue, the
unconquered flag of England! Nor do we perceive now for the first time
that there was poetry in those fleets of old; our forefathers felt it
then, and expressed it in a thousand songs.[7]
LETTER III.
TO A LADY WHO LAMENTED THAT HER SON HAD INTELLECTUAL DOUBTS CONCERNING
THE DOGMAS OF THE CHURCH.
The situation of mother and son a very common one--Painful only when
the parties are in earnest--The knowledge of the difference evidence
of a deeper unity--Value of honesty--Evil of a splendid official
religion not believed by men of culture--Diversity of belief an
evidence of religious vitality--Criticism not to be ignored--Desire
for the highest attainable truth--Letter from Lady Westmorland about
her son, Julian Fane.
The difference which you describe as having arisen between your son and
you on the most grave and important subject which can occupy the
thoughts of men, gives the outline of a situation painful to both the
parties concerned, and which lays on each of them new and delicate
obligations. You do not know how common this situation is, and how sadly
it interferes with the happiness of the very best and most pure-minded
souls alive. For such a situation produces pain only where both parties
are earnest and sincere; and the more earnest both are, the more painful
does the situation become. If you and your son thought of religion
merely from the conventional point of view, as the world does only too
easily, you would meet on a common ground, and might pass through life
without ever becoming aware of any gulf of separation, even though the
hollowness of your several professions were of widely different kinds.
But as it happens, unfortunately for your peace (yet would you have it
otherwise?), that you are both in earnest, both anxious to believe what
is true and do what you believe to be right, you are likely to cause
each other much suffering of a kind altogether unknown to less honorable
and devoted natures. There are certain forms of suffering which affect
only the tenderest and truest hearts; they have so many privileges, that
this pain has been imposed upon them as the shadow of their sunshine.
Let me suggest, as some ground of consolation and of hope, that your
very knowledge of the difference which pains you is in itself the
evidence of a deeper unity. If your son has told you the full truth
about the changes in his belief, it is probably because you yourself
have educated him in the habit of truthfulness, which is as much a law
of religion as it is of honor. Do you wish this part of his education to
be enfeebled or obliterated? Could the Church herself reasonably or
consistently blame him for practising the one virtue which, in a
peaceful and luxurious society, demands a certain exercise of courage?
Our beliefs are independent of our will, but our honesty is not; and he
who keeps his honesty keeps one of the most precious possessions of all
true Christians and gentlemen. What state of society can be more
repugnant to high religious feeling than a state of smooth external
unanimity combined with the indifference of the heart, a state in which
some splendid official religion performs its daily ceremonies as the
costliest functionary of the Government, whilst the men of culture take
a share in them out of conformity to the customs of society, without
either the assent of the intellect or the emotion of the soul? All
periods of great religious vitality have been marked by great and open
diversity of belief; and to this day those countries where religion is
most alive are the farthest removed from unanimity in the details of
religious doctrine. If your son thinks these things of such importance
to his conscience that he feels compelled to inflict upon you the
slightest pain on their account, you may rest assured that his religious
fibre is still full of vitality. If it were deadened, he would argue
very much as follows. He would say: "These old doctrines of the Church
are not of sufficient consequence for me to disturb my mother about
them. What is the use of alluding to them ever?" And then you would have
no anxiety; and he himself would have the feeling of settled peace which
comes over a battle-field when the dead are buried out of sight. It is
the peculiarity--some would say the evil, but I cannot think it an
evil--of an age of great intellectual activity to produce an amount of
critical inquiry into religious doctrine which is entirely unknown to
times of simple tradition. And in these days the critical tendency has
received a novel stimulus from the successive suggestions of scientific
discovery. No one who, like your son, fully shares in the intellectual
life of the times in which he lives, can live as if this criticism did
not exist. If he affected to ignore it, as an objection already
answered, there would be disingenuousness in the affectation. Fifty
years ago, even twenty or thirty years ago, a highly intellectual young
man might have hardened into the fixed convictions of middle age without
any external disturbance, except such as might have been easily avoided.
The criticism existed then, in certain circles; but it was not in the
air, as it is now. The life of mankind resembles that of a brook which
has its times of tranquillity, but farther on its times of trouble and
unrest. Our immediate forefathers had the peaceful time for their lot;
those who went before them had passed over very rough ground at the
Reformation. For us, in our turn, comes the recurrent restlessness,
though not in the same place. What we are going to, who can tell? What
we suffer just now, you and many others know too accurately. There are
gulfs of separation in homes of the most perfect love. Our only hope of
preserving what is best in that purest of earthly felicities lies in the
practice of an immense charity, a wide tolerance, a sincere respect for
opinions that are not ours, and a deep trust that the loyal pursuit of
truth cannot but be in perfect accordance with the intentions of the
Creator, who endowed the noblest races of mankind with the indefatigable
curiosity of science. Not to inquire was possible for our forefathers,
but it is not possible for us. With our intellectual growth has come an
irrepressible anxiety to possess the highest truth attainable by us.
This desire is not sinful, not presumptuous, but really one of the best
and purest of our instincts, being nothing else than the sterling
honesty of the intellect, seeking the harmony of concordant truth, and
utterly disinterested.
I may quote, as an illustration of the tendencies prevalent amongst the
noblest and most cultivated young men, a letter from Lady Westmorland to
Mr. Robert Lytton about her accomplished son, the now celebrated Julian
Fane. "We had," she said, "several conversations, during his last
illness, upon religious subjects, about which he had his own peculiar
views. The disputes and animosities between High and Low Church, and all
the feuds of religious sectarianism, caused him the deepest disgust. I
think, indeed, that he carried this feeling too far. He had a horror of
_cant_, which I also think was exaggerated; for it gave him a repulsion
for all outward show of religious observances. He often told me that he
never missed the practice of prayer, at morning and evening, and at
other times. But his prayers were his own: his own thoughts in his own
words. He said that he could not pray in the set words of another; nor
unless he was _alone_. As to joining in family prayers, or praying at
church, he found it impossible. He constantly read the New Testament. He
deprecated the indiscriminate reading of the Bible. He firmly believed
in the efficacy of sincere prayer; and was always pleased when I told
him I had prayed for him."
To this it may be added, that many recent conversions to the Church of
Rome, though apparently of an exactly opposite character, have in
reality also been brought about by the scientific inquiries of the age.
The religious sentiment, alarmed at the prospect of a possible taking
away of that which it feeds upon, has sought in many instances to
preserve it permanently under the guardianship of the strongest
ecclesiastical authority. In an age of less intellectual disturbance
this anxiety would scarcely have been felt; and the degree of authority
claimed by one of the reformed Churches would have been accepted as
sufficient. Here again the agitations of the modern intellect have
caused division in families; and as you are lamenting the heterodoxy of
your son, so other parents regret the Roman orthodoxy of theirs.
LETTER IV.
TO THE SON OF THE LADY TO WHOM THE PRECEDING LETTER WAS ADDRESSED.
Difficulty of detaching intellectual from religious questions--The
sacerdotal system--Necessary to ascertain what religion
is--Intellectual religion really nothing but philosophy--The popular
instinct--The test of belief--Public worship--The intellect moral, but
not religious--Intellectual activity sometimes in contradiction to
dogma--Differences between the intellectual and religious lives.
Your request is not so simple as it appears. You ask me for a frank
opinion as to the course your mind is taking in reference to very
important subjects; but you desire only intellectual, and not religious
guidance. The difficulty is to effect any clear demarcation between the
two. Certainly I should never take upon myself to offer religious advice
to any one; it is difficult for those who have not qualified themselves
for the priestly office to do that with force and effect. The manner in
which a priest leads and manages a mind that has from the first been
moulded in the beliefs and observances of his Church, cannot be imitated
by a layman. A priest starts always from authority; his method, which
has been in use from the earliest ages, consists first in claiming your
unquestioning assent to certain doctrines, from which he immediately
proceeds to deduce the inferences that may affect your conduct or
regulate your thoughts. It is a method perfectly adapted to its own
ends. It can deal with all humanity, and produce the most immediate
practical results. So long as the assent to the doctrines is sincere,
the sacerdotal system may contend successfully against some of the
strongest forms of evil; but when the assent to the doctrines has ceased
to be complete, when some of them are half-believed and others not
believed at all, the system loses much of its primitive efficiency. It
seems likely that your difficulty, the difficulty of so many
intellectual men in these days, is to know where the intellectual
questions end and the purely religious ones can be considered to begin.
If you could once ascertain that, in a manner definitely satisfactory,
you would take your religious questions to a clergyman and your
intellectual ones to a man of science, and so get each solved
independently.
Without presuming to offer a solution of so complex a difficulty as
this, I may suggest to you that it is of some importance to your
intellectual life to ascertain what religion is. A book was published
many years ago by a very learned author, in which he endeavored to show
that what is vulgarly called scepticism may be intellectual religion.
Now, although nothing can be more distasteful to persons of culture
than the bigotry which refuses the name of religion to other people's
opinions, merely because they are other people's opinions, I suspect
that the popular instinct is right in denying the name of religion to
the inferences of the intellect. The description which the author just
alluded to gave of what he called intellectual religion was in fact
simply a description of philosophy, and of that discipline which the
best philosophy imposes upon the heart and the passions. On the other
hand, Dr. Arnold, when he says that by religion he always understands
Christianity, narrows the word as much as he would have narrowed the
word "patriotism" had he defined it to mean a devotion to the interests
of England. I think the popular instinct, though of course quite unable
to construct a definition of religion, is in its vague way very well
aware of the peculiar nature of religious thought and feeling. The
popular instinct would certainly never confound religion with philosophy
on the one hand, nor, on the other, unless excited to opposition, would
it be likely to refuse the name of religion to another worship, such as
Mahometanism, for instance.
According to the popular instinct, then, which on a subject of this kind
appears the safest of all guides, a religion involves first a belief and
next a public practice. The nature of the belief is in these days wholly
peculiar to religion; in other times it was not so, because then people
believed other things much in the same way. But in these days the test
of religious belief is that it should make men accept as certain truth
what they would disbelieve on any other authority. For example, a true
Roman Catholic believes that the consecrated host is the body of Christ,
and so long as he lives in the purely religious spirit he continues to
believe this; but so soon as the power of his religious sentiment
declines he ceases to believe it, and the wafer appears to him a wafer,
and no more. And so amongst Protestants the truly religious believe many
things which no person not being under the authority of religion could
by any effort bring himself to believe. It is easy, for example, to
believe that Joshua arrested the sun's apparent motion, so long as the
religious authority of the Bible remains perfectly intact; but no sooner
does the reader become critical than the miracle is disbelieved. In all
ages, and in all countries, religions have narrated marvellous things,
and the people have always affirmed that not to believe these narratives
constituted the absence of religion, or what they called atheism. They
have equally, in all ages and countries, held the public act of
participation in religious worship to be an essential part of what they
called religion. They do not admit the sufficiency of secret prayer.
Can these popular instincts help us to a definition? They may help us at
least to mark the dividing line between religion and morality, between
religion and philosophy. No one has ever desired, more earnestly and
eagerly than I, to discover the foundations of the intellectual
religion; no one has ever felt more chilling disappointment in the
perception of the plain bare fact that the intellect gives morality,
philosophy, precious things indeed, but not religion. It is like seeking
art by science. Thousands of artists, whole schools from generation to
generation, have sought fine art through anatomy and perspective; and
although these sciences did not hinder the born artists from coming to
art at last, they did not ensure their safe arrival in the art-paradise;
in many instances they even led men away from art. So it is with the
great modern search for the intellectual religion; the idea of it is
scientific in its source, and the result of it, the last definite
attainment, is simply intellectual morality, not religion in the sense
which all humanity has attached to religion during all the ages that
have preceded ours. We may say that philosophy is the religion of the
intellectual; and if we go scrupulously to Latin derivations, it is so.
But taking frankly the received meaning of the word as it is used by
mankind everywhere, we must admit that, although high intellect would
lead us inevitably to high and pure morality, and to most scrupulously
beautiful conduct in everything, towards men, towards women, towards
even the lower and lowest animals, still it does not lead us to that
belief in the otherwise unbelievable, or to that detailed _cultus_
which is meant by religion in the universally accepted sense. It is
disingenuous to take a word popularly respected and attribute to it
another sense. Such a course is not strictly honest, and therefore not
purely intellectual; for the foundation of the intellectual life is
honesty.
The difficulty of the intellectual life is, that whilst it can never
assume a position of hostility to religion, which it must always
recognize as the greatest natural force for the amelioration of mankind,
it is nevertheless compelled to enunciate truths which may happen to be
in contradiction with dogmas received at this or that particular time.
That you may not suspect me of a disposition to dwell continually on
safe generalities and to avoid details out of timidity, let me mention
two cases on which the intellectual and scientific find themselves at
variance with the clergy. The clergy tell us that mankind descend from a
single pair, and that in the earlier ages the human race attained a
longevity counted not by decades but by centuries. Alexander Humboldt
disbelieves the first of these propositions, Professor Owen disbelieves
the second. Men of science generally are of the same opinion. Few men of
science accept Adam and Eve, few accept Methuselah. Professor Owen
argues that, since the oldest skeletons known have the same system of
teething that we have, man can never have lived long enough to require
nine sets of teeth. In regard to these, and a hundred other points on
which science advances new views, the question which concerns us is how
we are to maintain the integrity of the intellectual life. The danger is
the loss of inward ingenuousness, the attempt to persuade ourselves that
we believe opposite statements. If once we admit disingenuousness into
the mind, the intellectual life is no longer serene and pure. The plain
course for the preservation of our honesty, which is the basis of truly
intellectual thinking, is to receive the truth, whether agreeable or the
contrary, with all its train of consequences, however repulsive or
discouraging. In attempting to reconcile scientific truth with the
oldest traditions of humanity, there is but one serious danger, the loss
of intellectual integrity. Of that possession modern society has little
left to lose.
But let us understand that the intellectual life and the religious life
are as distinct as the scientific and the artistic lives. They may be
led by the same person, but by the same person in different moods. They
coincide on some points, accidentally. Certainly, the basis of high
thinking is perfect honesty, and honesty is a recognized religious
virtue. Where the two minds differ is on the importance of authority.
The religious life is based upon authority, the intellectual life is
based upon personal investigation. From the intellectual point of view I
cannot advise you to restrain the spirit of investigation, which is the
scientific spirit. It may lead you very far, yet always to truth,
ultimately,--you, or those after you, whose path you may be destined to
prepare. Science requires a certain inward heat and heroism in her
votaries, notwithstanding the apparent coldness of her statements.
Especially does she require that intellectual fearlessness which accepts
a proved fact without reference to its personal or its social
consequences.
LETTER V.
TO A FRIEND WHO SEEMED TO TAKE CREDIT TO HIMSELF, INTELLECTUALLY, FROM
THE NATURE OF HIS RELIGIOUS BELIEF.
Anecdote of a Swiss gentleman--Religious belief protects traditions,
but does not weaken the critical faculty itself--Illustration from the
art of etching--Sydney Smith--Dr. Arnold--Earnest religious belief of
Ampère--Comte and Sainte-Beuve--Faraday--Belief or unbelief proves
nothing for or against intellectual capacity.
I happened once to be travelling in Switzerland with an eminent citizen
of that country, and I remember how in speaking of some place we passed
through he associated together the ideas of Protestantism and
intellectual superiority in some such phrase as this: "The people here
are very superior; they are Protestants." There seemed to exist, in my
companion's mind, an assumption that Protestants would be superior
people intellectually, or that superior people would be Protestants;
and this set me thinking whether, in the course of such experience as
had fallen in my way, I had found that religious creed had made much
difference in the matter of intellectual acumen or culture.
The exact truth appears to be this. A religious belief protects this or
that subject against intellectual action, but it does not affect the
energy of the intellectual action upon subjects which are not so
protected. Let me illustrate this by a reference to one of the fine
arts, the art of etching. The etcher protects a copper-plate by means of
a waxy covering called etching-ground, and wherever this ground is
removed the acid bites the copper. The waxy ground does not in the least
affect the strength of the acid, it only intervenes between it and the
metal plate. So it is in the mind of man with regard to his intellectual
acumen and his religious creed. The creed may protect a tradition from
the operation of the critical faculty, but it does not weaken the
critical faculty itself. In the English Church, for example, the Bible
is protected against criticism; but this does not weaken the critical
faculty of English clergymen with reference to other literature, and
many of them give evidence of a strong critical faculty in all matters
not protected by their creed. Think of the vigorous common sense of
Sydney Smith, exposing so many abuses at a time when it needed not only
much courage but great originality to expose them! Remember the
intellectual force of Arnold, a great natural force if ever there was
one--so direct in action, so independent of contemporary opinion!
Intellectual forces of this kind act freely not only in the Church of
England, but in other Churches, even in the Church of Rome. Who amongst
the scientific men of this century has been more profoundly scientific,
more capable of original scientific discovery than Ampère? Yet Ampère
was a Roman Catholic, and not a Roman Catholic in the conventional sense
merely, like the majority of educated Frenchmen, but a hearty and
enthusiastic believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome. The belief
in transubstantiation did not prevent Ampère from becoming one of the
best chemists of his time, just as the belief in the plenary inspiration
of the New Testament does not prevent a good Protestant from becoming an
acute critic of Greek literature generally. A man may have the finest
scientific faculty, the most advanced scientific culture, and still
believe the consecrated wafer to the body of Jesus Christ. For since he
still believes it to be the body of Christ under the apparent form of a
wafer, it is evident that the wafer under chemical analysis would
resolve itself into the same elements as before consecration; therefore
why consult chemistry? What has chemistry to say to a mystery of this
kind, the essence of which is the _complete_ disguise of a human body
under a form in _all_ respects answering the material semblance of a
wafer? Ampère must have foreseen the certain results of analysis as
clearly as the best chemist educated in the principles of Protestantism,
but this did not prevent him from adoring the consecrated host in all
the sincerity of his heart.
I say that it does not follow, because M. or N. happens to be a
Protestant, that he is intellectually superior to Ampère, or because M.
or N. happens to be a Unitarian, or a Deist, or a Positivist, that he is
intellectually superior to Dr. Arnold or Sydney Smith. And on the other
side of this question it is equally unfair to conclude that because a
man does not share whatever may be our theological beliefs on the
positive side, he must be less capable intellectually than we are. Two
of the finest and most disciplined modern intellects, Comte and
Sainte-Beuve, were neither Catholics, nor Protestants, nor Deists, but
convinced atheists; yet Comte until the period of his decline, and
Sainte-Beuve up to the very hour of his death, were quite in the highest
rank of modern scientific and literary intellect.
The inference from these facts which concerns every one of us is, that
we are not to build up any edifice of intellectual self-satisfaction on
the ground that in theological matters we believe or disbelieve this
thing or that. If Ampère believed the doctrines of the Church of Rome,
which to us seem so incredible, if Faraday remained throughout his
brilliant intellectual career (certainly one of the most brilliant ever
lived through by a human being) a sincere member of the obscure sect of
the Sandemanians, we are not warranted in the conclusion that we are
intellectually their betters because our theology is more novel, or more
fashionable, or more in harmony with reason. Nor, on the other hand,
does our orthodoxy prove anything in favor of our mental force and
culture. Who, amongst the most orthodox writers, has a more forcible and
cultivated intellect than Sainte-Beuve?--who can better give us the tone
of perfect culture, with its love of justice, its thoroughness in
preparation, its superiority to all crudeness and violence? Anglican or
Romanist, dissenter or heretic, may be our master in the intellectual
sphere, from which no sincere and capable laborer is excluded, either by
his belief or by his unbelief.
LETTER VI.
TO A ROMAN CATHOLIC FRIEND WHO ACCUSED THE INTELLECTUAL CLASS OF A WANT
OF REVERENCE FOR AUTHORITY.
Necessity for treating affirmations as if they were doubtful--The
Papal Infallibility--The Infallibility of the Sacred
Scriptures--Opposition of method between Intellect and
Faith--The perfection of the intellectual life requires intellectual
methods--Inevitable action of the intellectual
forces.
It is very much the custom, in modern writing about liberty of thought,
to pass lightly over the central difficulty, which sooner or later will
have to be considered. The difficulty is this, that the freedom of the
intellectual life can never be secured except by treating as if they
were doubtful several affirmations which large masses of mankind hold to
be certainties as indisputable as the facts of science. One of the most
recently conspicuous of these affirmations is the infallibility of the
Pope of Rome. Nothing can be more certain in the opinion of immense
numbers of Roman Catholics than the infallible authority of the Supreme
Pontiff on all matters affecting doctrine. But then the matters
affecting doctrine include many subjects which come within the circle of
the sciences. History is one of those subjects which modern intellectual
criticism takes leave to study after its own methods, and yet certain
prevalent views of history are offensive to the Pope and explicitly
condemned by him. The consequence is, that in order to study history
with mental liberty, we have to act practically as if there existed a
doubt of the Papal infallibility. The same difficulty occurs with
reference to the great Protestant doctrine which attributes a similar
infallibility to the various authors who composed what are now known to
us as the Holy Scriptures. Our men of science act, and the laws of
scientific investigation compel them to act, as if it were not quite
certain that the views of scientific subjects held by those early
writers were so final as to render modern investigation superfluous. It
is useless to disguise the fact that there is a real opposition of
method between intellect and faith, and that the independence of the
intellectual life can never be fully secured unless all affirmations
based upon authority are treated as if they were doubtful. This implies
no change of manner in the intellectual classes towards those classes
whose mental habits are founded upon obedience. I mean that the man of
science does not treat the affirmations of any priesthood with less
respect than the affirmations of his own scientific brethren; he applies
with perfect impartiality the same criticism to all affirmations, from
whatever source they emanate. The intellect does not recognize authority
in any one, and intellectual men do not treat the Pope, or the author of
Genesis, with less consideration than those famous persons who in their
day have been the brightest luminaries of science. The difficulty,
however, remains, that whilst the intellectual class has no wish to
offend either those who believe in the infallibility of the Pope, or
those who believe in the infallibility of the author of Genesis, it is
compelled to conduct its own investigations as if those infallibilities
were matters of doubt and not of certainty.
Why this is so, may be shown by a reference to the operation of Nature
in other ways. The rewards of physical strength and health are not given
to the most moral, to the most humane, to the most gentle, but to those
who have acted, and whose forefathers have acted, in the most perfect
accordance with the laws of their physical constitution. So the
perfection of the intellectual life is not given to the most humble, the
most believing, the most obedient, but to those who use their minds
according to the most purely intellectual methods. One of the most
important truths that human beings can know is the perfectly independent
working of the natural laws: one of the best practical conclusions to be
drawn from the observation of Nature is that in the conduct of our own
understandings we should use a like independence.
It would be wrong, in writing to you on subjects so important as these,
to shrink from handling the real difficulties. Every one now is aware
that science must and will pursue her own methods and work according to
her own laws, without concerning herself with the most authoritative
affirmations from without. But if science said one thing and
authoritative tradition said another, no perfectly ingenuous person
could rest contented until he had either reconciled the two or decidedly
rejected one of them. It is impossible for a mind which is honest
towards itself to admit that a proposition is true and false at the same
time, true in science and false in theology. Therefore, although the
intellectual methods are entirely independent of tradition, it may
easily happen that the indirect results of our following those methods
may be the overthrow of some dogma which has for many generations been
considered indispensable to man's spiritual welfare. With regard to this
contingency it need only be observed that the intellectual forces of
humanity must act, like floods and winds, according to their own laws;
and that if they cast down any edifice too weak to resist them, it must
be because the original constructors had not built it substantially, or
because those placed in charge of it had neglected to keep it in repair.
This is their business, not ours. Our work is simply to ascertain truth
by our own independent methods, alike without hostility to any persons
claiming authority, and without deference to them.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The title of this letter seems so odd, that it may be necessary
to inform the reader that it was addressed to a real person.
[7] I had desired to say something about the uses of tradition in the
industrial arts and in the fine arts, but the subject is a very large
one, and I have not time or space to treat it properly here. I may
observe, however, briefly, that the genuine spirit of tradition has
almost entirely disappeared from English industry and art, where it
has been replaced by a spirit of scientific investigation and
experiment. The true traditional spirit was still in full vigor in
Japan a few years ago, and it kept the industry and art of that
country up to a remarkably high standard. The traditional spirit is
most favorable to professional skill, because, under its influence,
the apprentice learns thoroughly, whereas under other influences he
often learns very imperfectly. The inferiority of English painting to
French (considered technically) has been due to the prevalence of a
traditional spirit in the French school which was almost entirely
absent from our own.
PART VII.
_WOMEN AND MARRIAGE._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF INTELLECTUAL TASTES, WHO, WITHOUT HAVING AS YET
ANY PARTICULAR LADY IN VIEW, HAD EXPRESSED, IN A GENERAL WAY, HIS
DETERMINATION TO GET MARRIED.
How ignorant we all are about marriage--People wrong in their
estimates of the marriages of others--Effects of marriage on the
intellectual life--Two courses open--A wife who would not interfere
with elevated pursuits--A wife capable of understanding them--Madame
Ingres--Difference in the education of the sexes--Difficulty of
educating a wife.
The subject of marriage is one concerning which neither I nor anybody
else can have more than an infinitesimally small atom of knowledge. Each
of us knows how his or her own marriage has turned out; but that, in
comparison with a knowledge of marriage generally, is like a single
plant in comparison with the flora of the globe. The utmost experience
on this subject to be found in this country extends to about three
trials or experiments. A man may become twice a widower, and then marry
a third time, but it may be easily shown that the variety of his
experience is more than counterbalanced by its incompleteness in each
instance. For the experiment to be conclusive even as to the wisdom of
one decision, it must extend over half a lifetime. A true marriage is
not a mere temporary arrangement, and although a young couple are said
to be married as soon as the lady has changed her name, the truth is
that the real marriage is a long slow intergrowth, like that of two
trees planted quite close together in the forest.
The subject of marriage generally is one of which men know less than
they know of any other subject of universal interest. People are almost
always wrong in their estimates of the marriages of others, and the best
proof how little we know the real tastes and needs of those with whom we
have been most intimate, is our unfailing surprise at the marriages they
make. Very old and experienced people fancy they know a great deal about
younger couples, but their guesses, there is good reason to believe,
never _exactly_ hit the mark.
Ever since this idea, that marriage is a subject we are all very
ignorant about, had taken root in my own mind, many little incidents
were perpetually occurring to confirm it; they proved to me, on the one
hand, how often I had been mistaken about other people, and, on the
other hand, how mistaken other people were concerning the only marriage
I profess to know anything about, namely, my own.
Our ignorance is all the darker that few men tell us the little that
they know, that little being too closely bound up with that innermost
privacy of life which every man of right feeling respects in his own
case, as in the case of another. The only instances which are laid bare
to the public view are the unhappy marriages, which are really not
marriages at all. An unhappy alliance bears exactly the same relation to
a true marriage that disease does to health, and the quarrels and misery
of it are the crises by which Nature tries to bring about either the
recovery of happiness, or the endurable peace of a settled separation.
All that we really know about marriage is that it is based upon the most
powerful of all our instincts, and that it shows its own justification
in its fruits, especially in the prolonged and watchful care of
children. But marriage is very complex in its effects, and there is one
set of effects, resulting from it, to which remarkably little attention
has been paid hitherto,--I mean its effects upon the intellectual life.
Surely they deserve consideration by all who value culture.
I believe that for an intellectual man, only two courses are open;
either he ought to marry some simple dutiful woman who will bear him
children, and see to the household matters, and love him in a trustful
spirit without jealousy of his occupations; or else, on the other hand,
he ought to marry some highly intelligent lady, able to carry her
education far beyond school experiences, and willing to become his
companion in the arduous paths of intellectual labor. The danger in the
first of the two cases is that pointed out by Wordsworth in some verses
addressed to lake-tourists who might feel inclined to buy a peasant's
cottage in Westmorland. The tourist would spoil the little romantic
spot if he bought it; the charm of it is subtly dependent upon the
poetry of a simple life, and would be brushed away by the influence of
the things that are necessary to people in the middle class. I remember
dining in a country inn with an English officer whose ideas were
singularly unconventional. We were waited upon by our host's daughter, a
beautiful girl, whose manners were remarkable for their natural elegance
and distinction. It seemed to us both that no lady of rank could be more
distinguished than she was; and my companion said that he thought a
gentleman might do worse than ask that girl to marry him, and settle
down quietly in that quiet mountain village, far from the cares and
vanities of the world. That is a sort of dream which has occurred no
doubt to many an honorable man. Some men have gone so far as to try to
make the dream a reality, and have married the beautiful peasant. But
the difficulty is that she does not remain what she was; she becomes a
sort of make-belief lady, and then her ignorance, which in her natural
condition was a charming _naïveté_, becomes an irritating defect. If,
however it were possible for an intellectual man to marry some
simple-hearted peasant girl, and keep her carefully in her original
condition, I seriously believe that the venture would be less perilous
to his culture than an alliance with some woman of our Philistine
classes, equally incapable of comprehending his pursuits, but much more
likely to interfere with them. I once had a conversation on this subject
with a distinguished artist, who is now a widower, and who is certainly
not likely to be prejudiced against marriage by his own experience,
which had been an unusually happy one. His view was that a man devoted
to art might marry either a plain-minded woman, who would occupy herself
exclusively with household matters and shield his peace by taking these
cares upon herself, or else a woman quite capable of entering into his
artistic life; but he was convinced that a marriage which exposed him to
unintelligent criticism and interference would be dangerous in the
highest degree. And of the two kinds of marriage which he considered
possible he preferred the former, that with the entirely ignorant and
simple person from whom no interference was to be apprehended. He
considered the first Madame Ingres the true model of an artist's wife,
because she did all in her power to guard her husband's peace against
the daily cares of life and never herself disturbed it, acting the part
of a breakwater which protects a space of calm, and never destroys the
peace that it has made. This may be true for artists whose occupation
is rather æsthetic than intellectual, and does not get much help or
benefit from talk; but the ideal marriage for a man of great literary
culture would be one permitting some equality of companionship, or, if
not equality, at least interest. That this ideal is not a mere dream,
but may consolidate into a happy reality, several examples prove; yet
these examples are not so numerous as to relieve me from anxiety about
your chances of finding such companionship. The different education of
the two sexes separates them widely at the beginning, and to meet on any
common ground of culture a second education has to be gone through. It
rarely happens that there is resolution enough for this.
The want of thoroughness and reality in the education of both sexes, but
especially in that of women, may be attributed to a sort of policy which
is not very favorable to companionship in married life. It appears to be
thought wise to teach boys things which women do not learn, in order to
give women a degree of respect for men's attainments, which they would
not be so likely to feel if they were prepared to estimate them
critically; whilst girls are taught arts and languages which until
recently were all but excluded from our public schools, and won no rank
at our universities. Men and women had consequently scarcely any common
ground to meet upon, and the absence of serious mental discipline in the
training of women made them indisposed to submit to the irksomeness of
that earnest intellectual labor which might have remedied the
deficiency. The total lack of accuracy in their mental habits was then,
and is still for the immense majority of women, the least easily
surmountable impediment to culture. The history of many marriages which
have failed to realize intellectual companionship is comprised in a
sentence which was actually uttered by one of the most accomplished of
my friends: "She knew nothing when I married her. I tried to teach her
something; it made her angry, and I gave it up."
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The foundations of the intellectual marriage--Marriage not a snare or
pitfall for the intellectual--Men of culture, who marry badly, often
have themselves to blame--For every grade of the masculine intellect
there exists a corresponding grade of the feminine
intellect--Difficulty of finding the true mate--French University
Professors--An extreme case of intellectual separation--Regrets of a
widow--Women help us less by adding to our knowledge than by
understanding us.
In several letters which have preceded this I have indicated some of the
differences between the female sex and ours, and it is time to examine
the true foundations of the intellectual marriage. Let me affirm, to
begin with, my profound faith in the natural arrangement. There is in
nature so much evident care for the development of the intellectual
life, so much protection of it in the social order, there are such
admirable contrivances for continuing it from century to century, that
we may fairly count upon some provision for its necessities in marriage.
Intellectual men are not less alive to the charms of women than other
men are; indeed the greatest of them have always delighted in the
society of women. If marriage were really dangerous to the intellectual
life, it would be a moral snare or pitfall, from which the best and
noblest would be least likely to escape. It is hard to believe that the
strong passions which so often accompany high intellectual gifts were
intended either to drive their possessors into immorality or else to the
misery of ill-assorted unions.
No, there _is_ such a thing as the intellectual marriage, in which the
intellect itself is married. If such marriages are not frequent, it is
that they are not often made the deliberate purpose of a wise alliance.
Men choose their wives because they are pretty, or because they are
rich, or because they are well-connected, but rarely for the permanent
interest of their society. Yet who that had ever been condemned to the
dreadful embarrassments of a _tête-à-tête_ with an uncompanionable
person, could reflect without apprehension on a lifetime of such
_tête-à-têtes_?
When intellectual men suffer from this misery they have themselves to
blame. What is the use of having any mental superiority, if, in a
matter so enormously important as the choice of a companion for life, it
fails to give us a warning when the choice is absurdly unsuitable? When
men complain, as they do not unfrequently, that their wives have no
ideas, the question inevitably suggests itself, why the superiority of
the masculine intellect did not, in these cases, permit it to discover
the defect in time? If we are so clever as to be bored by ordinary
women, why cannot our cleverness find out the feminine cleverness which
would respond to it?
What I am going to say now is in its very nature incapable of proof, and
yet the longer I live the more the truth of it is "borne in upon me." I
feel convinced that for every grade of the masculine intellect there
exists a corresponding grade of the feminine intellect, so that a
precisely suitable intellectual marriage is always possible for every
one. But since the higher intellects are rare, and rare in proportion to
their elevation, it follows that the difficulty of finding the true mate
increases with the mental strength and culture of the man. If the
"mental princes," as Blake called himself, are to marry the mental
princesses, they will not always discover them quite so easily as kings'
sons find kings' daughters.
This difficulty of finding the true mate is the real reason why so many
clever men marry silly or stupid women. The women about them seem to be
all very much alike, mentally; it seems hopeless to expect any real
companionship, and the clever men are decided by the color of a girl's
eyes, or a thousand pounds more in her dowry, or her relationship to a
peer of the realm.
It was remarked to me by a French university professor, that although
men in his position had on the whole much more culture than the middle
class, they had an extraordinary talent for winning the most vulgar and
ignorant wives. The explanation is, that their marriages are not
intellectual marriages at all. The class of French professors is not
advantageously situated; it has not great facilities for choice. Their
incomes are so small that, unless helped by private means, the first
thing they can prudently look to in a wife is her utility as a domestic
servant, which, in fact, it is her destiny to become. The intellectual
disparity is from the beginning likely to be very great, because the
professor is confined to the country-town where his _Lycée_ happens to
be situated, and in that town he does not always see the most cultivated
society. He may be an intellectual prince, but where is he to find his
princess? The marriage begins without the idea of intellectual
companionship, and it continues as it began. The girl was uneducated: it
seems hopeless to try to educate the woman; and then there is the
supreme difficulty, only to be overcome by two wills at once most
resolute and most persistent, namely, how to find the time. Years pass;
the husband is occupied all day, the wife needs to cheer herself with a
little society, and goes to sit with neighbors who are not likely to
add anything valuable to her knowledge or to give any elevation to her
thoughts. Then comes the final fixing and crystallization of her
intellect, after which, however much pains and labor might be taken by
the pair, she is past the possibility of change.
These women are often so good and devoted that their husbands enjoy
great happiness; but it is a kind of happiness curiously independent of
the lady's presence. The professor may love his wife, and fully
appreciate her qualities as a housekeeper, but he passes a more
interesting evening with some male friend whose reading is equal to his
own. Sometimes the lady perceives this, and it is an element of sadness
in her life.
"I never see my husband," she tells you, not in anger. "His work
occupies him all day, and in the evening he sees his friends." The pair
walk out together twice a week. I sometimes wonder what they say to each
other during those conjugal promenades. They talk about their children,
probably, and the little recurring difficulties about money. He cannot
talk about his studies, or the intellectual speculations which his
studies continually suggest.
The most extreme cases of intellectual separation between husband and
wife that ever came under my observation was, however, not that of a
French professor, but a highly-cultivated Scotch lawyer. He was one of
the most intellectual men I ever knew--a little cynical, but full of
original power, and uncommonly well-informed. His theory was, that women
ought not to be admitted into the region of masculine thought--that it
was not good for them; and he acted so consistently up to this theory,
that although he would open his mind with the utmost frankness to a male
acquaintance over the evening whisky-toddy, there was not whisky enough
in all Scotland to make him frank in the presence of his wife. She
really knew nothing whatever about his intellectual existence; and yet
there was nothing in his ways of thinking which an honorable man need
conceal from an intelligent woman. His theory worked well enough in
practice, and his reserve was so perfect that it may be doubted whether
even feminine subtlety ever suspected it. The explanation of his system
may perhaps have been this. He was an exceedingly busy man; he felt that
he had not time to teach his wife to know him as he was, and so
preferred to leave her with her own conception of him, rather than
disturb that conception when he believed it impossible to replace it by
a completely true one. We all act in that way with those whom we
consider _quite_ excluded from our private range of thought.
All this may be very prudent and wise: there may be degrees of conjugal
felicity, satisfactory in their way, without intellectual intercourse,
and yet I cannot think that any man of high culture could regard his
marriage as altogether a successful one so long as his wife remained
shut out from his mental life. Nor is the exclusion always quite
agreeable to the lady herself. A widow said to me that her husband had
never thought it necessary to try to raise her to his own level, yet she
believed that with his kindly help she might have attained it.
You with your masculine habits, may observe, as to this, that if the
lady had seriously cared to attain a higher level she might have
achieved it by her own private independent effort. But this is exactly
what the feminine nature never does. A clever woman is the best of
pupils, when she loves her teacher, but the worst of solitary learners.
It is not by adding to our knowledge, but by understanding us, that
women are our helpers. They understand us far better than men do, when
once they have the degree of preliminary information which enables them
to enter into our pursuits. Men are occupied with their personal works
and thoughts, and have wonderfully little sympathy left to enable them
to comprehend us; but a woman, by her divine sympathy--divine indeed,
since it was given by God for this--can enter into our inmost thought,
and make allowances for all our difficulties. Talk about your work and
its anxieties to a club of masculine friends, they will give very little
heed to you; they are all thinking about themselves, and they will
dislike your egotism because they have so much egotism of their own,
which yours invades and inconveniences. But talk in the same way to any
woman who has education enough to enable her to follow you, and she will
listen so kindly, and so very intelligently, that you will be betrayed
into interminable confidences.
Now, although an intellectual man may not care to make himself
understood by all the people in the street, it is not a good thing for
him to feel that he is understood by nobody. The intellectual life is
sometimes a fearfully solitary one. Unless he lives in a great capital
the man devoted to that life is more than all other men liable to suffer
from isolation, to feel utterly alone beneath the deafness of space and
the silence of the stars. Give him one friend who can understand him,
who will not leave him, who will always be accessible by day and
night--one friend, one kindly listener, just one, and the whole universe
is changed. It is deaf and indifferent no longer, and whilst _she_
listens, it seems as if all men and angels listened also, so perfectly
his thought is mirrored in the light of her answering eyes.
LETTER III.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The intellectual ideal of marriage--The danger of dulness--To be
counteracted only by the renewal of both minds--Example of Lady
Baker--Separation of the sexes by an old prejudice about
education--This prejudice on the decline--Influence of the late Prince
Consort.
How far may you hope to realize the intellectual ideal of marriage? Have
I ever observed in actual life any approximate realization of that
ideal?
These are the two questions which conclude and epitomize the last of
your recent letters. Let me endeavor to answer them as satisfactorily as
the obscurity of the subject will permit.
The intellectual ideal seems to be that of a conversation on all the
subjects you most care about, which should never lose its interest. Is
it possible that two people should live together and talk to each other
every day for twenty years without knowing each other's views too well
for them to seem worth expressing or worth listening to? There are
friends whom we know _too_ well, so that our talk with them has less of
refreshment and entertainment than a conversation with the first
intelligent stranger on the quarter-deck of the steamboat. It is evident
that from the intellectual point of view this is the great danger of
marriage. It may become dull, not because the mental force of either of
the parties has declined, but because each has come to know so
accurately beforehand what the other will say on any given topic, that
inquiry is felt to be useless. This too perfect intimacy, which has
ended many a friendship outside of marriage, may also terminate the
intellectual life in matrimony itself.
Let us not pass too lightly over this danger, for it is not to be
denied. Unless carefully provided against, it will gradually extinguish
the light that plays between the wedded intelligences as the electric
light burns between two carbon points.
I venture to suggest, however, that this evil may be counteracted by
persons of some energy and originality. This is one of those very
numerous cases in which an evil is sure to arrive if nothing is done to
prevent it, yet in which the evil need not arrive when those whom it
menaces are forewarned. To take an illustration intelligible in these
days of steam-engines. We know that if the water is allowed to get very
low in the boiler a destructive explosion will be the consequence; yet,
since every stoker is aware of this, such explosions are not of frequent
occurrence. That evil is continually approaching and yet continually
averted by the exercise of human foresight.
Let us suppose that a married couple are clearly aware that in the
course of years their society is sure to become mutually uninteresting
unless something is done to preserve the earlier zest of it. What is
that something?
That which an author does for the unknown multitude of his readers.
Every author who succeeds takes the trouble to renew his mind either by
fresh knowledge or new thoughts. Is it not at least equally worth while
to do as much to preserve the interest of marriage? Without undervaluing
the friendly adhesion of many readers, without affecting any contempt
for fame, which is dearer to the human heart than wealth itself whenever
it appears to be not wholly unattainable, may not I safely affirm that
the interest of married life, from its very _nearness_, has a still
stronger influence upon the mind of any thinking person, of either sex,
than the approbation of unnumbered readers in distinct countries or
continents? You never _see_ the effect of your thinking on your readers;
they live and die far away from you, a few write letters of praise or
criticism, the thousands give no sign. But the wife is with you always,
she is almost as near to you as your own body; the world, to you, is a
figure-picture in which there is one figure, the rest is merely
background. And if an author takes pains to renew his mind for the
people in the background, is it not at least equally worth your while to
bring fresh thought for the renewal of your life with her?
This, then, is my theory of the intellectual marriage, that the two
wedded intellects ought to renew themselves continually for each other.
And I argue that if this were done in earnest, the otherwise inevitable
dulness would be perpetually kept at bay.
To the other question, whether in actual life I have ever seen this
realized, I answer yes, in several instances.
Not in very many instances, yet in more than one. Women, when they have
conceived the idea that this renewal is necessary, have resolution
enough for the realization of it. There is hardly any task too hard for
them, if they believe it essential to the conjugal life. I could give
you the name and address of one who mastered Greek in order not to be
excluded from her husband's favorite pursuit; others have mastered other
languages for the same object, and even some branch of science for which
the feminine mind has less natural affinity than it has for imaginative
literature. Their remarkable incapacity for independent mental labor is
accompanied by an equally remarkable capacity for labor under an
accepted masculine guidance. In this connection I may without
impropriety mention one Englishwoman, for she is already celebrated, the
wife of Sir Samuel Baker, the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza. She stood
with him on the shore of that unknown sea, when first it was beheld by
English eyes; she had passed with him through all the hard preliminary
toils and trials. She had learned Arabic with him in a year of necessary
but wearisome delay; her mind had travelled with his mind as her feet
had followed his footsteps. Scarcely less beautiful, if less heroic, is
the picture of the geologist's wife, Mrs. Buckland, who taught herself
to reconstruct broken fossils, and did it with a surprising delicacy,
and patience, and skill, full of science, yet more than science, the
perfection of feminine art.
The privacy of married life often prevents us from knowing the extent to
which intelligent women have renewed their minds by fresh and varied
culture for the purpose of retaining their ascendency over their
husbands, or to keep up the interest of their lives. It is done much
more frequently by women than by men. They have so much less egotism, so
much more adaptability, that they fit themselves to us oftener than we
adapt ourselves to them. But in a quiet perfect marriage these efforts
would be mutual. The husband would endeavor to make life interesting to
his companion by taking a share in some pursuit which was really her
own. It is easier for us than it was for our ancestors to do this--at
least for our immediate ancestors. There existed, fifty years ago, a
most irrational prejudice, very strongly rooted in the social
conventions of the time, about masculine and feminine accomplishments.
The educations of the two sexes were so trenchantly separated that
neither had access to the knowledge of the other. The men had learned
Latin and Greek, of which the women were ignorant; the women had learned
French or Italian, which the men could neither read nor speak. The
ladies studied fine art, not seriously, but it occupied a good deal of
their time and thoughts; the gentlemen had a manly contempt for it,
which kept them, as contempt always does, in a state of absolute
ignorance. The intellectual separation of the sexes was made as complete
as possible by the conventionally received idea that a man could not
learn what girls learned without effeminacy, and that if women aspired
to men's knowledge they would forfeit the delicacy of their sex. This
illogical prejudice was based on a bad syllogism of this kind:--
Girls speak French, and learn music and drawing.
Benjamin speaks French, and learns music and drawing.
Benjamin is a girl.
And the prejudice, powerful as it was, had not even the claim of any
considerable antiquity. Think how strange and unreasonable it would have
seemed to Lady Jane Grey and Sir Philip Sidney! In their time, ladies
and gentlemen studied the same things, the world of culture was the same
for both, and they could meet in it as in a garden.
Happily we are coming back to the old rational notion of culture as
independent of the question of sex. Latin and Greek are not unfeminine;
they were spoken by women in Athens and Rome; the modern languages are
fit for a man to learn, since men use them continually on the
battle-fields and in the parliaments and exchanges of the world. Art is
a manly business, if ever any human occupation could be called manly,
for the utmost efforts of the strongest men are needed for success in
it.
The increasing interest in the fine arts, the more important position
given to modern languages in the universities, the irresistible
attractions and growing authority of science, all tend to bring men and
women together on subjects understood by both, and therefore operate
directly in favor of intellectual interests in marriage. You will not
suspect me of a snobbish desire to pay compliments to royalty if I trace
some of these changes in public opinion to the example and influence of
the Prince Consort, operating with some effect during his life, yet with
far greater force since he was taken away from us. The truth is, that
the most modern English ideal of gentlemanly culture is that which
Prince Albert, to a great extent, realized in his own person. Perhaps
his various accomplishments may be a little embellished or exaggerated
in the popular belief, but it is unquestionable that his notion of
culture was very large and liberal, and quite beyond the narrow pedantry
of the preceding age. There was nothing in it to exclude a woman, and we
know that she who loved him entered largely into the works and
recreations of his life.
LETTER IV.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
Women do not of themselves undertake intellectual labor--Their
resignation to ignorance--Absence of scientific curiosity in
women--They do not accumulate accurate knowledge--Archimedes in his
bath--Rarity of inventions due to women--Exceptions.
Before saying much about the influence of marriage on the intellectual
life, it is necessary to make some inquiry into the intellectual nature
of women.
The first thing to be noted is that, with exceptions so rare as to be
practically of no importance to an argument, women do not of themselves
undertake intellectual labor. Even in the situations most favorable for
labor of that kind, women do not undertake it unless they are urged to
it, and directed in it, by some powerful masculine influence. In the
absence of that influence, although their minds are active, that
activity neither tends to discipline nor to the accumulation of
knowledge. Women who are not impelled by some masculine influence are
not superior, either in knowledge or discipline of the mind, at the age
of fifty to what they were at the age of twenty-five. In other words,
they have not in themselves the motive powers which can cause an
intellectual advance.
The best illustration of this is a sisterhood of three or four rich old
maids, with all the advantages of leisure. You will observe that they
invariably remain, as to their education, where they were left by their
teachers many years before. They will often lament, perhaps, that in
their day education was very inferior to what it is now; but it never
occurs to them that the large leisure of subsequent years might, had it
been well employed, have supplied those deficiencies of which they are
sensible. Nothing is more curiously remote from masculine habits than
the resignation to particular degrees of ignorance, as to the
inevitable, which a woman will express in a manner which says: "You know
I am so; you know that I cannot make myself better informed." They are
like perfect billiard-balls on a perfect table, which stop when no
longer impelled, wherever they may happen to be.
It is this absence of intellectual initiative which causes the great
ignorance of women. What they have been well taught, that they know, but
they do not increase their stores of knowledge. Even in what most
interests them, theology, they repeat, but do not extend, their
information. All the effort of their minds appears (so far as an outside
observer may presume to judge) to act like water on a picture, which
brings out the colors that already exist upon the canvas but does not
add anything to the design. There is a great and perpetual freshness and
vividness in their conceptions, which is often lacking in our own. Our
conceptions fade, and are replaced; theirs are not replaced, but
refreshed.
What many women do for their theological conceptions or opinions, others
do with reference to the innumerable series of questions of all kinds
which present themselves in the course of life. They attempt to solve
them by the help of knowledge acquired in girlhood; and if that cannot
be done, they either give them up as beyond the domain of women, or else
trust to hearsay for a solution. What they will _not_ do is to hunt the
matter out unaided, and get an accurate answer by dint of independent
investigation.
There is another characteristic of women, not peculiar to them, for many
men have it in an astonishing degree, and yet more general in the female
sex than in the male: I allude to the absence of scientific curiosity.
Ladies see things of the greatest wonder and interest working in their
presence and for their service without feeling impelled to make any
inquiries into the manner of their working. I could mention many very
curious instances of this, but I select one which seems typical. Many
years ago I happened to be in a room filled with English ladies, most of
whom were highly intelligent, and the conversation happened to turn upon
a sailing-boat which belonged to me. One of the ladies observed that
sails were not of much use, since they could only be available to push
the boat in the direction of the wind; a statement which all the other
ladies received with approbation. Now, all these ladies had seen ships
working under canvas against head-winds, and they might have reflected
that without that portion of the art of seamanship every vessel
unprovided with steam would assuredly drift upon a lee-shore; but it was
not in the feminine nature to make a scientific observation of that
kind. You will answer, perhaps, that I could scarcely expect ladies to
investigate men's business, and that seamanship is essentially the
business of our own sex. But the truth is, that all English people, no
matter of what sex, have so direct an interest in the maritime activity
of England, that they might reasonably be expected to know the one
primary conquest on which for many centuries that activity has depended,
the conquest of the opposing wind, the sublimest of the early victories
of science. And this absence of curiosity in women extends to things
they use every day. They never seem to want to know the insides of
things as we do. All ladies know that steam makes a locomotive go; but
they rest satisfied with that, and do not inquire further _how_ the
steam sets the wheels in motion. They know that it is necessary to wind
up their watches, but they do not care to inquire into the real effects
of that little exercise of force.
Now this absence of the investigating spirit has very wide and important
consequences. The first consequence of it is that women do not naturally
accumulate accurate knowledge. Left to themselves, they accept various
kinds of teaching, but they do not by any analysis of their own either
put that teaching to any serious intellectual test, or qualify
themselves for any extension of it by independent and original
discovery. We of the male sex are seldom clearly aware how much of our
practical force, of the force which discovers and originates, is due to
our common habit of analytical observation; yet it is scarcely too much
to say that most of our inventions have been suggested by actually or
intellectually pulling something else in pieces. And such of our
discoveries as cannot be traced directly to analysis are almost always
due to habits of general observation which lead us to take note of some
fact apparently quite remote from what it helps us to arrive at. One of
the best instances of this indirect utility of habitual observation, as
it is one of the earliest, is what occurred to Archimedes in his bath.
When the water displaced by his body overflowed, he noticed the fact of
displacement, and at once perceived its applicability to the cubic
measurement of complicated bodies. It is possible that if his mind had
not been exercised at the time about the adulteration of the royal
crown, it would not have been led to anything by the overflowing of his
bath; but the capacity to receive a suggestion of that kind is, I
believe, a capacity exclusively masculine. A woman would have noticed
the overflowing, but she would have noticed it only as a cause of
disorder or inconvenience.
This absence of the investigating and discovering tendencies in women is
confirmed by the extreme rarity of inventions due to women, even in the
things which most interest and concern them. The stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are the two inventions which would most naturally have
been hit upon by women, for people are naturally inventive about things
which relieve _themselves_ of labor, or which increase their own
possibilities of production; and yet the stocking-loom and the
sewing-machine are both of them masculine ideas, carried out to
practical efficiency by masculine energy and perseverance. So I believe
that all the improvements in pianos are due to men, though women have
used pianos much more than men have used them.
This, then, is in my view the most important negative characteristic of
women, that they do not push forwards intellectually by their own force.
There have been a few instances in which they have written with power
and originality, have become learned, and greatly superior, no doubt, to
the majority of men. There are three or four women in England, and as
many on the Continent, who have lived intellectually in harness for many
years, and who unaffectedly delight in strenuous intellectual labor,
giving evidence both of fine natural powers and the most persevering
culture; but these women have usually been encouraged in their work by
some near masculine influence. And even if it were possible, which it is
not, to point to some female Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci, it is not
the rare exceptions which concern us, but the prevalent rule of Nature.
Without desiring to compare our most learned ladies with anything so
disagreeable to the eye as a bearded woman, I may observe that Nature
generally has a few exceptions to all her rules, and that as women
having beards are a physical exception, so women who naturally study and
investigate are intellectual exceptions. Once more let me repudiate any
malicious intention in establishing so unfortunate and _maladroite_ an
association of ideas, for nothing is less agreeable than a woman with a
beard, whilst, on the contrary, the most intellectual of women may at
the same time be the most permanently charming.
LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO CONTEMPLATED MARRIAGE.
The danger of deviation--Danger from increased expenditure--Nowhere so
great as in England--Complete absorption in business--Case of a
tradesman--Case of a solicitor--The pursuit of comfort dangerous to
the Intellectual Life--The meanness of its results--Fireside
purposes--Danger of deviation in rich marriages--George Sand's study
of this in her story of "Valvèdre."
Amongst the dangers of marriage, one of those most to be dreaded by a
man given to intellectual pursuits is the deviation which, in one way or
other, marriage inevitably produces. It acts like the pointsman on a
railway, who, by pulling a lever, sends the train in another direction.
The married man never goes, or hardly ever goes, exactly on the same
intellectual lines which he would have followed if he had remained a
bachelor. This deviation may or may not be a gain; it is always a most
serious danger.
Sometimes the deviation is produced by the necessity for a stricter
attention to money, causing a more unremitting application to work that
pays well, and a proportionate neglect of that which can only give
extension to our knowledge and clearness to our views.
In no country is this danger so great as it is in England, where the
generally expensive manner of living, and the prevalent desire to keep
families in an ideally perfect state of physical comfort, produce an
absorption in business which in all but the rarest instances leaves no
margin for intellectual labor. There are, no doubt, some remarkable
examples of men earning a large income by a laborious profession, who
have gained reputation in one of the sciences or in some branch of
literature, but these are very exceptional cases. A man who works at his
profession as most Englishmen with large families have to work, can
seldom enjoy that surplus of nervous energy which would be necessary to
carry him far in literature or science. I remember meeting an English
tradesman in the railway between Paris and the coast, who told me that
he was obliged to visit France very frequently, yet could not speak
French, which was a great deficiency and inconvenience to him. "Why not
learn?" I then asked, and received the following answer:
"I have to work at my business all day long, and often far into the
night. When the day's work is over I generally feel very tired, and want
rest; but if I don't happen to feel quite so tired, then it is not work
that I need, but recreation, of which I get very little. I never feel
the courage to set to work at the French grammar, though it would be
both pleasant and useful to me to know French; indeed, I constantly feel
the want of it. It might, perhaps, be possible to learn from a
phrase-book in the railway train, but to save time I always travel at
night. Being a married man, I have to give my whole attention to my
business."
A solicitor with a large practice in London held nearly the same
language. He worked at his office all day, and often brought home the
most difficult work for the quiet of his own private study after the
household had gone to bed. The little reading that he could indulge in
was light reading. In reality the profession intruded even on his few
hours of leisure, for he read many of the columns in the _Times_ which
relate to law or legislation, and these make at the end of a few years
an amount of reading sufficient for the mastery of a foreign literature.
This gentleman answered very accurately to M. Taine's description of
the typical Englishman, absorbed in business and the _Times_.
In these cases it is likely that the effect of marriage was not inwardly
felt as a deviation; but when culture has been fairly begun, and
marriage hinders the pursuit of it, or makes it deviate from the chosen
path, then there is often an inward consciousness of the fact, not
without its bitterness.
A remarkable article on "Luxury," in the second volume of the _Cornhill
Magazine_, deals with this subject in a manner evidently suggested by
serious reflection and experience. The writer considers the effects of
the pursuit of comfort (never carried so far as it is now) on the higher
moral and intellectual life. The comforts of a bachelor were not what
the writer meant; these are easily procured, and seldom require the
devotion of all the energies. The "comfort" which is really dangerous to
intellectual growth is that of a family establishment, because it so
easily becomes the one absorbing object of existence. Men who began life
with the feeling that they would willingly devote their powers to great
purposes, like the noble examples of past times who labored and suffered
for the intellectual advancement of their race, and had starvation for
their reward, or in some cases even the prison and the stake--men who in
their youth felt themselves to be heirs of a nobility of spirit like
that of Bruno, of Swammerdam, of Spinoza, have too often found
themselves in the noon of life concentrating all the energies of body
and soul on the acquisition of ugly millinery and uglier upholstery, and
on spreading extravagant tables to feed uncultivated guests.
"It is impossible," says the writer of the article just alluded to, "it
is impossible to say why men were made, but assuming that they were made
for some purpose, of which the faculties which they possess afford
evidence, it follows that they were intended to do many other things
besides providing for their families and enjoying their society. They
were meant to know, to act, and to feel--to know everything which the
mind is able to contemplate, to name, and to classify; to do everything
which the will, prompted by the passions and guided by the conscience,
can undertake; and, subject to the same guidance, to feel in its utmost
vigor every emotion which the contemplation of the various persons and
objects which surround us can excite. This view of the objects of life
affords an almost infinite scope for human activity in different
directions; but it also shows that it is in the highest degree dangerous
to its beauty and its worth to allow any one side of life to become the
object of idolatry; and there are many reasons for thinking that
domestic happiness is rapidly assuming that position in the minds of the
more comfortable classes of Englishmen.... It is a singular and
affecting thing, to see how every manifestation of human energy bears
witness to the shrewdness of the current maxim that a large income is a
necessary of life. Whatever is done for money is done admirably well.
Give a man a specific thing to make or to write, and pay him well for
it, and you may with a little trouble secure an excellent article; but
the ability which does these things so well, might have been and ought
to have been trained to far higher things, which for the most part are
left undone, because the clever workman thinks himself bound to earn
what will keep himself, his wife, and his six or seven children, up to
the established standard of comfort. What was at first a necessity,
perhaps an unwelcome one, becomes by degrees a habit and a pleasure, and
men who might have done memorable and noble things, if they had learnt
in time to consider the doing of such things an object worth living for,
lose the power and the wish to live for other than fireside purposes."
But this kind of intellectual deviation, you may answer, is not strictly
the consequence of marriage, _quâ_ marriage; it is one of the
consequences of a degree of relative poverty, produced by the larger
expenditure of married life, but which might be just as easily produced
by a certain degree of money-pressure in the condition of a bachelor.
Let me therefore point out a kind of deviation which may be as
frequently observed in rich marriages as in poor ones. Suppose the case
of a bachelor with a small but perfectly independent income amounting to
some hundreds a year, who is devoted to intellectual pursuits, and
spends his time in study or with cultivated friends of his own, choosing
friends whose society is an encouragement and a help. Suppose that this
man makes an exceedingly prudent marriage, with a rich woman, you may
safely predict, in this instance, intellectual deviations of a kind
perilous to the highest culture. He will have new calls upon his time,
his society will no longer be entirely of his own choosing, he will no
longer be able to devote himself with absolute singleness of purpose to
studies from which his wife must necessarily be excluded. If he were to
continue faithful to his old habits, and shut himself up every day in
his library or laboratory, or set out on frequent scientific
expeditions, his wife would either be a lady of quite extraordinary
perfection of temper, or else entirely indifferent in her feelings
towards him, if she did not regard his pursuits with quickly-increasing
jealousy. She would think, and justifiably think, that he ought to give
more of his time to the enjoyment of her society, that he ought to be
more by her side in the carriage and in the drawing-room, and if he
loved her he would yield to these kindly and reasonable wishes. He would
spend many hours of every day in a manner not profitable to his great
pursuits, and many weeks of every year in visits to her friends. His
position would be even less favorable to study in some respects than
that of a professional man. It would be difficult for him, if an amateur
artist, to give that unremitting attention to painting which the
professional painter gives. He could not say, "I do this for you and for
our children;" he could only say, "I do it for my own pleasure," which
is not so graceful an excuse. As a bachelor, he might work as
professional people work, but his marriage would strongly accentuate the
amateur character of his position. It is possible that if his labors had
won great fame the lady might bear the separation more easily, for
ladies always take a noble pride in the celebrity of their husbands; but
the best and worthiest intellectual labor often brings no fame whatever,
and notoriety is a mere accident of some departments of the intellectual
life, and not its ultimate object.
George Sand, in her admirable novel "Valvèdre," has depicted a situation
of this kind with the most careful delicacy of touch. Valvèdre was a man
of science, who attempted to continue the labors of his intellectual
life after marriage had united him to a lady incapable of sharing them.
The reader pities both, and sympathizes with both. It is hard, on the
one hand, that a man endowed by nature with great talents for scientific
work should not go on with a career already gloriously begun; and yet,
on the other hand, a woman who is so frequently abandoned for science
may blamelessly feel some jealousy of science.
Valvèdre, in narrating the story of his unhappy wedded life, said that
Alida wished to have at her orders a perfect gentleman to accompany
her, but that he felt in himself a more serious ambition. He had not
aimed at fame, but he had thought it possible to become a useful
servant, bringing his share of patient and courageous seekings to the
edifice of the sciences. He had hoped that Alida would understand this.
"'There is time enough for everything,' she said, still retaining him in
the useless wandering life that she had chosen. 'Perhaps,' he answered,
'but on condition that I lose no more of it; and it is not in this
wandering life, cut to pieces by a thousand unforeseen interruptions,
that I can make the hours yield their profit.'
"'Ah! we come to the point!' exclaimed Alida impetuously. 'You wish to
leave me, and to travel alone in impossible regions.'
"'No, I will work near you and abandon certain observations which it
would be necessary to make at too great a distance, but you also will
sacrifice something: we will not see so many idle people, we will settle
somewhere for a fixed time. It shall be where you will, and if the place
does not suit you, we will try another; but from time to time you will
permit me a phase of sedentary work.'
"'Yes, yes, you want to live for yourself alone; you have lived enough
for me. I understand; your love is satiated and at an end.'
"Nothing could conquer her conviction _that study was her rival_, and
that love was only possible in idleness.
"'To love is everything,' she said; 'and he who loves has not time to
concern himself with anything else. Whilst the husband is intoxicating
himself with the marvels of science, the wife languishes and dies. It is
the destiny which awaits me; and since I am a burden to you, I should do
better to die at once.'
"A little later Valvèdre ventured to hint something about work, hoping
to conquer his wife's _ennui_, on which she proclaimed the hatred of
work as a sacred right of her nature and position.
"'Nobody ever taught me to work,' she said, 'and I did not marry under a
promise to begin again at the _a_, _b_, _c_ of things. Whatever I know I
have learned by intuition, by reading without aim or method. I am a
woman; my destiny is to love my husband and bring up children. It is
very strange that my husband should be the person who counsels me to
think of something better.'"
I am far from suggesting that Madame Valvèdre is an exact representative
of her sex, but the sentiments which in her are exaggerated, and
expressed with passionate plainness, are in much milder form very
prevalent sentiments indeed; and Valvèdre's great difficulty, how to get
leave to prosecute his studies with the degree of devotion necessary to
make them fruitful, is not at all an uncommon difficulty with
intellectual men after marriage. The character of Madame Valvèdre, being
passionate and excessive, led her to an open expression of her
feelings; but feelings of a like kind, though milder in degree, exist
frequently below the surface, and may be detected by any vigilant
observer of human nature. That such feelings are very natural it is
impossible even for a _savant_ to deny; but whilst admitting the clear
right of a woman to be preferred by a man to science when once he has
married her, let me observe that the man might perhaps do wisely, before
the knot is tied, to ascertain whether her intellectual dowry is rich
enough to compensate him for the sacrifices she is likely to exact.
LETTER VI.
TO A SOLITARY STUDENT.
Need of a near intellectual friendship in solitude--Persons who live
independently of custom run a peculiar risk in marriage--Women by
nature more subservient to custom than men are--Difficulty of
conciliating solitude and marriage--De Sénancour--The marriages of
eccentrics--Their wives either protect them or attempt to reform them.
Isolated as you are, by the very superiority of your culture, from the
ignorant provincial world around you, I cannot but believe that marriage
is essential to your intellectual health and welfare. If you married
some cultivated woman, bred in the cultivated society of a great
capital, that companionship would give you an independence of
surrounding influences which nothing else can give. You fancy that by
shutting yourself up in a country house you are uninfluenced by the
world around you. It is a great error. You know that you are isolated,
that you are looked upon and probably ridiculed as an eccentric, and
this knowledge, which it is impossible to banish from your mind,
deprives your thinking of elasticity and grace. You urgently need the
support of an intellectual friendship quite near to you, under your own
roof. Bachelors in great cities feel this necessity less.
Still remember, that whoever has arranged his life independently of
custom runs a peculiar risk in marriage. Women are by nature far more
subservient to custom than we are, more than we can easily conceive. The
danger of marriage, for a person of your tastes, is that a woman
entering your house might enter it as the representative of that
minutely-interfering authority which you continually ignore. And let us
never forget that a perfect obedience to custom requires great
sacrifices of time and money that you might not be disposed to make, and
which certainly would interfere with study. You value and enjoy your
solitude, well knowing how great a thing it is to be master of all your
hours. It is difficult to conciliate solitude, or even a wise and
suitable selection of acquaintances, with the semi-publicity of
marriage. Heads of families receive many persons in their houses whom
they would never have invited, and from whose society they derive little
pleasure and no profit. De Sénancour had plans of studious retirement,
and hoped that the "_douce intimité_" of marriage might be compatible
with these cherished projects. But marriage, he found, drew him into the
circle of ordinary provincial life, and he always suffered from its
influences.
You are necessarily an eccentric. In the neighborhood where you live it
is an eccentricity to study, for nobody but you studies anything. A man
so situated is fortunate when this feeling of eccentricity is
alleviated, and unfortunate when it is increased. A wife would certainly
do one or the other. Married to a very superior woman, able to
understand the devotion to intellectual aims, you would be much relieved
of the painful consciousness of eccentricity; but a woman of less
capacity would intensify it.
So far as we can observe the married life of others, it seems to me that
I have met with instances of men, constituted and occupied very much as
you are, who have found in marriage a strong protection against the
ignorant judgments of their neighbors, and an assurance of intellectual
peace; whilst in other cases it has appeared rather as if their solitude
were made more a cause of conscious suffering, as if the walls of their
cabinets were pulled down for the boobies outside to stare at them and
laugh at them. A woman will either take your side against the customs of
the little world around, or she will take the side of custom against
you. If she loves you deeply, and if there is some visible result of
your labors in fame and money, she may possibly do the first, and then
she will protect your tranquillity better than a force of policemen, and
give you a delightful sense of reconciliation with all humanity; but
many of her most powerful instincts tend the other way. She has a
natural sympathy with all the observances of custom, and you neglect
them; she is fitted for social life, which you are not. Unless you win
her wholly to your side, she may undertake the enterprise of curing your
eccentricities and adapting you to the ideal of her caste. This may be
highly satisfactory to the operator, but it is full of inconveniences to
the patient.
LETTER VII.
TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE WHO FOUND IT DIFFICULT TO ASSOCIATE WITH
PERSONS OF HER OWN SEX.
Men are not very good judges of feminine conversation--The interest of
it would be increased if women could be more freely initiated into
great subjects--Small subjects interesting when seen in relation to
central ideas--That ladies of superior faculty ought rather to elevate
female society than withdraw from it--Women when displaced do not
appear happy.
What you confided to me in our last interesting conversation has given
me material for reflection, and afforded a glimpse of a state of things
which I have sometimes suspected without having data for any positive
conclusion. The society of women is usually sought by men during hours
of mental relaxation, and we naturally find such a charm in their mere
presence, especially when they are graceful or beautiful, that we are
not very severe or even accurate judges of the abstract intellectual
quality of their talk. But a woman cannot feel the indescribable charm
which wins us so easily, and I have sometimes thought that a superior
person of your sex might be aware of certain deficiencies in her sisters
which men very readily overlook. You tell me that you feel embarrassed
in the society of ladies, because they know so little about the subjects
which interest you, and are astonished when you speak about anything
really worth attention. On the other hand, you feel perfectly at ease
with men of ability and culture, and most at your ease with men of the
best ability and the most eminent attainments. What you complain of
chiefly in women seems to be their impatience of varieties of thought
which are unfamiliar to them, and their constant preference for small
topics.
It has long been felt by men that if women could be more freely
initiated into great subjects the interest of general conversation would
be much increased. The difficulty appears to lie in their instinctive
habit of making all questions personal questions. The etiquette of
society makes it quite impossible for men to speak to ladies in the
manner which would be intellectually most profitable to them. We may
not teach because it is pedantic, and we may not contradict, because it
is rude. Most of the great subjects are conventionally held to be
closed, so that it is a sin against good taste to discuss them. In every
house the ladies have a set of fixed convictions of some kind, which it
is not polite in any man to appear to doubt. The consequence of these
conventional rules is that women live in an atmosphere of acquiescence
which makes them intolerant of anything like bold and original thinking
on important subjects. But as the mind always requires free play of some
kind, when all the great subjects are forbidden it will use its activity
in playing about little ones.
For my part I hardly think it desirable for any of us to be incessantly
coping with great subjects, and the ladies are right in taking a lively
interest in the small events around them. But even the small events
would have a deeper interest if they were seen in their true relations
to the great currents of European thought and action. It is probably the
ignorance of these relations which, more than the smallness of the
topics themselves, makes feminine talk fatiguing to you. Very small
things indeed have an interest when exhibited in relation to larger, as
men of science are continually demonstrating. I have been taking note
lately of the talk that goes on around me, and I find that when it is
shallow and wearisome it is always because the facts mentioned bear no
reference to any central or governing idea, and do not illustrate
anything. Conversation is interesting in proportion to the originality
of the central ideas which serve as pivots, and the fitness of the
little facts and observations which are contributed by the talkers. For
instance, if people happened to be talking about rats, and some one
informed you that he had seen a rat last week, that would be quite
uninteresting: but you would listen with greater attention if he said;
"The other night, as I was going up stairs very late, I followed a very
fine rat who was going up stairs too, and he was not in the least
hurried, but stopped after every two or three steps to have a look at me
and my candle. He was very prettily marked about the face and tail, so I
concluded that he was not a common rat, but probably a lemming. Two
nights afterwards I met him again, and this time he seemed almost to
know me, for he quietly made room for me as I passed. Very likely he
might be easily tamed." This is interesting, because, though the fact
narrated is still trifling, it illustrates animal character.
If you will kindly pardon an "improvement" of this subject, as a
preacher would call it, I might add that an intellectual lady like
yourself might, perhaps, do better to raise the tone of the feminine
talk around her than to withdraw from it in weariness. There are always,
in every circle, a few superior persons who, either from natural
diffidence, or because they are not very rich, or because they are too
young, suffer themselves to be entirely overwhelmed by the established
mediocrity around them. What they need is a leader, a deliverer. Is it
not in your power to render services of this kind? Could you not select
from the younger ladies whom you habitually meet, a few who, like
yourself, feel bored by the dulness or triviality of what you describe
as the current feminine conversation? There is often a painful shyness
which prevents people of real ability from using it for the advantage of
others, and this shyness is nowhere so common as in England, especially
provincial England. It feels the want of a hardy example. A lady who
talked really well would no doubt run some risk of being rather
unpleasantly isolated at first, but surely, if she tried, she might
ultimately find accomplices. You could do much, to begin with, by
recommending high-toned literature, and gradually awakening an interest
in what is truly worth attention. It seems lamentable that every
cultivated woman should be forced out of the society of her own sex, and
made to depend upon ours for conversation of that kind which is an
absolute necessity to the intellectual. The truth is, that women so
displaced never appear altogether happy. And culture costs so much
downright hard work, that it ought not to be paid for by any suffering
beyond those toils which are its fair and natural price.
LETTER VIII.
TO A LADY OF HIGH CULTURE.
Greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women--They do not
hear truth--Men disguise their thoughts for women--Cream and
curaçoa--Probable permanence of the desire to please women--Most truth
in cultivated society--Hopes from the increase of culture.
I think that the greatest misfortune in the intellectual life of women
is that they do not hear the truth from men.
All men in cultivated society say to women as much as possible that
which they may be supposed to wish to hear, and women are so much
accustomed to this that they can scarcely hear without resentment an
expression of opinion which takes no account of their personal and
private feeling. The consideration for the feelings of women gives an
agreeable tone to society, but it is fatal to the severity of truth.
Observe a man of the world whose opinions are well known to you,--notice
the little pause before he speaks to a lady. During that little pause he
is turning over what he has to say, so as to present it in the manner
that will please her best; and you may be sure that the integrity of
truth will suffer in the process. If we compare what we know of the man
with that which the lady hears from him, we perceive the immense
disadvantages of her position. He ascertains what will please her, and
that is what he administers. He professes to take a deep interest in
things which he does not care for in the least, and he passes lightly
over subjects and events which he knows to be of the most momentous
importance to the world. The lady spends an hour more agreeably than if
she heard opinions which would irritate, and prognostics which would
alarm her, but she has missed an opportunity for culture, she has been
confirmed in feminine illusions. If this happened only from time to
time, the effect would not tell so much on the mental constitution; but
it is incessant, it is continual. Men disguise their thoughts for women
as if to venture into the feminine world were as dangerous as travelling
in Arabia, or as if the thoughts themselves were criminal.
There appeared two or three years ago in _Punch_ a clever drawing which
might have served as an illustration to this subject. A fashionable
doctor was visiting a lady in Belgravia who complained that she suffered
from debility. Cod-liver oil being repugnant to her taste, the agreeable
doctor, wise in his generation, blandly suggested as an effective
substitute a mixture of cream and curaçoa. What that intelligent man did
for his patient's physical constitution, all men of politeness do for
the intellectual constitution of ladies. Instead of administering the
truth which would strengthen, though unpalatable, they administer
intellectual cream and curaçoa.
The primary cause of this tendency to say what is most pleasing to
women is likely to be as permanent as the distinction of sex itself. It
springs directly from sexual feelings, it is hereditary and instinctive.
Men will never talk to women with that rough frankness which they use
between themselves. Conversation between the sexes will always be
partially insincere. Still I think that the more women are respected,
the more men will desire to be approved by them for what they are in
reality, and the less they will care for approval which is obtained by
dissimulation. It may be observed already that, in the most intellectual
society of great capitals, men are considerably more outspoken before
women than they are in the provincial middle-classes. Where women have
most culture, men are most open and sincere. Indeed, the highest culture
has a direct tendency to command sincerity in others, both because it is
tolerant of variety in opinion, and because it is so penetrating that
dissimulation is felt to be of no use. By the side of an uncultivated
woman, a man feels that if he says anything different from what she has
been accustomed to she will take offence, whilst if he says anything
beyond the narrow range of her information he will make her cold and
uncomfortable. The most honest of men, in such a position, finds it
necessary to be very cautious, and can scarcely avoid a little
insincerity. But with a woman of culture equal to his own, these causes
for apprehension have no existence, and he can safely be more himself.
These considerations lead me to hope that as culture becomes more
general women will hear truth more frequently. Whenever this comes to
pass, it will be, to them, an immense intellectual gain.
LETTER IX.
TO A YOUNG MAN OF THE MIDDLE CLASS, WELL EDUCATED, WHO COMPLAINED THAT
IT WAS DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO LIVE AGREEABLY WITH HIS MOTHER, A PERSON OF
SOMEWHAT AUTHORITATIVE DISPOSITION, BUT UNEDUCATED.
A sort of misunderstanding common in modern households--Intolerance of
inaccuracy--A false position--A lady not easily
intimidated--Difficulty of arguing when you have to teach--Instance
about the American War--The best course in discussion with
ladies--Women spoilt by non-contradiction--They make all questions
personal--The strength of their feelings--Their indifference to
matters of fact.
I have been thinking a good deal, and seriously, since we last met,
about the subject of our conversation, which though a painful one is not
to be timidly avoided. The degree of unhappiness in your little
household, which ought to be one of the pleasantest of households, yet
which, as you confided to me, is overshadowed by a continual
misunderstanding, is, I fear, very common indeed at the present day. It
is only by great forbearance, and great skill, that any household in
which persons of very different degrees of culture have to live together
on terms of equality, can be maintained in perfect peace; and neither
the art nor the forbearance is naturally an attribute of youth. A man
whose scholarly attainments were equal to your own, and whose experience
of men and women was wider, could no doubt offer you counsel both wise
and practical, yet I can hardly say that I should like you better if you
followed it. I cannot blame you for having the natural characteristics
of your years, an honest love of the best truth that you have attained
to, an intolerance of inaccuracy on all subjects, a simple faith in the
possibility of teaching others, even elderly ladies, when they happen to
know less than yourself. All these characteristics are in themselves
blameless; and yet in your case, and in thousands of other similar
cases, they often bring clouds of storm and trial upon houses which, in
a less rapidly progressive century than our own, might have been blessed
with uninterrupted peace. The truth is, that you are in a false position
relatively to your mother, and your mother is in a false position
relatively to you. She expects deference, and deference is scarcely
compatible with contradiction; certainly, if there be contradiction at
all, it must be very rare, very careful, and very delicate. You, on the
other hand, although no doubt full of respect and affection for your
mother in your heart, cannot hear her authoritatively enunciating
anything that you know to be erroneous, without feeling irresistibly
urged to set her right. She is rather a talkative lady; she does not
like to hear a conversation going forward without taking a part in it,
and rather an important part, so that whatever subject is talked about
in her presence, that subject she will talk about also. Even before
specialists your mother has an independence of opinion, and a degree of
faith in her own conclusions, which would be admirable if they were
founded upon right reason and a careful study of the subject. Medical
men, and even lawyers, do not intimidate her; she is convinced that she
knows more about disease than the physician, and more about legal
business than an old attorney. In theology no parson can approach her;
but here a woman may consider herself on her own ground, as theology is
the speciality of women.
All this puts you out of patience, and it is intelligible that, for a
young gentleman of intellectual habits and somewhat ardent temperament
like yourself, it must be at times rather trying to have an AUTHORITY at
hand ever ready to settle all questions in a decisive manner. To you I
have no counsel to offer but that of unconditional submission. You have
the weakness to enter into arguments when to sustain them you must
assume the part of a teacher. In arguing with a person already
well-informed upon the subject in dispute, you may politely refer to
knowledge which he already possesses, but when he does not possess the
knowledge you cannot argue with him; you must first teach him, you must
become didactic, and therefore odious. I remember a great scene which
took place between you and your mother concerning the American War. It
was brought on by a too precise answer of yours relatively to your
friend B., who had emigrated to America. You mother asked to what part
of America B. had emigrated, and you answered, "The Argentine Republic."
A shade of displeasure clouded your mother's countenance, because she
did not know where the Argentine Republic might be, and betrayed it by
her manner. You imprudently added that it was in South America. "Yes,
yes, I know very well," she answered; "there was a great battle there
during the American War. It is well your friend was not there under
Jefferson Davis." Now, permit me to observe, my estimable young friend,
that this was what the French call a fine opportunity for holding your
tongue, but your missed it. Fired with an enthusiasm for truth (always
dangerous to the peace of families), you began to explain to the good
lady that the Argentine Republic, though in South America, was not one
of the Southern States of the Union. This led to a scene of which I was
the embarrassed and unwilling witness. Your mother vehemently affirmed
that all the Southern States had been under Jefferson Davis, that she
knew the fact perfectly, that it had always been known to every one
during the war, and that, consequently, as the Argentine Republic was in
South America, the Argentine Republic had been under Jefferson Davis.
Rapidly warming with this discussion, your mother "supposed that you
would deny next that there had ever been such a thing as a war between
the North and the South." Then you, in your turn, lost temper, and you
fetched an atlas for the purpose of explaining that the southern
division of the continent of America was not the southern half of the
United States. You were landed, as people always are landed when they
prosecute an argument with the ignorant, in the thankless office of the
schoolmaster. You were actually trying to give your mother a lesson in
geography! She was not grateful to you for your didactic attentions. She
glanced at the book as people glance at an offered dish which they
dislike. She does not understand maps; the representation of places in
geographical topography has never been quite clear to her. Your little
geographical lecture irritated, but did not inform; it clouded the
countenance, but did not illuminate the understanding. The distinction
between South America and the Southern States is not easy to the
non-analytic mind under any circumstances, but when _amour propre_ is
involved it becomes impossible.
I believe that the best course in discussions of this kind with ladies
is simply to say _once_ what is true, for the acquittal of your own
conscience, but after that to remain silent on that topic, leaving the
last word to the lady, who will probably simply re-affirm what she has
already said. For example, in the discussion about the Argentine
Republic, your proper course would have been to say first, firmly, that
the territory in question was not a part of the seceded States and had
never been in the Union, with a brief and decided geographical
explanation. Your mother would not have been convinced by this, and
would probably have had the last word, but the matter would have ended
there. Another friend of mine, who is in a position very like your own,
goes a step farther, and is determined to agree with his mother-in-law
in everything. He always assents to her propositions. She is a
Frenchwoman, and has been accustomed to use _Algérie_ and _Afrique_ as
convertible terms. Somebody spoke of the Cape of Good Hope as being in
Africa. "Then it belongs to France, as Africa belongs to France." "Oui,
chère mère," he answered, in his usual formula; "vous avez raison."
He alluded to this afterwards when we were alone together. "I was
foolish enough some years since," he said, "to argue with my _belle
mère_ and try to teach her little things from time to time, but it kept
her in a state of chronic ill-humor and led to no good; it spoiled her
temper, and it did not improve her mind. But since I have adopted the
plan of perpetual assent we get on charmingly. Whatever she affirms I
assent to at once, and all is well. My friends are in the secret, and so
no contradictory truth disturbs our amiable tranquillity."
A system of this kind spoils women completely, and makes the least
contradiction intolerable to them. It is better that they should at
least have the opportunity of hearing truth, though no attempt need be
made to force it upon them. The position of ladies of the generation
which preceded ours is in many respects a very trying one, and we do not
always adequately realize it. A lady like your mother, who never really
went through any intellectual discipline, who has no notion of
intellectual accuracy in anything, is compelled by the irresistible
feminine instinct to engage her strongest feelings in every discussion
that arises. A woman can rarely detach her mind from questions of
persons to apply it to questions of fact. She does not think simply, "Is
that true of such a thing?" but she thinks, "Does he love me or respect
me?" The facts about the Argentine Republic and the American War were
probably quite indifferent to your mother; but your opposition to what
she had asserted seemed to her a failure in affection, and your attempt
to teach her a failure in respect. This feeling in women is far from
being wholly egoistic. They refer everything to persons, but not
necessarily to their own persons. Whatever you affirm as a fact, they
find means of interpreting as loyalty or disloyalty to some person whom
they either venerate or love, to the head of religion, or of the State,
or of the family. Hence it is always dangerous to enter upon
intellectual discussion of any kind with women, for you are almost
certain to offend them by setting aside the sentiments of veneration,
affection, love, which they have in great strength, in order to reach
accuracy in matters of fact, which they neither have nor care for.
PART VIII.
_ARISTOCRACY AND DEMOCRACY._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG ENGLISH NOBLEMAN.
A contrast--A poor student--His sad fate--Class-sentiment--Tycho
Brahe--Robert Burns--Shelley's opinion of Byron--Charles
Dickens--Shopkeepers in English literature--Pride of aristocratic
ignorance--Pursuits tabooed by the spirit of caste--Affected
preferences in intellectual pursuits--Studies that add to
gentility--Sincerity of interest needed for genuine culture--The
exclusiveness of scholarly caste--Its bad influence on
outsiders--Feeling of Burns toward scholars--Sureness of
class-instinct--Unforeseen effect of railways--Return to nomadic life
and the chase--Advantages and possibilities to life in the higher
classes.
It is one of the privileges of authorship to have correspondents in the
most widely different positions, and by means of their frank and
friendly letters (usually much more frank than any oral communication)
to gain a singularly accurate insight into the working of circumstances
on the human intellect and character. The same post that brought me your
last letter brought news about another of my friends whose lot has been
a striking contrast to your own.[8]
Let me dwell upon this contrast for a few minutes. All the sunshine
appears to have been on your side, and all the shadow on his. Born of
highly cultivated parents, in the highest rank in England under royalty,
you have lived from the beginning amongst the most efficient aids to
culture, and Nature has so endowed you that, instead of becoming
indifferent to these things from familiarity, you have learned to value
them more and more in every successive year. The plainest statement of
your advantages would sound like an extract from one of Disraeli's
novels. Your father's principal castle is situated amongst the finest
scenery in Britain, and his palace in London is filled with masterpieces
of art. Wherever you have lived you have been surrounded by good
literature and cultivated friends. Your health is steadily robust, you
can travel wherever you choose, and all the benefits of all the capitals
of Europe belong to you as much as to their own citizens. In all these
gifts and opportunities there is but one evil--the bewilderment of their
multiplicity.
My other correspondent has been less fortunately situated. "I began
school," he says, "when six years old, was taken from it at eleven and
sent to the mines to earn a little towards my own support. I continued
there till fourteen, when through an unlucky incident I was made a
hopeless cripple. At that day I was earning the noble sum of eightpence
per day, quite as much as any boy of that age got in the lead mines. I
suffered much for two years; after that, became much easier, but my legs
were quite useless, and have continued so up to the present time. The
right thigh-bone is decayed, has not got worse these nine years;
therefore I conclude that I may live--say another thirty years. I should
_like_, at all events, for life _is_ sweet even at this cost; not but
what I could die quietly enough, I dare say. I have not been idle these
years...."
(Here permit me to introduce a parenthesis. He certainly had _not_ been
idle. He had educated himself up to such a point that he could really
appreciate both literature and art, and had attained some genuine skill
in both. His letters to me were the letters of a cultivated gentleman,
and he used invariably to insert little pen-sketches, which were done
with a light and refined hand.)
"I can do anything almost in bed--except getting up. I am now twenty-two
years old. My father was a miner, but is now unable to work. I have only
one brother working, and we are about a dozen of us; consequently we are
not in the most flourishing circumstances, but a friend has put it in my
power to learn to etch. I have got the tools and your handbook on the
subject."
These extracts are from his first letter. Afterwards he wrote me others
which made me feel awed and humbled by the manly cheerfulness with which
he bore a lot so dreary, and by the firmness of resolution he showed in
his pursuits. He could not quit his bed, but that was not the worst; he
could not even sit up in bed, and yet he contrived, I know not how, both
to write and draw and etch on copper, managing the plaguy chemicals, and
even printing his own proofs. His bed was on wheels, on a sort of light
iron carriage, and he saw nature out-of-doors. All the gladness of
physical activity was completely blotted out of his existence, and in
that respect his prospects were without hope. And still he said that
"life was sweet." O marvel of all marvels, how _could_ that life be
sweet!
Aided by a beautiful patience and resignation the lamp of the mind
burned with a steady brightness, fed by his daily studies. In the
winters, however, the diseased limb gave him prolonged agony, and in the
autumn of 1872, to avoid the months of torture that lay before him, he
had himself put in the railway and sent off, in his bed, to Edinburgh,
sleeping in a waiting-room on the way. There was no one to attend him,
but he trusted, not vainly, to the humanity of strangers. Just about the
same time your lordship went northwards also, with many friends, to
enjoy the noble scenery, and the excitement of noble sport. My poor
cripple got to Edinburgh, got a glimpse of Scott's monument and the
Athenian pillars, and submitted himself to the surgeons. They rendered
him the best of services, for they ended his pains forever.
So I am to get no more of those wonderfully brave and cheerful letters
that were written from the little bed on wheels. I miss them for the
lessons they quite unconsciously conveyed. He fancied that he was the
learner, poor lad! and I the teacher, whereas it was altogether the
other way. He made me feel what a blessing it is, even from the purely
intellectual point of view, to be able to get out of bed after the
night's rest, and go from one room to another. He made me understand the
value of every liberty and every power whilst at the same time he taught
me to bear more patiently every limit, and inconvenience, and
restriction.
In comparing his letters with yours I have been struck by one reflection
predominantly, which is, the entire absence of class-sentiment in both
of you. Nobody, not in the secret, could guess that one set of letters
came from a palace and the other set from a poor miner's cottage; and
even to me, who do not see the habitations except by an effort of the
memory or imagination, there is nothing to recall the immensity of the
social distance that separated my two friendly and welcome
correspondents. It is clear, of course, that one of them had enjoyed
greater advantages than the other, but neither wrote from the point of
view which marks his caste or class. It was my habit to write to you,
and to him, exactly in the same tone, yet this was not felt to be
unsuitable by either.
Is it not that the love and pursuit of culture lead each of us out of
his class, and that class-views of any kind, whether of the aristocracy,
or of the middle class, or of the people, inevitably narrow the mind and
hinder it from receiving pure truth? Have you ever known any person who
lived habitually in the notions of a caste, high or low, without
incapacitating himself in a greater or less degree for breadth and
delicacy of perception? It seems to me that the largest and best minds,
although they have been born and nurtured in this caste or that, and may
continue to conform externally to its customs, always emancipate
themselves from it intellectually, and arrive at a sort of neutral
region, where the light is colorless, and clear, and equal, like plain
daylight out of doors. So soon as we attain the forgetfulness of self,
and become absorbed in our pursuits for their own sakes, the feeling of
caste drops off from us. It was not a mark of culture in Tycho Brahe,
but rather of the imperfections of his culture, that he felt so strongly
the difficulty of conciliating scientific pursuits with the obligations
of noble birth, and began his public discourses on astronomy by telling
his audience that the work was ill-suited to his social
position--hesitating, too, even about authorship from a dread of social
degradation. And to take an instance from the opposite extreme of human
society, Robert Burns betrayed the same imperfection of culture in his
dedication to the members of the Caledonian Hunt, when he spoke of his
"honest rusticity," and told the gentlefolks that he was "bred to the
plough, and independent." Both of these men had been unfavorably
situated for the highest culture, the one by the ignorance of his epoch
the other by the ignorance of his class; hence this uneasiness about
themselves and their social position. Shelley said of Byron, "The canker
of aristocracy wants to be cut out;" and he did not say this from the
point of view of a democrat, for Shelley was not precisely a democrat,
but from, the broadly human point of view, on which the finest
intellects like to take their stand. Shelley perceived that Byron's
aristocracy narrowed him, and made his sympathies less catholic than
they might have been, nor can there be any doubt of the accuracy of this
estimate of Shelley's; if a doubt existed it would be removed by Byron's
alternative for a poet, "solitude, or high life." Another man of genius,
whose loss we have recently deplored, was narrowed by his antipathy to
the aristocratic spirit, though it is necessary to add, in justice, that
it did not prevent him from valuing the friendship of noblemen whom he
esteemed. The works of Charles Dickens would have been more accurate as
pictures of English life, certainly more comprehensively accurate, if he
could have felt for the aristocracy that hearty and loving sympathy
which he felt for the middle classes and the people. But the narrowness
of Dickens is more excusable than that of Byron, because a kindly heart
more easily enters into the feelings of those whom it can often pity
than of those who appear to be lifted above pity (though this is nothing
but an appearance) and also because it is the habit of aristocracies to
repel such sympathy by their manners, which the poor do not.
I have often thought that a sign of aristocratic narrowness in many
English authors, including some of the most popular authors of the day,
is the way they speak of shopkeepers. This may be due to simple
ignorance; but if so, it is ignorance that might be easily avoided.
Happily for our convenience there are a great many shopkeepers in
England, so that there is no lack of the materials for study; but our
novelists appear to consider this important class of Englishmen as
unworthy of any patient and serious portraiture. You may remember Mr.
Anthony Trollope's "Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson," which
appeared in the _Cornhill Magazine_, under Thackeray's editorship. That
was an extreme instance of the way the class is treated in our
literature; and then in poetry we have some disdainful verses of Mr.
Tennyson's. It may be presumed that there is material for grave and
respectful treatment of this extensive class, but our poets and
novelists do not seem to have discovered, or sought to discover, the
secret of that treatment. The intensity of the prejudices of caste
prevents them from seeing any possibility of true gentlemanhood in a
draper or a grocer, and blinds them to the æsthetic beauty or grandeur
which may be as perfectly compatible with what is disdainfully called
"counter-jumping" as it is admitted to be with the jumping of
five-barred gates.
The same caste prejudices have often kept the mass of the upper classes
in ignorance of most valuable and important branches of knowledge. The
poor have been ignorant, yet never proud of their ignorance; the
ignorance that men are proud of belongs to caste always, not always to
what we should call an aristocratic caste, but to the caste-feeling in
one class or another. The pride of the feudal baron in being totally
illiterate amounted to self-exclusion from all intellectual culture, and
we may still find living instances of partial self-exclusion from
culture, of which pride is the only motive. There are people who pass
their time in what are considered amusements (that do not amuse),
because it seems to them a more gentlemanly sort of life than the
devotion to some great and worthy pursuit which would have given the
keenest zest and relish to their whole existence (besides making them
useful members of society, which they are not), but which happens to be
tabooed for them by the prejudices of their caste. There are many
studies, in themselves noble and useful, that a man of good family
cannot follow with the earnestness and the sacrifice of time necessary
to success in them, without incurring the disapprobation of his
friends. If this disapprobation were visited on the breaker of
caste-regulations because he neglected some other culture, there would
still be something reasonable in it; but this is not the case. The
caste-regulation forbids the most honorable and instructive labor when
it does not forbid the most unprofitable idleness, the most utter
throwing away of valuable time and faculty. Tycho Brahe feared to lose
caste in becoming the most illustrious astronomer of his time; but he
would have had no such apprehension, nor any ground for such
apprehension, if instead of being impelled to noble work by a high
intellectual instinct, he had been impelled by meaner passions to
unlimited self-indulgence. Even, in our own day these prejudices are
still strong enough, or have been until very lately, to keep our upper
classes in great darkness about natural knowledge of all kinds, and
about its application to the arts of life. How few gentlemen have been
taught to draw accurately, and how few are accurately acquainted with
the great practical inventions of the age! The caste-sentiment does not,
in these days, keep them ignorant of literature, but it keeps them
ignorant of _things_. A friend who had a strong constructive and
experimental turn, told me that, as a rule, he found gentlemen less
capable of entering into his ideas than common joiners and blacksmiths,
because these humble workmen, from their habit of dealing with matter,
had acquired some experience of its nature. For my own part, I have
often been amazed by the difficulty of making something clear to a
classically educated gentleman which any intelligent mechanic would have
seen to the bottom, and all round, after five or six minutes of
explanation. There is a certain French nobleman whose ignorance I have
frequent opportunities of fathoming, always with fresh astonishment at
the depths of it, and I declare that he knows no more about the
properties of stone, and timber, and metal, than if he were a cherub in
the clouds of heaven!
But there is something in caste-sentiment even more prejudicial to
culture than ignorance itself, and that is the affectation of strong
preferences for certain branches of knowledge in which people are not
seriously interested. There is nothing which people will not pretend to
like, if a liking for it is supposed to be one of the marks and
indications of gentility. There has been an immense amount of this kind
of affectation in regard to classical scholarship, and we know for a
certainty that it _is_ affectation whenever people are loud in their
praise of classical authors whom they never take the trouble to read. It
may have happened to you, as it has happened to me from time to time, to
hear men affirm the absolute necessity of classical reading to
distinction of thought and manner, and yet to be aware at the same time,
from close observation of their habits, that those very men entirely
neglected the sources of that culture in which they professed such
earnest faith. The explanation is, that as classical accomplishments are
considered to be one of the evidences of gentility, whoever speaks
loudly in their favor affirms that he has the tastes and preferences of
a gentleman. It is like professing the fashionable religion, or
belonging to an aristocratic shade of opinion in politics. I have not a
doubt that all affectations of this kind are injurious to genuine
culture, for genuine culture requires sincerity of interest before
everything, and the fashionable affectations, so far from attracting
sincere men to the departments of learning which happen to be _à la
mode_, positively drive them away, just as many have become
Nonconformists because the established religion was considered necessary
to gentility, who might have remained contented with its ordinances as a
simple discipline for their souls.
I dislike the interference of genteel notions in our studies for another
reason. They deprive such culture as we may get from them, of one of the
most precious results of culture, the enlargement of our sympathy for
others. If we encourage ourselves in the pride of scholarly caste, so
far as to imagine that we who have made Latin verses are above
comparison with all who have never exercised their ingenuity in that
particular way, we are not likely to give due and serious attention to
the ideas of people whom we are pleased to consider uneducated; and yet
it may happen that these people are sometimes our intellectual
superiors, and that their ideas concern us very closely. But this is
only half the evil. The consciousness of our contempt embitters the
feelings of men in other castes, and prevents them from accepting our
guidance when it might be of the greatest practical utility to them. I
may mention Robert Burns as an instance of a man of genius who would
have been happier and more fortunate if he had felt no barrier of
separation between himself and the culture of his time. His poetry is as
good rustic poetry as the best that has come down to us from antiquity,
and instead of feeling towards the poets of times past the kind of
soreness which a parvenu feels towards families of ancient descent, he
ought rather to have rejoiced in the consciousness that he was their
true and legitimate successor, as the clergy of an authentic Church feel
themselves to be successors and representatives of saints and apostles
who are gathered to their everlasting rest. But poor Burns knew that in
an age when what is called scholarship gave all who had acquired it a
right to look down upon poets who had only genius as the illegitimate
offspring of nature, his position had not that solidity which belonged
to the scholarly caste, and the result was a perpetual uneasiness which
broke out in frequent defiance.
"There's ither poets, much your betters,
Far seen in Greek, deep men o' letters,
Hae thought they had ensur'd their debtors
A' future ages;
_Now moths deform in shapeless tatters,
Their unknown pages_."
And again, in another poem--
"A set o' dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
_They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An' syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o' Greek!_"
It was the influence of caste that made Burns write in this way, and how
unjust it was every modern reader knows. The great majority of poets
have been well-educated men, and instead of ganging into college like
stirks and coming out like asses, they have, as a rule, improved their
poetic faculty by an acquaintance with the masterpieces of their art.
Yet Burns is not to be blamed for this injustice; he sneered at Greek
because Greek was the mark of a disdainful and exclusive caste, but he
never sneered at French or Italian. He had no soreness against culture
for its own sake; it was the pride of caste that galled him.
How surely the wonderful class-instinct guided the aristocracy to the
kind of learning likely to be the most effectual barrier against
fellowship with the mercantile classes and the people! The uselessness
of Greek in industry and commerce was a guarantee that those who had to
earn their bread would never find time to master it, and even the
strange difficult look of the alphabet (though in reality the alphabet
was a gate of gossamer), ensured a degree of awful veneration for those
initiated into its mysteries. Then the habit our forefathers had of
quoting Latin and Greek to keep the ignorant in their places, was a
strong defensive weapon of their caste, and they used it without
scruple. Every year removes this passion for exclusiveness farther and
farther into the past; every year makes learning of every kind less
available as the armor of a class, and less to be relied upon as a means
of social advancement and consideration. Indeed, we have already reached
a condition which is drawing back many members of the aristocracy to a
state of feeling about intellectual culture resembling that of their
forefathers in the middle ages. The old barbarian feeling has revived of
late, a feeling which (if it were self-conscious enough) might find
expression in some such words as these:--
"It is not by learning and genius that we can hold the highest place,
but by the dazzling exhibition of external splendor in those costly
pleasures which are the plainest evidence of our power. Let us have
beautiful equipages on the land, beautiful yachts upon the sea; let our
recreations be public and expensive, that the people may not easily lose
sight of us, and may know that there is a gulf of difference between our
life and theirs. Why should we toil at books that the poorest students
read, we who have lordly pastimes for every month in the year? To be
able to revel immensely in pleasures which those below us taste rarely
or not at all, this is the best evidence of our superiority. So let us
take them magnificently, like English princes and lords."
Even the invention of railways has produced the unforeseen result of a
return in the direction of barbarism. If there is one thing which
distinguishes civilization it is fixity of residence; and it is
essential to the tranquil following of serious intellectual purposes
that the student should remain for many months of the year in his own
library or laboratory, surrounded by all his implements of culture. But
there are people of the highest rank in the England of to-day whose
existence is as much nomadic as that of Red Indians in the reserved
territories of North America. You cannot ascertain their whereabouts
without consulting the most recent newspaper. Their life may be quite
accurately described as a return, on a scale of unprecedented splendor
and comfort, to the life of tribes in that stage of human development
which is known as the period of the chase. They migrate from one
hunting-ground to another as the diminution of the game impels them.
Their residences, vast and substantial as they are, serve only as tents
and wigwams. The existence of a monk in the cloister, of a prisoner in a
fortress, is more favorable to the intellect than theirs.
And yet notwithstanding these re-appearances of the savage nature at the
very summit of modern civilization, the life of a great English
nobleman of to-day commands so much of what the intellectual know to be
truly desirable, that it seems as if only a little firmness of
resolution were needed to make all advantages his own. Surrounded by
every aid, and having all gates open, he sees the paths of knowledge
converging towards him like railways to some rich central city. He has
but to choose his route, and travel along it with the least possible
hindrance from every kind of friction, in the society of the best
companions, and served by the most perfectly trained attendants. Might
not our lords be like those brilliant peers who shone like intellectual
stars around the throne of Elizabeth, and our ladies like that great
lady of whom said a learned Italian, "che non vi aveva altra dama al
mondo che la pareggiasse nella cognizione delle arti e nella notizia
delle scienze e delle lingue," wherefore he called her boldly, in the
enthusiasm of his admiration, "_grande anfitrite, Diana nume della
terra!_"
LETTER II.
TO AN ENGLISH DEMOCRAT.
The liberal and illiberal spirit of aristocracy--The desire to draw a
line--Substitution of external limitations for realities--The high
life of nature--Value of gentlemen in a State--Odiousness of the
narrow class-spirit--Julian Fane--Perfect knighthood--Democracies
intolerant of dignity--Tendency of democracies to fix one uniform type
of manners--That type not a high one--A descriptive
anecdote--Knowledge and taste reveal themselves in manners--Dr. Arnold
on the absence of gentlemen in France and Italy--Absence of a class
with traditional good manners--Language defiled by the vulgarity of
popular taste--Influence of aristocratic opinion limited, that of
democratic opinion universal--Want of elevation in the French
_bourgeoisie_--Spirit of the provincial democracy--Spirit of the
Parisian democracy--Sentiments and acts of the Communards--Romantic
feeling towards the past--Hopes for liberal culture in the democratic
idea--Aristocracies think too much of persons and positions--That we
ought to forget persons and apply our minds to things, and phenomena,
and ideas.
All you say against the narrowness of the aristocratic spirit is true
and to the point; but I think that you and your party are apt to
confound together two states of feeling which are essentially distinct
from each other. There is an illiberal spirit of aristocracy, and there
is also a liberal one. The illiberal spirit does not desire to improve
itself, having a full and firm belief in its own absolute perfection;
its sole anxiety is to exclude others, to draw a circular line, the
smaller the better, provided always that it gets inside and can keep the
millions out. We see this spirit, not only in reference to birth, but in
even fuller activity with regard to education and employment--in the
preference for certain schools and colleges, for class reasons, without
regard to the quality of the teaching--in the contempt for all
professions but two or three, without regard to the inherent baseness or
nobility of the work that has to be done in them: so that the question
asked by persons of this temper is not whether a man has been well
trained in his youth, but if he has been to Eton and Oxford; not whether
he is honorably laborious in his manhood, but whether he belongs to the
Bar, or the Army, or the Church. This spirit is evil in its influence,
because it substitutes external limitations for the realities of the
intellect and the soul, and makes those realities themselves of no
account wherever its traditions prevail. This spirit cares nothing for
culture, nothing for excellence, nothing for the superiorities that make
men truly great; all it cares for is to have reserved seats in the great
assemblage of the world. Whatever you do, in fairness and honesty,
against this evil and inhuman spirit of aristocracy, the best minds of
this age approve; but there is another spirit of aristocracy which does
not always receive the fairest treatment at your hands, and which ought
to be resolutely defended against you.
There is really, in nature, such a thing as high life. There is really,
in nature, a difference between the life of a gentleman who has culture,
and fine bodily health, and independence, and the life of a Sheffield
dry-grinder who cannot have any one of these three things. It is a good
and not a bad sign of the state of popular intelligence when the people
does not wilfully shut its eyes to the differences of condition amongst
men, and when those who have the opportunity of leading what is truly
the high life accept its discipline joyfully and have a just pride in
keeping themselves up to their ideal. A life of health, of sound
morality, of disinterested intellectual activity, of freedom from petty
cares, _is_ higher than a life of disease, and vice, and stupidity, and
sordid anxiety. I maintain that it is right and wise in a nation to set
before itself the highest attainable ideal of human life as the
existence of the complete gentleman, and that an envious democracy,
instead of rendering a service to itself, does exactly the contrary when
it cannot endure and will not tolerate the presence of high-spirited
gentlemen in the State. There are things in this world that it is right
to hate, that we are the better for hating with all our hearts; and one
of the things that I hate most, and with most reason, is the narrow
class-spirit when it sets itself against the great interests of mankind.
It is odious in the narrow-minded, pompous, selfish, pitiless aristocrat
who thinks that the sons of the people were made by Almighty God to be
his lackeys and their daughters to be his mistresses; it is odious also,
to the full as odious, in the narrow-minded, envious democrat who cannot
bear to see any elegance of living, or grace of manner, or culture of
mind above the range of his own capacity or his own purse.
Let me recommend to your consideration the following words, written by
one young nobleman about another young nobleman, and reminding us, as we
much need to be reminded, that life may be not only honest and vigorous,
but also noble and beautiful. Robert Lytton says of Julian Fane--
"He was, I think, the most graceful and accomplished gentleman of the
generation he adorned, and by this generation, at least, appropriate
place should be reserved for the memory of a man in whose character the
most universal sympathy with all the intellectual culture of his age was
united to a refinement of social form, and a perfection of personal
grace, which, in spite of all its intellectual culture, the age is sadly
in want of. There is an artistry of life as well as of literature, and
the perfect knighthood of Sidney is no less precious to the world than
the genius of Spenser."
It is just this "perfect knighthood" that an envious democracy sneers at
and puts down. I do not say that all democracies are necessarily
envious, but they often are so, especially when they first assert
themselves, and whilst in that temper they are very willing to ostracize
gentlemen, or compel them to adopt bad manners. I have some hopes that
the democracies of the future may be taught by authors and artists to
appreciate natural gentlemanhood; but so far as we know them hitherto
they seem intolerant of dignity, and disposed to attribute it (very
unjustly) to individual self-conceit. The personages most popular in
democratic countries are often remarkably deficient in dignity, and
liked the better for the want of it, whilst if on the positive side they
can display occasional coarseness they become more popular still. Then I
should say, that although democratic feeling raises the lower classes
and increases their self-respect, which is indeed one of the greatest
imaginable benefits to a nation, it has a tendency to fix one uniform
type of behavior and of thought as the sole type in conformity with what
is accepted for "common sense," and that type can scarcely, in the
nature of things, be a very elevated one. I have been much struck, in
France, by the prevalence of what may be not inaccurately defined as the
commercial traveller type, even in classes where you would scarcely
expect to meet with it. One little descriptive anecdote will illustrate
what I mean. Having been invited to a stag-hunt in the Côte d'Or, I sat
down to _déjeuner_ with the sportsmen in a good country-house or château
(it was an old place with four towers), and in the midst of the meal in
came a man smoking a cigar. After a bow to the ladies he declined to eat
anything, and took a chair a little apart, but just opposite me. He
resumed his hat and went on smoking with a _sans-gêne_ that rather
surprised me under the circumstances. He put one arm on the side-board:
the hand hung down, and I perceived that it was dirty (so was the
shirt), and that the nails had edges of ebony. On his chin there was a
black stubble of two days' growth. He talked very loudly, and his dress
and manners were exactly those of a bagman just arrived at his inn. Who
and what could the man be? I learned afterwards that he had begun life
as a distinguished pupil of the _Ecole Polytechnique_, that since then
he had distinguished himself as an officer of artillery and had won the
Legion of Honor on the field of battle, that he belonged to one of the
principal families in the neighborhood, and had nearly 2000_l._ a year
from landed property.
Now, it may be a good thing for the roughs at the bottom of the social
scale to level up to the bagman-ideal, but it does seem rather a pity
(does it not?) that a born gentleman of more than common bravery and
ability should level _down_ to it. And it is here that lies the
principle objection to democracy from the point of view of culture, that
its notion of life and manners is a uniform notion, not admitting much
variety of classes, and not allowing the high development of graceful
and accomplished humanity in any class which an aristocracy does at
least encourage in one class, though it may be numerically a small
class. I have not forgotten what Saint-Simon and La Bruyère have
testified about the ignorance of the old noblesse. Saint-Simon said that
they were fit for nothing but fighting, and only qualified for promotion
even in the army by seniority; that the rest of their time was passed
in "the most deadly uselessness, the consequence of their indolence and
distaste for all instruction." I am sure that my modern artillery
captain, notwithstanding his bad manners, _knew_ more than any of his
forefathers; but where was his "perfect knighthood?" And we easily
forget "how much talent runs into manners," as Emerson says. From the
artistic and poetical point of view, behavior is an expression of
knowledge and taste and feeling in combination, as clear and legible as
literature or painting, so that when the behavior is coarse and
unbecoming we know that the perceptions cannot be delicate, whatever may
have been learned at school. When Dr. Arnold travelled on the Continent,
nothing struck him more than the absence of gentlemen. "We see no
gentlemen anywhere," he writes from Italy. From France he writes: "Again
I have been struck with the total absence of all gentlemen, and of all
persons of the education and feelings of gentlemen." Now, although Dr.
Arnold spoke merely from the experience of a tourist, and was perhaps
not quite competent to judge of Frenchmen and Italians otherwise than
from externals, still there was much truth in his observation. It was
not quite absolutely true. I have known two or three Italian officers,
and one Savoyard nobleman, and a Frenchman here and there, who were as
perfect gentlemen as any to be found in England, but they were isolated
like poets, and were in fact poets in behavior and self discipline. The
plain truth is, that there is no distinct class in France maintaining
good manners as a tradition common to all its members; and this seems to
be the inevitable defect of a democracy. It may be observed, further,
that language itself is defiled by the vulgarity of the popular taste;
that expressions are used continually, even by the upper middle class,
which it is impossible to print, and which are too grossly indecent to
find a place even in the dictionaries; that respectable men, having
become insensible to the meaning of these expressions from hearing them
used without intention, employ them constantly from habit, as they
decorate their speech with oaths, whilst only purists refrain from them
altogether.
An aristocracy may be very narrow and intolerant, but it can only
exclude from its own pale, whereas when a democracy is intolerant it
excludes from all human intercourse. Our own aristocracy, as a class,
rejects Dissenters, and artists, and men of science, but they flourish
quite happily outside of it. Now try to picture to yourself a great
democracy having the same prejudices, who could get out of the
democracy? All aristocracies are intolerant with reference, I will not
say to religion, but, more accurately, with reference to the outward
forms of religion, and yet this aristocratic intolerance has not
prevented the development of religious liberty, because the lower
classes were not strictly bound by the customs of the nobility and
gentry. The unwritten law appears to be that members of an aristocracy
shall conform either to what is actually the State Church or to what has
been the State Church at some former period of the national history.
Although England is a Protestant country, an English gentleman does not
lose caste when he joins the Roman Catholic communion; but he loses
caste when he becomes a Dissenter. The influence of this caste-law in
keeping the upper classes within the Churches of England and of Rome has
no doubt been very considerable, but its influence on the nation
generally has been incomparably less considerable than that of some
equally decided social rule in the entire mind of a democracy. Had this
rule of conformity to the religion of the State been that of the English
democracy, religious liberty would have been extinguished throughout the
length and breadth of England. I say that the customs and convictions of
a democracy are more dangerous to intellectual liberty than those of an
aristocracy, because, in matters of custom, the gentry rule only within
their own park-palings, whereas the people, when power resides with
them, rule wherever the breezes blow. A democracy that dislikes
refinement and good manners can drive men of culture into solitude, and
make morbid hermits of the very persons who ought to be the lights and
leaders of humanity. It can cut short the traditions of good-breeding,
the traditions of polite learning, the traditions of thoughtful
leisure, and reduce the various national types of character to one
type, that of the _commis-voyageur_. All men of refined sentiment in
modern France lament the want of elevation in the _bourgeoisie_. They
read nothing, they learn nothing, they think of nothing but money and
the satisfaction of their appetites. There are exceptions, of course,
but the tone of the class is mean and low, and devoid of natural dignity
or noble aspiration. Their ignorance passes belief, and is accompanied
by an absolute self-satisfaction. "La fin de la bourgeoisie," says an
eminent French author, "commence parcequ'elle a les sentiments de la
populace. Je ne vois pas qu'elle lise d'autres journaux, qu'elle se
régale d'une musique différente, qu'elle ait des plaisirs plus élevés.
Chez l'une comme chez l'autre, c'est le même amour de l'argent, le même
respect du fait accompli, le même besoin d'idoles pour les détruire, la
même haine de toute supériorité, le même esprit de dénigrement, la même
crasse ignorance!" M. Renan also complains that during the Second Empire
the country sank deeper and deeper into vulgarity, forgetting its past
history and its noble enthusiasms. "Talk to the peasant, to the
socialist of the International, of France, of her past history, of her
genius, he will not understand you. Military honor seems madness to him;
the taste for great things, the glory of the mind, are vain dreams;
money spent for art and science is money thrown away foolishly. Such is
the provincial spirit." And if this is the provincial spirit, what is
the spirit of the metropolitan democracy? Is it not clearly known to us
by its acts? It had the opportunity, under the Commune, of showing the
world how tenderly it cared for the monuments of national history, how
anxious it was for the preservation of noble architecture, of great
libraries, of pictures that can never be replaced. Whatever may have
been our illusions about the character of the Parisian democracy, we
know it very accurately now. To say that it is brutal would be an
inadequate use of language, for the brutes are only indifferent to
history and civilization, not hostile to them. So far as it is possible
for us to understand the temper of that democracy, it appears to cherish
an active and intense hatred for every conceivable kind of superiority,
and an instinctive eagerness to abolish the past; or, as that is not
possible, since the past will always _have been_ in spite of it, then at
least to efface all visible memorials and destroy the bequests of all
preceding generations. If any one had affirmed, before the fall of Louis
Napoleon, that the democratic spirit was capable of setting fire to the
Louvre and the national archives and libraries, of deliberately planning
the destruction of all those magnificent edifices, ecclesiastical and
civil, which were the glory of France and the delight of Europe, we
should have attributed such an assertion to the exaggerations of
reactionary fears. But since the year 1870 we do not speculate about
the democratic temper in its intensest expression; we have seen it at
work, and we know it. We know that every beautiful building, every
precious manuscript and picture, has to be protected against the noxious
swarm of Communards as a sea-jetty against the Pholas and the Teredo.
Compare this temper with that of a Marquis of Hertford, a Duke of
Devonshire, a Duc de Luynes! True guardians of the means of culture,
these men have given splendid hospitality to the great authors and
artists of past times, by keeping their works for the future with tender
and reverent care. Nor has this function of high stewardship ever been
more nobly exercised than it is to-day by that true knight and
gentleman, Sir Richard Wallace. Think of the difference between this
great-hearted guardian of priceless treasures, keeping them for the
people, for civilization, and a base-spirited Communard setting fire to
the library of the Louvre.
The ultra-democratic spirit is hostile to culture, from its hatred of
all delicate and romantic sentiment, from its scorn of the tenderer and
finer feelings of our nature, and especially from its brutish incapacity
to comprehend the needs of the higher life. If it had its way we should
be compelled by public opinion to cast all the records of our ancestors,
and the shields they wore in battle, into the foul waters of an eternal
Lethe. The intolerance of the sentiment of birth, that noble sentiment
which has animated so many hearts with heroism, and urged them to deeds
of honor, associated as it is with a cynical disbelief in the existence
of female virtue,[9] is one of the commonest signs of this evil spirit
of detraction. It is closely connected with an ungrateful indifference
towards all that our forefathers have done to make civilization possible
for us. Now, although the intellectual spirit studies the past
critically, and does not accept history as a legend is accepted by the
credulous, still the intellectual spirit has a deep respect for all that
is noble in the past, and would preserve the record of it forever. Can
you not imagine, have you not actually seen, the heir of some ancient
house who shares to the full the culture and aspirations of the age in
which we live, and who nevertheless preserves, with pious reverence, the
towers his forefathers built on the ancestral earth, and the oaks they
planted, and the shields that were carved on the tombs where the knights
and their ladies rest? Be sure that a right understanding of the present
is compatible with a right and reverent understanding of the past, and
that, although we may closely question history and tradition, no longer
with childlike faith, still the spirit of true culture would never
efface their vestiges. It was not Michelet, not Renan, not Hugo, who set
fire to the Palace of Justice and imperilled the Sainte-Chapelle.
And yet, notwithstanding all these vices and excesses of the democratic
spirit, notwithstanding the meanness of the middle classes and the
violence of the mob, there is one all-powerful reason why our best hopes
for the liberal culture of the intellect are centred in the democratic
idea. The reason is, that aristocracies think too much of persons and
positions to weigh facts and opinions justly. In an aristocratic society
it is thought unbecoming to state your views in their full force in the
presence of any social superior. If you state them at all you must
soften them to suit the occasion, or you will be a sinner against
good-breeding. Observe how timid and acquiescent the ordinary Englishman
becomes in the presence of a lord. No right-minded person likes to be
thought impudent, and where the tone of society refers everything to
position, you are considered impudent when you forget your station. But
what has my station to do with the truths the intellect perceives, that
lie entirely outside of me? From the intellectual point of view, it is a
necessary virtue to forget your station, to forget yourself entirely,
and to think of the subject only, in a manner perfectly disinterested.
Anonymous journalism was a device to escape from that continual
reference to the rank and fortune of the speaker which is an inveterate
habit in all aristocratic communities. A young man without title or
estate knows that he would not be listened to in the presence of his
social superiors, so he holds his tongue in society and relieves
himself by an article in the _Times_. The anonymous newspapers and
reviews are a necessity in an aristocratic community, for they are the
only means of attracting attention to facts and opinions without
attracting it to yourself, the only way of escaping the personal
question, "Who and what are you, that you venture to speak so plainly,
and where is your stake in the country?"
The democratic idea, by its theoretic equality amongst men, affords an
almost complete relief from this impediment to intellectual
conversation. The theory of equality is good, because it negatives the
interference of rank and wealth in matters that appertain to the
intellect or to the moral sense. It may even go one step farther with
advantage, and ignore intellectual authority also. The perfection of the
intellectual spirit is the entire forgetfulness of persons, in the
application of the whole power of the mind to things, and phenomena, and
ideas. Not to mind whether the speaker is of noble or humble birth, rich
or poor; this indeed is much, but we ought to attain a like indifference
to the authority of the most splendid reputation. "Every great advance
in natural knowledge," says Professor Huxley, "has involved the absolute
rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the
annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of
science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most
venerates hold them, not because their verity is testified by portents
and wonders, but because his experience teaches him that whenever he
chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary
source, Nature--whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to
experiment and to observation--Nature will confirm them."
FOOTNOTES:
[8] I think it right to inform the reader that there is no fiction in
this letter.
[9] The association between the two is this. If you believe that you
are descended from a distinguished ancestor, you are simple enough to
believe in his wife's fidelity.
PART IX.
_SOCIETY AND SOLITUDE._
LETTER I.
TO A LADY WHO DOUBTED THE REALITY OF INTELLECTUAL FRIENDSHIPS.
That intellectual friendships are in their nature temporary, when
there is no basis of feeling to support them--Their freshness soon
disappears--Danger of satiety--Temporary acquaintances--Succession in
friendships--Free communication of intellectual results--Friendships
between ripe and immature men--Rembrandt and Hoogstraten--Tradition
transmitted through these friendships.
I heartily agree with you so far as this, that intellectual relations
will not sustain friendship for very long, unless there is also some
basis of feeling to sustain it. And still there is a certain reality in
the friendships of the intellect whilst they last, and they are
remembered gratefully for their profit when in the course of nature they
have ceased. We may wisely contract them, and blamelessly dissolve them
when the occasion that created them has gone by. They are like business
partnerships, contracted from motives of interest, and requiring
integrity above all things, with mutual respect and consideration, yet
not necessarily either affection or the semblance of it. Since the
motive of the intellectual existence is the desire to ascertain and
communicate truth, a sort of positive and negative electricity
immediately establishes itself between those who want to know and those
who desire to communicate their knowledge; and the connection is
mutually agreeable until these two desires are satisfied. When this
happens, the connection naturally ceases; but the memory of it usually
leaves a permanent feeling of good-will, and a permanent disposition to
render services of the same order. This, in brief, is the whole
philosophy of the subject; but it may be observed farther, that the
purely intellectual intercourse which often goes by the name of
friendship affords excellent opportunities for the formation of real
friendship, since it cannot be long continued without revealing much of
the whole nature of the associates.
We do not easily exhaust the mind of another, but we easily exhaust what
is accessible to us in his mind; and when we have done this, the first
benefit of intercourse is at an end. Then comes a feeling of dulness and
disappointment, which is full of the bitterest discouragement to the
inexperienced. In maturer life we are so well prepared for this that it
discourages us no longer. We know beforehand that the freshness of the
mind that was new to us will rapidly wear away, that we shall soon
assimilate the fragment of it which is all that ever can be made our
own, so we enjoy the freshness whilst it lasts, and are even careful of
it as a fruiterer is of the bloom upon his grapes and plums. It may seem
a hard and worldly thing to say, but it appears to me that a wise man
might limit his intercourse with others before there was any danger of
satiety, as it is wisdom in eating to rise from table with an appetite.
Certainly, if the friends of our intellect live near enough for us to
anticipate no permanent separation by mere distance, if we may expect to
meet them frequently, to have many opportunities for a more thorough and
searching exploration of their minds, it is a wise policy not to exhaust
them all at once. With the chance acquaintances we make in travelling,
the case is altogether different; and this is, no doubt, the reason why
men are so astonishingly communicative when they never expect to see
each other any more. You feel an intense curiosity about some temporary
companion; you make many guesses about him; and to induce him to tell
you as much as possible in the short time you are likely to be together,
you win his confidence by a frankness that would perhaps considerably
surprise your nearest neighbors and relations. This is due to the
shortness of the opportunity; but with people who live in the same
place, you will proceed much more deliberately.
Whoever would remain regularly provided with intellectual friends, ought
to arrange a succession of friendships, as gardeners do with peas and
strawberries, so that, whilst some are fully ripe, others should be
ripening to replace them. This doctrine sounds like blasphemy against
friendship; but it is not intended to apply to the sacred friendship of
the heart, which ought to be permanent like marriage, only to the
friendship of the head, which is of the utmost utility to culture, yet
in its nature temporary. I know a distinguished Englishman who is quite
remarkable for the talent with which he arranges his intellectual
friendships, so as never to be dependent on any one, but always sure of
the intercourse he needs, both now and in the future. He will never be
isolated, never without some fresh and living interest in humanity. It
may seem to you that there is a lamentable want of faith in this; and I
grant at once that a system of this kind does presuppose the extinction
of the boyish belief in the permanence of human relations; still, it
indicates a large-minded confidence in the value of human intercourse,
an enjoyment of the present, a hope for the future, and a right
appreciation of the past.
Nothing is more beautiful in the intellectual life than the willingness
of all cultivated people--unless they happen to be accidentally soured
by circumstances that have made them wretched--to communicate to others
the results of all their toil. It is true that they apparently lose
nothing by the process, and that a rich man who gives some portion of
his material wealth exercises a greater self-denial; still, when you
consider that men of culture, in teaching others, abandon something of
their relative superiority, and often voluntarily incur the sacrifice
of what is most precious to them, namely, their time, I think you will
admit that their readiness in this kind of generosity is one of the
finest characteristics of highly-developed humanity. Of all intellectual
friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old
and ripe men and their younger brethren in science, or literature, or
art. It is by these private friendships, even more than by public
performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is
perpetuated from age to age. Hoogstraten, who was a pupil of Rembrandt,
asked him many questions, which the great master answered thus:--"Try to
put well in practice what you already know; in so doing you will, in
good time, discover the hidden things which you now inquire about." That
answer of Rembrandt's is typical of the maturest teaching. How truly
friendly it is; how full of encouragement; how kind in its admission
that the younger artist _did_ already know something worth putting into
practice; and yet, at the same time, how judicious in its reserve! Few
of us have been so exceptionally unfortunate as not to find, in our own
age, some experienced friend who has helped us by precious counsel,
never to be forgotten. We cannot render it in kind; but perhaps in the
fulness of time it may become our noblest duty to aid another as we have
ourselves been aided, and to transmit to him an invaluable treasure, the
tradition of the intellectual life.
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.
Certain dangers to the intellectual life--Difficult to resist the
influences of society--Gilding--Fashionable education--Affectations of
knowledge--Not easy to ascertain what people really know--Value of
real knowledge diminished--Some good effects of affectations--Their
bad effect on workers--Skill in amusements.
The kind of life which you have been leading for the last three or four
years will always be valuable to you as a past experience, but if the
intellectual ambition you confess to me is quite serious, I would
venture to suggest that there are certain dangers in the continuation of
your present existence if altogether uninterrupted. Pray do not suspect
me of any narrow prejudice against human intercourse, or of any wish to
make a hermit of you before your time, but believe that the few
observations I have to make are grounded simply on the desire that your
career should be entirely satisfactory to your own maturer judgment,
when you will look back upon it after many years.
An intellectual man may go into general society quite safely if only he
can resist its influence upon his serious work; but such resistance is
difficult in maturity and impossible in youth.
The sort of influence most to be dreaded is this. Society is, and must
be, based upon appearances, and not upon the deepest realities. It
requires some degree of reality to produce the appearance, but not a
substantial reality. Gilding is the perfect type of what Society
requires. A certain quantity of gold is necessary for the work of the
gilder, but a very small quantity, and skill in applying the metal so as
to cover a large surface, is of greater consequence than the weight of
the metal itself. The mind of a fashionable person is a carefully gilded
mind.
Consider fashionable education. Society imperatively requires an outside
knowledge of many things; not permitting the frank confession of
ignorance, whilst it is yet satisfied with a degree of knowledge
differing only from avowed ignorance in permitting you to be less
sincere. All young ladies, whether gifted by nature with any musical
talent or not, are compelled to say that they have learned to play upon
the piano; all young gentlemen are compelled to affect to know Latin. In
the same way the public opinion of Society compels its members to
pretend to know and appreciate the masterpieces of literature and art.
There is, in truth, so much compulsion of this kind that it is not easy
to ascertain what people do really know and care about until they admit
you into their confidence.
The inevitable effect of these affectations is to diminish the value, in
Society, of genuine knowledge and accomplishment of all kinds. I know a
man who is a Latin scholar; he is one of the few moderns who have really
learned Latin; but in fashionable society this brings him no
distinction, because we are all supposed to know Latin, and the true
scholar, when he appears, cannot be distinguished from the multitude of
fashionable pretenders. I know another man who can draw; there are not
many men, even amongst artists, who can draw soundly; yet in fashionable
society he does not get the serious sort of respect which he deserves,
because fashionable people believe that drawing is an accomplishment
generally attainable by young ladies and communicable by governesses. I
have no wish to insinuate that Society is wrong, in requiring a certain
pretence to education in various subjects, and a certain affectation of
interest in masterpieces, for these pretences and affectations do serve
to deliver it from the darkness of a quite absolute ignorance. A society
of fashionable people who think it necessary to be able to talk
superficially about the labors of men really belonging to the
intellectual class, is always sure to be much better informed than a
Society such as that of the French peasantry, for example, where nobody
is expected to know anything. It is well for Society itself that it
should profess a deep respect for classical learning, for the great
modern poets and painters, for scientific discoverers, even though the
majority of its members do not seriously care about them. The pretension
itself requires a certain degree of knowledge, as gilding requires a
certain quantity of gold.
The evil effects of these affectations may be summed up in a sentence.
They diminish the apparent value of the realities which they imitate,
and they tend to weaken our enthusiasm for those great realities, and
our ardor in the pursuit of them. The impression which fashionable
society produces upon a student who has strength enough to resist it, is
a painful sense of isolation in his earnest work. If he goes back to the
work with courage undiminished, he still clearly realizes--what it would
be better for him not to realize quite so clearly--the uselessness of
going beyond fashionable standards, if he aims at social success. And
there is still another thing to be said which concerns you just now very
particularly. Whoever leads the intellectual life in earnest is sure on
some points to fail in strict obedience to the exigencies of fashionable
life, so that, if fashionable successes are still dear to him, he will
be constantly tempted to make some such reflections as the
following:--"Here am I, giving years and years of labor to a pursuit
which brings no external reward, when half as much work would keep me
abreast of the society I live with, in everything it really cares about.
I know quite well all that my learning is costing me. Other men outshine
me easily in social pleasures and accomplishments. My skill at billiards
and on the moors is evidently declining, and I cannot ride or drive so
well as fellows who do very little else. In fact I am becoming an old
muff, and all I have to show on the other side is a degree of
scholarship which only six men in Europe can appreciate, and a
speciality in natural science in which my little discoveries are sure to
be either anticipated or left behind."
The truth is, that to succeed well in fashionable society the higher
intellectual attainments are not so useful as distinguished skill in
those amusements which are the real business of the fashionable world.
The three things which tell best in your favor amongst young gentlemen
are to be an excellent shot, to ride well to hounds, and to play
billiards with great skill. I wish to say nothing against any of these
accomplishments, having an especially hearty admiration and respect for
all good horsemen, and considering the game of billiards the most
perfectly beautiful of games; still, the fact remains that to do these
things as well as some young gentlemen do them, we must devote the time
which they devote, and if we regularly give nine hours a day to graver
occupations, pray, how and where are we to find it?
LETTER III.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.
Some exceptional men may live alternately in different
worlds--Instances--Differences between the fashionable and the
intellectual spirit--Men sometimes made unfashionable by special
natural gifts--Sometimes by trifling external circumstances--Anecdote
of Ampère--He did not shine in society--His wife's anxieties about his
material wants--Apparent contrast between Ampère and Oliver Goldsmith.
You ask me why there should be any fundamental incompatibility between
the fashionable and the intellectual lives. It seems to you that the two
might possibly be reconciled, and you mention instances of men who
attained intellectual distinction without deserting the fashionable
world.
Yes, there _have_ been a few examples of men endowed with that overflow
of energy which permits the most opposite pursuits, and enables its
possessors to live, apparently, in two worlds between which there is not
any natural affinity. A famous French novelist once took the trouble to
elaborate the portrait of a lady who passed one half of her time in
virtue and churches, whilst she employed the other half in the wildest
adventures. In real life I may allude to a distinguished English
engraver, who spent a fortnight over his plate and a fortnight in some
fashionable watering-place, alternately, and who found this distribution
of his time not unfavorable to the elasticity of his mind. Many
hard-working Londoners, who fairly deserve to be considered intellectual
men, pass their days in professional labor and their evenings in
fashionable society. But in all instances of this kind the professional
work is serious enough, and regular enough, to give a very substantial
basis to the life, so that the times of recreation are kept daily
subordinate by the very necessity of circumstances. If you had a
profession, and were obliged to follow it in earnest six or eight hours
a day, the more Society amused you the better. The danger in your case
is that your whole existence may take a fashionable tone.
The _esprit_ or tone of fashion differs from the intellectual tone in
ways which I will attempt to define. Fashion is nothing more than the
temporary custom of rich and idle people who make it their principal
business to study the external elegance of life. This custom incessantly
changes. If your habits of mind and life change with it you are a
fashionable person, but if your habits of mind and life either remain
permanently fixed or follow some law of your own individual nature, then
you are outside of fashion. The intellectual spirit is remarkable for
its independence of custom, and therefore on many occasions it will
clash with the fashionable spirit. It does so most frequently in the
choice of pursuits, and in the proportionate importance which the
individual student will (in his own case) assign to his pursuits. The
regulations of fashionable life have fixed, at the least temporarily,
the degree of time and attention which a fashionable person may devote
to this thing or that. The intellectual spirit ignores these
regulations, and devotes its possessor, or more accurately its
_possessed_, to the intellectual speciality for which he has most
aptitude, often leaving him ignorant of what fashion has decided to be
essential. After living the intellectual life for several years he will
know too much of one thing and too little of some other things to be in
conformity with the fashionable ideal. For example, the fashionable
ideal of a gentleman requires classical scholarship, but it is so
difficult for artists and men of science to be classical scholars also
that in this respect they are likely to fall short. I knew a man who
became unfashionable because he had a genius for mechanics. He was
always about steam-engines, and, though a gentleman by birth, associated
from choice with men who understood the science that chiefly interested
him, of which all fashionable people were so profoundly ignorant that he
habitually kept out of their way. He, on his part, neglected scholarship
and literature and all that "artistry of life," as Mr. Robert Lytton
calls it, in which fashionable society excels. Men are frequently driven
into unfashionable existence by the very force and vigor of their own
intellectual gifts, and sometimes by external circumstances, apparently
most trifling, yet of infinite influence on human destiny. There is a
good instance of this in a letter from Ampère to his young wife, that
"Julie" who was lost to him so soon. "I went to dine yesterday at Madame
Beauregard's with hands blackened by a harmless drug which stains the
skin for three or four days. She declared that it looked like manure,
and left the table, saying that she would dine when I was at a distance.
I promised not to return there before my hands were white. Of course I
shall never enter the house again."
Here we have an instance of a man of science who has temporarily
disqualified himself for polite society by an experiment in the pursuit
of knowledge. What do you think of the vulgarity of Madame Beauregard?
To me it appears the perfect type of that preoccupation about
appearances which blinds the genteel vulgar to the true nobility of
life. Were not Ampère's stained hands nobler than many white ones? It is
not necessary for every intellectual worker to blacken his fingers with
chemicals, but a kind of rust very frequently comes over him which ought
to be as readily forgiven, yet rarely is forgiven. "In his relations
with the world," writes the biographer of Ampère, "the authority of
superiority disappeared. To this the course of years brought no
alternative. Ampère become celebrated, laden with honorable
distinctions, the great Ampère! outside the speculations of the
intellect, was hesitating and timid again, disquieted and troubled, and
more disposed to accord his confidence to others than to himself."
Intellectual pursuits did not qualify Ampère, they do not qualify any
one, for success in fashionable society. To succeed in the world you
ought to be _of_ the world, so as to share the things which interest it
without too wide a deviation from the prevalent current of your
thoughts. Its passing interests, its temporary customs, its transient
phases of sentiment and opinion, ought to be for the moment your own
interests, your own feelings and opinions. A mind absorbed as Ampère's
was in the contemplation and elucidation of the unchangeable laws of
nature, is too much fixed upon the permanent to adapt itself naturally
to these ever-varying estimates. He did not easily speak the world's
lighter language, he could not move with its mobility. Such men forget
even what they eat and what they put on; Ampère's young wife was in
constant anxiety, whilst the pair were separated by the severity of
their fate, as to the sufficiency of his diet and the decency of his
appearance. One day she writes to him to mind not to go out in his
shabby old coat, and in the same letter she entreats him to purchase a
bottle of wine, so that when he took no milk or broth he would find it,
and when it was all drunk she tells him to buy another bottle.
Afterwards she asks him whether he makes a good fire, and if he has any
chairs in his room. In another letter she inquires if his bed is
comfortable, and in another she tells him to mind about his acids, for
he has burnt holes in his blue stockings. Again, she begs him to try to
have a passably decent appearance, because that will give pleasure to
his poor wife. He answers, to tranquillize her, that he does not burn
his things now, and that he makes chemical experiments only in his old
breeches with his gray coat and his waistcoat of greenish velvet. But
one day he is forced to confess that she must send him new trousers if
he is to appear before MM. Delambre and Villars. He "does not know what
to do," his best breeches still smell of turpentine, and, having wished
to put on trousers to go to the Society of Emulation, he saw the hole
which Barrat fancied he had mended become bigger than ever, so that it
showed the piece of different cloth which he had sown under it. He adds
that his wife will be afraid that he will spoil his "_beau pantalon_,"
but he promises to send it back to her as clean as when he received it.
How different is all this from that watchful care about externals which
marks the man of fashion! Ampère was quite a young man then, still
almost a bridegroom, yet he is already so absorbed in the intellectual
life as to forget appearances utterly, except when Julie, with feminine
watchfulness, writes to recall them to his mind. I am not defending or
advocating this carelessness. It is better to be neat and tidy than to
go in holes and patches; but I desire to insist upon the radical
difference between the fashionable spirit and the intellectual spirit.
And this difference, which shows itself in these external things, is
not less evident in the clothing or preparation of the mind. Ampère's
intellect, great and noble as it was, could scarcely be considered more
suitable for _le grand monde_ than the breeches that smelt of
turpentine, or the trousers made ragged by aquafortis.
A splendid contrast, as to tailoring, was our own dear Oliver Goldsmith,
who displayed himself in those wonderful velvet coats and satin
small-clothes from Mr. Filby's, which are more famous than the finest
garments ever worn by prince or peer. Who does not remember that
bloom-colored coat which the ablest painters have studiously
immortalized, made by John Filby, at the Harrow, in Water Lane (best
advertised of tailors!), and that charming blue velvet suit, which Mr.
Filby was never paid for? Surely a poet so splendid was fit for the
career of fashion! No, Oliver Goldsmith's velvet and lace were the
expression of a deep and painful sense of personal unfitness. They were
the fine frame which is intended to pass off an awkward and imperfect
picture. There was a quieter dignity in Johnson's threadbare sleeves.
Johnson, the most influential though not the most elegant intellect of
his time, is grander in his neglect of fashion than Goldsmith in his
ruinous subservience. And if it were permitted to me to speak of two or
three great geniuses who adorn the age in which we ourselves are living,
I might add that they seem to follow the example of the author of
"Rasselas" rather than that of Mr. Filby's illustrious customer. They
remind me of a good old squire who, from a fine sentiment of duty,
permitted the village artist to do his worst upon him, and incurred
thereby this withering observation from his metropolitan tailor: "You
are _covered_, sir, but you are _not_ dressed!"
LETTER IV.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO LIVED MUCH IN FASHIONABLE SOCIETY.
Test of professions--Mobility of fashionable taste--Practical service
of an external deference to culture--Incompatibility between
fashionable and intellectual lives--What each has to offer.
Your polite, almost diplomatic answer to my letter about fashionable
society may be not unfairly concentrated into some such paragraph as the
following:--
"What grounds have I for concluding that the professed tastes and
opinions of Society are in any degree insincere? May not society be
quite sincere in the preferences which it professes, and are not the
preferences themselves almost always creditable to the good taste and
really advanced culture of the Society which I suspect of a certain
degree of affectation?"
This is the sense of your letter, and in reply to it I give you a simple
but sure test. Is the professed opinion carried out in practice, when
there are fair opportunities for practice?
Let us go so far as to examine a particular instance. Your friends
profess to appreciate classical literature. Do they read it? Or, on the
other hand, do they confine themselves to believing that it is a good
thing for other people to read it?
When I was a schoolboy, people told me that the classical authors of
antiquity were eminently useful, and indeed absolutely necessary to the
culture of the human mind, but I perceived that they did not read them.
So I have heard many people express great respect for art and science,
only they did not go so far as to master any department of art or
science.
If you will apply this test to the professions of what is especially
called fashionable society it is probable that you will arrive at the
conclusions of the minority, which I have endeavored to express. You
will find that the fashionable world remains very contentedly outside
the true working intellectual life, and does not really share either its
labors or its aspirations.
Another kind of evidence, which tells in the same direction, is the
mobility of fashionable taste. At one time some studies are fashionable,
at another time these are neglected and others have taken their place.
You will not find this fickleness in the true intellectual world, which
steadily pursues all its various studies, and keeps them well abreast,
century after century.
If I insist upon this distinction with reference to you, do not accuse
me of hostility even to fashion itself. Fashion is one of the great
Divine institutions of human society, and the best philosophy rebels
against none of the authorities that be, but studies and endeavors to
explain them. The external deference which Society yields to culture is
practically of great service, although (I repeat the epithet) it is
_external_. The sort of good effect is in the intellectual sphere what
the good effect of a general religious profession is in the moral
sphere. All fashionable society goes to church. Fashionable religion
differs from the religion of Peter and Paul as fashionable science
differs from that of Humboldt and Arago, yet, notwithstanding this
difference, the profession of religion is useful to Society as some
restraint, at least during one day out of seven, upon its inveterate
tendency to live exclusively for its amusement. And if any soul happens
to come into existence in the fashionable world which has the genuine
religious nature, that nature has a chance of developing itself, and of
finding ready to hand certain customs which are favorable to its
well-being. So it is, though in quite a different direction, with the
esteem which Society professes for intellectual pursuits. It is an
esteem in great part merely nominal, as fashionable Christianity is
nominal, and still it helps and favors the early development of the
genuine faculty where it exists. It is certainly a great help to us
that fashionable society, which has such a tremendous, such an almost
irresistible power for good or evil, does not openly discourage our
pursuits, but on the contrary regards them with great external deference
and respect. The recognition which Society has given to artists has been
wanting in frankness and in promptitude, though even in this case much
may be said to excuse a sort of hesitation rather than refusal which was
attributable to the strangeness and novelty of the artistic caste in
England; but Society has far more than a generation professed a respect
for literature and erudition which has helped those two branches of
culture more effectually than great subsidies of money. The exact truth
seems to be that Society is sincere in approving our devotion to these
pursuits, but is not yet sufficiently interested in them to appreciate
them otherwise than from the outside, just as a father and mother
applaud their boys for reading Thucydides, yet do not read him
themselves, either in the original or in a translation.
All that I care to insist upon is that there is a degree of
incompatibility between the fashionable and the intellectual lives which
makes it necessary, at a certain time, to choose one or the other as our
own. There is no hostility, there need not be any uncharitable feeling
on one side or the other, but there must be a resolute choice between
the two. If you decide for the intellectual life, you will incur a
definite loss to set against your gain. Your existence may have calmer
and profounder satisfactions, but it will be less amusing, and even in
an appreciable degree less _human_; less in harmony, I mean, with the
common instincts and feelings of humanity. For the fashionable world,
although decorated by habits of expense, has enjoyment for its object,
and arrives at enjoyment by those methods which the experience of
generations has proved to be most efficacious. Variety of amusement,
frequent change of scenery and society, healthy exercise, pleasant
occupation of the mind without fatigue--these things do indeed make
existence agreeable to human nature, and the science of living agreeably
is better understood in the fashionable society of England than by
laborious students and _savans_. The life led by that society is the
true heaven of the natural man, who likes to have frequent feasts and a
hearty appetite, who enjoys the varying spectacle of wealth, and
splendor, and pleasure, who loves to watch, from the Olympus of his
personal ease, the curious results of labor in which he takes no part,
the interesting ingenuity of the toiling world below. In exchange for
these varied pleasures of the spectator the intellectual life can offer
you but one satisfaction, for all its promises are reducible simply to
this, that you shall come at last, after infinite labor, into contact
with some great _reality_--that you shall know, and do, in such sort
that you will feel yourself on firm ground and be recognized--probably
not much applauded, but yet recognized--as a fellow-laborer by other
knowers and doers. Before you come to this, most of your present
accomplishments will be abandoned by yourself as unsatisfactory and
insufficient, but one or two of them will be turned to better account,
and will give you after many years a tranquil self-respect, and, what is
still rarer and better, a very deep and earnest reverence for the
greatness which is above you. Severed from the vanities of the Illusory,
you will live with the realities of knowledge, as one who has quitted
the painted scenery of the theatre to listen by the eternal ocean or
gaze at the granite hills.
LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO KEPT ENTIRELY OUT OF COMPANY.
That Society which is frivolous in the mass contains individuals who
are not frivolous--A piece of the author's early experience--Those who
keep out of Society miss opportunities--People talk about what they
have in common--That we ought to be tolerant of dulness--The loss to
Society if superior men all held aloof--Utility of the gifted in
general society--They ought not to submit to expulsion.
I willingly concede all that you say against fashionable society as a
whole. It is, as you say, frivolous, bent on amusement, incapable of
attention sufficiently prolonged to grasp any serious subject, and
liable both to confusion and inaccuracy in the ideas which it hastily
forms or easily receives. You do right, assuredly, not to let it waste
your most valuable hours, but I believe also that you do wrong in
keeping out of it altogether.
The society which seems so frivolous in masses contains individual
members who, if you knew them better, would be able and willing to
render you the most efficient intellectual help, and you miss this help
by restricting yourself exclusively to books. Nothing can replace the
conversation of living men and women; not even the richest literature
can replace it.
Many years ago I was thrown by accident amongst a certain society of
Englishmen who, when they were all together, never talked about anything
worth talking about. Their general conversations were absolutely empty
and null, and I concluded, as young men so easily conclude, that those
twenty or thirty gentlemen had not half a dozen ideas amongst them. A
little reflection might have reminded me that my own talk was no better
than theirs, and consequently that there might be others in the company
who also knew more and thought more than they expressed. I found out, by
accident, after awhile, that some of these men had more than common
culture in various directions; one or two had travelled far, and brought
home the results of much observation; one or two had read largely, and
with profit; more than one had studied a science; five or six had seen a
great deal of the world. It was a youthful mistake to conclude that,
because their general conversation was very dull, the men were dull
individually. The general conversations of English society _are_ dull;
it is a national characteristic. But the men themselves are individually
often very well informed, and quite capable of imparting their
information to a single interested listener. The art is to be that
listener. Englishmen have the greatest dread of producing themselves in
the semi-publicity of a general conversation, because they fear that
their special topics may not be cared for by some of the persons
present; but if you can get one of them into a quiet corner by himself,
and humor his shyness with sufficient delicacy and tact, he will
disburden his mind at last, and experience a relief in so doing.
By keeping out of society altogether you miss these precious
opportunities. The wise course is to mix as much with the world as may
be possible without withdrawing too much time from your serious studies,
but not to expect anything valuable from the general talk, which is
nothing but a neutral medium in which intelligences float and move as
yachts do in sea-water, and for which they ought not to be held
individually responsible. The talk of Society answers its purpose if it
simply permits many different people to come together without clashing,
and the purpose of its conventions is the avoidance of collision. In
England the small talk is heavy, like water; in France it is light as
air; in both countries it is a medium and no more.
Society talks, by preference, about amusements; it does so because when
people meet for recreation they wish to relieve their minds from serious
cares, and also for the practical reason that Society must talk about
what its members have in common, and their amusements are more in common
than their work. As M. Thiers recommended the republican form of
government in France on the ground that it was the form which divided
his countrymen least, so a polite and highly civilized society chooses
for the subject of general conversation the topic which is least likely
to separate the different people who are present. It almost always
happens that the best topic having this recommendation is some species
of amusement; since amusements are easily learnt outside the business of
life, and we are all initiated into them in youth.
For these reasons I think that we ought to be extremely tolerant of the
dulness or frivolity which may seem to prevail in any numerous company,
and not to conclude too hastily that the members of it are in any degree
more dull or frivolous than ourselves. It is unfortunate, certainly,
that the art of general conversation is not so successfully cultivated
as it might be, and there are reasons for believing that our posterity
will surpass us in this respect, because as culture increases the spirit
of toleration increases with it, so that the great questions of
politics and religion, in which all are interested, may be discussed
more safely than they could be at the present day, by persons of
different ways of thinking. But even the sort of general conversation we
have now, poor as it may seem, still sufficiently serves as a medium for
human intercourse, and permits us to meet on a common ground where we
may select at leisure the agreeable or instructive friends that our
higher intellect needs, and without whom the intellectual life is one of
the ghastliest of solitudes.
And now permit me to add a few observations on another aspect of this
subject, which is not without its importance.
Let us suppose that every one of rather more than ordinary capacity and
culture were to act as you yourself are acting, and withdraw entirely
from general society. Let us leave out of consideration for the present
the loss to their private culture which would be the consequence of
missing every opportunity for forming new intellectual friendships. Let
us consider, this time, what would be the consequence to Society itself.
If all the cultivated men were withdrawn from it, the general tone of
Society would inevitably descend much lower even than it is at present;
it would sink so low that the whole national intellect would undergo a
sure and inevitable deterioration. It is plainly the duty of men
situated as you are, who have been endowed by nature with superior
faculties, and who have enlarged them by the acquisition of knowledge,
to preserve Society by their presence from an evil so surely prolific of
bad consequences. If Society is less narrow, and selfish, and
intolerant, and apathetic than it used to be, it is because they who are
the salt of the earth have not disdained to mix with its grosser and
earthier elements. All the improvement in public sentiment, and the
advancement in general knowledge which have marked the course of recent
generations, are to be attributed to the wholesome influence of men who
could think and feel, and who steadily exercised, often quite obscurely,
yet not the less usefully in their time and place, the subtle but
powerful attraction of the greater mind over the less. Instead of
complaining that people are ignorant and frivolous, we ought to go
amongst them and lead them to the higher life. "I know not how it is,"
said one in a dull circle to a more gifted friend who entered it
occasionally, "when we are left to ourselves we are all lamentably
stupid, but whenever you are kind enough to come amongst us we all talk
very much better, and of things that are well worth talking about." The
gifted man is always welcome, if only he will stoop to conquer, and
forget himself to give light and heat to others. The low Philistinism of
many a provincial town is due mainly to the shy reserve of the one or
two superior men who fancy that they cannot amalgamate with the common
intellect of the place.
Not only would I advocate a little patient condescension, but even
something of the sturdier temper which will not be driven out. Are the
Philistines to have all the talk to themselves forever; are they to
rehearse their stupid old platitudes without the least fear of
contradiction? How long, O Lord? how long? Let us resolve that even in
general society they shall not eternally have things their own way.
Somebody ought to have the courage to enlighten them even at their own
tables, and in the protecting presence of their admiring wives and
daughters.
LETTER VI.
TO A FRIEND WHO KINDLY WARNED THE AUTHOR OF THE BAD EFFECTS OF SOLITUDE.
_Væ solis_--Society and solitude alike necessary--The use of each--In
solitude we know ourselves--Montaigne as a book-buyer--Compensations
of solitude--Description of one who loved and sought it--How men are
driven into solitude--Cultivated people in the provinces--Use of
solitude as a protection for rare and delicate natures--Shelley's
dislike to general society--Wordsworth and Turner--Sir Isaac Newton's
repugnance to society--Auguste Comte--His systematic isolation and
unshakable firmness of purpose--Milton and Bunyan--The solitude which
is really injurious--Painters and authors--An ideal division of life.
You cry to me _Væ solis!_ and the cry seems not the less loud and
stirring that it comes in the folds of a letter. Just at first it quite
startled and alarmed me, and made me strangely dissatisfied with my life
and work; but farther reflection has been gradually reconciling me ever
since, and now I feel cheerful again, and in a humor to answer you.
_Woe unto him that is alone!_ This has been often said, but the studious
recluse may answer, _Woe unto him that is never alone and cannot bear to
be alone!_
We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and
winter, day and night, exercise and rest. I thank heaven for a thousand
pleasant and profitable conversations with acquaintances and friends; I
thank heaven also, and not less gratefully, for thousands of sweet hours
that have passed in solitary thought or labor, under the silent stars.
Society is necessary to give us our share and place in the collective
life of humanity, but solitude is necessary to the maintenance of the
individual life. Society is to the individual what travel and commerce
are to a nation; whilst solitude represents the home life of the nation,
during which it develops its especial originality and genius.
The life of the perfect hermit, and that of those persons who feel
themselves nothing individually, and have no existence but what they
receive from others, are alike imperfect lives. The perfect life is like
that of a ship of war which has its own place in the fleet and can share
in its strength and discipline, but can also go forth alone in the
solitude of the infinite sea. We ought to belong to Society, to have our
place in it, and yet to be capable of a complete individual existence
outside of it.
Which of the two is the grander, the ship in the disciplined fleet,
arranged in order of battle, or the ship alone in the tempest, a
thousand miles from land? The truest grandeur of the ship is neither in
one nor the other, but in the capacity for both. What would that captain
merit who either had not seamanship enough to work under the eye of the
admiral, or else had not sufficient knowledge of navigation to be
trusted out of the range of signals?
I value society for the abundance of ideas that it brings before us,
like carriages in a frequented street; but I value solitude for
sincerity and peace, and for the better understanding of the thoughts
that are truly ours. Only in solitude do we learn our inmost nature and
its needs. He who has lived for some great space of existence apart from
the tumult of the world, has discovered the vanity of the things for
which he has no natural aptitude or gift--their _relative_ vanity, I
mean, their uselessness to himself, personally; and at the same time he
has learned what is truly precious and good for him. Surely this is
knowledge of inestimable value to a man: surely it is a great thing for
any one in the bewildering confusion of distracting toils and pleasures
to have found out the labor that he is most fit for and the pleasures
that satisfy him best. Society so encourages us in affectations that it
scarcely leaves us a chance of knowing our own minds; but in solitude
this knowledge comes of itself, and delivers us from innumerable
vanities.
Montaigne tells us that at one time he bought books from ostentation,
but that afterwards he bought only such books as he wanted for his
private reading. In the first of these conditions of mind we may observe
the influence of society; in the second the effect of solitude. The man
of the world does not consult his own intellectual needs, but considers
the eyes of his visitors; the solitary student takes his literature as a
lonely traveller takes food when he is hungry, without reference to the
ordered courses of public hospitality.
It is a traditional habit of mankind to see only the disadvantages of
solitude, without considering its compensations; but there are great
compensations, some of the greatest being negative. The lonely man is
lord of his own hours and of his own purse; his days are long and
unbroken, he escapes from every form of ostentation, and may live quite
simply and sincerely in great calm breadths of leisure. I knew one who
passed his summers in the heart of a vast forest, in a common thatched
cottage with furniture of common deal, and for this retreat he quitted
very gladly a rich fine house in the city. He wore nothing but old
clothes, read only a few old books, without the least regard to the
opinions of the learned, and did not take in a newspaper. On the wall of
his habitation he inscribed with a piece of charcoal a quotation from De
Sénancour to this effect: "In the world a man lives in his own age; in
solitude, in all the ages." I observed in him the effects of a lonely
life, and he greatly aided my observations by frankly communicating his
experiences. That solitude had become inexpressibly dear to him, but he
admitted one evil consequence of it, which was an increasing unfitness
for ordinary society, though he cherished a few tried friendships, and
was grateful to those who loved him and could enter into his humor. He
had acquired a horror of towns and crowds, not from nervousness, but
because he felt imprisoned and impeded in his thinking, which needed the
depths of the forest, the venerable trees, the communication with
primæval nature, from which he drew a mysterious yet necessary
nourishment for the peculiar activity of his mind. I found that his case
answered very exactly to the sentence he quoted from De Sénancour; he
lived less in his own age than others do, but he had a fine compensation
in a strangely vivid understanding of other ages. Like De Sénancour, he
had a strong sense of the transitoriness of what is transitory, and a
passionate preference for all that the human mind conceives to be
relatively or absolutely permanent. This trait was very observable in
his talk about the peoples of antiquity, and in the delight he took in
dwelling rather upon everything which they had in common with ourselves
than on those differences which are more obvious to the modern spirit.
His temper was grave and earnest, but unfailingly cheerful, and
entirely free from any tendency to bitterness. The habits of his life
would have been most unfavorable to the development of a man of
business, of a statesman, of a leader in practical enterprise, but they
were certainly not unfavorable to the growth of a tranquil and
comprehensive intellect, capable of "just judgment and high-hearted
patriotism." He had not the spirit of the newspapers, he did not live
intensely in the present, but he had the spirit which has animated great
poets, and saints, and sages, and far-seeing teachers of humanity. Not
in vain had he lived alone with Nature, not in vain had he watched in
solemn twilights and witnessed many a dawn. There is, there _is_ a
strength that comes to us in solitude from that shadowy, awful Presence
that frivolous crowds repel!
Solitude may be and is sometimes deliberately accepted or chosen, but
far more frequently men are driven into it by Nature and by Fate. They
go into solitude to escape the sense of isolation which is always most
intolerable when there are many voices round us in loud dissonance with
our sincerest thought. It is a great error to encourage in young people
the love of noble culture in the hope that it may lead them more into
what is called good society. High culture always isolates, always drives
men out of their class and makes it more difficult for them to share
naturally and easily the common class-life around them. They seek the
few companions who can understand them, and when these are not to be
had within any traversable distance, they sit and work alone. Very
possibly too, in some instances, a superior culture may compel the
possessor of it to hold opinions too far in advance of the opinions
prevalent around him to be patiently listened to or tolerated, and then
he must either disguise them, which is always highly distasteful to a
man of honor, or else submit to be treated as an enemy to human welfare.
Cultivated people who live in London (their true home) need never
condemn themselves to solitude from this cause, but in the provinces
there are many places where it is not easy for them to live sociably
without a degree of reserve that is more wearisome than solitude itself.
And however much pains you take to keep your culture well in the
background, it always makes you rather an object of suspicion to people
who have no culture. They perceive that you are reserved, they know that
very much of what passes in your mind is a mystery to them, and this
feeling makes them uneasy in your presence, even afraid of you, and not
indisposed to find a compensation for this uncomfortable feeling in
sarcasms behind your back. Unless you are gifted with a truly
extraordinary power of conciliating goodwill, you are not likely to get
on happily, for long together, with people who feel themselves your
inferiors. The very utmost skill and caution will hardly avail to hide
all your modes of thought. Something of your higher philosophy will
escape in an unguarded moment, and give offence because it will seem
foolish or incomprehensible to your audience. There is no safety for you
but in a timely withdrawal, either to a society that is prepared to
understand you, or else to a solitude where your intellectual
superiorities will neither be a cause of irritation to others nor of
vexation to yourself.
Like all our instincts, the instinct of solitude has its especial
purpose, which appears to be the protection of rare and delicate natures
from the commonplace world around them. Though recluses are considered
by men of the world to be doomed to inevitable incompetence, the fact is
that many of them have reached the highest distinction in intellectual
pursuits. If Shelley had not disliked general society as he did, the
originality of his own living and thinking would have been less
complete; the influences of mediocre people, who, of course, are always
in the majority, would have silently but surely operated to the
destruction of that unequalled and personal delicacy of imagination to
which we owe what is inimitable in his poetry. In the last year of his
life, he said to Trelawny of Mary, his second wife, "She can't bear
solitude, nor I society--the quick coupled with the dead." Here is a
piteous prayer of his to be delivered from a party that he dreaded:
"Mary says she will have a party! There are English singers here, the
Sinclairs, and she will ask them, and every one she or you know. Oh the
horror! For pity go to Mary and intercede for me! I will submit to any
other species of torture than that of being bored to death by idle
ladies and gentlemen." Again, he writes to Mary: "My greatest delight
would be utterly to desert all human society. I would retire with you
and our child to a solitary island in the sea; would build a boat, and
shut upon my retreat the flood-gates of the world. I would read no
reviews and talk with no authors. If I dared trust my imagination it
would tell me that there are one or two chosen companions beside
yourself whom I should desire. But to this I would not listen; where two
or three are gathered together, the devil is among them." At Marlow he
knew little of his neighbors. "I am not wretch enough," he said, "to
tolerate an acquaintance." Wordsworth and Turner, if less systematic in
their isolation, were still solitary workers, and much of the peculiar
force and originality of their performance is due to their independence
of the people about them. Painters are especial sufferers from the
visits of talkative people who know little or nothing of the art they
talk about, and yet who have quite influence enough to disturb the
painter's mind by proving to him that his noblest thoughts are surest to
be misunderstood. Men of science, too, find solitude favorable to their
peculiar work, because it permits the concentration of their powers
during long periods of time. Newton had a great repugnance to society,
and even to notoriety--a feeling which is different, and in men of
genius more rare. No one can doubt, however, that Newton's great
intellectual achievements were due in some measure to this peculiarity
of his temper, which permitted him to ripen them in the sustained
tranquillity necessary to difficult investigations. Auguste Comte
isolated himself not only from preference but on system, and whatever
may have been the defects of his remarkable mind, and the weakness of
its ultimate decay, it is certain that his amazing command over vast
masses of heterogeneous material would have been incompatible with any
participation in the passing interests of the world. Nothing in
intellectual history has ever exceeded the unshakable firmness of
purpose with which he dedicated his whole being to the elaboration of
the Positive philosophy. He sacrificed everything to it--position, time,
health, and all the amusements and opportunities of society. He found
that commonplace acquaintances disturbed his work and interfered with
his mastery of it, so he resolutely renounced them. Others have done
great things in isolation that was not of their own choosing, yet none
the less fruitful for them and for mankind. It was not when Milton saw
most of the world, but in the forced retirement of a man who had lost
health and eyesight, and whose party was hopelessly defeated, that he
composed the "Paradise Lost." It was during tedious years of
imprisonment that Bunyan wrote his immortal allegory. Many a genius has
owed his best opportunities to poverty, because poverty had happily
excluded him from society, and so preserved him from time-devouring
exigencies and frivolities.
The solitude which is really injurious is the severance from all who are
capable of understanding us. Painters say that they cannot work
effectively for very long together when separated from the society of
artists, and that they must return to London, or Paris, or Rome, to
avoid an oppressive feeling of discouragement which paralyzes their
productive energy. Authors are more fortunate, because all cultivated
people are society for them; yet even authors lose strength and agility
of thought when too long deprived of a genial intellectual atmosphere.
In the country you meet with cultivated individuals; but we need more
than this, we need those general conversations in which every speaker is
worth listening to. The life most favorable to culture would have its
times of open and equal intercourse with the best minds, and also its
periods of retreat. My ideal would be a house in London, not far from
one or two houses that are so full of light and warmth that it is a
liberal education to have entered them, and a solitary tower on some
island of the Hebrides, with no companions but the sea-gulls and the
thundering surges of the Atlantic. One such island I know well, and it
is before my mind's eye, clear as a picture, whilst I am writing. It
stands in the very entrance of a fine salt-water loch, rising above two
hundred feet out of the water and setting its granite front steep
against the western ocean. When the evenings are clear you can see
Staffa and Iona like blue clouds between you and the sunset; and on your
left, close at hand, the granite hills of Mull, with Ulva to the right
across the narrow strait. It was the dream of my youth to build a tower
there, with three or four little rooms in it, and walls as strong as a
lighthouse. There have been more foolish dreams, and there have been
less competent teachers than the tempests that would have roused me and
the calms that would have brought me peace. If any serious thought, if
any noble inspiration might have been hoped for, surely it would have
been there, where only the clouds and waves were transient, but the
ocean before me, and the stars above, and the mountains on either hand,
were emblems and evidences of eternity.
NOTE.--There is a passage in Scott's novel, "The Pirate," which
illustrates what has been said in this letter about the necessity for
concealing superior culture in the presence of less intellectual
companions, and I quote it the more willingly that Scott was so
remarkably free from any morbid aversion to society, and so capable of
taking a sincere interest in every human being.
Cleveland is speaking to Minna:--
"I thought over my former story, and saw that seeming more brave,
skilful, and enterprising than others had gained me command and
respect, and that seeming more gently nurtured and more civilized than
they had made them envy and hate me as a being of another species. _I
bargained with myself then, that since I could not lay aside my
superiority of intellect and education, I would do my best to disguise
and to sink, in the rude seaman, all appearance of better feeling and
better accomplishments._"
A similar policy is often quite as necessary in the society of
landsmen.
PART X.
_INTELLECTUAL HYGIENICS._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG AUTHOR WHILST HE WAS WRITING HIS FIRST BOOK.
Mr. Galton's advice to young travellers--That we ought to interest
ourselves in the _progress_ of a journey--The same rule applicable in
intellectual things--Women in the cabin of a canal boat--Working
hastily for temporary purposes--Fevered eagerness to get work
done--Beginners have rarely acquired firm intellectual habits--Knowing
the range of our own powers--The coolness of accomplished
artists--Advice given by Ingres--Balzac's method of work--Scott,
Horace Vernet, John Phillip--Decided workers are deliberate workers.
I read the other day, in Galton's "Art of Travel," a little bit which
concerns you and all of us, but I made the extract in my
commonplace-book for your benefit rather than my own, because the truth
it contains has been "borne in upon me" by my own experience, so that
what Mr. Galton says did not give me a new conviction, but only
confirmed me in an old one. He is speaking to explorers who have not
done so much in that way as he has himself, and though the subject of
his advice is the conduct of an exploring party (in the wilds of
Australia, for example) the advice itself is equally useful if taken
metaphorically, and applied to the conduct of intellectual labors and
explorations of all kinds.
"Interest yourself," says Mr. Galton, "chiefly in the progress of your
journey, and do not look forward to its end with eagerness. It is better
to think of a return to civilization, not as an end to hardship and a
haven from ill, but as a thing to be regretted, and as a close to an
adventurous and pleasant life. In this way, risking less, you will
insensibly creep on, making connections, and learning the capabilities
of the country as you advance, which will be found invaluable in the
case of a hurried or a disastrous return. And thus, when some months
have passed by, you will look back with surprise on the great distance
travelled over; for if you average only three miles a day, at the end of
the year you will have advanced 1000, which is a very considerable
exploration. The fable of the hare and the tortoise seems expressly
intended for travellers over wide and unknown tracts."
Yes, we ought to interest ourselves chiefly in the progress of our work,
and not to look forward to its end with eagerness. That eagerness of
which Mr. Galton speaks has spoiled many a piece of work besides a
geographical exploration, and it not only spoils work, but it does
worse, it spoils life also. How am I to enjoy this year as I ought, if I
am continually wishing it were over? A truly intellectual philosophy
must begin by recognizing the fact that the intellectual paths are
infinitely long, that there will always be new horizons behind the
horizon that is before us, and that we must accept a gradual advance as
the law of our intellectual life. It is our business to move forwards,
but we ought to do so without any greater feeling of hurry than that
which affects the most stationary of minds. Not a bad example for us is
a bargeman's wife in a canal-boat. She moves; movement is the law of her
life; yet she is as tranquil in her little cabin as any goodwife on
shore, brewing her tea and preparing her buttered toast without ever
thinking about getting to the end of her journey. For if that voyage
were ended, another would always succeed to it, and another! In striking
contrast to the unhurried bargeman's wife in her cabin is an irritable
Frenchman in the corner of a diligence, looking at his watch every
half-hour, and wishing that the dust and rattle were over, and he were
in his own easy-chair at home. Those who really lead the intellectual
life, and have embraced it for better and for worse, are like the
bargeman's wife; but those who live the life from time to time only, for
some special purpose, wishing to be rid of it as soon as that purpose is
accomplished, are like the sufferer in the purgatory of the diligence.
Is there indeed really any true intellectual life at all when every hour
of labor is spoiled by a feverish eagerness to be at the end of the
projected task? You cannot take a bit out of another man's life and live
it, without having lived the previous years that led up to it, without
having also the assured hopes for the years that lie beyond. The attempt
is constantly made by amateurs of all kinds, and by men of temporary
purposes, and it always fails. The amateur says when he awakes on some
fine summer morning, and draws up his blind, and looks out on the dewy
fields: "Ah, the world of nature is beautiful to-day: what if I were to
lead the life of an artist?" And after breakfast he seeks up his old box
of watercolor and his blockbook, and stool, and white umbrella, and what
not, and sallies forth, and fixes himself on the edge of the forest or
the banks of the amber stream. The day that he passes there looks like
an artist's day, yet it is not. It has not been preceded by the three or
four thousand days which ought to have led up to it; it is not strong in
the assured sense of present skill, in the calm knowledge that the hours
will bear good fruit. So the chances are that there will be some hurry,
and fretfulness, and impatience, under the shadow of that white parasol,
and also that when the day is over there will be a disappointment. You
cannot put an artist's day into the life of any one but an artist.
Our impatiences come mainly, I think, from an amateurish doubt about our
own capacity, which is accompanied by a fevered eagerness to see the
work done, because we are tormented both by hopes and fears so long as
it is in progress. We have fears that it may not turn out as it ought to
do, and we have at the same time hopes for its success. Both these
causes produce eagerness, and deprive us of the tranquillity which
distinguishes the thorough workman, and which is necessary to
thoroughness in the work itself. Now please observe that I am not
advising you to set aside these hopes and fears by an effort of the
will; when you have them they are the inevitable result of your state of
culture, and the will can no more get rid of them than it can get rid of
an organic disease. When you have a limited amount of power and of
culture, and are not quite clear in your own mind as to where the limits
lie, it is natural on the one hand that you should fear the
insufficiency of what you possess, and on the other that in more
sanguine moments you should indulge in hopes which are only extravagant
because your powers have not yet been accurately measured. You will
alternate between fear and hope, according to the temporary predominance
of saddening or cheerful ideas, but both these feelings will urge you to
complete the work in hand, that you may see your own powers reflected in
it, and measure them more exactly. This is the main cause of the
eagerness of young authors, and the reason why they often launch work
upon the sea of publicity which is sure to go immediately to the bottom,
from the unworkmanlike haste with which it has been put together. But
beyond this there is another cause, which is, that beginners in
literature have rarely acquired firm intellectual habits, that they do
not yet lead the tranquil intellectual life, so that such a piece of
work as the composition of a book keeps them in an unwholesome state of
excitement. When you feel this coming upon you, pray remember Mr.
Galton's wise traveller in unknown tracts, or the bargeman's wife in the
canal-boat.
Amongst the many advantages of experience, one of the most valuable is
that we come to know the range of our own powers, and if we are wise we
keep contentedly within them. This relieves us from the malady of
eagerness; we know pretty accurately beforehand what our work will be
when it is done, and therefore we are not in a hurry to see it
accomplished. The coolness of old hands in all departments of labor is
due in part to the cooling of the temperament by age, but it is due even
more to the fulness of acquired experience, for we do not find
middle-aged men so cool in situations where they feel themselves
incompetent. The conduct of the most experienced painters in the
management of their work is a good example of this masterly coolness,
because we can see them painting in their studios whereas we cannot so
easily see or so justly estimate the coolness of scientific or literary
workmen. A painter of great experience will have, usually, several
pictures at a time upon his easels, and pass an hour upon one, or an
hour upon the other, simple as the state of the pigment invites him
without ever being tempted to risk anything by hurrying a process. The
ugly preparatory daubing which irritates the impatience of the beginner
does not disturb _his_ equanimity; he has laid it with a view to the
long-foreseen result, and it satisfies him temporarily as the right
thing for the time being. If you know what is the right thing for the
time being, and always do it, you are sure of the calm of the thorough
workman. All his touches, except the very last touch on each work, are
touches of preparation, leading gradually up to his result. Ingres used
to counsel his pupils to sketch always, to sketch upon and within the
first sketch till the picture came right in the end; and this was
strictly Balzac's method in literature. The literary and artistic labors
of these two men did not proceed so much upon the principle of
travelling as upon that of cultivation. They took an idea in the rough,
as a settler takes a tract from wild nature, and then they went over it
repeatedly, each time pushing the cultivation of it a little farther.
Scott, Horace Vernet, John Phillip, and many others, have worked rather
on the principle of travelling, passing over the ground once, and
leaving it, never coming back again to correct the mistakes of
yesterday. Both methods of work require deliberation, but the latter
needs it in the supreme degree. All very decided workers, men who did
not correct, have been at the same time very deliberate workers--rapid,
in the sense of accomplishing much in the course of the year, or the
life, but cautious and slow and observant whilst they actually labored,
thinking out very carefully every sentence before they wrote it, every
touch of paint before they laid it.
LETTER II.
TO A STUDENT IN THE FIRST ARDOR OF INTELLECTUAL AMBITION.
The first freshness--Why should it not be preserved?--The dulness of
the intellectual--Fictions and false promises--Ennui in work
itself--Dürer's engraving of Melancholy--Scott about Dryden--Byron,
Shelley, Wordsworth--Humboldt, Cuvier, Goethe--Tennyson's
"Maud"--Preventives of _ennui_--Hard study for limited times--The
_ennui_ of jaded faculties.
I have been thinking about you frequently of late, and the burden or
refrain of my thoughts has been "What a blessing he has in that first
freshness, if only he could keep it!" But now I am beginning more
hopefully to ask myself, "Why should he not keep it?"
It would be an experiment worth trying, so to order your intellectual
life, that however stony and thorny your path might be, however
difficult and arduous, it should at all events never be dull; or, to
express what I mean more accurately, that you yourself should never
feel the depressing influences of dulness during the years when they are
most to be dreaded. I want you to live steadily and happily in your
intellectual labors, even to the natural close of existence, and my best
wish for you is that you may escape a long and miserable malady which
brain-workers very commonly suffer from when the first dreams of youth
have been disappointed--a malady in which the intellectual desires are
feeble, the intellectual hopes are few; whose victim, if he has still
resolution enough to learn anything, acquires without satisfaction, and,
if he has courage to create, has neither pride nor pleasure in his
creations.
If I were to sing the praises of knowledge as they have been so often
sung by louder harps than mine, I might avoid so dreary a theme. It is
easy to pretend to believe that the intellectual life is always sure to
be interesting and delightful, but the truth is that, either from an
unwise arrangement of their work, or from mental or physical causes
which we will investigate to some extent before we have done with the
subject, many men whose occupations are reputed to be amongst the most
interesting have suffered terribly from _ennui_, and that not during a
week or two at a time, but for consecutive years and years.
There is a class of books written with the praiseworthy intention of
stimulating young men to intellectual labor, in which this danger of the
intellectual life is systematically ignored. It is assumed in these
books that the satisfactions of intellectual labor are certain; that
although it may not always, or often, result in outward and material
prosperity, its inward joys will never fail. Promises of this kind
cannot safely be made to any one. The satisfactions of intellectual
riches are not more sure than the satisfactions of material riches; the
feeling of dull indifference which often so mysteriously clouds the life
of the rich man in the midst of the most elaborate contrivances for his
pleasure and amusement, has its exact counterpart in the lives of men
who are rich in the best treasures of the mind, and who have infinite
intellectual resources. However brilliant your ability, however brave
and persistent your industry, however vast your knowledge, there is
always this dreadful possibility of _ennui_. People tell you that work
is a specific against it, but many a man has worked steadily and
earnestly, and suffered terribly from _ennui_ all the time that he was
working, although the labor was of his own choice, the labor that he
loved best, and for which Nature evidently intended him. The poets, from
Solomon downwards, have all of them, so far as I know, given utterance
in one page or another of their writings to this feeling of dreary
dissatisfaction, and Albert Dürer, in his "Melencolia," illustrated it.
It is plain that the robust female figure which has exercised the
ingenuity of so many commentators is not melancholy either from weakness
of the body or vacancy of the mind. She is strong and she is learned;
yet, though the plumes of her wings are mighty, she sits heavily and
listlessly, brooding amidst the implements of suspended labor, on the
shore of a waveless sea. The truth is that Dürer engraved the melancholy
that he himself only too intimately knew. This is not the dulness of the
ignorant and incapable, whose minds are a blank because they have no
ideas, whose hands are listless for want of an occupation; it is the
sadness of the most learned, the most intelligent, the most industrious;
the weary misery of those who are rich in the attainments of culture,
who have the keys of the chambers of knowledge, and wings to bear them
to the heaven of the ideal. If you counsel this "Melencolia" to work
that she may be merry, she will answer that she knows the uses of labor
and its vanity, and the precise amount of profit that a man hath of all
his labor which he taketh under the sun. All things are full of labor,
she will tell you; and in much wisdom is much grief, and he that
increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.
Can we escape this brooding melancholy of the great workers--has any
truly intellectual person escaped it ever? The question can never be
answered with perfect certainty, because we can never quite accurately
know the whole truth about the life of another. I have known several men
of action, almost entirely devoid of intellectual culture, who enjoyed
an unbroken flow of animal energy and were clearly free from the
melancholy of Dürer; but I never intimately knew a really cultivated
person who had not suffered from it more or less, and the greatest
sufferers were the most conscientious thinkers and students. Amongst the
illustrious dead, it may be very safely answered that any poet who has
described it has written from his own experience--a transient experience
it may be, yet his own. When Walter Scott, _à-propos_ of Dryden, spoke
of "the apparently causeless fluctuation of spirits incident to one
doomed to labor incessantly in the feverish exercise of the
imagination," and of that "sinking of spirit which follows violent
mental exertion," is it not evident that his kindly understanding of
Dryden's case came from the sympathy of a fellow-laborer who knew by his
own experience the gloomier and more depressing passages of the
imaginative life? It would be prudent perhaps to omit the mention of
Byron, because some may attribute his sadness to his immorality; and if
I spoke of Shelley, they might answer that he was "sad because he was
impious;" but the truth is, that quite independently of conduct, and
even of belief, it was scarcely possible for natures so highly
imaginative as these two, and so ethereally intellectual as one of the
two, to escape those clouds of gloom which darken the intellectual life.
Wordsworth was not immoral, Wordsworth was not unorthodox, yet he could
be as sad in his own sober way as Byron in the bitterness of his
desolation, or Shelley in his tenderest wailing. The three men who seem
to have been the least subject to the sadness of intellectual workers
were Alexander Humboldt, Cuvier, and Goethe. Alexander Humboldt, so far
as is known to us, lived always in a clear and cheerful daylight; his
appetite for learning was both strong and regular; he embraced the
intellectual life in his earliest manhood, and lived in it with an
unhesitating singleness of purpose, to the limits of extreme old age.
Cuvier was to the last a model student, of a temper at once most
unflinching and most kind, happy in all his studies, happier still in
his unequalled facility of mental self-direction. Goethe, as all know,
lived a life of unflagging interest in each of the three great branches
of intellectual labor. During the whole of his long life he was
interested in literature, in which he was a master; he was interested in
science, in which he was a discoverer, and in art, of which he was an
ardent though not practically successful student. His intellectual
activity ceased only on rare occasions of painful illness or
overwhelming affliction; he does not seem to have asked himself ever
whether knowledge was worth its cost; he was always ready to pay the
appointed price of toil. He had no infirmity of intellectual doubt; the
powerful impulses from within assured him that knowledge was good for
him, and he went to it urged by an unerring instinct, as a young salmon
bred in the slime of a river seeks strength in the infinite sea. And
yet, being a poet and a man of strong passions, Goethe did not
altogether escape the green-sickness which afflicts the imaginative
temperament, or he could never have written "Werther;" but he cured
himself very soon, and the author of "Werther" had no indulgence for
Wertherism--indeed we are told that he grew ashamed of having written
the book which inoculated the younger minds of Europe with that
miserable disease. In our own time an illustrious poet has given in
"Maud" a very perfect study of a young mind in a morbid condition, a
mind having indeed the student-temper, but of a bad kind, that which
comes not from the genuine love of study, but from sulky rage against
the world.
"Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse.
_I will bury myself in my books_, and the Devil may pipe to his own."
This kind of self-burial in one's library does not come from the love of
literature. The recluse will not speak to his neighbor, yet needs human
intercourse of some kind, and seeks it in reading, urged by an inward
necessity. He feels no gratitude towards the winners of knowledge; his
morbid ill-nature depreciates the intellectual laborers:--
"The man of science himself is fonder of glory and vain;
An eye well-practised in nature, a spirit bounded and poor."
What is the life such a spirit will choose for itself? Despising alike
the ignorant and the learned, the acuteness of the cultivated and the
simplicity of the poor, in what form of activity or inaction will he
seek what all men need, the harmony of a life well tuned?
"Be mine a philosopher's life in the quiet woodland ways:
Where, if I cannot be gay, let a passionless peace be my lot."
There are many different morbid states of the mind, and this of the hero
of "Maud" is only one of them, but it is the commonest amongst
intellectual or semi-intellectual young men. See how he has a little fit
of momentary enthusiasm (all he is capable of) about a shell that
suddenly and accidentally attracts his attention. How true to the morbid
nature is that incident! Unable to pursue any large and systematic
observation, the diseased mind is attracted to things suddenly and
accidentally, sees them out of all proportion, and then falls into the
inevitable fit of scornful peevishness.
"What is it? A learned man
Could give it a clumsy name:
Let him name it who can."
The question which concerns the world is, how this condition of the mind
may be avoided. The cure Mr. Tennyson suggested was war; but wars,
though more frequent than is desirable, are not to be had always. And in
your case, my friend, it is happily not a cure but a preventive that is
needed. Let me recommend certain precautions which taken together are
likely to keep you safe. Care for the physical health in the first
place, for if there is a morbid mind the bodily organs are not doing
their work as they ought to do. Next, for the mind itself, I would
heartily recommend hard study, really hard study, taken very regularly
but in very moderate quantity. The effect of it on the mind is as
bracing as that of cold water on the body, but as you ought not to
remain too long in the cold bath, so it is dangerous to study _hard_
more than a short time every day. Do some work that is very difficult
(such as reading some language that you have to puzzle out _à coups de
dictionnaire_) two hours a day regularly, to brace the fighting power of
the intellect, but let the rest of the day's work be easier. Acquire
especially, if you possibly can, the enviable faculty of getting
entirely rid of your work in the intervals of it, and of taking a hearty
interest in common things, in a garden, or stable, or dog-kennel, or
farm. If the work pursues you--if what is called unconscious
cerebration, which ought to go forward without your knowing it, becomes
conscious cerebration, and bothers you, then you have been working
beyond your cerebral strength, and you are not safe.
An organization which was intended by Nature for the intellectual life
cannot be healthy and happy without a certain degree of intellectual
activity. Natures like those of Humboldt and Goethe need immense labors
for their own felicity, smaller powers need less extensive labor. To all
of us who have intellectual needs there is a certain supply of work
necessary to perfect health. If we do less, we are in danger of that
ennui which comes from want of intellectual exercise; if we do more, we
may suffer from that other ennui which is due to the weariness of the
jaded faculties, and this is the more terrible of the two.
LETTER III.
TO AN INTELLECTUAL MAN WHO DESIRED AN OUTLET FOR HIS ENERGIES.
Dissatisfaction of the intellectual when they have not an extensive
influence--A consideration suggested to the author by Mr. Matthew
Arnold--Each individual mind a portion of the national mind, which
must rise or decline with the minds of which it is composed--Influence
of a townsman in his town--Household influence--Charities and
condescendences of the highly cultivated--A suggestion of M.
Taine--Conversation with inferiors--How to make it interesting--That
we ought to be satisfied with humble results and small successes.
There is a very marked tendency amongst persons of culture to feel
dissatisfied with themselves and their success in life when they do not
exercise some direct and visible influence over a considerable portion
of the public. To put the case in a more concrete form, it may be
affirmed that if an intellectual young man does not exercise influence
by literature, or by oratory, or by one of the most elevated forms of
art, he is apt to think that his culture and intelligence are lost upon
the world, and either to blame himself for being what he considers a
failure, or else (and this is more common) to find fault with the world
in general for not giving him a proper chance of making his abilities
tell. The facilities for obtaining culture are now so many and great,
and within the reach of so many well-to-do people, that hundreds of
persons become really very clever in various ways who would have
remained utterly uncultivated had they lived in any previous century. A
few of these distinguish themselves in literature and other pursuits
which bring notoriety to the successful, but by far the greater number
have to remain in positions of obscurity, often being clearly conscious
that they have abilities and knowledge not much, if at all, inferior to
the abilities and knowledge of some who have achieved distinction. The
position of a clever man who remains obscure is, if he has ambition,
rather trying to the moral fibre, but there are certain considerations
which might help to give a direction to his energy and so procure him a
sure relief, which reputation too frequently fails to provide.
The first consideration is one which was offered to me many years ago by
Mr. Matthew Arnold, and which I can give, though from memory, very
nearly in his own words. The multiplicity of things which make claim to
the attention of the public is in these days such that it requires
either uncommon strength of will or else the force of peculiar
circumstances to make men follow any serious study to good result, and
the great majority content themselves with the general enlightenment of
the epoch, which they get from newspapers and reviews. Hence the efforts
of the intellectual produce little effect, and it requires either
extraordinary talent or extraordinary fanaticism to awaken the serious
interest of any considerable number of readers. Yet, in spite of these
discouragements, we ought to remember that our labors, if not applauded
by others, may be of infinite value to ourselves, and also that beyond
this gain to the individual, his culture is a gain to the nation,
whether the nation formally recognizes it or not. For the intellectual
life of a nation is the sum of the lives of all intellectual people
belonging to it, and in this sense your culture is a gain to England,
whether England counts you amongst her eminent sons, or leaves you
forever obscure. Is it not a noble spectacle, a spectacle well worthy of
a highly civilized country, when a private citizen, with an admirable
combination of patriotism and self-respect, says to himself as he
labors, "I know that in a country so great as England, where there are
so many able men, all that I do can count for very little in public
estimation, yet I will endeavor to store my mind with knowledge and make
my judgment sure, in order that the national mind of England, of which
my mind is a minute fraction, may be enlightened by so much, be it never
so little"? I think the same noble feeling might animate a citizen with
reference to his native town; I think a good townsman might say to
himself, "Our folks are not much given to the cultivation of their
minds, and they need a few to set them an example. I will be one of
those few. I will work and think, in order that our town may not get
into a state of perfect intellectual stagnation." But if the nation or
the city were too vast to call forth any noble feeling of this kind,
surely the family is little enough and near enough. Might not a man say,
"I will go through a good deal of intellectual drudgery in order that my
wife and children may unconsciously get the benefit of it; I will learn
facts for them that they may be accurate, and get ideas for them that
they may share with me a more elevated mental state; I will do something
towards raising the tone of the whole household"?
The practical difficulty in all projects of this kind is that the
household does not care to be intellectually elevated, and opposes the
resistance of gravitation. The household has its natural intellectual
level, and finds it as inevitably as water that is free. Cultivated men
are surrounded in their homes by a group of persons, wife, children,
servants, who, in their intercourse with one another, create the
household tone. What is a single individual with his books against these
combined and active influences? Is he to go and preach the gospel of the
intellect in the kitchen? Will he venture to present intellectual
conclusions in the drawing-room? The kitchen has a tone of its own
which all our efforts cannot elevate, and the drawing-room has its own
atmosphere, an atmosphere unfavorable to severe and manly thinking. You
cannot make cooks intellectual, and you must not be didactic with
ladies. Intellectual men always feel this difficulty, and most commonly
keep their intellect very much to themselves, when they are at home. If
they have not an outlet elsewhere, either in society or in literature,
they grow morbid.
Yet, although it is useless to attempt to elevate any human being above
his own intellectual level unless he gradually climbs himself as a man
ascends a mountain, there are nevertheless certain charities or
condescendences of the highly cultivated which may be good for the lower
intelligences that surround them, as the streams from the Alpine snows
are good for the irrigation of the valleys, though the meadows which
they water must forever remain eight or ten thousand feet below them.
And I believe that it would greatly add to the happiness of the
intellectual portion of mankind if they could more systematically
exercise these charities. It is quite clear that we can never effect by
chance conversation that total change in the mental state which is
gradually brought about by the slow processes of education; we cannot
give to an intellect that has never been developed, and which has fixed
itself in the undeveloped state, that power and activity which come only
after years of labor; but we may be able on many occasions to offer the
sort of help which a gentleman offers to an old woman when he invites
her to get up into the rumble behind his carriage. I knew an
intellectual lady who lived habitually in the country, and I may say
without fanciful exaggeration that the farmers' wives round about her
were considerably superior to what in all probability they would have
been without the advantage of her kindly and instructive conversation.
She possessed the happy art of conveying the sort of knowledge which
could be readily received by her hearers, and in a manner which made it
agreeable to them, so that they drew ideas from her quite naturally, and
her mind irrigated their minds, which would have remained permanently
barren without that help and refreshment. It would be foolish to
exaggerate the benefits of such intellectual charity as this, but it is
well, on the other hand, not to undervalue it. Such an influence can
never convey much solid instruction, but it may convey some of its
results. It may produce a more thoughtful and reasonable condition of
mind, it may preserve the ignorant from some of those preposterous
theories and beliefs which so easily gain currency amongst them.
Indirectly, it may have rather an important political influence, by
disposing people to vote for the better sort of candidate. And the
influence of such intellectual charity on the material well being of the
humbler classes, on their health and wealth, may be quite as
considerable as that of the other and more common sort of charity which
passes silver from hand to hand.
Shortly after the termination of the great Franco-German conflict, M.
Taine suggested in the _Temps_ that subscribers to the better sort of
journals might do a good deal for the enlightenment of the humbler
classes by merely lending their newspapers in their neighborhood. This
was a good suggestion: the best newspapers are an important intellectual
propaganda; they awaken an interest in the most various subjects, and
supply not only information but a stimulus. The danger to persons of
higher culture that the newspaper may absorb time which would else be
devoted to more systematic study, does not exist in the classes for
whose benefit M. Taine made his recommendation. The newspaper is their
only secular reading, and without it they have no modern literature of
any kind. In addition to the praiseworthy habit of lending good
newspapers, an intellectual man who lives in the country might adopt the
practice of conversing with his neighbors about everything in which they
could be induced to take an interest, giving them some notion of what
goes on in the classes which are intellectually active, some idea of
such discoveries and projects as an untutored mind may partially
understand. For example, there is the great tunnel under the Mont Cenis,
and there is the projected tunnel beneath the Channel, and there is the
cutting of the Isthmus of Suez. A peasant can comprehend the greatness
of these remarkable conceptions when they are properly explained to
him, and he will often feel a lively gratitude for information of that
kind. We ought to remember what a slow and painful operation reading is
to the uneducated. Merely to read the native tongue is to them a labor
so irksome that they are apt to lose the sense of a paragraph in seeking
for that of a sentence or an expression. As they would rather speak than
have to write, so they prefer hearing to reading, and they get much more
good from it, because they can ask a question when the matter has not
been made clear to them.
One of the best ways of interesting and instructing your intellectual
inferiors is to give them an account of your travels. All people like to
hear a traveller tell his own tale, and whilst he is telling it he may
slip in a good deal of information about many things, and much sound
doctrine. Accounts of foreign countries, even when you have not seen
them personally, nearly always awaken a lively interest, especially if
you are able to give your hearers detailed descriptions of the life led
by foreigners who occupy positions corresponding to their own. Peasants
can be made to take an interest in astronomy even, though you cannot
tell them anything about the peasants in Jupiter and Mars, and there is
always, at starting, the great difficulty of persuading them to trust
science about the motion and rotundity of the earth.
A very direct form of intellectual charity is that of gratuitous
teaching, both in classes and by public lectures, open to all comers. A
great deal of light has in this way been spread abroad in cities, but in
country villages there is little encouragement to enterprises of this
kind, the intelligence of farm laborers being less awakened than that of
the corresponding urban population. Let us remember, however, that one
of the very highest and last achievements of the cultivated intellect is
the art of conveying to the uncultivated, the untaught, the unprepared,
the best and noblest knowledge which they are capable of assimilating.
No one who, like the writer of these pages, has lived much in the
country, and much amongst a densely ignorant peasantry, will be likely
in any plans of enlightenment to err far on the side of enthusiastic
hopefulness. The mind of a farm laborer, or that of a small farmer, is
almost always sure to be a remarkably stiff soil, in which few
intellectual conceptions can take root; yet these few may make the
difference between an existence worthy of a man, and one that differs
from the existence of a brute in little beyond the possession of
articulate language. We to whom the rich inheritance of intellectual
humanity is so familiar as to have lost much of its freshness, are
liable to underrate the value of thoughts and discoveries which to us
have for years seemed commonplace. It is with our intellectual as with
our material wealth; we do not realize how precious some fragments of it
might be to our poorer neighbors. The old clothes that we wear no
longer may give comfort and confidence to a man in naked destitution;
the truths which are so familiar to us that we never think about them,
may raise the utterly ignorant to a sense of their human brotherhood.
Above all, in the exercise of our intellectual charities, let us
accustom ourselves to feel satisfied with humble results and small
successes; and here let me make a confession which may be of some
possible use to others. When a young man, I taught a drawing-class
gratuitously, beginning with thirty-six pupils, who dwindled gradually
to eleven. Soon afterwards I gave up the work from dissatisfaction, on
account of the meagre attendance. This was very wrong--the eleven were
worth the thirty-six; and so long as one of the eleven remained I ought
to have contentedly taught him. The success of a teacher is not to be
measured by the numbers whom he immediately influences. It is enough, it
has been proved to be enough in more than one remarkable instance, that
a single living soul should be in unison with the soul of a master, and
receive his thought by sympathy. The one disciple teaches in his turn,
and the idea is propagated.
LETTER IV.
TO THE FRIEND OF A MAN OF HIGH CULTURE WHO PRODUCED NOTHING.
Joubert--"Not yet time," or else "The time is past"--His weakness for
production--Three classes of minds--A more perfect intellectual life
attainable by the silent student than by authors--He may follow his
own genius--Saving of time effected by abstinence from writing--The
unproductive may be more influential than the prolific.
When I met B. at your house last week, you whispered to me in the
drawing-room that he was a man of the most remarkable attainments, who,
to the great regret of all his friends, had never employed his abilities
to any visible purpose. We had not time for a conversation on this
subject, because B. himself immediately joined us. His talk reminded me
very much of Joubert--not that I ever knew Joubert personally, though I
have lived very near to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, where Joubert lived; but
he is one of those characters whom it is possible to know without having
seen them in the flesh. His friends used to urge him to write something,
and then he said, "_Pas encore._" "Not yet; I need a long peace."
Tranquillity came, and then he said that God had only given force to his
mind for a limited time, and that the time was past. Therefore, as
Sainte-Beuve observed, for Joubert there was no medium; either it was
not yet time, or else the time was past.
Nothing is more common than for _other_ people to say this of us. They
often say "He is too young," as Napoleon said of Ingres, or else "He is
too old," as Napoleon said of Greuze. It is more rare for a man himself
to shrink from every enterprise, first under the persuasion that he is
unprepared, and afterwards because the time is no longer opportune. Yet
there does exist a certain very peculiar class of highly-gifted,
diffident, delicate, unproductive minds, which impress those around them
with an almost superstitious belief in their possibilities, yet never do
anything to justify that belief.
But may it not be doubted whether these minds _have_ productive power of
any kind? I believe that the full extent of Joubert's productive power
is displayed in those sentences of his which have been preserved, and
which reveal a genius of the rarest delicacy, but at the same time
singularly incapable of sustained intellectual effort. He said that he
could only compose slowly, and with an extreme fatigue. He believed,
however, that the weakness lay in the instrument alone, in the composing
faculties, and not in the faculties of thought, for he said that behind
his weakness there was strength, as behind the strength of some others
there was weakness.
In saying this, it is probable that Joubert did not overestimate
himself. He _had_ strength of a certain kind, or rather he had quality;
he had distinction, which is a sort of strength in society and in
literature. But he had no productive force, and I do not believe that
his unproductiveness was a productiveness checked by a fastidious taste;
I believe that it was real, that he was not organized for production.
Sainte-Beuve said that a modern philosopher was accustomed to
distinguish three classes of minds--
1. Those who are at once powerful and delicate, who excel as they
propose, execute what they conceive, and reach the great and true
beautiful--a rare _élite_ amongst mortals.
2. A class of minds especially characterized by their delicacy, who feel
that their idea is superior to their execution, their intelligence
greater than their talent, even when the talent is very real; they are
easily dissatisfied with themselves, disdain easily won praises, and
would rather judge, taste, and abstain from producing, than remain below
their conception and themselves. Or if they write it is by fragments,
for themselves only, at long intervals and at rare moments. Their
fecundity is internal, and known to few.
3. Lastly, there is a third class of minds more powerful and less
delicate or difficult to please, who go on producing and publishing
themselves without being too much dissatisfied with their work.
The majority of our active painters and writers, who fill modern
exhibitions, and produce the current literature of the day, belong to
the last class, to which we are all greatly indebted for the daily bread
of literature and art.
But Sainte-Beuve believed that Joubert belonged to the second class, and
I suspect that both Sainte-Beuve and many others have credited that
class with a potential productiveness beyond its real endowments. Minds
of the Joubert class are admirable and valuable in their way, but they
are really, and not apparently, sterile.
And why would we have it otherwise? When we lament that a man of culture
has "done nothing," as we say, we mean that he has not written books. Is
it necessary, is it desirable, that every cultivated person should write
books?
On the contrary, it seems that a more perfect intellectual life may be
attained by the silent student than by authors. The writer for the
public is often so far its slave that he is compelled by necessity or
induced by the desire for success (since it is humiliating to write
unsaleable books as well as unprofitable) to deviate from his true path,
to leave the subjects that most interest him for other subjects which
interest him less, and therefore to acquire knowledge rather as a matter
of business than as a labor of love. But the student who never
publishes, and does not intend to publish, may follow his own genius and
take the knowledge which belongs to him by natural affinity. Add to this
the immense saving of time effected by abstinence from writing. Whilst
the writer is polishing his periods, and giving hours to the artistic
exigencies of mere form, the reader is adding to his knowledge.
Thackeray said that writers were not great readers, because they had not
the time.
The most studious Frenchman I ever met with used to say that he so hated
the pen as scarcely to resolve to write a letter. He reminded me of
Joubert in this; he often said, "J'ai horreur de la plume." Since he had
no profession his leisure was unlimited, and he employed it in educating
himself without any other purpose than this, the highest purpose of all,
to become a cultivated man. The very prevalent idea that lives of this
kind are failures unless they leave some visible achievement as a
testimony and justification of their labors, is based upon a narrow
conception both of duty and of utility. Men of this unproductive class
are sure to influence their immediate neighborhood by the example of
their life. Isolated as they are too frequently in the provinces, in the
midst of populations destitute of the higher culture, they often
establish the notion of it notwithstanding the contemptuous estimates of
the practical people around them. A single intellectual life, thus
modestly lived through in the obscurity of a country-town, may leave a
tradition and become an enduring influence. In this, as in all things,
let us trust the arrangements of Nature. If men are at the same time
constitutionally studious and constitutionally unproductive, in must be
that production is not the only use of study. Joubert was right in
keeping silence when he felt no impulses to speak, right also in saying
the little that he did say without a superfluous word. His mind is more
fully known, and more influential, than many which are abundantly
productive.
LETTER V.
TO A STUDENT WHO FELT HURRIED AND DRIVEN.
Some intellectual products possible only in excitement--Byron's
authority on the subject--Can inventive minds work regularly?--Sir
Walter Scott's opinion--Napoleon on the winning of victories--The
prosaic business of men of genius--"Waiting for
inspiration"--Rembrandt's advice to a young painter--Culture necessary
to inspiration itself--Byron, Keats, Morris--Men of genius may be
regular as students.
In my last letter to you on quiet regularity of work, I did not give
much consideration to another matter which, in certain kinds of work,
has to be taken into account, for I preferred to make that the subject
of a separate letter. There are certain intellectual products which are
only possible in hours or minutes of great cerebral excitement. Byron
said that when people were surprised to find poets very much like others
in the ordinary intercourse of life, their surprise was due to ignorance
of this. If people knew, Byron said, that poetical production came from
an excitement which from its intensity could only be temporary, they
would not expect poets to be very different from other people when not
under the influence of this excitement. Now, we may take the word
"poet," in this connection, in the very largest sense. All men who have
the gift of invention are poets. The inventive ideas come to them at
unforeseen moments, and have to be seized when they come, so that the
true inventor works sometimes with vertiginous rapidity, and afterwards
remains for days or weeks without exercising the inventive faculty at
all. The question is, can you make an inventive mind work on the
principle of measured and regular advance. Is such counsel as that in my
former letter applicable to inventors?
Scott said, that although he had known many men of ordinary abilities
who were capable of perfect regularity in their habits, he had never
known a man of genius who was so. The popular impression concerning men
of genius is very strong in the same sense, but it is well not to attach
too much importance to popular impressions concerning men of genius, for
the obvious reason that such men come very little under popular
observation. When they work it is usually in the most perfect solitude,
and even people who live in the same house know very little, really, of
their intellectual habits.
The truth seems to be, first, that the moments of high excitement, of
noblest invention, are rare, and not to be commanded by the will; but,
on the other hand, that in order to make the gift of invention produce
its full effect in any department of human effort, vast labors of
preparation are necessary, and these labors may be pursued as steadily
as you like Napoleon I. used to say that battles were won by the sudden
flashing of an idea through the brain of the commander at a certain
critical instant. The capacity for generating this sudden electric spark
was military genius. The spark flashed independently of the will; the
General could not win that vivid illumination by labor or by prayer; it
came only in the brain of genius from the intense anxiety and excitement
of the actual conflict. Napoleon seems always to have counted upon it,
always to have believed that when the critical instant arrived the wild
confusion of the battle-field would be illuminated for him by that burst
of sudden flame. But if Napoleon had been ignorant of the prosaic
business of his profession, to which he attended more closely than any
other commander, what would these moments of supreme clearness have
availed him, or would they ever have come to him at all? If they had
come to him, they would have revealed only the extent of his own
negligence. Instead of showing him _what to do_, they would have made
painfully evident what _ought to have been done_. But it is more
probable that these clear moments would never have occurred to a mind
unprepared by study. Clear military inspirations never occur to
shopkeepers and farmers, as bright ideas about checkmates occur only to
persons who have studied chess. The prosaic business, then, of the man
of genius is to accumulate that preparatory knowledge without which his
genius can never be available, and he can do work of this kind as
regularly as he likes.
The one fatal mistake which is committed habitually by people who have
the scarcely desirable gift of half-genius is "waiting for inspiration."
They pass week after week in a state of indolence, unprofitable alike to
the mind and the purse, under pretext of waiting for intellectual
flashes like those which came to Napoleon on his battle-fields. They
ought to remember the advice given by one of the greatest artists of the
seventeenth century to a young painter of his acquaintance. "Practise
assiduously what you already know, and in course of time other things
will become clear to you." The inspirations come only to the
disciplined; the indolent wait for them in vain.
If you have genius, therefore, or believe you have, it is admitted that
you cannot be perpetually in a state of intense excitement. If you were
in that state without ceasing, you would go mad. You cannot be expected
to write poetry in the plodding ox-pace manner advocated for
intellectual work generally in my last letter. As for that good old
comparison between the hare and the tortoise, it may be answered for
you, simply, that you are not a tortoise, and that what is a most wise
procedure for tortoises may be impracticable for you. The actual
composition of poetry, especially poetry of a fiery kind, like--
"The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece,"
of Byron, is to be done not when the poet will, but when he can, or
rather, when he _must_.
But if you are a wise genius you will feel how necessary is culture even
for work of that kind. Byron would not have felt any enthusiasm for the
isles of Greece if he had not known something of their history. The
verses are an inspiration, but they could never have occurred to a quite
uncultivated person, however bright his inspirations. Even more
obviously was the genius of Keats dependent upon his culture. He did not
read Greek, but from translations of Greek literature and from the
direct study of Greek art he got the sort of material that he needed.
And in our own day Morris has been evidently a very diligent student of
many literatures. What I insist upon is, that we could not have had the
real Keats, the real Morris, unless they had prepared themselves by
culture. We see immediately that the work they have done is _their_
work, specially, that they were specially adapted for it--inspired for
it, if you will. But how evident it is that the inspiration could never
have produced the work, or anything like it, without labor in the
accumulation of material!
Now, although men of genius cannot be regularly progressive in actual
production, cannot write so many verses a day, regularly, as you may
spin yarn, they can be very regular as students, and some of the best of
them have been quite remarkable for unflinching steadiness of
application in that way. The great principle recommended by Mr. Galton,
of not looking forward eagerly to the end of your journey, but
interesting yourself chiefly in the progress of it, is as applicable to
the studies of men of genius as to those of more ordinary persons.
LETTER VI.
TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.
On some verses of Goethe--Man not constituted like a planet--Matthew
Arnold's poem, "Self-dependence"--Poetry and prose--The wind more
imitable than the stars--The stone in Glen Croe--Rest and be thankful.
"Rambling over the wild moors, with thoughts oftentimes as wild and
dreary as those moors, the young Carlyle, who had been cheered through
his struggling sadness, and strengthened for the part he was to play in
life, by the beauty and the wisdom which Goethe had revealed to him,
suddenly conceived the idea that it would be a pleasant and a fitting
thing if some of the few admirers in England forwarded to Weimar a
trifling token of their admiration. On reaching home Mr. Carlyle at once
sketched the design of a seal to be engraved, the serpent of eternity
encircling a star, with the words _ohne Hast, ohne Rast_ (unhasting,
unresting), in allusion to the well-known verses--
'Wie das Gestirn,
Ohne Hast
Aber ohne Rast
Drehe sich jeder
Um die eigne Last.'
(Like a star, unhasting, unresting, be each one fulfilling his God-given
'hest.')"[10]
This is said so beautifully, and seems so wise, that it may easily
settle down into the mind as a maxim and rule of life. Had we been told
in plain prose to take no rest, without the beautiful simile of the
star, and without the wise restriction about haste, our common sense
would have rebelled at once; but as both beauty and wisdom exist
together in the gem-like stanza, our judgment remains silent in charmed
acquiescence.
Let us ask ourselves, however, about this stella example, whether man is
naturally so constituted as to be able to imitate it. A planet moves
without haste, because it is incapable of excitement; and without rest,
because it is incapable of fatigue. A planet makes no effort, and
encounters no friction or resistance of any kind. Man is so constituted
as to feel frequently the stimulus of excitement, which immediately
translates itself either into actual acceleration or into the desire for
acceleration--a desire which cannot be restrained without an effort; and
whatever man undertakes to do he encounters friction and resistance,
which, for him, always sooner or later inevitably induce fatigue. Man is
neither constituted like a star nor situated like a star, and therefore
it is not possible for him to exist as stars exist.
You will object to this criticism that it handles a delicate little poem
very roughly, and you may tell me that I am unfit to receive the wisdom
of the poets, which is always uttered with a touch of Oriental
exaggeration. Certainly Goethe could never mean that a man should kill
himself by labors literally incessant. Goethe's own life is the best
elucidation of his true meaning. The example of the star was held up to
us to be followed only within the limits of our human nature, as a
Christian points to the example of Christ. In the same spirit Matthew
Arnold wrote his noble poem "Self-dependence," in which he tells us to
live like the stars and the sea:--
"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you."
From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:
"Wouldst thou _be_ as these are? _Live_ as they.
"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy."
The true intention of poetical teachings like these is in the influence
they have over the feelings. If a star makes me steadier in my labor,
less of a victim to vain agitation, in consequence of Goethe's verses;
if the stars and the sea together renew more fully their mighty charm
upon my heart because those stanzas of Arnold have fixed themselves in
my memory, the poets have done their work. But the more positive
_prosateur_ has his work to do also, and you, as it seems to me, need
this positive help of prose.
You are living a great deal too much like a star, and not enough like a
human being. You do not hasten often, but you _never_ rest, except when
Nature mercifully prostrates you in irresistible sleep. Like the stars
and the sea in Arnold's poem, you do not ask surrounding things to yield
you love, amusement, sympathy. The stars and the sea can do without
these refreshments of the brain and heart, but you cannot. Rest is
necessary to recruit your intellectual forces; sympathy is necessary to
prevent your whole nature from stiffening like a rotifer without
moisture; love is necessary to make life beautiful for you, as the
plumage of certain birds becomes splendid when they pair; and without
amusement you will lose the gayety which wise men try to keep as the
best legacy of youth.
Let your rest be perfect in its season, like the rest of waters that are
still. If you will have a model for your living, take neither the stars,
for they fly without ceasing, nor the ocean that ebbs and flows, nor the
river that cannot stay, but rather let your life be like that of the
summer air, which has times of noble energy and times of perfect peace.
It fills the sails of ships upon the sea, and the miller thanks it on
the breezy uplands; it works generously for the health and wealth of all
men, yet it claims its hours of rest. "I have pushed the fleet, I have
turned the mill, I have refreshed the city, and now, though the captain
may walk impatiently on the quarter-deck, and the miller swear, and the
city stink, I will stir no more until it pleases me."
You have learned many things, my friend, but one thing you have _not_
learned--the art of resting. That stone in Glen Croe ought to have
impressed its lesson on the mind of many a traveller, long before Earl
Russell gave it a newspaper celebrity. Have we not rested there
together, you and I, a little in advance of the coach, which the weary
horses were still slowly dragging up the tedious hill? And as we sat on
the turf, and looked down the misty glen, did we not read the lesson
there engraven? How good and _human_ the idea was, the idea of setting
up that graven stone in the wilderness; how full of sympathy is that
inscription for all the weakness and weariness of humanity! Once, in the
ardor of youth, there shone before me a golden star in heaven, and on
the deep azure around it "_Ohne Hast, ohne Rast_," in letters of steady
flame; but now I see more frequently a plain little stone set up in the
earth, with the inscription, "Rest, and be thankful!"
Is not the stone just a little like a grave-stone, my friend? Perhaps it
is. But if we take rest when we require it during life, we shall not
need the grave's rest quite so soon.
LETTER VII.
TO AN ARDENT FRIEND WHO TOOK NO REST.
The regret for lost time often a needless one--Tillier's doctrine
about _flânerie_--How much is gained in idle hours--Sainte-Beuve's
conviction that whatever he did he studied the infinite book of the
world and of life--Harness--Free play of the mind necessary--The
freedom of a grain of desert-sand--The freedom of the wild bee.
If we asked any intellectual workman what he would do if his life were
to be lived over again, I believe the answer, whatever its form, would
amount ultimately to this: "I would economize my time better." Very
likely if the opportunity were granted him he would do nothing of the
sort; very likely he would waste his time in ways more authorized by
custom, yet waste it just as extravagantly as he had done after his own
original fashion; but it always seems to us as if we could use the time
better if we had it over again.
It seems to me in looking back over the last thirty years, that the only
time really wasted has been that spent in laborious obedience to some
external authority. It may be a dangerous doctrine which Claude Tillier
expressed in an immortal sentence, but dangerous or not, it is full of
intellectual truth: "Le temps le mieux employé est celui que l'on
perd."[11] If what we are accustomed to consider lost time could be
removed, as to its effects at least, from the sum of our existence, it
is certain that we should suffer from a great intellectual
impoverishment. All the best knowledge of mankind, to begin with, is
acquired in hours which hard-working people consider lost hours--in
hours, that is, of pleasure and recreation. Deduct all that we have
learnt about men in times of recreation, in clubs and smoking-rooms, on
the hunting-field, on the cricket-ground, on the deck of the yacht, on
the box of the drag or the dog-cart, would the residue be worth very
much? would it not be a mere heap of dry bones without any warm flesh to
cover them? Even the education of most of us, such as it is, has been in
a great measure acquired out of school, as it were; I mean outside of
the acknowledged duties of our more serious existence. Few Englishmen
past forty have studied English literature either as a college exercise
or a professional preparation; they have read it privately, as an
amusement. Few Englishmen past forty have studied modern languages, or
science, or the fine arts, from any obedience to duty, but merely from
taste and inclination. And even if we studied these things formally, as
young men often do at the present day, it is not from the formal study
that we should get the _perfume_ of the language or the art, but from
idle hours in foreign lands and galleries. It is superfluous to
recommend idleness to the unintellectual, but the intellectual too often
undervalue it. The laborious intellect contracts a habit of
strenuousness which is some times a hindrance to its best activity.
"I have arrived," said Sainte-Beuve, "perhaps by way of secretly
excusing my own idleness, perhaps by a deeper feeling of the principle
that all comes to the same, at the conclusion that whatever I do or do
not, working in the study at continuous labor, scattering myself in
articles, spreading myself about in society, giving my time away to
troublesome callers, to poor people, to _rendez-vous_, in the street, no
matter to whom and to what, I cease not to do one and the same thing, to
read one and the same book, the infinite book of the world and of life,
that no one ever finishes, in which the wisest read farthest; I read it
then at all the pages which present themselves, in broken fragments,
backwards, what matters it? I never cease going on. The greater the
medley, the more frequent the interruption, the more I get on with this
book in which one is never beyond the middle; but the profit is to have
had it open before one at all sorts of different pages."
A distinguished author wrote to another author less distinguished: "You
have gone through a good deal of really vigorous study, but have not
_been in harness_ yet." By harness he meant discipline settled
beforehand like military drill. Now, the advantages of drill are evident
and very generally recognized, but the advantages of intellectual
_flânerie_ are not so generally recognized. For the work of the
intellect to be clear and healthy, a great deal of free play of the mind
is absolutely necessary. Harness is good for an hour or two at a time,
but the finest intellects have never _lived_ in harness. In reading any
book that has much vitality you are sure to meet with many allusions and
illustrations which the author hit upon, not when he was in harness, but
out at grass. Harness trains us to the systematic performance of our
work, and increases our practical strength by regulated exercise, but it
does not supply everything that is necessary to the perfect development
of the mind. The truth is, that we need both the discipline of harness
and the abundant nourishment of the free pasture. Yet may not our
freedom be the profitless, choiceless, freedom of a grain of
desert-sand, carried hither and thither by the wind, gaining nothing and
improving nothing, so that it does not signify where it was carried
yesterday or where it may fall to-morrow, but rather the liberty of the
wild bee, whose coming and going are ordered by no master, nor fixed by
any premeditated regulation, yet which misses no opportunity of
increase, and comes home laden in the twilight. Who knows where he has
wandered; who can tell over what banks and streams the hum of his wings
has sounded? Is anything in nature freer than he is; can anything
account better for a rational use of freedom? Would he do his work
better if tiny harness were ingeniously contrived for him? Where then
would be the golden honey, and where the waxen cells?
LETTER VIII.
TO A FRIEND (HIGHLY CULTIVATED) WHO CONGRATULATED HIMSELF ON HAVING
ENTIRELY ABANDONED THE HABIT OF READING NEWSPAPERS.
Advantages in economy of time--Much of what we read in newspapers is
useless to our culture--The too great importance which they attach to
novelty--Distortion by party spirit--An instance of false
presentation--Gains to serenity by abstinence from
newspapers--Newspapers keep up our daily interest in each other--The
French peasantry--The newspaper-reading Americans--An instance of
total abstinence from newspapers--Auguste Comte--A suggestion of
Emerson's--The work of newspaper correspondents--War
correspondents--Mr. Stanley--M. Erdan, of the _Temps_.
Your abstinence from newspaper reading is not anew experiment in itself,
though it is new in reference to your particular case, and I await its
effects with interest. I shall be curious to observe the consequences,
to an intellect constituted as yours is, of that total cutting off from
the public interests of your own century which an abstinence from
newspapers implies. It is clear that, whatever the loss may be, you
have a definite gain to set against it. The time which you have hitherto
given to newspapers, and which may be roughly estimated at about five
hundred hours a year, is henceforth a valuable time-income to be applied
to whatever purposes your best wisdom may select. When an intellectual
person has contrived by the force of one simple resolution to effect so
fine an economy as this, it is natural that he should congratulate
himself. Your feelings must be like those of an able finance minister
who has found means of closing a great leak in the treasury--if any
economy possible in the finances of a State could ever relatively equal
that splendid stroke of time-thrift which your force of will has enabled
you to effect. In those five hundred hours, which are now your own, you
may acquire a science or obtain a more perfect command over one of the
languages which you have studied. Some department of your intellectual
labors which has hitherto been unsatisfactory to you, because it was too
imperfectly cultivated, may henceforth be as orderly and as fruitful as
a well-kept garden. You may become thoroughly conversant with the works
of more than one great author whom you have neglected, not from lack of
interest, but from want of time. You may open some old chamber of the
memory that has been dark and disused for many a year; you may clear the
cobwebs away, and let the fresh light in, and make it habitable once
again.
Against these gains, of which some to a man of your industry are
certain, and may be counted upon, what must be our estimate of the
amount of sacrifice or loss? It is clear to both of us that much of what
we read in the newspapers is useless to our culture. A large proportion
of newspaper-writing is occupied with speculation on what is likely to
happen in the course of a few months; therefore, by waiting until the
time is past, we know the event without having wasted time in
speculations which could not effect it. Another rather considerable
fraction of newspaper matter consists of small events which have
interest for the day, owing to their novelty, but which will not have
the slightest permanent importance. The whole press of a
newspaper-reading country, like England or America, may be actively
engaged during the space of a week or a fortnight in discussing some
incident which everybody will have forgotten in six months; and besides
these sensational incidents, there are hundreds of less notorious ones,
often fictitious, inserted simply for the temporary amusement of the
reader. The greatest evil of newspapers, in their effect on the
intellectual life, is the enormous importance which they are obliged to
attach to mere novelty. From the intellectual point of view, it is of no
consequence whether a thought occurred twenty-two centuries ago to
Aristotle or yesterday evening to Mr. Charles Darwin, and it is one of
the distinctive marks of the truly intellectual to be able to take a
hearty interest in all truth, independently of the date of its
discovery. The emphasis given by newspapers to novelty exhibits things
in wrong relations, as the lantern shows you what is nearest at the cost
of making the general landscape appear darker by the contrast. Besides
this exhibition of things in wrong relations, there is a positive
distortion arising from the unscrupulousness of party, a distortion
which extends far beyond the limits of the empire.
An essay might be written on the distortion of English affairs in the
French press, or of French affairs in the English press, by writers who
are as strongly partisan in another country as in their own. "It is such
a grand thing," wrote an English Paris correspondent in 1870, "for
Adolphus Thiers, son of a poor laborer of Aix, and in early life a
simple journalist, to be at the head of the Government of France." This
is a fair specimen of the kind of false presentation which is so common
in party journalism. The newspaper from which I have quoted it was
strongly opposed to Thiers, being in fact one of the principal organs of
the English Bonapartists. It is not true that Thiers was the son of a
poor laborer of Aix. His father was a workman of Marseilles, his mother
belonging to a family in which neither wealth nor culture had been rare,
and his mother's relatives had him educated at the Lycée. The art of the
journalist in bringing together the two extremes of a career remarkable
for its steady ascent had for its object to produce the idea of
incongruity, of sudden and unsuitable elevation. Not only M. Thiers,
however, but every human being starts from a very small beginning, since
every man begins life as a baby. It is a great rise for one baby to the
Presidency of the French Republic; it was also a great rise for other
babies who have attained the premiership of England. The question is,
not what Thiers may have been seventy years ago, but what he was
immediately before his acceptance of the highest office of the State. He
was the most trusted and the most experienced citizen, so that the last
step in his career was as natural as the elevation of Reynolds to the
presidency of the Academy.
It is difficult for any one who cares for justice to read party journals
without frequent irritation, and it does not signify which side the
newspaper takes. Men are so unfair in controversy that we best preserve
the serenity of the intellect by studiously avoiding all literature that
has a controversial tone. By your new rule of abstinence from newspapers
you will no doubt gain almost as much in serenity as in time. To the
ordinary newspaper reader there is little loss of serenity, because he
reads only the newspaper that he agrees with, and however unfair it is,
he is pleased by its unfairness. But the highest and best culture makes
us disapprove of unfairness on our own side of the question also. We are
pained by it; we feel humiliated by it; we lament its persistence and
its perversity.
I have said nearly all that has to be said in favor of your rule of
abstinence. I have granted that the newspapers cost us much time, which,
if employed for great intellectual purposes, would carry us very far;
that they give disproportionate views of things by the emphasis they
give to novelty, and false views by the unfairness which belongs to
party. I might have added that newspaper writers give such a
preponderance to politics--not political philosophy, but to the everyday
work of politicians--that intellectual culture is thrown into the
background, and the election of a single member of Parliament is made to
seem of greater national importance than the birth of a powerful idea.
And yet, notwithstanding all these considerations, which are serious
indeed for the intellectual, I believe that your resolution is unwise,
and that you will find it to be untenable. One momentous reason more
than counterbalances all these considerations put together. Newspapers
are to the whole civilized world what the daily house-talk is to the
members of a household; they keep up our daily interest in each other,
they save us from the evils of isolation. To live as a member of the
great white race of men, the race that has filled Europe and America,
and colonized or conquered whatever other territories it has been
pleased to occupy, to share from day to day its cares, its thoughts, its
aspirations, it is necessary that every man should read his daily
newspaper. Why are the French peasants so bewildered and at sea, so out
of place in the modern world? It is because they never read a newspaper.
And why are the inhabitants of the United States, though scattered over
a territory fourteen times the area of France, so much more capable of
concerted political action, so much more _alive_ and modern, so much
more interested in new discoveries of all kinds and capable of selecting
and utilizing the best of them? It is because the newspaper penetrates
everywhere; and even the lonely dweller on the prairie or in the forest
is not intellectually isolated from the great currents of public life
which flow through the telegraph and the press.
The experiment of doing without newspapers has been tried by a whole
class, the French peasantry, with the consequences that we know, and it
has also from time to time been tried by single individuals belonging to
more enlightened sections of society. Let us take one instance, and let
us note what appear to have been the effects of this abstinence. Auguste
Comte abstained from newspapers as a teetotaller abstains from
spirituous liquors. Now, Auguste Comte possessed a gift of nature which,
though common in minor degrees, is in the degree in which he possessed
it rarer than enormous diamonds. That gift was the power of dealing with
abstract intellectual conceptions, and living amidst them always, as the
practical mind lives in and deals with material things. And it happened
in Comte's case, as it usually does happen in cases of very peculiar
endowment, that the gift was accompanied by the instincts necessary to
its perfect development and to its preservation. Comte instinctively
avoided the conversation of ordinary people, because he felt it to be
injurious to the perfect exercise of his faculty, and for the same
reason he would not read newspapers. In imposing upon himself these
privations he acted like a very eminent living etcher, who, having the
gift of an extraordinary delicacy of hand, preserves it by abstinence
from everything that may effect the steadiness of the nerves. There is a
certain difference, however, between the two cases which I am anxious to
accentuate. The etcher runs no risk of any kind by his rule of
abstinence. He refrains from several common indulgences, but he denies
himself nothing that is necessary to health. I may even go farther, and
say that the rules which he observes for the sake of perfection in his
art, might be observed with advantage by many who are not artists, for
the sake of their own tranquillity, without the loss of anything but
pleasure. The rules which Comte made for himself involved, on the other
hand, a great peril. In detaching himself so completely from the
interests and ways of thinking of ordinary men, he elaborated, indeed,
the conceptions of the positive philosophy, but arrived afterwards at a
peculiar kind of intellectual decadence from which it is
possible--probable even--that the rough common sense of the newspapers
might have preserved him. They would have saved him, I seriously
believe, from that mysticism which led to the invention of a religion
far surpassing in unreasonableness the least rational of the creeds of
tradition. It is scarcely imaginable, except on the supposition of
actual insanity, that any regular reader of the _Times_, the _Temps_,
the _Daily News_, and the _Saturday Review_, should believe the human
race to be capable of receiving as the religion of its maturity the
Comtist Trinity and the Comtist Virgin Mother. A Trinity consisting of
the Great Being (or humanity), the Great Fetish (or the earth), and the
Great Midst (or space); a hope for the human race (how unphysiological!)
that women might ultimately arrive at maternity independently of virile
help,--these are conceptions so remote, not only from the habits of
modern thought, but (what is more important) from its tendencies, that
they could not occur to a mind in regular communication with its
contemporaries.
"If you should transfer the amount of your reading day by day from the
newspaper to the standard authors?" To this suggestion of Emerson's it
may be answered that the loss would be greater than the gain. The
writers of Queen Anne's time could educate an Englishman of Queen Anne's
time, but they can only partially educate an Englishman of Queen
Victoria's time. The mind is like a merchant's ledger, it requires to be
continually posted up to the latest date. Even the last telegram may
have upset some venerable theory that has been received as infallible
for ages.
In times when great historical events are passing before our eyes, the
journalist is to future historians what the African traveller is to the
map-makers. His work is neither complete nor orderly, but it is the
fresh record of an eye-witness, and enables us to become ourselves
spectators of the mighty drama of the world. Never was this service so
well rendered as it is now, by correspondents who achieve heroic feats
of bodily and mental prowess, exposing themselves to the greatest
dangers, and writing much and well in circumstances the most unfavorable
to literary composition. How vividly the English war correspondents
brought before us the reality of the great conflict between Germany and
France! What a romantic achievement, worthy to be sung in heroic verse,
was the finding of Livingstone by Stanley! Not less interesting have
been the admirable series of letters by M. Erdan in the _Temps_, in
which, with the firmness of a master-hand, he has painted from the life,
week after week, year after year, the decline and fall of the temporal
power of the Papacy. I cannot think that any page of Roman history is
better worth reading than his letters, more interesting, instructive,
lively, or authentic. Yet with your contempt for newspapers you would
lose all this profitable entertainment, and seek instead of it the
accounts of former epochs not half so interesting as this fall of the
temporal power, accounts written in most cases by men in libraries who
had not seen the sovereigns they wrote about, nor talked with the people
whose condition they attempted to describe. You have a respect for these
accounts because they are printed in books, and bound in leather, and
entitled "history," whilst you despise the direct observation of a man
like Erdan, because he is only a journalist, and his letters are
published in a newspaper. Is there not some touch of prejudice in this,
some mistake, some narrowness of intellectual aristocracy?
LETTER IX.
TO AN AUTHOR WHO APPRECIATED CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE.
Miss Mitford on the selfishness of authors--A suggestion of
Emerson's--A laconic rule of his--Traces of jealousy--And of a more
subtle feeling--A contradiction--Necessary to resist the invasion of
the present--A certain equilibrium--The opposite of a pedant--The best
classics not pedants, but artists.
Reading the other day a letter by Miss Mitford, I was reminded of you as
the eye is reminded of green when it sees scarlet. You, whose interest
in literature has ever kept pace with the time, to whom no new thing is
unwelcome if only it is good, are safe from her accusations; but how
many authors have deserved them! Miss Mitford is speaking of a certain
writer who is at the same time a clergyman, and whom it is not
difficult to recognize.
"I never," she says, "saw him interested in the slightest degree by the
work of any other author, except, indeed, one of his own followers or of
his own clique, and then only as admiring or helping him. He has great
kindness and great sympathy with working people, or with a dying friend,
but I profess to you I am amazed at the utter selfishness of authors. I
do not know one single poet who cares for any man's poetry but his own.
In general they read no books except such as may be necessary to their
own writings--that is to the work they happen to be about, and even then
I suspect that they only read the bits that they may immediately want.
You know the absolute ignorance in which Wordsworth lived of all modern
works; and if, out of compliment to a visitor, he thought it needful to
seem to read or listen to two or three stanzas, he gave unhesitating
praise to the writer himself, but took especial care not to repeat the
praise where it might have done him good--utterly fair and false."
There are touches of this spirit of indifference to contemporary
literature in several writers and scholars whom we know. There are
distinct traces of it even in published writings, though it is much more
evident in private life and habit. Emerson seriously suggests that "the
human mind would perhaps be a gainer if all the secondary writers were
lost--say, in England, all but Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, through
the profounder study so drawn to those wonderful minds." In the same
spirit we have Emerson's laconic rule, "Never read any but famed books,"
which suggests the remark that if men had obeyed this rule from the
beginning, no book could ever have acquired reputation, and nobody would
ever have read anything. The idea of limiting English literature to a
holy trinity of Shakespeare, Milton, and Bacon, and voluntarily losing
all other authors, seems to me the most intense expression of the spirit
of aristocracy in reading. It is as if a man were to decide in his own
mind that society would be the better if all persons except the three
Emperors were excluded from it. There is a want of reliance upon one's
own judgment, and an excess of faith in the estimates of others, when we
resolve to read only those books which come to us in the splendor of a
recognized intellectual royalty. We read either to gain information, to
have good thinking suggested to us, or to have our imagination
stimulated. In the way of knowledge the best authors are always the most
recent, so that Bacon could not suffice. In the way of thinking, our
methods have gained in precision since Milton's time, and we are helped
by a larger experience than his. The one thing which Shakespeare and
Milton can do for us quite perfectly still, is to fill our imagination
richly, and give it a fine stimulus. But modern writers can render us
the same service.
Is there not a little jealousy of contemporaries in the persistence with
which some authors avoid them, and even engage others to avoid them? May
not there be a shade of another feeling than jealousy, a feeling more
subtle in operation, the undefined apprehension that we may find, even
amongst our more obscure contemporaries, merit equal to our own? So long
as we restrict our reading to old books of great fame we are safe from
this apprehension, for if we find admirable qualities, we know
beforehand that the world has handsomely acknowledged them, and we
indulge in the hope that our own admirable qualities will be recognized
by posterity with equal liberality. But it creates an unpleasant feeling
of uneasiness to see quantities of obscure contemporary work, done in a
plain way to earn a living by men of third or fourth-rate reputation, or
of no reputation at all, which in many respects would fairly sustain a
comparison with our own. It is clear that an author ought to be the last
person to advise the public not to read contemporary literature, since
he is himself a maker of contemporary literature; and there is a direct
contradiction between the invitation to read his book, which he
circulates by the act of publishing, and the advice which the book
contains. Emerson is more safe from this obvious rejoinder when he
suggests to us to transfer our reading day by day from the newspaper to
the standard authors. But are these suggestions anything more than the
reaction of an intellectual man against the too prevalent customs of
the world? The reading practised by most people, by all who do not set
before themselves intellectual culture as one of the definite aims of
life, is remarkable for the regularity with which it neglects all the
great authors of the past. The books provided by the circulating
library, the reviews and magazines, the daily newspapers, are read
whilst they are novelties, but the standard authors are left on their
shelves unopened. We require a firm resolution to resist this invasion
of what is new, because it flows like an unceasing river, and unless we
protect our time against it by some solid embankment of unshakable rule
and resolution, every nook and cranny of it will be filled and flooded.
An Englishman whose life was devoted to culture, but who lived in an
out-of-the-way place on the Continent, told me that he considered it a
decided advantage to his mind to live quite outside of the English
library system, because if he wanted to read a new book he had to buy it
and pay heavily for carriage besides, which made him very careful in his
choice. For the same reason he rejoiced that the nearest English
news-room was two hundred miles from his residence.
But, on the other hand, what would be the condition of a man's mind who
never read anything but the classic authors? He would live in an
intellectual monastery, and would not even understand the classic
authors themselves, for we understand the past only by referring it to
what we know in the present.
It is best to preserve our minds in a state of equilibrium, and not to
allow our repugnance to what we see as an evil to drive us into an evil
of an opposite kind. We are too often like those little toy-fish with a
bit of steel in their mouths, which children attract with a magnet. If
you present the positive pole of the magnet, the fish rushes at it at
once, but if you offer the negative end it retreats continually.
Everything relatively to our character has this positive or negative
end, and we either rush to things or rush away from them. Some persons
are actually driven away from the most entertaining writers because they
happen to be what are called classics, because pedants boast of having
read them. I know a man who is exactly the opposite of a pedant, who has
a horror of the charlatanism which claims social and intellectual
position as the reward for having laboriously waded through those
authors who are conventionally termed "classical," and this opposition
to pedantry has given him an aversion to the classics themselves, which
he never opens. The shallow pretence to admiration of famous writers
which is current in the world is so distasteful to the love of honesty
and reality which is the basis of his character, that by an unhappy
association of ideas he has acquired a repugnance to the writers
themselves. But such men as Horace, Terence, Shakespeare, Molière,
though they have had the misfortune to be praised and commentated upon
by pedants, were in their lives the precise opposite of pedants; they
were _artists_ whose study was human nature, and who lived without
pretension in the common world of men. The pedants have a habit of
considering these genial old artists as in some mysterious way their own
private property, for do not the pedants live by expounding them? And
some of us are frightened away from the fairest realms of poetry by the
fences of these grim guardians.
LETTER X.
TO AN AUTHOR WHO KEPT VERY IRREGULAR HOURS.
Julian Fane--His late hours--Regularity produced by habit--The time of
the principal effort--That the chief work should be done in the best
hours--Physicians prefer early to late work--The practice of Goethe
and some modern authors--The morning worker ought to live in a
tranquil neighborhood--Night-work--The medical objection to it--The
student's objection to day-work--Time to be kept in masses by adults,
but divided into small portions by children--Rapid turning of the
mind--Cuvier eminent for this faculty--The Duke of Wellington--The
faculty more available with some occupations than others--The slavery
of a minute obedience to the clock--Broad rules the best--Books of
agenda, good in business, but not in the higher intellectual pursuits.
What you told me of your habits in the employment of your hours reminded
me of Julian Fane. Mr. Lytton tells us that "after a long day of
professional business, followed by a late evening of social amusement,
he would return in the small hours of the night to his books, and sit,
unwearied, till sunrise in the study of them. Nor did he then seem to
suffer from this habit of late hours. His nightly vigils occasioned no
appearance of fatigue the next day.... He rarely rose before noon, and
generally rose much later."
But however irregular a man's distribution of his time may be in the
sense of wanting the government of fixed rules, there always comes in
time a certain regularity by the mere operation of habit. People who get
up very late hardly ever do so in obedience to a rule; many get up early
by rule, and many more are told that they ought to get up early, and
believe it, and aspire to that virtue, but fail to carry it into
practice. The late-risers are rebels and sinners--in this respect--to a
man, and so persistently have the wise, from Solomon downwards, harped
upon the moral loveliness of early rising and the degradation which
follows the opposite practice, that one can hardly get up after eight
without either an uncomfortable sense of guilt or an extraordinary
callousness. Yet the late-risers, though obeying no rule, for the
abandoned sinner recognizes none, become regular in their late rising
from the gradual fixing power of habit. Even Julian Fane, though he
regretted his desultory ways, "and dwelt with great earnestness on the
importance of regular habits of work," was perhaps less irregular than
he himself believed. We are sure to acquire habits; what is important is
not so much that the habits should be regular, as that their regularity
should be of the kind most favorable in the long run to the
accomplishment of our designs, and this never comes by chance, it is the
result of an effort of the will in obedience to governing wisdom.
The first question which every one who has the choice of his hours must
settle for himself is at what time of day he will make his principal
effort; for the day of every intellectual workman ought to be marked by
a kind of artistic composition; there ought to be some one labor
distinctly recognized as dominant, with others in subordination, and
subordination of various degrees. Now for the hours at which the
principal effort ought to be made, it is not possible to fix them by the
clock so as to be suitable for everybody, but a broad rule may be
arrived at which is applicable to all imaginable cases. The rule is
this--to do the chief work in the best hours; to give it the pick of
your day; and by day I do not mean only the solar day, but the whole of
the twenty-four hours. There is an important physiological reason for
giving the best hours to the most important work. The better the
condition of the brain and the body, and the more favorable the
surrounding circumstances, the smaller will be the cost to the
organization of the labor that has to be done. It is always the safest
way to do the heaviest (or most important) work at the time and under
the conditions which make it the least costly.
Physicians are unanimous in their preference of early to late work; and
no doubt, if the question were not complicated by other considerations,
we could not do better than to follow their advice in its simplicity.
Goethe wrote in the morning, with his faculties refreshed by sleep and
not yet excited by any stimulant. I could mention several living authors
of eminence who pursue the same plan, and find it favorable alike to
health and to production. The rule which they follow is never to write
after lunch, leaving the rest of their time free for study and society,
both of which are absolutely necessary to authors. According to this
system it is presumed that the hours between breakfast and lunch are the
best hours. In many cases they are so. A person in fair health, after
taking a light early breakfast without any heavier stimulant than tea or
coffee, finds himself in a state of freshness highly favorable to sound
and agreeable thinking. His brain will be in still finer order if the
breakfast has been preceded by a cold bath, with friction and a little
exercise. The feeling of freshness, cleanliness, and moderate
exhilaration, will last for several hours, and during those hours the
intellectual work will probably be both lively and reasonable. It is
difficult for a man who feels cheerful and refreshed, and whose task
seems easy and light, to write anything morbid or perverse.
But for the morning to be so good as I have just described it, the
workman must be quite favorably situated. He ought to live in a very
tranquil neighborhood, and to be as free as possible from anxiety as to
what the postman may have in reserve for him. If his study-window looks
out on a noisy street, and if the day is sure, as it wears on, to bring
anxious business of its own, then the increasing noise and the
apprehension (even though it be almost entirely unconscious) of
impending business, will be quite sufficient to interfere with the work
of any man who is the least in the world nervous, and almost all
intellectual laborers _are_ nervous, more or less. Men who have the
inestimable advantage of absolute tranquillity, at all times, do well to
work in the morning, but those who can only get tranquillity at times
independent of their own choice have a strong reason for working at
those times, whether they happen to be in the morning or not.
In an excellent article on "Work" (evidently written by an experienced
intellectual workman), which appeared in one of the early numbers of the
_Cornhill Magazine_, and was remarkable alike for practical wisdom and
the entire absence of traditional dogmatism, the writer speaks frankly
in favor of night-work, "If you can work at all at night, one hour at
that time is worth any two in the morning. The house is hushed, the
brain is clear, the distracting influences of the day are at an end.
You have not to disturb yourself with thoughts of what you are about to
do, or what you are about to suffer. You know that there is a gulf
between you and the affairs of the outside world, almost like the chasm
of death; and that you need not take thought of the morrow until the
morrow has come. There are few really great thoughts, such as the world
will not willingly let die, that have not been conceived under the quiet
stars."
The medical objection to night-work in the case of literary men would
probably be that the night is _too_ favorable to literary production.
The author of the Essay just quoted says that at night "you only drift
into deeper silence _and quicker inspiration_. If the right mood is upon
you, _you write on_; if not, your pillow awaits you." Exactly so; that
is to say, the brain, owing to the complete external tranquillity, can
so concentrate its efforts on the subject in hand as to work itself up
into a luminous condition which is fed by the most rapid destruction of
the nervous substance that ever takes place within the walls of a human
skull. "If the right mood is upon you, _you write on_;" in other words,
if you have once well lighted your spirit-lamp, it will go on burning so
long as any spirit is left in it, for the air is so tranquil that
nothing comes to blow it out. You drift into deeper silence and "quicker
inspiration." It is just this quicker inspiration that the physician
dreads.
Against this objection may be placed the equally serious objection to
day-work, that every interruption, when you are particularly anxious not
to be interrupted, causes a definite loss and injury to the nervous
system. The choice must therefore be made between two dangers, and if
they are equally balanced there can be no hesitation, because all the
_literary_ interests of an author are on the side of the most tranquil
time. Literary work is always sure to be much better done when there is
no fear of disturbance than under the apprehension of it; and precisely
the same amount of cerebral effort will produce, when the work is
uninterrupted, not only better writing, but a much greater quantity of
writing. The knowledge that he is working well and productively is an
element of health to every workman because it encourages cheerful habits
of mind.
In the division of time it is an excellent rule for adults to keep it as
much as possible _in large masses_, not giving a quarter of an hour to
one occupation and a quarter to another, but giving three, four, or five
hours to one thing at a time. In the case of children an opposite
practice should be followed; they are able to change their attention
from one subject to another much more easily than we can, whilst at the
same time they cannot fix their minds for very long without cerebral
fatigue leading to temporary incapacity. The custom prevalent in
schools, of making the boys learn several different things in the course
of the day, is therefore founded upon the necessities of the boy-nature,
though most grown men would find that changes so frequent would, for
them, have all the inconveniences of interruption. To boys they come as
relief, to men as interruption. The reason is that the physical
condition of the brain is different in the two cases; but in our loose
way of talking about these things we may say that the boy's ideas are
superficial, like the plates and dishes on the surface of a
dinner-table, which may be rapidly changed without inconvenience,
whereas the man's ideas, having all struck root down to the very depths
of his nature, are more like the plants in a garden, which cannot be
removed without a temporary loss both of vigor and of beauty, and the
loss cannot be instantaneously repaired. For a man to do his work
thoroughly well, it is necessary that he should dwell in it long enough
at a time to get all the powers of his mind fully under command with
reference to the particular work in hand, and he cannot do this without
tuning his whole mind to the given diapason, as a tuner tunes a piano.
Some men can tune their minds more rapidly, as violins are tuned, and
this faculty may to a certain extent be acquired by efforts of the will
very frequently repeated. Cuvier had this faculty in the most eminent
degree. One of his biographers says: "His extreme facility for study,
and of directing all the powers of his mind to diverse occupations of
study, from one quarter of an hour to another, was one of the most
extraordinary qualities of his mind." The Duke of Wellington also
cultivated the habit (inestimably valuable to a public man) of directing
the whole of his attention to the subject under consideration, however
frequently that subject might happen to be changed. But although men of
exceptional power and very exceptional flexibility may do this with
apparent impunity, that still depends very much on the nature of the
occupation. There are some occupations which are not incompatible with a
fragmentary division of time, because these occupations are themselves
fragmentary. For example, you may study languages in phrase-books during
very small spaces of time, because the complete phrase is in itself a
very small thing, but you could not so easily break and resume the
thread of an elaborate argument. I suspect that though Cuvier appeared
to his contemporaries a man remarkably able to leave off and resume his
work at will, he must have taken care to do work that would bear
interruption at those times when he knew himself to be most liable to
it. And although, when a man's time is unavoidably broken up into
fragments, no talent of a merely auxiliary kind can be more precious
than that of turning each of those fragments to advantage, it is still
true that he whose time is at his own disposal will do his work most
calmly, most deliberately, and therefore on the whole most thoroughly
and perfectly, when he keeps it in fine masses. The mere knowledge that
you have three or four clear hours before you is in itself a great help
to the spirit of thoroughness, both in study and in production. It is
agreeable too, when the sitting has come to an end, to perceive that a
definite advance is the result of it, and advance in anything is
scarcely perceptible in less than three or four hours.
There are several pursuits which _cannot_ be followed in fragments of
time, on account of the necessary preparations. It is useless to begin
oil-painting unless you have full time to set your palette properly, to
get your canvas into a proper state for working upon, to pose the model
as you wish, and settle down to work with everything as it ought to be.
In landscape-painting from nature you require the time to go to the
selected place, and after your arrival to arrange your materials and
shelter yourself from the sun. In scientific pursuits the preparations
are usually at least equally elaborate, and often much more so. To
prepare for an experiment, or for a dissection, takes time which we feel
to be disproportionate when it leaves too little for the scientific work
itself. It is for this reason more frequently than for any other that
amateurs who begin in enthusiasm, so commonly, after a while, abandon
the objects of their pursuit.
There is a kind of slavery to which no really intellectual man would
ever voluntarily submit, a minute obedience to the clock. Very
conscientious people often impose upon themselves this sort of slavery.
A person who has hampered himself with rules of this kind will take up a
certain book, for instance, when the clock strikes nine, and begin at
yesterday's mark, perhaps in the middle of a paragraph. Then he will
read with great steadiness till a quarter-past nine, and exactly on the
instant when the minute-hand gets opposite the dot, he will shut his
book, however much the passage may happen to interest him. It was in
allusion to good people of this kind that Sir Walter Scott said he had
never known a man of genius who could be perfectly regular in his
habits, whilst he had known many blockheads who could. It is easy to see
that a minute obedience to the clock is unintellectual in its very
nature, for the intellect is not a piece of mechanism as a clock is, and
cannot easily be made to act like one. There may be perfect
correspondence between the locomotives and the clocks on a railway, for
if the clocks are pieces of mechanism the locomotives are so likewise,
but the intellect always needs a certain looseness and latitude as to
time. Very broad rules are the best, such as "Write in the morning, read
in the afternoon, see friends in the evening," or else "Study one day
and produce another, alternately," or even "Work one week and see the
world another week, alternately."
There is a fretting habit, much recommended by men of business and of
great use to them, of writing the evening before the duties of the day
in a book of agenda. If this is done at all by intellectual men with
reference to their pursuits, it ought to be done in a very broad, loose
way, never minutely. An intellectual worker ought never to make it a
matter of conscience (in intellectual labor) to do a predetermined
quantity of little things. This sort of conscientiousness frets and
worries, and is the enemy of all serenity of thought.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Lewes's "Life of Goethe," Book vii. chap. 8.
[11] The best employed time is that which one loses.
PART XI.
_TRADES AND PROFESSIONS._
LETTER I.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN OF ABILITY AND CULTURE WHO HAD NOT DECIDED ABOUT
HIS PROFESSION.
The Church--Felicities and advantages of the clerical profession--Its
elevated ideal--That it is favorable to noble studies--French priests
and English Clergymen--The professional point of view--Difficulty of
disinterested thinking--Colored light--Want of strict
accuracy--Quotation from a sermon--The drawback to the clerical
life--Provisional nature of intellectual conclusions--The legal
profession--That it affords gratification to the intellectual
powers--Want of intellectual disinterestedness in lawyers--Their
absorption in professional life--Anecdote of a London
lawyer--Superiority of lawyers in their sense of
affairs--Medicine--The study of it a fine preparation for the
intellectual life--Social rise of medical men coincident with the
mental progress of communities--Their probable future influence on
education--The heroic side of their profession--The military and naval
professions--Bad effect of the privation of
solitude--Interruption--Anecdote of Cuvier--The fine arts--In what way
they are favorable to thought--Intellectual leisure of
artists--Reasoning artists--Sciences included in the fine arts.
It may be taken for granted that to a mind constituted as yours is, no
profession will be satisfactory which does not afford free play to the
intellectual powers. You might no doubt exercise resolution enough to
bind yourself down to uncongenial work for a term of years, but it would
be with the intention of retiring as soon as you had realized a
competency. The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and
educates what is best in us.
You had thoughts, at one time, of the Church, and the Church would have
suited you in many respects very happily, yet not, I think, in all
respects. The clerical profession has many great felicities and
advantages: it educates and develops, by its mild but regular
discipline, much of our higher nature; it sets before us an elevated
ideal, worth striving for at the cost of every sacrifice but one, of
which I intend to say something farther on; and it offers just that
mixture of public and private life which best affords the alternation of
activity and rest. It is an existence in many respects most favorable to
the noblest studies. It offers the happiest combination of duties that
satisfy the conscience with leisure for the cultivation of the mind; it
gives the easiest access to all classes of society, providing for the
parson himself a neutral and independent position, so safe that he need
only conduct himself properly to preserve it. How superior, from the
intellectual point of view, is this liberal existence to the narrower
one of a French _curé de campagne_! I certainly think that if a good
_curé_ has an exceptional genius for sanctity, his chances of becoming a
perfect saint are better than those of a comfortable English incumbent,
who is at the same time a gentleman and man of the world, but he is not
nearly so well situated for leading the intellectual life. Our own
clergy have a sort of middle position between the _curé_ and the layman,
which without at all interfering with their spiritual vocation, makes
them better judges of the character of laymen and more completely in
sympathy with it.
And yet, although the life of a clergyman is favorable to culture in
many ways, it is not wholly favorable to it. There exists, in clerical
thinking generally, just one restriction or impediment, which is the
overwhelming importance of the professional point of view. Of all the
professions the ecclesiastical one is that which most decidedly and most
constantly affects the judgment of persons and opinions. It is
peculiarly difficult for a clergyman to attain disinterestedness in his
thinking, to accept truth just as it may happen to present itself,
without passionately desiring that one doctrine may turn out to be
strong in evidence and another unsupported. And so we find the clergy,
as a class, anxious rather to discover aids to faith, than the simple
scientific truth; and the more the special priestly character develops
itself, the more we find them disposed to use their intellects for the
triumph of principles that are decided upon beforehand. Sometimes this
disposition leads them to see the acts of laymen in a colored light and
to speak of them without strict accuracy. Here is an example of what I
mean. A Jesuit priest preached a sermon in London very recently, in
which he said that "in Germany, France, Italy, and England, gigantic
efforts were being made to rob Christian children of the blessing of a
Christian education." "Herod, though dead," the preacher continued, "has
left his mantle behind him; and I wish that the soldiers of Herod in
those countries would plunge their swords into the breasts of little
children while they were innocent, rather than have their souls
destroyed by means of an unchristian and uncatholic education." No doubt
this is very earnest and sincere, but it is not accurate and just
thinking. The laity in the countries the preacher mentioned have
certainly a strong tendency to exclude theology from State schools,
because it is so difficult for a modern State to impose any kind of
theological teaching without injustice to minorities; but the laity do
not desire to deprive children of whatever instruction may be given to
them by the clergy of their respective communions. May I add, that to
the mind of a layman it seems a sanguinary desire that all little
children should have swords plunged into their breasts rather than be
taught in schools not clerically directed? The exact truth is, that the
powerful lay element is certainly separating itself from the
ecclesiastical element all over Europe, because it is found by
experience that the two have a great and increasing difficulty in
working harmoniously together, but the ecclesiastical element is
detached and not destroyed. The quotation I have just made is in itself
a sufficient illustration of that very peculiarity in the more exalted
ecclesiastical temperament, which often makes it so difficult for
priests and governments, in these times, to get on comfortably together.
Here is first a very inaccurate statement, and then an outburst of most
passionate feeling, whereas the intellect desires the strictest truth
and the most complete disinterestedness. As the temper of the laity
becomes more and more intellectual (and that is the direction of its
movement), the sacerdotal habit will become more and more remote from
it.
The clerical life has many strong attractions for the intellectual, and
just one drawback to counterbalance them. It offers tranquillity,
shelter from the interruptions and anxieties of the more active
professions, and powerful means of influence ready to hand; but it is
compatible with intellectual freedom and with the satisfaction of the
conscience, only just so long as the priest really remains a believer in
the details of his religion. Now, although we may reasonably hope to
retain the chief elements of our belief, although what a man believes at
twenty-five is always what he will most probably believe at fifty,
still, in an age when free inquiry is the common habit of cultivated
people of our sex, we may well hesitate before taking upon ourselves any
formal engagement for the future, especially in matters of detail. The
intellectual spirit does not regard its conclusions as being at any time
final, but always provisional; we hold what we believe to be the truth
until we can replace it by some more perfect truth, but cannot tell how
much of to-day's beliefs to-morrow will retain or reject. It may be
observed, however, that the regular performance of priestly functions is
in itself a great help to permanence in belief by connecting it closely
with practical habit, so that the clergy do really and honestly often
retain through life their hold on early beliefs which as laymen they
might have lost.
The profession of the law provides ample opportunities for a critical
intellect with a strong love of accuracy and a robust capacity for hard
work, besides which it is the best of worldly educations. Some lawyers
love their work as passionately as artists do theirs, others dislike it
very heartily, most of them seem to take it as a simple business to be
done for daily bread. Lawyers whose heart is in their work are
invariably men of superior ability, which proves that there is something
in it that affords gratification to the intellectual powers. However, in
speaking of lawyers, I feel ignorant and on the outside, because their
profession is one of which the interior feelings can be known to no one
who has not practised. One thing seems clear, they get the habit of
employing the whole strength and energy of their minds for especial and
temporary ends, the purpose being the service of the client, certainly
not the revelation of pure truth. Hence, although they become very
acute, and keen judges of that side of human nature which they
habitually see (not the best side), they are not more disinterested than
clergymen.[12] Sometimes they take up some study outside of their
profession and follow it disinterestedly, but this is rare. A busy
lawyer is much more likely than a clergyman to become entirely absorbed
in his professional life, because it requires so much more intellectual
exertion. I remember asking a very clever lawyer who lived in London,
whether he ever visited an exhibition of pictures, and he answered me by
the counter-inquiry whether I had read Chitty on Contracts, Collier on
Partnerships, Taylor on Evidence, Cruse's Digest, or Smith's Mercantile
Law? This seemed to me at the time a good instance of the way a
professional habit may narrow one's views of things, for these law-books
were written for lawyers alone, whilst the picture exhibitions were
intended for the public generally. My friend's answer would have been
more to the point if I had inquired whether he had read Linton on
Colors, and Burnet on Chiaroscuro.
There is just one situation in which we all may feel for a short time as
lawyers feel habitually. Suppose that two inexperienced players sit down
to a game of chess, and that each is backed by a clever person who is
constantly giving him hints. The two backers represent the lawyers, and
the players represent their clients. There is not much disinterested
thought in a situation of this kind, but there is a strong stimulus to
acuteness.
I think that lawyers are often superior to philosophers in their sense
of what is relatively important in human affairs with reference to
limited spaces of time, such as half a century. They especially know the
enormous importance of custom, which the speculative mind very readily
forgets, and they have in the highest degree that peculiar sense which
fits men for dealing with others in the affairs of ordinary life. In
this respect they are remarkably superior to clergymen, and superior
also to artists and men of science.
The profession of medicine is, of all fairly lucrative professions, the
one best suited to the development of the intellectual life. Having to
deal continually with science, being constantly engaged in following and
observing the operation of natural laws, it produces a sense of the
working of those laws which prepares the mind for bold and original
speculation, and a reliance upon their unfailing regularity, which gives
it great firmness and assurance. A medical education is the best
possible preparation for philosophical pursuits, because it gives them a
solid basis in the ascertainable. The estimation in which these studies
are held is an accurate meter of the intellectual advancement of a
community. When the priest is reverenced as a being above ordinary
humanity, and the physician slightly esteemed, the condition of society
is sure to be that of comparative ignorance and barbarism; and it is one
of several signs which indicate barbarian feeling in our own
aristocracy, that it has a contempt for the study of medicine. The
progress of society towards enlightenment is marked by the steady social
rise of the surgeon and the physician, a rise which still continues,
even in Western Europe. It is probable that before very long the medical
profession will exercise a powerful influence upon general education,
and take an active share in it. There are very strong reasons for the
opinion that schoolmasters educated in medicine would be peculiarly well
qualified to train both body and mind for a vigorous and active manhood.
An immense advantage, even from the intellectual point of view, in the
pursuit of medicine and surgery, is that they supply a discipline in
mental heroism. Other professions do this also, but not to the same
degree. The combination of an accurate training in positive science with
the habitual contempt of danger and contemplation of suffering and
death, is the finest possible preparation for noble studies and arduous
discoveries. I ought to add, however, that medical men in the provinces,
when they have not any special enthusiasm for their work, seem
peculiarly liable to the deadening influences of routine, and easily
fall behind their age. The medical periodicals provide the best remedy
for this.
The military and naval professions are too active, and too much bound to
obedience in their activity, for the highest intellectual pursuits; but
their greatest evil in this respect is the continual privation of
solitude, and the frequency of interruption. A soldier's life in the
higher ranks, when there is great responsibility and the necessity for
personal decision, undoubtedly leads to the most brilliant employment of
the mental powers, and develops a manliness of character which is often
of the greatest use in intellectual work; so that a man of science may
find his force augmented, and better under control, for having passed
through a military experience; but the life of barracks and camps is
destructive to continuity of thinking. The incompatibility becomes
strikingly manifest when we reflect how impossible it would have been
for Ney or Massena to do the work of Cuvier or Comte. Cuvier even
declined to accompany the expedition to Egypt, notwithstanding the
prospects of advantage that it offered. The reason he gave for this
refusal was, that he could do more for science in the tranquillity of
the Jardin des Plantes. He was a strict economist of time, and dreaded
the loss of it involved in following an army, even though his mission
would have been purely scientific. How much more would Cuvier have
dreaded the interruptions of a really military existence! It is these
interruptions, and not any want of natural ability, that are the true
explanation of the intellectual poverty which characterizes the military
profession. Of all the liberal professions it is the least studious.
Let me say a word in conclusion about the practical pursuit of the fine
arts. Painters are often remarkable for pleasant conversational power,
and a degree of intelligence strikingly superior to their literary
culture. This is because the processes of their art can be followed, at
least under certain circumstances, by the exercise of hand and eye,
directed merely by artistic taste and experience, whilst the intellect
is left free either for reflection or conversation. Rubens liked to be
read to when he painted; many artists like to hear people talk, and to
take a share occasionally in the conversation. The truth is that
artists, even when they work very assiduously, do in fact enjoy great
spaces of intellectual leisure, and often profit by them. Painting
itself is also a fine discipline for some of the best faculties of the
mind, though it is well known that the most gifted artists think least
about their art. Still there is a large class of painters, including
many eminent ones, who _proceed intellectually_ in the execution of
their works, who reason them out philosophically step by step, and
exercise a continual criticism upon their manual labor as it goes
forward. I find, as I know art and artists better, that this class is
more numerous than is commonly suspected, and that the charming effects
which we believe to be the result of pure inspiration have often been
elaborately reasoned out like a problem in mathematics. We are very apt
to forget that art includes a great science, the science of natural
appearances, and that the technical work of painters and engravers
cannot go forward safely without the profoundest knowledge of certain
delicate materials, this being also a science, and a difficult one. The
common tendency is to underrate (from ignorance) what is intellectual in
the practice of the fine arts; and yet the artists of past times have
left evidence enough that they thought about art, and thought deeply.
Artists are often illiterate; but it is possible to be at the same time
illiterate and intellectual; as we see frequent examples of
book-learning in people who have scarcely a single idea of their own.
LETTER II.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO HAD LITERARY AND ARTISTIC TASTES, BUT NO
PROFESSION.
The world only recognizes performance--Uselessness of
botch-work--Vastness of the interval between botch-work and
handicraft--Delusions of the well-to-do--Quotation from Charles
Lever--Indifference, and even contempt, for skill--Moral contempt for
skill--The contempt which comes from the pride of
knowledge--Intellectual value of skill and of professional discipline.
It is not a graceful thing for me to say, nor pleasant for you to hear,
that what you have done hitherto in art and literature is neither of
any value in itself nor likely to lead you to that which is truly and
permanently satisfying. I believe you have natural ability, though it
would not be easy for any critic to measure its degree when it has never
been developed by properly-directed work. Most critics would probably
err on the unfavorable side, for we are easily blind to powers that are
little more than latent. To see anything encouraging in your present
performance, it would need the sympathy and intelligence of the American
sculptor Greenough, of whom it was said that "his recognition was not
limited to achievement, but extended to latent powers." The world,
however, recognizes nothing short of performance, because the
performance is what it needs, and promises are of no use to it.
In this rough justice of the world there is a natural distribution of
rewards. You will be paid, in fame and money, for all excellent work;
and you will be paid, in money, though not in fame, for all work that is
even simply good, provided it be of a kind that the world needs, or
fancies that it needs. But you will never be paid at all for botch-work,
neither in money nor in fame, nor by your own inward approval.
For we all of us either know that our botch-work is worthless, or else
have serious misgivings about it. That which is less commonly realized
by those who have not undergone the test of professional labor is the
vastness of the interval that separates botch-work from handicraft, and
the difficulty of getting over it. "There are few delusions," Charles
Lever said in "The Bramleighs," "more common with well-to-do people than
the belief that if 'put to it' they could earn their own livelihood in a
variety of ways. Almost every man has some two or three or more
accomplishments which he fancies would be quite adequate to his support;
and remembering with what success the exercise of these gifts has ever
been hailed in the society of his friends, he has a sort of generous
dislike to be obliged to eclipse some poor drudge of a professional,
who, of course, will be consigned to utter oblivion after his own
performance. Augustus Bramleigh was certainly not a conceited or a vain
man, and yet he had often in his palmy days imagined how easy it would
be for him to provide for his own support. He was something of a
musician; he sang pleasingly; he drew a little; he knew something of
three or four modern languages; he had that sort of smattering
acquaintance with questions of religion, politics, and literature which
the world calls being 'well-informed,' and yet nothing short of the
grave necessity revealed to him that towards the object of securing a
livelihood a cobbler in his bulk was out-and-out his master. The world
has no need of the man of small acquirements, and would rather have its
shoes mended by the veriest botch of a professional than by the
cleverest amateur that ever studied a Greek sandal."
Something of this illusion, which Charles Lever has touched so truly,
may be due to a peculiarity of the English mind in its present (not
quite satisfactory) stage of development, a peculiarity which I am not
the first to point out, since it has been already indicated by Mr.
Pointer, the distinguished artist; and I think that this peculiarity is
to be found in very great force, perhaps in greater force than
elsewhere, in that well-to-do English middle class in which you have
been born and educated. It consists in a sort of indifference to skill
of all kinds, which passes into something not very far from active
contempt when a call is made for attention, recognition, admiration. The
source of this feeling will probably be found in the inordinate respect
for wealth, between which and highly developed personal skill, in
anything, there is a certain antagonism or incompatibility. The men of
real skill are almost always men who earn their living by their skill.
The feeling of the middle-class capitalists concerning the skilful man
may be expressed, not unjustly, as follows: "Yes, he is very clever; he
may well be clever--it is his trade; he gets his living by it." This is
held to exonerate us from the burden of admiration, and there is not any
serious interest in the achievements of human endeavor as evidence of
the marvellous natural endowments and capabilities of the human
organism. In some minds the indifference to skill is more active and
grows into very real, though not openly expressed contempt. This
contempt is partly moral. The skilful man always rejoices in his skill
with a heaven-bestowed joy and delight--one of the purest and most
divine pleasures given by God to man--an encouragement to labor, and a
reward, the best reward, after his arduous apprenticeship. But there is
a sour and severe spirit, hating all innocent pleasures, which despises
the gladness of the skilful as so much personal vanity.
There is also the contempt for skill which comes from the pride of
knowledge. To attain skill _in_ anything a degree of application is
necessary which absorbs more time than the acquisition of knowledge
_about_ the thing, so that the remarkably skilful man is not likely to
be the erudite man. There have been instances of men who possessed both
skill and learning. The American sculptor Greenough, and the English
painter Dyce, were at the same time both eminently skilful in their
craft and eminently learned out of it; but the combination is very rare.
Therefore the possession of skill has come to be considered presumptive
evidence of a want of general information.
But the truth is that professional skill is knowledge tested and
perfected by practical application, and therefore has a great
intellectual value. Professional life is to private individuals what
active warfare is to a military state. It brings to light every
deficiency, and reveals our truest needs. And therefore it seems to me a
matter for regret that you should pass your existence in irresponsible
privacy, and not have your attainments tested by the exigencies of some
professional career. The discipline which such a career affords, and
which no private resolution can ever adequately replace, may be all that
is wanting to your development.
LETTER III.
TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN WHO WISHED TO DEVOTE HIMSELF TO LITERATURE AS A
PROFESSION.
Byron's vexation at the idea of poetry being considered a
profession--Buffon could not bear to be called a naturalist--Cuvier
would not be called a Hellenist--Faraday's life not professional--The
intellectual life frequently protected by professions outside of
it--Professional work ought to be plain business work--Michelet's
account of the incubation of a book--Necessity for too great rapidity
of production in professional literature--It does not pay to do your
best--Journalism and magazine-writing--Illustration from a sister
art--Privilege of an author to be allowed to write little.
Do you remember how put out Byron was when some reviewer spoke of
Wordsworth as being "at the head of the profession"? Byron's vexation
was not entirely due to jealousy of Wordsworth, though that may have had
something to do with it, nor was it due either to an aristocratic
dislike of being in a "profession" himself, though this feeling may have
had a certain influence; it was due to a proper sense of the dignity of
the intellectual life. Buffon could not bear to be called a
"naturalist," and Cuvier in the same way disliked the title of
Hellenist, because it sounded professional: he said that though he knew
more Greek than all the Academy he was not a Hellenist as Gail was,
because he did not live by Greek.
Now, if this feeling had arisen merely from a dislike to having it
supposed that one is obliged to earn his own living, it would have been
a contemptibly vulgar sentiment, whoever professed it. Nothing can be
more honorable to a man than to earn his bread by honest industry of any
kind, whether it be manual or intellectual, and still I feel with Byron,
and Buffon, and Cuvier, that the great instruments of the world's
intellectual culture ought not to be, in the ordinary sense,
professions. Byron said that poetry, as he understood it, was "an art,
an attribute," but not what is understood by a "profession." Surely the
same is true of all the highest intellectual work, in whatever kind. You
could scarcely consider Faraday's life to be what is commonly understood
by a professional life. Tyndall says that if Faraday had chosen to
employ his talents in analytical chemistry he might have realized a
fortune of 150,000_l._ Now that would have been a professional
existence; but the career which Faraday chose (happily for science) was
not professional, but intellectual. The distinction between the
professional and the intellectual lives is perfectly clear in my own
mind, and therefore I ought to be able to express it clearly. Let me
make the attempt.
The purpose of a profession, of a profession pure and simple, is to turn
knowledge and talent to pecuniary profit. On the other hand, the purpose
of cultivated men, or men of genius, who work in an unprofessional
spirit, is to increase knowledge, or make it more accurate, or else
simply to give free exercise to high faculties which demand it. The
distinction is so clear and trenchant that most intellectual men, whose
private fortunes are not large, prefer to have a profession distinct
from their higher intellectual work, in order to secure the perfect
independence of the latter. Mr. Smiles, in his valuable book on
"Character," gives a list of eminent intellectual men who have pursued
real professional avocations of various kinds separately from their
literary or scientific activity, and he mentions an observation of
Gifford's which is much to my present purpose:--"Gifford, the editor of
the _Quarterly_, who knew the drudgery of writing for a living, once
observed that 'a single hour of composition, won from the business of
the day, is worth more than the whole day's toil of him who works at the
trade of literature: in the one case, the spirit comes joyfully to
refresh itself, like a hart to the water-brooks; in the other, it
pursues its miserable way, panting and jaded, with the dogs of hunger
and necessity behind.'" So Coleridge said that "three hours of leisure,
unalloyed by any alien anxiety, and looked forward to with delight as a
change and recreation, will suffice to realize in literature a larger
product of what is truly genial than weeks of compulsion." Coleridge's
idea of a profession was, that it should be "some regular employment
which could be carried on so far mechanically, that an average quantum
only of health, spirits, and intellectual exertion are requisite to its
faithful discharge." Without in the least desiring to undervalue good
professional work of any kind, I may observe that, to be truly
professional, it ought to be always at command, and therefore that the
average power of the man's intellect, not his rare flashes of highest
intellectual illumination, ought to suffice for it. Professional work
ought always to be plain business work, requiring knowledge and skill,
but not any effort of genius. For example, in medicine, it is
professional work to prescribe a dose or amputate a limb, but not to
discover the nervous system or the circulation of the blood.
If literature paid sufficiently well to allow it, a literary man might
very wisely consider _study_ to be his profession, and not production.
He would then study regularly, say, six hours a day, and write when he
had something to say, and really wanted to express it. His book, when it
came out, would have had time to be properly hatched, and would probably
have natural life in it. Michelet says of one of his books: "Cette
oeuvre a du moins le caractère d'être venue comme vient toute vraie
création vivante. Elle s'est faite à la chaleur d'une douce
incubation."[13] It would be impossible, in so short a space, to give a
more accurate description of the natural manner in which a book comes
into existence. A book ought always to be "fait à la chaleur d'une douce
incubation."
But when you make a profession of literature this is what you can hardly
ever get leave to do. Literary men require to see something of the
world; they can hardly be hermits, and the world cannot be seen without
a constant running expenditure, which at the end of the year represents
an income. Men of culture and refinement really _cannot_ live like very
poor people without deteriorating in refinement, and falling behind in
knowledge of the world. When they are married, and have families, they
can hardly let their families live differently from themselves; so that
there are the usual expenses of the English professional classes to be
met, and these are heavy when they have to be got out of the profits of
literature. The consequence is, that if a book is to be written
prudently it must be written quickly, and with the least amount of
preparatory labor that can possibly be made to serve. This is very
different from the "_douce incubation_" of Michelet. Goldsmith said of
hack-writing, that it was difficult to imagine a combination more
prejudicial to taste than that of the author whose interest it is to
write as much as possible, and the bookseller, whose interest it is to
pay as little as possible. The condition of authors has no doubt greatly
improved since Goldsmith's time, but still the fact remains that the
most careful and finished writing, requiring extensive preparatory
study, is a luxury in which the professional writer can only indulge
himself at great risk. Careful writing does, no doubt, occasionally pay
for the time it costs; but such writing is more commonly done by men who
are either independent by fortune, or who make themselves, as authors,
independent by the pursuit of some other profession, than by regular men
of letters whose whole income is derived from their inkstands. And when,
by way of exception, the hack-writer does produce very highly-finished
and concentrated work, based upon an elaborate foundation of hard study,
that work is seldom professional in the strictest sense, but is a labor
of love, outside the hasty journalism or magazine-writing that wins his
daily bread. In cases of this kind it is clear that the best work is not
done as a regular part of professional duty, and that the author might
as well earn his bread in some other calling, if he still had the same
amount of leisure for the composition of real literature.
The fault I find with writing as a profession is that _it does not pay
to do your best_. I don't mean to insinuate that downright slovenly or
careless work is the most profitable; but I do mean to say that any high
degree of conscientiousness, especially in the way of study and
research, is a direct injury to the professional writer's purse.
Suppose, for example, that he is engaged in reviewing a book, and is to
get 3_l._ 10_s._ for the review when it is written. If by the accident
of previous accumulation his knowledge is already fully equal to the
demand upon it, the review may be written rapidly, and the day's work
will have been a profitable one; but if, on the other hand, it is
necessary to consult several authorities, to make some laborious
researches, then the reviewer is placed in a dilemma between literary
thoroughness and duty to his family. He cannot spend a week in reading
up a subject for the sum of 3_l._ 10_s._ Is it not much easier to string
together a few phrases which will effectually hide his ignorance from
everybody but the half-dozen enthusiasts who have mastered the subject
of the book? It is strange that the professional pursuit of literature
should be a direct discouragement to study; yet it is so. There _are_
hack-writers who study, and they deserve much honor for doing so, since
the temptations the other way are always so pressing and immediate.
Sainte-Beuve was a true student, loving literature for its own sake, and
preparing for his articles with a diligence rare in the profession. But
he was scarcely a hack-writer, having a modest independency, and living
besides with the quiet frugality of a bachelor.
The truth seems to be that literature of the highest kind can only in
the most exceptional cases be made a profession, yet that a skilful
writer may use his pen professionally if he chooses. The production of
the printed talk of the day _is_ a profession, requiring no more than
average ability, and the tone and temper of ordinary educated men. The
outcome of it is journalism and magazine-writing; and now let me say a
word or two about these.
The highest kind of journalism is very well done in England; the men who
do it are often either highly educated, or richly gifted by nature, or
both. The practice of journalism is useful to an author in giving him a
degree of readiness and rapidity, a skill in turning his materials to
immediate account, and a power of presenting one or two points
effectively, which may often be valuable in literature of a more
permanent order. The danger of it may be illustrated by a reference to a
sister art. I was in the studio of an English landscape-painter when
some pictures arrived from an artist in the country to go along with his
own to one of the exhibitions. They were all very pretty and very
clever--indeed, so clever were they, that their cleverness was almost
offensive--and so long as they were looked at by themselves, the
brilliance of them was rather dazzling. But the instant they were placed
by the side of thoroughly careful and earnest work, it became strikingly
evident that they had been painted hastily, and would be almost
immediately exhausted by the purchaser. Now these pictures were the
_journalism of painting_; and my friend told me that when once an
artist has got into the habit of doing hasty work like that, he seldom
acquires better habits afterwards.
Professional writers who follow journalism for its immediate profits,
are liable in like manner to retain the habit of diffuseness in
literature which ought to be more finished and more concentrated.
Therefore, although journalism is a good teacher of promptitude and
decision, it often spoils a hand for higher literature by incapacitating
it for perfect finish; and it is better for a writer who has ambition to
write little, _but always his best_, than to dilute himself in daily
columns. One of the greatest privileges which an author can aspire to is
_to be allowed to write little_, and that is a privilege which the
professional writer does not enjoy except in such rare instances as that
of Tennyson, whose careful finish is as prudent in the professional
sense as it is satisfactory to the scrupulous fastidiousness of the
artist.
LETTER IV.
TO AN ENERGETIC AND SUCCESSFUL COTTON MANUFACTURER.
Two classes in their lower grades inevitably hostile--The spiritual
and temporal powers--The functions of both not easily exercised by the
same person--Humboldt, Faraday, Livingstone--The difficulty about
time--Limits to the energy of the individual--Jealousy between the
classes--That this jealousy ought not to exist--Some of the sciences
based upon an industrial development--The work of the intellectual
class absolutely necessary in a highly civilized community--That it
grows in numbers and influence side by side with the industrial class.
Our last conversation together, in the privacy of your splendid new
drawing-room after the guests had gone away and the music had ceased for
the night, left me under the impression that we had not arrived at a
perfect understanding of each other. This was due in a great measure to
my unfortunate incapacity for expressing anything exactly by spoken
words. The constant habit of writing, which permits a leisurely
selection from one's ideas, is often very unfavorable to readiness in
conversation. Will you permit me, then, to go over the ground we
traversed, this time in my own way, pen in hand?
We represent, you and I, two classes which in their lower grades are
inevitably hostile; but the superior members of these classes ought not
to feel any hostility, since both are equally necessary to the world. We
are, in truth, the spiritual and the temporal powers in their most
modern form. The chief of industry and the man of letters stand to-day
in the same relation to each other and to mankind as the baron and
bishop of the Middle Ages. We are not recognized, either of us, by
formally conferred titles, we are both held to be somewhat intrusive by
the representatives of a former order of things, and there is, or was
until very lately, a certain disposition to deny what we consider our
natural rights; but we know that our powers are not to be resisted, and
we have the inward assurance that the forces of nature are with us.
This, with reference to the outer world. But there is a want of
clearness in the relation between ourselves. You understand your great
temporal function, which is the wise direction of the industry of
masses, the accumulation and distribution of wealth; but you do not so
clearly understand the spiritual function of the intellectual class, and
you do not think of it quite justly. This want of understanding is
called by some of us your Philistinism. Will you permit me to explain
what the intellectual class thinks of you, and what is its opinion about
itself?
Pray excuse any appearance of presumption on my part if I say we of the
intellectual class and you of the industrial. My position is something
like that of the clergyman who reads, "Let him come to me or to some
other learned and discreet minister of God's word," thereby calling
himself learned and discreet. It is a simple matter of fact that I
belong to the intellectual class, since I lead its life, just as it is
a fact that you have a quarter of a million of money.
First, I want to show that the existence of my class is necessary.
Although men in various occupations often acquire a considerable degree
of culture outside their trade, the highest results of culture can
scarcely ever be attained by men whose time is taken up in earning a
fortune. Every man has but a limited flow of mental energy per day; and
if this is used up in an industrial leadership, he cannot do much more
in the intellectual sphere than simply ascertain what has been done by
others. Now, although we have a certain respect, and the respect is
just, for those who know what others have accomplished, it is clear that
if no one did more than this, if no one made any fresh discoveries, the
world would make no progress whatever; and in fact, if nobody ever had
been dedicated to intellectual pursuits in preceding ages, the men who
only learn what others have done, would in these days have had nothing
to learn. Past history proves the immensity of the debt which the world
owes to men who gave their whole time and attention to intellectual
pursuits; and if the existences of these men could be eliminated from
the past of the human race, its present would be very different from
what it is. A list has been published of men who have done much good
work in the intervals of business, but still the fact remains that the
great intellectual pioneers were absorbed and devoted men, scorning
wealth so far as it affected themselves, and ready to endure everything
for knowledge beyond the knowledge of their times. Instances of such
enthusiasm abound, an enthusiasm fully justified by the value of the
results which it has achieved. When Alexander Humboldt sold his
inheritance to have the means for his great journey in South America,
and calmly dedicated the whole of a long life, and the strength of a
robust constitution, to the advancement of natural knowledge, he acted
foolishly indeed, if years, and strength, and fortune are given to us
only to be well invested in view of money returns; but the world has
profited by his decision. Faraday gave up the whole of his time to
discovery when he might have earned a large fortune by the judicious
investment of his extraordinary skill in chemistry. Livingstone has
sacrificed everything to the pursuit of his great work in Africa. Lives
such as these--and many resemble them in useful devotion of which we
hear much less--are clearly not compatible with much money-getting. A
decent existence, free from debt, is all that such men ought to be held
answerable for.
I have taken two or three leading instances, but there is quite a large
class of intellectual people who cannot in the nature of things serve
society effectively in their own way without being quite outside of the
industrial life. There is a real incompatibility between some pursuits
and others. I suspect that you would have been a good general, for you
are a born leader and commander of men; but it would have been difficult
to unite a regular military career with strict personal attention to
your factories. We often find the same difficulty in our intellectual
pursuits. We are not always quite so unpractical as you think we are;
but the difficulty is how to find the time, and how to arrange it so as
not to miss two or three distinct classes of opportunities. We are not
all of us exactly imbeciles in money matters, though the pecuniary
results of our labors seem no doubt pitiful enough. There is a tradition
that a Greek philosopher, who was suspected by the practical men of his
day of incapacity for affairs, devoted a year to prove the contrary, and
traded so judiciously that he amassed thereby great riches. It may be
doubtful whether he could do it in one year, but many a fine
intellectual capacity has overshadowed a fine practical capacity in the
same head by the withdrawal of time and effort.
It is because the energies of one man are so limited, and there is so
little time in a single human life, that the intellectual and industrial
functions must, _in their highest development_, be separated. No one man
could unite in his own person your life and Humboldt's, though it is
possible that he might have the natural capacity for both. Grant us,
then, the liberty _not_ to earn very much money, and this being once
granted, try to look upon our intellectual superiority as a simple
natural fact, just as we look upon your pecuniary superiority.
In saying in this plain way that we are intellectually superior to you
and your class, I am guilty of no more pride and vanity than you when
you affirm or display your wealth. The fact is there, in its simplicity.
We have culture because we have paid the twenty or thirty years of labor
which are the price of culture, just as you have great factories and
estates which are the reward of your life's patient and intelligent
endeavor.
Why should there be any narrow jealousy between us; why any contempt on
the one side or the other? Each has done his appointed work, each has
caused to fructify the talent which the Master gave.
Yet a certain jealousy _does_ exist, if not between you and me
personally, at least between our classes. The men who have culture
without wealth are jealous of the power and privileges of those who
possess money without culture; and on the other hand, the men whose time
has been too entirely absorbed by commercial pursuits to leave them any
margin sufficient to do justice to their intellectual powers, are often
painfully sensitive to the contempt of the cultivated, and strongly
disposed, from jealousy, to undervalue culture itself. Both are wrong so
far as they indulge any unworthy and unreasonable feeling of this kind.
The existence of the two classes is necessary to an advanced
civilization. The science of accumulating and administrating material
wealth, of which you yourself are a great practical master, is the
foundation of the material prosperity of nations, and it is only when
this prosperity is fully assured to great numbers that the arts and
sciences can develop themselves in perfect liberty and with the tranquil
assurance of their own permanence. The advancement of material
well-being in modern states tends so directly to the advancement of
intellectual pursuits, even when the makers of fortunes are themselves
indifferent to this result, that it ought always to be a matter of
congratulation for the intellectual class itself, which needs the
support of a great public with leisure to read and think. It is easy to
show how those arts and sciences which our class delights to cultivate
are built upon those developments of industry which have been brought
about by the energy of yours. Suppose the case of a scientific chemist:
the materials for his experiments are provided ready to his hand by the
industrial class; the record of them is preserved on paper manufactured
by the same industrial class; and the public which encourages him by its
attention is usually found in great cities which are maintained by the
labors of the same useful servants of humanity. It is possible, no
doubt, in these modern times, that some purely pastoral or agricultural
community might produce a great chemist, because a man of inborn
scientific genius who came into the world in an agricultural country
might in these days get his books and materials from industrial centres
at a distance, but his work would still be based on the industrial life
of others. No pastoral or agricultural community which was really
isolated from industrial communities ever produced a chemist. And now
consider how enormously important this one science of chemistry has
proved itself even to our intellectual life! Several other sciences have
been either greatly strengthened or else altogether renewed by it, and
the wonderful photographic processes have been for nature and the fine
arts what printing was for literature, placing reliable and authentic
materials for study within the reach of every one. Literature itself has
profited by the industrial progress of the present age, in the increased
cheapness of everything that is material in books. I please myself with
the reflection that even you make paper cheaper by manufacturing so much
cotton.
All these are reasons why we ought not to be jealous of you; and now
permit me to indicate a few other reasons why it is unreasonable on your
part to feel any jealousy of us.
Suppose we were to cease working to-morrow--cease working, I mean, in
our peculiar ways--and all of us become colliers and factory operatives
instead, with nobody to supply our places. Or, since you may possibly be
of opinion that there is enough literature and science in the world at
the present day, suppose rather that at some preceding date the whole
literary and scientific and artistic labor of the human race; had come
suddenly to a standstill. Mind, I do not say of Englishmen merely, but
of the whole race, for if any intellectual work had been done in France
or Germany, or even in Japan, you would have imported it like cotton and
foreign cereals. Well, I have no hesitation in telling you that although
there was a good deal of literature and science in England before the
1st of January, 1800, the present condition of the nation would have
been a very chaotic condition if the intellectual class had ceased on
that day to think and observe and to place on record its thoughts and
observations. The life of a progressive nation cannot long go forward
exclusively on the thinking of the past: its thoughtful men must not be
all dead men, but living men who accompany it on its course. It is they
who make clear the lessons of experience; it is they who discover the
reliable general laws upon which all safe action must be founded in the
future; it is they who give decision to human action in every direction
by constantly registering, in language of comprehensive accuracy, both
its successes and its failures. It is their great and arduous labor
which makes knowledge accessible to men of action at the cost of little
effort and the smallest possible expenditure of time. The intellectual
class grows in numbers and in influence along with the numbers and
influence of the materially productive population of the State. And not
only are the natural philosophers, the writers of contemporary and past
history, the discoverers in science, _necessary_ in the strictest sense
to the life of such a community as the modern English community, but
even the poets, the novelists, the artists are necessary to the
perfection of its life. Without them and their work the national mind
would be as incomplete as would be the natural universe without beauty.
But this, perhaps, you will perceive less clearly, or be less willing to
admit.
LETTER V.
TO A YOUNG ETONIAN WHO THOUGHT OF BECOMING A COTTON-SPINNER.
Absurd old prejudices against commerce--Stigma attached to the great
majority of occupations--Traditions of feudalism--Distinctions between
one trade and another--A real instance of an Etonian who had gone into
the cotton-trade--Observations on this case--The trade a fine field
for energy--A poor one for intellectual culture--It develops practical
ability--Culture not possible without leisure--The founders of
commercial fortunes.
It is agreeable to see various indications that the absurd old
prejudices against commerce are certainly declining. There still remains
quite enough contempt for trade in the professional classes and the
aristocracy, to give us frequent opportunities for studying it as a
relic of former superstition, unhappily not yet rare enough to be quite
a curiosity; but as time passes and people become more rational, it
will retreat to out-of-the-way corners of old country mansions and rural
parsonages, at a safe distance from the light-giving centres of
industry. It is a surprising fact, and one which proves the almost
pathetic spirit of deference and submission to superiors which
characterizes the English people, that out of the hundreds of
occupations which are followed by the busy classes of this country, only
three are entirely free from some degrading stigma, so that they may be
followed by a high-born youth without any sacrifice of caste. The wonder
is that the great active majority of the nation, the men who by their
industry and intelligence have made England what she is, should ever
have been willing to submit to so insolent a rule as this rule of caste,
which, instead of honoring industry, honored idleness, and attached a
stigma to the most useful and important trades. The landowner, the
soldier, the priest, these three were pure from every stain of
degradation, and only these three were quite absolutely and ethereally
pure. Next to them came the lawyer and the physician, on whom there
rested some traces of the lower earth; so that although the youthful
baron would fight or preach, he would neither plead nor heal. And after
these came the lower professions and the innumerable trades, all marked
with stigmas of deeper and deeper degradation.
From the intellectual point of view these prejudices indicate a state of
society in which public opinion has not emerged from barbarism. It
understands the strength of the feudal chief having land, with serfs or
voters on the land; it knows the uses of the sword, and it dreads the
menaces of the priesthood. Beyond this it knows little, and despises
what it does not understand. It is ignorant of science, and industry,
and art; it despises them as servile occupations beneath its conception
of the gentleman. This is the tradition of countries which retain the
impressions of feudalism; but notwithstanding all our philosophy, it is
difficult for us to avoid some feeling of astonishment when we reflect
that the public opinion of England--a country that owes so much of her
greatness and nearly all her wealth to commercial enterprise--should be
contemptuous towards commerce.
I may notice, in passing, a very curious form of this narrowness. Trade
is despised, but distinctions are established between one trade and
another. A man who sells wine is considered more of a gentleman than a
man who sells figs and raisins; and I believe you will find, if you
observe people carefully, that a woollen manufacturer is thought to be a
shade less vulgar than a cotton manufacturer. These distinctions are
seldom based on reason, for the work of commerce is generally very much
the same sort of work, mentally, whatever may be the materials it deals
in. You may be heartily congratulated on the strength of mind, firmness
of resolution, and superiority to prejudice, which have led you to
choose the business of a cotton-spinner. It is an excellent business,
and, in itself, every whit as honorable as dealing in corn and cattle,
which our nobles do habitually without reproach. But now that I have
disclaimed any participation in the stupid narrowness which despises
trade in general, and the cotton-trade in particular, let me add a few
words upon the effects of the cotton business on the mind.
There appeared in one of the newspapers a little time since a most
interesting and evidently genuine letter from an Etonian, who had
actually entered business in a cotton factory, and devoted himself to it
so as to earn the confidence of his employers and a salary of 400_l_. a
year as manager. He had waited some time uselessly for a diplomatic
appointment which did not arrive, and so, rather than lose the best
years of early manhood, as a more indolent fellow would have done very
willingly, in pure idleness, he took the resolution of entering
business, and carried out his determination with admirable persistence.
At first nobody would believe that the "swell" could be serious; people
thought that his idea of manufacturing was a mere freak, and expected
him to abandon it when he had to face the tedium of the daily work; but
the swell _was_ serious--went to the mill at six in the morning and
stayed there till six at night, from Monday till Saturday inclusive.
After a year of this, his new companions believed in him.
Now, all this is very admirable indeed as a manifestation of energy, and
that truest independence which looks to fortune as the reward of its own
manly effort, but it may be permitted to me to make a few observations
on this young gentleman's resolve. What he did seems to me rather the
act of an energetic nature seeking an outlet for energy, than of an
intellectual nature seeking pasture and exercise for the intellect. I am
far indeed from desiring, by this comparison, to cast any disparaging
light on the young gentleman's natural endowments, which appear to have
been valuable in their order and robust in their degree, nor do I
question the wisdom of his choice; all I mean to imply is, that although
he had chosen a fine large field for simple energy, it was a poor and
barren field for the intellect to pasture in. Consider for one moment
the difference in this respect between the career which he had abandoned
and the trade he had embraced. As an _attaché_ he would have lived in
capital cities, have had the best opportunities for perfecting himself
in modern languages, and for meeting the most varied and the most
interesting society. In every day there would have been precious hours
of leisure, to be employed in the increase of his culture. If an
intellectual man, having to choose between diplomacy and
cotton-spinning, preferred cotton-spinning it would be from the desire
for wealth, or from the love of an English home. The life of a cotton
manufacturer, who personally attends to his business with that close
supervision which has generally conducted to success, leaves scarcely
any margin for intellectual pleasure or spare energy for intellectual
work. After ten hours in the mill, it is difficult to sit down and
study; and even if there were energy enough, the mind would not readily
cast off the burden of great practical anxieties and responsibilities so
as to attune itself to disinterested thinking. The leaders of industry
often display mental power of as high an order as that which is employed
in the government of great empires; they show the highest administrative
ability, they have to deal continually with financial questions which on
their smaller scale require as much forethought and acumen as those that
concern the exchequer; but the ability they need is always strictly
practical, and there is the widest difference between the practical and
the intellectual minds. A constant and close pressure of practical
considerations develops the sort of power which deals effectually with
the present and its needs but atrophies the higher mind. The two minds
which we call intelligence and intellect resemble the feet and wings of
birds. Eagles and swallows walk badly or not at all, but they have a
marvellous strength of flight; ostriches are great pedestrians, but they
know nothing of the regions of the air. The best that can be hoped for
men immersed in the details of business is that they may be able, like
partridges and pheasants, to take a short flight on an emergency, and
rise, if only for a few minutes, above the level of the stubble and the
copse.
Without, therefore, desiring to imply any prejudiced contempt for trade,
I do desire to urge the consideration of its inevitable effects upon the
mind. For men of great practical intelligence and abundant energy, trade
is all-sufficing, but it could never entirely satisfy an intellectual
nature. And although there is drudgery in every pursuit, for even
literature and painting are full of it, still there are certain kinds of
drudgery which intellectual natures find to be harder to endure than
others. The drudgery which they bear least easily is an incessant
attention to duties which have no intellectual interest, and yet which
cannot be properly performed mechanically so as to leave the mind at
liberty for its own speculations. Deep thinkers are notoriously absent,
for thought requires abstraction from what surrounds us, and it is hard
for them to be denied the liberty of dreaming. An intellectual person
might be happy as a stone-breaker on the roadside, because the work
would leave his mind at liberty; but he would certainly be miserable as
an engine-driver at a coal-pit shaft, where the abstraction of an
instant would imperil the lives of others.
In a recent address delivered by Mr. Gladstone at Liverpool, he
acknowledged the neglect of culture which is one of the shortcomings of
our trading community, and held out the hope (perhaps in some degree
illusory) that the same persons might become eminent in commerce and in
learning. No doubt there have been instances of this; and when a
"concern" has been firmly established by the energy of a predecessor,
the heir to it may be satisfied with a royal sort of supervision,
leaving the drudgery of detail to his managers, and so secure for
himself that sufficient leisure without which high culture is not
possible. But the _founders_ of great commercial fortunes have, I
believe, in every instance thrown their _whole_ energy into their trade,
making wealth their aim, and leaving culture to be added in another
generation. The founders of commercial families are in this country
usually men of great mother-wit and plenty of determination--but
illiterate.
FOOTNOTES:
[12] The word "disinterested" is used here in the sense explained in
Part II. Letter III.
[13] "This work has at any rate the character of having come into the
world like every really living creation. It has been produced by the
heat of a gentle incubation."
PART XII.
_SURROUNDINGS._
LETTER I.
TO A FRIEND WHO OFTEN CHANGED HIS PLACE OF RESIDENCE.
An unsettled class of English people--Effect of localities on the
mind--Reaction against surroundings--Landscape-painting a consequence
of it--Crushing effect of too much natural magnificence--The mind
takes color from its surroundings--Selection of a place of
residence--Charles Dickens--Heinrich Heine--Dr. Arnold at Rugby--His
house in the lake district--Tycho Brahe--His establishment on the
island of Hween--The young Humboldts in the Castle of Tegel--Alexander
Humboldt's appreciation of Paris--Dr. Johnson--Mr.
Buckle--Cowper--Galileo.
I find that there is a whole class of English subjects (you belong to
that class) of whom it is utterly impossible to predict where they will
be living in five years. Indeed, as you are the worst of correspondents,
I only learned your present address, by sheer accident, from a perfect
stranger, and he told me, of course, that you had plans for going
somewhere else, but where that might be he knew not. The civilized
English nomad is usually, like yourself, a person of independent means,
rich enough to bear the expenses of frequent removals, but without the
cares of property. His money is safely invested in the funds, or in
railways; and so, wherever the postman can bring his dividends, he can
live in freedom from material cares. When his wife is as unsettled as
himself, the pair seem to live in a balloon, or in a sort of Noah's ark,
which goes whither the wind lists, and takes ground in the most
unexpected places.
Have you ever studied the effect of localities on the mind--on your own
mind? That which we are is due in great part to the accident of our
surroundings, which act upon us in one or two quite opposite ways.
Either we feel in harmony with them, in which case they produce a
positive effect upon us, or else we are out of harmony, and then they
drive us into the strangest reactions. A great ugly English town, like
Manchester, for instance, makes some men such thorough townsmen that
they cannot live without smoky chimneys; or it fills the souls of others
with such a passionate longing for beautiful scenery and rustic
retirement, that they find it absolutely necessary to bury themselves
from time to time in the recesses of picturesque mountains. The
development of modern landscape-painting has not been due to habits of
rural existence, but to the growth of very big and hideous modern
cities, which made men long for shady forests, and pure streams, and
magnificent spectacles of sunset, and dawn, and moonlight. It is by this
time a trite observation that people who have always lived in beautiful
scenery do not, and cannot, appreciate it; that too much natural
magnificence positively crushes the activity of the intellect and that
its best effect is simply that of refreshment for people who have not
access to it every day. It happens too, in a converse way, that rustics
and mountaineers have the strongest appreciation of the advantages of
great cities, and thrive in them often more happily than citizens who
are born in the brick streets. Those who have great facilities for
changing their place of residence ought always to bear in mind that
every locality is like a dyer's vat, and that the residents take its
color, or some other color, from it just as the clothes do that the dyer
steeps in stain. If you look back upon your past life, you will
assuredly admit that every place has colored your mental habits; and
that although other tints from other places have supervened, so that it
may be difficult to say precisely what remains of the place you lived in
many years ago, still something does remain, like the effect of the
first painting on a picture, which tells on the whole work permanently,
though it may have been covered over and over again by what painters
call scumblings and glazings.
The selection of a place of residence, even though we only intend to
pass a few short years in it, is from the intellectual point of view a
matter so important that one can hardly exaggerate its consequences. We
see this quite plainly in the case of authors, whose minds are more
visible to us than the minds of other men, and therefore more easily and
conveniently studied. We need no biographer to inform us that Dickens
was a Londoner, that Browning had lived in Italy, that Ruskin had passed
many seasons in Switzerland and Venice. Suppose for one moment that
these three authors had been born in Ireland, and had never quitted it,
is it not certain that their production would have been different? Let
us carry our supposition farther still, and conceive, if we can, the
difference to their literary performance if they had been born, not in
Ireland, but in Iceland, and lived there all their lives! Is it not
highly probable that in this case their production would have been so
starved and impoverished from insufficiency of material and of
suggestion, that they would have uttered nothing but some simple
expression of sentiment and imagination, some homely song or tale? All
sights and sounds have their influence on our temper and on our
thoughts, and our inmost being is not the same in one place as in
another. We are like blank paper that takes a tint by reflection from
what is nearest, and changes it as its surroundings change. In a dull
gray room, how gray and dull it looks! but it will be bathed in rose or
amber if the hangings are crimson or yellow. There are natures that go
to the streams of life in great cities as the heart goes to the
water-brooks; there are other natures that need the solitude of
primæval forests and the silence of the Alps. The most popular of
English novelists sometimes went to write in the tranquillity of
beautiful scenery, taking his manuscript to the shore of some azure lake
in Switzerland, in sight of the eternal snow; but all that beauty and
peace, all that sweetness of pure air and color, were not seductive
enough to overcome for many days the deep longing for the London
streets. His genius needed the streets, as a bee needs the summer
flowers, and languished when long separated from them. Others have
needed the wild heather, or the murmur of the ocean, or the sound of
autumn winds that strip great forest-trees. Who does not deeply pity
poor Heine in his last sad years, when he lay fixed on his couch of pain
in that narrow Parisian lodging, and compared it to the sounding grave
of Merlin the enchanter, "which is situated in the wood of Brozeliande,
in Brittany, under lofty oaks whose tops taper, like emerald flames,
towards heaven. O brother Merlin," he exclaims, and with what touching
pathos! "O brother Merlin, I envy thee those trees, with their fresh
breezes, for never a green leaf rustles about this mattress-grave of
mine in Paris, where from morning till night I hear nothing but the
rattle of wheels, the clatter of hammers, street-brawls, and the
jingling of pianofortes!"
In the biography of Dr. Arnold, his longing for natural beauty recurs as
one of the peculiarities of his constitution. He did not need very
grand scenery, though he enjoyed it deeply, but some wild natural
loveliness was such a necessity for him that he pined for it unhappily
in its absence. Rugby could offer him scarcely anything of this, "We
have no hills," he lamented, "no plains--not a single wood, and but one
single copse; no heath, no down, no rock, no river, no clear
stream--scarcely any flowers, for the lias is particularly poor in
them--nothing but one endless monotony of enclosed fields and hedgerow
trees. This is to me a daily privation; it robs me of what is naturally
my anti-attrition; and as I grow older I begin to feel it.... The
positive dulness of the country about Rugby makes it to me a mere
working-place: I cannot expatiate there even in my walks."
"The monotonous character of the midland scenery of Warwickshire," says
Dr. Arnold's biographer, "was to him, with his strong love of natural
beauty and variety, absolutely repulsive; there was something almost
touching in the eagerness with which, amidst that 'endless succession of
fields and hedgerows,' he would make the most of any features of a
higher order; in the pleasure with which he would cherish the few places
where the current of the Avon was perceptible, or where a glimpse of the
horizon could be discerned; in the humorous despair with which he would
gaze on the dull expanse of fields eastward from Rugby. It is no wonder
we do not like looking that way, when one considers that there is
nothing fine between us and the Ural mountains. Conceive what you look
over; for you just miss Sweden, and look over Holland, the north of
Germany, and the centre of Russia."[14]
This dreadful midland monotony impelled Dr. Arnold to seek refreshment
and compensation in a holiday home in the Lake district, and there he
found all that his eyes longed for, streams, hills, woods, and
wild-flowers. Nor had his belief in the value of these sweet natural
surroundings been illusory; such instincts are not given for our
betrayal, and the soul of a wise man knows its own needs, both before
they are supplied, and after. Westmorland gave him all he had hoped
from it, and more. "Body and mind," he wrote, "alike seem to repose
greedily in delicious quiet, without dulness, which we enjoy in
Westmorland." And again: "At Allan Bank, in the summer, I worked on the
Roman history, and hope to do so again in the winter. It is very
inspiring to write with such a view before one's eyes as that from our
drawing-room at Allan Bank, where the trees of the shrubbery gradually
run up into the trees of the cliff, and the mountain-side, with its
infinite variety of rocky peaks and points upon which the cattle
expatiate, rises over the tops of the trees."
Of all happily-situated mental laborers who have worked since the days
of Horace, surely Tycho Brahe was the happiest and most to be envied.
King Frederick of Denmark gave him a delightful island for his
habitation, large enough for him not to feel imprisoned (the
circumference being about five miles), yet little enough for him to feel
as snugly at home there as Mr. Waterton in his high-walled park. The
land was fertile and rich in game, so that the scientific Robinson
Crusoe lived in material abundance; and as he was only about seven miles
from Copenhagen, he could procure everything necessary to his
convenience. He built a great house on the elevated land in the midst of
the isle, about three-quarters of a mile from the sea, a palace of art
and science, with statues and paintings and all the apparatus which the
ingenuity of that age could contrive for the advancement of astronomical
pursuits. Uniting the case of a rich nobleman's existence with every aid
to science, including special erections for his instruments, and a
printing establishment that worked under his own immediate direction, he
lived far enough from the capital to enjoy the most perfect
tranquillity, yet near enough to escape the consequences of too absolute
isolation. Aided in all he undertook by a staff of assistants that he
himself had trained, supported in his labor by the encouragement of his
sovereign, and especially by his own unflagging interest in scientific
investigation, he led in that peaceful island the ideal intellectual
life. Of that mansion where he labored, of the observatory where he
watched the celestial phenomena, surrounded but not disturbed by the
waves of a shallow sea, there remains at this day literally not one
stone upon another; but many a less fortunate laborer in the same field,
harassed by poverty, distracted by noise and interruption, has
remembered with pardonable envy the splendid peace of Uranienborg.
It was one of the many fortunate circumstances in the position of the
two Humboldts that they passed their youth in the quiet old castle of
Tegel, separated from Berlin by a pine-wood, and surrounded by walks and
gardens. They too, like Tycho Brahe, enjoyed that happy combination of
tranquillity with the neighborhood of a capital city which is so
peculiarly favorable to culture. In later life, when Alexander Humboldt
had collected those immense masses of material which were the result of
his travels in South America, he warmly appreciated the unequalled
advantages of Paris. He knew how to extract from the solitudes of
primæval nature what he wanted for the enrichment of his mind; but he
knew also how to avail himself of all the assistance and opportunities
which are only to be had in great capitals. He was not attracted to
town-life, like Dr. Johnson and Mr. Buckle, to the exclusion of wild
nature; but neither, on the other hand, had he that horror of towns
which was a morbid defect in Cowper, and which condemns those who suffer
from it to rusticity. Even Galileo, who thought the country especially
favorable to speculative intellects, and the walls of cities an
imprisonment for them, declared that the best years of his life were
those he had spent in Padua.
LETTER II.
TO A FRIEND WHO MAINTAINED THAT SURROUNDINGS WERE A MATTER OF
INDIFFERENCE TO A THOROUGHLY OCCUPIED MIND.
Archimedes at the siege of Syracuse--Geoffroy St. Hilaire in the
besieged city of Alexandria--Goethe at the bombardment of
Verdun--Lullo, the Oriental missionary--Giordano Bruno--Unacknowledged
effect of surroundings--Effect of Frankfort on Goethe--Great
capitals--Goethe--His garden-house--What he said about Béranger and
Paris--Fortunate surroundings of Titian.
There are so many well-known instances of men who have been able to
continue their intellectual labors under the most unfavorable
conditions, that your argument might be powerfully supported by an
appeal to actual experience. There is Archimedes, of course, to begin
with, who certainly seems to have abstracted himself sufficiently from
the tumult of a great siege to forget it altogether when occupied with
his mathematical problems. The prevalent stories of his death, though
not identical, point evidently to a habit of abstraction which had been
remarked as a peculiarity by those about him, and it is probable enough
that a great inventor in engineering would follow his usual speculations
under circumstances which, though dangerous, had lasted long enough to
become habitual. Even modern warfare, which from the use of gunpowder is
so much noisier than that which raged at Syracuse, does not hinder men
from thinking and writing when they are used to it. Geoffrey St. Hilaire
never worked more steadily and regularly in his whole life than he did
in the midst of the besieged city of Alexandria. "Knowledge is so
sweet," he said long afterwards, in speaking of this experience, "that
it never entered my thoughts how a bombshell might in an instant have
cast into the abyss both me and my documents." By good luck two electric
fish had been caught and given to him just then, so he immediately began
to make experiments, as if he had been in his own cabinet in Paris, and
for three weeks he thought of nothing else, utterly forgetting the
fierce warfare that filled the air with thunder and flame, and the
streets with victims. He had sixty-four hypotheses to amuse him, and it
was necessary to review his whole scientific acquirement with reference
to each of these as he considered them one by one. It may be doubted,
however, whether he was more in danger from the bombardment or from the
intensity of his own mental concentration. He grew thin and haggard,
slept one hour in the twenty-four, and lived in a perilous condition of
nervous strain and excitement. Goethe at the bombardment of Verdun,
letting his mind take its own course, found that it did not occupy
itself with tragedies, or with anything suggested by what was passing
in the conflict around him, but by scientific considerations about the
phenomena of colors. He noticed, in a passing observation, the bad
effect of war upon the mind, how it makes people destructive one day and
creative the next, how it accustoms them to phases intended to excite
hope in desperate circumstances, thus producing a peculiar sort of
hypocrisy different from the priestly and courtly kind. This is the
extent of his interest in the war; but when he finds some soldiers
fishing he is attracted to the spot and profoundly occupied--not with
the soldiers, but with the optical phenomena on the water. He was never
very much moved by external events, nor did he take that intense
interest in the politics of the day which we often find in people less
studious of literature and science. Raimond Lullo, the Oriental
missionary, continued to write many volumes in the midst of the most
continual difficulties and dangers, preserving as much mental energy and
clearness as if he had been safe and tranquil in a library. Giordano
Bruno worked constantly also in the midst of political troubles and
religious persecutions, and his biographer tells us that "il desiderio
vivissimo della scienza aveva ben più efficacia sull' animo del Bruno,
che non gli avvenimenti esterni."
These examples which have just occurred to me, and many others that it
would be easy to collect, may be taken to prove at least so much as
this, that it is possible to be absorbed in private studies when
surrounded by the most disturbing influences; but even in these cases it
would be a mistake to conclude that the surroundings had no effect
whatever. There can be no doubt that Geoffroy St. Hilaire was intensely
excited by the siege of Alexandria, though he may not have attributed
his excitement to that cause. His mind was occupied with the electrical
fishes, but his nervous system was wrought upon by the siege, and kept
in that state of tension which at the same time enabled him to get
through a gigantic piece of intellectual labor and made him incapable of
rest. Had this condition been prolonged it must have terminated either
in exhaustion or in madness. Men have often engaged in literature or
science to escape the pressure of anxiety, which strenuous mental labor
permits us, at least temporarily, to forget; but the circumstances which
surround us have invariably an influence of some kind upon our thinking,
though the connection may not be obvious. Even in the case of Goethe,
who could study optics on a battle-field, his English biographer
recognizes the effect of the Frankfort life which surrounded the great
author in his childhood. "The old Frankfort city, with its busy crowds,
its fairs, its mixed population, and its many sources of excitement,
offered great temptations and great pasture to so desultory a genius.
This is perhaps a case wherein circumstances may be seen influencing the
direction of character.... A large continuity of thought and effort was
perhaps radically uncongenial to such a temperament; yet one cannot help
speculating whether under other circumstances he might not have achieved
it. Had he been reared in a quiet little old German town, where he would
have daily seen the same faces in the silent streets, and come in
contact with the same characters, his culture might have been less
various, but it might perhaps have been deeper. Had he been reared in
the country, with only the changing seasons and the sweet serenities of
nature to occupy his attention when released from study, he would
certainly have been a different poet. The long summer afternoons spent
in lonely rambles, the deepening twilights filled with shadowy visions,
the slow uniformity of his external life necessarily throwing him more
and more upon the subtler diversities of inward experience, would
inevitably have influenced his genius in quite different directions,
would have animated his works with a very different spirit."
We are sometimes told that life in a great capital is essential to the
development of genius, but Frankfort was the largest town Goethe ever
lived in, and he never visited either Paris or London. Much of the
sanity of his genius may have been due to his residence in so tranquil a
place as Weimar, where he could shut himself up in his "garden-house"
and lock all the gates of the bridge over the Ilm. "The solitude," says
Mr. Lewes, "is absolute, broken only by the occasional sound of the
church clock, the music from the barracks, and the screaming of the
peacocks spreading their superb beauty in the park." Few men of genius
have been happier in their surroundings than Goethe. He had
tranquillity, and yet was not deprived of intellectual intercourse; the
scenery within excursion-distance from his home was interesting and even
inspiring, yet not so splendid as to be overwhelming. We know from his
conversations that he was quite aware of the value of those little
centres of culture to Germany, and yet in one place he speaks of
Béranger in the tone which seems to imply an appreciation of the larger
life of Paris. "Fancy," he says, "this same Béranger away from Paris,
and the influence and opportunities of a world-city, born as the son of
a poor tailor, at Jena or Weimar; let him run his wretched career in
either of the two small cities, and see what fruit would have grown on
such a soil and in such an atmosphere."
We cannot too frequently be reminded that we are nothing of ourselves,
and by ourselves, and are only something by the place we hold in the
intellectual chain of humanity by which electricity is conveyed to us
and through us--to be increased in the transmission if we have great
natural power and are favorably situated, but not otherwise. A child is
born to the Vecelli family at Cadore, and when it is nine years old is
taken to Venice and placed under the tuition of Sebastian Zuccato.
Afterwards he goes to Bellini's school, and there gets acquainted with
another student, one year his junior, whose name is Barbarelli. They
live together and work together in Venice; then young Barbarelli (known
to posterity as Giorgione), after putting on certain spaces of wall and
squares of canvas such color as the world had never before seen, dies in
his early manhood and leaves Vecellio, whom we call Titian, to work on
there in Venice till the plague stays his hand in his hundredth year.
The genius came into the world, but all the possibilities of his
development depended upon the place and the time. He came exactly in the
right place and precisely at the right time. To be born not far from
Venice in the days of Bellini, to be taken there at nine years old, to
have Giorgione for one's comrade, all this was as fortunate for an
artistic career as the circumstances of Alexander of Macedon were for a
career of conquest.
LETTER III.
TO AN ARTIST WHO WAS FITTING UP A MAGNIFICENT NEW STUDIO.
Pleasure of planning a studio--Opinions of an outsider--Saint
Bernard--Father Ravignan--Goethe's study and bed-room--Gustave Doré's
studio--Leslie's painting-room--Turner's opinion--Habits of Scott and
Dickens--Extremes good--Vulgar mediocrity not so good--Value of
beautiful views to literary men--Montaigne--Views from the author's
windows.
Nothing in the life of an artist is more agreeable than the building and
furnishing of the studio in which he hopes to produce his most mature
and perfect work. It is so pleasant to labor when we are surrounded by
beauty and convenience, that painters find a large and handsome studio
to be an addition to the happiness of their lives, and they usually
dream of it, and plan it, several years before the dream is realized.
Only a few days ago I was talking on this very subject with an
intellectual friend who is not an artist, and who maintained that the
love of fine studios is in great part a mere illusion. He admitted the
necessity for size, and for a proper kind of light, but laughed at
carved oak, and tapestry, and armor, and the knicknacks that artists
encumber themselves with. He would have it that a mind thoroughly
occupied with its own business knew nothing whatever of the objects that
surrounded it, and he cited two examples--Saint Bernard, who travelled
all day by the shore of Lake Leman without seeing it, and the _père_
Ravignan, who worked in a bare little room with a common table of
blackened pine and a cheap rush-bottomed chair. On this I translated to
him, from Goethe's life by Lewes, a passage which was new to him and
delighted him as a confirmation of his theory. The biographer describes
the poet's study as "a low-roofed narrow room, somewhat dark, for it is
lighted only through two tiny windows, and furnished with a simplicity
quite touching to behold. In the centre stands a plain oval table of
unpolished oak. No arm-chair is to be seen, no sofa, nothing which
speaks of ease. A plain hard chair has beside it the basket in which he
used to place his handkerchief. Against the wall, on the right, is a
long pear-tree table, with bookshelves, on which stand lexicons and
manuals.... On the side-wall again, a bookcase with some works of poets.
On the wall to the left is a long desk of soft wood, at which he was
wont to write. A sheet of paper with notes of contemporary history is
fastened near the door. The same door leads into a bed-room, if bed-room
it can be called, which no maid-of-all-work in England would accept
without a murmur: it is a closet with a window. A simple bed, an
armchair by its side, and a tiny washing-table with a small white basin
on it, and a sponge, is all the furniture. To enter this room with any
feeling for the greatness and goodness of him who slept here, and who
here slept his last sleep, brings tears into our eyes, and makes the
breathing deep."
When I had finished reading this passage, my friend exclaimed
triumphantly, "There! don't you see that it was just because Goethe had
imaginative power of a strong and active kind that he cared nothing
about what surrounded him when he worked? He had statues and pictures to
occupy his mind when it was disengaged, but when he wrote he preferred
that bare little cell where nothing was to be seen that could distract
his attention for an instant. Depend upon it, Goethe acted in this
matter either from a deliberate and most wise calculation, or else from
the sure instinct of genius."
Whilst we were on this subject I thought over other instances, and
remembered my surprise on visiting Gustave Doré in his painting-room in
Paris. Doré has a Gothic exuberance of imagination, so I expected a
painting-room something like Victor Hugo's house, rather barbarous, but
very rich and interesting, with plenty of carved cabinets, and tapestry,
and _biblos_, as they call picturesque curiosities in Paris. To my
surprise, there was nothing (except canvases and easels) but a small
deal table, on which tubes of oil-color were thrown in disorder, and two
cheap chairs. Here, evidently, the pleasure of painting was sufficient
to occupy the artist; and in the room where he made his illustrations
the characteristics were simplicity and good practical arrangements for
order, but there was nothing to amuse the imagination. Mr. Leslie used
to paint in a room which was just like any other in the house, and had
none of the peculiarities of a studio. Turner did not care in the least
what sort of a room he painted in, provided it had a door, and a bolt on
the inside. Scott could write anywhere, even in the family sitting-room,
with talk going forward as usual; and after he had finished Abbotsford,
he did not write in any of its rich and noble rooms, but in a simple
closet with book-shelves round it. Dickens wrote in a comfortable room,
well lighted and cheerful, and he liked to have funny little bronzes on
his writing-table.
The best way appears to be to surround ourselves, whenever it can be
conveniently done, with whatever we know by experience to be favorable
to our work. I think the barest cell monk ever prayed in would be a good
place for imaginative composition, and so too would be the most
magnificent rooms in Chatsworth or Blenheim. A middling sort of place
with a Philistine character, vulgar upholstery, and vulgar pictures or
engravings, is really dangerous, because these things often attract
attention in the intervals of labor and occupy it in a mean way. An
artist is always the better for having something that may profitably
amuse and occupy his eye when he quits his picture, and I think it is a
right instinct which leads artists to surround themselves with many
picturesque and beautiful things, not too orderly in their arrangement,
so that there may be pleasant surprises for the eye, as there are in
nature.
For literary men there is nothing so valuable as a window with a
cheerful and beautiful prospect. It is good for us to have this
refreshment for the eye when we leave off working, and Montaigne did
wisely to have his study up in a tower from which he had extensive
views.
There is a well-known objection to extensive views, as wanting in
snugness and comfort, but this objection scarcely applies to the
especial case of literary men. What we want is not so much snugness as
relief, refreshment, suggestion, and we get these, as a general rule,
much better from wide prospects than from limited ones. I have just
alluded to Montaigne,--will you permit me to imitate that dear old
philosopher in his egotism and describe to you the view from the room I
write in, which cheers and amuses me continually? But before describing
this let me describe another of which the recollection is very dear to
me and as vivid as a freshly-painted picture. In years gone by, I had
only to look up from my desk and see a noble loch in its inexhaustible
loveliness, and a mountain in its majesty. It was a daily and hourly
delight to watch the breezes play about the enchanted isles, on the
delicate silvery surface, dimming some clear reflection, or trailing it
out in length, or cutting sharply across it with acres of rippling blue.
It was a frequent pleasure to see the clouds play about the crest of
Cruachan and Ben Vorich's golden head, gray mists that crept upwards
from the valleys till the sunshine suddenly caught them and made them
brighter than the snows they shaded. And the leagues and leagues of
heather on the lower land to the southward that became like the aniline
dyes of deepest purple and blue, when the sky was gray in the
evening--all save one orange-streak! Ah, those were spectacles never to
be forgotten, splendors of light and glory, and sadness of deepening
gloom when the eyes grew moist in the twilight and secretly drank their
tears.
And yet, wonderful as it was, that noble and passionately beloved
Highland scenery was wanting in one great element that a writer
imperatively needs. In all that natural magnificence humanity held no
place. Hidden behind a fir-clad promontory to the north, there still
remained, it is true, the gray ruin of old Kilchurn, and far to the
south-west, in another reach of the lake, the island-fortress of
Ardhonnel. But there was not a visible city with spires and towers,
there were only the fir-trees on the little islands and a few
gravestones on the largest. Beyond, were the depopulated deserts of
Breadalbane.
Here, where I write to you now, it seems as if mankind were nearer, and
the legends of the ages written out for me on the surface of the world.
Under the shadow of Jove's hill rises before me one of the most ancient
of European cities, _soror et æmula Romæ_. She bears on her walls and
edifices the record of sixty generations. Temple, and arch, and pyramid,
all these bear witness still, and so do her ancient bulwarks, and many a
stately tower. High above all, the cathedral spire is drawn dark in the
morning mist, and often in the clear summer evenings it comes brightly
in slanting sunshine against the steep woods behind. Then the old city
arrays herself in the warmest and mellowest tones, and glows as the
shadows fall. She reigns over the whole width of her valley to the folds
of the far blue hills. Even so ought our life to be surrounded by the
loveliness of nature--surrounded, but not subdued.
FOOTNOTE:
[14] How purely this is the misery of a man of culture! A peasant
would not have gone so far.
INDEX.
Abolition of custom, how to effect, 252
Abstinence from newspaper reading, 461
Accomplishments, masculine and feminine, 303
Accumulation of preparatory knowledge, 448
Accumulators, great, of money, 237
Activity, mere, a waste of time, 190
Adult brain, the, 162
Advantages of few authors to poor, 244
-- of experience, 420
Affectations of caste, 351
Affirmations based upon authority, 282
African traveller and map-makers, 469
Alcibiades, education of, 117
Alphabet, Greek, 354
Amateurism, 134
Ampère, profoundly scientific, 278
-- anecdote of, 287
Amusement, necessity of, 454
Analytical observation, value of, 310
Anatomy, difficulty of study, 116
Ancients, incorrect use of word, 146
-- and moderns compared, 255
Application and opportunities, 244
Arabia, use of coffee, 40
Archimedes in the bath, 310
-- at Syracuse, 539
Aristocracy, liberal and illiberal, 358
-- unwritten religious law of, 366
-- and democracy, 341
-- spirit of, in reading, 472
Arnold, Dr., quoted, 144, 535
-- definition of religion, 271
-- intellectual force, 278
Arnold, Matthew, "Self-dependence" quoted, 458
Art of reading, 211
-- of resting, 455
Artist, idea of happy marriage, 289
Artistic conception of black coats, 249
Artists, drudgery of, 75
-- poor critics, 95
Arts, practical pursuit of, 498
Assimilating power of brain, 162
Assimilation, power of, 167
Association of ideas, 168
Atheism, popular construction, 272
Athenian education, 117
Attraction of the future, 255
Author in mortal disease, to an, 53
-- and tradesman compared, 236
-- his advice about notes, 167
-- his study described, 551
Authors, dependence upon private means, 232
-- young, eagerness of, 419
-- selfishness of, 471
-- condition since Goldsmith's time, 509
Authorship, privilege of, 341
Available knowledge, 115
Baker, Sir Samuel, and wife, 302
Balzac's method in literature, 421
Barbarian notions, return to, 356
Bargeman's wife, example of, 417
Basis, moral, the, 67
Baudelaire, Charles, quoted, 85
Beckford, Mr., author of "Vathek," 215
-- two thousand slaves labor for, 218
Beer, use of, 36
Belgian school of painting, 73
Bixio, Alexandre, death-bed, 53
Black coats artistic at dinner table, 249
Blessing of good, cheap literature, 244
Boar-hunt, the author at, 46
Bodily exercise, neglect of, 48
Body and brain, close connection, 21
Book-making differs from literature, 83
Books and newspapers, 470
Bossuet, 232
_Bourgeoisie_, low condition, 367
Brain and body, close connection, 21
Brain work unfavorable to digestion, 34
"Bramleighs, The," quoted, 501
Bruno, Giordano, passion for philosophy, 79
-- constant work of, 541
Buckland, Mrs., 303
Bunyan, results of solitude, 411
Burns, quoted, 353
-- separation from culture, 353
-- injustice of, 354
Byron, cause of his death, 21
-- aristocracy of, 347
-- poetical inspiration of, 450
Capacity and preference, relation, 87
Careers aided by wealth, 225
Carelessness, danger of, 224
Carpenter, Dr., surrenders practice for science, 222
Caste, prejudices of, 348
Catholic Church power in 14th century, 257
-- Roman, belief of, 272
Central passion of men of ability, 231
Chance acquaintances, 376
Character, positive or negative end, 475
"Character" quoted, 507
Charity, intellectual, 438
Chemist, a product of industrial communities, 520
Chemistry, intellectual, 105
Children, imitative power, 162
-- proper division of time, 482
Child-teaching, 155
Christian, muscular, to a, 42
Christianity, fashionable, 394
Church of Rome, embodiment of tradition, 261
-- service to European civilization, 261
Class jealousy, 518
Classical accomplishments, 351
Clergy at variance with scientists, 274
-- English, 490
-- restrictions of, 490
-- injustice and inaccuracy of, 491
Clerical profession, advantages, 489
-- incompatible with intellectual freedom, 422
Code of customs constitutes law, 251
Coffee and tea, use of, 39
Colloquial use of language, 147
Communard's hatred of superiority, 369
Communicativeness of chance acquaintances, 376
Community, intelligent, is conservative, 251
Compensation, principle of, 212
Completeness of education, 171
Composition, drudgery of, 72
Comte, Auguste, laments consequences of anxiety, 230
-- atheist and scientist, 279
-- voluntary isolation of, 411
-- abstinence from newspapers, 466
-- mysticism of, 468
Condescension, intellectual advised, 402
Conjugal felicity, degrees of, 297
Contemporary literature, indifference to, 471
Contempt for skill, 503
-- for trade, 522
Continent, absence of gentlemen, 364
Controversy, unfairness of, 464
Conversation of women, 325
-- between the sexes, 332
-- generally dull, 398
Cookery, science of, 35
Copernicus, monument at Warsaw, 261
Correspondents, the two contrasted, 345
Cotton-manufacturer, letter to, 513
Cotton-trade, effect on the mind, 525
Country people, ignorance of, 439
Cream and curacoa, 331
Creative faculty may be commanded, 85
Critical faculty of English clergy, 277
Critics, artists as, 95
Culture, moral utility, 101
-- proper limitations of, 106
-- how rich may best serve its cause, 323
-- of middle classes, 241
-- independent of sex, 304
-- induces sincerity, 332
-- hostility of democracy, 369
-- high, isolates, 407
-- facilities for obtaining, 432
-- individual, national gain, 433
Curate, poor, in prosperous community, 287
Custom and tradition, 246
-- the one law of society, 248
-- a necessary aid to religion, 248
Custom nature's provision for reform, 250
-- precious legacy of the past, 251
-- not final, but a form, 251
-- opposition unphilosophical, 251
-- how to procure abolition, 252
-- resistance sometimes imperative, 258
Cuvier, a model student, 427
Decline of old prejudices, 522
Democracy and aristocracy, 341
-- envious, 360
-- its levelling _down_ tendency, 363
-- intolerance of, 366
-- metropolitan and provincial, 368
-- hostile to culture, 369
De Saussure, labors of, 229
De Sénancour, 232
-- quoted, 406
Descent of man, 274
De Stael, Madame, literary methods, 62
Development of natural gifts, 172
-- of faculty, 175
Deviation produced by marriage, 317
Dickens, narrowness of, 347
-- study described, 549
Discipline necessary to success, 81
-- object of, 84
-- value and necessity, 449
-- of a professional career, 504
Discussions with ladies, best course, 337
Disease, effect of mental labor, 18
Diseased, experience of, 55
Disinterestedness, most essential virtue, 91
Displacement of native tongue, 157
Dissatisfaction of cultured persons, 431
Distinctions in trade, 521
Disuse of native tongue, 156
Diversity of belief in religion, 265
Domestic picture, a, 57
Doré, Gustave, painting-room, 549
Dress-coat, the young gentleman lacking, 245
Drill, intellectual, advantages of, 459
Drinks, question of, 35
Drudgery in all work, 71
Dullness of general conversation, 398
Dunces, illustrious, 80
Dürer, Albert, _Melencolia_, 424
Duty, occasional, of eccentricity, 253
-- of cultured men to society, 401
Eagerness of young authors, 419
Eccentricity sometimes a moral duty, 253
-- sometimes an intellectual duty, 253
Ecclesiastical authority, remarkable decline, 256
Economy of time, 177
Education, 104
-- use of the word, 173
-- completeness of, 171
-- want of thoroughness and reality, 290
-- of sexes compared, 290
-- fashionable, 380
Educator, professional, practice the best, 226
Egotism of the uneducated mother, 324
Electricity practically annihilates distance, 257
Elevation of intellectual life, 55
Emerson's rule, 472
Empire, Second, vulgarity of, 367
Énault, Louis, study of languages, 181
Encouragement to the poor student, 243
Energy, human, limitation of, 244
English officer in Paris, 163
-- strong to resist voluptuousness, 218
-- recognize refining influence of wealth, 240
-- gentry, free expenditures, 241
-- gentleman, methods of culture, 241
-- clergy, criticism of literature, 277
-- tradesman, anecdote of, 313
-- correspondent quoted, 463
Englishman, eminent, poor remuneration, 234
Engraving, 76
_Ennui_ in work, 423
Equality, theoretic, 372
Erdan, M., letters by, 469
Essential virtue, disinterestedness, chief, 91
Etchers, the woes of, 76
Etiquette of society bar to intellectual advance, 326
European civilization, service of church, 261
-- governments resist power of church, 258
Excesses, intellectual, dangers of, 101
Excitement, cerebral, intellectual products, 446
Exercise, bodily, need of, 49
Exeter, bishop of, quoted, 70
Experience, the lesson, 191
-- advantages of, 420
Experiment replaces tradition, 254
Experiments on public taste, 235
Facilities for obtaining culture, 432
Facility of acquiring languages, 161
Faculty, development of, 175
Fane, Julian, religion of, 267
-- late hours, 467
Faraday, intellectual career, 279, 505
-- a Sandemanian, 280
Fashionable education, 380
-- religion, 393
Fickleness of fashion, 392
Fine arts, technical difficulties, 76
-- pursuit of, 498
Five facts regarding languages, 152
France, invasion by Germans, 95
-- intellectual isolation, 148
-- vulgar language of people, 365
-- low condition of _bourgeoisie_, 367
French monarchy, question of, 94
-- college, to a principal of, 137
-- cook, perfection of art, 104
-- officer, incident of, 362
-- peasantry, intellectual apathy, 241
-- peasantry, parsimony, 241
-- peasantry without newspapers, 466
-- school of painting, 73
-- students of English, isolated, 122
Frenchman writes a school-primer with good results, 234
Fresco-painters, troubles of, 76
Friendships of the intellect, reality of, 375
-- succession of, 376
Future, attraction of, 255
Galton, Mr., advice to travellers, 416
Garibaldi, Italian follower of, 45
Generation, our, poetical events, 95
Genius, popular impression of, 447
-- military, of Napoleon, 448
-- dependent upon culture, 450
Gentlemen, absence of, on Continent, 364
German invasion of France, 95
Germans, intellectual labor of, 200
Germany, secular power resists ecclesiastical, 258
Girardin, St. Marc, 255
"_Give it time_," 193
Goethe, habits of, 33
-- pecuniary independence, 233
-- intellectual activity, 427
-- interest in intellectual labor, 427
-- production of _Werther_, 428
-- at bombardment of Verdun, 540
Goldsmith, Oliver, elaborate dress, 390
Good use of opportunity, 212
-- and cheap literature, 244
Government patronage of intellectual pursuits, 138
-- and priests lack harmony, 492
Great problem of human life, 242
Greek, general view of, 146
-- uselessness in industry and commerce, 354
-- alphabet, imaginary terrors, 355
Growing old, the rapidity of, 59
Habits, sure to be acquired, 478
Hack-writing, 508
Heine, last years of, 534
Helps, Sir Arthur, quoted, 186, 230
Hermit, experience of, 405
Highland scenery lacks humanity, 551
Historians, partiality of, 95
-- future, value of journalist, 469
Historical party in England, 257
-- party in France, 257
Honesty, importance of, _note_, 97
-- value of, 265
-- foundation of intellectual life, 274
Hoogstraten and Rembrandt, 378
Hours of idleness, 198
Household, intellectual level of, 434
How to learn a language, 147
-- women help men, 297
Hugo, Victor, intellectual decadence, 95
Human energy, limitation of, 244
-- race, longevity, 274
Humboldt, Alexander, intellectual greatness, 90
Humboldt, Alexander, fortune servant of ambition, 223
-- in South America, 516
-- youth of, 538
Hurry, evil consequences of, 209
Huxley, Professor, quoted, 372
Hygienics, intellectual, 415
Ideal division of life, 412
Ideas, association of, 168
-- ratio of narrowness, 241
Idleness, hours of, 198
-- value of, 458
Illusions, popular, concerning languages, 151
Immorality of intellectual people, 99
Inapplicability of past experience, 256
Incompatibility, fashionable and intellectual life, 394
Incongruous associations, 170
Indirect uses of study, 131
Indolent men who like to be hurried, 207
Industrial classes, results of their labor, 520
Infallibility of the pope, 281
Infraction of custom, penalties, 247
Ingres, counsel to pupils, 421
Ingres, Madame, the first, 289
Inspiration, sister of daily labor, 85
-- waiting for, 449
Instinct of accumulation, 237
-- of solitude, 409
Intellect does not recognize authority, 282
Intellectual and religious questions, difference, 270
-- attainments of two houses of Parliament, 240
-- class necessary, 515
-- deviations resulting from marriage, 317
-- kingdom, difficult entrance of the rich, 220
-- life, inward law, 88
Intellectual requirements of, 221
-- foundation, difficulty, 274
-- differs from religious life, 275
-- based upon personal investigation, 275
-- a solitary one, 298
-- absence of caste, 346
-- man rebels against custom, 250
-- two courses open in marriage, 287
-- methods independent of tradition, 288
-- nature of women, 306
Intellectual natures need intellectual activity, 430
-- progress, necessity of, 521
-- reaction against money making, 229
-- religion, foundations of, 272
-- religion, search and result, 273
-- separation of the sexes, 303
-- stupidity of amassing money, 237
-- workers, suggestions to, 18
International marriages, 162
Interruption, evils of, 204
Intolerance of democracies, 366
Intoxication, literary, 67
Invasion of France by Germans, 95
Inventions a factor in politics, 256
-- mainly due to men, 311
Inward law of intellectual life, 88
Irregular verbs, time-wasters, 193
Irrigation, intellectual, 436
Isolation of high culture, 407
Italian deserter, the, 157
Jacquemont, Victor, letters of, 200
Japanese, revolution of thought and practice, 354
Jealousy of class, 518
Johnson, dignity of his threadbare sleeves, 390
Joubert, 441
-- productive power, 443
-- quoted, 255
Journalism in England, 511
Journalist, value to future historians, 469
Journals, party, injustice of, 464
Kant, Immanuel, habits of, 27
Keats, genius dependent upon culture, 450
Kepler, early struggles, 232
Knight service in society, 251
Knowledge of mankind, 457
-- selection of, 108
Labor, pecuniary rewards of, 233
-- of previous ages, disdain for, 260
-- dominant and subordinate, 478
-- of preparation, 448
_Lalla Rookh_, Moore's trials, 72
Language, Latin as a common, 127
Language, facility of acquisition, 161
-- in France, vulgarity of, 365
Languages, popular illusions, 151
-- five facts, 152
-- separation of, 159
Late hours, 477
Latin, modern ignorance of, 121
-- island, a, 128
Latinist, the modern, 121
Law, complex code of customs, 251
-- of society, 248
Lawyers, superiority of, in certain directions, 495
Lay element of Europe, powerful, 491
Legal profession, advantages of, 493
Leslie's studio, 549
Levels, intellectual, 435
Lever, Charles, quoted, 501
Lewes' "Life of Goethe" quoted, 451, 547
-- quoted, 544
Lewis, John, practice work of, 74
Life, an ideal division of, 412
Limited knowledge and experience of the poor, 240
Limitation of human energy, 244
Line-engraver, labor of, 76
Linguist, the modern, 150
Listening, the art of, 398
Literature, to a student of, 130
-- good and cheap, 244
-- criticism of English clergy, 277
-- contemporary, indifference to, 471
Literary intoxication, 67
Littré quoted, 259
Locality, mental effect of, 530
Locke quoted, 85
Loitering element in liberal education, 196
Longevity, young men careless of, 65
-- of human race, 274
Lost opportunities, 199
Louvre, wanton destruction of, 368
Love, necessity of, 454
Lullo, Raimond, Oriental missionary, 541
"Luxury," article in Cornhill Magazine, 315
-- quoted, 316
Lytton, Robert, letter of Lady Westmorland, 267
-- estimate of Julian Fane, 361
Man unlike a planet, 452
-- need of pluck, 70
Mankind, operations of riches and poverty, 239
-- best knowledge of, 457
Marriage, 285
-- true, a slow intergrowth, 286
-- general ignorance regarding, 286
-- complex effects, 287
-- of intellectual men, 287
-- a distinguished artist's views, 289
-- ideal for man of literary culture, 290
-- intellectual, 291
-- how decided, 293
-- of French professors, 294
-- of the Scotch lawyer, 296
-- the intellectual ideal, 299
-- the necessity of keeping up its interest, 301
-- frequently leads to intellectual deviation, 317
-- risk of eccentric men, 323
-- semi-publicity, 323
Marriages, international, 162
Maximilian, Emperor, execution of, 95
Mediæval builders, 260
Medicine, profession of, 495
Meissonier, practice for self-instruction, 74
"Melencolia" of Albert Dürer, 424
Memory, defective, advantage of, 165
-- selecting, 166
-- rational art of, 169
Men, how helped by women, 296
-- disguise their thoughts from women, 330
Mental labor not injurious to healthy persons, 22
-- may aggravate disease, 18
Mental stimulants, 69
-- refusals should be heeded, 88
-- powers, immoderate use, 20
-- work, physical preparation, 479
Metaphor of the mountains, 228
"Midshipman Easy," allusion to, 188
Military genius of Napoleon, 448
-- profession, 497
-- profession, intellectual poverty of, 498
Milton, forced retirement, 411
Mind of a fashionable person, 380
Minds, three classes, 443
Miracles, belief in, 272
Miscalculation, bad results, 196
Miscellaneous reading, our debt to, 132
Mitford, Miss, quoted, 471
Mobility of fashionable taste, 392
Modern education, 116
-- inventions, power of, 256
-- languages, to student of, 149
-- languages, limits of soundness, 183
-- mind looks forward, 255
_Modern Painters_, result of long study, 229
-- work of genius and wealth, 229
Money, the influences of, 216
-- restraints of, 238
-- the guardian of peace, 238
-- accumulated labor of the past, 238
-- protector of intellectual life, 238
Montaigne, early education of, 121
-- purchases of books, 405
-- his tower, 550
Moore's trials with "Lalla Rookh," 72
Moral basis, the, 67
-- utility of culture, 101
Morality, individual theories, 99
-- public opinion regulates, 257
-- general advance of, 258
Morbid mind, cure for, 430
Morris, a diligent student, 450
Mother and son, difference in religious views, 284
-- the uneducated, 325
Mulready, preparation for new picture, 74
Multiplicity of modern studies, 120
Muscular Christian, to a, 42
Music, refining influence of, 44, 132
-- limits of soundness, 183
Napoleon, military genius of, 448
Napoleon III., overthrow of, 95
National intellectual life, 433
Native tongue, results of disuse, 156
Natural connection between wealth and culture, 240
-- gifts, development of, 172
-- laws, independent working, 282
Nature, extraordinary reactions, 100
-- high life in, 359
Nature, provision for intellectual life in marriage, 292
-- _will_ be obeyed, 248
Naval profession, 497
Navy, English, reconstruction of, 262
Neapolitan servant, case of, 158
Necessity a help in industrial pursuits, 525
-- disturbs higher intellectual life, 225, 226
Need of society and solitude, 403
Negative end of character, 475
-- qualification for work, 109
Neighbors, education of, 437
Newspaper reading, abstinence from, 460
Newspapers as educators, 437
-- daily house-talk of the world, 465
-- in United States, 466
-- in France, 466
Newton, desire for solitude, 410
Nervous system, physiological action, 17
Nightingale, Florence, quoted, 204
Night-work, medical objection to, 481
Noblesse, old, ignorance of, 363
Nomad, English, life of, 530
Nomadic habits of higher classes, 356
Obedience to nature, necessity of, 248
Object of intellectual discipline, 84
Occasion, mistaken estimates, 186
Opposition to custom unphilosophical, 251
-- of method between intellect and faith, 282
Oil painting, dangers of, 76
Old prejudices declining, 522
Opportunities lost, 199
-- unlimited, danger of, 214
-- and application, 244
Origin of discipline, 82
Orleans, Duchess of, 220
-- system of mental culture, 220
Orthodoxy no guaranty of intellectual capacity, 299
Outlet, intellectual, necessary, 435
Painters, intellectual discipline of, 498
Painting, different schools, 73
Palgrave's, Mr., "Travels in Arabia," 40
Papacy, decline and fall of temporal power, 469
Papal infallibility, 281
Paris, siege of, 95
Parliament, houses of, high attainments, 240
Parsimony of French peasantry, 241
Party journals, injustice, 464
Past, custom a precious legacy, 251
-- not reliable as a guide, 256
Patriotism as a stimulant, 69
Peasants, instruction of, 438
Pecuniary rewards of labor, 233
Pendennis, Major, typical life, 65
_Philistine_ intellects, 202
Philosophy, popular acceptation of term, 273
-- a truly intellectual, 417
Physical basis, the, 17
-- repugnances of surgeons, 87
-- preparation for mental labor, 479
Physician, social rise of, 496
Physiological action of nervous system, 17
Pioneers, intellectual, 516
Planet, dissimilarity of man to, 452
Plans should be well arranged, 189
Pluck, value of, 70
Poet, the true, 447
Poetical events of our generation, 95
-- teachings, true intentions, 453
Political influence of culture, 436
Politics, preponderance in newspapers, 465
Polyglot waiters, 165
Poor, limited knowledge and experience, 240
-- incompetent for work of Parliament, 240
-- independence of public opinion, 243
-- man desirous of culture, consolation, 243
Pope of Rome, affirmed infallibility, 281
Popular illusions regarding languages, 151
-- impression regarding genius, 447
Positive end of character, 475
Poverty and peace incompatible, 223
-- unfavorable to intellectual life, 224
-- advantage in liberal professions, 226
-- obstacle to intellectual perfection, 239
Power of assimilation, 167
-- of time, 176
Practical suggestions to intellectual workers, 16
Practice, best professional as educator, 226
-- of journalism, 511
Preference and capacity, relation, 87
Prejudices of caste, 348
-- old, decline of, 522
Preparatory labor, 448
Prescott, Mr., instance of, 63
Preservation of the senses, 60, 64
Priests, manner of religious teaching, 270
-- and government not harmonious, 492
Prince Consort, example and influence, 305
Problem, great, of life, 242
Products of cerebral excitement, 446
Professions, liberal, advantages of poverty, 226
-- test of, 392
-- and trades, 488
-- purpose of, 507
Progress, satisfactions of, 79
-- its debt to rebellion, 250
-- of work, interest necessary, 416
Propositions about modern languages, 152
Protection in intellectual pursuits, 137
Public taste, experiments on, 235
-- opinion, regulator of morality, 257
-- opinion in France, 258
Purpose of a profession, 506
Qualifications for work, 109
Railways, unforeseen effect, 356
Rational art of memory, 169
Ravignon, _pere_, 547
Reactions of Nature, 100
Reading, miscellaneous, advantage of, 132
-- painful to uneducated, 438
-- newspapers, abstinence from, 460
-- practised by most people, 474
Rebellion, debt of progress to, 250
Reconciliation of poverty and the soul, 242
Refinements of a language, 164
Reform and progress of custom, 250
Refusals, mental, should be heeded, 86
Regret for lost time, 456
Regularity of work, 446
Regulated economy of time, 203
Relation between preference and capacity, 87
-- of trivial events to great principles, 329
Religion as a stimulant, 69
-- requires aid of custom, 248
-- different views of mother and son, 264
-- indefinable, 271
-- according to popular instinct, 272
-- intellectual foundation of, 273
-- influence of caste-law, 366
Religious vitality, periods of, 265
-- teaching, 270
-- and intellectual questions, difference, 270
-- creed does not weaken critical faculty, 277
-- belief, test of, 272
Rembrandt, answer to Hoogstraten, 378
Renan, M., charges Second Empire with vulgarity 367
Repugnances to be overcome, 87
Resisting power of adult brain, 162
Rest, necessary in intellectual labor, 454
Resting, the art of, 455
Restoration of French monarchy, 94
Restraints of money, 238
Retreats demanded by intellectual life, 221
Return to barbarism, 356
Rich man a director of work, 219
-- social diversions of, 220
-- vulgar people, 242
Road to success, commonly gradual increase, 226
Roman Catholic, belief of, 272
Romans, education of, 118
Roscoe, William, Italian studies, 134
Rosse, Lord, colossal telescope, 220
-- useful application of wealth, 220
Rossini, advice to young composer, 195
Ruskin, Mr., value of artistic perception, 62
-- extract from _Modern Painters_, 215
-- wealth of material, 229
-- career of, 229
Sacerdotal system, 270
Sadness of intellectual workers, 426
Sainte Beuve, example of self-discipline, 83
-- system of living, 236
-- atheist and scientist, 279
-- quoted, 458
Saint-Bernard at Lake Leman, 547
Saint-Hilaire, Geoffroy, in blindness, 57
Saint-Hilaire, Geoffrey, at Alexandria, 540
Sand, George, working under pressure, 23
-- quoted, 86
-- novel of "Valvèdre," 319
Satisfactions of intellectual riches, 424
Schiller, literary hack-work of, 233
Schoolmaster, thankless office of, 337
Science, methods and laws of, 283
-- requires heat and heroism, 276
-- of living, 395
Scientific cookery, importance of, 35
-- writers and thinkers, independence, 258
-- at variance with clergy, 274
Scott, Sir Walter, physical exercise, 24
-- habits of, 33
-- writing-closet, 549
Secular power resists ecclesiastical, 258
Selection of knowledge, 108
Selfishness of authors, 471
Senses, usefulness to intellectual life, 60
Separation of languages, 159
Shelley, boating exercise, 24
-- the morality of, 99
-- writings unprofitable, 232
-- desire for solitude, 409
Ships of the line, old, 262
Shopkeepers, treatment by English authors, 348
Siege of Paris, 95
Silent student, attainments, 444
Simon Jules, allusion to, 141
Sincerity induced by culture, 332
Skill, indifference to, 502
Skip judiciously in reading, 211
Small talk in England and France, 399
Smiles, Mr., _Character_ quoted, 506
Smith, Sydney, quoted, 173
-- common sense of, 277
Smoking, moderate and excessive, 39
Social diversions of the rich, 220
Society, penalties for infringing custom, 247
-- _will be obeyed_, 248
-- desires harmony, 249
-- and solitude, 374
-- fashionable demands, 380
-- external deference to culture, 393
Solitude and society, 374
-- traditional view of, 405
-- effects upon man, 406
Soul and poverty, reconciliation, 242
Soundness, requisite to best success, 179
Spain, secular power resists ecclesiastical, 250
Spenser, the fables of, 251
State schools, exclusion of theology, 491
Station fetters intellect, 371
Steam makes cities of States, 257
Stimulants, effects of, 37
-- mental, 69
Stone in Glen Croe, the, 455
Structural relations of languages, 170
Student, the poor, encouragement, 243
-- the poor, sad story, 344
-- dangers of society, 382
Study, indirect uses of, 131
-- of medicine, 495
Substitution of experiment for tradition, 251
Success, result of discipline, 81
-- common road, gradual increase, 226
Sue, Eugene, daily habits, 24
Surgeon, social rise of, 496
Surroundings of cultivated men, 434, 531
Swiss gentleman, anecdote of, 276
Systematic arrangement of work, 478
Taste, public, experiments on, 235
Tea and coffee, use of, 39
Teachings, poetical, true intentions, 458
Telescope, colossal, of Lord Rosse, 220
Temptations of wealth, 218
Test of religious belief, 272
Theology, exclusion from state schools, 481
Theoretic equality amongst men, 372
Thiers, antecedents of, 463
-- elevation of, 464
Thoughts upon "Government" quoted, 96
Thrift, the principle of, 193
Tillier, Claude, doctrine of, 457
Time, the power of, 176
-- loss of, 177
-- mistaken estimates, 186
-- regulated economy, 203
Titian, early surroundings, 544
Tobacco, use of, 38
Trade distinctions, 521
-- contempt for, 522
Trades and professions, 488
Tradition and custom, 246
-- rejected for experiment, 254
-- decline of authoritative influence, 200
-- church of Rome, embodiment, 261
-- in industrial and fine arts, _note_, 263
Training, intellectual, 214
Tranquillity conducive to intellectual success, 480
Travellers, Mr. Galton's advice, 416
Triumph of discipline, 86
Trivial events, relation to great principles, 328
Truth a law of religion, 265
Turner's studio, 549
Tyco Brahe, princely ease, 233
-- surroundings of, 537
Ultramontane party, 91
Undisciplined writer, to an, 80
United States, influence of newspapers, 486
Unknown element of all problems, 188
Unproductive class, the, 444
Utility, moral, of culture, 101
"Valvèdre," extract from, 319
Variety of labor for children, 482
Various pursuits, objection to, 114
_Vathek_, written at a single sitting, 26
-- author of, 216
Vatican, council of, 127
Vinci, Leonardo da, education of, 172
Waiting for inspiration, 449
Want hinders intellectual pursuits, 231
Warsaw, monument to Copernicus, 261
Wealth, double temptation of, 218
-- an obstacle to labor, 219
-- inordinate respect for, 502
_Werther_ indicative of Goethe's _ennui_, 428
Westmorland, Lady, letter to Robert Lytton, 267
Why men choose their wives, 292
Wine, use of, 35
Wives of French professors, 294
Women and marriage, 285
-- how they help men, 297
-- incapacity for solitary mental labor, 302
-- intellectual nature of, 306
-- absence of scientific curiosity, 308
-- rarity of invention among, 310
-- lack inherent force for advance, 311
-- do not hear the truth from men, 330
-- conversation of, 325
Wordsworth, love of pedestrian excursions, 51
-- failure as a London journalist, 232
-- happy results of a legacy, 232
-- advice to tourists, 288
Work, systematic arrangement desirable, 478
_Work_, article in Cornhill Magazine, 480
World recognizes performance only, 500
Woepke, Franz, remarkable extent of studies, 103
-- mathematician and orientalist, 223
-- pension of Italian prince, 223
Writing against time, 209
-- as a profession, 509
Young men careless of longevity, 65
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