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Title: The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature
Representative Prose and Verse
Author: Various
Editor: Robert Emmons Rogers
Release Date: April 3, 2010 [eBook #31871]
Language: English
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THE VOICE OF SCIENCE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
Representative Prose and Verse
Selected and Arranged by
ROBERT EMMONS ROGERS
Assistant Professor of English in
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
With an Introduction by Henry Greenleaf Pearson
Head of the Department of English and History in
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Atlantic Monthly Press
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Copyright, 1921, by
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE
The nucleus of this collection was a privately printed volume for the use
of the students in the sophomore course in English and History at the
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George Washington University, Washington, D.C. The present volume, which
contains some changes and additions, is edited by Robert E. Rogers,
assistant professor of English at the Institute, who is, therefore,
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CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION ix
MATTHEW ARNOLD
_The Function of Criticism_ 1
SIR MICHAEL FOSTER
_The Growth of Science in the Nineteenth Century_ 22
THOMAS HUXLEY
_Three Hypotheses Respecting the History of Nature_ 52
_On the Physical Basis of Life_ 69
JOHN TYNDALL
_Scope and Limit of Scientific Materialism_ 93
JOHN HENRY, CARDINAL NEWMAN
_Christianity and Physical Science_ 104
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
_Pulvis et Umbra_ 108
JOHN RUSKIN
_The Mystery of Life and its Arts_ 116
MATTHEW ARNOLD
_Marcus Aurelius_ 146
_Dover Beach_ 170
_Morality_ 171
_Self-Dependence_ 172
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
_All is Well_ 174
_To Spend Uncounted Years of Pain_ 174
_Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth_ 175
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
_The Garden of Proserpine_ 176
EDWARD FITZGERALD
_Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam_ 180
ROBERT BROWNING
_Rabbi Ben Ezra_ 197
_An Epistle_ 204
_Caliban upon Setebos_ 214
_A Grammarian's Funeral_ 224
_Why I am a Liberal_ 228
_Fears and Scruples_ 229
_Epilogue to "Asolando"_ 231
_Prospice_ 232
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
_Wages_ 233
_The Higher Pantheism_ 233
_Flower in the Crannied Wall_ 234
_In Memoriam_ 235
_Crossing the Bar_ 239
GEORGE MEREDITH
_Lucifer in Starlight_ 240
WILLIAM E. HENLEY
_Invictus_ 241
THOMAS HARDY
_New Year's Eve_ 242
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
_Civilization_ 244
_Illusions_ 255
_Fate_ 268
WALT WHITMAN
_Song of the Open Road_ 300
_Crossing Brooklyn Ferry_ 313
_A Song of Joys_ 320
INTRODUCTION
BY HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON
"The Voice of Science in Nineteenth-Century Literature" is a volume of
selections put together for use in the third term of a course in English
and History offered to the second-year students at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. The plan of the year's work provides for a study
of the record made in English literature by the great movements of thought
that distinguished the nineteenth century. First John Stuart Mill's essays
on "Liberty" and "Representative Government" furnish an interpretation of
the political currents of thought in the first half of the century.
Carlyle's "Past and Present," which is read in the second third of the
year, is an analysis of economic and social problems in the same period;
in the third term the profound effect of science on the thought of the age
receives illustration in the writings here brought together.
Broadly stated, the central theme of the book is man's place in the
universe, considered in the light of the new knowledge and speculation as
to his origin and destiny which the study of science in the nineteenth
century has invoked. Some of the selections are more closely related to
this theme than are others. Between some of the selections the connection
or contrast is obvious ("Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "The Rubaiyat of Omar
Khayyam"); in others it is less immediately evident. In some cases the
background is the group of ideas roughly classed under the word
_evolution_; in others it is some characteristic phase of religious
feeling or ethical or theological thought. The contrast in outlook
between the American writers, Emerson and Whitman, and their English
contemporaries is one of which particularly valuable use may be made. The
discovery of these interrelations is what gives zest to the reading for
both parties in the classroom; for neither teacher nor students should the
work take the form of checking off selections on a minutely correlated
syllabus. The course should be pursued on the assumption that the whole is
greater than the sum of the parts: the total impression, the height gained
at the end, the inspiration of the view there disclosed--these are the
goals to be sought for. And the discerning teacher will not be surprised
that the pupil presses him so closely up the ascent.
In reading pursued on this plan what should be emphasized on the side of
history is not the marshaling of fact, of things done, but the war of
thought in one field or another. Without being embroiled in the
controversy for this or that belief, the student examines the battleground
to learn how the battle was fought. He discovers what befell truths,
half-truths, and falsehoods, and under what circumstances of glory or
shame. He sees the period with the unity that genius always gives to a
subject; at the same time he learns how to make the correction that a
piece of contemporary interpretation inevitably requires. On the side of
literature, the student's approach is no less special and with its
appropriate reward. He sees the man of genius primarily in the setting of
his age. The personal adventures and idiosyncracies that often form so
large and so unedifying a portion of the treatment afforded in the
traditional "historical survey course" here fill a modest space in the
background; the attention is concentrated on what this leader did for the
men of his own day. These writers lived intensely in the life of their own
generation; conscious of a clearer perception of the truth and possessing
a voice that men could hear, they sought to lead their companions out of
the wilderness. It is the man of genius speaking with authority to those
of his own time who is here presented. In such a setting his voice has
still its ancient power.
THE VOICE OF SCIENCE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
MATTHEW ARNOLD
THE FUNCTION OF CRITICISM[1]
The critical power is of lower rank than the creative. True; but in
assenting to this proposition, one or two things are to be kept in mind.
It is undeniable that the exercise of a creative power, that a free
creative activity, is the true function of man; it is proved to be so by
man's finding in it his true happiness. But it is undeniable, also, that
men may have the sense of exercising this free creative activity in other
ways than in producing great works of literature or art; if it were not
so, all but a very few men would be shut out from the true happiness of
all men; they may have it in well-doing, they may have it in learning,
they may have it even in criticizing. This is one thing to be kept in
mind. Another is, that the exercise of the creative power in the
production of great works of literature or art, however high this exercise
of it may rank, is not, at all epochs, and under all conditions, possible;
and that, therefore, labor may be vainly spent in attempting it, and may
with more fruit be used in preparing for it, in rendering it possible.
This creative power works with elements, with materials; what if it has
not those materials, those elements, ready for its use? In that case it
must surely wait till they are ready. Now, in literature,--I will limit
myself to literature, for it is about literature that the question
arises,--the elements with which the creative power works are ideas; the
best ideas on every matter which literature touches, current at the time;
at any rate, we may lay it down as certain that in modern literature no
manifestation of the creative power not working with these can be very
important or fruitful. And I say _current_ at the time, not merely
accessible at the time; for creative literary genius does not principally
show itself in discovering new ideas--that is rather the business of the
philosopher; the grand work of literary genius is a work of synthesis and
exposition, not of analysis and discovery; its gift lies in the faculty of
being happily inspired by a certain intellectual and spiritual atmosphere,
by a certain order of ideas, when it finds itself in them; of dealing
divinely with these ideas, presenting them in the most effective and
attractive combinations, making beautiful works with them, in short. But
it must have the atmosphere, it must find itself amidst the order of
ideas, in order to work freely; and these it is not so easy to command.
This is why great creative epochs in literature are so rare; this is why
there is so much that is unsatisfactory in the productions of many men of
real genius; because, for the creation of a master-work of literature, two
powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and
the man is not enough without the moment; the creative power has, for its
happy exercise, appointed elements, and those elements are not in its own
control.
Nay, they are more within the control of the critical power. It is the
business of the critical power, as I said in the words already quoted, "in
all branches of knowledge, theology, philosophy, history, art, science, to
see the object as in itself it really is." Thus it tends, at last, to make
an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail
itself. It tends to establish an order of ideas, if not absolutely true,
yet true by comparison with that which it displaces; to make the best
ideas prevail. Presently these new ideas reach society, the touch of truth
is the touch of life, and there is a stir and growth everywhere; out of
this stir and growth come the creative epochs of literature.
Or, to narrow our range, and quit these considerations of the general
march of genius and of society,--considerations which are apt to become
too abstract and impalpable,--everyone can see that a poet, for instance,
ought to know life and the world before dealing with them in poetry; and
life and the world being, in modern times, very complex things, the
creation of a modern poet, to be worth much, implies a great critical
effort behind it; else it would be a comparatively poor, barren, and
short-lived affair. This is why Byron's poetry had so little endurance in
it, and Goethe's so much; both had a great productive power, but Goethe's
was nourished by a great critical effort providing the true materials for
it, and Byron's was not; Goethe knew life and the world, the poet's
necessary subjects, much more comprehensively and thoroughly than Byron.
He knew a great deal more of them, and he knew them much more as they
really are.
It has long seemed to me that the burst of creative activity in our
literature, through the first quarter of this century, had about it, in
fact, something premature; and that from this cause its productions are
doomed, most of them, in spite of the sanguine hopes which accompanied and
do still accompany them, to prove hardly more lasting than the productions
of far less splendid epochs. And this prematureness comes from its having
proceeded without having its proper data, without sufficient materials to
work with. In other words, the English poetry of the first quarter of this
century, with plenty of energy, plenty of creative force, did not know
enough. This makes Byron so empty of matter, Shelley so incoherent,
Wordsworth, even, profound as he is, yet so wanting in completeness and
variety. Wordsworth cared little for books, and disparaged Goethe. I
admire Wordsworth, as he is, so much that I cannot wish him different; and
it is vain, no doubt, to imagine such a man different from what he is, to
suppose that he could have been different; but surely the one thing
wanting to make Wordsworth an even greater poet than he is,--his thought
richer, and his influence of wider application,--was that he should have
read more books--among them, no doubt, those of that Goethe whom he
disparaged without reading him.
But to speak of books and reading may easily lead to a misunderstanding
here. It was not really books and reading that lacked to our poetry at
this epoch; Shelley had plenty of reading, Coleridge had immense reading.
Pindar and Sophocles--as we all say so glibly, and often with so little
discernment of the real import of what we are saying--had not many books;
Shakespeare was no deep reader. True; but in the Greece of Pindar and
Sophocles, in the England of Shakespeare, the poet lived in a current of
ideas in the highest degree animating and nourishing to the creative
power; society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought,
intelligent and alive; and this state of things is the true basis for the
creative power's exercise; in this it finds its data, its materials, truly
ready for its hand; all the books and reading in the world are only
valuable as they are helps to this. Even when this does not actually
exist, books and reading may enable a man to construct a kind of semblance
of it in his own mind, a world of knowledge and intelligence in which he
may live and work. This is by no means an equivalent to the artist for the
nationally diffused life and thought of the epochs of Sophocles or
Shakespeare; but, besides that, it may be a means of preparation for such
epochs, it does really constitute, if many share in it, a quickening and
sustaining atmosphere of great value. Such an atmosphere the many-sided
learning and the long and widely combined critical effort of Germany
formed for Goethe, when he lived and worked. There was no national glow of
life and thought there, as in the Athens of Pericles or the England of
Elizabeth. That was the poet's weakness. But there was a sort of
equivalent for it in the complete culture and unfettered thinking of a
large body of Germans. That was his strength. In the England of the first
quarter of this century there was neither a national glow of life and
thought, such as we had in the age of Elizabeth, nor yet a culture and a
force of learning and criticism such as were to be found in Germany.
Therefore the creative power of poetry wanted, for success in the highest
sense, materials and a basis; a thorough interpretation of the world was
necessarily denied to it.
At first sight it seems strange that out of the immense stir of the French
Revolution and its age should not have come a crop of works of genius
equal to that which came out of the stir of the great productive time of
Greece, or out of that of the Renaissance, with its powerful episode, the
Reformation. But the truth is that the stir of the French Revolution took
a character which essentially distinguished it from such movements as
these. These were, in the main, disinterestedly intellectual and spiritual
movements; movements in which the human spirit looked for its satisfaction
in itself and in the increased play of its own activity; the French
Revolution took a political, practical character. This Revolution--the
object of so much blind love and so much blind hatred--found, indeed, its
motive-power in the intelligence of men, and not in their practical sense.
This is what distinguishes it from the English Revolution of Charles the
First's time; this is what makes it a more spiritual event than our
Revolution, an event of much more powerful and world-wide interest, though
practically less successful--it appeals to an order of ideas which are
universal, certain, permanent. 1789 asked of a thing, Is it rational? 1642
asked of a thing, Is it legal? or, when it went furthest, Is it according
to conscience? This is the English fashion, a fashion to be treated,
within its own sphere, with the highest respect; for its success, within
its own sphere, has been prodigious.
But what is law in one place is not law in another; what is law here
to-day is not law even here to-morrow; and as for conscience, what is
binding on one man's conscience is not binding on another's; the old woman
who threw her stool at the head of the surpliced minister in the Tron
Church at Edinburgh obeyed an impulse to which millions of the human race
may be permitted to remain strangers. But the prescriptions of reason are
absolute, unchanging, of universal validity; _to count by tens is the
easiest way of counting_--that is a proposition of which everyone, from
here to the Antipodes, feels the force; at least, I should say so if we
did not live in a country where it is not impossible that any morning we
may find a letter in the "Times" declaring that a decimal coinage is an
absurdity. That a whole nation should have been penetrated with an
enthusiasm for pure reason, and with an ardent zeal for making its
prescriptions triumph, is a very remarkable thing, when we consider how
little of mind, or anything so worthy and quickening as mind, comes into
the motives which alone, in general, _impel_ great masses of men. In spite
of the extravagant direction given to this enthusiasm, in spite of the
crimes and follies in which it lost itself, the French Revolution derives
from the force, truth, and universality of the ideas which it took for its
law, and from the passion with which it could inspire a multitude for
these ideas, a unique and still living power; it is--it will probably long
remain--the greatest, the most animating event in history. And as no
sincere passion for the things of the mind, even though it turn out in
many respects an unfortunate passion, is ever quite thrown away and quite
barren of good, France has reaped from hers one fruit, the natural and
legitimate fruit, though not precisely the grand fruit she expected: she
is the country in Europe where _the people_ is most alive.
But the mania for giving an immediate political and practical application
to all these fine ideas of the reason was fatal. Here an Englishman is in
his element: on this theme we can all go for hours. And all we are in the
habit of saying on it has undoubtedly a great deal of truth. Ideas cannot
be too much prized in and for themselves, cannot be too much lived with;
but to transport them abruptly into the world of politics and practice,
violently to revolutionize this world to their bidding--that is quite
another thing. There is the world of ideas and there is the world of
practice; the French are often for suppressing the one and the English the
other; but neither is to be suppressed. A member of the House of Commons
said to me the other day: "That a thing is an anomaly, I consider to be no
objection to it whatever." I venture to think he was wrong; that a thing
is an anomaly _is_ an objection to it, but absolutely and in the sphere of
ideas; it is not necessarily, under such and such circumstances, or at
such and such a moment, an objection to it in the sphere of politics and
practice. Joubert has said beautifully: "C'est la force et le droit qui
réglent toutes choses dans le monde; la force en attendant le droit."
Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is
ready. _Force till right is ready_; and till right is ready, force, the
existing order of things, is justified, is the legitimate ruler. But
right is something moral, and implies inward recognition, free assent of
the will; we are not ready for right,--_right_, so far as we are
concerned, _is not ready_,--until we have attained this sense of seeing it
and willing it. The way in which for us it may change and transform force,
the existing order of things, and become, in its turn, the legitimate
ruler of the world, will depend on the way in which, when our time comes,
we see it and will it. Therefore, for other people enamored of their own
newly discerned right, to attempt to impose it upon us as ours, and
violently to substitute their right for our force, is an act of tyranny,
and to be resisted. It sets at nought the second great half of our maxim,
_force till right is ready_. This was the grand error of the French
Revolution; and its movement of ideas, by quitting the intellectual sphere
and rushing furiously into the political sphere, ran, indeed, a prodigious
and memorable course, but produced no such intellectual fruit as the
movement of ideas of the Renaissance, and created, in opposition to
itself, what I may call an _epoch of concentration_.
The great force of that epoch of concentration was England; and the great
voice of that epoch of concentration was Burke. It is the fashion to treat
Burke's writings on the French Revolution as superannuated and conquered
by the event; as the eloquent but unphilosophical tirades of bigotry and
prejudice. I will not deny that they are often disfigured by the violence
and passion of the moment, and that in some directions Burke's view was
bounded, and his observation therefore at fault; but on the whole, and for
those who can make the needful corrections, what distinguishes these
writings is their profound, permanent, fruitful, philosophical truth; they
contain the true philosophy of an epoch of concentration, dissipate the
heavy atmosphere which its own nature is apt to engender round it, and
make its resistance rational instead of mechanical.
But Burke is so great because, almost alone in England, he brings thought
to bear upon politics, he saturates politics with thought; it is his
accident that his ideas were at the service of an epoch of concentration,
not of an epoch of expansion; it is his characteristic that he so lived by
ideas, and had such a source of them welling up within him, that he could
float even an epoch of concentration and English Tory politics with them.
It does not hurt him that Dr. Price and the Liberals were displeased with
him; it does not hurt him, even, that George the Third and the Tories were
enchanted with him. His greatness is that he lived in a world which
neither English Liberalism nor English Toryism is apt to enter--the world
of ideas, not the world of catchwords and party habits. So far is it from
being really true of him that he "to party gave up what was meant for
mankind," that at the very end of his fierce struggle with the French
Revolution, after all his invectives against its false pretensions,
hollowness, and madness, with his sincere conviction of its
mischievousness, he can close a memorandum on the best means of combating
it,--some of the last pages he ever wrote: the _Thoughts on French
Affairs_, in December, 1791,--with these striking words:--
"The evil is stated, in my opinion, as it exists. The remedy must be where
power, wisdom, and information, I hope, are more united with good
intentions than they can be with me. I have done with this subject, I
believe, for ever. It has given me many anxious moments for the last two
years. _If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men
will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will draw that
way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and then they who persist in
opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to
resist the decrees of Providence itself, than the mere designs of men.
They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate._"
That return of Burke upon himself has always seemed to me one of the
finest things in English literature, or indeed, in any literature. That is
what I call living by ideas: when one side of a question has long had your
earnest support, when all your feelings are engaged, when you hear all
round you no language but one, when your party talks this language like a
steam-engine and can imagine no other--still to be able to think, still to
be irresistibly carried, if so it be, by the current of thought to the
opposite side of the question, and, like Balaam, to be unable to speak
anything _but what the Lord has put in your mouth_. I know nothing more
striking, and I must add that I know nothing more un-English.
For the Englishman in general is like my friend the Member of Parliament,
and believes, point-blank, that for a thing to be an anomaly is absolutely
no objection to it whatever. He is like the Lord Auckland of Burke's day,
who, in a memorandum on the French Revolution, talks of "certain
miscreants, assuming the name of philosophers, who have presumed
themselves capable of establishing a new system of society." The
Englishman has been called a political animal, and he values what is
political and practical so much that ideas easily become objects of
dislike in his eyes, and thinkers "miscreants," because ideas and thinkers
have rashly meddled with politics and practice. This would be all very
well if the dislike and neglect confined themselves to ideas transported
out of their own sphere, and meddling rashly with practice; but they are
inevitably extended to ideas as such, and to the whole life of
intelligence; practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing.
The notion of the free play of the mind upon all subjects being a
pleasure in itself, being an object of desire, being an essential provider
of elements without which a nation's spirit, whatever compensations it may
have for them, must, in the long run, die of inanition, hardly enters into
an Englishman's thoughts. It is noticeable that the word _curiosity_,
which in other languages is used in a good sense, to mean, as a high and
fine quality of man's nature, just this disinterested love of a free play
of the mind on all subjects, for its own sake--it is noticeable, I say,
that this word has in our language no sense of the kind, no sense but a
rather bad and disparaging one. But criticism, real criticism, is
essentially the exercise of this very quality; it obeys an instinct
prompting it to try to know the best that is known and thought in the
world, irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of the kind;
and to value knowledge and thought as they approach this best, without the
intrusion of any other considerations whatever. This is an instinct for
which there is, I think, little original sympathy in the practical English
nature, and what there was of it has undergone a long, benumbing period of
check and suppression in the epoch of concentration which followed the
French Revolution.
But epochs of concentration cannot well endure forever; epochs of
expansion, in the due course of things, follow them. Such an epoch of
expansion seems to be open here in England. In the first place, all danger
of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice has long
disappeared; like the traveler in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear
our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long peace, the ideas of
Europe steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle, though in
infinitesimally small quantities at a time, with our own notions. Then,
too, in spite of all that is said about the absorbing and brutalizing
influence of our passionate material progress, it seems to me
indisputable that this progress is likely, though not certain, to lead in
the end to an apparition of intellectual life; and that man, after he has
made himself perfectly comfortable and has now to determine what to do
with himself next, may begin to remember that he has a mind, and that the
mind may be made the source of great pleasure. I grant it is mainly the
privilege of faith, at present, to discern this end to our railways, our
business, and our fortune-making; but we shall see if, here as elsewhere,
faith is not in the end the true prophet. Our ease, our traveling, and our
unbounded liberty to hold just as hard and securely as we please to the
practice to which our notions have given birth, all tend to beget an
inclination to deal a little more freely with these notions themselves, to
canvass them a little, to penetrate a little into their real nature.
Flutterings of curiosity, in the foreign sense of the word, appear amongst
us, and it is in these that criticism must look to find its account.
Criticism first; a time of true creative activity, perhaps,--which, as I
have said, must inevitably be preceded amongst us by a time of
criticism,--hereafter, when criticism has done its work.
It is of the last importance that English criticism should clearly discern
what rules for its course, in order to avail itself of the field now
opening to it, and to produce fruit for the future, it ought to take. The
rules may be given in one word; by being _disinterested_. And how is it to
be disinterested? By keeping aloof from practice; by resolutely following
the law of its own nature, which is to be a free play of the mind on all
subjects which it touches; by steadily refusing to lend itself to any of
those ulterior, political, practical considerations about ideas, which
plenty of people will be sure to attach to them, which perhaps ought often
to be attached to them, which in this country, at any rate, are certain to
be attached to them quite sufficiently, but which criticism has really
nothing to do with. Its business is, as I have said, simply to know the
best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn making
this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas. Its business is
to do this with inflexible honesty, with due ability; but its business is
to do no more, and to leave alone all questions of practical consequences
and applications, questions which will never fail to have due prominence
given to them. Else criticism, besides being really false to its own
nature, merely continues in the old rut which it has hitherto followed in
this country, and will certainly miss the chance now given to it. For what
is at present the bane of criticism in this country? It is that practical
considerations cling to it and stifle it; it subserves interests not its
own; our organs of criticism are organs of men and parties having
practical ends to serve, and with them those practical ends are the first
thing and the play of mind the second; so much play of mind as is
compatible with the prosecution of those practical ends is all that is
wanted.
* * * * *
It must needs be that men should act in sects and parties, that each of
these sects and parties should have its organ, and should make this organ
subserve the interests of its action; but it would be well, too, that
there should be a criticism, not the minister of these interests, not
their enemy, but absolutely and entirely independent of them. No other
criticism will ever attain any real authority or make any real way toward
its end--the creating a current of true and fresh ideas.
It is because criticism has so little kept in the pure intellectual
sphere, has so little detached itself from practice, has been so directly
polemical and controversial, that it has so ill accomplished, in England,
its best spiritual work; which is to keep man from a self-satisfaction
which is retarding and vulgarizing, to lead him toward perfection, by
making his mind dwell upon what is excellent in itself, and the absolute
beauty and fitness of things. A polemical practical criticism makes men
blind even to the ideal imperfection of their practice, makes them
willingly assert its ideal perfection, in order the better to secure it
against attack; and clearly this is narrowing and baneful for them. If
they were reassured on the practical side, speculative considerations of
ideal perfection they might be brought to entertain, and their spiritual
horizon would thus gradually widen....
It will be said that it is a very subtle and indirect action which I am
thus prescribing for criticism, and that, by embracing in this manner the
Indian virtue of detachment and abandoning the sphere of practical life,
it condemns itself to a slow and obscure work. Slow and obscure it may be,
but it is the only proper work of criticism. The mass of mankind will
never have any ardent zeal for seeing things as they are; very inadequate
ideas will always satisfy them. On these inadequate ideas reposes, and
must repose, the general practice of the world. That is as much as saying
that whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one
of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely
doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The
rush and roar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting
effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its
vortex; most of all will this be the case where that life is so powerful
as it is in England. But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing
to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic
can do the practical man any service; and it is only by the greatest
sincerity in pursuing his own course, and by at last convincing even the
practical man of his sincerity, that he can escape misunderstandings which
perpetually threaten him.
For the practical man is not apt for fine distinctions, and yet in these
distinctions truth and the highest culture greatly find their account. But
it is not easy to lead a practical man--unless you reassure him as to your
practical intentions, you have no chance of leading him--to see that a
thing which he has always been used to look at from one side only, which
he greatly values, and which, looked at from that side, more than
deserves, perhaps, all the prizing and admiring which he bestows upon
it--that this thing, looked at from another side, may appear much less
beneficent and beautiful, and yet retain all its claims to our practical
allegiance. Where shall we find language innocent enough, how shall we
make the spotless purity of our intentions evident enough, to enable us to
say to the political Englishman that the British constitution itself,
which, seen from the practical side, looks such a magnificent organ of
progress and virtue, seen from the speculative side,--with its
compromises, its love of facts, its horror of theory, its studied
avoidance of clear thoughts,--that, seen from this side, our august
constitution sometimes looks--forgive me, shade of Lord Somers!--a
colossal machine for the manufacture of Philistines? How is Cobbett to say
this and not be misunderstood, blackened as he is with the smoke of a
lifelong conflict in the field of political practice? How is Mr. Carlyle
to say it and not be misunderstood, after his furious raid into this field
with his "Latter-day Pamphlets"? How is Mr. Ruskin, after his pugnacious
political economy? I say, the critic must keep out of the region of
immediate practice in the political, social, humanitarian sphere, if he
wants to make a beginning for that more free speculative treatment of
things, which may perhaps one day make its benefits felt even in this
sphere, but in a natural and thence irresistible manner.
Do what he will, however, the critic will still remain exposed to frequent
misunderstandings, and nowhere so much as here in England. For here people
are particularly indisposed even to comprehend that, without this free,
disinterested treatment of things, truth and the highest culture are out
of the question. So immersed are they in practical life, so accustomed to
take all their notions from this life and its processes, that they are apt
to think that truth and culture themselves can be reached by the processes
of this life, and that it is an impertinent singularity to think of
reaching them in any other way. "We are all _terræ filii_," cries their
eloquent advocate; "all Philistines together. Away with the notion of
proceeding by any other way than the way dear to the Philistines; let us
have a social movement, let us organize and combine a party to pursue
truth and new thought, let us call it _the liberal party_, and let us all
stick to each other, and back each other up. Let us have no nonsense about
independent criticism, and intellectual delicacy, and the few and the
many. Don't let us trouble ourselves about foreign thought; we shall
invent the whole thing for ourselves as we go along. If one of us speaks
well, applaud him; if one of us speaks ill, applaud him too; we are all in
the same movement, we are all liberals, we are all in pursuit of truth."
In this way the pursuit of truth becomes really a social, practical,
pleasurable affair, almost requiring a chairman, a secretary, and
advertisements; with the excitement of a little resistance, an occasional
scandal, to give the happy sense of difficulty overcome; but, in general,
plenty of bustle and very little thought. To act is so easy, as Goethe
says; to think is so hard! It is true that the critic has many
temptations to go with the stream, to make one of the party movement, one
of these _terræ filii_; it seems ungracious to refuse to be a _terræ
filius_, when so many excellent people are; but the critic's duty is to
refuse, or, if resistance is vain, at least to cry with Obermann:
_Perissons en resistant_.
* * * * *
What then is the duty of criticism here? To take the practical point of
view, to applaud the liberal movement and all its works ... for their
general utility's sake? By no means; but to be perpetually dissatisfied
with these works, while they perpetually fall short of a high and perfect
ideal.
In criticism, these are elementary laws; but they never can be popular,
and in this country they have been very little followed, and one meets
with immense obstacles in following them. That is a reason for asserting
them again and again. Criticism must maintain its independence of the
practical spirit and its aims. Even with well-meant efforts of the
practical spirit, it must express dissatisfaction, if in the sphere of the
ideal they seem impoverishing and limiting. It must not hurry on to the
goal because of its practical importance. It must be patient, and know how
to wait; and flexible, and know how to attach itself to things and how to
withdraw from them. It must be apt to study and praise elements that for
the fulness of spiritual perfection are wanted, even though they belong to
a power that in the practical sphere may be maleficent. It must be apt to
discern the spiritual shortcomings or illusions of powers that in the
practical sphere may be beneficent. And this without any notion of
favoring or injuring, in the practical sphere, one power or the other;
without any notion of playing off, in this sphere, one power against the
other. When one looks, for instance, at the English Divorce Court,--an
institution which perhaps has its practical conveniences, but which in the
ideal sphere is so hideous; an institution which neither makes divorce
impossible nor makes it decent; which allows a man to get rid of his wife,
or a wife of her husband, but makes them drag one another first, for the
public edification, through a mire of unutterable infamy,--when one looks
at this charming institution, I say, with its crowded trials, its
newspaper reports, and its money compensations, this institution in which
the gross unregenerate British Philistine has indeed stamped an image of
himself, one may be permitted to find the marriage theory of Catholicism
refreshing and elevating. Or when Protestantism, in virtue of its supposed
rational and intellectual origin, gives the law to criticism too
magisterially, criticism may and must remind it that its pretensions, in
this respect, are illusive and do it harm; that the Reformation was a
moral rather than an intellectual event; that Luther's theory of grace no
more exactly reflects the mind of the spirit than Bossuet's philosophy of
history reflects it; and that there is no more antecedent probability of
the Bishop of Durham's stock of ideas being agreeable to perfect reason
than of Pope Pius the Ninth's. But criticism will not on that account
forget the achievements of Protestantism in the practical and moral
sphere; nor that, even in the intellectual sphere, Protestantism, though
in a blind and stumbling manner, carried forward the Renaissance, while
Catholicism threw itself violently across its path.
I lately heard a man of thought and energy contrasting the want of ardor
and movement which he now found amongst young men in England with what he
remembered in his own youth, twenty years ago. "What reformers we were
then!" he exclaimed; "what a zeal we had! how we canvassed every
institution in Church and State, and were prepared to remodel them all on
first principles!" He was inclined to regret, as a spiritual flagging, the
lull that he saw. I am disposed rather to regard it as a pause in which
the turn to a new mode of spiritual progress is being accomplished.
Everything was long seen, by the young and ardent amongst us, in
inseparable connection with politics and practical life. We have pretty
well exhausted the benefits of seeing things in this connection; we have
got all that can be got by so seeing them. Let us try a more disinterested
mode of seeing them; let us betake ourselves more to the serener life of
the mind and spirit. This life, too, may have its excesses and dangers;
but they are not for us at present. Let us think of quietly enlarging our
stock of true and fresh ideas, and not, as soon as we get an idea or half
an idea, be running out with it into the street, and trying to make it
rule there. Our ideas will, in the end, shape the world all the better for
maturing a little. Perhaps in fifty years' time it will in the English
House of Commons be an objection to an institution that it is an anomaly,
and my friend the Member of Parliament will shudder in his grave. But let
us in the meanwhile rather endeavor that in twenty years' time it may, in
English literature, be an objection to a proposition that it is absurd.
That will be a change so vast, that the imagination almost fails to grasp
it. _Ab integro sæculorum nascitur ordo._
If I have insisted so much on the course which criticism must take where
politics and religion are concerned, it is because, where these burning
matters are in question, it is most likely to go astray. In general, its
course is determined for it by the idea which is the law of its being: the
idea of a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is
known and thought in the world, and thus to establish a current of fresh
and true ideas. By the very nature of things, as England is not all the
world, much of the best that is known and thought in the world cannot be
of English growth, must be foreign; by the nature of things, again, it is
just this that we are least likely to know, while English thought is
streaming in upon us from all sides, and takes excellent care that we
shall not be ignorant of its existence; the English critic, therefore,
must dwell much on foreign thought, and with particular heed on any part
of it which, while significant and fruitful in itself, is for any reason
specially likely to escape him. Judging is often spoken of as the critic's
one business, and so in some sense it is; but the judgment which almost
insensibly forms itself in a fair and clear mind, along with fresh
knowledge, is the valuable one; and thus knowledge, and ever fresh
knowledge, must be the critic's great concern for himself; and it is by
communicating fresh knowledge, and letting his own judgment pass along
with it,--but insensibly, and in the second place, not the first, as a
sort of companion and clue, not as an abstract lawgiver,--that he will
generally do most good to his readers.
Sometimes, no doubt, for the sake of establishing an author's place in
literature and his relation to a central standard,--and if this is not
done, how are we to get at our _best in the world_?--criticism may have to
deal with a subject-matter so familiar that fresh knowledge is out of the
question, and then it must be all judgment; an enunciation and detailed
application of principles. Here the great safeguard is never to let one's
self become abstract, always to retain an intimate and lively
consciousness of the truth of what one is saying, and, the moment this
fails us, to be sure that something is wrong. Still, under all
circumstances, this mere judgment and application of principles is, in
itself, not the most satisfactory work to the critic; like mathematics,
it is tautological, and cannot well give us, like fresh learning, the
sense of creative activity. To have this sense is, as I said at the
beginning, the great happiness and the great proof of being alive, and it
is not denied to criticism to have it; but then criticism must be sincere,
simple, flexible, ardent, ever widening its knowledge. Then it may have,
in no contemptible measure, a joyful sense of creative activity; a sense
which a man of insight and conscience will prefer to what he might derive
from a poor, starved, fragmentary, inadequate creation. And at some epochs
no other creation is possible.
Still, in full measure, the sense of creative activity belongs only to
genuine creation; in literature we must never forget that. But what true
man of letters ever can forget it? It is no such common matter for a
gifted nature to come into possession of a current of true and living
ideas, and to produce amidst the inspiration of them, that we are likely
to underrate it. The epochs of Æschylus and Shakespeare make us feel their
preëminence. In an epoch like those is, no doubt, the true life of
literature; there is the promised land, toward which criticism can only
beckon. That promised land it will not be ours to enter, and we shall die
in the wilderness; but to have desired to enter it, to have saluted it
from afar, is already, perhaps, the best distinction among contemporaries;
it will certainly be the best title to esteem with posterity.
SIR MICHAEL FOSTER
THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[2]
The eyes of the young look ever forward; they take little heed of the
short though ever-lengthening fragment of life which lies behind them;
they are wholly bent on that which is to come. The eyes of the aged turn
wistfully again and again to the past; as the old glide down the
inevitable slope, their present becomes a living over again the life which
has gone before, and the future takes on the shape of a brief lengthening
of the past. May I this evening venture to give rein to the impulses of
advancing years? May I, at this last meeting of the association in the
eighteen hundreds, dare to dwell for a while upon the past, and to call to
mind a few of the changes which have taken place in the world since those
autumn days in which men were saying to each other that the last of the
seventeen hundreds was drawing toward its end?
Dover, in the year of our Lord 1799, was in many ways unlike the Dover of
to-day. On moonless nights men groped their way in its narrow streets by
the help of swinging lanterns and smoky torches, for no lamps lit the
ways. By day the light of the sun struggled into the houses through narrow
panes of blurred glass. Though the town then, as now, was one of the chief
portals to and from the countries beyond the seas, the means of travel was
scanty and dear, available for the most part to the rich alone, and for
all beset with discomfort and risk. Slow and uncertain was the carriage
of goods, and the news of the world outside came to the town (though it,
from its position, learned more than most towns) tardily, fitfully, and
often falsely. The people of Dover sat then much in dimness, if not in
darkness, and lived in large measure on themselves. They who study the
phenomena of living beings tell us that light is the great stimulus of
life, and that the fullness of the life of a being or of any of its
members may be measured by the variety, the swiftness, and the certainty
of the means by which it is in touch with its surroundings. Judged from
this standpoint, life at Dover then, as indeed elsewhere, must have fallen
far short of the life of to-day.
The same study of living beings, however, teaches us that while from one
point of view the environment seems to mould the organism, from another
point the organism seems to be master of its environment. Going behind the
change of circumstances, we may raise the question, the old question, Was
life in its essence worth more then than now? Has there been a real
advance?
Let me at once relieve your minds by saying that I propose to leave this
question in the main unanswered. It may be, or it may not be, that man's
grasp of the beautiful and of the good, if not looser, is not firmer than
it was a hundred years ago. It may be, or it may not be, that man is no
nearer to absolute truth, to seeing things as they really are, than he was
then. I will merely ask you to consider with me for a few minutes how far
and in what ways man's laying hold of that aspect of, or part of, truth
which we call natural knowledge, or sometimes science, differed in 1799
from what it is to-day, and whether that change must not be accounted a
real advance, a real improvement in man.
I do not propose to weary you by what in my hands would be the rash effort
of attempting a survey of all the scientific results of the nineteenth
century. It will be enough if for a little while I dwell on some few of
the salient features distinguishing the way in which we nowadays look
upon, and during the coming week shall speak of, the works of nature
around us--though those works themselves, save for the slight shifting
involved in a secular change, remain exactly the same--from the way in
which they were looked upon and might have been spoken of at a gathering
of philosophers at Dover in 1799, and I ask your leave to do so.
In the philosophy of the ancients earth, fire, air, and water were called
"the elements." It was thought, and rightly thought, that a knowledge of
them and of their attributes was a necessary basis of a knowledge of the
ways of nature. Translated into modern language, a knowledge of these
"elements" of old means a knowledge of the composition of the atmosphere,
of water, and of all the other things which we call matter, as well as a
knowledge of the general properties of gases, liquids, and solids, and of
the nature and effects of combustion. Of all these things our knowledge
to-day is large and exact, and, though ever enlarging, in some respects
complete. When did that knowledge begin to become exact?
To-day the children in our schools know that the air which wraps round the
globe is not a single thing, but is made up of two things, oxygen and
nitrogen,[3] mingled together. They know, again, that water is not a
single thing, but the product of two things, oxygen and hydrogen, joined
together. They know that when the air makes the fire burn and gives the
animal life, it is the oxygen in it which does the work. They know that
all round them things are undergoing that union with oxygen which we call
oxidation, and that oxidation is the ordinary source of heat and light.
Let me ask you to picture to yourselves what confusion there would be
to-morrow, not only in the discussions at the sectional meetings of our
association, but in the world at large, if it should happen that in the
coming night some destroying touch should wither up certain tender
structures in all our brains and wipe out from our memories all traces of
the ideas which cluster in our minds around the verbal tokens, oxygen and
oxidation. How could any of us--not the so-called man of science alone,
but even the man of business and the man of pleasure--go about his ways
lacking those ideas? Yet those ideas were, in 1799, lacking to all but a
few.
Although in the third quarter of the seventeenth century the light of
truth about oxidation and combustion had flashed out in the writings of
John Mayow, it came as a flash only, and died away as soon as it had come.
For the rest of that century, and for the greater part of the next,
philosophers stumbled about in darkness, misled for most of the time by
the phantom conception which they called phlogiston. It was not until the
end of the third quarter of the eighteenth century that the new light,
which has burned steadily ever since, lit up the minds of the men of
science. The light came at nearly the same time from England and from
France. Rounding off the sharp corners of controversy, and joining, as we
may fitly do to-day, the two countries as twin bearers of a common crown,
we may say that we owe the truth to Priestley, to Lavoisier, and to
Cavendish. If it was Priestley who was the first to demonstrate the
existence of what we now call oxygen, it is to Lavoisier that we owe the
true conception of the nature of oxidation and the clear exposition of the
full meaning of Priestley's discovery; while the knowledge of the
composition of water, the necessity complement of the knowledge of oxygen,
came to us through Cavendish and, we may perhaps add, through Watt.
The date of Priestley's discovery of oxygen is 1774; Lavoisier's classic
memoir "On the nature of the principle which enters into combination with
metals during calcination" appeared in 1775, and Cavendish's paper on the
composition of water did not see the light until 1784.
During the last quarter of the eighteenth century this new idea of oxygen
and oxidation was struggling into existence. How new was the idea, is
illustrated by the fact that Lavoisier himself at first spoke of that
which he was afterwards, namely, in 1778, led to call oxygen, the name by
which it has since been known, as "the principle which enters into
combination." What difficulties its acceptance met with is illustrated by
the fact that Priestley himself refused to the end of his life to grasp
the true bearings of the discovery which he had made.
In the year 1799 the knowledge of oxygen, of the nature of water and of
air, and indeed the true conception of chemical composition and chemical
change, was hardly more than beginning to be; and the century had to pass
wholly away before the next great chemical idea, which we know by the name
of the atomic theory of John Dalton, was made known. We have only to read
the scientific literature of the time to recognize that a truth which is
now not only woven as a master-thread into all our scientific conceptions,
but even enters largely into the everyday talk and thoughts of educated
people, was, a hundred years ago, struggling into existence among the
philosophers themselves. It was all but absolutely unknown to the large
world outside those select few.
If there be one word of science which is writ large on the life of the
present time, it is the word "electricity." It is, I take it, writ larger
than any other word. The knowledge which it denotes has carried its
practical results far and wide into our daily life, while the theoretical
conceptions which it signifies pierce deep into the nature of things. We
are to-day proud, and justly proud, both of the material triumphs and of
the intellectual gains which it has brought us, and we are full of even
larger hopes of it in the future.
At what time did this bright child of the nineteenth century have its
birth?
He who listened to the small group of philosophers of Dover, who in 1799
might have discoursed of natural knowledge, would perhaps have heard much
of electric machines, of electric sparks, of the electric fluid, and even
of positive and negative electricity; for frictional electricity had long
been known and even carefully studied. Probably one or more of the group,
dwelling on the observations which Galvani, an Italian, had made known
some twenty years before, developed views on the connection of electricity
with the phenomena of living bodies. Possibly one of them was exciting the
rest by telling how he had just heard that a professor at Pavia, one
Volta, had discovered that electricity could be produced, not only by
rubbing together particular bodies, but by the simple contact of two
metals, and had thereby explained Galvani's remarkable results. For,
indeed, as we shall hear from Professor Fleming, it was in that very year,
1799, that electricity as we now know it took its birth. It was then that
Volta brought to light the apparently simple truths out of which so much
has sprung. The world, it is true, had to wait for yet some twenty years
before both the practical and theoretic worth of Volta's discovery became
truly pregnant under the fertilizing influence of another discovery. The
loadstone and its magnetic virtues had, like the electrifying power of
rubbed amber, long been an old story. But, save for the compass, not much
had come from it. And even Volta's discovery might have long remained
relatively barren had it been left to itself. When, however, in 1819,
Oersted made known his remarkable observations on the relations of
electricity to magnetism, he made the contact needed for the flow of a new
current of ideas. And it is perhaps not too much to say that those ideas,
developing during the years of the rest of the century with an
ever-accelerating swiftness, have wholly changed man's material relations
to the circumstances of life, and at the same time carried him far in his
knowledge of the nature of things.
Of all the various branches of science, none perhaps is to-day, none for
these many years past has been, so well known to, even if not understood
by, most people as that of geology. Its practical lessons have brought
wealth to many; its fairy tales have brought delight to more; and round it
hovers the charm of danger, for the conclusions to which it leads touch on
the nature of man's beginning.
In 1799 the science of geology, as we now know it, was struggling into
birth. There had been from of old cosmogonies, theories as to how the
world had taken shape out of primeval chaos. In that fresh spirit which
marked the zealous search after natural knowledge pursued in the middle
and latter part of the seventeenth century, the brilliant Stenson, in
Italy, and Hooke, in England, had laid hold of some of the problems
presented by fossil remains, and Woodward, with others, had labored in the
same field. In the eighteenth century, especially in its latter half,
men's minds were busy about the physical agencies determining or modifying
the features of the earth's crust; water and fire, subsidence from a
primeval ocean and transformation by outbursts of the central heat,
Neptune and Pluto were being appealed to, by Werner on the one hand and by
Demarest on the other, in explanation of the earth's phenomena. The way
was being prepared, theories and views were abundant, and many sound
observations had been made; and yet the science of geology, properly so
called, the exact and proved knowledge of the successive phases of the
world's life, may be said to date from the closing years of the eighteenth
century.
In 1783 James Hutton put forward in a brief memoir his Theory of the
Earth, which, in 1795, two years before his death, he expanded into a
book; but his ideas failed to lay hold of men's minds until the century
had passed away, when, in 1802, they found an able expositor in John
Playfair. The very same year that Hutton published his book, Cuvier came
to Paris and almost forthwith began, with Brongniart, his immortal
researches into the fossils of Paris and its neighborhood. And four years
later, in the year 1799 itself, William Smith's tabular list of strata and
fossils saw the light. It is, I believe, not too much to say that out of
these, geology, as we now know it, sprang.
It was thus in the closing years of the eighteenth century that was begun
the work which the nineteenth century has carried forward to such great
results; but at this time only the select few had grasped the truth, and
even they only the beginning of it. Outside a narrow circle the thoughts
even of the educated about the history of the globe were bounded by the
story of the Deluge,--though the story was often told in a strange
fashion,--or were guided by fantastic views of the plastic forces of a
sportive nature.
In another branch of science, in that which deals with the problems
presented by living beings, the thoughts of men in 1799 were also very
different from the thoughts of men to-day. It is a very old quest, the
quest after the knowledge of the nature of living beings, one of the
earliest on which man set out; for it promised to lead him to a knowledge
of himself--a promise which perhaps is still before us, but the
fulfillment of which is yet far off. As time has gone on, the pursuit of
natural knowledge has seemed to lead man away from himself into the
furthermost parts of the universe, and into secret workings of Nature in
which he appears to be of little or no account; and his knowledge of the
nature of living things, and so of his own nature, has advanced slowly,
waiting till the progress of other branches of natural knowledge can bring
it aid. Yet in the past hundred years the biologic sciences, as we now
call them, have marched rapidly onward.
We may look upon a living body as a machine doing work in accordance with
certain laws, and may seek to trace out the working of the inner wheels:
how these raise up the lifeless dust into living matter, and let the
living matter fall away again into dust, giving out movement and heat. Or
we may look upon the individual life as a link in a long chain, joining
something which went before to something about to come, a chain whose
beginning lies hid in the farthest past, and may seek to know the ties
which bind one life to another. As we call up to view the long series of
living forms, living now or flitting like shadows on the screen of the
past, we may strive to lay hold of the influences which fashion the
garment of life. Whether the problems of life are looked upon from the one
point of view or the other, we to-day, not biologists only, but all of us,
have gained a knowledge hidden even from the philosophers a hundred years
ago.
Of the problems presented by the living body viewed as a machine, some may
be spoken of as mechanical, others as physical, and yet others as
chemical, while some are, apparently at least, none of these. In the
seventeenth century William Harvey, laying hold of the central mechanism
of the blood stream, opened up a path of inquiry which his own age and the
century which followed trod with marked success. The knowledge of the
mechanism of the animal and of the plant advanced apace, but the physical
and chemical problems had yet to wait. The eighteenth century, it is true,
had its physics and its chemistry; but, in relation at least to the
problems of the living being, a chemistry which knew not oxygen and a
physics which knew not the electricity of chemical action were of little
avail. The philosopher of 1799, when he discussed the functions of the
animal or of the plant involving chemical changes, was fain, for the most
part, as were his predecessors in the century before, to have recourse to
such vague terms as "fermentation" and the like; to-day our treatises on
physiology are largely made up of precise and exact expositions of the
play of physical agencies and chemical bodies in the living organisms. He
made use of the words "vital force" or "vital principle," not as an
occasional, but as a common, explanation of the phenomena of the living
body. During the present century, especially during its latter half, the
idea embodied in those words has been driven away from one seat after
another; if we use it now when we are dealing with the chemical and
physical events of life, we use it with reluctance, as a _deus ex machina_
to be appealed to only when everything else has failed.
Some of the problems--and those, perhaps, the chief problems--of the
living body have to be solved, neither by physical nor by chemical
methods, but by methods of their own. Such are the problems of the nervous
system. In respect to these the men of 1799 were on the threshold of a
pregnant discovery. During the latter part of this nineteenth century,
especially during its last quarter, the analysis of the mysterious
processes in the nervous system, and especially in the brain, which issue
as feeling, thought, and the power to move, has been pushed forward with a
success conspicuous in its practical, and full of promise in its
theoretical, gains. That analysis may be briefly described as a following
up of threads. We now know that what takes place along a tiny thread which
we call a nerve fibre differs from that which takes place along its fellow
threads, that differing nervous impulses travel along different nervous
fibres, and that nervous and physical events are the outcome of the
clashing of nervous impulses as they sweep along the closely woven web of
living threads of which the brain is made. We have learned by experiment
and by observation that the pattern of the web determines the play of the
impulses, and we can already explain many of the obscure problems, not
only of nervous disease, but of nervous life, by an analysis which is a
tracking out of the devious and linked path of nervous threads. The very
beginning of this analysis was unknown in 1799. Men knew that nerves were
the agents of feeling and of the movements of muscles; they had learned
much about what this part or that part of the brain could do; but they did
not know that one nerve fibre differed from another in the very essence of
its work. It was just about the end of the eighteenth century, or the
beginning of the nineteenth, that an English surgeon began to ponder over
a conception which, however, he did not make known until some years later,
and which did not gain complete demonstration and full acceptance until
still more years had passed away. It was in 1811, in a tiny pamphlet
published privately, that Charles Bell put forth his New Idea, that the
nervous system is constructed on the principle that "the nerves are not
single nerves possessing various powers, but bundles of different nerves,
whose filaments are united for the convenience of distribution, but which
are distinct in office, as they are in origin, from the brain."
Our present knowledge of the nervous system is to a large extent only an
exemplification and expansion of Charles Bell's New Idea, and has its
origin in that.
If we pass from the problems of the living organism viewed as a machine to
those presented by the varied features of the different creatures who have
lived or who still live on the earth, we at once call to mind that the
middle years of the nineteenth century mark an epoch in biologic thought
such as never came before; for it was then that Charles Darwin gave to the
world the "Origin of Species."
That work, however, with all the far-reaching effects which it has had,
could have had little or no effect, or, rather, could not have come into
existence, had not the earlier half of the century been in travail
preparing for its coming. For the germinal idea of Darwin appeals, as to
witnesses, to the results of two lines of biologic investigation which
were almost unknown to the men of the eighteenth century.
To one of these lines I have already referred. Darwin, as we know,
appealed to the geological record; and we also know how that record,
imperfect as it was then, and imperfect as it must always remain, has
since his time yielded the most striking proofs of at least one part of
his general conception. In 1799 there was, as we have seen, no geological
record at all.
Of the other line I must say a few words.
To-day the merest beginner in biologic study, or even that exemplar of
acquaintance without knowledge, the general reader, is aware that every
living being, even man himself, begins its independent existence as a tiny
ball, of which we can, even acknowledging to the full the limits of the
optical analysis at our command, assert with confidence that in structure,
using that word in its ordinary sense, it is in all cases absolutely
simple. It is equally well known that the features of form which supply
the characters of a grown-up living being, all the many and varied
features of even the most complex organism, are reached as the goal of a
road, at times a long road, of successive changes; that the life of every
being, from the ovum to its full estate, is a series of shifting scenes,
which come and go, sometimes changing abruptly, sometimes melting the one
into the other, like dissolving views--all so ordained that often the
final shape with which the creature seems to begin, or is said to begin,
its life in the world is the outcome of many shapes, clothed with which it
in turn has lived many lives before its seeming birth.
All, or nearly all, the exact knowledge of the labored way in which each
living creature puts on its proper shape and structure is the heritage of
the present century. Although the way in which the chick is moulded in the
egg was not wholly unknown even to the ancients, and in later years had
been told, first in the sixteenth century by Fabricius, then in the
seventeenth century, in a more clear and striking manner, by the great
Italian naturalist, Malpighi, the teaching thus offered had been neglected
or misinterpreted. At the close of the eighteenth century the dominant
view was that in the making of a creature out of the egg there was no
putting on of wholly new parts, no epigenesis. It was taught that the
entire creature lay hidden in the egg, hidden by reason of the very
transparency of its substance; lay ready-made, but folded up, as it were;
and that the process of development within the egg or within the womb was
a mere unfolding, a simple evolution. Nor did men shrink from accepting
the logical outcome of such a view--namely, that within the unborn
creature itself lay in like manner, hidden and folded up, its offspring
also, and within that, again, its offspring in turn, after the fashion of
a cluster of ivory balls carved by Chinese hands, one within the other.
This was no fantastic view, put forward by an imaginative dreamer; it was
seriously held by sober men, even by men like the illustrious Haller, in
spite of their recognizing that, as the chick grew in the egg, some
changes of form took place. Though so early as the middle of the
eighteenth century Friedrich Casper Wolff, and, later on, others, had
strenuously opposed such a view, it held its own, not only to the close of
the century, but far on into the next. It was not until a quarter of the
nineteenth century had been added to the past that Von Baer made known the
results of researches which once and for all swept away the old view. He
and others working after him made it clear that each individual puts on
its final form and structure, not by an unfolding of preëxisting hidden
features, but by the formation of new parts through the continued
differentiation of a primitively simple material. It was also made clear
that the successive changes which the embryo undergoes in its progress
from the ovum to maturity are the expression of morphologic laws; that the
progress is one from the general to the special; and that the shifting
scenes of embryonic life are hints and tokens of lives lived by ancestors
in times long past.
If we wish to measure how far off in biologic thought the end of the
eighteenth century stands, not only from the end, but even from the middle
of the nineteenth, we may imagine Darwin striving to write the "Origin of
Species" in 1799. We may fancy his being told by philosophers how one
group of living beings differed from another group because all its members
and all their ancestors came into existence at one stroke, when the
first-born progenitor of the race, within which all the rest were folded
up, stood forth as the result of a creative act. We may fancy him
listening to a debate between the philosopher who maintained that all the
fossils strewn in the earth were the remains of animals or plants churned
up in the turmoil of a violent universal flood, and dropped in their
places as the waters went away, and him who argued that such were not
really the "spoils of living creatures," but the products of some playful
plastic power which, out of the superabundance of its energy, fashioned
here and there the lifeless earth into forms which imitated, but only
imitated, those of living things. Could he amid such surroundings, by any
flight of genius, have beaten his way to the conception for which his name
will ever be known?
* * * * *
Here I may well turn away from the past. It is not my purpose, nor, as I
have said, am I fitted, nor is this perhaps the place, to tell even in
outline the tale of the work of science in the nineteenth century. I am
content to have pointed out that the two great sciences of chemistry and
geology took their birth, or at least began to stand alone, at the close
of the last century, and have grown to be what we know them now within
about a hundred years, and that the study of living beings has within the
same time been so transformed as to be to-day something wholly different
from what it was in 1799. And, indeed, to say more would be to repeat
almost the same story about other things. If our present knowledge of
electricity is essentially the child of the nineteenth century, so also is
our present knowledge of many other branches of physics. And those most
ancient forms of exact knowledge, the knowledge of numbers and of the
heavens, whose beginning is lost in the remote past, have, with all other
kinds of natural knowledge, moved onward during the whole of the hundred
years with a speed which is ever increasing. I have said, I trust, enough
to justify the statement that in respect to natural knowledge a great gulf
lies between 1799 and 1899. That gulf, moreover, is a twofold one: not
only has natural knowledge been increased, but men have run to and fro,
spreading it as they go. Not only have the few driven far back round the
full circle of natural knowledge the dark clouds of the unknown, which
wrap us all about, but also the many walk in the zone of light thus
increasingly gained. If it be true that the few to-day are, in respect to
natural knowledge, far removed from the few of those days, it is also true
that nearly all which the few alone knew then, and much which they did not
know, has now become the common knowledge of the many.
What, however, I may venture to insist upon here is that the difference in
respect to natural knowledge, whatever be the case with other differences
between then and now, is undoubtedly a difference which means progress.
The span between the science of that time and the science of to-day is
beyond all question a great stride onward.
We may say this, but we must say it without boasting. For the very story
of the past, which tells of the triumphs of science, bids the man of
science put away from him all thoughts of vainglory, and that by many
tokens.
Whoever, working at any scientific problem, has occasion to study the
inquiries into the same problem by some fellow worker in the years long
gone by, comes away from that study humbled by one or other of two
different thoughts. On the one hand, he may find, when he has translated
the language of the past into the phraseology of to-day, how near was his
forerunner of old to the conception which he thought, with pride, was all
his own, not only so true but so new. On the other hand, if the ideas of
the investigator of old, viewed in the light of modern knowledge, are
found to be so wide of the mark as to seem absurd, the smile which begins
to play upon the lips of the modern is checked by the thought, Will the
ideas which I am now putting forth, and which I think explain so clearly,
so fully, the problem in hand, seem to some worker in the far future as
wrong and as fantastic as do these of my forerunner to me? In either case
his personal pride is checked.
Further, there is written clearly on each page of the history of science,
in characters which cannot be overlooked, the lesson that no scientific
truth is born anew, coming by itself and of itself. Each new truth is
always the offspring of something which has gone before, becoming in turn
the parent of something coming after. In this aspect the man of science is
unlike, or seems to be unlike, the poet and the artist. The poet is born,
not made; he rises up, no man knowing his beginnings; when he goes away,
though men after him may sing his songs for centuries, he himself goes
away wholly, having taken with him his mantle, for this he can give to
none other. The man of science is not thus creative: he is created. His
work, however great it be, is not wholly his own: it is in part the
outcome of the work of men who have gone before. Again and again a
conception which has made a name great has come not so much by the man's
own effort as out of the fullness of time. Again and again we may read in
the words of some man of old the outlines of an idea which, in later days,
has shone forth as a great acknowledged truth. From the mouth of the man
of old the idea dropped barren, fruitless; the world was not ready for it,
and heeded it not; the concomitant and abutting truths which could give it
power to work were wanting. Coming back again in later days, the same idea
found the world awaiting it; things were in travail preparing for it, and
someone, seizing the right moment to put it forth again, leaped into fame.
It is not so much the men of science who make science, as some spirit,
which, born of the truths already won, drives the man of science onward
and uses him to win new truths in turn.
It is because each man of science is not his own master, but one of many
obedient servants of an impulse which was at work long before him, and
will work long after him, that in science there is no falling back. In
respect to other things there may be times of darkness and times of light;
there may be risings, decadences, and revivals. In science there is only
progress. The path may not be always a straight line; there may be
swerving to this side and to that; ideas may seem to return again and
again to the same point of the intellectual compass; but it will always be
found that they have reached a higher level--they have moved, not in a
circle, but in a spiral. Moreover, science is not fashioned as is a house,
by putting brick to brick, that which is once put remaining as it was put,
to the end. The growth of science is that of a living being. As in the
embryo, phase follows phase, and each member or body puts on in succession
different appearances, though all the while the same member, so a
scientific conception of one age seems to differ from that of a following
age, though it is the same one in the process of being made; and as the
dim outlines of the early embryo become, as the being grows more distinct
and sharp, like a picture on a screen brought more and more into focus, so
the dim gropings and searchings of the men of science of old are by
repeated approximations wrought into the clear and exact conclusions of
later times.
The story of natural knowledge, of science, in the nineteenth century, as,
indeed, in preceding centuries, is, I repeat, a story of continued
progress. There is in it not so much as a hint of falling back, not even
of standing still. What is gained by scientific inquiry is gained forever;
it may be added to, it may seem to be covered up, but it can never be
taken away. Confident that the progress will go on, we cannot help peering
into the years to come, and straining our eyes to foresee what science
will become and what it will do as they roll on. While we do so, the
thought must come to us: Will all the increasing knowledge of nature
avail only to change the ways of man; will it have no effect on man
himself?
The material good which mankind has gained and is gaining through the
advance of science is so imposing as to be obvious to everyone, and the
praises of this aspect of science are to be found in the mouths of all.
Beyond all doubt, science has greatly lessened and has markedly narrowed
hardship and suffering; beyond all doubt, science has largely increased
and has widely diffused ease and comfort. The appliances of science have,
as it were, covered with a soft cushion the rough places of life, and that
not for the rich only, but also for the poor. So abundant and so prominent
are the material benefits of science, that in the eyes of many these seem
to be the only benefits which she brings. She is often spoken of as if she
were useful and nothing more; as if her work were only to administer to
the material wants of man.
Is this so? We may begin to doubt it when we reflect that the triumphs of
science which bring these material advantages are in their very nature
intellectual triumphs. The increasing benefits brought by science are the
results of man's increasing mastery over nature, and that mastery is
increasingly a mastery of mind; it is an increasing power to use the
forces of what we call inanimate nature in place of the force of his own
or other creatures' bodies; it is an increasing use of mind in place of
muscle.
Is it to be thought that that which has brought the mind so greatly into
play has had no effect on the mind itself? Is that part of the mind which
works out scientific truths a mere slavish machine, producing results it
knows not how, having no part in the good which in its workings it brings
forth?
What are the qualities, the features, of that scientific mind which has
wrought, and is working, such great changes in man's relation to nature?
In seeking an answer to this question we have not to inquire into the
attributes of genius. Though much of the progress of science seems to take
on the form of a series of great steps, each made by some great man, the
distinction in science between the great discoverer and the humble worker
is one of degree only, not of kind. As I was urging just now, the
greatness of many great names in science is often, in large part, the
greatness of occasion, not of absolute power. The qualities which guide
one man to a small truth silently taking its place among its fellows, as
these go to make up progress, are at bottom the same as those by which
another man is led to something of which the whole world rings.
The features of the fruitful scientific mind are, in the main, three.
In the first place, above all other things, his nature must be one which
vibrates in unison with that of which he is in search; the seeker after
truth must himself be truthful, truthful with the truthfulness of nature.
For the truthfulness of nature is not wholly the same as that which man
sometimes calls truthfulness. It is far more imperious, far more exacting.
Man, unscientific man, is often content with the "nearly" and the
"almost." Nature never is. It is not her way to call the same two things
which differ, though the difference may be measured by less than a
thousandth of a milligramme or of a millimetre, or by any other like
standard of minuteness. And the man who, carrying the ways of the world
into the domain of science, thinks that he may treat nature's differences
in any other way than she treats them herself, will find that she resents
his conduct; if he, in carelessness or in disdain, overlooks the minute
difference which she holds out to him as a signet to guide him in his
search, the projecting tip, as it were, of some buried treasure, he is
bound to go astray, and the more strenuously he struggles on, the further
he will find himself from his true goal.
In the second place, he must be alert of mind. Nature is ever making signs
to us; she is ever whispering to us the beginnings of her secrets; the
scientific man must be ever on the watch, ready at once to lay hold of
nature's hint, however small; to listen to her whisper, however low.
In the third place, scientific inquiry, though it be preeminently an
intellectual effort, has need of the moral quality of courage--not so much
the courage which helps a man to face a sudden difficulty as the courage
of steadfast endurance. Almost every inquiry, certainly every prolonged
inquiry, sooner or later goes wrong. The path, at first so straight and
clear, grows crooked and gets blocked; the hope and enthusiasm, or even
the jaunty ease, with which the inquirer set out, leave him, and he falls
into a slough of despond. That is the critical moment calling for courage.
Struggling through the slough, he will find on the other side the wicket
gate opening up the real path; losing heart, he will turn back and add one
more stone to the great cairn of the unaccomplished.
But, I hear someone say, these qualities are not the peculiar attributes
of the man of science: they may be recognized as belonging to almost
everyone who has commanded or deserved success, whatever may have been his
walk of life. That is so. That is exactly what I desire to insist, that
the men of science have no peculiar virtues, no special powers. They are
ordinary men, their characters are common, even commonplace. Science, as
Huxley said, is organized common sense, and men of science are common men
drilled in the ways of common sense. For their life has this feature.
Though in themselves they are no stronger, no better than other men, they
possess a strength which, as I just now urged, is not their own, but is
that of the science whose servants they are. Even in his apprenticeship,
the scientific inquirer, while learning what has been done before his
time, if he learns it aright, so learns it that what is known may serve
him, not only as a vantage-ground whence to push off into the unknown, but
also as a compass to guide him in his course. And when, fitted for his
work, he enters on inquiry itself, what a zealous, anxious guide, what a
strict and, because strict, helpful, schoolmistress does Nature make
herself to him! Under her care every inquiry, whether it bring the
inquirer to a happy issue or seem to end in nought, trains him for the
next effort. She so orders her ways that each act of obedience to her
makes the next act easier for him; and step by step she leads him on
toward that perfect obedience which is complete mastery.
Indeed, when we reflect on the potency of the discipline of scientific
inquiry, we cease to wonder at the progress of scientific knowledge. The
results actually gained seem to fall so far short of what under such
guidance might have been expected to have been gathered in, that we are
fain to conclude that science has called to follow her, for the most part,
the poor in intellect and the wayward in spirit. Had she called to her
service the many acute minds who have wasted their strength struggling in
vain to solve hopeless problems, or who have turned their energies to
things other than the increase of knowledge; had she called to her service
the many just men who have walked straight without the need of a rod to
guide them, how much greater than it has been would have been the progress
of science, and how many false teachings would the world have been spared!
To men of science themselves, when they consider their favored lot, the
achievements of the past should serve, not as a boast, but as a reproach.
If there be any truth in what I have been urging, that the pursuit of
scientific inquiry is itself a training of special potency, giving
strength to the feeble and keeping in the path those who are inclined to
stray, it is obvious that the material gains of science, great as they may
be, do not make up all the good which science brings, or may bring, to
man. We especially, perhaps, in these later days, through the rapid
development of the physical sciences, are too apt to dwell on the material
gains alone. As a child in its infancy looks upon its mother only as a
giver of good things, and does not learn till after days how she was also
showing her love by carefully training it in the way it should go, so we,
too, have thought too much of the gifts of science, overlooking her power
to guide.
Man does not live by bread alone, and science brings him more than bread.
It is a great thing to make two blades of grass grow where before one
alone grew; but it is no less great a thing to help a man to come to a
just conclusion on the questions with which he has to deal. We may claim
for science that, while she is doing the one, she may be so used as to do
the other also. The dictum just quoted, that science is organized common
sense, may be read as meaning that the common problems of life, which
common people have to solve, are to be solved by the same methods by which
the man of science solves his special problems. It follows that the
training which does so much for him may be looked to as promising to do
much for them.
Such aid can come from science on two conditions only. In the first place,
this her influence must be acknowledged; she must be duly recognized as a
teacher no less than as a hewer of wood and a drawer of water. And the
pursuit of science must be followed, not by the professional few only, but
at least in such measure as will ensure the influence of example by the
many. But this latter point I need not urge before this great
association, whose chief object during more than half a century has been
to bring within the fold of science all who would answer to the call. In
the second place, it must be understood that the training to be looked for
from science is the outcome, not of the accumulation of scientific
knowledge, but of the practice of scientific inquiry. Man may have at his
fingers' ends all the accomplished results and all the current opinions of
any one or of all the branches of science, and yet remain wholly
unscientific in mind; but no one can have carried out even the humblest
research without the spirit of science in some measure resting upon him.
And that spirit may in part be caught even without entering upon an actual
investigation in search of a new truth. The learner may be led to old
truths, even the oldest, in more ways than one. He may be brought abruptly
to a truth in its finished form, coming straight to it like a thief
climbing over the wall; and the hurry and press of modern life tempt many
to adopt this quicker way. Or he may be more slowly guided along the path
by which the truth was reached by him who first laid hold of it. It is by
this latter way of learning the truth, and by this alone, that the learner
may hope to catch something at least of the spirit of the scientific
inquirer.
This is not the place, nor have I the wish, to plunge into the turmoil of
controversy; but if there be any truth in what I have been urging, then
they are wrong who think that in the schooling of the young science can be
used with profit only to train those for whom science will be the means of
earning their bread. It may be that, from the point of view of pedagogic
art, the experience of generations has fashioned out of the older studies
of literature an instrument of discipline of unusual power, and that the
teaching of science is as yet but a rough tool in unpractised hands. That,
however, is not an adequate reason why scope should not be given for
science to show the value which we claim for it as an intellectual
training fitted for all sorts and conditions of men. Nor need the studies
of humanity and literature fear her presence in the schools; for if her
friends maintain that the teaching is one-sided, and therefore misleading,
which deals with the doings of man only, and is silent about the works of
nature, in the sight of which he and his doings shrink almost to nothing,
she herself would be the first to admit that that teaching is equally
wrong which deals only with the works of nature and says nothing about the
doings of man, who is, to us at least, nature's centre.
There is yet another general aspect of science on which I would crave
leave to say a word. In that broad field of human life which we call
politics, in the struggle, not of man with man, but of race with race,
science works for good. If we look only on the surface, it may at first
sight seem otherwise. In no branch of science has there during these later
years been greater activity and more rapid progress than in that which
furnishes the means by which man brings death, suffering, and disaster on
his fellow men. If the healer can look with pride on the increased power
which science has given him to alleviate human suffering and ward off the
miseries of disease, the destroyer can look with still greater pride on
the power which science has given him to sweep away lives and to work
desolation and ruin; while the one has slowly been learning to save units,
the other has quickly learned to slay thousands. But, happily, the very
greatness of the modern power of destruction is already becoming a bar to
its use, and bids fair--may we hope before long--wholly to put an end to
it; in the words of Tacitus, though in another sense, the very
preparations for war, through the character which science gives them, make
for peace.
Moreover, not in one branch of science only, but in all, there is a deep
undercurrent of influence sapping the very foundations of all war. As I
have already urged, no feature of scientific inquiry is more marked than
the dependence of each step forward on other steps which have been made
before. The man of science cannot sit by himself in his own cave, weaving
out results by his own efforts, unaided by others, heedless of what others
have done and are doing. He is but a bit of a great system, a joint in a
great machine, and he can only work aright when he is in due touch with
his fellow workers. If his labor is to be what it ought to be, and is to
have the weight which it ought to have, he must know what is being done,
not by himself, but by others, and by others not of his own land and
speaking his tongue only, but also of other lands and of other speech.
Hence it comes about that to the man of science the barriers of manners
and of speech which pen men into nations become more and more unreal and
indistinct. He recognizes his fellow worker, wherever he may live, and
whatever tongue he may speak, as one who is pushing forward shoulder to
shoulder with him toward a common goal, as one whom he is helping and who
is helping him. The touch of science makes the whole world kin.
The history of the past gives us many examples of this brotherhood of
science. In the revival of learning throughout the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and some way on into the eighteenth century, the
common use of the Latin tongue made intercourse easy. In some respects, in
those earlier days science was more cosmopolitan than it afterwards
became. In spite of the difficulties and hardships of travel, the men of
science of different lands again and again met each other face to face,
heard with their ears, and saw with their eyes, what their brethren had to
say or show. The Englishman took the long journey to Italy to study
there; the Italian, the Frenchman, and the German wandered from one seat
of learning to another; and many a man held a chair in a country not his
own. There was help, too, as well as intercourse. The Royal Society of
London took upon itself the task of publishing nearly all the works of the
great Italian, Malpighi; and the brilliant Lavoisier, two years before his
own countrymen in their blind fury slew him, received from the same body
the highest token which it could give of its esteem.
In these closing years of the nineteenth century this great need of mutual
knowledge and of common action felt by men of science of different lands
is being manifested in a special way. Though nowadays what is done
anywhere is soon known everywhere, the news of a discovery being often
flashed over the globe by telegraph, there is an increasing activity in
the direction of organization to promote international meetings and
international coöperation. In almost every science, inquirers from many
lands now gather together at stated intervals, in international
congresses, to discuss matters which they have in common at heart, and go
away, each one feeling strengthened by having met his brother. The desire
that, in the struggle to lay bare the secrets of nature, the least waste
of human energy should be incurred, is leading more and more to the
concerted action of nations combining to attack problems the solution of
which is difficult and costly. The determination of standards of
measurement, magnetic surveys, the solution of great geodetic problems,
the mapping of the heavens and of the earth--all these are being carried
on by international organizations.
* * * * *
One international scientific effort demands a word of notice. The need
which every inquirer in science feels to know, and to know quickly, what
his fellow worker, wherever on the globe he may be carrying on his work or
making known his results, has done or is doing, led some four years back
to a proposal for carrying out by international coöperation a complete
current index, issued promptly, of the scientific literature of the world.
Though much labor in many lands has been spent upon the undertaking, the
project is not yet an accomplished fact. Nor can this, perhaps, be
wondered at, when the difficulties of the task are weighed. Difficulties
of language, difficulties of driving in one team all the several sciences
which, like young horses, wish each to have its head free with leave to go
its own way, difficulties mechanical and financial, of press and post,
difficulties raised by existing interests--these and yet other
difficulties are obstacles not easy to be overcome. The most striking and
the most encouraging features of the deliberations which have now been
going on for three years have been the repeated expressions, coming not
from this or that quarter only, but from almost all quarters, of an
earnest desire that the effort should succeed, of a sincere belief in the
good of international coöperation, and of a willingness to sink as far as
possible individual interests for the sake of the common cause. In the
face of such a spirit we may surely hope that the many difficulties will
ultimately pass out of sight.
* * * * *
I make no apology for having thus touched on international coöperation. I
should have been wanting had I not done so on the memorable occasion of
this meeting. A hundred years ago two great nations were grappling with
each other in a fierce struggle, which had lasted, with pauses, for many
years, and which was to last for many years to come; war was on every lip
and in almost every heart. To-day this meeting has, by a common wish,
been so arranged that those two nations should, in the persons of their
men of science, draw as near together as they can, with nothing but the
narrow streak of the Channel between them, in order that they may take
counsel together on matters in which they have one interest and a common
hope. May we not look upon this brotherly meeting as one of many signs
that science, though she works in a silent manner and in ways unseen by
many, is steadily making for peace?
Looking back, then, in this last year of the eighteen hundreds, on the
century which is drawing to a close, while we may see in the history of
scientific inquiry much which, telling the man of science of his
shortcomings and his weakness, bids him be humble, we also see much,
perhaps more, which gives him hope. Hope is, indeed, one of the watchwords
of science. In the latter-day writings of some who know not science much
may be read which shows that the writer is losing, or has lost, hope in
the future of mankind. There are not a few of these; their repeated
utterances make a sign of the times. Seeing in matters lying outside
science few marks of progress and many tokens of decline or decay,
recognizing in science its material benefits only, such men have thoughts
of despair when they look forward to the times to come. But if there be
any truth in what I have attempted to urge to-night, if the intellectual,
if the moral influences of science are no less marked than her material
benefits, if, moreover, that which she has done is but the earnest of that
which she shall do, such men may pluck up courage and gather strength by
laying hold of her garment.
We men of science at least need not share their views or their fears. Our
feet are set, not on the shifting sands of the opinions and the fancies of
the day, but on a solid foundation of verified truth, which by the labors
of each succeeding age is made broader and more firm. To us the past is a
thing to look back upon, not with regret, not as something which has been
lost never to be regained, but with content, as something whose influence
is with us still, helping us on our further way. With us, indeed, the past
points not to itself, but to the future; the golden age is in front of us,
not behind us; that which we do know is a lamp whose brightest beams are
shed into the unknown before us, showing us how much there is in front,
and lighting up the way to reach it. We are confident in the advance
because, as each one of us feels that any step forward which he may make
is not ordered by himself and is not the result of his own sole efforts in
the present, but is, and that in large measure, the outcome of the labors
of others in the past, so each one of us has the sure and certain hope
that, as the past has helped him, so his efforts, be they great or be they
small, will be a help to those to come.
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE
So far as I know, there are only three hypotheses which ever have been
entertained, or which well can be entertained, respecting the past history
of nature. I will, in the first place, state the hypotheses, and then I
will consider what evidence bearing upon them is in our possession, and by
what light of criticism that evidence is to be interpreted.
Upon the first hypothesis, the assumption is, that phenomena of nature
similar to those exhibited by the present world have always existed; in
other words, that the universe has existed from all eternity in what may
be broadly termed its present condition.
The second hypothesis is, that the present state of things has had only a
limited duration, and that, at some period in the past, a condition of the
world, essentially similar to that which we now know, came into existence,
without any precedent condition from which it could have naturally
proceeded. The assumption that successive states of nature have arisen,
each without any relation of natural causation to an antecedent state, is
a mere modification of this second hypothesis.
The third hypothesis also assumes that the present state of things has had
but a limited duration; but it supposes that this state has been evolved
by a natural process from an antecedent state, and that from another, and
so on; and, on this hypothesis, the attempt to assign any limit to the
series of past changes is, usually, given up.
It is so needful to form clear and distinct notions of what is really
meant by each of these hypotheses, that I will ask you to imagine what,
according to each, would have been visible to a spectator of the events
which constitute the history of the earth. On the first hypothesis,
however far back in time that spectator might be placed, he would see a
world essentially, though perhaps not in all its details, similar to that
which now exists. The animals which existed would be the ancestors of
those which now live, and similar to them; the plants, in like manner,
would be such as we know; and the mountains, plains, and waters would
foreshadow the salient features of our present land and water. This view
was held more or less distinctly, sometimes combined with the notion of
recurrent cycles of change, in ancient times; and its influence has been
felt down to the present day.
It is worthy of remark that it is a hypothesis which is not inconsistent
with the doctrine of Uniformitarianism, with which geologists are
familiar. That doctrine was held by Hutton, and in his earlier days by
Lyell. Hutton was struck by the demonstration of astronomers that the
perturbations of the planetary bodies, however great they may be, yet
sooner or later right themselves; and that the solar system possesses a
self-adjusting power by which these aberrations are all brought back to a
mean condition. Hutton imagined that the like might be true of terrestrial
changes; although no one recognized more clearly than he the fact that the
dry land is being constantly washed down by rain and rivers, and deposited
in the sea; and that thus, in a longer or shorter time, the inequalities
of the earth's surface must be leveled, and its high lands brought down to
the ocean. But, taking into account the internal forces of the earth,
which, upheaving the sea-bottom, give rise to new land, he thought that
these operations of degradation and elevation might compensate each other;
and that thus, for any assignable time, the general features of our
planet might remain what they are. And inasmuch as, under these
circumstances, there need be no limit to the propagation of animals and
plants, it is clear that the consistent working-out of the uniformitarian
idea might lead to the conception of the eternity of the world. Not that I
mean to say that either Hutton or Lyell held this conception--assuredly
not; they would have been the first to repudiate it. Nevertheless, the
logical development of their arguments tends directly toward this
hypothesis.
The second hypothesis supposes that the present order of things, at some
no very remote time, had a sudden origin, and that the world, such as it
now is, had chaos for its phenomenal antecedent. That is the doctrine
which you will find stated most fully and clearly in the immortal poem of
John Milton,--the English "Divina Commoedia,"--"Paradise Lost." I
believe it is largely to the influence of that remarkable work, combined
with the daily teachings to which we have all listened in our childhood,
that this hypothesis owes its general wide diffusion as one of the current
beliefs of English-speaking people. If you turn to the seventh book of
"Paradise Lost," you will find there stated the hypothesis to which I
refer, which is briefly this: that this visible universe of ours came into
existence at no great distance of time from the present; and that the
parts of which it is composed made their appearance, in a certain definite
order, in the space of six natural days, in such a manner that, on the
first of these days, light appeared; that, on the second, the firmament,
or sky, separated the waters above from the waters beneath the firmament;
that, on the third day, the waters drew away from the dry land, and upon
it a varied vegetable life, similar to that which now exists, made its
appearance; that the fourth day was signalized by the apparition of the
sun, the stars, the moon, and the planets; that, on the fifth day, aquatic
animals originated within the waters; that, on the sixth day, the earth
gave rise to our four-footed terrestrial creatures, and to all varieties
of terrestrial animals except birds, which had appeared on the preceding
day; and, finally, that man appeared upon the earth, and the emergence of
the universe from chaos was finished. Milton tells us, without the least
ambiguity, what a spectator of these marvelous occurrences would have
witnessed. I doubt not that his poem is familiar to all of you, but I
should like to recall one passage to your minds, in order that I may be
justified in what I have said regarding the perfectly concrete, definite
picture of the origin of the animal world which Milton draws. He says:--
The sixth, and of creation last, arose
With evening harps and matin, when God said,
"Let the earth bring forth soul living in her kind,
Cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth,
Each in their kind!" The earth obeyed, and, straight
Opening her fertile womb, teemed at a birth
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full-grown. Out of the ground uprose,
As from his lair, the wild beast, where he wons
In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den;
Among the trees in pairs they rose, they walked;
The cattle in the fields and meadows green;
Those rare and solitary; these in flocks
Pasturing at once, and in broad herds upsprung.
The grassy clods now calved; now half appears
The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts--then springs, as broke from bonds,
And rampant shakes his brinded mane; the ounce,
The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole
Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw
In hillocks; the swift stag from underground
Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould
Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved
His vastness; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose
As plants; ambiguous between sea and land,
The river-horse and scaly crocodile.
At once came forth whatever creeps the ground,
Insect or worm.
There is no doubt as to the meaning of this statement, nor as to what a
man of Milton's genius expected would have been actually visible to an
eye-witness of this mode of origination of living things.
The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of evolution, supposes that, at
any comparatively late period of past time, our imaginary spectator would
meet with a state of things very similar to that which now obtains; but
that the likeness of the past to the present would gradually become less
and less, in proportion to the remoteness of his period of observation
from the present day; that the existing distribution of mountains and
plains, of rivers and seas, would show itself to be the product of a slow
process of natural change operating upon more and more widely different
antecedent conditions of the mineral framework of the earth; until, at
length, in place of that framework, he would behold only a vast nebulous
mass, representing the constituents of the sun and of the planetary
bodies. Preceding the forms of life which now exist, our observer would
see animals and plants, not identical with them, but like them; increasing
their difference with their antiquity and, at the same time, becoming
simpler and simpler; until, finally, the world of life would present
nothing but that undifferentiated protoplasmic matter which, so far as our
present knowledge goes, is the common foundation of all vital activity.
The hypothesis of evolution supposes that, in all this vast progression,
there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which we could say,
"This is a natural process," and, "This is not a natural process"; but
that the whole might be compared to that wonderful process of development
which may be seen going on every day under our eyes, in virtue of which
there arises, out of the semifluid, comparatively homogeneous substance
which we call an egg, the complicated organization of one of the higher
animals. That, in a few words, is what is meant by the hypothesis of
evolution.
I have already suggested that, in dealing with these three hypotheses, in
endeavoring to form a judgment as to which of them is the more worthy of
belief, or whether none is worthy of belief,--in which case our condition
of mind should be that suspension of judgment which is so difficult to all
but trained intellects,--we should be indifferent to all _a priori_
considerations. The question is a question of historical fact. The
universe has come into existence somehow or other, and the problem is,
whether it came into existence in one fashion, or whether it came into
existence in another; and, as an essential preliminary to further
discussion, permit me to say two or three words as to the nature and the
kinds of historical evidence.
The evidence as to the occurrence of any event in past time may be ranged
under two heads, which, for convenience' sake, I will speak of as
testimonial evidence and as circumstantial evidence. By testimonial
evidence I mean human testimony; and by circumstantial evidence I mean
evidence which is not human testimony. Let me illustrate by a familiar
example what I understand by these two kinds of evidence, and what is to
be said respecting their value.
Suppose that a man tells you that he saw a person strike another and kill
him: that is testimonial evidence of the fact of murder. But it is
possible to have circumstantial evidence of the fact of murder: that is to
say, you may find a man dying with a wound upon his head having exactly
the form and character of the wound which is made by an axe; and, with due
care in taking surrounding circumstances into account, you may conclude
with the utmost certainty that the man has been murdered; that his death
is the consequence of a blow inflicted by another man with that implement.
We are very much in the habit of considering circumstantial evidence as of
less value than testimonial evidence; and it may be that, where the
circumstances are not perfectly clear and intelligible, it is a dangerous
and unsafe kind of evidence; but it must not be forgotten that, in many
cases, circumstantial is quite as conclusive as testimonial evidence, and
that, not unfrequently, it is a great deal weightier than testimonial
evidence. For example, take the case to which I referred just now. The
circumstantial evidence may be better and more convincing than the
testimonial evidence; for it may be impossible, under the conditions that
I have defined, to suppose that the man met his death from any cause but
the violent blow of an axe wielded by another man. The circumstantial
evidence in favor of a murder having been committed, in that case, is as
complete and as convincing as evidence can be. It is evidence which is
open to no doubt and to no falsification. But the testimony of a witness
is open to multitudinous doubts. He may have been mistaken. He may have
been actuated by malice. It has constantly happened that even an accurate
man has declared that a thing has happened in this, that, or the other
way, when a careful analysis of the circumstantial evidence has shown that
it did not happen in that way, but in some other way.
We may now consider the evidence in favor of or against the three
hypotheses. Let me first direct your attention to what is to be said about
the hypotheses of the eternity of the state of things in which we now
live. What will first strike you is, that it is a hypothesis which,
whether true or false, is not capable of verification by any evidence.
For, in order to obtain either circumstantial or testimonial evidence
sufficient to prove the eternity of duration of the present state of
nature, you must have an eternity of witnesses or an infinity of
circumstances, and neither of these is attainable. It is utterly
impossible that such evidence should be carried beyond a certain point of
time; and all that could be said, at most, would be, that, so far as the
evidence could be traced, there was nothing to contradict the hypothesis.
But when you look, not to the testimonial evidence,--which, considering
the relative insignificance of the antiquity of human records, might not
be good for much in this case,--but to the circumstantial evidence, then
you find that this hypothesis is absolutely incompatible with such
evidence as we have; which is of so plain and so simple a character that
it is impossible in any way to escape from the conclusions which it forces
upon us.
You are, doubtless, all aware that the outer substance of the earth, which
alone is accessible to direct observation, is not of a homogeneous
character, but that it is made up of a number of layers or strata. Each of
these groups represents a number of beds of sand, of stone, of clay, of
slate, and of various other materials.
On careful examination, it is found that the materials of which each of
these layers of more or less hard rock is composed are, for the most part,
of the same nature as those which are at present being formed under known
conditions on the surface of the earth. For example, the chalk, which
constitutes a great part of the Cretaceous formation in some parts of the
world, is practically identical in its physical and chemical characters
with a substance which is now being formed at the bottom of the Atlantic
Ocean, and covers an enormous area; other beds of rock are comparable with
the sands which are being formed upon sea-shores, packed together, and so
on. Thus, omitting rocks of igneous origin, it is demonstrable that all
these beds of stone, of which a total of not less than seventy thousand
feet is known, have been formed by natural agencies, either out of the
waste and washing of the dry land, or else by the accumulation of the
exuviæ of plants and animals. Many of these strata are full of such
exuviæ--the so-called "fossils." Remains of thousands of species of
animals and plants, as perfectly recognizable as those of existing forms
of life which you meet with in museums, or as the shells which you pick up
upon the sea-beach, have been imbedded in the ancient sands, or muds, or
limestones, just as they are being imbedded now in sandy, or clayey, or
calcareous subaqueous deposits. They furnish us with a record, the general
nature of which cannot be misinterpreted, of the kinds of things that have
lived upon the surface of the earth during the time that is registered by
this great thickness of stratified rocks.
But even a superficial study of these fossils shows us that the animals
and plants which live at the present time have had only a temporary
duration; for the remains of such modern forms of life are met with, for
the most part, only in the uppermost, or latest, tertiaries, and their
number rapidly diminishes in the lower deposits of that epoch. In the
older tertiaries, the places of existing animals and plants are taken by
other forms, as numerous and diversified as those which live now in the
same localities, but more or less different from them; in the mesozoic
rocks, these are replaced by others yet more divergent from modern types;
and in the palæozoic formations, the contrast is still more marked. Thus
the circumstantial evidence absolutely negatives the conception of the
eternity of the present condition of things. We can say with certainty
that the present condition of things has existed for a comparatively short
period; and that, so far as animal and vegetable nature are concerned, it
has been preceded by a different condition. We can pursue this evidence
until we reach the lowest of the stratified rocks, in which we lose the
indications of life altogether. The hypothesis of the eternity of the
present state of nature may, therefore, be put out of court.
We now come to what I will term Milton's hypothesis--the hypothesis that
the present condition of things has endured for a comparatively short
time; and, at the commencement of that time, came into existence within
the course of six days. I doubt not that it may have excited some surprise
in your minds that I should have spoken of this as Milton's hypothesis,
rather than that I should have chosen the terms which are more customary,
such as "the doctrine of creation," or "the Biblical doctrine," or "the
doctrine of Moses," all of which denominations, as applied to the
hypothesis to which I have just referred, are certainly much more familiar
to you than the title of the Miltonic hypothesis. But I have had what I
cannot but think are very weighty reasons for taking the course which I
have pursued. In the first place, I have discarded the title of the
"doctrine of creation," because my present business is not with the
question why the objects which constitute nature came into existence, but
when they came into existence, and in what order. This is as strictly a
historical question as the question when the Angles and the Jutes invaded
England, and whether they preceded or followed the Romans. But the
question about creation is a philosophical problem, and one which cannot
be solved, or even approached, by the historical method. What we want to
learn is, whether the facts, so far as they are known, afford evidence
that things arose in the way described by Milton, or whether they do not;
and, when that question is settled, it will be time enough to inquire into
the causes of their origination.
In the second place, I have not spoken of this doctrine as the Biblical
doctrine. It is quite true that persons as diverse in their general views
as Milton the Protestant and the celebrated Jesuit Father Suarez, each put
upon the first chapter of Genesis the interpretation embodied in Milton's
poem. It is quite true that this interpretation is that which has been
instilled into every one of us in our childhood; but I do not for one
moment venture to say that it can properly be called the Biblical
doctrine. It is not my business, and does not lie within my competency, to
say what the Hebrew text does, and what it does not signify; moreover,
were I to affirm that this is the Biblical doctrine, I should be met by
the authority of many eminent scholars, to say nothing of men of science,
who, at various times, have absolutely denied that any such doctrine is to
be found in Genesis. If we are to listen to many expositors of no mean
authority, we must believe that what seems so clearly defined in
Genesis--as if very great pains had been taken that there should be no
possibility of mistake--is not the meaning of the text at all. The account
is divided into periods, which we may make just as long or as short as
convenience requires. We are also to understand that it is consistent with
the original text to believe that the most complex plants and animals may
have been evolved by natural processes, lasting for millions of years, out
of structureless rudiments. A person who is not a Hebrew scholar can only
stand aside and admire the marvelous flexibility of a language which
admits of such diverse interpretations. But assuredly, in the face of such
contradictions of authority upon matters respecting which he is
incompetent to form any judgment, he will abstain, as I do, from giving
any opinion.
In the third place, I have carefully abstained from speaking of this as
the Mosaic doctrine, because we are now assured upon the authority of the
highest critics, and even of dignitaries of the Church, that there is no
evidence that Moses wrote the Book of Genesis, or knew anything about it.
You will understand that I give no judgment--it would be an impertinence
upon my part to volunteer even a suggestion--upon such a subject. But,
that being the state of opinion among the scholars and the clergy, it is
well for the unlearned in Hebrew lore, and for the laity, to avoid
entangling themselves in such a vexed question. Happily, Milton leaves us
no excuse for doubting what he means, and I shall therefore be safe in
speaking of the opinion in question as the Miltonic hypothesis.
Now we have to test that hypothesis. For my part, I have no prejudice one
way or the other. If there is evidence in favor of this view, I am
burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way of accepting it; but
there must be evidence. Scientific men get an awkward habit--no, I won't
call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of believing nothing unless
there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which
is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral. We
will, if you please, test this view by the circumstantial evidence alone;
for, from what I have said, you will understand that I do not propose to
discuss the question of what testimonial evidence is to be adduced in
favor of it. If those whose business it is to judge are not at one as to
the authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is offered, nor
as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of such evidence
is superfluous. But I may be permitted to regret this necessity of
rejecting the testimonial evidence the less, because the examination of
the circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that it is
incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but that, so far as it goes, it is
contrary to the hypothesis.
The considerations upon which I base this conclusion are of the simplest
possible character. The Miltonic hypothesis contains assertions of a very
definite character relating to the succession of living forms. It is
stated that plants, for example, made their appearance upon the third day,
and not before. And you will understand that what the poet means by plants
are such plants as now live, the ancestors, in the ordinary way of
propagation of like by like, of the trees and shrubs which flourish in the
present world. It must needs be so: for, if they were different, either
the existing plants have been the result of a separate origination since
that described by Milton, of which we have no record, or any ground for
supposition that such an occurrence has taken place; or else they have
arisen by a process of evolution from the original stocks.
In the second place, it is clear that there was no animal life before the
fifth day, and that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals and birds appeared.
And it is further clear that terrestrial living things, other than birds,
made their appearance upon the sixth day, and not before. Hence, it
follows that if, in the large mass of circumstantial evidence as to what
really has happened in the past history of the globe we find indications
of the existence of terrestrial animals, other than birds, at a certain
period, it is perfectly certain that all that has taken place since that
time must be referred to the sixth day.
In the great Carboniferous formation, whence America derives so vast a
proportion of her actual and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which
have been formed from the vegetation of that period, we find abundant
evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals. They have been
described, not only by European but by American naturalists. There are to
be found numerous insects allied to our cockroaches. There are to be found
spiders and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to existing
scorpions that it requires the practised eye of the naturalist to
distinguish them. Inasmuch as these animals can be proved to have been
alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is perfectly clear that, if the
Miltonic account is to be accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending from
the middle of the Palæozoic formations to the uppermost members of the
series must belong to the day which is termed by Milton the sixth.
But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic animals took their
origin upon the fifth day, and not before; hence, all formations in which
remains of aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which therefore
testify that such animals lived at the time when these formations were in
course of deposition, must have been deposited during or since the period
which Milton speaks of as the fifth day. But there is absolutely no
fossiliferous formation in which the remains of aquatic animals are
absent. The oldest fossils in the Silurian rocks are exuviæ of marine
animals; and if the view which is entertained by Principal Dawson and Dr.
Carpenter respecting the nature of the Eozoön be well founded, aquatic
animals existed at a period as far antecedent to the deposition of the
coal as the coal is from us; inasmuch as the Eozoön is met with in those
Laurentian strata which lie at the bottom of the series of stratified
rocks. Hence it follows, plainly enough, that the whole series of
stratified rocks, if they are to be brought into harmony with Milton, must
be referred to the fifth and sixth days, and that we cannot hope to find
the slightest trace of the products of the earlier days in the geological
record. When we consider these simple facts, we see how absolutely futile
are the attempts that have been made to draw a parallel between the story
told by so much of the crust of the earth as is known to us and the story
that Milton tells. The whole series of fossiliferous stratified rocks
must be referred to the last two days; and neither the Carboniferous nor
any other formation can afford evidence of the work of the third day.
Not only is there this objection to any attempt to establish a harmony
between the Miltonic account and the facts recorded in the fossiliferous
rocks, but there is a further difficulty. According to the Miltonic
account, the order in which animals should have made their appearance in
the stratified rocks would be this: fishes, including the great whales,
and birds; after them, all varieties of terrestrial animals except birds.
Nothing could be further from the facts as we find them; we know of not
the slightest evidence of the existence of birds before the Jurassic, or
perhaps the Triassic, formation; while terrestrial animals, as we have
just seen, occur in the Carboniferous rocks. If there were any harmony
between the Miltonic account and the circumstantial evidence, we ought to
have abundant evidence of the existence of birds in the Carboniferous, the
Devonian, and the Silurian rocks. I need hardly say that this is not the
case, and that not a trace of birds makes its appearance until the far
later period which I have mentioned.
And again, if it be true that all varieties of fishes and the great
whales, and the like, made their appearance on the fifth day, we ought to
find the remains of these animals in the older rocks--in those which were
deposited before the Carboniferous epoch. Fishes we do find, in
considerable number and variety; but the great whales are absent, and the
fishes are not such as now live. Not one solitary species of fish now in
existence is to be found in the Devonian or Silurian formations. Hence we
are introduced afresh to the dilemma which I have already placed before
you: either the animals which came into existence on the fifth day were
not such as those which are found at present, are not the direct and
immediate ancestors of those which now exist,--in which case either fresh
creations of which nothing is said, or a process of evolution, must have
occurred,--or else the whole story must be given up, as not only devoid of
any circumstantial evidence, but as contrary to such evidence as exists.
I placed before you in a few words, some little time ago, a statement of
the sum and substance of Milton's hypothesis. Let me now try to state, as
briefly, the effect of the circumstantial evidence bearing upon the past
history of the earth which is furnished, without the possibility of
mistake, with no chance of error as to its chief features, by the
stratified rocks. What we find is that the great series of formations
represents a period of time of which our human chronologies hardly afford
us a unit of measure. I will not pretend to say how we ought to estimate
this time, in millions or in billions of years. For my purpose, the
determination of its absolute duration is wholly unessential; but
unquestionably the time was enormous.
It results from the simplest methods of interpretation, that, leaving out
of view certain patches of metamorphosed rocks, and certain volcanic
products, all that is now dry land has once been at the bottom of the
waters. It is perfectly certain that, at a comparatively recent period of
the world's history,--the Cretaceous epoch,--none of the great physical
features, which at present mark the surface of the globe, existed. It is
certain that the Rocky Mountains were not. It is certain that the Himalaya
Mountains were not. It is certain that the Alps and the Pyrenees had no
existence. The evidence is of the plainest possible character, and is
simply this: we find raised up on the flanks of these mountains, elevated
by the forces of upheaval which have given rise to them, masses of
Cretaceous rock which formed the bottom of the sea before those mountains
existed. It is therefore clear that the elevatory forces which gave rise
to the mountains operated subsequently to the Cretaceous epoch; and that
the mountains themselves are largely made up of the materials deposited in
the sea which once occupied their place. As we go back in time, we meet
with constant alternations of sea and land, of estuary and open ocean;
and, in correspondence with these alternations, we observe the changes in
the fauna and flora to which I have referred.
But the inspection of these changes gives us no right to believe that
there has been any discontinuity in natural processes. There is no trace
of general cataclysms, of universal deluges, or of sudden destructions of
a whole fauna or flora. The appearances which were formerly interpreted in
that way have all been shown to be delusive, as our knowledge has
increased, and as the blanks which formerly appeared to exist between the
different formations have been filled up. That there is no absolute break
between formation and formation, that there has been no sudden
disappearance of all the forms of life and replacement of them by others,
but that changes have gone on slowly and gradually, that one type has died
out and another has taken its place, and that thus, by insensible degrees,
one fauna has been replaced by another, are conclusions strengthened by
constantly increasing evidence. So that within the whole of the immense
period indicated by the fossiliferous stratified rocks there is assuredly
not the slightest proof of any break in the uniformity of nature's
operations, no indication that events have followed other than a clear and
orderly sequence.
That, I say, is the natural and obvious teaching of the circumstantial
evidence contained in the stratified rocks. I leave you to consider how
far, by any ingenuity of interpretation, by any stretching of the meaning
of language, it can be brought into harmony with the Miltonic hypothesis.
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE
In order to make the title of this discourse generally intelligible, I
have translated the term "protoplasm," which is the scientific name of the
substance of which I am about to speak, by the words "the physical basis
of life." I suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing as
a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel, so widely spread is the
conception of life as a something which works through matter, but is
independent of it; and even those who are aware that matter and life are
inseparably connected may not be prepared for the conclusion--plainly
suggested by the phrase, "_the_ physical basis or matter of life,"--that
there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and
that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well
as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as
this appears almost shocking to common sense.
What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different from one another, in
faculty, in form, and in substance, than the various kinds of living
beings? What community of faculty can there be between the brightly
colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of
the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom it is instinct
with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds with knowledge?
Again, think of the microscopic fungus--a mere infinitesimal ovoid
particle, which finds space and duration enough to multiply into countless
millions in the body of a living fly; and then of the wealth of foliage,
the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch
of a plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the dimensions of
a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which covers acres with its profound
shadow, and endures while nations and empires come and go around its vast
circumference. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, picture
to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of beasts that live or have
lived, disporting his eighty or ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber,
with easy roll, among waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left
dockyard would founder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invisible
animalcules--mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of which could, in fact,
dance upon the point of a needle with the same ease as the angels of the
Schoolmen could, in imagination. With these images before your minds, you
may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is there between the
animalcule and the whale, or between the fungus and the fig tree? And, _a
fortiori_, between all four?
Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition, what hidden bond
can connect the flower that a girl wears in her hair and the blood that
courses through her youthful veins; or, what is there in common between
the dense and resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the
tortoise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be seen
pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which drain away to mere
films in the hand which raises them out of their element?
Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of everyone who
ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical
basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I
propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent
difficulties, a threefold unity--namely, a unity of power or faculty, a
unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition--does pervade the
whole living world.
No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first place, to prove
that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, diverse as
they may be in degree, are substantially similar in kind.
Goethe has condensed a survey of all the powers of mankind into the
well-known epigram:--
Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernähren,
Kinder zeugen, und die nähren so gut es vermag.
* * * * *
Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich wie er auch will.
In physiological language this means that all the multifarious and
complicated activities of man are comprehensible under three categories.
Either they are immediately directed toward the maintenance and
development of the body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative
positions of parts of the body, or they tend toward the continuance of the
species. Even those manifestations of intellect, of feeling, and of will,
which we rightly name the higher faculties, are not excluded from this
classification, inasmuch as, to everyone but the subject of them, they are
known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of parts of the
body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of human action are, in the
long run, resolvable into muscular contraction, and muscular contraction
is but a transitory change in the relative positions of the parts of a
muscle. But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activities of
the highest form of life covers all those of the lower creatures. The
lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In
addition, all animals manifest those transitory changes of form which we
class under irritability and contractility; and it is more than probable
that, when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we shall find all
plants in possession of the same powers, at one time or other of their
existence.
I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare and conspicuous, as
those exhibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plant, or the stamens of
the barberry, but to such more widely spread, and, at the same time, more
subtle and hidden, manifestations of vegetable contractility. You are
doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging property to the
innumerable stiff and needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs that
cover its surface. Each stinging needle tapers from a broad base to a
slender summit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such microscopic
fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. The
whole hair consists of a very delicate outer case of wood, closely applied
to the inner surface of which is a layer of semifluid matter, full of
innumerable granules of extreme minuteness. This semifluid lining is
protoplasm, which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,
and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the hair which it
fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying power, the
protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair is seen to be in a condition of
unceasing activity. Local contractions of the whole thickness of its
substance pass slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to
the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending of successive
stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent billows of a cornfield.
But, in addition to these movements, and independently of them, the
granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams, through channels in the
protoplasm which seem to have a considerable amount of persistence. Most
commonly, the currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar
directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side of the hair
and down the other. But this does not prevent the existence of partial
currents which take different routes; and, sometimes, trains of granules
may be seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions, within a
twenty-thousandth of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite
streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or shorter
struggle, one predominates. The cause of these currents seems to lie in
contractions of the protoplasm which bounds the channels in which they
flow, but contractions so minute that the best microscopes show only their
effects, and not themselves.
The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned within the
compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which we commonly regard as a
merely passive organism, is not easily forgotten by one who has watched
its display, continued hour after hour, without pause or sign of
weakening. The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seemingly
as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon one; and the
comparison of such a protoplasm to a body with an internal circulation,
which has been put forward by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its
startling character. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle
have been observed in a great multitude of very different plants, and
weighty authorities have suggested that they probably occur, in more or
less perfection, in all young vegetable cells. If such be the case, the
wonderful noonday silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to
the dullness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur of these
tiny maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of living cells
which constitute each tree, we should be stunned, as with the roar of a
great city.
Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the exception that
contractility should be still more openly manifested at some periods of
their existence. The protoplasm of Algæ and Fungi becomes, under many
circumstances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case, and
exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled by the contractility
of one or more hair-like prolongations of its body, which are called
vibratile _cilia_. And, so far as the conditions of the manifestation of
the phenomena of contractility have yet been studied, they are the same
for the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks influence both,
and in the same way, though it may be in different degrees. It is by no
means my intention to suggest that there is no difference in faculty
between the lowest plant and the highest, or between plants and animals.
But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant, or animal, and
those of the highest, is one of degree, not of kind, and depends, as
Milne-Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon the extent to which the
principle of the division of labor is carried out in the living economy.
In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform all functions,
and one and the same portion of protoplasm may successively take on the
function of feeding, moving, or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on
the contrary, a great number of parts combine to perform each function,
each part doing its allotted share of the work with great accuracy and
efficiency, but being useless for any other purpose.
On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental resemblances that
exist between the powers of the protoplasm in plants and in animals, they
present a striking difference (to which I shall advert more at length
presently), in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm out
of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to procure it
ready-made, and hence, in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon what
condition this difference in the powers of the two great divisions of the
world of life depends, nothing is at present known.
With such qualification as arises out of the last-mentioned fact, it may
be truly said that the acts of all living things are fundamentally one. Is
any such unity predictable of their forms? Let us seek in easily verified
facts for a reply to this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by
pricking one's finger, and viewed with proper precautions and under a
sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen, among the
innumerable multitude of little circular, discoidal bodies, or corpuscles,
which float in it and give it its color, a comparatively small number of
colorless corpuscles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If
the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the body, these colorless
corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvelous activity, changing their
forms with great rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of
their substance, and creeping about as if they were independent organisms.
The substance which is thus active is a mass of protoplasm, and its
activity differs in detail, rather than in principle, from that of the
protoplasm of the nettle. Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies
and becomes distended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a
smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less hidden, in the
living corpuscle, and is called its _nucleus_. Corpuscles of essentially
similar structure are to be found in the skin, in the lining of the mouth,
and scattered through the whole framework of the body. Nay, more: in the
earliest condition of the human organism, in that state in which it has
but just become distinguishable from the egg in which it arises, it is
nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles, and every organ of the body
was, once, no more than such an aggregation.
Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be what may be termed the
structural unit of the human body. As a matter of fact, the body, in its
earliest state, is a mere multiple of such units; and, in its perfect
condition, it is a multiple of such units variously modified.
But does the formula which expresses the essential structural character of
the highest animal cover all the rest, as the statement of its powers and
faculties covered that of all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile
and fish, mollusk, worm, and polyp, are all composed of structural units
of the same character, namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus. There
are sundry very low animals, each of which, structurally, is a mere
colorless blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the very
bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity becomes simplified, and
all the phenomena of life are manifested by a particle of protoplasm
without a nucleus. Nor are such organisms insignificant by reason of their
want of complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm of those
simplest forms of life which people an immense extent of the bottom of the
sea would not outweigh that of all the higher living beings which inhabit
the land put together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present
day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of rock-builders.
What has been said of the animal world is no less true of plants. Imbedded
in the protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end of the nettle hair, there
lies a spheroidal nucleus. Careful examination further proves that the
whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of such masses of
nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a wooden case, which is modified
in form, sometimes into a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral
vessel, sometimes into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back to its
earliest state, the nettle arises, as the man does, in a particle of
nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in the lowest animals,
a single mass of such protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, or the
protoplasm may exist without a nucleus.
Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how is one mass of
non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished from another? Why call one
"plant" and the other "animal"?
The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants and animals
are not separable, and that, in many cases, it is a mere matter of
convention whether we call a given organism an animal or a plant. There is
a living body called _Æthalium septicum_, which appears upon decaying
vegetable substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon the
surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents and
purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded as such; but the
remarkable investigations of De Bary have shown that, in another
condition, the _Æthalium_ is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in
solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most
characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant, or is it an animal?
Is it both, or is it neither? Some decide in favor of the last
supposition, and establish an intermediate kingdom, a sort of biological
"No Man's Land," for all these questionable forms. But, as it is
admittedly impossible to draw any distinct boundary line between this no
man's land and the vegetable world, on the one hand, and the animal, on
the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely doubles the
difficulty which, before, was single.
Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is
the clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains
clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature, from the commonest brick
or sun-dried clod.
Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate, and that all
living forms are fundamentally of one character. The researches of the
chemist have revealed a no less striking uniformity of material
composition in living matter.
In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investigation can tell us
little or nothing, directly, of the composition of living matter, inasmuch
as such matter must needs die in the act of analysis; and upon this very
obvious ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be somewhat
frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any conclusions whatever
respecting the composition of actually living matter, from that of the
dead matter of life, which alone is accessible to us. But objectors of
this class do not seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true
that we know nothing about the composition of any body whatever, as it is.
The statement that a crystal of calc-spar consists of carbonate of lime is
quite true, if we only mean that, by appropriate processes, it may be
resolved into carbonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic
acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain carbonate of
lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, or anything like it. Can it,
therefore, be said that chemical analysis teaches nothing about the
chemical composition of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but
it is hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about the
uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis to the living
bodies that have yielded them.
One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements, and this is,
that all the forms of protoplasm which have yet been examined contain the
four elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex
union, and that they behave similarly toward several reagents. To this
complex combination, the nature of which has never been determined with
exactness, the name of protein has been applied. And if we use this term
with such caution as may properly arise out of our comparative ignorance
of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said that all
protoplasm is proteinaceous; or, as the white, or albumen, of an egg is
one of the commonest examples of a nearly pure protein matter, we may say
that all living matter is more or less albuminoid.
Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of protoplasm are
affected by the direct action of electric shocks; and yet the number of
cases in which the contraction of protoplasm is shown to be effected by
this agency increases every day.
Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence that all forms of
protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation at a
temperature of from 40 to 50 degrees Centigrade, which has been called
"heat-stiffening"; though Kuhne's beautiful researches have proved this
occurrence to take place in so many and such diverse living beings, that
it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds good for all.
Enough has, perhaps, been said to prove the existence of a general
uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or physical basis of life,
in whatever group of living beings it may be studied. But it will be
understood that this general uniformity by no means excludes any amount of
special modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral, carbonate
of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts
that, under all these protean changes, it is one and the same thing.
And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of
life?
Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the
universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
themselves, but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable
permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or, is the
matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the
manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary
matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done?
Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives.
Physiology writes over the portals of life:--
Debemur morti nos nostraque,--
with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy
line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm
or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and,
strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died.
In the wonderful story of the "Peau de Chagrin," the hero becomes
possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of
gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the
proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in
proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last
handbreadth of the _peau de chagrin_ disappear with the gratification of a
last wish.
Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation,
and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may
have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable
_peau de chagrin_, and for every trivial act it is somewhat the smaller.
All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or
indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.
Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the
strictest sense, he burns that others may have light--so much eloquence,
so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is
clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily,
the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_ differs from Balzac's in its capacity
of being repaired, and brought back to its full size, after every
exertion.
For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellectual worth to you,
has a certain physical value to me, which is conceivably expressible by
the number of grains of protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in
maintaining my vital processes during its delivery. My _peau de chagrin_
will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse than it was at the
beginning. By and by, I shall probably have recourse to the substance
commonly called mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back to its
original size. Now, this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or
less modified, of another animal--a sheep. As I shall eat it, it is the
same matter altered, not only by death, but by exposure to sundry
artificial operations in the process of cooking.
But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not rendered it
incompetent to resume its old functions as matter of life. A singular
inward laboratory, which I possess, will dissolve a certain portion of the
modified protoplasm; the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and
the subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will convert the
dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into
man.
Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup
on lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the
same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my
own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacea might, and
probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature
by turning my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if nothing better were
to be had, I might supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the
protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man, with no more
trouble than that of the sheep, and with far less, I fancy, than that of
the lobster.
Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment what animal, or what
plant, I lay under contribution for protoplasm; and the fact speaks
volumes for the general identity of that substance in all living beings. I
share this catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which,
so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the protoplasm of any of
their fellows, or of any plant; but here the assimilative powers of the
animal world cease. A solution of smelling-salts in water, with an
infinitesimal proportion of some other saline matters, contains all the
elementary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm; but, as
I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would not keep a hungry man
from starving, nor would it save any animal whatever from a like fate. An
animal cannot make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some other
animal, or some plant--the animal's highest feat of constructive chemistry
being to convert dead protoplasm into that living matter of life which is
appropriate to itself.
Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we must eventually
turn to the vegetable world. The fluid containing carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia, which offers such a Barmecide feast to the animal, is a table
richly spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of only such
materials, many a plant will not only maintain itself in vigor, but grow
and multiply until it has increased a million-fold, or a
million-million-fold, the quantity of protoplasm which it originally
possessed; in this way building up the matter of life, to an indefinite
extent, from the common matter of the universe.
Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of dead protoplasm
to the higher power, as one may say, of living protoplasm; while the plant
can raise the less complex substances--carbonic acid, water, and
ammonia--to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same level.
But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the fungi, for example,
appear to need higher compounds to start with; and no known plant can live
upon the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with pure
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, sulphur and the like,
would as infallibly die as the animal in his bath of smelling-salts,
though it would be surrounded by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor,
indeed, need the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so
far as this, in order to arrive at the limit of the plant's thaumaturgy.
Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other needful constituents be
supplied with ammonia, and an ordinary plant will still be unable to
manufacture protoplasm.
Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have no right to
speculate on any other), breaks up, in consequence of that continual death
which is the condition of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid,
water, and ammonia, which certainly possess no properties but those of
ordinary matter. And out of these same forms of ordinary matter, and from
none which are simpler, the vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm
that keeps the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of the
power which animals distribute and disperse.
But it will be observed that the existence of the matter of life depends
on the preëxistence of certain compounds; namely, carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia. Withdraw any one of these three from the world, and all vital
phenomena come to an end. They are related to the protoplasm of the plant,
as the protoplasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydrogen,
oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, carbon and oxygen
unite in certain proportions, and under certain conditions, to give rise
to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and hydrogen
give rise to ammonia. These new compounds, like the elementary bodies of
which they are composed, are lifeless. But when they are brought together,
under certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex body,
protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life.
I see no break in this series of steps in molecular complication, and I am
unable to understand why the language which is applicable to any one term
of the series may not be used with any of the others. We think fit to call
different kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to
speak of the various powers and activities of these substances as the
properties of the matter of which they are composed.
When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain proportion, and an
electric spark is passed through them, they disappear, and a quantity of
water, equal in weight to the sum of their weights, appears in their
place. There is not the slightest parity between the passive and active
powers of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which have given
rise to it. At 32 degrees Fahrenheit, and far below that temperature,
oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose particles tend to
rush away from one another with great force. Water, at the same
temperature, is a strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to
cohere into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up frosty
imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable foliage.
Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phenomena, the
properties of the water, and we do not hesitate to believe that, in some
way or another, they result from the properties of the component elements
of the water. We do not assume that a something called "aquosity" entered
into and took possession of the oxide of hydrogen as soon as it was
formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their places in the
facets of the crystal, or among the leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the
contrary, we live in the hope and in the faith that, by the advance of
molecular physics, we shall by-and-by be able to see our way as clearly
from the constituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now
able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and
the manner in which they are put together.
Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, and ammonia
disappear, and in their place, under the influence of preëxisting living
protoplasm, an equivalent weight of the matter of life makes its
appearance?
It is true that there is no sort of parity between the properties of the
components and the properties of the resultant; but neither was there in
the case of the water. It is also true that what I have spoken of as the
influence of preëxisting living matter is something quite unintelligible;
but does anybody quite comprehend the _modus operandi_ of an electric
spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen?
What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the existence in
the living matter of a something which has no representative, or
correlative, in the not-living matter which gave rise to it? What better
philosophical status has "vitality" than "aquosity"? And why should
"vitality" hope for a better fate than the other "itys" which have
disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the operation of the
meat-jack by its inherent "meat-roasting quality," and scorned the
"materialism" of those who explained the turning of the spit by a certain
mechanism worked by the draught of the chimney?
If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant signification
whenever it is employed, it seems to me that we are logically bound to
apply to the protoplasm, or physical basis of life, the same conceptions
as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena
exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.
If the properties of water may be properly said to result from the nature
and disposition of its component molecules, I can find no intelligible
ground for refusing to say that the properties of protoplasm result from
the nature and disposition of its molecules.
But I bid you beware lest, in accepting these conclusions, you are placing
your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people's
estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's, and leads to the antipodes of
heaven. It may seem a small thing to admit that the dull, vital actions of
a fungus are the properties of its protoplasm, and are the direct results
of the nature of the matter of which it is composed. But if, as I have
endeavored to prove to you, its protoplasm is essentially identical with,
and most readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover no
logical halting-place between the admission that such is the case, and the
further concession that all vital action may, with equal propriety, be
said to be the result of the molecular forces of the protoplasm which
displays it. And if so, it must be true, in the same sense and to the same
extent, that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and your
thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molecular changes in that
matter of life which is the source of our other vital phenomena.
Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when the
propositions I have just placed before you are accessible to public
comment and criticism, they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and
perhaps by some few of the wise and thoughtful. I should not wonder if
"gross and brutal materialism" were the mildest phrase applied to them in
certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the propositions are
distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two things are certain: the one,
that I hold the statements to be substantially true; the other, that I,
individually, am no materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism
to involve grave philosophical error.
This union of materialistic terminology with the repudiation of
materialistic philosophy I share with some of the most thoughtful men with
whom I am acquainted. And, when I first undertook to deliver the present
discourse, it appeared to me to be fitting opportunity to explain how such
a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I
purposed to lead you through the territory of vital phenomena to the
materialistic slough in which you find yourselves now plunged, and then to
point out to you the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is
possible.
Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative, and,
therefore, that our conception of matter represents that which it really
is. Let us suppose, further, that we do know more of cause and effect than
a certain definite order of succession among facts, and that we have a
knowledge of the necessity of that succession,--and hence, of necessary
laws,--and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from utter
materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious that our knowledge of
what we call the material world is, to begin with, at least as certain and
definite as that of the spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with
law is of as old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, I take
it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to prove that anything
whatever may not be the effect of a material and necessary cause, and that
human logic is equally incompetent to prove that any act is really
spontaneous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the assumption, has
no cause; and the attempt to prove such a negative as this is, on the face
of the matter, absurd. And while it is thus a philosophical impossibility
to demonstrate that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, anyone who is acquainted with the history of science will admit,
that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, means,
the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation, and
the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of
what we call spirit and spontaneity.
I have endeavored, in the first part of this discourse, to give you a
conception of the direction in which modern physiology is tending; and I
ask you, what is the difference between the conception of life as the
product of a certain disposition of material molecules, and the old notion
of an Archæus governing and directing blind matter within each living
body, except this--that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have devoured
spirit and spontaneity? And as surely as every future grows out of past
and present, so will the physiology of the future gradually extend the
realm of matter and law until it is coextensive with knowledge, with
feeling, and with action.
The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a nightmare, I believe,
upon many of the best minds of these days. They watch what they conceive
to be the progress of materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a
savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the
face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their
souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed
lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase of his wisdom.
If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the reprobation with which it is
visited, I confess their fears seem to me to be well founded. While, on
the contrary, could David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at
their perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and
falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own hands have
raised.
For, after all, what do we know of this terrible "matter," except as a
name for the unknown and hypothetical cause of states of our own
consciousness? And what do we know of that "spirit" over whose threatened
extinction by matter a great lamentation is arising, like that which was
heard at the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown
and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of consciousness? In other
words, matter and spirit are but names for the imaginary substrata of
groups of natural phenomena.
And what are the dire necessity and "iron" law under which men groan?
Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an
"iron" law, it is that of gravitation; and if there be a physical
necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But
what is all we really know, and can know, about the latter phenomenon?
Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have fallen to the ground
under these conditions; that we have not the smallest reason for believing
that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we
have, on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is
very convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that unsupported stones
will fall to the ground "a law of nature." But when, as commonly happens,
we change _will_ into _must_, we introduce an idea of necessity which most
assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I
can discover elsewhere. For my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematize
the intruder. Fact I know, and Law I know, but what is this Necessity,
save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the nature of
either matter or spirit, and that the notion of necessity is something
illegitimately thrust into the perfectly legitimate conception of law, the
materialistic position that there is nothing in the world but matter,
force, and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most
baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines of materialism,
like those of spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits
of philosophical inquiry"; and David Hume's great service to humanity is
his irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called
himself a skeptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the
same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with
its existing implications, does him gross injustice.
If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of the moon are, and
I reply that I do not know; that neither I, nor anyone else, has any means
of knowing; and that, under these circumstances, I decline to trouble
myself about the subject at all, I do not think he has any right to call
me a skeptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive that I am
simply honest and truthful, and show a proper regard for the economy of
time. So Hume's strong and subtle intellect takes up a great many problems
about which we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are
essentially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable of
being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of men who have work
to do in the world. And he thus ends one of his essays:--
"If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics, for
instance, let us ask, _Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning
quantity or number?_ No. _Does it contain any experimental reasoning
concerning matter of fact and existence?_ No. Commit it then to the
flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble ourselves about
matters of which, however important they may be, we do know nothing, and
can know nothing? We live in a world which is full of misery and
ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the
little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less
ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually, it is
necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the
order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is
practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something
as a condition of the course of events.
Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as often as we like
to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest foundation upon which
any belief can rest, and forms one of our highest truths. If we find that
the ascertainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one
terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another, it is our clear
duty to use the former; and no harm can accrue, so long as we bear in
mind that we are dealing merely with terms and symbols.
In itself it is of little moment whether we express the phenomena of
matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter:
matter may be regarded as a form of thought, thought may be regarded as a
property of matter--each statement has a certain relative truth. But with
a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in
every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other
phenomena of the universe, and suggests inquiry into the nature of those
physical conditions, or concomitants of thought, which are more or less
accessible to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to
exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought that we
already possess in respect of the material world; whereas, the
alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and leads
to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas.
Thus there can be little doubt that the further science advances, the more
extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of nature be
represented by materialistic formulæ and symbols.
But the man of science who, forgetting the limits of philosophical
inquiry, slides from these formulæ and symbols into what is commonly
understood by materialism, seems to me to place himself on a level with
the mathematician who should mistake the _x_'s and _y_'s with which he
works his problems for real entities--and with this further disadvantage,
as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of
no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
JOHN TYNDALL
SCOPE AND LIMIT OF SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM
Partly through mathematical and partly through experimental research,
physical science has of late years assumed a momentous position in the
world. Both in a material and in an intellectual point of view it has
produced, and is designed to produce, immense changes--vast social
ameliorations, and vast alterations in the popular conception of the
origin, rule, and governance of natural things. By science, in the
physical world, miracles are wrought; while philosophy is forsaking its
ancient metaphysical channels and pursuing others which have been opened
or indicated by scientific research. This must become more and more the
case as philosophical writers become more deeply imbued with the methods
of science, better acquainted with the facts which scientific men have won
and with the great theories which they have elaborated.
If you look at the face of a watch, you see the hour- and minute-hands,
and possibly also a second-hand, moving over the graduated dial. Why do
these hands move, and why are their relative motions such as they are
observed to be? These questions cannot be answered without opening the
watch, mastering its various parts, and ascertaining their relationship to
each other. When this is done, we find that the observed motion of the
hands follows of necessity from the inner mechanism of the watch, when
acted upon by the force invested in the spring.
The motion of the hands may be called a phenomenon of art, but the case is
similar with the phenomena of nature. These also have their inner
mechanism and their store of force to set that mechanism going. The
ultimate problem of physical science is to reveal this mechanism, to
discern this store, and to show that, from the combined action of both,
the phenomena of which they constitute the basis must of necessity flow.
I thought that an attempt to give you even a brief and sketchy
illustration of the manner in which scientific thinkers regard this
problem would not be uninteresting to you on the present occasion; more
especially as it will give me occasion to say a word or two on the
tendencies and limits of modern science; to point out the region which men
of science claim as their own, and where it is mere waste of time to
oppose their advance; and also to define, if possible, the bourne between
this and that other region to which the questionings and yearnings of the
scientific intellect are directed in vain.
But here your tolerance will be needed. It was the American Emerson, I
think, who said that it is hardly possible to state any truth strongly
without apparent injustice to some other truth. Truth is often of a dual
character, taking the form of a magnet with two poles; and many of the
differences which agitate the thinking part of mankind are to be traced to
the exclusiveness with which partisan reasoners dwell upon one half of the
duality in forgetfulness of the other half. The proper course appears to
be to state both halves strongly, and allow each its fair share in the
formation of the resultant conviction. But this waiting for the statement
of the two sides of the question implies patience. It implies a resolution
to suppress indignation if the statement of the one half should clash with
our convictions, and to repress equally undue elation if the
half-statement should happen to chime in with our views. It implies a
determination to wait calmly for the statement of the whole, before we
pronounce judgment in the form of either acquiescence or dissent.
This premised and, I trust, accepted, let us enter upon our task. There
have been writers who affirmed that the pyramids of Egypt were the
productions of nature; and in his early youth Alexander von Humboldt wrote
a learned essay with the express object of refuting this notion. We now
regard the pyramids as the work of men's hands, aided probably by
machinery of which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming
workers toiling at these vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and,
guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the whip, of
the architect, placing them in their proper positions. The blocks in this
case were moved and posited by a power external to themselves, and the
final form of the pyramid expresses the thought of its human builder.
Let us pass from this illustration of constructive power to another of a
different kind. When a solution of common salt is slowly evaporated, the
water which holds the salt in solution disappears, but the salt itself
remains behind. At a certain stage of concentration the salt can no longer
retain the liquid form: its particles, or molecules, as they are called,
begin to deposit themselves as minute solids, so minute, indeed, as to
defy all microscopic power. As evaporation continues, solidification goes
on, and we finally obtain, through the clustering together of innumerable
molecules, a finite crystalline mass of a definite form. What is this
form? It sometimes seems a mimicry of the architecture of Egypt. We have
little pyramids built by the salt, terrace above terrace from base to
apex, forming a series of steps resembling those up which the Egyptian
traveler is dragged by his guides. The human is as little disposed to look
unquestioning at these pyramidal salt-crystals as to look at the pyramids
of Egypt without inquiring whence they came. How, then, are those salt
pyramids built up?
Guided by analogy, you may, if you like, suppose that, swarming among the
constituent molecules of the salt, there is an invisible population,
controlled and coerced by some invisible master, and placing the atomic
blocks in their positions. This, however, is not the scientific idea, nor
do I think your good sense will accept it as a likely one. The scientific
idea is that the molecules act upon each other without the intervention of
slave labor; that they attract each other and repel each other at certain
definite points, or poles, and in certain definite directions; and that
the pyramidal form is the result of this play of attraction and repulsion.
While, then, the blocks of Egypt were laid down by a power external to
themselves, these molecular blocks of salt are self-posited, being fixed
in their places by the forces with which they act upon each other.
I take common salt as an illustration because it is so familiar to us all;
but any other crystalline substance would answer my purpose equally well.
Everywhere, in fact, throughout inorganic nature, we have this formative
power, as Fichte would call it--this structural energy ready to come into
play and build the ultimate particles of matter into definite shapes. The
ice of our winters and of our polar regions is its handiwork, and so
equally are the quartz, feldspar, and mica of our rocks. Our chalk-beds
are for the most part composed of minute shells, which are almost the
product of structural energy; but behind the shell, as a whole, lies a
more remote and subtle formative act. These shells are built up of little
crystals of calc-spar, and to form these crystals the structural force had
to deal with the intangible molecules of carbonate of lime. This tendency
on the part of matter to organize itself, to grow into shape, to assume
definite forms in obedience to the definite action of force, is, as I have
said, all-pervading. It is in the ground on which you tread, in the water
you drink, in the air you breathe. Incipient life, as it were, manifests
itself throughout the whole of what we call inorganic nature.
The forms of the minerals resulting from this play of polar forces are
various, and exhibit different degrees of complexity. Men of science avail
themselves of all possible means of exploring their molecular
architecture. For this purpose they employ in turn, as agents of
exploration, light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and sound. Polarized
light is especially useful and powerful here. A beam of such light, when
sent in among the molecules of a crystal, is acted on by them, and from
this action we infer with more or less of clearness the manner in which
the molecules are arranged. That differences, for example, exist between
the inner structure of rock salt and crystallized sugar or sugar-candy, is
thus strikingly revealed. These differences may be made to display
themselves in chromatic phenomena of great splendor, the play of molecular
force being so regulated as to remove some of the colored constituents of
white light, and to leave others with increased intensity behind.
And now let us pass from what we are accustomed to regard as a dead
mineral to a living grain of corn. When _it_ is examined by polarized
light, chromatic phenomena similar to those noticed in crystals are
observed. And why? Because the architecture of the grain resembles the
architecture of the crystal. In the grain also the molecules are set in
definite positions, and in accordance with their arrangement they act upon
the light. But what has built together the molecules of the corn? I have
already said regarding crystalline architecture that you may, if you
please, consider the atoms and molecules to be placed in position by a
power external to themselves. The same hypothesis is open to you now. But
if, in the case of crystals, you have rejected this notion of an external
architect, I think you are bound to reject it now, and to conclude that
the molecules of the corn are self-posited by the forces with which they
act upon each other. It would be poor philosophy to invoke an external
agent in the one case and reject it in the other.
Instead of cutting our grain of corn into slices and subjecting it to the
action of polarized light, let us place it in the earth and subject it to
a certain degree of warmth. In other words, let the molecules, both of the
corn and of the surrounding earth, be kept in that state of agitation
which we call warmth. Under these circumstances, the grain and the
substances which surround it interact, and a definite molecular
architecture is the result. A bud is formed; this bud reaches the surface,
where it is exposed to the sun's rays, which are also to be regarded as a
kind of vibratory motion. And as the motion of common heat, with which the
grain and the substances surrounding it were first endowed, enabled the
grain and these substances to exercise their attractions and repulsions,
and thus to coalesce in definite forms, so the specific motion of the
sun's rays now enables the green bud to feed upon the carbonic acid and
the aqueous vapor of the air. The bud appropriates those constituents of
both for which it has an elective attraction, and permits the other
constituent to resume its place in the air. Thus the architecture is
carried on. Forces are active at the root, forces are active in the blade,
the matter of the earth and the matter of the atmosphere are drawn toward
both, and the plant augments in size. We have in succession the bud, the
stalk, the ear, the full corn in the ear; the cycle of molecular action
being completed by the production of grains similar to that with which the
process began.
Now there is nothing in this process which necessarily eludes the
conceptive or imagining power of the purely human mind. An intellect the
same in kind as our own would, if only sufficiently expanded, be able to
follow the whole process from beginning to end. It would see every
molecule placed in its position by the specific attractions and repulsions
exerted between it and other molecules, the whole process and its
consummation being an instance of the play of molecular force. Given the
grain and its environment, the purely human intellect might, if
sufficiently expanded, trace out _a priori_ every step of the process of
growth, and by the application of purely mechanical principles demonstrate
that the cycle must end, as it is seen to end, in the reproduction of
forms like that with which it began. A similar necessity rules here to
that which rules the planets in their circuits round the sun.
You will notice that I am stating my truth strongly, as at the beginning
we agreed it should be stated. But I must go still further, and affirm
that in the eye of science _the animal body_ is just as much a product of
molecular force as the stalk and ear of corn, or as the crystal of salt or
sugar. Many of the parts of the body are obviously mechanical. Take the
human heart, for example, with its system of valves; or take the exquisite
mechanism of the eye or hand. Animal heat, moreover, is the same in kind
as the heat of a fire, being produced by the same chemical process. Animal
motion, too, is as directly derived from the food of the animal as the
motion of Trevethyck's walking engine from the fuel in its furnace. As
regards matter, the animal body creates nothing; as regards force, it
creates nothing. Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his
stature? All that has been said, then, regarding the plant may be restated
with regard to the animal. Every particle that enters into the composition
of a muscle, a nerve, or a bone has been placed in its position by
molecular force. And, unless the existence of law in these matters is
denied, and the element of caprice introduced, we must conclude that,
given the relation of any molecule of the body to its environment, its
position in the body might be determined mathematically. Our difficulty is
not with the _quality_ of the problem, but with its _complexity_; and this
difficulty might be met by the simple expansion of the faculties which we
now possess. Given this expansion, with the necessary data, and the chick
might be deduced as rigorously and as logically from the egg as the
existence of Neptune was deduced from the disturbances of Uranus, or as
conical refraction was deduced from the undulatory theory of light.
You see, I am not mincing matters, but avowing nakedly what many
scientific thinkers more or less distinctively believe. The formation of a
crystal, a plant, or an animal is, in their eyes, a purely mechanical
problem, which differs from the problems of ordinary mechanics in the
smallness of the masses and the complexity of the processes involved. Here
you have one half of our dual truth; let us now glance at the other half.
Associated with this wonderful mechanism of the animal body, we have
phenomena no less certain than those of physics, but between which and the
mechanism we discern no necessary connection. A man, for example, can say
_I feel_, _I think_, _I love_; but how does _consciousness_ infuse itself
into the problem? The human brain is said to be the organ of thought and
feeling; when we are hurt, the brain feels it; when we ponder, it is the
brain that thinks; when our passions or affections are excited, it is
through the instrumentality of the brain. Let us endeavor to be a little
more precise here. I hardly imagine that there exists a profound
scientific thinker, who has reflected upon the subject, unwilling to admit
the extreme probability of the hypothesis that, for every fact of
consciousness, whether in the domain of sense, of thought, or of emotion,
a certain definite molecular condition is set up in the brain; who does
not hold this relation of physics to consciousness to be invariable, so
that, given the state of the brain, the corresponding thought or feeling
might be inferred; or, given the thought or feeling, the corresponding
state of the brain might be inferred.
But how inferred? It is at bottom not a case of logical inference at all,
but of empirical association. You may reply that many of the inferences of
science are of this character; the inference, for example, that an
electric current of a given direction will deflect a magnetic needle in a
definite way; but the cases differ in this, that the passage from the
current to the needle, if not demonstrable, is thinkable, and that we
entertain no doubt as to the final mechanical solution of the problem. But
the passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of
consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a
definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not
possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ,
which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to
the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds
and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated as to enable us to
see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following
all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if
such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding
states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the
solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with
the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of
phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the
consciousness of _love_, for example, be associated with a right-handed
spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of
_hate_ with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know, when we
love, that the motion is in one direction, and when we hate, that the
motion is in the other; but the _Why?_ would remain as unanswerable as
before.
In affirming that the growth of the body is mechanical, and that thought,
as exercised by us, has its correlative in the physics of the brain, I
think the position of the "Materialist" is stated, as far as that position
is a tenable one. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain
this position against all attacks; but I do not think, in the present
condition of the human mind, that he can pass beyond this position. I do
not think he is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his
molecular motions _explain_ everything. In reality, they explain nothing.
The utmost he can affirm is the association of two classes of phenomena,
of whose real bond of union he is in absolute ignorance.
The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its
modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is known to
enter into the composition of the human brain, and a trenchant German
writer has exclaimed, "Ohne Phosphor, kein Gedanke."[4] That may or may
not be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge
would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here assigned to
the materialist he is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this
"Matter" of which we have been discoursing, who or what divided it into
molecules, who or what impressed upon them this necessity of running into
organic forms, he has no answer. Science is mute in reply to these
questions.
But if the materialist is confounded and science rendered dumb, who else
is prepared with a solution? To whom has this arm of the Lord been
revealed? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and
philosopher, one and all. Perhaps the mystery may resolve itself into
knowledge at some future day. The process of things upon this earth has
been one of amelioration. It is a long way from the iguanodon and his
contemporaries to the President and the Members of the British
Association. And whether we regard the improvement from the scientific or
from the theological point of view, as the result of progressive
development, or as the result of successive exhibitions of creative
energy, neither view entitles us to assume that man's present faculties
end the series--that the process of amelioration stops at him.
A time may therefore come when this ultra-scientific region by which we
are now enfolded may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human,
investigation. Two thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse in
the eye the sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ
requisite for their translation into light does not exist. And so, from
this region of darkness and mystery which surrounds us, rays may now be
darting which require but the development of the proper intellectual
organs to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing ours as ours
surpasses that of the wallowing reptiles which once held possession of
this planet. Meanwhile the mystery is not without its uses. It certainly
may be made a power in the human soul; but it is a power which has
feeling, not knowledge, for its base. It may be, and will be, and we hope
is, turned to account, both in steadying and strengthening the intellect,
and in rescuing man from that littleness to which in the struggle for
existence or for precedence in the world he is continually prone.
JOHN HENRY, CARDINAL NEWMAN
CHRISTIANITY AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE[5]
So far, then, as these remarks have gone, Theology and Physics cannot
touch each other, have no intercommunion, have no ground of difference or
agreement, of jealousy or of sympathy. As well may musical truths be said
to interfere with the doctrines of architectural science; as well may
there be a collision between the mechanist and the geologist, the engineer
and the grammarian; as well might the British Parliament or the French
nation be jealous of some possible belligerent power upon the surface of
the moon, as Physics pick a quarrel with Theology. And it may be
well--before I proceed to fill up in detail this outline, and to explain
what has to be explained in this statement--to corroborate it, as it
stands, by the remarkable words upon the subject of a writer of the
day:[6]--
"We often hear it said," he observes, writing as a Protestant (and here
let me assure you, gentlemen, that though his words have a controversial
tone with them, I do not quote them in that aspect, or as wishing here to
urge anything against Protestants, but merely in pursuance of my own
point, that Revelation and Physical Science cannot really come into
collision), "we often hear it said that the world is constantly becoming
more and more enlightened, and that this enlightenment must be favorable
to Protestantism, and unfavorable to Catholicism. We wish that we could
think so. But we see great reason to doubt whether this is a well-founded
expectation. We see that during the last two hundred and fifty years the
human mind has been in the highest degree active; that it has made great
advances in every branch of natural philosophy; that it has produced
innumerable inventions tending to promote the convenience of life; that
medicine, surgery, chemistry, engineering, have been very greatly
improved, that government, police, and law have been improved, though not
to so great an extent as the physical sciences. Yet we see that, during
these two hundred and fifty years, Protestantism has made no conquests
worth speaking of. Nay, we believe that, as far as there has been change,
that change has, on the whole, been in favor of the Church of Rome. We
cannot, therefore, feel confident that the progress of knowledge will
necessarily be fatal to a system which has, to say the least, stood its
ground in spite of the immense progress made by the human race in
knowledge since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
"Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us to be founded
on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge with respect to
which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a
proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every
fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original
foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock
of truth. In the inductive sciences, again, the law is progress....
"But with theology the case is very different. As respects natural
religion (Revelation being for the present altogether left out of the
question), it is not easy to see that a philosopher of the present day is
more favorably situated than Thales or Simonides. He has before him just
the same evidences of design in the structure of the universe which the
early Greeks had.... As to the other great question, what becomes of man
after death, we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his
unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot
Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences, in which we surpass the
Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul
after the animal life is extinct....
"Natural Theology, then, is not a progressive science. That knowledge of
our origin and of our destiny which we derive from Revelation is indeed of
very different clearness, and of very different importance. But neither is
Revealed Religion of the nature of a progressive science.... In divinity
there cannot be a progress analogous to that which is constantly taking
place in pharmacy, geology, and navigation. A Christian of the fifth
century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian
of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candor and natural acuteness
being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the compass,
printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other
discoveries and inventions, which were unknown in the fifth century, are
familiar to the nineteenth. None of these discoveries and inventions has
the smallest bearing on the question whether man is justified by faith
alone, or whether the invocation of saints is an orthodox practice.... We
are confident that the world will never go back to the solar system of
Ptolemy; nor is our confidence in the least shaken by the circumstance
that so great a man as Bacon rejected the theory of Galileo with scorn;
for Bacon had not all the means of arriving at a sound conclusion. But
when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was ready to die for the doctrine of
Transubstantiation, we cannot but feel some doubt whether the doctrine of
Transubstantiation may not triumph over all opposition. More was a man of
eminent talents. He had all the information on the subject that we have,
or _that, while the world lasts, any human being will have.... No
progress that science has made, or will make_, can add to what seems to us
the overwhelming force of the argument against the Real Presence. We are
therefore unable to understand why what Sir Thomas More believed
respecting Transubstantiation may not be believed, to the end of time, by
men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir Thomas More. But Sir Thomas More
is one of the choice specimens of human wisdom and virtue; and the
doctrine of Transubstantiation is a kind of proof charge. The faith which
stands that test will stand any test....
"The history of Catholicism strikingly illustrates these observations.
During the last seven centuries the public mind of Europe has made
constant progress in every department of secular knowledge; but in
religion we can trace no constant progress.... Four times since the
authority of the Church of Rome was established in Western Christendom,
has the human intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice that Church
remained completely victorious. Twice she came forth from the conflict
bearing the marks of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life still
strong within her. When we reflect on the tremendous assaults she has
survived, we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish."
* * * * *
You see, gentlemen, if you trust the judgment of a sagacious mind, deeply
read in history, Catholic Theology has nothing to fear from the progress
of Physical Science, even independently of the divinity of its doctrines.
It speaks of things supernatural; and these, by the very force of the
words, research into nature cannot touch.
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
PULVIS ET UMBRA[7]
We look for some reward of our endeavors, and are disappointed; not
success, not happiness, not even peace of conscience, crowns our
ineffectual efforts to do well. Our frailties are invincible, our virtues
barren; the battle goes sore against us to the going down of the sun. The
canting moralist tells us of right and wrong; and we look abroad, even on
the face of our small earth, and find them change with every climate, and
no country where some action is not honored for a virtue and none where it
is not branded for a vice; and we look in our experience, and find no
vital congruity in the wisest rules, but at the best a municipal fitness.
It is not strange if we are tempted to despair of good. We ask too much.
Our religions and moralities have been trimmed to flatter us, till they
are all emasculate and sentimentalized, and only please and weaken. Truth
is of a rougher strain. In the harsh face of life, faith can read a
bracing gospel. The human race is a thing more ancient than the ten
commandments; and the bones and revolutions of the Kosmos, in whose joints
we are but moss and fungus, more ancient still.
Of the Kosmos in the last resort, science reports many doubtful things,
and all of them appalling. There seems no substance to this solid globe on
which we stamp: nothing but symbols and ratios. Symbols and ratios carry
us and bring us forth and beat us down; gravity, which swings the
incommensurable suns and worlds through space, is but a figment varying
inversely as the squares of distances; and the suns and worlds
themselves, imponderable figures of abstraction, NH{3} and H{2}O.
Consideration dares not dwell upon this view; that way madness lies;
science carries us into zones of speculation, where there is no habitable
city for the mind of man.
But take the Kosmos with a grosser faith, as our senses give it us. We
behold space sown with rotatory islands, suns and worlds and the shards
and wrecks of systems: some, like the sun, still blazing; some rotting,
like the earth; others, like the moon, stable in desolation. All of these
we take to be made of something we call matter: a thing which no analysis
can help us to conceive; to whose incredible properties no familiarity can
reconcile our minds. This stuff, when not purified by the lustration of
fire, rots uncleanly into something we call life; seized through all its
atoms with a pediculous malady; swelling in tumors that become
independent, sometimes even (by an abhorrent prodigy) locomotory; one
splitting into millions, millions cohering into one, as the malady
proceeds through varying stages. This vital putrescence of the dust, used
as we are to it, yet strikes us with occasional disgust; and the profusion
of worms in a piece of ancient turf, or the air of a marsh darkened with
insects, will sometimes check our breathing so that we aspire for cleaner
places. But none is clean: the moving sand is infected with lice; the pure
spring, where it bursts out of the mountain, is a mere issue of worms;
even in the hard rock the crystal is forming.
In two main shapes this eruption covers the countenance of the earth: the
animal and the vegetable; one in some degree the inversion of the other;
the second rooted to the spot; the first coming detached out of its natal
mud, and scurrying abroad with the myriad feet of insects, or towering
into the heavens on the wings of birds; a thing so inconceivable that, if
it be well considered, the heart stops. To what passes with the anchored
vermin, we have little clue; doubtless they have their joys and sorrows,
their delights and killing agonies; it appears not how. But of the
locomotory, to which we ourselves belong, we can tell more. These share
with us a thousand miracles: the miracles of sight, of hearing, of the
projection of sound; things that bridge space; the miracles of memory and
reason, by which the present is conceived, and, when it is gone, its image
kept living in the brains of man and brute; the miracle of reproduction,
with its imperious desires and staggering consequences. And to put the
last touch upon this mountain mass of the revolting and the inconceivable,
all these prey upon each other, lives tearing other lives in pieces,
cramming them inside themselves, and by that summary process, growing fat:
the vegetarian, the whale, perhaps the tree, not less than the lion of the
desert; for the vegetarian is only the eater of the dumb.
Meanwhile our rotatory island, loaded with predatory life, and more
drenched with blood, both animal and vegetable, than ever mutinied ship,
scuds through space with unimaginable speed, and turns alternate cheeks to
the reverberation of a blazing world, ninety million miles away.
What a monstrous spectre is this man, the disease of the agglutinated
dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing,
feeding, growing, bringing forth small copies of himself; grown upon with
hair like grass, fitted with eyes that move and glitter in his face; a
thing to set children screaming; and yet, looked at nearlier, known as his
fellows know him, how surprising are his attributes! Poor soul, here for
so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires so
incommensurate and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely
descended, irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow lives: who
should have blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny, and a
being merely barbarous? And we look and behold him instead filled with
imperfect virtues: infinitely childish, often admirably valiant, often
touchingly kind; sitting down, amidst his momentary life, to debate of
right and wrong and the attributes of the deity; rising up to do battle
for an egg or die for an idea; singling out his friends and his mate with
cordial affection; bringing forth in pain; rearing, with long-suffering
solicitude, his young.
To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in him one thought, strange to
the point of lunacy: the thought of duty; the thought of something owing
to himself, to his neighbor, to his God; an ideal of decency, to which he
would rise if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which, if it be
possible, he will not stoop. The design in most men is one of conformity;
here and there, in picked natures, it transcends itself and soars on the
other side, arming martyrs with independence; but in all, in their
degrees, it is a bosom thought. Not in man alone, for we trace it in dogs
and cats whom we know fairly well; and doubtless some similar point of
honor sways the elephant, the oyster, and the louse, of whom we know so
little. But in man, at least, it sways with so complete an empire that
merely selfish things come second, even with the selfish; that appetites
are starved, fears are conquered, pains supported; that almost the dullest
shrinks from the reproof of a glance, although it were a child's; and all
but the most cowardly stand amid the risks of war; and the more noble,
having strongly conceived an act as due to their ideal, affront and
embrace death. Strange enough, if, with their singular origin and
perverted practice, they think they are to be rewarded in some future
life; stranger still, if they are persuaded of the contrary, and think
this blow, which they solicit, will strike them senseless for eternity.
I shall be reminded what a tragedy of misconception and misconduct man at
large presents: of organized injustice, cowardly violence, and treacherous
crime; and of the damning imperfections of the best. They cannot be too
darkly drawn. Man is indeed marked for failure in his efforts to do right.
But where the best consistently miscarry, how tenfold more remarkable that
all should continue to strive; and surely we should find it both touching
and inspiriting that, in a field from which success is banished, our race
should not cease to labor.
If the first view of this creature, stalking in his rotatory isle, be a
thing to shake the courage of the stoutest, on this nearer sight he
startles us with an admiring wonder. It matters not where we look, under
what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what depth of
ignorance, burthened with what erroneous morality: by camp-fires in
Assiniboia, the snow powdering his shoulders, the wind plucking his
blanket, as he sits, passing the ceremonial calumet and uttering his grave
opinions like a Roman senator: in ships at sea, a man inured to hardship
and vile pleasures, his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern and a
bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him, and he, for all that,
simple, innocent, cheerful, kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave
to drown for others; in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent
millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future,
with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest
up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the
bright gin-palace, perhaps long-suffering with the drunken wife that ruins
him; in India (a woman this time) kneeling with broken cries and streaming
tears, as she drowns her child in the sacred river; in the brothel, the
discard of society, living mainly on strong drink, fed with affronts, a
fool, a thief, the comrade of thieves, and even here keeping the point of
honor and the touch of pity, often repaying the world's scorn with
service, often standing firm upon a scruple, and at a certain cost,
rejecting riches--everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere
some decency of thought and carriage, everywhere the ensign of man's
ineffectual goodness. Ah! if I could show you this! if I could show you
these men and women, all the world over, in every stage of history, under
every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope,
without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of
virtue, still clinging, in the brothel or on the scaffold, to some rag of
honor, the poor jewel of their souls! They may seek to escape, and yet
they cannot; it is not alone their privilege and glory, but their doom;
they are condemned to some nobility; all their lives long, the desire of
good is at their heels, the implacable hunter.
Of all earth's meteors, here at least is the most strange and consoling:
that this ennobled lemur, this hair-crowned bubble of the dust, this
inheritor of a few years and sorrows, should yet deny himself his rare
delights, and add to his frequent pains, and live for an ideal, however
misconceived. Nor can we stop with man. A new doctrine, received with
screams a little while ago by canting moralists, and still not properly
worked into the body of our thoughts, lights us a step further into the
heart of this rough but noble universe. For nowadays the pride of man
denies in vain his kinship with the original dust. He stands no longer
like a thing apart. Close at his heels we see the dog, prince of another
genus: and in him too we see dumbly testified the same cultus of an
unattainable ideal, the same constancy in failure. Does it stop with the
dog? We look at our feet, where the ground is blackened with the swarming
ant: a creature so small, so far from us in the hierarchy of brutes, that
we can scarce trace and scarce comprehend his doings; and here also, in
his ordered polities and rigorous justice, we see confessed the law of
duty and the fact of individual sin. Does it stop, then, with the ant?
Rather, this desire of well-doing and this doom of frailty run through all
the grades of life; rather is this earth, from the frosty top of Everest
to the next margin of the internal fire, one stage of ineffectual virtues
and one temple of pious tears and perseverance.
The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together. It is the common and
the god-like law of life. The browsers, the biters, the barkers, the hairy
coats of field and forest, the squirrel in the oak, the thousand-footed
creeper in the dust, as they share with us the gift of life, share with us
the love of an ideal: strive like us,--like us are tempted to grow weary
of the struggle,--to do well; like us receive at times unmerited
refreshment, visitings of support, returns of courage; and are condemned
like us to be crucified between that double law of the members and the
will. Are they like us, I wonder, in the timid hope of some reward, some
sugar with the drug? Do they, too, stand aghast at unrewarded virtues, at
the sufferings of those whom, in our partiality, we take to be just, and
the prosperity of such as, in our blindness, we call wicked? It may be;
and yet God knows what they should look for. Even while they look, even
while they repent, the foot of man treads them by thousands in the dust,
the yelping hounds burst upon their trail, the bullet speeds, the knives
are heating in the den of the vivisectionist; or the dew falls, and the
generation of a day is blotted out. For these are creatures compared with
whom our weakness is strength, our ignorance wisdom, our brief span
eternity.
And as we dwell, we living things, in our isle of terror and under the
imminent hand of death, God forbid it should be man the erected, the
reasoner, the wise in his own eyes--God forbid it should be man that
wearies in well-doing, that despairs of unrewarded effort, or utters the
language of complaint. Let it be enough for faith, that the whole creation
groans in mortal frailty, strives with unconquerable constancy--surely not
all in vain.
JOHN RUSKIN
THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS[8]
When I accepted the privilege of addressing you to-day, I was not aware of
a restriction with respect to the topics of discussion which may be
brought before this Society[9]--a restriction which, though entirely wise
and right under the circumstances contemplated in its introduction, would
necessarily have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing any
lecture for you on the subject of art in a form which might be permanently
useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as I must transgress such
limitation; for indeed my infringement will be of the letter--not of the
spirit--of your commands. In whatever I may say touching the religion
which has been the foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed
to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I shall take no
note of any separations in creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither do I
fear that ultimately I shall offend any, by proving--or at least stating
as capable of positive proof--the connection of all that is best in the
crafts and arts of man, with the simplicity of his faith, and the
sincerity of his patriotism.
But I speak to you under another disadvantage, by which I am checked in
frankness of utterance, not here only, but everywhere: namely, that I am
never fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give me credit for
real knowledge of my subject, or how far they grant me attention only
because I have been sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist
upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I boldly call the
misfortune, to set my words sometimes prettily together; not without a
foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had of doing so: until I was
heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many people thought of
the words only, and cared nothing for their meaning. Happily, therefore,
the power of using such pleasant language--if, indeed, it ever were
mine--is passing away from me; and whatever I am now able to say at all, I
find myself forced to say with great plainness. For my thoughts have
changed also, as my words have; and whereas in earlier life, what little
influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to the enthusiasm with which
I was able to dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, and of their
colors in the sky; so all the influence I now desire to retain must be due
to the earnestness with which I am endeavoring to trace the form and
beauty of another kind of cloud than those: the bright cloud of which it
is written, "What is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a
little time, and then vanisheth away."
I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age,
without having, at some moment of change or disappointment, felt the truth
of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine
from the cloud of their life into the sudden agony of the knowledge that
the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as
transient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at such times of
melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true perception that this human
life shares in the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery
of the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, and its forms and
courses no less fantastic, than spectral and obscure; so that not only in
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow which we cannot
pierce, it is true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man walketh in a
vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain."
And least of all, whatever may have been the eagerness of our passions, or
the height of our pride, are we able to understand in its depths the third
and most solemn character in which our life is like those clouds of
heaven; that to it belongs, not only their transience, not only their
mystery, but also their power; that in the cloud of the human soul there
is a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more precious than the
rain; and that, though of the good and evil it shall one day be said
alike, that the place that knew them knows them no more, there is an
infinite separation between those whose brief presence had there been a
blessing, like the mist of Eden that went up from the earth to water the
garden, and those whose place knew them only as a drifting and changeful
shade, of whom the Heavenly sentence is, that they are "wells without
water; clouds that are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of
darkness is reserved forever."
To those among us, however, who have lived long enough to form some just
estimate of the rate of the changes which are, hour by hour in
accelerating catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, the arts,
and the creeds of men, it seems to me that, now at least, if never at any
former time, the thoughts of the true nature of our life, and of its
powers and responsibilities, should present themselves with absolute
sadness and sternness. And although I know that this feeling is much
deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, by chance, has attended
the greater number of my cherished purposes, I do not for that reason
distrust the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against an
exaggerated degree of it; nay, I rather believe that in periods of new
effort and violent change, disappointment is a wholesome medicine; and
that in the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may
see the colors of things with deeper truth than in the most dazzling
sunshine....
You know, there is a tendency in the minds of many men, when they are
heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their life, to feel, and
perhaps in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, that life itself is a
vanity. Because it has disappointed them, they think its nature is of
disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure that can be grasped by
imagination only; that the cloud of it has no strength nor fire within;
but is a painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. You know
how beautifully Pope has expressed this particular phase of thought:--
Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays,
These painted clouds that beautify our days;
Each want of happiness by hope supplied,
And each vacuity of sense, by pride.
Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy;
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy.
One pleasure past, another still we gain,
And not a vanity is given in vain.
But the effect of failure upon my own mind has been just the reverse of
this. The more that my life disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful
it became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's saying, that the vanity
of it _was_ indeed given in vain; but that there was something behind the
veil of it, which was not vanity. It became to me, not a painted cloud,
but a terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, which vanished as I
drew near, but a pillar of darkness, to which I was forbidden to draw
near. For I saw that both my own failure, and such success in petty things
as in its poor triumph seemed to me worse than failure, came from the want
of sufficiently earnest effort to understand the whole law and meaning of
existence, and to bring it to noble and due end; as, on the other hand, I
saw more and more clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any
other occupation, had come from the ruling of the lower purposes, not by a
conviction of their nothingness, but by a solemn faith in the advancing
power of human nature, or in the promise, however dimly apprehended, that
the mortal part of it would one day be swallowed up in immortality; and
that, indeed, the arts themselves never had reached any vital strength of
honor, but in the effort to proclaim this immortality, and in the service
either of great and just religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and
law of such national life as must be the foundation of religion.
Nothing that I have ever said is more true or necessary--nothing has been
more misunderstood or misapplied--than my strong assertion that the arts
can never be right themselves unless their motive is right. It is
misunderstood this way: weak painters, who have never learned their
business, and cannot lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out,
"Look at this picture of mine; it _must_ be good, I had such a lovely
motive. I have put my whole heart into it, and taken years to think over
its treatment." Well, the only answer for these people is,--if one had the
cruelty to make it,--"Sir, you cannot think over _any_thing in any number
of years,--you haven't the head to do it; and though you had fine motives,
strong enough to make you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first you
could paint a picture, you can't paint one, nor half an inch of one; you
haven't the hand to do it."
But, far more decisively we have to say to the men who _do_ know their
business, or may know it if they choose, "Sir, you have this gift, and a
mighty one; see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It is a
greater trust than ships and armies: you might cast _them_ away, if you
were their captain, with less treason to your people than in casting your
own glorious power away, and serving the devil with it instead of men.
Ships and armies you may replace if they are lost, but a great intellect,
once abused, is a curse to the earth forever."
This, then, I meant by saying that the arts must have noble motive. This
also I said respecting them, that they never had prospered, nor could
prosper, but when they had such true purpose, and were devoted to the
proclamation of divine truth or law. And yet I saw also that they had
always failed in this proclamation--that poetry, and sculpture, and
painting, though great when they strove to teach us something about the
gods, never had taught us anything trustworthy about the gods, but had
always betrayed their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their powers at
the full reach, became ministers to pride and to lust. And I felt also,
with increasing amazement, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves the
hearers, no less than in these the teachers; and that, while the wisdom
and rightness of every act and art of life could only be consistent with a
right understanding of the ends of life, we were all plunged as in a
languid dream--our hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our ears closed,
lest the inspiration of hand or voice should reach us--lest we should see
with our eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed.
This intense apathy in all of us is the first great mystery of life; it
stands in the way of every perception, every virtue. There is no making
ourselves feel enough astonishment at it. That the occupations or pastimes
of life should have no motive, is understandable; but--that life itself
should have no motive,--that we neither care to find out what it may lead
to, nor to guard against its being forever taken away from us,--here is a
mystery indeed. For just suppose I were able to call at this moment to
anyone in this audience by name, and to tell him positively that I knew a
large estate had been lately left to him on some curious conditions; but
that though I knew it was large, I did not know how large, nor even where
it was--whether in the East Indies or the West, or in England, or at the
Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance
of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out on what terms it
had been left to him. Suppose I were able to say this positively to any
single man in this audience, and he knew that I did not speak without
warrant, do you think that he would rest content with that vague
knowledge, if it were anywise possible to obtain more? Would he not give
every energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest till he had
ascertained where this place was, and what it was like? And suppose he
were a young man, and all he could discover by his best endeavor was that
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he persevered, during
certain years of probation, in an orderly and industrious life; but that,
according to the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it literally depended on
his behavior from day to day whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty
thousand a year, or nothing whatever--would you not think it strange if
the youth never troubled himself to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor
even to know what was required of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and
never inquired whether his chances of the estate were increasing or
passing away?
Well, you know that this is actually and literally so with the greater
number of the educated persons now living in Christian countries. Nearly
every man and woman in any company such as this outwardly professes to
believe--and a large number unquestionably think they believe--much more
than this; not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect for them
if they please the Holder of it, but that the infinite contrary of such a
possession--an estate of perpetual misery--is in store for them if they
displease this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet there
is not one in a thousand of these human souls that cares to think, for ten
minutes of the day, where this estate is or how beautiful it is, or what
kind of life they are to lead in it, or what kind of life they must lead
to obtain it.
You fancy that you care to know this; so little do you care that,
probably, at this moment many of you are displeased with me for talking of
the matter! You came to hear about the Art of this world, not about the
Life of the next, and you are provoked with me for talking of what you can
hear any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. I will tell you something
before you go about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, and what else you
would like better to hear of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you say,
"We want you to talk of pictures and pottery, because we are sure that you
know something of them, and you know nothing of the other world." Well--I
don't. That is quite true. But the very strangeness and mystery of which I
urge you to take notice, is in this--that I do not--nor you either. Can
you answer a single bold question unflinchingly about that other
world?--Are you sure there is a heaven? Sure there is a hell? Sure that
men are dropping before your faces through the pavements of these streets
into eternal fire, or sure that they are not? Sure that, at your own
death, you are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with
all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and raised into perpetual
companionship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the earth are as
grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of his feet? Are you sure of
this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much as care to make it sure? and,
if not, how can anything that we do be right--how can anything we think be
wise? what honor can there be in the arts that amuse us, or what profit in
the possessions that please?
Is not this a mystery of life?
But further, you may, perhaps, think it a beneficent ordinance for the
generality of men that they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on
such questions of the future, because the business of the day could not be
done if this kind of thought were taken by all of us for the morrow. Be it
so; but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and wisest of us,
who were evidently the appointed teachers of the rest, would set
themselves apart to seek out whatever could be surely known of the future
destinies of their race; and to teach this in no rhetorical or ambiguous
manner, but in the plainest and most severely earnest words.
Now, the highest representatives of men who have thus endeavored, during
the Christian era, to search out these deep things, and relate them, are
Dante and Milton. There are none who for earnestness of thought, for
mastery of word, can be classed with these. I am not at present, mind you,
speaking of persons set apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to
deliver creeds to us, or doctrines; but of men who try to discover and set
forth, as far as by human intellect is possible, the facts of the other
world. Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, but only these
two poets have in any powerful manner striven to discover, or in any
definite words professed to tell, what we shall see and become there; or
how those upper and nether worlds are, and have been, inhabited.
And what have they told us? Milton's account of the most important event
in his whole system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evidently
unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that it is wholly founded on,
and in a great part spoiled and degraded from, Hesiod's account of the
decisive war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest of his poem is
a picturesque drama, in which every artifice of invention is visibly and
consciously employed; not a single fact being, for an instant, conceived
as tenable by any living faith.
Dante's conception is far more intense, and, by himself, for the time, not
to be escaped from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, and that one
of the wildest that ever entranced a soul--a dream in which every
grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tradition is renewed, and adorned;
and the destinies of the Christian Church, under their most sacred
symbols, become literally subordinate to the praise, and are only to be
understood by the aid, of one dear Florentine maiden.
I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and
trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems
daily more amazing to me that men such as these should dare to play with
the most precious truths (or the most deadly untruths) by which the whole
human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived--all the world
their audiences forever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart; and yet,
to this submissive infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon
sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of
hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the
openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and
which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic
imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal
love.
Is not this a mystery of life?
But more. We have to remember that these two great teachers were both of
them warped in their temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They
were men of intellectual war, unable, through darkness of controversy, or
stress of personal grief, to discern where their own ambition modified
their utterances of the moral law; or their own agony mingled with their
anger at its violation. But greater men than these have
been--innocent-hearted--too great for contest. Men, like Homer and
Shakespeare, of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in future
ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen god. Men,
therefore, to whose unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with which they will not
strive; or in mournful and transitory strength, which they dare not
praise. And all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes subject to
them. It does not matter how little, or how much, any of us have read,
either of Homer or Shakespeare; everything round us, in substance or in
thought, has been moulded by them. All Greek gentlemen were educated under
Homer. All Roman gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and French,
and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, and by its principles. Of the
scope of Shakespeare, I will say only that the intellectual measure of
every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned
to him according to the degree in which he has been taught by Shakespeare.
Well, what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, deliver to us
of conviction respecting what it most behooves that intelligence to grasp?
What is their hope--their crown of rejoicing? what manner of exhortation
have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, and
dictates their undying words? Have they any peace to promise to our
unrest, any redemption to our misery?
Take Homer first, and think if there is any sadder image of human fate
than the great Homeric story. The main features in the character of
Achilles are its intense desire of justice and its tenderness of
affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this man, though aided
continually by the wisest of the gods, and burning with the desire of
justice in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion, the most
unjust of men; and, full of the deepest tenderness in his heart, becomes
yet, through ill-governed passion, the most cruel of men. Intense alike in
love and in friendship, he loses, first his mistress, and then his friend;
for the sake of the one, he surrenders to death the armies of his own
land; for the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man lay down
his life for his friend? Yea, even for his _dead_ friend, this Achilles,
though goddess-born and goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country,
and his life--casts alike the innocent and guilty, with himself, into one
gulf of slaughter, and dies at last by the hand of the basest of his
adversaries.
Is not this a mystery of life?
But what, then, is the message to us of our own poet, and searcher of
hearts, after fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have been numbered
over the graves of men? Are his words more cheerful than the Heathen's--is
his hope more near--his trust more sure--his reading of fate more happy?
Ah, no! He differs from the Heathen poet chiefly in this--that he
recognizes, for deliverance, no gods nigh at hand; and that, by petty
chance--by momentary folly--by broken message--by fool's tyranny--or
traitor's snare, the strongest and most righteous are brought to their
ruin, and perish without word of hope. He indeed, as part of his
rendering of character, ascribes the power and modesty of habitual
devotion to the gentle and the just. The death-bed of Katharine is bright
with visions of angels; and the great soldier-king, standing by his few
dead, acknowledges the presence of the Hand that can save alike by many or
by few. But observe that from those who with deepest spirit meditate, and
with deepest passion mourn, there are no such words as these; nor in their
hearts are any such consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the
helpful presence of the Deity, which through all heathen tradition is the
source of heroic strength, in battle, in exile, and in the valley of the
shadow of death, we find only, in the great Christian poet, the
consciousness of a moral law, through which "the gods are just, and of our
pleasant vices make instruments to scourge us"; and of the resolved
arbitration of the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom what we
feebly and blindly began; and force us, when our indiscretion serves us,
and our deepest plots do pall, to the confession that "there's a divinity
that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will."
Is not this a mystery of life?
Be it so, then. About this human life that is to be, or that is, the wise
religious men tell us nothing that we can trust; and the wise
contemplative men, nothing that can give us peace. But there is yet a
third class to whom we may turn--the wise practical men. We have sat at
the feet of the poets who sang of heaven, and they have told us their
dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of earth, and they have
chanted to us dirges and words of despair. But there is one class of men
more--men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow, but firm of
purpose; practised in business; learned in all that can be (by handling)
known. Men whose hearts and hopes are wholly in this present world; from
whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at least, how, at present,
conveniently to live in it. What will _they_ say to us, or show us by
example? These kings--these councilors--these statesmen and builders of
kingdoms--these capitalists and men of business, who weigh the earth, and
the dust of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely; and what is the
mystery of life to us is none to them. They can surely show us how to
live, while we live, and to gather out of the present world what is best.
I think I can best tell you their answer by telling you a dream I had
once. For though I am no poet, I have dreams sometimes. I dreamed I was at
a child's May-day party, in which every means of entertainment had been
provided for them by a wise and kind host. It was in a stately house, with
beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children had been set free in
the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their
afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about what was to
happen next day; and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened,
because there was a chance of their being sent to a new school, where
there were examinations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their
heads as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy themselves. The house,
I said, was in a beautiful garden, and in the garden were all kinds of
flowers; sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and
pleasant streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the
children were happy for a little while; but presently they separated
themselves into parties; and then each party declared it would have a
piece of the garden for its own, and that none of the others should have
anything to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently which
pieces they would have; and at last the boys took up the thing, as boys
should do, "practically," and fought in the flower-beds till there was
hardly a flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits
of the garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no
more; and so they all lay down at last, breathless, in the ruin, and
waited for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.[10]
Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves happy also
in their manner. For them there had been provided every kind of indoor
pleasure: there was music for them to dance to; and the library was open,
with all manner of amusing books; and there was a museum full of the most
curious shells, and animals, and birds; and there was a workshop, with
lathes and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys; and there were
pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there were
microscopes, and kaleidoscopes, and whatever toys a child could fancy; and
a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat.
But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more
"practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed nails
that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them out.
Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took a
fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly,
were spraining their fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. With all
that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and then, everybody
wanted some of somebody else's. And at last, the really practical and
sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, that
afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books,
and the cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in themselves,
but only, if they could be exchanged for nail-heads. And at last they
began to fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of
garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and
tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise; but
all the practical ones thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all
the afternoon, even though they knew they would not be allowed to carry so
much as one brass knob away with them. But no--it was, "Who has most
nails? I have a hundred, and you have fifty"; or, "I have a thousand, and
you have two. I must have as many as you before I leave the house, or I
cannot possibly go home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I
awoke, and thought to myself, "What a false dream that is, of _children_!"
The child is the father of the man; and wiser. Children never do such
foolish things. Only men do.
But there is yet one last class of persons to be interrogated. The wise
religious men we have asked in vain; the wise contemplative men, in vain;
the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another group yet. In the
midst of this vanity of empty religion, of tragic contemplation, of
wrathful and wretched ambition, and dispute for dust, there is yet one
great group of persons, by whom all these disputers live--the persons who
have determined, or have had it by a beneficent Providence determined for
them, that they will do something useful; that whatever may be prepared
for them hereafter, or happen to them here, they will, at least, deserve
the food that God gives them by winning it honorably: and that, however
fallen from the purity, or far from the peace, of Eden, they will carry
out the duty of human dominion, though they have lost its felicity; and
dress and keep the wilderness, though they no more can dress or keep the
garden.
These--hewers of wood and drawers of water; these--bent under burdens, or
torn of scourges; these--that dig and weave that plant and build; workers
in wood, and in marble, and in iron--by whom all food, clothing,
habitation, furniture, and means of delight are produced, for themselves,
and for all men beside; men, whose deeds are good, though their words may
be few; men, whose lives are serviceable, be they never so short, and
worthy of honor, be they never so humble--from these surely, at least, we
may receive some clear message of teaching; and pierce, for an instant,
into the mystery of life, and of its arts.
Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a lesson. But I grieve to say,--or
rather, for that is the deeper truth of the matter, I rejoice to
say,--this message of theirs can only be received by joining them, not by
thinking about them.
You sent for me to talk to you of art; and I have obeyed you in coming.
But the main thing I have to tell you is, that art must not be talked
about. The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies that it is
ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter ever speaks, or ever has
spoken, much of his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no
exception, for he wrote of all that he could not himself do, and was
utterly silent respecting all that he himself did.
The moment a man can really do his work he becomes speechless about it.
All words become idle to him--all theories. Does a bird need to theorize
about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is
essentially done that way--without hesitation, without difficulty, without
boasting; and in the doers of the best, there is an inner and involuntary
power which approximates literally to the instinct of an animal--nay, I
am certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does _not_
supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine than
that of the lower animals; as the human body is more beautiful than
theirs; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than the
nightingale, but with more--only more various, applicable, and governable;
that a great architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver
or the bee, but with more--with an innate cunning of proportion that
embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all
construction.
* * * * *
And now, returning to the broader question, what these arts and labors of
life have to teach us of its mystery, this is the first of their
lessons--that the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially the
work of the people who _feel themselves wrong_; who are striving for the
fulfillment of a law, and the grasp of a loveliness, which they have not
yet attained, which they feel even further and further from attaining, the
more they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper sense, it is the work of
people who know also that they are right. The very sense of inevitable
error from their purpose marks the perfectness of that purpose, and the
continued sense of failure arises from the continued opening of the eyes
more clearly to all the sacredest laws of truth.
This is one lesson. The second is a very plain, and greatly precious one:
namely--that, whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled in this
spirit of striving against misrule, and doing whatever we have to do
honorably and perfectly, they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems
possible to the nature of man. In all other paths by which that happiness
is pursued there is disappointment, or destruction: for ambition and for
passion there is no rest--no fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth
perish in a darkness greater than their past light: and the loftiest and
purest love too often does but inflame the cloud of life with endless fire
of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, through every scale of
human industry, that industry, worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the
laborer in the field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask the patient,
delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in
bronze, and in marble, and with the colors of light; and none of these,
who are true workmen, will ever tell you that they have found the law of
heaven an unkind one--that in the sweat of their face they should eat
bread, till they return to the ground; nor that they ever found it an
unrewarded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faithfully to the
command, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do--do it with thy might."
These are the two great and constant lessons which our laborers teach us
of the mystery of life. But there is another, and a sadder one, which they
cannot teach us, which we must read on their tombstones.
"Do it with thy might." There have been myriads upon myriads of human
creatures who have obeyed this law,--who have put every breath and nerve
of their being into its toil,--who have devoted every hour, and exhausted
every faculty,--who have bequeathed their unaccomplished thoughts at
death,--who, being dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of memory, and
strength of example. And, at last, what has all this "Might" of humanity
accomplished, in six thousand years of labor and sorrow? What has it
_done_? Take the three chief occupations and arts of men, one by one, and
count their achievements. Begin with the first,--the lord of them
all,--Agriculture. Six thousand years have passed since we were set to
till the ground, from which we were taken. How much of it is tilled? How
much of that which is, wisely or well? In the very centre and chief garden
of Europe,--where the two forms of parent Christianity have had their
fortresses,--where the noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and the
noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, have maintained, for dateless
ages, their faiths and liberties,--there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet
run wild in devastation; and the marshes, which a few hundred men could
redeem with a year's labor, still blast their helpless inhabitants into
fevered idiotism. That is so, in the centre of Europe! While, on the near
coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperides, an Arab woman, but a
few sunsets since, ate her child, for famine. And, with all the treasures
of the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could not find a few
grains of rice for a people that asked of us no more; but stood by, and
saw five hundred thousand of them perish of hunger.
Then after agriculture, the art of kings, take the next head of human
arts--Weaving; the art of queens, honored of all Heathen women, in the
person of their virgin goddess--honored of all Hebrew women, by the word
of their wisest king--"She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands
hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the poor. She is not
afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed
with scarlet. She maketh herself covering of tapestry; her clothing is
silk and purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth it, and delivereth
girdles to the merchant." What have we done in all these thousands of
years with this bright art of Greek maid and Christian matron? Six
thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to weave? Might not every
naked wall have been purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced
with sweet colors from the cold? What have we done? Our fingers are too
few, it seems, to twist together some poor covering for our bodies. We set
our streams to work for us, and choke the air with fire, to turn our
spinning-wheels--and--_are we yet clothed_? Are not the streets of the
capitals of Europe foul with sale of cast clouts and rotten rags? Is not
the beauty of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, while,
with better honor, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and
the suckling of the wolf in her den? And does not every winter's snow robe
what you have not robed, and shroud what you have not shrouded; and every
winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to witness against you
hereafter, by the voice of their Christ,--"I was naked, and ye clothed me
not"?
Lastly--take the Art of Building--the strongest--proudest--most
orderly--most enduring of the arts of man; that of which the produce is in
the surest manner accumulative, and need not perish, or be replaced; but
if once well done, will stand more strongly than the unbalanced
rocks--more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art which is
associated with all civic pride and sacred principle; with which men
record their power--satisfy their enthusiasm--make sure their
defence--define and make dear their habitation. And in six thousand years
of building, what have we done? Of the greater part of all that skill and
strength, _no_ vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the
fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste of disorder, and of
time, and of rage, what _is_ left to us? Constructive and progressive
creatures that we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capable of
fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, in comfort, with
the insects of the forest, or, in achievement, with the worm of the sea?
The white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by poor atoms of
scarcely nascent life; but only ridges of formless ruin mark the places
where once dwelt our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have cells
for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in
homes that consume them like graves; and night by night, from the corners
of our streets, rises up the cry of the homeless: "I was a stranger, and
ye took me not in."
Must it be always thus? Is our life forever to be without profit--without
possession? Shall the strength of its generations be as barren as death;
or cast away their labor, as the wild fig tree casts her untimely figs? Is
it all a dream then--the desire of the eyes and the pride of life--or, if
it be, might we not live in nobler dream than this? The poets and
prophets, the wise men, and the scribes, though they have told us nothing
about a life to come, have told us much about the life that is now. They
have had--they also--their dreams, and we have laughed at them. They have
dreamed of mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed of peace and
good-will; they have dreamed of labor undisappointed, and of rest
undisturbed; they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and overflowing in
store; they have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of providence in law;
of gladness of parents, and strength of children, and glory of gray hairs.
And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, and held them for idle and
vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What have we accomplished with our
realities? Is this what has come of our worldly wisdom, tried against
their folly? this, our mightiest possible, against their impotent ideal?
or, have we only wandered among the spectra of a baser felicity, and
chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions of the Almighty; and
walked after the imaginations of our evil hearts, instead of after the
counsels of Eternity, until our lives--not in the likeness of the cloud of
heaven, but of the smoke of hell--have become "as a vapor, that appeareth
for a little time, and then vanisheth away"?
_Does_ it vanish, then? Are you sure of that?--sure that the nothingness
of the grave will be a rest from this troubled nothingness; and that the
coiling shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change into the
smoke of the torment that ascends forever? Will any answer that they _are_
sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor,
whither they go? Be it so: will you not, then, make as sure of the Life
that now is, as you are of the Death that is to come? Your hearts are
wholly in this world--will you not give them to it wisely, as well as
perfectly? And see, first of all, that you _have_ hearts, and sound
hearts, too, to give. Because you have no heaven to look for, is that any
reason that you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and infinite
earth, which is firmly and instantly given you in possession? Although
your days are numbered, and the following darkness sure, is it necessary
that you should share the degradation of the brute, because you are
condemned to its mortality; or live the life of the moth, and of the worm,
because you are to companion them in the dust? Not so; we may have but a
few thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only--perhaps tens; nay,
the longest of our time and best, looked back on, will be but as a moment,
as the twinkling of an eye; still we are men, not insects; we are living
spirits, not passing clouds. "He maketh the winds His messengers; the
momentary fire, His minister"; and shall we do less than _these_? Let us
do the work of men while we bear the form of them; and, as we snatch our
narrow portion of time out of Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance
of passion out of Immortality--even though our lives _be_ as a vapor, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.
But there are some of you who believe not this--who think this cloud of
life has no such close--that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon
the floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, and every eye
shall see Him. Some day, you believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty
years, for every one of us the judgment will be set, and the books opened.
If that be true, far more than that must be true. Is there but one day of
judgment? Why, for us every day is a day of judgment--every day is a Dies
Iræ, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the flame of its west. Think
you that judgment waits till the doors of the grave are opened? It waits
at the doors of your houses--it waits at the corners of your streets; we
are in the midst of judgment--the insects that we crush are our
judges--the moments we fret away are our judges--the elements that feed
us, judge, as they minister--and the pleasures that deceive us, judge, as
they indulge. Let us, for our lives, do the work of Men while we bear the
form of them, if indeed those lives are _Not_ as a vapor, and do _Not_
vanish away.
"The work of men"--and what is that? Well, we may any of us know very
quickly, on the condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many of us
are for the most part thinking, not of what we are to do, but of what we
are to get; and the best of us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is
a mortal one--we want to keep back part of the price; and we continually
talk of taking up our cross, as if the only harm in a cross was the
_weight_ of it--as if it was only a thing to be carried, instead of to
be--crucified upon. "They that are His have crucified the flesh, with the
affections and lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in time of national
distress, of religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of
humanity--none of us will cease jesting, none cease idling, none put
themselves to any wholesome work, none take so much as a tag of lace off
their footman's coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, that
they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kindreds--yes, and life, if
need be? Life!--some of us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as
we have made it. But "_station_ in Life,"--how many of us are ready to
quit _that_? Is it not always the great objection, where there is question
of finding something useful to do--"We cannot leave our stations in Life"?
Those of us who really cannot--that is to say, who can only maintain
themselves by continuing in some business or salaried office, have already
something to do; and all that they have to see to is, that they do it
honestly and with all their might. But with most people who use that
apology, "remaining in the station of life to which Providence has called
them" means keeping all the carriages, and all the footmen and large
houses they can possibly pay for; and, once for all, I say that if ever
Providence _did_ put them into stations of that sort,--which is not at all
a matter of certainty,--Providence is just now very distinctly calling
them out again. Levi's station in life was the receipt of custom; and
Peter's, the shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antechambers of the High
Priest--which "station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice.
And whatever our station in life may be, at this crisis, those of us who
mean to fulfil our duty ought first, to live on as little as we can; and,
secondly, to do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend all we
can spare in doing all the sure good we can.
And sure good is, first in feeding people, then in dressing people, then
in lodging people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, with arts, or
sciences, or any other subject of thought.
I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do not let yourselves be
deceived by any of the common talk of "indiscriminate charity." The order
to us is not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor
the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, but simply to feed the hungry. It
is quite true, infallibly true, that if any man will not work, neither
should he eat--think of that, and every time you sit down to your dinner,
ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, before you ask a blessing, "How much
work have I done to-day for my dinner?" But the proper way to enforce that
order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave
vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to
discern and seize your vagabond; and shut your vagabond up out of honest
people's way, and very sternly then see that, until he has worked, he does
_not_ eat. But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to give;
and, therefore, to enforce the organization of vast activities in
agriculture and in commerce, for the production of the wholesomest food,
and proper storing and distribution of it, so that no famine shall any
more be possible among civilized beings. There is plenty of work in this
business alone, and at once, for any number of people who like to engage
in it.
Secondly, dressing people--that is to say, urging everyone within reach of
your influence to be always neat and clean, and giving them means of being
so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you must give up the effort with
respect to them, only taking care that no children within your sphere of
influence shall any more be brought up with such habits; and that every
person who is willing to dress with propriety shall have encouragement to
do so. And the first absolutely necessary step toward this is the gradual
adoption of a consistent dress for different ranks of persons, so that
their rank shall be known by their dress; and the restriction of the
changes of fashion within certain limits. All which appears for the
present quite impossible; but it is only so far even difficult as it is
difficult to conquer our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we
are not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, that these mean
and shallow vices are unconquerable by Christian women.
And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you may think should have been
put first, but I put it third, because we must feed and clothe people
where we find them, and lodge them afterwards. And providing lodgment for
them means a great deal of vigorous legislation, and cutting down of
vested interests that stand in the way; and after that, or before that, so
far as we can get it, through sanitary and remedial action in the houses
that we have; and then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and in
groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to their streams, and walled
round, so that there may be no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but
clean and busy streets within, and the open country without, with a belt
of beautiful garden and orchard round the walls, so that from any part of
the city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight of far horizon, might be
reachable in a few minutes' walk. This the final aim; but in immediate
action every minor and possible good to be instantly done, when, and as,
we can; roofs mended that have holes in them--fences patched that have
gaps in them--walls buttressed that totter--and floors propped that shake;
cleanliness and order enforced with our own hands and eyes, till we are
breathless, every day. And all the fine arts will healthily follow. I
myself have washed a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and
broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed their stairs since they
first went up them; and I never made a better sketch than that afternoon.
These, then, are the three first needs of civilized life; and the law for
every Christian man and woman is, that they shall be in direct service
toward one of these three needs, as far as is consistent with their own
special occupation, and if they have no special business, then wholly in
one of these services. And out of such exertion in plain duty all other
good will come; for in this direct contention with material evil, you will
find out the real nature of all evil; you will discern by the various
kinds of resistance, what is really the fault and main antagonism to good;
also you will find the most unexpected helps and profound lessons given,
and truths will come thus down to us which the speculation of all our
lives would never have raised us up to. You will find nearly every
educational problem solved, as soon as you truly want to do something;
everybody will become of use in their own fittest way, and will learn what
is best for them to know in that use. Competitive examination will then,
and not till then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, and
in practice; and on these familiar arts, and minute, but certain and
serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified and sustained the greater
arts and splendid theoretical sciences.
But much more than this. On such holy and simple practice will be founded,
indeed, at last, an infallible religion. The greatest of all the mysteries
of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even the sincerest
religion, which is not daily founded on rational, effective, humble, and
helpful action. Helpful action, observe! for there is just one law, which,
obeyed, keeps all religions pure--forgotten, makes them all false.
Whenever in any religious faith, dark or bright, we allow our minds to
dwell upon the points in which we differ from other people, we are wrong,
and in the devil's power. That is the essence of the Pharisee's
thanksgiving--"Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are." At
every moment of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in what we
differ from other people, but in what we agree with them; and the moment
we find we can agree as to anything that should be done, kind or good (and
who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push at it together: you can't
quarrel in a side-by-side push; but the moment that even the best men stop
pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pugnacity for piety, and
it's all over. I will not speak of the crimes which in past times have
been committed in the name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at this
hour held to be consistent with obedience to Him; but I _will_ speak of
the morbid corruption and waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by
which the pure strength of that which should be the guiding soul of every
nation, the splendor of its youthful manhood, and spotless light of its
maidenhood, is averted or cast away. You may see continually girls who
have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot
sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine,
whose whole life has been passed either in play or in pride; you will find
girls like these, when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate
passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them
through the irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation
over the meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to
be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of
their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences warped
into fruitless agony concerning questions which the laws of common
serviceable life would either have solved for them in an instant, or kept
out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active
in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow
creatures have indeed been the better for her day, and the powerless
sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant
and beneficent peace.
So with our youths. We once taught them to make Latin verses, and called
them educated; now we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a
bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can they sow, can they plant
at the right time, or build with a steady hand? Is it the effort of their
lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely in word
and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with many, and the strength of
England is in them, and the hope; but we have to turn their courage from
the toil of war to the toil of mercy; and their intellect from dispute of
words to discernment of things; and their knighthood from the errantry of
adventure to the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, indeed,
shall abide, for them and for us, an incorruptible felicity, and an
infallible religion; shall abide for us Faith, no more to be assailed by
temptation, no more to be defended by wrath and by fear;--shall abide with
us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years that overwhelm, or made
ashamed by the shadows that betray:--shall abide for us, and with us, the
greatest of these; the abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. For
the greatest of these is Charity.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Mr. Mill says, in his book on Liberty, that "Christian morality is, in
great part, merely a protest against paganism; its ideal is negative
rather than positive, passive rather than active." He says, that, in
certain most important respects, "it falls far below the best morality of
the ancients." The object of systems of morality is to take possession of
human life, to save it from being abandoned to passion or allowed to drift
at hazard, to give it happiness by establishing it in the practice of
virtue; and this object they seek to attain by prescribing to human life
fixed principles of action, fixed rules of conduct. In its uninspired as
well as in its inspired moments, in its days of languor and gloom as well
as in its days of sunshine and energy, human life has thus always a clue
to follow, and may always be making way towards its goal. Christian
morality has not failed to supply to human life aids of this sort. It has
supplied them far more abundantly than many of its critics imagine. The
most exquisite document, after those of the New Testament, of all the
documents the Christian spirit has ever inspired,--the _Imitation_,--by no
means contains the whole of Christian morality; nay, the disparagers of
this morality would think themselves sure of triumphing if one agreed to
look for it in the _Imitation_ only. But even the _Imitation_ is full of
passages like these: "Vita sine proposito languida et vaga est."--"Omni
die renovare debemus propositum nostrum, dicentes: nunc hodie perfecte
incipiamus, quia nihil est quod hactenus fecimus."--"Secundum propositum
nostrum est cursus profectus nostri."--"Raro etiam unum vitium perfecte
vincimus, et ad _quotidianum_ profectum non accendimur."--"Semper aliquid
certi proponendum est."--"Tibi ipsi violentiam frequenter fac." (_A life
without a purpose is a languid, drifting thing.--Every day we ought to
renew our purpose, saying to ourselves: This day let us make a sound
beginning, for what we have hitherto done is nought.--Our improvement
is in proportion to our purpose.--We hardly ever manage to get
completely rid even of one fault, and do not set our hearts on_ daily
_improvement.--Always place a definite purpose before thee.--Get the habit
of mastering thine inclination._) These are moral precepts, and moral
precepts of the best kind. As rules to hold possession of our conduct, and
to keep us in the right course through outward troubles and inward
perplexity, they are equal to the best ever furnished by the great masters
of morals--Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.
But moral rules, apprehended as ideas first, and then rigorously followed
as laws, are, and must be, for the sage only. The mass of mankind have
neither force of intellect enough to apprehend them clearly as ideas, nor
force of character enough to follow them strictly as laws. The mass of
mankind can be carried along a course full of hardship for the natural
man, can be borne over the thousand impediments of the narrow way, only by
the tide of a joyful and bounding emotion. It is impossible to rise from
reading Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius without a sense of constraint and
melancholy, without feeling that the burden laid upon man is well-nigh
greater than he can bear. Honor to the sages who have felt this, and yet
have borne it! Yet, even for the sage, this sense of labor and sorrow in
his march toward the goal constitutes a relative inferiority; the noblest
souls of whatever creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian
Paul, have insisted on the necessity of an inspiration, a living emotion
to make moral action perfect; an obscure indication of this necessity is
the one drop of truth in the ocean of verbiage with which the controversy
on justification by faith has flooded the world. But, for the ordinary
man, this sense of labor and sorrow constitutes an absolute
disqualification; it paralyzes him; under the weight of it, he cannot make
way toward the goal at all. The paramount virtue of religion is, that it
has _lighted up_ morality; that it has supplied the emotion and
inspiration needful for carrying the sage along the narrow way perfectly,
for carrying the ordinary man along it at all. Even the religions with
most dross in them have had something of this virtue; but the Christian
religion manifests it with unexampled splendor. "Lead me, Zeus and
Destiny!" says the prayer of Epictetus, "whithersoever I am appointed to
go: I will follow without wavering; even though I turn coward and shrink,
I shall have to follow all the same." The fortitude of that is for the
strong, for the few; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with which it
surrounds them is bleak and gray. But, "Let Thy loving spirit lead me
forth into the land of righteousness";--"The Lord shall be unto thee an
everlasting light, and thy God thy Glory";--"Unto you that fear My Name
shall the Sun of Righteousness arise with healing in his wings," says the
Old Testament; "born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of
the will of man, but of God";--"Except a man be born again, he cannot see
the kingdom of God";--"Whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world,"
says the New. The ray of sunshine is there, the glow of a divine warmth;
the austerity of the sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the weak
is healed; he who is vivified by it renews his strength; "all things are
possible to Him"; "he is a new creature."
Epictetus says: "Every matter has two handles, one of which will bear
taking hold of, the other not. If thy brother sin against thee, lay not
hold of the matter by this, that he sins against thee; for by this handle
the matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold of it by
this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate; and thou wilt take hold of it
by what will bear handling." Jesus, being asked whether a man is bound to
forgive his brother as often as seven times, answers: "I say not unto
thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven." Epictetus here
suggests to the reason grounds for forgiveness of injuries which Jesus
does not; but it is vain to say that Epictetus is on that account a better
moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, the emotion, of Jesus' answer fires
his hearer to the practice of forgiveness of injuries, while the thought
in Epictetus's leaves him cold. So with Christian morality in general: its
distinction is not that it propounds the maxim, "Thou shalt love God and
thy neighbor," with more development, closer reasoning, truer sincerity,
than other moral systems; it is that it propounds this maxim with an
inspiration which wonderfully catches the hearer and makes him act upon
it. It is because Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths of
this nature, that he is--instead of being, like the school from which he
proceeds, doomed to sterility--a writer of distinguished mark and
influence, a writer deserving all attention and respect; it is (I must be
pardoned for saying) because he is not sufficiently leavened with them,
that he falls just short of being a great writer....
The man whose thoughts Mr. Long[11] has thus faithfully reproduced is
perhaps the most beautiful figure in history. He is one of those consoling
and hope-inspiring marks, which stand forever to remind our weak and
easily discouraged race how high human goodness and perseverance have
once been carried, and may be carried again. The interest of mankind is
peculiarly attracted by examples of signal goodness in high places; for
that testimony to the worth of goodness is the most striking which is
borne by those to whom all the means of pleasure and self-indulgence lay
open, by those who had at their command the kingdoms of the world and the
glory of them. Marcus Aurelius was the ruler of the grandest of empires;
and he was one of the best of men. Besides him, history presents one or
two sovereigns eminent for their goodness, such as Saint Louis or Alfred.
But Marcus Aurelius has, for us moderns, this great superiority in
interest over Saint Louis or Alfred, that he lived and acted in a state of
society modern by its essential characteristics, in an epoch akin to our
own, in a brilliant centre of civilization. Trajan talks of "our
enlightened age" just as glibly as the "Times" talks of it. Marcus
Aurelius thus becomes for us a man like ourselves, a man in all things
tempted as we are. Saint Louis inhabits an atmosphere of mediæval
Catholicism, which the man of the nineteenth century may admire, indeed,
may even passionately wish to inhabit, but which, strive as he will, he
cannot really inhabit. Alfred belongs to a state of society (I say it with
all deference to the "Saturday Review" critic who keeps such jealous watch
over the honor of our Saxon ancestors) half-barbarous. Neither Alfred nor
Saint Louis can be morally and intellectually as near to us as Marcus
Aurelius.
The record of the outward life of this admirable man has in it little of
striking incident. He was born at Rome on the 26th of April, in the year
121 of the Christian era. He was nephew and son-in-law to his predecessor
on the throne, Antoninus Pius. When Antoninus died, he was forty years
old, but from the time of his earliest manhood he had assisted in
administering public affairs. Then, after his uncle's death in 161, for
nineteen years he reigned as Emperor. The barbarians were pressing on the
Roman frontier, and a great part of Marcus Aurelius's nineteen years of
reign was passed in campaigning. His absences from Rome were numerous and
long. We hear of him in Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Greece; but, above all,
in the countries on the Danube, where the war with the barbarians was
going on--in Austria, Moravia, Hungary. In these countries much of his
"Journal" seems to have been written; parts of it are dated from them; and
there, a few weeks before his fifty-ninth birthday, he fell sick and died.
The record of him on which his fame chiefly rests is the record of his
inward life--his "Journal," or "Commentaries," or "Meditations," or
"Thoughts," for by all these names has the work been called. Perhaps the
most interesting of the records of his outward life is that which the
first book of this work supplies, where he gives an account of his
education, recites the names of those to whom he is indebted for it, and
enumerates his obligations to each of them. It is a refreshing and
consoling picture, a priceless treasure for those, who, sick of the "wild
and dreamlike trade of blood and guile," which seems to be nearly the
whole that history has to offer to our view, seek eagerly for that
substratum of right thinking and well-doing which in all ages must surely
have somewhere existed, for without it the continued life of humanity
would have been impossible.
"From my mother I learned piety and beneficence, and abstinence not only
from evil deeds but even from evil thoughts; and further, simplicity in my
way of living, far removed from the habits of the rich." Let us remember
that, the next time we are reading the sixth satire of Juvenal. "From my
tutor I learned" (hear it, ye tutors of princes!) "endurance of labor, and
to want little, and to work with my own hands, and not to meddle with
other people's affairs, and not to be ready to listen to slander." The
vices and foibles of the Greek sophist or rhetorician--the _Græculus
esuriens_--are in everybody's mind; but he who reads Marcus Aurelius's
account of his Greek teachers and masters, will understand how it is that,
in spite of the vices and foibles of individual _Græculi_, the education
of the human race owes to Greece a debt which can never be overrated.
The vague and colorless praise of history leaves on the mind hardly any
impression of Antoninus Pius: it is only from the private memoranda of his
nephew that we learn what a disciplined, hard-working, gentle, wise,
virtuous man he was; a man who, perhaps, interests mankind less than his
immortal nephew only because he has left in writing no record of his inner
life--_caret quia vate sacro_.
Of the outward life and circumstances of Marcus Aurelius, beyond these
notices which he has himself supplied, there are few of much interest and
importance. There is the fine anecdote of his speech when he heard of the
assassination of the revolted Avidius Cassius, against whom he was
marching; _he was sorry_, he said, _to be deprived of the pleasure of
pardoning him_. And there are one or two more anecdotes of him which show
the same spirit. But the great record for the outward life of a man who
has left such a record of his lofty inward aspirations as that which
Marcus Aurelius has left, is the clear consenting voice of all his
contemporaries,--high and low, friend and enemy, pagan and Christian,--in
praise of his sincerity, justice, and goodness. The world's charity does
not err on the side of excess, and here was a man occupying the most
conspicuous station in the world, and professing the highest possible
standard of conduct; yet the world was obliged to declare that he walked
worthily of his profession. Long after his death, his bust was to be seen
in the houses of private men through the wide Roman Empire. It may be the
vulgar part of human nature which busies itself with the semblance and
doings of living sovereigns; it is its nobler part which busies itself
with those of the dead. These busts of Marcus Aurelius, in the homes of
Gaul, Britain, and Italy, bore witness, not to the inmates' frivolous
curiosity about princes and palaces, but to their reverential memory of
the passage of a great man upon the earth.
Two things, however, before one turns from the outward to the inward life
of Marcus Aurelius, force themselves upon one's notice, and demand a word
of comment: he persecuted the Christians, and he had for his son the
vicious and brutal Commodus. The persecution at Lyons, in which Attalus
and Pothinus suffered, the persecution at Smyrna, in which Polycarp
suffered, took place in his reign. Of his humanity, of his tolerance, of
his horror of cruelty and violence, of his wish to refrain from severe
measures against the Christians, of his anxiety to temper the severity of
these measures when they appeared to him indispensable, there is no doubt;
but, on the one hand, it is certain that the letter, attributed to him,
directing that no Christian should be punished for being a Christian, is
spurious; it is almost certain that his alleged answer to the authorities
of Lyons, in which he directs that Christians persisting in their
profession shall be dealt with according to the law, is genuine. Mr. Long
seems inclined to try to throw doubt over the persecution at Lyons, by
pointing out that the letter of the Lyons Christians relating it alleges
it to have been attended by miraculous and incredible incidents. "A man,"
he says, "can only act consistently by accepting all this letter or
rejecting it all, and we cannot blame him for either." But it is contrary
to all experience to say that, because a fact is related with incorrect
additions, and embellishments, therefore it probably never happened at
all; or that it is not, in general, easy for an impartial mind to
distinguish between the fact and the embellishments. I cannot doubt that
the Lyons persecution took place, and that the punishment of Christians
for being Christians was sanctioned by Marcus Aurelius.
But then I must add that nine modern readers out of ten, when they read
this, will, I believe, have a perfectly false notion of what the moral
action of Marcus Aurelius, in sanctioning that punishment, really was.
They imagine Trajan, or Antoninus Pius, or Marcus Aurelius, fresh from the
perusal of the Gospel, fully aware of the spirit and holiness of the
Christian saints, ordering their extermination because he loved darkness
rather than light. Far from this, the Christianity which these emperors
aimed at repressing was, in their conception of it, something
philosophically contemptible, politically subversive, and morally
abominable. As men, they sincerely regarded it much as well-conditioned
people, with us, regard Mormonism; as rulers, they regarded it much as
Liberal statesmen, with us, regard the Jesuits. A kind of Mormonism,
constituted as a vast secret society, with obscure aims of political and
social subversion, was what Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius believed
themselves to be repressing when they punished Christians. The early
Christian apologists again and again declare to us under what odious
imputations the Christians lay, how general was the belief that these
imputations were well-grounded, how sincere was the horror which the
belief inspired. The multitude, convinced that the Christians were
atheists who ate human flesh and thought incest no crime, displayed
against them a fury so passionate as to embarrass and alarm their rulers.
The severe expressions of Tacitus--"_exitiabilis superstitio_"; "_odio
humani generis convicti_"--show how deeply the prejudices of the multitude
imbued the educated class also. One asks one's self with astonishment how
a doctrine so benign as that of Christ can have incurred misrepresentation
so monstrous. The inner and moving cause of the misrepresentation lay, no
doubt, in this--that Christianity was a new spirit in the Roman world,
destined to act in that world as its dissolvent; and it was inevitable
that Christianity in the Roman world, like democracy in the modern world,
like every new spirit with a similar mission assigned to it, should at its
first appearance occasion an instinctive shrinking and repugnance in the
world which it was to dissolve. The outer and palpable causes of the
misrepresentation were, for the Roman public at large, the confounding of
the Christians with the Jews, that isolated, fierce, and stubborn race,
whose stubbornness, fierceness, and isolation, real as they were, the
fancy of a civilized Roman yet further exaggerated; the atmosphere of
mystery and novelty which surrounded the Christian rites; the very
simplicity of Christian theism; for the Roman statesman, the character of
secret assemblages which the meetings of the Christian community wore,
under a State-system as jealous of unauthorized associations as the Code
Napoleon.
A Roman of Marcus Aurelius's time and position could not well see the
Christians except through the mist of these prejudices. Seen through such
a mist, the Christians appeared with a thousand faults not their own; but
it has not been sufficiently remarked that faults really their own many of
them assuredly appeared with, besides--faults especially likely to strike
such an observer as Marcus Aurelius, and to confirm him in the prejudices
of his race, station, and rearing. We look back upon Christianity after
it has proved what a future it bore within it, and for us the sole
representatives of its early struggles are the pure and devoted spirits
through whom it proved this; Marcus Aurelius saw it with its future yet
unshown, and with the tares among its professed progeny not less
conspicuous than the wheat. Who can doubt that, among the professing
Christians of the second century, as among the professing Christians of
the nineteenth, there was plenty of folly, plenty of rabid nonsense,
plenty of gross fanaticism? Who will even venture to affirm that,
separated in great measure from the intellect and civilization of the
world for one or two centuries, Christianity, wonderful as have been its
fruits, had the development perfectly worthy of its inestimable germ? Who
will venture to affirm that, by the alliance of Christianity with the
virtue and intelligence of men like the Antonines,--of the best product of
Greek and Roman civilization, while Greek and Roman civilization had yet
life and power,--Christianity and the world, as well as the Antonines
themselves, would not have been gainers?
That alliance was not to be. The Antonines lived and died with an utter
misconception of Christianity; Christianity grew up in the Catacombs, not
on the Palatine. Marcus Aurelius incurs no moral reproach by having
authorized the punishment of the Christians; he does not thereby become,
in the least, what we mean by a _persecutor_. One may concede that it was
impossible for him to see Christianity as it really was, as impossible as
for even the moderate and sensible Fleury to see the Antonines as they
really were; one may concede that the point of view from which
Christianity appeared something anti-civil and anti-social, which the
State had the faculty to judge and the duty to suppress, was inevitably
his. Still, however, it remains true that this sage, who made perfection
his aim and reason his law, did Christianity an immense injustice and
rested in an idea of State-attributes which was illusive. And this is, in
truth, characteristic of Marcus Aurelius, that he is blameless, yet, in a
certain sense, unfortunate; in his character, beautiful as it is, there is
something melancholy, circumscribed, and ineffectual.
For of his having such a son as Commodus, too, one must say that he is not
to be blamed on that account, but that he is unfortunate. Disposition and
temperament are inexplicable things; there are natures on which the best
education and example are thrown away; excellent fathers may have, without
any fault of theirs, incurably vicious sons. It is to be remembered also,
that Commodus was left, at the perilous age of nineteen, master of the
whole world; while his father, at that age, was but beginning a twenty
years' apprenticeship to wisdom, labor, and self-command, under the
sheltering teachership of his uncle Antoninus. Commodus was a prince apt
to be led by favorites; and if the story is true which says that he left,
all through his reign, the Christians untroubled, and ascribes this lenity
to the influence of his mistress Marcia, it shows that he could be led to
good as well as to evil; for such a nature to be left at a critical age
with absolute power, and wholly without good counsel and direction, was
the more fatal. Still one cannot help wishing that the example of Marcus
Aurelius could have availed more with his own only son. One cannot but
think that with such virtue as his there should go, too, the ardor that
removes mountains, and that the ardor that removes mountains might have
even won Commodus; the word _ineffectual_ again rises to one's mind;
Marcus Aurelius saved his own soul by his righteousness, and he could do
no more. Happy they who can do this! but still happier, who can do more!
Yet, when one passes from his outward to his inward life, when one turns
over the pages of his "Meditations," entries jotted down from day to day,
amid the business of the city or the fatigues of the camp, for his own
guidance and support; meant for no eye but his own; without the slightest
attempt at style, with no care, even, for correct writing; not to be
surpassed for naturalness and sincerity--all disposition to carp and cavil
dies away, and one is overpowered by the charm of a character of such
purity, delicacy, and virtue. He fails neither in small things nor in
great; he keeps watch over himself, both that the great springs of action
may be right in him, and that the minute details of action may be right
also. How admirable in a hard-tasked ruler, and a ruler, too, with a
passion for thinking and reading, is such a memorandum as the following:--
"Not frequently nor without necessity to say to anyone, or to write in a
letter, that I have no leisure; nor continually to excuse the neglect of
duties required by our relation to those with whom we live, by alleging
urgent occupation."
And, when that ruler is a Roman emperor, what an "idea" is this to be
written down and meditated by him:--
"The idea of a polity in which there is the same law for all, a polity
administered with regard to equal rights and equal freedom of speech, and
the idea of a kingly government which respects most of all the freedom of
the governed."
And, for all men who "drive at practice," what practical rules may not one
accumulate out of these "Meditations":--
"The greatest part of what we say or do being unnecessary, if a man takes
this away, he will have more leisure and less uneasiness. Accordingly, on
every occasion, a man should ask himself, 'Is this one of the unnecessary
things?' Now a man should take away not only unnecessary acts, but also
unnecessary thoughts, for thus superfluous acts will not follow after."
And again:--
"We ought to check in the series of our thoughts everything that is
without a purpose and useless, but most of all the over-curious feeling
and the malignant; and a man should use himself to think of those things
only about which, if one should suddenly ask, 'What hast thou now in thy
thoughts?' with perfect openness thou mightest immediately answer, 'This
or That,' so that from thy words it should be plain that everything in
thee is simple and benevolent, and such as befits a social animal, and one
that cares not for thoughts about sensual enjoyments, or any rivalry or
envy and suspicion, or anything else for which thou wouldst blush if thou
shouldst say thou hadst it in thy mind."
So, with a stringent practicalness worthy of Franklin, he discourses on
his favorite text, "Let nothing be done without a purpose." But it is when
he enters the region where Franklin cannot follow him, when he utters his
thoughts on the ground-motives of human action, that he is most
interesting; that he becomes the unique, the incomparable Marcus Aurelius.
Christianity uses language very liable to be misunderstood when it seems
to tell men to do good, not, certainly, from the vulgar motives of worldly
interest, or vanity, or love of human praise, but "that their Father which
seeth in secret may reward them openly." The motives of reward and
punishment have come, from the misconception of language of this kind, to
be strangely overpressed by many Christian moralists, to the deterioration
and disfigurement of Christianity. Marcus Aurelius says, truly and
nobly:--
"One man, when he has done a service to another, is ready to set it down
to his account as a favor conferred. Another is not ready to do this, but
still in his own mind he thinks of the man as his debtor, and he knows
what he has done. A third, in a manner, does not even know what he has
done, _but he is like a vine which has produced grapes, and seeks for
nothing more after it has once produced its proper fruit_. As a horse when
he has run, a dog when he has caught the game, a bee when it has made its
honey, so a man, when he has done a good act, does not call out for others
to come and see, but he goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to
produce again the grapes in season. Must a man, then, be one of these, who
in a manner acts thus without observing it? Yes."
And again:--
"What more dost thou want when thou hast done a man a service? Art thou
not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and
dost thou seek to be paid for it, _just as if the eye demanded a
recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking_?"
Christianity, in order to match morality of this strain, has to correct
its apparent offers of external reward, and to say: "The kingdom of God is
within you."
I have said that it is by its accent of emotion that the morality of
Marcus Aurelius acquires a special character, and reminds one of Christian
morality. The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the intellect; the
sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to the character; the sentences of
Marcus Aurelius find their way to the soul. I have said that religious
emotion has the power to _light up_ morality: the emotion of Marcus
Aurelius does not quite light up his morality, but it suffuses it; it has
not power to melt the clouds of effort and austerity quite away, but it
shines through them and glorifies them; it is a spirit, not so much of
gladness and elation, as of gentleness and sweetness; a delicate and
tender sentiment, which is less than joy and more than resignation. He
says that in his youth he learned from Maximus, one of his teachers,
"cheerfulness in all circumstances as well as in illness; _and a just
admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity_": and it is
this very admixture of sweetness with his dignity which makes him so
beautiful a moralist. It enables him to carry, even into his observation
of nature, a delicate penetration, a sympathetic tenderness, worthy of
Wordsworth; the spirit of such a remark as the following seems to me to
have no parallel in the whole range of Greek and Roman literature:--
"Figs, when they are quite ripe, gape open; and in the ripe olives the
very circumstance of their being near to rottenness adds a peculiar beauty
to the fruit. And the ears of corn bending down, and the lion's eyebrows,
and the foam which flows from the mouth of wild boars, and many other
things,--though they are far from being beautiful, in a certain
sense,--still, because they come in the course of nature, have a beauty in
them, and they please the mind; so that, if a man should have a feeling
and a deeper insight with respect to the things which are produced in the
universe, there is hardly anything which comes in the course of nature
which will not seem to him to be in a manner disposed so as to give
pleasure."
But it is when his strain passes to directly moral subjects that his
delicacy and sweetness lend to it the greatest charm. Let those who can
feel the beauty of spiritual refinement read this, the reflection of an
emperor who prized mental superiority highly:--
"Thou sayest, 'Men cannot admire the sharpness of thy wits.' Be it so; but
there are many other things of which thou canst not say, 'I am not formed
for them by nature.' Show those qualities, then, which are altogether in
thy power--sincerity, gravity, endurance of labor, aversion to pleasure,
contentment with thy portion and with few things, benevolence, frankness,
no love of superfluity, freedom from trifling, magnanimity. Dost thou not
see how many qualities thou art at once able to exhibit, as to which there
is no excuse of natural incapacity and unfitness, and yet thou still
remainest voluntarily below the mark? Or art thou compelled, through being
defectively furnished by nature, to murmur, and to be mean, and to
flatter, and to find fault with thy poor body, and to try to please men,
and to make great display, and to be so restless in thy mind? No, indeed;
but thou mightest have been delivered from these things long ago. Only, if
in truth thou canst be charged with being rather slow and dull of
comprehension, thou must exert thyself about this also, not neglecting nor
yet taking pleasure in thy dulness."
The same sweetness enables him to fix his mind, when he sees the isolation
and moral death caused by sin, not on the cheerless thought of the misery
of this condition, but on the inspiriting thought that man is blest with
the power to escape from it:--
"Suppose that thou hast detached thyself from the natural unity,--for thou
wast made by nature a part, but now thou hast cut thyself off,--yet here
is this beautiful provision, that it is in thy power again to unite
thyself. God has allowed this to no other part--after it has been
separated and cut asunder, to come together again. But consider the
goodness with which he has privileged man; for he has put it in his power,
when he has been separated, to return and to be united and to resume his
place."
It enables him to control even the passion for retreat and solitude, so
strong in a soul like his, to which the world could offer no abiding
city.
"Men seek retreat for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and
mountains; and thou, too, art wont to desire such things very much. But
this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of man, for it is in thy
power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere
either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than
into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that,
by looking into them, he is immediately in perfect tranquillity.
Constantly, then, give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let
thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt
recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to
send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou
returnest."
Against this feeling of discontent and weariness, so natural to the great
for whom there seems nothing left to desire or to strive after, but so
enfeebling to them, so deteriorating, Marcus Aurelius never ceased to
struggle. With resolute thankfulness he kept in remembrance the blessings
of his lot; the true blessings of it, not the false.
"I have to thank Heaven that I was subjected to a ruler and a father
[Antoninus Pius] who was able to take away all pride from me, and to bring
me to the knowledge that it is possible for a man to live in a palace
without either guards, or embroidered dresses, or any show of this kind;
but that it is in such a man's power to bring himself very near to the
fashion of a private person, without being for this reason either meaner
in thought or more remiss in action with respect to the things which must
be done for public interest.... I have to be thankful that my children
have not been stupid or deformed in body; that I did not make more
proficiency in rhetoric, poetry, and the other studies, by which I should
perhaps have been completely engrossed, if I had seen that I was making
great progress in them;... that I knew Apollonius, Rusticus, Maximus;...
that I received clear and frequent impressions about living according to
nature, and what kind of a life that is, so that, so far as depended on
Heaven and its gifts, help, and inspiration, nothing hindered me from
forthwith living according to nature, though I still fall short of it
through my own fault, and through not observing the admonitions of Heaven,
and, I may almost say, its direct instructions; that my body has held out
so long in such a kind of life as mine; that, though it was my mother's
lot to die young, she spent the last years of her life with me; that,
whenever I wished to help any man in his need, I was never told that I had
not the means of doing it; that, when I had an inclination to philosophy,
I did not fall into the hands of a sophist."
And, as he dwelt with gratitude on these helps and blessings vouchsafed to
him, his mind (so, at least, it seems to me) would sometimes revert with
awe to the perils and temptations of the lonely height where he stood, to
the lives of Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, in their hideous
blackness and ruin; and then he wrote down for himself such a warning
entry as this, significant and terrible in its abruptness:--
"A black character, a womanish character, a stubborn character, bestial,
childish, animal, stupid, counterfeit, scurrilous, fraudulent,
tyrannical!"
Or this:--
"About what am I now employing my soul? On every occasion I must ask
myself this question, and inquire, What have I now in this part of me
which they call the ruling principle, and whose soul have I now--that of a
child, or of a young man, or of a weak woman, or of a tyrant, or of one of
the lower animals in the service of man, or of a wild beast?"
The character he wished to attain he knew well, and beautifully he has
marked it, and marked, too, his sense of shortcoming:--
"When thou hast assumed these names,--good, modest, true, rational,
equal-minded, magnanimous,--take care that thou dost not change these
names; and, if thou shouldst lose them, quickly return to them. If thou
maintainest thyself in possession of these names, without desiring that
others should call thee by them, thou wilt be another being, and wilt
enter on another life. For to continue to be such as thou hast hitherto
been, and to be torn in pieces and denied in such a life, is the character
of a very stupid man, and one overfond of his life, and like those
half-devoured fighters with wild beasts, who though covered with wounds
and gore, still entreat to be kept to the following day, though they will
be exposed in the same state to the same claws and bites. Therefore fix
thyself in the possession of these few names; and if thou art able to
abide in them, abide as if thou wast removed to the Happy Islands."
For all his sweetness and serenity, however, man's point of life "between
two infinities" (of that expression Marcus Aurelius is the real owner) was
to him anything but a Happy Island, and the performances on it he saw
through no veils of illusion. Nothing is in general more gloomy and
monotonous than declamations on the hollowness and transitoriness of human
life and grandeur; but here, too, the great charm of Marcus Aurelius, his
emotion, comes in to relieve the monotony and to break through the gloom;
and even on this eternally used topic he is imaginative, fresh, and
striking:--
"Consider, for example, the times of Vespasian. Thou wilt see all these
things, people marrying, bringing up children, sick, dying, warring,
feasting, trafficking, cultivating the ground, flattering, obstinately
arrogant, suspecting, plotting, wishing for somebody to die, grumbling
about the present, loving, heaping up treasure, desiring to be consuls or
kings. Well, then that life of these people no longer exists at all.
Again, go to the times of Trajan. All is again the same. Their life too is
gone. But chiefly thou shouldst think of those whom thou hast thyself
known distracting themselves about idle things, neglecting to do what was
in accordance with their proper constitution, and to hold firmly to this
and to be content with it."
Again:--
"The things which are much valued in life are empty, and rotten, and
trifling; and people are like little dogs, biting one another, and little
children quarreling, crying, and then straightway laughing. But fidelity,
and modesty, and justice and truth are fled
Up to Olympus from the wide-spread earth.
What then is there which still detains thee here?"
And once more:--
"Look down from above on the countless herds of men, and their countless
solemnities, and the infinitely varied voyagings in storms and calms, and
the differences among those who are born, who live together and die. And
consider too the life lived by others in olden time, and the life now
lived among barbarous nations, and how many know not even thy name, and
how many will soon forget it, and how they who perhaps now are praising
thee will very soon blame thee, and that neither a posthumous name is of
any value, nor reputation, nor anything else."
He recognized, indeed, that (to use his own words) "the prime principle in
man's constitution is the social"; and he labored sincerely to make, not
only his acts toward his fellow men, but his thoughts also, suitable to
this conviction.
"When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtue of those who
live with thee: for instance, the activity of one, and the modesty of
another, and the liberality of a third, and some other good quality of a
fourth."
Still, it is hard for a pure and thoughtful man to live in a state of
rapture at the spectacle afforded to him by his fellow creatures; above
all it is hard, when such a man is placed as Marcus Aurelius was placed,
and has had the meanness and perversity of his fellow creatures thrust, in
no common measure, upon his notice--has had, time after time, to
experience how "within ten days thou wilt seem a god to those to whom thou
art now a beast and an ape." His true strain of thought as to his
relations with his fellow men is rather the following. He has been
enumerating the higher consolations which may support a man at the
approach of death, and he goes on:--
"But if thou requirest also a vulgar kind of comfort which shall reach thy
heart, thou wilt be made best reconciled to death by observing the objects
from which thou art going to be removed, and the morals of those with whom
thy soul will no longer be mingled. For it is no way right to be offended
with men, but it is thy duty to care for them and to bear with them
gently; and yet to remember that thy departure will not be from men who
have the same principles as thyself. For this is the only thing, if there
be any, which could draw us the contrary way and attach us to life--to be
permitted to live with those who have the same principles as ourselves.
But now thou seest how great is the distress caused by the difference of
those who live together, so that thou mayest say: 'Come quick, O death,
lest perchance I too should forget myself.'"
_O faithless and perverse generation! how long shall I be with you? how
long shall I suffer you?_ Sometimes this strain rises even to passion:--
"Short is the little which remains to thee of life. Live as on a mountain.
Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.
If they cannot endure him, let them kill him. For that is better than to
live as men do."
It is remarkable how little of a merely local and temporary character, how
little of those _scoriæ_ which a reader has to clear away before he gets
to the precious ore, how little that even admits of doubt or question, the
morality of Marcus Aurelius exhibits. In general, the action he prescribes
is action which every sound nature must recognize as right, and the
motives he assigns are motives which every clear reason must recognize as
valid. And so he remains the especial friend and comforter of scrupulous
and difficult, yet pure-hearted and upward-striving souls, in those ages
most especially that walk by sight, not by faith, but yet have no open
vision; he cannot give such souls, perhaps, all they yearn for, but he
gives them much; and what he gives them, they can receive.
Yet no, it is not for what he thus gives them that such souls love him
most! it is rather because of the emotion which gives to his voice so
touching an accent, it is because he too yearns as they do for something
unattained by him. What an affinity for Christianity had this persecutor
of the Christians! The effusion of Christianity, its relieving tears, its
happy self-sacrifice, were the very element, one feels, for which his soul
longed; they were near him, they brushed him, he touched them, he passed
them by. One feels, too, that the Marcus Aurelius one knows must still
have remained, even had they presented themselves to him, in a great
measure himself; he would have been no Justin. But how would they have
affected him? in what measure would it have changed him? Granted that he
might have found, like the _Alogi_ of modern times, in the most beautiful
of the Gospels, the Gospel which has leavened Christendom most
powerfully,--the Gospel of St. John,--too much Greek metaphysics, too much
_gnosis_; granted that this Gospel might have looked too like what he knew
already to be a total surprise to him: what, then, would he have said to
the Sermon on the Mount, to the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew? What
would have become of his notion of the _exitiabilis superstitio_, of the
"obstinacy of the Christians"? Vain question! yet the greatest charm of
Marcus Aurelius is that he makes us ask it. We see him wise, just,
self-governed, tender, thankful, blameless; yet, with all this, agitated,
stretching out his arms for something beyond--_tendentemque manus ripæ
ulterioris amore_.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
DOVER BEACH
The sea is calm to-night,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;--on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægæan, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
MORALITY
We cannot kindle when we will
The fire that in the heart resides;
The spirit bloweth and is still,
In mystery our soul abides;
But tasks in hours of insight will'd
Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
With aching hands and bleeding feet
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone;
We bear the burden and the heat
Of the long day, and wish 'twere done.
Not till the hours of light return,
All we have built do we discern.
Then, when the clouds are off the soul,
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye,
Ask, how _she_ view'd thy self-control,
Thy struggling task'd morality--
Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air,
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair.
And she, whose censure thou dost dread,
Whose eye thou wert afraid to seek,
See, on her face a glow is spread,
A strong emotion on her cheek.
"Ah child," she cries, "that strife divine--
Whence was it, for it is not mine?
"There is no effort on _my_ brow--
I do not strive, I do not weep.
I rush with the swift spheres, and glow
In joy, and, when I will, I sleep.
Yet that severe, that earnest air
I saw, I felt it once--but where?
"I knew not yet the gauge of Time,
Nor wore the manacles of Space.
I felt it in some other clime--
I saw it in some other place.
--'Twas when the heavenly house I trod,
And lay upon the breast of God."
SELF-DEPENDENCE
Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.
And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calmed me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!
"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.
"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silvered roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.
"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."
O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery!"
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
ALL IS WELL
Whate'er you dream, with doubt possessed,
Keep, keep it snug within your breast,
And lay you down and take your rest;
Forget in sleep the doubt and pain,
And when you wake, to work again.
The wind it blows, the vessel goes,
And where and whither, no ones knows.
'Twill all be well: no need of care;
Though how it will, and when, and where,
We cannot see, and can't declare.
In spite of dreams, in spite of thought,
'Tis not in vain, and not for nought,
The wind it blows, the ship it goes,
Though where and whither, no one knows.
TO SPEND UNCOUNTED YEARS OF PAIN
To spend uncounted years of pain,
Again, again, and yet again,
In working out in heart and brain
The problem of our being here;
To gather facts from far and near,
Upon the mind to hold them clear,
And, knowing more may yet appear,
Unto one's latest breath to fear,
The premature result to draw--
Is this the object, end, and law,
And purpose of our being here?
SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH
Say not the struggle nought availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly;
But westward, look, the land is bright.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE
Here, where the world is quiet;
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter
For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.
Here life has death for neighbor,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labor,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,
And no such things grow here.
No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,
Pale beds of blowing rushes,
Where no leaf blooms or blushes
Save this whereout she crushes
For dead men deadly wine.
Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated
Comes out of darkness morn.
Though one were strong as seven,
He too with death shall dwell,
Nor wake with wings in heaven,
Nor weep for pains in hell;
Though one were fair as roses,
His beauty clouds and closes;
And well though love reposes,
In the end it is not well.
Pale, beyond porch and portal,
Crowned with calm leaves, she stands
Who gathers all things mortal
With cold immortal hands;
Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her,
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.
She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,
The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.
There go the loves that wither,
The old loves with wearier wings;
And all dead years draw thither,
And all disastrous things;
Dead dreams of days forsaken,
Blind buds that snows have shaken,
Wild leaves that winds have taken,
Red strays of ruined springs.
We are not sure of sorrow;
And joy was never sure;
To-day will die to-morrow;
Time stoops to no man's lure;
And love, grown faint and fretful,
With lips but half regretful
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful
Weeps that no loves endure.
From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
Then star nor sun shall waken,
Nor any change of light:
Nor sound of waters shaken,
Nor any sound or sight:
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal,
Nor days nor things diurnal;
Only the sleep eternal
In an eternal night.
EDWARD FITZGERALD
RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM
I
Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n, and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light.
II
Before the phantom of False morning died,
Methought a Voice within the Tavern cried,
"When all the Temple is prepared within,
Why nods the drowsy Worshipper outside?"
III
And, as the Cock crew, those who stood before
The Tavern shouted--"Open then the Door!
You know how little while we have to stay,
And, once departed, may return no more."
IV
Now the New Year reviving old Desires,
The thoughtful Soul to Solitude retires,
Where the WHITE HAND OF MOSES on the Bough
Puts out, and Jesus from the Ground suspires.
V
Iram indeed is gone with all his Rose,
And Jamshyd's Sev'n-ring'd Cup where no one knows;
But still a Ruby kindles in the Vine,
And many a Garden by the Water blows.
VI
And David's lips are lockt; but in divine
High-piping Pehleví, with "Wine! Wine! Wine!
Red Wine!"--the Nightingale cries to the Rose
That sallow cheek of hers to incarnadine.
VII
Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.
VIII
Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.
IX
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
And this first Summer month that brings the Rose
Shall take Jamshyd and Kaikobád away.
X
Well, let it take them! What have we to do
With Kaikobád the Great, or Kaikhosrú?
Let Zál and Rustum bluster as they will,
Or Hátim call to Supper--heed not you.
XI
With me along the strip of Herbage strown
That just divides the desert from the sown,
Where name of Slave and Sultán is forgot--
And Peace to Mahmúd on his golden Throne!
XII
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
XIII
Some for the Glories of This World; and some
Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come;
Ah, take the Cash, and let the Credit go,
Nor heed the rumble of a distant Drum!
XIV
Look to the blowing Rose about us--"Lo,
Laughing," she says, "into the world I blow,
At once the silken tassel of my Purse
Tear, and its Treasure on the Garden throw."
XV
And those who husbanded the Golden grain,
And those who flung it to the winds like Rain,
Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd
As, buried once, Men want dug up again.
XVI
The Worldly Hope men set their Hearts upon
Turns Ashes--or it prospers; and anon,
Like Snow upon the Desert's dusty Face,
Lighting a little hour or two--is gone.
XVII
Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
Whose Portals are alternate Night and Day,
How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.
XVIII
They say the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep:
And Bahrám, that great Hunter--the Wild Ass
Stamps o'er his Head, but cannot break his Sleep.
XIX
I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.
XX
And this reviving Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River-Lip on which we lean--
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen!
XXI
Ah, my Belovèd, fill the Cup that clears
TO-DAY of past Regrets and future Fears:
_To-morrow!_--Why, To-morrow I may be
Myself with Yesterday's Sev'n Thousand Years.
XXII
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath prest,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
XXIII
And we, that now make merry in the Room
They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,
Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth
Descend--ourselves to make a Couch--for whom?
XXIV
Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,
Before we too into the Dust descend;
Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,
Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and--sans End!
XXV
Alike for those who for TO-DAY prepare,
And those that after some TO-MORROW stare,
A Muezzín from the Tower of Darkness cries,
"Fools! your Reward is neither Here nor There."
XXVI
Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd
Of the Two Worlds so wisely--they are thrust
Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn
Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.
XXVII
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about; but evermore
Came out by the same door where in I went.
XXVIII
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd--
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."
XXIX
Into this Universe, and _Why_ not knowing
Nor _Whence_, like Water willy-nilly flowing;
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not _Whither_, willy-nilly blowing.
XXX
What, without asking, hither hurried _Whence_?
And, without asking, _Whither_ hurried hence!
Oh, many a Cup of this forbidden Wine
Must drown the memory of that insolence!
XXXI
Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate
I rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate,
And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road;
But not the Master-knot of Human Fate.
XXXII
There was the Door to which I found no Key;
There was the Veil through which I might not see;
Some little talk awhile of ME and THEE
There was--and then no more of THEE and ME.
XXXIII
Earth could not answer; nor the Seas that mourn
In flowing Purple, of their Lord forlorn;
Nor rolling Heaven, with all his Signs reveal'd
And hidden by the sleeve of Night and Morn.
XXXIV
Then of the THEE IN ME who works behind
The Veil, I lifted up my hands to find
A Lamp amid the Darkness; and I heard,
As from Without--"THE ME WITHIN THEE BLIND!"
XXXV
Then to the Lip of this poor earthen Urn
I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn:
And Lip to Lip it murmur'd--"While you live,
Drink!--for, once dead, you never shall return."
XXXVI
I think the Vessel, that with fugitive
Articulation answer'd, once did live,
And drink; and Ah! the passive Lip I kiss'd,
How many Kisses might it take--and give!
XXXVII
For I remember stopping by the way
To watch a Potter thumping his wet Clay;
And with its all-obliterated Tongue
It murmur'd--"Gently, Brother, gently, pray!"
XXXVIII
And has not such a Story from of Old
Down Man's successive generations roll'd
Of such a clod of saturated Earth
Cast by the Maker into Human mould?
XXXIX
And not a drop that from our Cups we throw
For Earth to drink of, but may steal below
To quench the fire of Anguish in some Eye
There hidden--far beneath, and long ago.
XL
As then the Tulip for her morning sup
Of Heav'nly Vintage from the soil looks up,
Do you devoutly do the like, till Heav'n
To Earth invert you--like an empty Cup.
XLI
Perplext no more with Human or Divine,
To-morrow's tangle to the winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The Cypress-slender Minister of Wine.
XLII
And if the Wine you drink, the Lip you press,
End in what All begins and ends in--Yes;
Think then you are TO-DAY what YESTERDAY
You were--TO-MORROW you shall be not less.
XLIII
So when that Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff--you shall not shrink.
XLIV
Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,
And naked on the Air of Heaven ride,
Were't not a Shame--were't not a Shame for him
In this clay carcass crippled to abide?
XLV
'Tis but a Tent where takes his one day's rest
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest;
The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrásh
Strikes, and prepares it for another Guest.
XLVI
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account, and mine, should know the like no more;
The Eternal Sákí from that Bowl has pour'd
Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.
XLVII
When You and I behind the Veil are past,
Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,
Which of our Coming and Departure heeds
As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.
XLVIII
A Moment's Halt--a momentary taste
Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste--
And Lo!--the phantom Caravan has reach'd
The NOTHING it set out from--Oh, make haste!
XLIX
Would you that spangle of Existence spend
About THE SECRET--quick about it, Friend!
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True--
And upon what, prithee, may life depend?
L
A Hair perhaps divides the False and True;
Yes; and a single Alif were the clue--
Could you but find it--to the Treasure-house,
And peradventure to THE MASTER too;
LI
Whose secret Presence, though Creation's veins
Running Quicksilver-like, eludes your pains;
Taking all shapes from Máh to Máhi; and
They change and perish all--but He remains;
LII
A moment guess'd--then back behind the Fold
Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll'd
Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
He doth Himself contrive, enact, behold.
LIII
But if in vain, down on the stubborn floor
Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door,
You gaze TO-DAY, while You are You--how then
TO-MORROW, You when shall be You no more?
LIV
Waste not your Hour, nor in the vain pursuit
Of This and That endeavor and dispute;
Better be jocund with the fruitful Grape
Than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit.
LV
You know, my Friends, with what a brave Carouse
I made a Second Marriage in my house;
Divorced old barren Reason from my Bed,
And took the Daughter of the Vine to Spouse.
LVI
For "IS" and "IS-NOT" though with Rule and Line
And "UP-AND-DOWN" by Logic I define,
Of all that one should care to fathom, I
Was never deep in anything but--Wine.
LVII
Ah, but my Computations, People say,
Reduced the Year to better reckoning?--Nay,
'Twas only striking from the Calendar
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday.
LVIII
And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,
Came shining through the Dusk an Angel Shape
Bearing a Vessel on his Shoulder; and
He bid me taste of it; and 'twas--the Grape!
LIX
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The sovereign Alchemist that in a trice
Life's leaden metal into Gold transmute:
LX
The mighty Mahmúd, Allah breathing Lord,
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.
LXI
Why, be this Juice the growth of God, who dare
Blaspheme the twisted tendril as a Snare?
A Blessing, we should use it, should we not?
And if a Curse--why, then, Who set it there?
LXII
I must abjure the Balm of Life, I must,
Scared by some After-reckoning ta'en on trust,
Or lured with Hope of some Diviner Drink,
To fill the Cup--when crumbled into Dust!
LXIII
O threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise!
One thing at least is certain--_This_ Life flies;
One thing is certain and the rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.
LXIV
Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who
Before us pass'd the door of Darkness through,
Not one returns to tell us of the Road,
Which to discover we must travel too.
LXV
The Revelations of Devout and Learn'd
Who rose before us, and as Prophets burn'd,
Are all but Stories, which, awoke from Sleep,
They told their comrades, and to Sleep return'd.
LXVI
I sent my Soul through the Invisible,
Some letter of that After-life to spell:
And by and by my Soul return'd to me,
And answer'd, "I myself am Heav'n and Hell":
LXVII
Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire,
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire,
Cast on the Darkness into which Ourselves,
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire.
LXVIII
We are no other than a moving row
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go
Round with the Sun-illumined Lantern held
In Midnight by the Master of the Show;
LXIX
But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and Days;
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
And one by one back in the Closet lays.
LXX
The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Here or There as strikes the Player goes;
And He that toss'd you down into the Field,
_He_ knows about it all--HE knows--HE knows!
LXXI
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
LXXII
And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,
Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die,
Lift not your hands to _It_ for help--for It
As impotently moves as you or I.
LXXIII
With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sow'd the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.
LXXIV
YESTERDAY _This_ Day's Madness did prepare;
TO-MORROW'S Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why:
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
LXXV
I tell you this--When, started from the Goal,
Over the flaming shoulders of the Foal
Of Heav'n Parwín and Mushtarí they flung,
In my predestined Plot of Dust and Soul
LXXVI
The Vine had struck a fibre: which about
If clings my Being--let the Dervish flout;
Of my Base metal may be filed a Key,
That shall unlock the Door he howls without.
LXXVII
And this I know: whether the one True Light
Kindle to Love, or Wrath--consume me quite,
One Flash of It within the Tavern caught
Better than in the Temple lost outright.
LXXVIII
What! out of senseless Nothing to provoke
A conscious Something to resent the yoke
Of unpermitted Pleasure, under pain
Of Everlasting Penalties, if broke!
LXXIX
What! from his helpless Creature be repaid
Pure Gold for what he lent him dross-allay'd--
Sue for a Debt he never did contract,
And cannot answer--Oh, the sorry trade!
LXXX
O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestined Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!
LXXXI
O Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd--Man's forgiveness give--and take!
* * * * *
LXXXII
As under cover of departing Day
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazán away,
Once more within the Potter's house alone
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay.
LXXXIII
Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and small,
That stood along the floor and by the wall;
And some loquacious Vessels were; and some
Listen'd perhaps, but never talk'd at all.
LXXXIV
Said one among them--"Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to Shapeless Earth again."
LXXXV
Then said a Second--"Ne'er a peevish Boy
Would break the Bowl from which he drank in joy;
And He that with his hand the Vessel made
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy."
LXXXVI
After a momentary silence spake
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make;
"They sneer at me for leaning all awry:
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?"
LXXXVII
Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot--
I think a Súfi pipkin--waxing hot--
"All this of Pot and Potter--Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
LXXXVIII
"Why," said another, "Some there are who tell
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell
The luckless Pots he marr'd in making--Pish!
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well."
LXXXIX
"Well," murmur'd one, "Let whoso make or buy,
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry;
But fill me with the old familiar Juice;
Methinks I might recover by and by."
XC
So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,
The little Moon look'd in that all were seeking:
And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!
Now for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-creaking!"
* * * * *
XCI
Ah, with the Grape my fading Life provide,
And wash the Body whence the Life has died,
And lay me, shrouded in the living Leaf,
By some not unfrequented Garden-side.
XCII
That ev'n my buried Ashes such a snare
Of Vintage shall fling up into the Air
As not a True-believer passing by
But shall be overtaken unaware.
XCIII
Indeed the Idols I have loved so long
Have done my credit in this World much wrong:
Have drown'd my Glory in a shallow Cup,
And sold my Reputation for a Song.
XCIV
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore--but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence apieces tore.
XCV
And much as Wine has play'd the Infidel,
And robb'd me of my Robe of Honor--Well,
I wonder often what the Vintners buy
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.
XCVI
Yet ah, that Spring should vanish with the Rose!
That Youth's sweet-scented manuscript should close!
The Nightingale that in the branches sang,
Ah, whence, and whither flown again, who knows!
XCVII
Would but the Desert of the Fountain yield
One glimpse--if dimly, yet indeed, reveal'd,
To which the fainting Traveler might spring,
As springs the trampled herbage of the field!
XCVIII
Would but some wingèd Angel ere too late
Arrest the yet unfolded Roll of Fate,
And make the stern Recorder otherwise
Enregister, or quite obliterate!
XCIX
Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!
* * * * *
C
Yon rising Moon that looks for us again--
How oft hereafter will she wax and wane;
How oft hereafter rising look for us
Through this same Garden--and for _one_ in vain!
CI
And when like her, oh Sákí, you shall pass
Among the Guests Star-scatter'd on the Grass,
And in your joyous errand reach the spot
Where I made One--turn down an empty Glass!
ROBERT BROWNING
RABBI BEN EZRA
I
Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned;
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all nor be afraid!"
II
Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"
III
Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.
IV
Poor vaunt of life indeed,
Were man but formed to feed
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast:
Such feasting ended, then
As sure an end to men;
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt the maw-crammed beast?
V
Rejoice we are allied
To That which doth provide
And not partake, effect and not receive!
A spark disturbs our clod;
Nearer we hold of God
Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.
VI
Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive, and hold cheap the strain;
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!
VII
For thence,--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks,--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
VIII
What is he but a brute
Whose flesh has soul to suit,
Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want play?
To man, propose this test--
Thy body at its best,
How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?
IX
Yet gifts should prove their use:
I own the Past profuse
Of power each side, perfection every turn:
Eyes, ears took in their dole,
Brain treasured up the whole;
Should not the heart beat once, "How good to live and learn?"
X
Not once beat "Praise be Thine!
I see the whole design,
I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:
Perfect I call Thy plan:
Thanks that I was a man!
Maker, remake, complete,--I trust what Thou shalt do!"
XI
For pleasant is this flesh;
Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;
Would we some prize might hold
To match those manifold
Possessions of the brute,--gain most, as we did best!
XII
Let us not always say,
"Spite of this flesh to-day
I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"
As the bird wings and sings,
Let us cry, "All good things
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul!"
XIII
Therefore I summon age
To grant youth's heritage,
Life's struggle having so far reached its term:
Thence shall I pass, approved
A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the germ.
XIV
And I shall thereupon
Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on my adventure brave and new:
Fearless and unperplexed,
When I wage battle next,
What weapons to select, what armor to indue.
XV
Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold:
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame:
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old.
XVI
For note, when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray:
A whisper from the west
Shoots--"Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."
XVII
So, still within this life,
Though lifted o'er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
"This rage was right i' the main,
That acquiescence vain:
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past."
XVIII
For more is not reserved
To man, with soul just nerved
To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch
The Master work, and catch
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.
XIX
As it was better, youth
Should strive, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made:
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further. Thou waitedest age: wait death nor be afraid!
XX
Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.
XXI
Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!
XXII
Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes
Match me: we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?
XXIII
Not on the vulgar mass
Called "work," must sentence pass,
Things done, that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
XXIV
But all, the world's coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
XXV
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped.
XXVI
Ay, note that Potter's wheel,
That metaphor! and feel
Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,--
Thou, to whom fools propound,
When the wine makes its round,
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"
XXVII
Fool! All that is, at all,
Lasts ever, past recall;
Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:
What entered into thee,
_That_ was, is, and shall be:
Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.
XXVIII
He fixed thee mid this dance
Of plastic circumstance,
This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:
Machinery just meant
To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.
XXIX
What though the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves
Around thy base, no longer pause and press?
What though, about thy rim,
Skull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?
XXX
Look not thou down but up!
To uses of a cup,
The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,
The new wine's foaming flow,
The Master's lips a-glow!
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what need'st thou with earth's wheel?
XXXI
But I need, now as then,
Thee, God, who mouldest men;
And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
Did I,--to the wheel of life
With shapes and colors rife,
Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:
XXXII
So, take and use Thy work:
Amend what flaws may lurk,
What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim!
My times be in Thy hand!
Perfect the cup as planned!
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!
AN EPISTLE
CONTAINING THE STRANGE MEDICAL EXPERIENCE OF KARSHISH, THE ARAB PHYSICIAN
Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs,
The not-incurious in God's handiwork
(This man's-flesh He hath admirably made,
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste,
To coop up and keep down on earth a space
That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's soul)
--To Abib, all-sagacious in our art,
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast,
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks
Befall the flesh through too much stress and strain,
Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip
Back and rejoin its source before the term,--
And aptest in contrivance, under God,
To baffle it by deftly stopping such:--
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame with peace),
Three samples of true snake-stone--rarer still,
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than drugs),
And writeth now the twenty-second time.
My journeyings were brought to Jericho;
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art
Shall count a little labor unrepaid?
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone
On many a flinty furlong of this land.
Also the country-side is all on fire
With rumors of a marching hitherward--
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son.
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted ear;
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls:
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone.
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten me,
And once a town declared me for a spy;
But at the end, I reach Jerusalem,
Since this poor covert where I pass the night,
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence
A man with plague-sores at the third degree
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laughest here!
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe,
To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields.
A viscid choler is observable
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say,
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure
Than our school wots of: there's a spider here
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs,
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back;
Take five and drop them ... but who knows his mind,
The Syrian runagate I trust this to?
His service payeth me a sublimate
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye.
Best wait: I reach Jerusalem at morn
There set in order my experiences,
Gather what most deserves and give thee all--
Or I might add, Judea's gum-tragacanth
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer-grained,
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphyry,
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp disease
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy--
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at Zoar--
But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end.
Yet stay: my Syrian blinketh gratefully,
Protesteth his devotion is my price--
Suppose I write what harms not, though he steal?
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush,
What set me off a-writing first of all.
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang!
For, be it this town's barrenness--or else
The Man had something in the look of him--
His case has struck me far more than 'tis worth.
So, pardon if (lest presently I lose
In the great press of novelty at hand
The care and pains this somehow stole from me)
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind,
Almost in sight--for, wilt thou have the truth?
The very man is gone from me but now,
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse.
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all.
'Tis but a case of mania--subinduced
By epilepsy, at the turning-point
Of trance prolonged unduly some three days.
When, by the exhibition of some drug
Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art
Unknown to me and which 'twere well to know,
The evil thing out-breaking all at once
Left the man whole and sound of body indeed,--
But, flinging, so to speak, life's gates too wide,
Making a clear house of it too suddenly,
The first conceit that entered pleased to write
Whatever it was minded on the wall
So plainly at that vantage, as it were
(First come, first served), that nothing subsequent
Attaineth to erase the fancy-scrawls
Which the returned and new-established soul
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart
That henceforth she will read or these or none.
And first--the man's own firm conviction rests
That he was dead (in fact they buried him),
That he was dead and then restored to life
By a Nazarene physician of his tribe:
--Sayeth, the same bade, "Rise," and he did rise.
"Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry.
Not so this figment!--not, that such a fume,
Instead of giving way to time and health,
Should eat itself into the life of life,
As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones and all!
For see, how he takes up the after-life.
The man--it is one Lazarus, a Jew,
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age,
The body's habit wholly laudable,
As much, indeed, beyond the common health
As he were made and put aside to show.
Think, could we penetrate by any drug
And bathe the wearied soul and worried flesh,
And bring it clear and fair, by three days' sleep!
Whence has the man the balm that brightens all?
This grown man eyes the world now like a child.
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise,
Let in their friend, obedient as a sheep,
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke,
Now sharply, now with sorrow,--told the case,--
He listened not except I spoke to him,
But folded his two hands and let them talk,
Watching the flies that buzzed: and yet no fool.
And that's a sample how his years must go.
Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life,
Should find a treasure, can he use the same
With straightened habits and with tastes starved small,
And take at once to his impoverished brain
The sudden element that changes things,
--That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his hand,
And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned dust?
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth,
Warily parsimonious, when's no need,
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times?
All prudent counsel, as to what befits
The golden mean, is lost on such an one.
The man's fantastic will is the man's law.
So here--we'll call the treasure knowledge, say--
Increased beyond the fleshy faculty--
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth,
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing Heaven.
The man is witless of the size, the sum,
The value in proportion of all things,
Or whether it be little or be much.
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments
Assembled to besiege his city now,
And of the passing of a mule with gourds--
'Tis one! Then take it on the other side,
Speak of some trifling fact--he will gaze rapt
With stupor at its very littleness--
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed
He caught prodigious import, whole results;
And so will turn to us the bystanders
In ever the same stupor (note this point)
That we too see not with his opened eyes!
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play,
Preposterously, at cross purposes.
Should his child sicken unto death,--why, look
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness,
Or pretermission of his daily craft,--
While a word, gesture, glance, from that same child
At play or in the school or laid asleep,
Will start him to an agony of fear,
Exasperation, just as like! demand
The reason why--"'tis but a word," object--
"A gesture"--he regards thee as our lord
Who lived there in the pyramid alone,
Looked at us, dost thou mind, when being young
We both would unadvisedly recite
Some charm's beginning, from that book of his,
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont.
Thou and the child have each a veil alike
Thrown o'er your heads from under which ye both
Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a match
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know!
He holds on firmly to some thread of life--
(It is the life to lead perforcedly)--
Which runs across some vast distracting orb
Of glory on either side that meagre thread,
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet--
The spiritual life around the earthly life!
The law of that is known to him as this--
His heart and brain move there, his feet stay here.
So is the man perplext with impulses
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight on,
Proclaiming what is Right and Wrong across
And not along this black thread through the blaze--
"It should be" balked by "here it cannot be."
And oft the man's soul springs into his face
As if he saw again and heard again
His sage that bade him, "Rise," and he did rise.
Something--a word, a tick of the blood within
Admonishes--then back he sinks at once
To ashes, that was very fire before,
In sedulous recurrence to his trade
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread--
And studiously the humbler for that pride,
Professedly the faultier that he knows
God's secret, while he holds the thread of life.
Indeed the especial marking of the man
Is prone submission to the Heavenly will--
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is.
Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last
For that same death which will restore his being
To equilibrium, body loosening soul
Divorced even now by premature full growth:
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live
So long as God please, and just how God please.
He even seeketh not to please God more
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God please.
Hence I perceive not he affects to preach
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be--
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do.
How can he give his neighbor the real ground,
His own conviction? ardent as he is--
Call his great truth a lie, why still the old
"Be it as God please" reassureth him.
I probed the sore as thy disciple should--
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid carelessness
Sufficeth thee, when Rome is on her march
To stamp out like a little spark thy town,
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale and thee at once?"
He merely looked with his large eyes on me.
The man is apathetic, you deduce?
Contrariwise he loves both old and young,
Able and weak--affects the very brutes
And birds--how say I? flowers of the field--
As a wise workman recognizes tools
In a master's workshop, loving what they make.
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb:
Only impatient, let him do his best,
At ignorance and carelessness and sin--
An indignation which is promptly curbed.
As when in certain travels I have feigned
To be an ignoramus in our art
According to some preconceived design,
And happed to hear the land's practitioners,
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance,
Prattle fantastically on disease,
Its cause and cure--and I must hold my peace!
Thou wilt object--why have I not ere this
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the source,
Conferring with the frankness that befits?
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech
Perished in a tumult many years ago,
Accused--our learning's fate--of wizardry.
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule
And creed prodigious as described to me.
His death which happened when the earthquake fell
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss
To occult learning in our lord the sage
That lived there in the pyramid alone)
Was wrought by the mad people--that's their wont--
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it,
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help--
How could he stop the earthquake? That's their way!
The other imputations must be lies:
But take one--though I loathe to give it thee,
In mere respect to any good man's fame!
(And after all our patient Lazarus
Is stark mad--should we count on what he says?
Perhaps not--though in writing to a leech
'Tis well to keep back nothing of a case.--)
This man so cured regards the curer, then,
As--God forgive me--who but God himself,
Creator and Sustainer of the world,
That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile!
--Sayeth that such an One was born and lived,
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his own house,
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I know,
And yet was ... what I said nor choose repeat,
And must have so avouched himself, in fact,
In hearing of this very Lazarus
Who saith--But why all this of what he saith?
Why write of trivial matters, things of price
Calling at every moment for remark?
I noticed on the margin of a pool
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort,
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange!
Thy pardon for this long and tedious case,
Which, now that I review it, needs must seem
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth.
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest
And awe indeed, this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus--
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek-teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face, with certain spots
Multiform, manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian--he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends
For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine,
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!
The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great were the All-Loving too--
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself.
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine,
But love I gave thee, with Myself to love,
And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.
CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS
OR, NATURAL THEOLOGY IN THE ISLAND
"_Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself._"
['Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is best,
Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire,
With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin.
And, while he kicks both feet in the cool slush,
And feels about his spine small eft-things course,
Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh:
And while above his head a pompion-plant,
Coating the cave-top as a brow its eye,
Creeps down to touch and tickle hair and beard,
And now a flower drops with a bee inside,
And now a fruit to snap at, catch and crunch,--
He looks out o'er yon sea which sunbeams cross
And recross till they weave a spider-web
(Meshes of fire, some great fish breaks at times)
And talks to his own self, howe'er he please,
Touching that other, whom his dam called God.
Because to talk about Him vexes--ha,
Could He but know! and time to vex is now,
When talk is safer than in winter-time.
Moreover Prosper and Miranda sleep
In confidence he drudges at their task,
And it is good to cheat the pair, and gibe,
Letting the rank tongue blossom into speech.]
Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos!
'Thinketh, He dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon;
'Thinketh, He made it, with the sun to match,
But not the stars; the stars came otherwise;
Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:
Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,
And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.
'Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease:
He hated that He cannot change His cold,
Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish
That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,
And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine
O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,
A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;
Only, she ever sickened, found repulse
At the other kind of water, not her life
(Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun),
Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,
And in her old bounds buried her despair,
Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.
'Thinketh, He made thereat the sun, this isle,
Trees and the fowls here, beast and creeping thing.
Yon otter, sleek-wet, black, lithe as a leech;
Yon auk, one fire-eye in a ball of foam,
That floats and feeds; a certain badger brown
He hath watched hunt with that slant white-wedge eye
By moonlight; and the pie with the long tongue
That pricks deep into oakwarts for a worm,
And says a plain word when she finds her prize,
But will not eat the ants; the ants themselves
That build a wall of seeds and settled stalks
About their hole--He made all these and more,
Made all we see, and us, in spite: how else?
He could not, Himself, make a second self
To be His mate: as well have made Himself:
He would not make what he mislikes or slights,
An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:
But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,
Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be--
Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
Things He admires and mocks too,--that is it.
Because, so brave, so better though they be,
It nothing skills if He begin to plague.
Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash,
Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,
Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,--
Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,
Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain;
Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme,
And wanton, wishing I were born a bird.
Put case, unable to be what I wish,
I yet could make a live bird out of clay:
Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban
Able to fly?--for, there, see, he hath wings,
And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire,
And there, a sting to do his foes offence,
There, and I will that he begin to live,
Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns
Of grigs high up that make the merry din,
Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not.
In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,
And he lay stupid-like,--why, I should laugh;
And if he, spying me, should fall to weep,
Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong,
Bid his poor leg smart less or grow again,--
Well, as the chance were, this might take or else
Not take my fancy: I might hear his cry,
And give the mankin three sound legs for one,
Or pluck the other off, leave him like an egg,
And lessoned he was mine and merely clay.
Were this no pleasure, lying in the thyme,
Drinking the mash, with brain become alive,
Making and marring clay at will? So He.
'Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
'Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
That march now from the mountain to the sea;
Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
Loving not, hating not, just choosing so.
'Say, the first straggler that boasts purple spots
Shall join the file, one pincer twisted off;
'Say, this bruised fellow shall receive a worm,
And two worms he whose nippers end in red;
As it likes me each time, I do: so He.
Well then, 'supposeth He is good i' the main,
Placable if His mind and ways were guessed,
But rougher than His handiwork, be sure!
Oh, He hath made things worthier than Himself,
And envieth that, so helped, such things do more
Than He who made them! What consoles but this?
That they, unless through Him, do nought at all,
And must submit: what other use in things?
'Hath cut a pipe of pithless elder joint
That, blown through, gives exact the scream o' the jay
When from her wing you twitch the feathers blue:
Sound this, and little birds that hate the jay
Flock within stone's throw, glad their foe is hurt:
Put case such pipe could prattle and boast forsooth
"I catch the birds, I am the crafty thing,
I make the cry my maker cannot make
With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!"
Would not I smash it with my foot? So He.
But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease?
Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that,
What knows,--the something over Setebos
That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought,
Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance.
There may be something quiet o'er His head,
Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor grief,
Since both derive from weakness in some way.
I joy because the quails come; would not joy
Could I bring quails here when I have a mind:
This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth.
'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,
But never spends much thought nor care that way.
It may look up, work up,--the worse for those
It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish,
Who, making Himself feared through what he does,
Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot soar
To what is quiet and hath happy life;
Next looks down here, and out of very spite
Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real,
These good things to match those as hips do grapes.
'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books
Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle:
Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,
Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words;
Has peeled a wand and called it by a name;
Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's robe
The eyed skin of a supple oncelot;
And hath an ounce sleeker than youngling mole,
A four-legged serpent he makes cower and couch,
Now snarl, now hold its breath and mind his eye,
And saith she is Miranda and my wife:
'Keeps for his Ariel a tall pouch-bill crane
He bids go wade for fish and straight disgorge;
Also a sea-beast, lumpish, which he snared,
Blinded the eyes of, and brought somewhat tame,
And split its toe-webs, and now pens the drudge
In a hole o' the rock and calls him Caliban;
A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.
'Plays thus at being Prosper in a way,
Taketh his mirth with make-believes: so He.
His dam held that the Quiet made all things
Which Setebos vexed only: 'holds not so.
Who made them weak, meant weakness He might vex.
Had He meant other, while His hand was in,
Why not make horny eyes no thorn could prick,
Or plate my scalp with bone against the snow,
Or overscale my flesh 'neath joint and joint,
Like an orc's armor? Ay,--so spoil His sport!
He is the One now: only He doth all.
'Saith, He may like, perchance, what profits Him.
Ay, himself loves what does him good; but why?
'Gets good no otherwise. This blinded beast
Loves whoso places flesh-meat on his nose,
But, had he eyes, would want no help, but hate
Or love, just as it liked him: He hath eyes.
Also it pleaseth Setebos to work,
Use all His hands, and exercise much craft,
By no means for the love of what is worked.
'Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world
When all goes right, in this safe summer-time,
And he wants little, hungers, aches not much,
Than trying what to do with wit and strength.
'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs,
And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk,
And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each,
And set up endwise certain spikes of tree,
And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top,
Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill.
No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake;
'Shall some day knock it down again; so He.
'Saith He is terrible: watch His feats in proof!
One hurricane will spoil six good months' hope.
He hath a spite against me, that I know,
Just as He favors Prosper, who knows why?
So it is, all the same, as well I find.
'Wove wattles half the winter, fenced them firm
With stone and stake to stop she-tortoises
Crawling to lay their eggs here: well, one wave,
Feeling the foot of Him upon its neck,
Gaped as a snake does, lolled out its large tongue,
And licked the whole labor flat: so much for spite.
'Saw a ball flame down late (yonder it lies)
Where, half an hour before, I slept i' the shade:
Often they scatter sparkles: there is force!
'Dug up a newt He may have envied once
And turned to stone, shut up inside a stone.
Please Him and hinder this?--What Prosper does?
Aha, if He would tell me how! Not He!
There is the sport: discover how or die!
All need not die, for of the things o' the isle
Some flee afar, some dive, some run up trees;
Those at His mercy,--why, they please Him most
When ... when ... well, never try the same way twice!
Repeat what act has pleased, He may grow wroth.
You must not know His ways, and play Him off,
Sure of the issue. 'Doth the like himself:
'Spareth a squirrel that it nothing fears,
But steals the nut from underneath my thumb,
And when I threat, bites stoutly in defense:
'Spareth an urchin that contrariwise,
Curls up into a ball, pretending death
For fright at my approach: the two ways please.
But what would move my choler more than this,
That either creature counted on its life
To-morrow and next day and all days to come,
Saying, forsooth, in the inmost of its heart,
"Because he did so yesterday with me,
And otherwise with such another brute,
So must he do henceforth and always."--Ay?
'Would teach the reasoning couple what "must" means!
'Doth as he likes, or wherefore Lord? So He.
'Conceiveth all things will continue thus,
And we shall have to live in fear of Him
So long as He lives, keeps His strength: no change,
If He have done His best, make no new world
To please Him more, so leave off watching this,--
If He surprise not even the Quiet's self
Some strange day,--or, suppose, grow into it
As grubs grow butterflies: else, here are we,
And there is He, and nowhere help at all.
'Believeth with the life, the pain shall stop.
His dam held different, that after death
He both plagued enemies and feasted friends:
Idly! He doth His worst in this our life,
Giving just respite lest we die through pain,
Saving last pain for worst,--with which, an end.
Meanwhile, the best way to escape His ire
Is, not to seem too happy. 'Sees, himself,
Yonder two flies, with purple films and pink,
Bask on the pompion-bell above; kills both.
'Sees two black painful beetles roll their ball
On head and tail as if to save their lives:
Moves them the stick away they strive to clear.
Even so, 'would have Him misconceive, suppose
This Caliban strives hard and ails no less,
And always, above all else, envies Him;
Wherefore he mainly dances on dark nights,
Moans in the sun, gets under holes to laugh,
And never speaks his mind save housed as now:
Outside, groans, curses. If He caught me here,
O'erheard this speech, and asked "What chucklest at?"
'Would, to appease Him, cut a finger off,
Or of my three kid yearlings burn the best,
Or let the toothsome apples rot on tree,
Or push my tame beast for the orc to taste:
While myself lit a fire, and made a song
And sung it, "_What I hate, be consecrate
To celebrate Thee and Thy state, no mate
For Thee; what see for envy in poor me?_"
Hoping the while, since evils sometimes mend,
Warts rub away and sores are cured with slime,
That some strange day, will either the Quiet catch
And conquer Setebos, or likelier He
Decrepit may doze, doze, as good as die.
[What, what? A curtain o'er the world at once!
Crickets stop hissing; not a bird--or, yes,
There scuds His raven that has told Him all!
It was fool's play, this prattling! Ha! The wind
Shoulders the pillared dust, death's house o' the move
And fast invading fires begin! White blaze--
A tree's head snaps--and there, there, there, there, there,
His thunder follows! Fool to gibe at Him!
Lo! 'Lieth flat and loveth Setebos!
'Maketh his teeth meet through his upper lip,
Will let those quails fly, will not eat this month
One little mess of whelks, so he may 'scape!]
A GRAMMARIAN'S FUNERAL
Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
Singing together.
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes,
Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
Cared-for till cock-crow.
Look out if yonder's not the day again
Rimming the rock-row!
That's the appropriate country--there, man's thought,
Rarer, intenser,
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
Chafes in the censer!
Leave we the unlettered plain its herd and crop;
Seek we sepulture
On a tall mountain, citied to the top,
Crowded with culture!
All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels;
Clouds overcome it;
No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's
Circling its summit!
Thither our path lies--wind we up the heights--
Wait ye the warning?
Our low life was the level's and the night's;
He's for the morning!
Step to a tune, square chests, erect the head,
'Ware the beholders!
This is our master, famous, calm, and dead,
Borne on our shoulders.
Sleep, crop and herd! sleep, darkling thorpe and croft,
Safe from the weather!
He, whom we convey to his grave aloft,
Singing together,
He was a man born with thy face and throat,
Lyric Apollo!
Long he lived nameless: how should spring take note
Winter would follow?
Till lo, the little touch, and youth was gone!
Cramped and diminished,
Moaned he, "New measures, other feet anon!
My dance is finished?"
No, that's the world's way! (Keep the mountain-side,
Make for the city.)
He knew the signal, and stepped on with pride
Over men's pity;
Left play for work, and grappled with the world
Bent on escaping:
"What's in the scroll," quoth he, "thou keepest furled?
Show me their shaping,
Theirs, who most studied man, the bard and sage,--
Give!"--So he gowned him,
Straight got by heart that book to its last page:
Learned, we found him!
Yea, but we found him bald too--eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
"Time to taste life," another would have said,
"Up with the curtain!"
This man said rather, "Actual life comes next?
Patience a moment!
Grant I have mastered learning's crabbed text,
Still, there's the comment.
Let me know all. Prate not of most or least,
Painful or easy:
Even to the crumbs I'd fain eat up the feast,
Ay, nor feel queasy!"
Oh, such a life as he resolved to live,
When he had learned it,
When he had gathered all books had to give;
Sooner, he spurned it!
Image the whole, then execute the parts--
Fancy the fabric
Quite, ere you build, ere steel strike fire from quartz,
Ere mortar dab brick!
(Here's the town-gate reached: there's the market-place
Gaping before us.)
Yea, this in him was the peculiar grace
(Hearten our chorus),
Still before living he'd learn how to live--
No end to learning.
Earn the means first--God surely will contrive
Use for our earning.
Others mistrust and say, "But time escapes,--
Live now or never!"
He said, "What's Time? leave Now for dogs and apes!
Man has Forever."
Back to his book then: deeper drooped his head;
_Calculus_ racked him:
Leaden before, his eyes grew dross of lead;
_Tussis_ attacked him.
"Now, Master, take a little rest!"--not he!
(Caution redoubled!
Step two abreast, the way winds narrowly.)
Not a whit troubled,
Back to his studies, fresher than at first,
Fierce as a dragon
He (soul-hydroptic with a sacred thirst)
Sucked at the flagon.
Oh, if we draw a circle premature,
Heedless of far gain,
Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure,
Bad is our bargain!
Was it not great? did not he throw on God,
(He loves the burthen--)
God's task to make the heavenly period
Perfect the earthen?
Did not he magnify the mind, shew clear
Just what it all meant?
He would not discount life, as fools do here,
Paid by installment!
He ventured neck or nothing--heaven's success
Found, or earth's failure:
"Wilt thou trust death or not?" he answered "Yes.
Hence with life's pale lure!"
That low man seeks a little thing to do,
Sees it and does it:
This high man, with a great thing to pursue,
Dies ere he knows it.
That low man goes on adding one to one,
His hundred's soon hit:
This high man, aiming at a million,
Misses an unit.
That, has the world here--should he need the next,
Let the world mind him!
This, throws himself on God, and unperplext
Seeking shall find Him.
So, with the throttling hands of Death at strife,
Ground he at grammar;
Still, thro' the rattle, parts of speech were rife.
While he could stammer
He settled _Hoti's_ business--let it be!--
Properly based _Oun_--
Gave us the doctrine of the enclitic _De_,
Dead from the waist down.
Well, here's the platform, here's the proper place.
Hail to your purlieus,
All ye highfliers of the feathered race,
Swallows and curlews!
Here's the top-peak! the multitude below
Live, for they can there.
This man decided not to Live but Know--
Bury this man there?
Here--here's his place, where meteors shoot, clouds form,
Lightnings are loosened,
Stars come and go! let joy break with the storm--
Peace let the dew send!
Lofty designs must close in like effects:
Loftily lying,
Leave him--still loftier than the world suspects.
Living and dying.
WHY I AM A LIBERAL
"Why?" Because all I haply can and do,
All that I am now, all I hope to be,--
Whence comes it save from fortune setting free
Body and soul the purpose to pursue,
God traced for both? If fetters, not a few,
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me,
These shall I bid men--each in his degree
Also God-guided--bear, and gayly too?
But little do or can the best of us:
That little is achieved thro' Liberty.
Who then dares hold, emancipated thus,
His fellow shall continue bound? not I,
Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss
A brother's right to freedom. That is "Why."
FEARS AND SCRUPLES
Here's my case. Of old I used to love him,
This same unseen friend, before I knew:
Dream there was none like him, none above him,--
Wake to hope and trust my dream was true.
Loved I not his letters full of beauty?
Not his actions famous far and wide?
Absent, he would know I vowed him duty,
Present, he would find me at his side.
Pleasant fancy! for I had but letters,
Only knew of actions by hearsay:
He himself was busied with my betters;
What of that? My turn must come some day.
"Some day" proving--no day! Here's the puzzle
Passed and passed my turn is. Why complain?
He's so busied! If I could but muzzle
People's foolish mouths that give me pain!
"Letters?" (hear them!) "You a judge of writing?
Ask the experts!--How they shake the head
O'er these characters, your friend's inditing--
Call them forgery from A to Zed!"
"Actions? Where's your certain proof" (they bother),
"He, of all you find so great and good,
He, he only, claims this, that, the other
Action--claimed by men, a multitude?"
I can simply wish I might refute you,
Wish my friend would,--by a word, a wink,--
Bid me stop that foolish mouth,--you brute, you!
He keeps absent,--why, I cannot think.
Never mind! Tho' foolishness may flout me
One thing's sure enough; 'tis neither frost,
No, nor fire, shall freeze or burn from out me
Thanks for truth--tho' falsehood, gained--tho' lost.
All my days, I'll go the softlier, sadlier,
For that dream's sake! How forget the thrill
Thro' and thro' me as I thought, "The gladlier
Lives my friend because I love him still!"
Ah, but there's a menace some one utters!
"What and if your friend at home play tricks?
Peep at hide-and-seek behind the shutters?
Mean your eyes should pierce thro' solid bricks?
"What and if he, frowning, wake you, dreamy?
Lay on you the blame that bricks--conceal?
Say '_At least I saw who did not see me;
Does see now, and presently shall feel'?_"
"Why, that makes your friend a monster!" say you:
"Had his house no window? At first nod
Would you not have hailed him?" Hush, I pray you!
What if this friend happen to be--God?
EPILOGUE TO "ASOLANDO"
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time,
When you set your fancies free,
Will they pass to where--by death, fools think, imprisoned--
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom you loved so,
--Pity me?
Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken!
What had I on earth to do
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the unmanly?
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I drivel
--Being--who?
One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.
No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work-time
Greet the unseen with a cheer!
Bid him forward, breast and back as either should be,
"Strive and thrive!" cry, "Speed,--fight on, fare ever
There as here!"
PROSPICE
Fear death?--to feel the fog in my throat,
The mist in my face,
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place,
The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe;
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form,
Yet the strong man must go:
For the journey is done and the summit attained,
And the barriers fall,
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained,
The reward of it all.
I was ever a fighter, so--one fight more,
The best and the last!
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forbore,
And bade me creep past.
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers
The heroes of old,
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears.
Of pain, darkness and cold.
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave,
The black minute's at end,
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave,
Shall dwindle, shall blend,
Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain,
Then a light, then thy breast,
O thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee again,
And with God be the rest!
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
WAGES
Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song,
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless sea--
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong--
Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no lover of glory she:
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.
The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be dust,
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the worm and the fly?
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just,
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky:
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die.
THE HIGHER PANTHEISM
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plains--
Are not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns?
Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that which He seems?
Dreams are true while they last, and do we not live in dreams?
Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?
Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the reason why;
For is He not all but that which has power to feel "I am I"?
Glory about thee, without thee; and thou fulfillest thy doom,
Making Him broken gleams, and a stifled splendor and gloom.
Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet--
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.
God is law, say the wise; O Soul, and let us rejoice,
For, if He thunder by law, the thunder is yet His voice.
Law is God, say some: no God at all, says the fool;
For all we have power to see is a straight staff bent in a pool;
And the ear of man cannot hear, and the eye of man cannot see;
But if we could see and hear, this Vision--were it not He?
FLOWER IN THE CRANNIED WALL
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower--but _if_ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
IN MEMORIAM
PROEM
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou:
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see;
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
LIV
Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete;
That not a worm is cloven in vain;
That not a moth with vain desire
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire,
Or but subserves another's gain.
Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.
So runs my dream: but what am I?
An infant crying in the night:
An infant crying for the light:
And with no language but a cry.
LV
The wish, that of the living whole
No life may fail beyond the grave,
Derives it not from what we have
The likest God within the soul?
Are God and Nature then at strife,
That Nature lends such evil dreams?
So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life;
That I, considering everywhere
Her secret meaning in her deeds,
And finding that of fifty seeds
She often brings but one to bear,
I falter where I firmly trod,
And falling with my weight of cares
Upon the great world's altar-stairs
That slope thro' darkness up to God,
I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what I feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
LVI
"So careful of the type?" but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, "A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.
"Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more." And he, shall he,
Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation's final law--
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek'd against his creed--
Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal'd within the iron hills?
No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music match'd with him.
O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.
CROSSING THE BAR
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
GEORGE MEREDITH
LUCIFER IN STARLIGHT[12]
On a starred night Prince Lucifer uprose.
Tired of his dark dominion, swung the fiend
Above the rolling ball in cloud part screened,
Where sinners hugged their spectre of repose.
Poor prey to his hot fit of pride were those.
And now upon his western wing he leaned,
And now his huge bulk o'er Afric's sands careened,
And now the black planet shadowed Arctic snows.
Soaring through wider zones that pricked his scars
With memory of the old revolt from Awe,
He reached a middle height, and at the stars,
Which are the brain of heaven, he looked, and sank.
Around the ancient track marched, rank on rank,
The army of unalterable law.
WILLIAM E. HENLEY
INVICTUS
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as a pit from Pole to Pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud;
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the Shade;
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and still finds me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll:
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.
THOMAS HARDY
NEW YEAR'S EVE[13]
"I have finished another year," said God,
"In gray, green, white, and brown;
I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,
Sealed up the worm within the clod,
And let the last sun down."
"And what's the good of it?" I said.
"What reasons made you call
From formless void this earth we tread,
When nine-and-ninety can be read
Why nought should be at all?
"Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, 'who in
This tabernacle groan'?
If ever a joy be found herein,
Such joy no man had wished to win
If he had never known!"
Then he: "My labors--logicless--
You may explain; not I:
Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess
That I evolved a Consciousness
To ask for reasons why.
"Strange that ephemeral creatures who
By my own ordering are,
Should see the shortness of my view,
Use ethic tests I never knew,
Or made provision for!"
He sank to raptness as of yore,
And opening New Year's Day
Wove it by rote as theretofore,
And went on working evermore
In his unweeting way.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
CIVILIZATION[14]
A certain degree of progress from the rudest state in which man is
found,--a dweller in caves, or on trees, like an ape,--a cannibal, and
eater of pounded snails, worms, and offal,--a certain degree of progress
from this extreme, is called Civilization. It is a vague, complex name, of
many degrees. Nobody has attempted a definition. M. Guizot, writing a book
on the subject, does not. It implies the evolution of a highly-organized
man, brought to supreme delicacy of sentiment, as in practical power,
religion, liberty, sense of honor, and taste. In the hesitation to define
what it is, we usually suggest it by negations. A nation that has no
clothing, no iron, no alphabet, no marriage, no arts of peace, no abstract
thought, we call barbarous. And after many arts are invented or imported,
as among the Turks and Moorish nations, it is often a little complaisant
to call them civilized.
Each nation grows after its own genius, and has a civilization of its own.
The Chinese and Japanese, though each complete in his way, is different
from the man of Madrid or the man of New York. The term imports a
mysterious progress. In the brutes is none; and in mankind to-day the
savage tribes are gradually extinguished rather than civilized. The
Indians of this country have not learned the white man's work; and in
Africa, the negro of to-day is the negro of Herodotus. In other races the
growth is not arrested; but the like progress that is made by a boy "when
he cuts his eye-teeth," as we say,--childish illusions passing daily
away, and he seeing things really and comprehensively,--is made by tribes.
It is the learning the secret of cumulative power, of advancing on one's
self. It implies a facility of association, power to compare, the ceasing
from fixed ideas. The Indian is gloomy and distressed when urged to depart
from his habits and traditions. He is overpowered by the gaze of the
white, and his eye sinks. The occasion of one of these starts of growth is
always some novelty that astounds the mind, and provokes it to dare to
change. Thus there is a Cadmus, a Pytheas, a Manco Capac at the beginning
of each improvement--some superior foreigner importing new and wonderful
arts, and teaching them. Of course, he must not know too much, but must
have the sympathy, language, and gods of those he would inform. But
chiefly the sea-shore had been the point of departure to knowledge, as to
commerce. The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the
most. The power which the sea requires in a sailor makes a man of him very
fast, and the change of shores and population clears his head of much
nonsense of his wigwam.
Where shall we begin or end the list of those feats of liberty and wit,
each of which feats made an epoch of history? Thus, the effect of a framed
or stone house is immense on the tranquillity, power, and refinement of
the builder. A man in a cave or in a camp, a nomad, will die with no more
estate than the wolf or the horse leaves. But so simple a labor as a house
being achieved, his chief enemies are kept at bay. He is safe from the
teeth of wild animals, from frost, sunstroke, and weather; and fine
faculties begin to yield their fine harvest. Invention and art are born,
manners and social beauty and delight. 'Tis wonderful how soon a piano
gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under
a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin Grammar--and one of those tow-head
boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates, take
heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the
pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong
hands.
When the Indian trail gets widened, graded, and bridged to a good road,
there is a benefactor, there is a missionary, a pacificator, a
wealth-bringer, a maker of markets, a vent for industry. Another step in
civility is the change from war, hunting, and pasturage to agriculture.
Our Scandinavian forefathers have left us a significant legend to convey
their sense of the importance of this step. "There was once a giantess who
had a daughter, and the child saw a husbandman ploughing in the field.
Then she ran and picked him up with her finger and thumb, and put him and
his plough and his oxen into her apron, and carried them to her mother,
and said, 'Mother, what sort of a beetle is this that I found wriggling in
the sand?' But the mother said, 'Put it away, my child; we must begone out
of this land, for these people will dwell in it.'" Another success is the
post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded
by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer
or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea, over
land, and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it,
I look upon as a fine metre of civilization.
The division of labor, the multiplication of the arts of peace, which is
nothing but a large allowance to each man to choose his work according to
his faculty,--to live by his better hand,--fills the State with useful and
happy laborers; and they, creating demand by the very temptation of their
productions, are rapidly and surely rewarded by good sale: and what a
police and ten commandments their work thus becomes! So true is Dr.
Johnson's remark that "men are seldom more innocently employed than when
they are making money."
The skillful combinations of civil government, though they usually follow
natural leadings, as the lines of race, language, religion, and territory,
yet require wisdom and conduct in the rulers, and in their result delight
the imagination. "We see insurmountable multitudes obeying, in opposition
to their strongest passions, the restraints of a power which they scarcely
perceive, and the crimes of a single individual marked and punished at the
distance of half the earth."
Right position of woman in the State is another index. Poverty and
industry with a healthy mind read very easily the laws of humanity, and
love them; place the sexes in right relations of mutual respect, and a
severe morality gives that essential charm to woman which educates all
that is delicate, poetic, and self-sacrificing, breeds courtesy and
learning, conversation and wit, in her rough mate; so that I have thought
a sufficient measure of civilization is the influence of good women.
Another measure of culture is the diffusion of knowledge, overrunning all
the old barriers of caste, and, by the cheap press, bringing the
university to every poor man's door in the newsboy's basket. Scraps of
science, of thought, of poetry, are in the coarsest sheet, so that in
every house we hesitate to burn a newspaper until we have looked it
through.
The ship, in its latest complete equipment, is an abridgment and compend
of a nation's arts: the ship steered by compass and chart,--longitude
reckoned by lunar observation and by chronometer,--driven by steam; and
in wildest sea-mountains, at vast distances from home,--
The pulses of her iron heart
Go beating through the storm.
No use can lessen the wonder of this control, by so weak a creature, of
forces so prodigious. I remember I watched, in crossing the sea, the
beautiful skill whereby the engine in its constant working was made to
produce two hundred gallons of fresh water out of salt water every
hour--thereby supplying all the ship's wants.
The skill that pervades complex details; the man that maintains himself;
the chimney taught to burn its own smoke; the farm made to produce all
that is consumed on it; the very prison compelled to maintain itself and
yield a revenue, and, better still, made a reform school, and a
manufactory of honest men out of rogues, as the steamer made fresh water
out of salt--all these are examples of that tendency to combine
antagonisms, and utilize evil, which is the index of high civilization.
Civilization is the result of highly complex organization. In the snake,
all the organs are sheathed: no hands, no feet, no fins, no wings. In bird
and beast, the organs are released, and begin to play. In man, they are
all unbound, and full of joyful action. With this unswaddling he receives
the absolute illumination we call Reason, and thereby true liberty.
Climate has much to do with this melioration. The highest civility has
never loved the hot zones. Wherever snows falls, there is usually civil
freedom. Where the banana grows, the animal system is indolent and
pampered at the cost of higher qualities; the man is sensual and cruel.
But this scale is not invariable. High degrees of moral sentiment control
the unfavorable influences of climate; and some of our grandest examples
of men and of races come from the equatorial regions--as the genius of
Egypt, of India, and of Arabia.
These feats are measures or traits of civility; and temperate climate is
an important influence, though not quite indispensable; for there have
been learning, philosophy, and art in Iceland, and in the tropics. But one
condition is essential to the social education of man, namely, morality.
There can be no high civility without a deep morality, though it may not
always call itself by that name, but sometimes the point of honor, as in
the institution of chivalry; or patriotism, as in the Spartan and Roman
republics; or the enthusiasm of some religious act which imputes its
virtue to its dogma; or the cabalism, or _esprit de corps_, of a masonic
or other association of friends.
The evolution of a highly-destined society must be moral; it must run in
the grooves of the celestial wheels. It must be catholic in aims. What is
_moral_? It is the respecting in action catholic or universal ends. Hear
the definition which Kant gives of moral conduct: "Act always so that the
immediate motive of thy will may become a universal rule for all
intelligent beings."
Civilization depends on morality. Everything good in man leans on what is
higher. This rule holds in small as in great. Thus, all our strength and
success in the work of our hands depend on our borrowing the aid of the
elements. You have seen a carpenter on a ladder with a broad axe chopping
upward chips from a beam. How awkward! at what disadvantage he works! But
see him on the ground, dressing his timber under him. Now, not his feeble
muscles, but the force of gravity brings down the axe; that is to say, the
planet itself splits his stick. The farmer had much ill-temper, laziness,
and shirking to endure from his hand-sawyers, until one day he bethought
him to put his saw-mill on the edge of a waterfall; and the river never
tires of turning his wheel: the river is good-natured, and never hints an
objection.
We had letters to send: couriers could not go fast enough, nor far enough;
broke their wagons, foundered their horses; bad roads in spring,
snow-drifts in winter, heats in summer; could not get the horses out of a
walk. But we found out that the air and earth were full of electricity,
and always going our way--just the way we wanted to send. _Would he take a
message?_ Just as lief as not; had nothing else to do; would carry it in
no time. Only one doubt occurred, one staggering objection--he had no
carpetbag, no visible pockets, no hands, not so much as a mouth, to carry
a letter. But, after much thought and many experiments, we managed to meet
the conditions, and to fold up the letter in such invisible compact form
as he could carry in those invisible pockets of his, never wrought by
needle and thread--and it went like a charm.
I admire still more than the saw-mill the skill which, on the sea-shore,
makes the tides drive the wheels and grind corn, and which thus engages
the assistance of the moon, like a hired hand, to grind, and wind, and
pump, and saw, and split stone, and roll iron.
Now that is the wisdom of a man, in every instance of his labor, to hitch
his wagon to a star, and see his chore done by the gods themselves. That
is the way we are strong, by borrowing the might of the elements. The
forces of steam, gravity, galvanism, light, magnets, wind, fire, serve us
day by day, and cost us nothing.
Our astronomy is full of examples of calling in the aid of these
magnificent helpers. Thus, on a planet so small as ours, the want of an
adequate base for astronomical measurements is early felt; as, for
example, in detecting the parallax of a star. But the astronomer, having
by an observation fixed the place of a star, by so simple an expedient as
waiting six months, and then repeating his observation, contrived to put
the diameter of the earth's orbit, say two hundred millions of miles,
between his first observation and his second, and this line afforded him a
respectable base for his triangle.
All our arts aim to win this vantage. We cannot bring the heavenly powers
to us; but, if we will only choose our jobs in directions in which they
travel, they will undertake them with the greatest pleasure. It is a
peremptory rule with them, that _they never go out of their road_. We are
dapper little busybodies, and run this way and that way superserviceably;
but they swerve never from their fore-ordained paths--neither the sun, nor
the moon, nor a bubble of air, nor a mote of dust.
And as our handiworks borrow the elements, so all our social and political
action leans on principles. To accomplish anything excellent, the will
must work for catholic and universal ends. A puny creature, walled in on
every side, as Daniel wrote,--
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
But when his will leans on a principle, when he is the vehicle of ideas,
he borrows their omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are
impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was a great
instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best courages are
but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in
paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal.
No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other
way--Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules: every god will
leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and
promote--justice, love, freedom, knowledge, utility.
If we can thus ride in Olympian chariots by putting our works in the path
of the celestial circuits, we can harness also evil agents, the powers of
darkness, and force them to serve against their will the ends of wisdom
and virtue. Thus, a wise government puts fines and penalties on pleasant
vices. What a benefit would the American government, not yet relieved of
its extreme need, render to itself, and to every city, village, and hamlet
in the States, if it would tax whiskey and rum almost to the point of
prohibition! Was it Bonaparte who said that he found vices very good
patriots? "He got five millions from the love of brandy, and he should be
glad to know which of the virtues would pay him as much." Tobacco and
opium have broad backs, and will cheerfully carry the load of armies, if
you choose to make them pay high for such joy as they give and such harm
as they do.
These are traits, and measures, and modes; and the true test of
civilization is, not the census, nor the size of cities, nor the
crops--no, but the kind of man the country turns out. I see the vast
advantages of this country, spanning the breadth of the temperate zone. I
see the immense material prosperity--towns on towns, states on states, and
wealth piled in the massive architecture of cities; California quartz
mountains dumped down in New York to be repiled architecturally
along-shore from Canada to Cuba, and thence westward to California again.
But it is not New York streets, built by the confluence of workmen and
wealth of all nations, though stretching out toward Philadelphia until
they touch it, and northward until they touch New Haven, Hartford,
Springfield, Worcester, and Boston--not these that make the real
estimation. But, when I look over this constellation of cities which
animate and illustrate the land, and see how little the government has to
do with their daily life, how self-helped and self-directed all families
are,--knots of men in purely natural societies,--societies of trade, of
kindred blood, of habitual hospitality, house and house, man acting on man
by weight of opinion of longer or better-directed industry, the refining
influence of women, the invitation which experience and permanent causes
open to youth and labor,--when I see how much each virtuous and gifted
person, whom all men consider, lives affectionately with scores of
excellent people who are not known far from home, and perhaps with great
reason reckons these people his superiors in virtue, and in the symmetry
and force of their qualities, I see what cubic values America has, and in
these a better certificate of civilization than great cities or enormous
wealth.
In strictness, the vital refinements are the moral and intellectual steps.
The appearance of the Hebrew Moses, of the Indian Buddh,--in Greece, of
the Seven Wise Masters, of the acute and upright Socrates, and of the
Stoic Zeno,--in Judæa, the advent of Jesus,--and in modern Christendom, of
the realists Huss, Savonarola, and Luther,--are casual facts which carry
forward races to new convictions, and elevate the rule of life. In the
presence of these agencies, it is frivolous to insist on the invention of
printing or gunpowder, of steam-power or gas-light, percussion-caps and
rubber-shoes, which are toys thrown off from that security, freedom, and
exhilaration which a healthy morality creates in society. These arts add a
comfort and smoothness to house and street life; but a purer morality,
which kindles genius, civilizes civilization, casts backward all that we
held sacred into the profane, as the flame of oil throws a shadow when
shined upon by the flame of the Bude-light. Not the less the popular
measures of progress will ever be the arts and the laws.
But if there be a country which cannot stand any one of these tests--a
country where knowledge cannot be diffused without perils of mob-law and
statute-law,--where speech is not free,--where the post-office is
violated, mailbags opened, and letters tampered with,--where public debts
and private debts outside of the State are repudiated,--where liberty is
attacked in the primary institution of social life,--where the position of
the white woman is injuriously affected by the outlawry of the black
woman,--where the arts, such as they have, are all imported, having no
indigenous life,--where the laborer is not secured in the earnings of his
own hands,--where suffrage is not free or equal,--that country is, in all
these respects, not civil, but barbarous; and no advantages of soil,
climate, or coast can resist these suicidal mischiefs.
Morality and all the incidents of morality are essential: as, justice to
the citizen and personal liberty. Montesquieu says: "Countries are well
cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free"; and the remark
holds not less, but more true, of the culture of men, than of the tillage
of land. And the highest proof of civility is, that the whole public
action of the State is directed on securing the greatest good of the
greatest number.
ILLUSIONS[15]
Flow, flow the waves hated,
Accursed, adored,
The waves of mutation:
No anchorage is.
Sleep is not, death is not;
Who seem to die, live.
House you were born in,
Friends of your spring-time,
Old man and young maid,
Day's toil and its guerdon--
They are all vanishing,
Fleeing to fables,
Cannot be moored.
See the stars through them,
Through treacherous marbles.
Know, the stars yonder,
The stars everlasting
Are fugitive also,
And emulate, vaulted,
The lambent heat-lightning,
And fire-fly's flight.
When thou dost return
On the wave's circulation,
Beholding the shimmer,
The will's dissipation,
And, out of endeavor
To change and to flow,
The gas become solid,
And phantoms and nothings
Return to be things,
And endless imbroglio
Is law and the world,--
Then first shalt thou know,
That in the wild turmoil,
Horsed on the Proteus,
Thou ridest to power,
And to endurance.
Some years ago, in company with an agreeable party, I spent a long summer
day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through
spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and
county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern
to the innermost recess which tourists visit--a niche or grotto made of
one seamless stalactite and called, I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the
light of one day. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits; heard the voice
of unseen waterfalls; paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo
River, whose waters are peopled with the blind fish; crossed the streams
"Lethe" and "Styx"; plied with music and guns the echoes in these alarming
galleries; saw every form of stalagmite and stalactite in the sculptured
and fretted chambers--icicle, orange-flower, acanthus, grapes, and
snowball. We shot Bengal lights into the vaults and groins of the sparry
cathedrals, and examined all the masterpieces which the four combined
engineers, water, limestone, gravitation, and time, could make in the
dark.
The mysteries and scenery of the cave had the same dignity that belongs to
all natural objects, and shames the fine things to which we foppishly
compare them. I remarked, especially, the mimetic habit, with which
Nature, on new instruments, hums her old tunes, making night to mimic day,
and chemistry to ape vegetation. But I then took notice, and still chiefly
remember, that the best thing which the cave had to offer was an illusion.
On arriving at what is called the "Star Chamber," our lamps were taken
from us by the guide, and extinguished or put aside, and, on looking
upwards, I saw or seemed to see the night heaven thick with stars
glimmering more or less brightly over our heads, and even what seemed a
comet flaming among them. All the party were touched with astonishment
and pleasure. Our musical friends sung with much feeling a pretty song,
"The stars are in the quiet sky," etc., and I sat down on the rocky floor
to enjoy the serene picture. Some crystal specks in the black ceiling high
overhead, reflecting the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this
magnificent effect.
I own, I did not like the cave so well for eking out its sublimities with
this theatrical trick. But I have had many experiences like it, before and
since; and we must be content to be pleased without too curiously
analyzing the occasions. Our conversation with Nature is not just what it
seems. The cloud-rack, the sunrise and sunset glories, rainbows, and
northern lights, are not quite so spheral as our childhood thought them;
and the part our organization plays in them is too large. The senses
interfere everywhere, and mix their own structure with all they report of.
Once, we fancied the earth a plane, and stationary. In admiring the
sunset, we do not yet deduct the rounding, coördinating, pictorial powers
of the eye.
The same interference from our organization creates the most of our
pleasure and pain. Our first mistake is the belief that the circumstance
gives the joy which we give to the circumstance. Life is an ecstasy. Life
is sweet as nitrous oxide; and the fisherman dripping all day over a cold
pond, the switchman at the railway intersection, the farmer in the field,
the negro in the rice-swamp, the fop in the street, the hunter in the
woods, the barrister with the jury, the belle at the ball, all ascribe a
certain pleasure to their employment, which they themselves give it.
Health and appetite impart the sweetness to sugar, bread, and meat. We
fancy that our civilization has got on far, but we still come back to our
primers.
We live by our imaginations, by our admirations, by our sentiments. The
child walks amid heaps of illusions, which he does not like to have
disturbed. The boy, how sweet to him is his fancy! how dear the story of
barons and battles! What a hero he is, whilst he feeds on his heroes! What
a debt is his to imaginative books! He has no better friend or influence
than Scott, Shakespeare, Plutarch, and Homer. The man lives to other
objects, but who dares affirm that they are more real? Even the prose of
the streets is full of refractions. In the life of the dreariest alderman,
fancy enters into all details, and colors them with rosy hue. He imitates
the air and actions of people whom he admires, and is raised in his own
eyes. He pays a debt quicker to a rich man than to a poor man. He wishes
the bow and compliment of some leader in the state, or in society; weighs
what he says; perhaps he never comes nearer to him for that, but dies at
last better contented for this amusement of his eyes and his fancy.
The world rolls, the din of life is never hushed. In London, in Paris, in
Boston, in San Francisco, the carnival, the masquerade is at its height.
Nobody drops his domino. The unities, the fictions of the piece, it would
be an impertinence to break. The chapter of fascinations is very long.
Great is paint; nay, God is the painter; and we rightly accuse the critic
who destroys too many illusions. Society does not love its unmaskers. It
was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by D'Alembert, "qu'un état de
vapeur était un état très fâcheux, parcequ'il nous faisait voir les choses
comme elles sont." I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life.
Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bauble or
another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's
Mocking,--for the Power has many names,--is stronger than the Titans,
stronger than Apollo. Few have overheard the gods, or surprised their
secret. Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be
understood. All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snowstorm. We wake
from one dream into another dream. The toys, to be sure, are various, and
are graduated in refinement to the quality of the dupe. The intellectual
man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is
drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with
music and banner and badge.
Amid the joyous troop who give in to the charivari, comes now and then a
sad-eyed boy, whose eyes lack the requisite refractions to clothe the show
in due glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency to trace home the
glittering miscellany of fruits and flowers to one root. Science is a
search after identity, and the scientific whim is lurking in all corners.
At the State Fair, a friend of mine complained that all the varieties of
fancy pears in our orchards seem to have been selected by somebody who had
a whim for a particular kind of pear, and only cultivated such as had that
perfume; they were all alike. And I remember the quarrel of another youth
with the confectioners, that, when he racked his wit to choose the best
comfits in the shops, in all the endless varieties of sweetmeat he could
only find three flavors, or two. What then? Pears and cakes are good for
something; and because you, unluckily, have an eye or nose too keen, why
need you spoil the comfort which the rest of us find in them?
I knew a humorist who, in a good deal of rattle, had a grain or two of
sense. He shocked the company by maintaining that the attributes of God
were two--power and risibility; and that it was the duty of every pious
man to keep up the comedy. And I have known gentlemen of great stake in
the community, but whose sympathies were cold,--presidents of colleges,
and governors, and senators,--who held themselves bound to sign every
temperance pledge, and act with Bible societies, and missions, and
peacemakers, and cry, _Hist-a-boy!_ to every good dog. We must not carry
comity too far, but we all have kind impulses in this direction. When the
boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter
into Nature's game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly,
fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy
chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid
on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to
tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the
less they hung it round with frippery romance, like the children of the
happiest fortune, and talked of "the dear cottage where so many joyful
hours had flown." Well, this thatching of hovels is the custom of the
country. Women, more than all, are the element and kingdom of illusion.
Being fascinated, they fascinate. They see through Claude-Lorraines. And
how dare anyone, if he could, pluck away the _coulisses_, stage-effects,
and ceremonies, by which they live? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the
region of affection, and its atmosphere always liable to _mirage_.
We are not very much to blame for our bad marriages. We live amid
hallucinations; and this especial trap is laid to trip up our feet with,
and all are tripped up first or last. But the mighty Mother who had been
so sly with us, as if she felt that she owed us some indemnity, insinuates
into the Pandora-box of marriage some deep and serious benefits, and some
great joys. We find a delight in the beauty and happiness of children that
makes the heart too big for the body. In the worst-assorted connections
there is ever some mixture of true marriage. Teague and his jade get some
just relations of mutual respect, kindly observation, and fostering of
each other, learn something, and would carry themselves wiselier, if they
were now to begin.
'Tis fine for us to point at one or another fine madman, as if there were
any exempts. The scholar in his library is none. I, who have all my life
heard any number of orations and debates, read poems and miscellaneous
books, conversed with many geniuses, am still the victim of any new page;
and, if Marmaduke, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any other, invent a new style
or mythology, I fancy that the world will be all brave and right if
dressed in these colors, which I had not thought of. Then at once I will
daub with this new paint: but it will not stick. 'Tis like the cement
which the peddler sells at the door; he makes broken crockery hold with
it, but you can never buy of him a bit of the cement which will make it
hold when he is gone.
Men who make themselves felt in the world avail themselves of a certain
fate in their constitution, which they know how to use. But they never
deeply interest us, unless they lift a corner of the curtain, or betray
never so slightly their penetration of what is behind it. 'Tis the charm
of practical men, that outside of their practicality are a certain poetry
and play, as if they led the good horse Power by the bridle, and preferred
to walk, though they can ride so fiercely. Bonaparte is intellectual, as
well as Cæsar; and the best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway men have a
gentleness, when off duty; a good-natured admission that there are
illusions, and who shall say that he is not their sport? We stigmatize the
cast-iron fellows, who cannot so detach themselves, as "dragon-ridden,"
"thunder-stricken," and fools of fate, with whatever powers endowed.
Since our tuition is through emblems and indirections, 'tis well to know
that there is method in it, a fixed scale, and rank above rank in the
phantasms. We begin low with coarse masks, and rise to the most subtle and
beautiful. The red men told Columbus, "they had an herb which took away
fatigue"; but he found the illusion of "arriving from the east at the
Indies" more composing to his lofty spirit than any tobacco. Is not our
faith in the impenetrability of matter more sedative than narcotics? You
play with jack-straws, balls, bowls, horse and gun, estates and politics;
but there are finer games before you. Is not time a pretty toy? Life will
show you masks that are worth all your carnivals. Yonder mountain must
migrate into your mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous blur in Orion,
"the portentous year of Mizar and Alcor," must come down and be dealt with
in your household thought. What if you shall come to discern that the play
and playground of all this pompous history are radiations from yourself,
and that the sun borrows his beams? What terrible questions we are
learning to ask! The former men believed in magic, by which temples,
cities, and men were swallowed up and all trace of them gone. We are
coming on the secret of a magic which sweeps out of men's minds all
vestige of theism and beliefs which they and their fathers held and were
framed upon.
There are deceptions of the senses, deceptions of the passions, and the
structural, beneficent illusions of sentiment and of the intellect. There
is the illusion of love, which attributes to the beloved person all which
that person shares with his or her family, sex, age, or condition, nay,
with the human mind itself. 'Tis these which the lover loves, and Anna
Matilda gets the credit of them. As if one shut up always in a tower, with
one window, through which the face of heaven and earth could be seen,
should fancy that all the marvels he beheld belonged to that window. There
is the illusion of time, which is very deep; who has disposed of it? or
come to the conviction that what seems the _succession_ of thought is only
the distribution of wholes into causal series? The intellect sees that
every atom carries the whole of Nature; that the mind opens to
omnipotence; that, in the endless striving and ascents, the metamorphosis
is entire, so that the soul doth not know itself in its own act, when that
act is perfected. There is illusion that shall deceive even the elect.
There is illusion that shall deceive even the performer of the miracle.
Though he make his body, he denies that he makes it. Though the world
exist from thought, thought is daunted in presence of the world. One after
the other we accept the mental laws, still resisting those which follow,
which however must be accepted. But all our concessions only compel us to
new profusion. And what avails it that science has come to treat space and
time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical,
and withal our pretension of _property_ and even of self-hood are fading
with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities; but the
incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which
yesterday was a finality to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?
With such volatile elements to work in, 'tis no wonder if our estimates
are loose and floating. We must work and affirm, but we have no guess of
the value of what we say or do. The cloud is now as big as your hand, and
now it covers a county. That story of Thor, who was set to drain the
drinking-horn in Asgard, and to wrestle with the old woman, and to run
with the runner Lok, and presently found that he had been drinking up the
sea, and wrestling with Time, and racing with Thought, describes us who
are contending, amid these seeming trifles, with the supreme energies of
Nature. We fancy we have fallen into bad company and squalid condition,
low debts, shoe-bills, broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, butcher's
meat, sugar, milk, and coal. "Set me some great task, ye gods! and I will
show my spirit." "Not so," says the good Heaven; "plod and plough, vamp
your old coats and hats, weave a shoestring; great affairs and the best
wine by-and-by." Well, 'tis all phantasm; and if we weave a yard of tape
in all humility, and as well as we can, long hereafter we shall see it was
no cotton tape at all, but some galaxy which we braided, and that the
threads were Time and Nature.
We cannot write the order of the variable winds. How can we penetrate the
law of our shifting moods and susceptibility? Yet they differ as all and
nothing. Instead of the firmament of yesterday, which our eyes require, it
is to-day an eggshell which coops us in; we cannot even see what or where
our stars of destiny are. From day to day, the capital facts of human life
are hidden from our eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, and reveals them,
and we think how much good time is gone, that might have been saved had
any hint of these things been shown. A sudden rise in the road shows us
the system of mountains, and all the summits, which have been just as near
us all the year, but quite out of mind. But these alternations are not
without their order, and we are parties to our various fortune. If life
seem a succession of dreams, yet poetic justice is done in dreams also.
The visions of good men are good; it is the undisciplined will that is
whipped with bad thoughts and bad fortunes. When we break the laws, we
lose our hold on the central reality. Like sick men in hospitals, we
change only from bed to bed, from one folly to another; and it cannot
signify much what becomes of such castaways,--wailing, stupid, comatose
creatures,--lifted from bed to bed, from the nothing of life to the
nothing of death.
In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays and foundations.
There is none but a strict and faithful dealing at home, and a severe
barring out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games are played
with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy
with the last honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and childish
virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in
character. Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all
kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and my word as good as
my bond, and to be what cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or undermined,
to all the _éclat_ in the universe. This reality is the foundation of
friendship, religion, poetry, and art. At the top or at the bottom of all
illusions, I set the cheat which still leads us to work and live for
appearances, in spite of our conviction, in all sane hours, that it is
what we really are that avails with friends, with strangers, and with fate
or fortune.
One would think from the talk of men, that riches and poverty were a great
matter; and our civilization mainly respects it. But the Indians say, that
they do not think the white man with his brow of care, always toiling,
afraid of heat and cold, and keeping within doors, has any advantage of
them. The permanent interest of every man is, never to be in a false
position, but to have the weight of Nature to back him in all that he
does. Riches and poverty are a thick or thin costume; and our life--the
life of all of us--identical. For we transcend the circumstance
continually, and taste the real quality of existence; as in our
employments, which only differ in the manipulations, but express the same
laws; or in our thoughts, which wear no silks and taste no ice-creams. We
see God face to face every hour, and know the savor of Nature.
The early Greek philosophers Heraclitus and Xenophanes measured their
force on this problem of identity. Diogenes of Apollonia said, that unless
the atoms were made of one stuff, they could never blend and act with one
another. But the Hindoos, in their sacred writings, express the liveliest
feeling, both of the essential identity, and of that illusion which they
conceive variety to be: "The notions, _I am_, and _This is mine_, which
influence mankind, are but delusions of the mother of the world. Dispel, O
Lord of all creatures! the conceit of knowledge which proceeds from
ignorance." And the beatitude of man they hold to lie in being freed from
fascination.
The intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth in a trope, and the
will by clothing the laws of life in illusions. But the unities of Truth
and of Right are not broken by the disguise. There need never be any
confusion in these. In a crowded life of many parts and performers, on a
stage of nations, or in the obscurest hamlet in Maine or California, the
same elements offer the same choices to each new comer, and, according to
his election, he fixes his fortune in absolute nature. It would be hard to
put more mental and moral philosophy than the Persians have thrown into a
sentence:--
Fooled thou must be, though wisest of the wise:
Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice.
There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and
gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal
enters the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with them alone, they
pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their
thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions.
He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and
whose movement and doings he must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned,
insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously
commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should
resist their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, new
changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. And
when, by-and-by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a
little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones--they
alone with him alone.
FATE[16]
Delicate omens traced in air
To the lone bard true witness bare;
Birds with auguries on their wings
Chanted undeceiving things,
Him to beckon, him to warn;
Well might then the poet scorn
To learn of scribe or courier
Hints writ in vaster character;
And on his mind, at dawn of day,
Soft shadows of the evening lay.
For the prevision is allied
Unto the thing so signified;
Or say, the foresight that awaits
Is the same Genius that creates.
It chanced during one winter, a few years ago, that our critics were bent
on discussing the theory of the Age. By an odd coincidence, four or five
noted men were each reading a discourse to the citizens of Boston or New
York, on the Spirit of the Times. It so happened that the subject had the
same prominence in some remarkable pamphlets and journals issued in London
in the same season. To me, however, the question of the times resolved
itself into a practical question of the conduct of life. How shall I live?
We are incompetent to solve the times. Our geometry cannot span the huge
orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and reconcile their
opposition. We can only obey our own polarity. 'Tis fine for us to
speculate and elect our course, if we must accept an irresistible
dictation.
In our first steps to gain our wishes, we come upon immovable limitations.
We are fired with the hope to reform men. After many experiments, we find
that we must begin earlier--at school. But the boys and girls are not
docile; we can make nothing of them. We decide that they are not of good
stock. We must begin our reform earlier still--at generation: that is to
say, there is Fate, or laws of the world.
But, if there be irresistible dictation, this dictation understands
itself. If we must accept Fate, we are not less compelled to affirm
liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the
power of character. This is true, and that other is true. But our geometry
cannot span these extreme points, and reconcile them. What to do? By
obeying each thought frankly, by harping, or, if you will, pounding on
each string, we learn at last its power. By the same obedience to other
thoughts, we learn theirs, and then comes some reasonable hope of
harmonizing them. We are sure, that, though we know not how, necessity
does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with
the spirit of the times. The riddle of the age has for each a private
solution. If one would study his own time, it must be by this method of
taking up in turn each of the leading topics which belong to our scheme of
human life, and, by firmly stating all that is agreeable to experience on
one, and doing the same justice to the opposing facts in the others, the
true limitations will appear. Any excess of emphasis, on one part, would
be corrected, and a just balance would be made.
But let us honestly state the facts. Our America has a bad name for
superficialness. Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and
buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves
to face it. The Spartan, embodying his religion in his country, dies
before its majesty without a question. The Turk, who believes his doom is
written on the iron leaf in the moment when he entered the world, rushes
on the enemy's sabre with undivided will. The Turk, the Arab, the Persian,
accepts the fore-ordained fate.
On two days, it steads not to run from thy grave,
The appointed, and the unappointed day;
On the first, neither balm nor physician can save,
Nor thee, on the second, the Universe slay.
The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. Our Calvinists, in the last
generation, had something of the same dignity. They felt that the weight
of the Universe held them down to their place. What could _they_ do? Wise
men feel that there is something which cannot be talked or voted away--a
strap or belt which girds the world.
The Destiny, minister general,
That executeth in the world o'er all,
The purveyance which God hath seen beforne,
So strong it is that tho' the world had sworn
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay,
Yet sometime it shall fallen on a day
That falleth not oft in a thousand year,
For, certainly, our appetites here,
Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love,
All this is rulèd by the sight above.
CHAUCER: _The Knighte's Tale_.
The Greek Tragedy expressed the same sense: "Whatever is fated, that will
take place. The great immense mind of Jove is not to be transgressed."
Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of
Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an
election or favoritism. And, now and then, an amiable parson, like Jung
Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which,
whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at
his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist--does
not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly,
and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like
a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood,
benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the
elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of
Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of
the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones
of his prey in the coil of the anaconda--these are in the system, and our
habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the
slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is
complicity--expensive races--race living at the expense of race. The
planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets,
rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions
of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening of the forest. The sea changes its
bed. Towns and counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men
like flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons were crushed
in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea; the sword of the climate in the west
of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a
massacre. Our Western prairie shakes with fever and ague. The cholera, the
small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes, as a frost to the
crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by a
fall of the temperature of one night. Without uncovering what does not
concern us; or counting how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx; or
groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory biters, or the obscurities
of alternate generation;--the forms of the shark, the _labrus_, the jaw of
the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and
other warriors hidden in the sea--are hints of ferocity in the interiors
of nature. Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough,
incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its
huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in
a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.
Will you say, the disasters which threaten mankind are exceptional, and
one need not lay his account for cataclysms every day? Ay, but what
happens once, may happen again, and so long as these strokes are not to be
parried by us, they must be feared.
But these shocks and ruins are less destructive to us than the stealthy
power of other laws which act on us daily. An expense of ends to means is
fate--organization tyrannizing over character. The menagerie, or forms and
powers of the spine, is a book of fate: the bill of the bird, the skull of
the snake, determines tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of races,
of temperaments; so is sex; so is climate; so is the reaction of talents
imprisoning the vital power in certain directions. Every spirit makes its
house; but afterwards the house confines the spirit.
The gross lines are legible to the dull: the cabman is phrenologist so
far: he looks in your face to see if his shilling is sure. A dome of brow
denotes one thing; a pot-belly another; a squint, a pug-nose, mats of
hair, the pigment of the epidermis, betray character. People seem sheathed
in their tough organization. Ask Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask Quetelet,
if temperaments decide nothing? or if there be anything they do not
decide? Read the description in medical books of the four temperaments,
and you will think you are reading your own thoughts which you had not yet
told. Find the part which black eyes, and which blue eyes, play severally
in the company. How shall a man escape from his ancestors, or draw off
from his veins the black drop which he drew from his father's or his
mother's life? It often appears in a family, as if all the qualities of
the progenitors were potted in several jars--some ruling quality in each
son or daughter of the house--and sometimes the unmixed temperament, the
rank unmitigated elixir, the family vice, is drawn off in a separate
individual, and the others are proportionally relieved. We sometimes see a
change of expression in our companion, and say, his father, or his mother,
comes to the windows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote relative. In
different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if
there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin,--seven or
eight ancestors at least,--and they constitute the variety of notes for
that new piece of music which his life is. At the corner of the street,
you read the possibility of each passenger, in the facial angle, in the
complexion, in the depth of his eye. His parentage determines it. Men are
what their mothers made them. You may as well ask a loom which weaves
huckaback, why it does not make cashmere, as expect poetry from this
engineer or a chemical discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger in the
ditch to explain Newton's laws: the fine organs of his brains have been
pinched by overwork and squalid poverty from father to son, for a hundred
years. When each comes forth from his mother's womb, the gate of gifts
closes behind him. Let him value his hands and feet, he has but one pair.
So he has but one future, and that is already predetermined in his lobes,
and described in that little fatty face, pig-eye, and squat form. All the
privilege and all the legislation of the world cannot meddle or help to
make a poet or a prince of him.
Jesus said, "When he looketh on her, he hath committed adultery." But he
is an adulterer before he has yet looked on the woman, by the superfluity
of animal, and the defect of thought, in his constitution. Who meets him,
or who meets her, in the street, sees that they are ripe to be each
other's victim.
In certain men, digestion and sex absorb the vital force, and the stronger
these are, the individual is so much weaker. The more of these drones
perish, the better for the hive. If, later, they give birth to some
superior individual, with force enough to add to this animal a new aim,
and a complete apparatus to work it out, all the ancestors are gladly
forgotten. Most men and most women are merely one couple more. Now and
then, one has a new cell or camarilla opened in his brain--an
architectural, a musical, or a philological knack, some stray taste or
talent for flowers, or chemistry, or pigments, or story-telling, a good
hand for drawing, a good foot for dancing, an athletic frame for wide
journeying, etc.--which skill nowise alters rank in the scale of nature,
but serves to pass the time, the life of sensation going on as before. At
last, these hints and tendencies are fixed in one, or in a succession.
Each absorbs so much food and force as to become itself a new centre. The
new talent draws off so rapidly the vital force, that not enough remains
for the animal functions, hardly enough for health; so that, in the second
generation, if the like genius appear, the health is visibly deteriorated,
and the generative force impaired.
People are born with the moral or with the material bias; uterine brothers
with this diverging destination; and I suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr.
Frauenhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come to distinguish in the embryo at
the fourth day, this is a Whig, and that a Free-soiler.
It was a poetic attempt to lift this mountain of Fate, to reconcile this
despotism of race with liberty, which led the Hindoos to say, "Fate is
nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence." I find the
coincidence of the extremes of eastern and western speculation in the
daring statement of Schelling, "There is in every man a certain feeling,
that he has been what he is from all eternity, and by no means became
such in time." To say it less sublimely--in the history of the individual
is always an account of his condition, and he knows himself to be a party
to his present estate.
A good deal of our politics is physiological. Now and then, a man of
wealth in the heyday of youth adopts the tenet of broadest freedom. In
England, there is always some man of wealth and large connection planting
himself, during all his years of health, on the side of progress, who, as
soon as he begins to die, checks his forward play, calls in his troops,
and becomes conservative. All conservatives are such from personal
defects. They have been effeminated by position or nature, born halt and
blind, through luxury of their parents, and can only, like invalids, act
on the defensive. But strong natures, backwoodsmen, New Hampshire giants,
Napoleons, Burkes, Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are inevitable patriots,
until their life ebbs, and their defects and gout, palsy and money, warp
them.
The strongest idea incarnates itself in majorities and nations, in the
healthiest and strongest. Probably, the election goes by avoirdupois
weight, and, if you could weigh bodily the tonnage of any hundred of the
Whig and the Democratic party in a town, on the Dearborn balance, as they
passed the hay scales, you could predict with certainty which party would
carry it. On the whole, it would be rather the speediest way of deciding
the vote, to put the selectmen or the mayor and aldermen at the hayscales.
In science, we have to consider two things: power and circumstance. All we
know of the egg, from each successive discovery, is, _another vesicle_;
and if, after five hundred years, you get a better observer, or a better
glass, he finds within the last observed another. In vegetable and animal
tissue, it is just alike, and all that the primary power or spasm
operates, is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes--but the tyrannical
Circumstance! A vesicle in new circumstances, a vesicle lodged in
darkness, Oken thought, became animal; in light, a plant. Lodged in the
parent animal, it suffers changes, which end in unsheathing miraculous
capability in the unaltered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to fish, bird,
or quadruped, head and foot, eye and claw. The Circumstance is Nature.
Nature is, what you may do. There is much you may not. We have two
things--the circumstance, and the life. Once we thought, positive power
was all. Now we learn, that negative power, or circumstance, is half.
Nature is the tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull, the sheathed snake,
the ponderous, rock-like jaw; necessitated activity; violent direction;
the conditions of a tool, like the locomotive, strong enough on its track,
but which can do nothing but mischief off it; or skates, which are wings
on the ice, but fetters on the ground.
The book of Nature is the book of Fate. She turns the gigantic pages--leaf
after leaf--never re-turning one. One leaf she lays down, a floor of
granite; then a thousand ages, and a bed of slate; a thousand ages, and a
measure of coal; a thousand ages, and a layer of marl and mud; vegetable
forms appear; her first misshapen animals, zoöphyte, trilobium, fish,
then, saurians--rude forms, in which she has only blocked her future
statue, concealing under these unwieldy monsters the fine type of her
coming king. The face of the planet cools and dries, the races meliorate,
and man is born. But when a race has lived its term, it comes no more
again.
The population of the world is a conditional population; not the best, but
the best that could live now; and the scale of tribes, and the steadiness
with which victory adheres to one tribe, and defeat to another, is as
uniform as the superposition of strata. We know in history what weight
belongs to race. We see the English, French, and Germans, planting
themselves on every shore and market of America and Australia, and
monopolizing the commerce of these countries. We like the nervous and
victorious habit of our own branch of the family. We follow the step of
the Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. We see how much will has been
expended to extinguish the Jew, in vain. Look at the unpalatable
conclusions of Knox, in his "Fragment of Races,"--a rash and
unsatisfactory writer, but charged with pungent and unforgettable truths.
"Nature respects race, and not hybrids." "Every race has its own
_habitat_." "Detach a colony from the race, and it deteriorates to the
crab." See the shades of the picture. The German and Irish millions, like
the negro, have a great deal of guano in their destiny. They are ferried
over the Atlantic, and carted over America, to ditch and to drudge, to
make corn cheap, and then to lie down prematurely to make a spot of green
grass on the prairie.
One more faggot of these adamantine bandages, is, the new science of
Statistics. It is a rule, that the most casual and extraordinary
events--if the basis of population is broad enough--become matter of fixed
calculation. It would not be safe to say when a captain like Bonaparte, a
singer like Jenny Lind, or a navigator like Bowditch, would be born in
Boston: but, on a population of twenty or two hundred millions, something
like accuracy may be had.[17]
'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They
have all been invented over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine,
of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models. He helps
himself on each emergency by copying or duplicating his own structure,
just so far as the need is. 'Tis hard to find the right Homer, Zoroaster,
or Menu; harder still to find the Tubal Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or
Copernicus, or Fust, or Fulton, the indisputable inventor. There are
scores and centuries of them. "The air is full of men." This kind of
talent so abounds, this constructive tool-making efficiency, as if it
adhered to the chemic atoms, as if the air he breathes were made of
Vaucansons, Franklins, and Watts.
Doubtless, in every million there will be an astronomer, a mathematician,
a comic poet, a mystic. No one can read the history of astronomy, without
perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new
kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empedocles,
Aristarchus, Pythagoras, OEnopides, had anticipated them; each had the
same tense geometrical brain, apt for the same vigorous computation and
logic, a mind parallel to the movement of the world. The Roman mile
probably rested on a measure of a degree of the meridian. Mahometan and
Chinese know what we know of leap-year, of the Gregorian calendar, and of
the precession of the equinoxes. As, in every barrel of cowries, brought
to New Bedford, there shall be one _orangia_, so there will, in a dozen
millions of Malays and Mahometans, be one or two astronomical skulls. In a
large city, the most casual things, and things whose beauty lies in their
casualty, are produced as punctually and to order as the baker's muffin
for breakfast. "Punch" makes exactly one capital joke a week; and the
journals contrive to furnish one good piece of news every day.
And not less work the laws of repression, the penalties of violated
functions. Famine, typhus, frost, war, suicide, and effete races, must be
reckoned calculable parts of the system of the world.
These are pebbles from the mountain, hints of the terms by which our life
is walled up, and which show a kind of mechanical exactness, as of a loom
or mill, in what we call casual or fortuitous events.
The force with which we resist these torrents of tendency looks so
ridiculously inadequate, that it amounts to little more than a criticism
or a protest made by a minority of one, under compulsion of millions. I
seemed, in the height of a tempest, to see men overboard struggling in the
waves, and driven about here and there. They glanced intelligently at each
other, but 'twas little they could do for one another; 'twas much if each
could keep afloat alone. Well, they had a right to their eye-beams, and
all the rest was Fate.
* * * * *
We cannot trifle with this reality, this cropping out in our planted
gardens of the core of the world. No picture of life can have any veracity
that does not admit the odious facts. A man's power is hooped in by a
necessity which, by many experiments, he touches on every side, until he
learns its arc.
The element running through entire nature, which we popularly call Fate,
is known to us as limitation. Whatever limits us, we call Fate. If we are
brute and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and dreadful shape. As we
refine, our checks become finer. If we rise to spiritual culture, the
antagonism takes a spiritual form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu follows
Maya through all her ascending changes, from insect and crawfish up to
elephant; whatever form she took, he took the male form of that kind,
until she became at last woman and goddess, and he a man and a god. The
limitations refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of necessity is
always perched at the top.
When the gods in the Norse heaven were unable to bind the Fenris Wolf with
steel or with weight of mountains,--the one he snapped and the other he
spurned with his heel,--they put round his foot a limp band softer than
silk or cobweb, and this held him: the more he spurned it, the stiffer it
grew. So soft and so staunch is the ring of Fate. Neither brandy, nor
nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor hell-fire, nor ichor, nor poetry, nor
genius, can get rid of this limp band. For if we give it the high sense in
which the poets use it, even thought itself is not above Fate: that too
must act according to eternal laws, and all that is willful and fantastic
in it is in opposition to its fundamental essence.
And, last of all, high over thought, in the world of morals, Fate appears
as vindicator, leveling the high, lifting the low, requiring justice in
man, and always striking soon or late, when justice is not done. What is
useful will last; what is hurtful will sink. "The doer must suffer," said
the Greeks: "you would soothe a Deity not to be soothed." "God himself
cannot procure good for the wicked," said the Welsh triad. "God may
consent, but only for a time," said the bard of Spain. The limitation is
impassable by any insight of man. In its last and loftiest ascensions,
insight itself, and the freedom of the will, is one of its obedient
members. But we must not run into generalizations too large, but show the
natural bounds or essential distinctions, and seek to do justice to the
other elements as well.
* * * * *
Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, and morals--in race, in retardations
of strata, and in thought and character as well. It is everywhere bound or
limitation. But fate has its lord; limitation its limits; is different
seen from above and from below; from within and from without. For, though
Fate is immense, so is power, which is the other fact in the dual world,
immense. If Fate follows and limits power, power attends and antagonizes
Fate. We must respect Fate as natural history, but there is more than
natural history. For who and what is this criticism that pries into the
matter? Man is not order of nature, sack and sack, belly and members, link
in a chain, nor any ignominious baggage, but a stupendous antagonism, a
dragging together of the poles of the Universe. He betrays his relation to
what is below him--thick-skulled, small-brained, fishy,
quadrumanous--quadruped ill-disguised, hardly escaped into biped, and has
paid for the new powers by loss of some of the old ones. But the lightning
which explodes and fashions planets, maker of planets and suns, is in him.
On one side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges,
peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and, on the other part, thought, the
spirit which composes and decomposes nature--here they are, side by side,
god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm,
riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.
Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard the contradiction--freedom is
necessary. If you please to plant yourself on the side of Fate, and say,
Fate is all; then we say, a part of Fate is the freedom of man. Forever
wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in the soul. Intellect annuls
Fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free. And though nothing is more
disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and
the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a
"Declaration of Independence," or the statute right to vote, by those who
have never dared to think or to act, yet it is wholesome to man to look,
not at Fate, but the other way: the practical view is the other. His sound
relation to these facts is to use and command, not to cringe to them.
"Look not on nature, for her name is fatal," said the oracle. The too much
contemplation of these limits induces meanness. They who talk much of
destiny, their birth-star, etc., are in a lower dangerous plane, and
invite the evils they fear.
I cited the instinctive and heroic races as proud believers in Destiny.
They conspire with it; a loving resignation is with the event. But the
dogma makes a different impression, when it is held by the weak and lazy.
'Tis weak and vicious people who cast the blame on Fate. The right use of
Fate is to bring up our conduct to the loftiness of nature. Rude and
invincible except by themselves are the elements. So let man be. Let him
empty his breast of his windy conceits, and show his lordship by manners
and deeds on the scale of nature. Let him hold his purpose as with the tug
of gravitation. No power, no persuasion, no bribe shall make him give up
his point. A man ought to compare advantageously with a river, an oak, or
a mountain. He shall have not less the flow, the expansion, and the
resistance of these.
'Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal courage. Go face the fire at
sea, or the cholera in your friend's house, or the burglar in your own, or
what danger lies in the way of duty, knowing you are guarded by the
cherubim of Destiny. If you believe in Fate to your harm, believe it, at
least, for your good.
For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also is part of it, and can confront
fate with fate. If the Universe have these savage accidents, our atoms are
as savage in resistance. We should be crushed by the atmosphere, but for
the reaction of the air within the body. A tube made of a film of glass
can resist the shock of the ocean, if filled with the same water. If
there be omnipotence in the stroke, there is omnipotence of recoil.
But Fate against Fate is only parrying and defense: there are, also, the
noble creative forces. The revelation of Thought takes man out of
servitude into freedom. We rightly say of ourselves, we were born, and
afterward we were born again, and many times. We have successive
experiences so important, that the new forgets the old, and hence the
mythology of the seven or the nine heavens. The day of days, the great day
of the feast of life, is that in which the inward eye opens to the Unity
in things, to the omnipresence of law--sees that what is must be, and
ought to be, or is the best. This beatitude dips from on high down to us,
and we see. It is not in us so much as we are in it. If the air come to
our lungs, we breathe and live; if not, we die. If the light come to our
eyes, we see; else not. And if truth come to our mind, we suddenly expand
to its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. We are as lawgivers; we speak
for Nature; we prophesy and divine.
This insight throws us on the party and interest of the Universe, against
all and sundry; against ourselves, as much as others. A man speaking from
insight affirms of himself what is true of the mind: seeing its
immortality, he says, I am immortal; seeing its invincibility, he says, I
am strong. It is not in us, but we are in it. It is of the maker, not of
what is made. All things are touched and changed by it. This uses, and is
not used. It distances those who share it, from those who share it not.
Those who share it not are flocks and herds. It dates from itself; not
from former men or better men--gospel, or constitution, or college, or
custom. Where it shines, Nature is no longer intrusive, but all things
make a musical or pictorial impression. The world of men show like a
comedy without laughter:--populations, interests, government,
history;--'tis all toy figures in a toy house. It does not overvalue
particular truths. We hear eagerly every thought and word quoted from an
intellectual man. But, in his presence, our own mind is roused to
activity, and we forget very fast what he says, much more interested in
the new play of our own thought, than in any thought of his. 'Tis the
majesty into which we have suddenly mounted, the impersonality, the scorn
of egotisms, the sphere of laws, that engage us. Once we were stepping a
little this way, and a little that way; now, we are as men in a balloon,
and do not think so much of the point we have left, or the point we would
make, as of the liberty and glory of the way.
Just as much intellect as you add, so much organic power. He who sees
through the design, presides over it, and must will that which must be. We
sit and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream will come to pass. Our
thought, though it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest necessity, not
to be separated from thought, and not to be separated from will. They must
always have coexisted. It apprises us of its sovereignty and godhead,
which refuse to be severed from it. It is not mine or thine, but the will
of all mind. It is poured into the souls of all men, as the soul itself
which constitutes them men. I know not whether there be, as is alleged, in
the upper region of our atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, which
carries with it all atoms which rise to that height; but I see that, when
souls reach a certain clearness of perception, they accept a knowledge and
motive above selfishness. A breath of will blows eternally through the
universe of souls in the direction of the Right and Necessary. It is the
air which all intellects inhale and exhale, and it is the wind which blows
the worlds into order and orbit.
Thought dissolves the material universe, by carrying the mind up into a
sphere where all is plastic. Of two men, each obeying his own thought, he
whose thought is deepest will be the strongest character. Always one man
more than another represents the will of Divine Providence to the period.
If thought makes free, so does the moral sentiment. The mixtures of
spiritual chemistry refuse to be analyzed. Yet we can see that with the
perception of truth is joined the desire that it shall prevail. That
affection is essential to will. Moreover, when a strong will appears, it
usually results from a certain unity of organization, as if the whole
energy of body and mind flowed in one direction. All great force is real
and elemental. There is no manufacturing a strong will. There must be a
pound to balance a pound. Where power is shown in will, it must rest on
the universal force. Alaric and Bonaparte must believe they rest on a
truth, or their will can be bought or bent. There is a bribe possible for
any finite will. But the pure sympathy with universal ends is an infinite
force, and cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has had experience of the
moral sentiment cannot choose but believe in unlimited power. Each pulse
from that heart is an oath from the Most High. I know not what the word
_sublime_ means, if it be not the intimations in this infant of a terrific
force. A text of heroism, a name and anecdote of courage, are not
arguments, but sallies of freedom. One of these is the verse of the
Persian Hafiz, "'Tis written on the gate of Heaven, 'Woe unto him who
suffers himself to be betrayed by Fate!'" Does the reading of history make
us fatalists? What courage does not the opposite opinion show! A little
whim of will to be free gallantly contending against the universe of
chemistry.
But insight is not will, nor is affection will. Perception is cold, and
goodness dies in wishes; as Voltaire said, 'tis the misfortune of worthy
people that they are cowards; "_un des plus grands malheurs des honnêtes
gens c'est qu'ils sont des lâches_." There must be a fusion of these two
to generate the energy of will. There can be no driving force, except
through the conversion of the man into his will, making him the will, and
the will him. And one may say boldly, that no man has a right perception
of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be
its martyr.
The one serious and formidable thing in nature is a will. Society is
servile from want of will, and therefore the world wants saviours and
religions. One way is right to go: the hero sees it, and moves on that
aim, and has the world under him for root and support. He is to others as
the world. His approbation is honor; his dissent, infamy. The glance of
his eye has the force of sunbeams. A personal influence towers up in
memory only worthy, and we gladly forget numbers, money, climate,
gravitation, and the rest of Fate.
* * * * *
We can afford to allow the limitation, if we know it is the meter of the
growing man. We can stand against Fate, as children stand up against the
wall in their father's house, and notch their height from year to year.
But when the boy grows to man, and is master of the house, he pulls down
that wall, and builds a new and bigger. 'Tis only a question of time.
Every brave youth is in training to ride, and rule this dragon. His
science is to make weapons and wings of these passions and retarding
forces. Now whether, seeing these two things, fate and power, we are
permitted to believe in unity? The bulk of mankind believe in two gods.
They are under one dominion here in the house, as friend and parent, in
social circles, in letters, in art, in love, in religion: but in
mechanics, in dealing with steam and climate, in trade, in politics, they
think they come under another; and that it would be a practical blunder
to transfer the method and way of working of one sphere into the other.
What good, honest, generous men at home, will be wolves and foxes on
change! What pious men in the parlor will vote for what reprobates at the
polls! To a certain point, they believe themselves the care of a
Providence. But in a steamboat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe a
malignant energy rules.
But relation and connection are not somewhere and sometimes, but
everywhere and always. The divine order does not stop where their sight
stops. The friendly power works on the same rules, in the next farm and
the next planet. But where they have not experience, they run against it,
and hurt themselves. Fate, then, is a name for facts not yet passed under
the fire of thought--for causes which are unpenetrated.
But every jet of chaos which threatens to exterminate us is convertible by
intellect into wholesome force. Fate is unpenetrated causes. The water
drowns ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But learn to swim, trim your
bark, and the wave which drowned it will be cloven by it, and carry it,
like its own foam, a plume and a power. The cold is inconsiderate of
persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man like a dew-drop. But learn to
skate, and the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and poetic motion. The
cold will brace your limbs and brain to genius, and make you foremost men
of time. Cold and sea will train an imperial Saxon race, which nature
cannot bear to lose, and, after cooping it up for a thousand years in
yonder England, gives a hundred Englands, a hundred Mexicos. All the
bloods it shall absorb and domineer: and more than Mexicos--the secrets of
water and steam, the spasms of electricity, the ductility of metals, the
chariot of the air, the ruddered balloon, are awaiting you.
The annual slaughter from typhus far exceeds that of war; but right
drainage destroys typhus. The plague in the sea-service from scurvy is
healed by lemon juice and other diets portable or procurable; the
depopulation by cholera and small-pox is ended by drainage and
vaccination; and every other pest is not less in the chain of cause and
effect, and may be fought off. And, whilst art draws out the venom, it
commonly extorts some benefits from the vanquished enemy. The mischievous
torrent is taught to drudge for man; the wild beasts he makes useful for
food, or dress, or labor; the chemic explosions are controlled like his
watch. These are now the steeds on which he rides. Man moves in all modes,
by legs of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by gas of balloon, by
electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own
element. There is nothing he will not make his carrier.
Steam was, till the other day, the devil which we dreaded. Every pot made
by any human potter or brazier had a hole in its cover, to let off the
enemy, lest he should lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. But the
Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and Fulton bethought themselves that where was
power was not devil, but was God; that it must be availed of, and not by
any means let off and wasted. Could he lift pots and roofs and houses so
handily? he was the workman they were in search of. He could be used to
lift away, chain, and compel other devils, far more reluctant and
dangerous, namely, cubic miles of earth, mountains, weight or resistance
of water, machinery, and the labors of all men in the world; and time he
shall lengthen, and shorten space.
It has not fared much otherwise with higher kinds of steam. The opinion of
the million was the terror of the world, and it was attempted, either to
dissipate it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over with strata of
society--a layer of soldiers; over that, a layer of lords; and a king on
the top; with clamps and hoops of castles, garrisons, and police. But,
sometimes, the religious principle would get in, and burst the hoops, and
rive every mountain laid on top of it. The Fultons and Watts of politics,
believing in unity, saw that it was a power, and, by satisfying it (as
justice satisfies everybody), through a different disposition of
society,--grouping it on a level, instead of piling it into a
mountain,--they have contrived to make of this terror the most harmless
and energetic form of a State.
Very odious, I confess, are the lessons of Fate. Who likes to have a
dapper phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes? Who likes to believe that
he has hidden in his skull, spine, and pelvis, all the vices of a Saxon or
Celtic race, which will be sure to pull him down--with what grandeur of
hope and resolve he is fired--into a selfish, huckstering, servile,
dodging animal? A learned physician tells us, the fact is invariable with
the Neapolitan that, when mature, he assumes the forms of the unmistakable
scoundrel. That is a little overstated--but may pass.
But these are magazines and arsenals. A man must thank his defects, and
stand in some terror of his talents. A transcendent talent draws so
largely on his forces, as to lame him; a defect pays him revenues on the
other side. The sufferance, which is the badge of the Jew, has made him,
in these days, the ruler of the rulers of the earth. If Fate is ore and
quarry, if evil is good in the making, if limitation is power that shall
be, if calamities, oppositions, and weights are wings and means--we are
reconciled.
Fate involves the melioration. No statement of the universe can have any
soundness, which does not admit its ascending effort. The direction of the
whole, and of the parts, is toward benefit, and in proportion to the
health. Behind every individual closes organization: before him opens
liberty--the better, the best. The first and worst races are dead. The
second and imperfect races are dying out, or remain for the maturing of
higher. In the latest race, in man, every generosity, every new
perception, the love and praise he extorts from his fellows, are
certificates of advance out of fate into freedom. Liberation of the will
from the sheaths and clogs of organization which he has outgrown, is the
end and aim of this world. Every calamity is a spur and valuable hint; and
where his endeavors do not yet fully avail, they tell as tendency. The
whole circle of animal life,--tooth against tooth,--devouring war, war for
food, a yelp of pain and a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the whole
menagerie, the whole chemical mass, is mellowed and refined for higher
use--pleases at a sufficient perspective.
But to see how fate slides into freedom, and freedom into fate, observe
how far the roots of every creature run, or find, if you can, a point
where there is no thread of connection. Our life is consentaneous and
far-related. This knot of nature is so well tied, that nobody was ever
cunning enough to find the two ends. Nature is intricate, overlapped,
inter-weaved, and endless. Christopher Wren said of the beautiful King's
College chapel, "that, if anybody would tell him where to lay the first
stone, he would build such another." But where shall we find the first
atom in this house of man, which is all consent, inosculation, and balance
of parts?
The web of relation is shown in _habitat_, shown in hibernation. When
hibernation was observed, it was found, that, whilst some animals become
torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer: hibernation then was a
false name. The _long sleep_ is not an effect of cold, but is regulated by
the supply of food proper to the animal. It becomes torpid when the fruit
or prey it lives on is not in season, and regains its activity when its
food is ready.
Eyes are found in light; ears in auricular air; feet on land; fins in
water; wings in air; and each creature where it was meant to be, with a
mutual fitness. Every zone has its own _Fauna_. There is adjustment
between the animal and its food, its parasite, its enemy. Balances are
kept. It is not allowed to diminish in numbers, nor to exceed. The like
adjustments exist for man. His food is cooked when he arrives; his coal in
the pit; the house ventilated; the mud of the deluge dried; his companions
arrived at the same hour, and awaiting him with love, concert, laughter,
and tears. These are coarse adjustments, but the invisible are not less.
There are more belongings to every creature than his air and his food. His
instincts must be met, and he has predisposing power that bends and fits
what is near him to his use. He is not possible until the invisible things
are right for him, as well as the visible. Of what changes, then, in sky
and earth, and in finer skies and earths, does the appearance of some
Dante or Columbus apprise us!
How is this effected? Nature is no spendthrift, but takes the shortest way
to her ends. As the general says to his soldiers, "If you want a fort,
build a fort," so nature makes every creature do its own work and get its
living--is it planet, animal, or tree. The planet makes itself. The animal
cell makes itself; then, what it wants. Every creature--wren or
dragon--shall make its own lair. As soon as there is life, there is
self-direction, and absorbing and using of material. Life is freedom--life
in the direct ratio of its amount. You may be sure, the new-born man is
not inert. Life works both voluntarily and supernaturally in its
neighborhood. Do you suppose he can be estimated by his weight in pounds,
or that he is contained in his skin--this reaching, radiating, jaculating
fellow? The smallest candle fills a mile with its rays, and the papillæ
of a man run out to every star.
When there is something to be done, the world knows how to get it done.
The vegetable eye makes leaf, pericarp, root, bark, or thorn, as the need
is; the first cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, nose, or nail,
according to the want; the world throws its life into a hero or a
shepherd, and puts him where he is wanted. Dante and Columbus were
Italians in their time: they would be Russians or Americans to-day. Things
ripen, new men come. The adaptation is not capricious. The ulterior aim,
the purpose beyond itself, the correlation by which planets subside and
crystallize, then animate beasts and men, will not stop, but will work
into finer particulars, and from finer to finest.
The secret of the world is, the tie between person and event. Person makes
event and event person. The "times," "the age," what is that, but a few
profound persons and a few active persons who epitomize the
times?--Goethe, Hegel, Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, Cobden,
Kossuth, Rothschild, Astor, Brunel, and the rest. The same fitness must be
presumed between a man and the time and event, as between the sexes, or
between a race of animals and the food it eats, or the inferior races it
uses. He thinks his fate alien, because the copula is hidden. But the soul
contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the
actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always
granted. The event is the print of your form. It fits you like your skin.
What each does is proper to him. Events are the children of his body and
mind. We learn that the soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz sings--
Alas! till now I had not known,
My guide and fortune's guide are one.
All the toys that infatuate men, and which they play for,--houses, land,
money, luxury, power, fame,--are the self-same thing, with a new gauze or
two of illusion overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles by which men
are made willing to have their heads broke, and are led out solemnly every
morning to parade, the most admirable is this by which we are brought to
believe that events are arbitrary, and independent of actions. At the
conjurer's we detect the hair by which he moves his puppet, but we have
not eyes sharp enough to descry the thread that ties cause and effect.
Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit
of his character. Ducks take to the water, eagles to the sky, waders to
the sea margin, hunters to the forest, clerks to counting-rooms, soldiers
to the frontier. Thus events grow on the same stem with persons; are
sub-persons. The pleasure of life is according to the man that lives it,
and not according to the work or the place. Life is an ecstasy. We know
what madness belongs to love--what power to paint a vile object in hues of
heaven. As insane persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, and other
accommodations, and, as we do in dreams, with equanimity, the most absurd
acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup of life will reconcile us to
strange company and work. Each creature puts forth from itself its own
condition and sphere, as the slug sweats out its slimy house on the
pear-leaf, and the woolly aphides on the apple perspire their own bed, and
the fish its shell. In youth, we clothe ourselves with rainbows, and go as
brave as the zodiac. In age, we put out another sort of
perspiration--gout, fever, rheumatism, caprice, doubt, fretting, and
avarice.
A man's fortunes are the fruit of his character. A man's friends are his
magnetisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch for examples of Fate; but we
are examples. "_Quisque suos patimur manes._" The tendency of every man to
enact all that is in his constitution is expressed in the old belief, that
the efforts which we make to escape from our destiny only serve to lead us
into it; and I have noticed, a man likes better to be complimented on his
position, as the proof of the last or total excellence, than on his
merits.
A man will see his character emitted in the events that seem to meet, but
which exude from and accompany him. Events expand with the character. As
once he found himself among toys, so now he plays a part in colossal
systems, and his growth is declared in his ambition, his companions, and
his performance. He looks like a piece of luck, but is a piece of
causation--the mosaic, angulated and ground to fit into the gap he fills.
Hence in each town there is some man who is, in his brain and performance,
an explanation of the tillage, production, factories, banks, churches,
ways of living, and society, of that town. If you do not chance to meet
him, all that you see will leave you a little puzzled: if you see him, it
will become plain. We know in Massachusetts who built New Bedford, who
built Lynn, Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, Holyoke, Portland, and
many another noisy mart. Each of these men, if they were transparent,
would seem to you not so much men, as walking cities, and, wherever you
put them, they would build one.
History is the action and reaction of these two,--Nature and Thought,--two
boys pushing each other on the curbstone of the pavement. Everything is
pusher or pushed: and matter and mind are in perpetual tilt and balance
so. Whilst the man is weak, the earth takes him up. He plants his brain
and affections. By-and-by he will take up the earth, and have his gardens
and vineyards in the beautiful order and productiveness of his thought.
Every solid in the universe is ready to become fluid on the approach of
the mind, and the power to flux it is the measure of the mind. If the wall
remain adamant, it accuses the want of thought. To a subtler force, it
will stream into new forms, expressive of the character of the mind.
What is the city in which we sit here, but an aggregate of incongruous
materials, which have obeyed the will of some man? The granite was
reluctant, but his hands were stronger, and it came. Iron was deep in the
ground, and well combined with stone, but could not hide from his fires.
Wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, were dispersed over the earth and sea,
in vain. Here they are, within the reach of every man's day-labor--what he
wants of them.
The whole world is the flux of matter over the wires of thought to the
poles or points where it would build. The races of men rise out of the
ground preoccupied with a thought which rules them, and divided into
parties ready armed and angry to fight for this metaphysical abstraction.
The quality of the thought differences the Egyptian and the Roman, the
Austrian and the American. The men who come on the stage at one period are
all found to be related to each other. Certain ideas are in the air. We
are all impressionable, for we are made of them; all impressionable, but
some more than others, and these first express them. This explains the
curious contemporaneousness of inventions and discoveries. The truth is in
the air, and the most impressionable brain will announce it first, but all
will announce it a few minutes later. So women, as most susceptible, are
the best index of the coming hour. So the great man, that is, the man most
imbued with the spirit of the time, is the impressionable man--of a fibre
irritable and delicate, like iodine to light. He feels the infinitesimal
attractions. His mind is righter than others, because he yields to a
current so feeble as can be felt only by a needle delicately poised.
The correlation is shown in defects. Möller, in his "Essay on
Architecture," taught that the building which was fitted accurately to
answer its end would turn out to be beautiful, though beauty had not been
intended. I find the like unity in human structures rather virulent and
pervasive: that a crudity in the blood will appear in the argument; a hump
in the shoulder will appear in the speech and handiwork. If his mind could
be seen, the hump would be seen. If a man has a seesaw in his voice, it
will run into his sentences, into his poem, into the structure of his
fable, into his speculation, into his charity. And, as every man is hunted
by his own dæmon, vexed by his own disease, this checks all his activity.
So each man, like each plant, has his parasites. A strong, astringent,
bilious nature, has more truculent enemies than the slugs and moths that
fret my leaves. Such an one has curculios, borers, knife-worms: a swindler
ate him first, then a client, then a quack, then a smooth, plausible
gentleman, bitter and selfish as Moloch.
This correlation really existing can be divined. If the threads are there,
thought can follow and show them. Especially when a soul is quick and
docile; as Chaucer sings,--
Or if the soul of proper kind
Be so perfect as men find,
That it wot what is to come,
And that he warneth all and some,
Of every of their aventures,
By previsions or figures;
But that our flesh hath not might
It to understand aright,
For it is warned too darkly.
Some people are made up of rhyme, coincidence, omen, periodicity, and
presage: they meet the person they seek: what their companion prepares to
say to them, they first say to him; and a hundred signs apprise them of
what is about to befall.
Wonderful intricacy in the web, wonderful constancy in the design, this
vagabond life admits. We wonder how the fly finds its mate, and yet year
after year we find two men, two women, without legal or carnal tie, spend
a great part of their best time within a few feet of each other. And the
moral is, that what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from
us; as Goethe said, "what we wish for in youth, comes in heaps on us in
old age," too often cursed with the granting of our prayer; and hence the
high caution, that, since we are sure of having what we wish, we beware to
ask only for high things.
One key, one solution to the mysteries of human condition, one solution to
the old knots of fate, freedom, and foreknowledge, exists, the
propounding, namely, of the double consciousness. A man must ride
alternately on the horses of his private and his public nature, as the
equestrians in the circus throw themselves nimbly from horse to horse, or
plant one foot on the back of one, and the other foot on the back of the
other. So when a man is the victim of his fate, has sciatica in his loins,
and cramp in his mind; a club-foot and a club in his wit; a sour face, and
a selfish temper; a strut in his gait, and a conceit in his affection; or
is ground to powder by the vice of his race; he is to rally on his
relation to the universe which his ruin benefits. Leaving the dæmon who
suffers, he is to take sides with the Deity who secures universal benefit
by his pain.
To offset the drag of temperament and race, which pulls down, learn this
lesson--namely, that by the cunning co-presence of two elements, which is
throughout nature, whatever lames or paralyzes you draws in with it the
divinity, in some form, to repay. A good intention clothes itself with
sudden power. When a god wishes to ride, any chip or pebble will bud and
shoot out winged feet, and serve him for a horse.
Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity which holds nature and souls in
perfect solution, and compels every atom to serve an universal end. I do
not wonder at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer landscape, or the glory of
the stars; but at the necessity of beauty under which the universe lies;
that all is and must be pictorial; that the rainbow, and the curve of the
horizon, and the arch of the blue vault, are only results from the
organism of the eye. There is no need for foolish amateurs to fetch me to
admire a garden of flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a waterfall, when I
cannot look without seeing splendor and grace. How idle to choose a random
sparkle here or there, when the indwelling necessity plants the rose of
beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses the central intention of nature
to be harmony and joy.
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity. If we thought men were
free in the sense that in a single exception one fantastical will could
prevail over the law of things, it were all one as if a child's hand could
pull down the sun. If, in the least particular, one could derange the
order of nature--who would accept the gift of life?
Let us build altars to the Beautiful Necessity, which secures that all is
made of one piece; that plaintiff and defendant, friend and enemy, animal
and planet, food and eater, are of one kind. In astronomy is vast space,
but no foreign system; in geology, vast time, but the same laws as to-day.
Why should we be afraid of nature, which is no other than "philosophy and
theology embodied"? Why should we fear to be crushed by savage elements,
we who are made up of the same elements? Let us build to the Beautiful
Necessity, which makes man brave in believing that he cannot shun a danger
that is appointed, nor incur one that is not; to the Necessity which
rudely or softly educates him to the perception that there are no
contingencies; that Law rules throughout existence, a Law which is not
intelligent but intelligence,--not personal nor impersonal,--it disdains
words and passes understanding; it dissolves persons; it vivifies nature,
yet solicits the pure in heart to draw on all its omnipotence.
WALT WHITMAN
SONG OF THE OPEN ROAD
I
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.
(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill'd with them, and I will fill them in return.)
II
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is
here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas'd, the illiterate
person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar's tramp, the
drunkard's stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,
The escap'd youth, the rich person's carriage, the fop, the eloping
couple.
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town,
the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, anything passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.
III
You air that serves me with breath to speak!
You objects that call from diffusion my meanings and give them shape!
You light that wraps me and all things in delicate equable showers!
You paths worn in the irregular hollows by the roadsides!
I believe you are latent with unseen existences, you are so dear to me.
You flagg'd walks of the cities! you strong curbs at the edges!
You ferries! you planks and posts of wharves! you timber-lin'd sides!
you distant ships!
You rows of houses! you window-pierc'd façades! you roofs!
You porches and entrances! you copings and iron guards!
You windows whose transparent shells might expose so much!
You doors and ascending steps! you arches!
You gray stones of interminable pavements! you trodden crossings!
From all that has touch'd you I believe you have imparted to yourselves,
and now would impart the same secretly to me,
From the living and the dead you have peopled your impassive surfaces,
and the spirits thereof would be evident and amicable with me.
IV
The earth expanding right hand and left hand,
The picture alive, every part in its best light,
The music falling in where it is wanted, and stopping where it is not
wanted,
The cheerful voice of the public road, the gay fresh sentiment of the
road.
O highway I travel, do you say to me, _Do not leave me_?
Do you say, _Venture not--if you leave me you are lost_?
Do you say, _I am already prepared, I am well-beaten and undenied,
adhere to me_?
O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you,
You express me better than I can express myself,
You shall be more to me than my poem.
I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all free
poems also,
I think I could stop here myself and do miracles,
I think whatever I shall meet on the road I shall like, and whoever
beholds me shall like me.
I think whoever I see must be happy.
V
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master total and absolute,
Listening to others, considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that
would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me I
would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me he or she shall be blessed and shall bless me.
VI
Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear'd it would not
astonish me.
Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.
Here a great personal deed has room
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority
and all argument against it).
Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass'd from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the
excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it
out of the soul.
Now I reëxamine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the
spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.
Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied--he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love--if they are vacant of you, you are
vacant of them.
Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?
Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion'd, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?
VII
Here is the efflux of the soul,
The efflux of the soul comes from within through embower'd gates, ever
provoking questions,
These yearnings why are they? these thoughts in the darkness why are
they?
Why are there men and women that while they are nigh me the sunlight
expands my blood?
Why when they leave me do my pennants of joy sink flat and lank?
Why are there trees I never walk under but large and melodious thoughts
descend upon me?
(I think they hang there winter and summer on those trees and always
drop fruit as I pass.)
What is it I interchange so suddenly with strangers?
What with some driver as I ride on the seat by his side?
What with some fisherman drawing his seine by the shore as I walk by and
pause?
What gives me to be free to a woman's and man's good-will? what gives
them to be free to mine?
VIII
The efflux of the soul is happiness, here is happiness,
I think it pervades the open air, waiting at all times,
Now it flows unto us, we are rightly charged.
Here rises the fluid and attaching character,
The fluid and attaching character is the freshness and sweetness of man
and woman
(The herbs of the morning sprout no fresher and sweeter every day out of
the roots of themselves, than it sprouts fresh and sweet continually
out of itself).
Toward the fluid and attaching character exudes the sweat of the love of
young and old,
From it falls distill'd the charm that mocks beauty and attainments,
Toward it heaves the shuddering, longing ache of contact.
IX
Allons! whoever you are, come travel with me!
Traveling with me you find what never tires.
The earth never tires,
The earth is rude, silent, incomprehensible at first, Nature is rude and
incomprehensible at first.
Be not discouraged, keep on, there are divine things well envelop'd,
I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can
tell.
Allons! we must not stop here,
However sweet these laid-up stores, however convenient this dwelling, we
cannot remain here,
However shelter'd this port and however calm these waters we must not
anchor here,
However welcome the hospitality that surrounds us we are permitted to
receive it but a little while.
X
Allons! the inducements shall be greater,
We will sail pathless and wild seas,
We will go where winds blow, waves dash, and the Yankee clipper speeds
by under full sail.
Allons! with power, liberty, the earth, the elements,
Health, defiance, gayety, self-esteem, curiosity;
Allons! from all formules!
From your formules, O bat-eyed and materialistic priests.
The stale cadaver blocks up the passage--the burial waits no longer.
Allons! yet take warning!
He traveling with me needs the best blood, thews, endurance,
None may come to the trial till he or she bring courage and health,
Come not here if you have already spent the best of yourself,
Only those may come who come in sweet and determin'd bodies,
No diseas'd person, no rum-drinker or venereal taint is permitted here.
(I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes,
We convince by our presence.)
XI
Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call'd riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin'd, you hardly
settle yourself to satisfaction before you are call'd by an
irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who
remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with
passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach'd hands
toward you.
XII
Allons! after the great Companions, and to belong to them!
They too are on the road--they are the swift and majestic men--they are
the greatest women,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitués of many distant countries, habitués of far-distant dwellings,
Trusters of men and women, observers of cities, solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts, blossoms, shells of the shore,
Dancers at wedding-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of
children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of
coffins,
Journeyers over consecutive seasons, over the years, the curious years
each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and
well-grain'd manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample, unsurpass'd, content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.
XIII
Allons! to that which is endless as it was beginningless,
To undergo much, tramps of days, rests of nights,
To merge all in the travel they tend to, and the days and nights they
tend to,
Again to merge them in the start of superior journeys,
To see nothing anywhere but what you may reach it and pass it,
To conceive no time, however distant, but what you may reach it and pass
it,
To look up or down no road but it stretches and waits for you, however
long but it stretches and waits for you,
To see no being, not God's or any, but you also go thither,
To see no possession but you may possess it, enjoying all without labor
or purchase, abstracting the feast yet not abstracting one particle
of it,
To take the best of the farmer's farm and the rich man's elegant villa,
and the chaste blessings of the well-married couple, and the fruits
of orchards and flowers of gardens,
To take to your use out of the compact cities as you pass through,
To carry buildings and streets with you afterward where-ever you go,
To gather the minds of men out of their brains as you encounter them, to
gather the love out of their hearts,
To take your lovers on the road with you, for all that you leave them
behind you,
To know the universe itself as a road, as many roads, as roads for
traveling souls.
All parts away for the progress of souls,
All religion, all solid things, arts, governments--all that was or is
apparent upon this globe or any globe, falls into niches and corners
before the procession of souls along the grand roads of the universe.
Of the progress of the souls of men and women along the grand roads of
the universe, all other progress is the needed emblem and
sustenance.
Forever alive, forever forward,
Stately, solemn, sad, withdrawn, baffled, mad, turbulent, feeble,
dissatisfied,
Desperate, proud, fond, sick, accepted by men, rejected by men,
They go! they go! I know that they go, but I know not where they go,
But I know that they go toward the best--toward something great.
Whoever you are, come forth! or man or woman come forth!
You must not stay sleeping and dallying there in the house, though
you built it, or though it has been built for you.
Out of the dark confinement! out from behind the screen!
It is useless to protest, I know all and expose it.
Behold through you as bad as the rest,
Through the laughter, dancing, dining, supping of people,
Inside of dresses and ornaments, inside of those wash'd and trimm'd
faces,
Behold a secret silent loathing and despair.
No husband, no wife, no friend, trusted to hear the confession,
Another self, a duplicate of every one, skulking and hiding it goes,
Formless and wordless through the streets of the cities, polite and
bland in the parlors,
In the cars of railroads, in steamboats, in the public assembly,
Home to the houses of men and women, at the table, in the bedroom,
everywhere,
Smartly attired, countenance smiling, form upright, death under the
breast-bones, hell under the skull-bones,
Under the broadcloth and gloves, under the ribbons and artificial
flowers,
Keeping fair with the customs, speaking not a syllable of itself,
Speaking of anything else but never of itself.
XIV
Allons! through struggles and wars!
The goal that was named cannot be countermanded.
Have the past struggles succeeded?
What has succeeded? yourself? your nation? Nature?
Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that
from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth
something to make a greater struggle necessary.
My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion,
He going with me must go well arm'd,
He going with me goes often with spare diet, poverty, angry enemies,
desertions.
XV
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe--I have tried it--my own feet have tried it well--be not
detain'd!
Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf
unopen'd!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn'd!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the
court, and the judge expound the law.
Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?
CROSSING BROOKLYN FERRY
I
Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west--sun there half an hour high--I see you also face
to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you
are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,
are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me,
and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.
II
The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join'd scheme, myself disintegrated, everyone
disintegrated yet part of the scheme,
The similitudes of the past and those of the future,
The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings, on the
walk in the street and the passage over the river,
The current rushing so swiftly and swimming with me far away,
The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them,
The certainty of others, the life, love, sight, hearing of others.
Others will enter the gates of the ferry and cross from shore to shore,
Others will watch the run of the flood-tide,
Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, and the
heights of Brooklyn to the south and east,
Others will see the islands large and small;
Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the sun half an
hour high,
A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years hence, others will
see them,
Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring-in of the flood-tide, the
falling-back to the sea of the ebb-tide.
III
It avails not, time nor place--distance avails not,
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many
generations hence,
Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt,
Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd,
Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright
flow, I was refresh'd,
Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the swift
current, I stood yet was hurried,
Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships and the thick-stemm'd
pipes of steamboats, I look'd.
I too many and many a time cross'd the river of old,
Watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls, saw them high in the air floating
with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,
Saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies and left the
rest in strong shadow,
Saw the slow-wheeling circles and the gradual edging toward the south,
Saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light round the shape of my
head in the sunlit water,
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and south-westward,
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the vessels arriving,
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships at anchor,
The sailors at work in the rigging or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender
serpentine pennants,
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their
pilot-houses,
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the
wheels,
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset,
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the
frolicsome crests and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the
granite storehouses by the docks,
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on
each side by the barges, the hay-boat, the belated lighter,
On the neighboring shore the fires from the foundry chimneys burning
high and glaringly into the night,
Casting their flicker of black contrasted with wild red and yellow
light over the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.
IV
These and all else were to me the same as they are to you,
I loved well those cities, loved well the stately and rapid river,
The men and women I saw were all near to me,
Others the same--others who look back on me because I look'd forward
to them
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night).
V
What is it then between us?
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?
Whatever it is, it avails not--distance avails not, and place avails
not,
I too lived, Brooklyn of ample hills was mine,
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters
around it,
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day among crowds of people sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night or as I lay in my bed they came upon me,
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution,
I too had receiv'd identity by my body,
That I was I knew was of my body, and what I should be
I knew I should be of my body.
VI
It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,
The dark threw its patches down upon me also,
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious,
My great thoughts as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
Nor is it you alone who know what it is to be evil,
I am he who knew what it was to be evil,
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant,
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these
wanting,
Was one with the rest, the days and haps of the rest,
Was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they
saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their
flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I lov'd in the street or ferry-boat or public assembly, yet
never told them a word,
Liv'd the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing,
sleeping,
Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old rôle, the rôle that is what we make it, as great as we
like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
VII
Closer yet I approach you,
What thought you have of me now, I had as much of you--I laid in my
stores in advance,
I consider'd long and seriously of you before you were born.
Who was to know what should come home to me?
Who knows but I am enjoying this?
Who knows, for all the distance, but I am as good as looking at you now,
for all you cannot see me?
VIII
Ah, what can ever be more stately and admirable to me than mast-hemm'd
Manhattan?
River and sunset and scallop-edg'd waves of flood-tide?
The sea-gulls oscillating their bodies, the hay-boat in the twilight,
and the belated lighter?
What gods can exceed these that clasp me by the hand, and with voices I
love call me promptly and loudly by my nighest name as I approach?
What is more subtle than this which ties me to the woman or man that
looks in my face?
Which fuses me into you now, and pours my meaning into you?
We understand then, do we not?
What I promis'd without mentioning it, have you not accepted?
What the study could not teach--what the preaching could not accomplish
is accomplish'd, is it not?
IX
Flow on, river! flow with the flood-tide, and ebb with the ebb-tide!
Frolic on, crested and scallop-edg'd waves!
Gorgeous clouds of the sunset! drench with your splendor me, or the men
and women generations after me!
Cross from shore to shore, countless crowds of passengers!
Stand up, tall masts of Mannahatta! stand up, beautiful hills of
Brooklyn!
Throb, baffled and curious brain! throw out questions and answers!
Suspend here and everywhere, eternal float of solution!
Gaze, loving and thirsting eyes, in the house or street or public
assembly!
Sound out, voices of young men! loudly and musically call me by my
nighest name!
Live, old life! play the part that looks back on the actor or actress!
Play the old rôle, the rôle that is great or small according as one
makes it!
Consider, you who peruse me, whether I may not in unknown ways be
looking upon you;
Be firm, rail over the river, to support those who lean idly, yet haste
with the hasting current;
Fly on, sea-birds! fly sideways, or wheel in large circles high in the
air;
Receive the summer sky, you water, and faithfully hold it till all
downcast eyes have time to take it from you!
Diverge, fine spokes of light, from the shape of my head, or anyone's
head, in the sunlit water!
Come on, ships from the lower bay! pass up or down, white-sail'd
schooners, sloops, lighters!
Flaunt away, flags of all nations! be duly lower'd at sunset!
Burn high your fires, foundry chimneys! cast black shadows at nightfall!
cast red and yellow light over the tops of the houses!
Appearances, now or henceforth, indicate what you are,
You necessary film, continue to envelop the soul,
About my body for me, and your body for you, be hung our divinest
aromas,
Thrive, cities--bring your freight, bring your shows, ample and
sufficient rivers,
Expand, being than which none else is perhaps more spiritual,
Keep your places, objects than which none else is more lasting.
You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful ministers,
We receive you with free sense at last, and are insatiate henceforward,
Not you any more shall be able to foil us, or withhold yourselves from
us,
We use you, and do not cast you aside--we plant you permanently within
us,
We fathom you not--we love you--there is perfection in you also,
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
A SONG OF JOYS
O to make the most jubilant song!
Full of music--full of manhood, womanhood, infancy!
Full of common employments--full of grain and trees.
O for the voices of animals--O for the swiftness and balance of fishes!
O for the dropping of raindrops in a song!
O for the sunshine and motion of waves in a song!
O for the joy of my spirit--it is uncaged--it darts like lightning!
It is not enough to have this globe or a certain time,
I will have thousands of globes and all time.
O the engineer's joys! to go with a locomotive!
To hear the hiss of steam, the merry shriek, the steam-whistle, the
laughing locomotive!
To push with resistless way and speed off in the distance.
O the gleesome saunter over fields and hillsides!
The leaves and flowers of the commonest weeds, the moist fresh stillness
of the woods,
The exquisite smell of the earth at daybreak, and all through the
forenoon.
O the horseman's and horsewoman's joys!
The saddle, the gallop, the pressure upon the seat, the cool gurgling by
the ears and hair.
O the fireman's joys!
I hear the alarm at dead of night,
I hear bells, shouts! I pass the crowd, I run!
The sight of the flames maddens me with pleasure.
O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in
perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his
opponent.
O the joy of that vast elemental sympathy which only the human soul is
capable of generating and emitting in steady and limitless floods.
O the mother's joys!
The watching, the endurance, the precious love, the anguish, the
patiently yielded life.
O the joy of increase, growth, recuperation,
The joy of soothing and pacifying, the joy of concord and harmony.
O to go back to the place where I was born,
To hear the birds sing once more,
To ramble about the house and barn and over the fields once more,
And through the orchard and along the old lanes once more.
O to have been brought up on bays, lagoons, creeks, or along the coast,
To continue and be employ'd there all my life,
The briny and damp smell, the shore, the salt weeds exposed at low
water,
The work of fishermen, the work of the eel-fisher and clam-fisher;
I come with my clam-rake and spade, I come with my eel-spear.
Is the tide out? I join the group of clam-diggers on the flats,
I laugh and work with them, I joke at my work like a mettlesome young
man;
In winter I take my eel-basket and eel-spear and travel out on foot on
the ice--I have a small axe to cut holes in the ice,
Behold me well-clothed going gayly or returning in the afternoon, my
brood of tough boys accompanying me,
My brood of grown and part-grown boys, who love to be with no one else
so well as they love to be with me.
Another time in warm weather out in a boat, to lift the lobster-pots
where they are sunk with heavy stones (I know the buoys),
O the sweetness of the Fifth-month morning upon the water as I row just
before sunrise toward the buoys,
I pull the wicker pots up slantingly, the dark green lobsters are
desperate with their claws as I take them out, I insert wooden
pegs in the joints of their pincers,
I go to all the places one after another, and then row back to the
shore,
There in a huge kettle of boiling water the lobsters shall be boil'd
till their color becomes scarlet.
Another time mackerel-taking,
Voracious, mad for the hook, near the surface, they seem to fill the
water for miles;
Another time fishing for rock-fish in Chesapeake bay, I one of the
brown-faced crew;
Another time trailing for blue-fish off Paumanok, I stand with braced
body,
My left foot is on the gunwale, my right arm throws far out the coils
of slender rope,
In sight around me the quick veering and darting of fifty skiffs, my
companions.
O boat on the rivers,
The voyage down the St. Lawrence, the superb scenery, the steamers,
The ships sailing, the Thousand Islands, the occasional timber-raft and
the raftsmen with long-reaching sweep-oars,
The little huts on the rafts, and the stream of smoke when they cook
supper at evening.
(O something pernicious and dread!
Something far away from a puny and pious life!
Something unproved! something in a trance!
Something escaped from the anchorage and driving free.)
O to work in mines, or forging iron,
Foundry casting, the foundry itself, the rude high roof, the ample and
shadow'd space,
The furnace, the hot liquid pour'd out and running.
O to resume the joys of the soldier!
To feel the presence of a brave commanding officer--to feel his
sympathy!
To behold his calmness--to be warm'd in the rays of his smile!
To go to battle--to hear the bugles play and the drums beat!
To hear the crash of artillery--to see the glittering of the bayonets
and musket-barrels in the sun!
To see men fall and die and not complain!
To taste the savage taste of blood--to be so devilish!
To gloat so over the wounds and deaths of the enemy.
O the whaleman's joys! O I cruise my old cruise again!
I feel the ship's motion under me, I feel the Atlantic breezes fanning
me,
I hear the cry again sent down from the mast-head, _There--she blows!_
Again I spring up the rigging to look with the rest--we descend, wild
with excitement,
I leap in the lower'd boat, we row toward our prey where he lies,
We approach stealthy and silent, I see the mountainous mass, lethargic,
basking,
I see the harpooneer standing up, I see the weapon dart from his
vigorous arm;
O swift again far out in the ocean the wounded whale, settling, running
to windward, tows me,
Again I see him rise to breathe, we now close again,
I see a lance driven through his side, press'd deep, turn'd in the
wound,
Again we back off, I see him settle again, the life is leaving him fast,
As he rises he spouts blood, I see him swim in circles narrower and
narrower, swiftly cutting the water--I see him die,
He gives one convulsive leap in the centre of the circle, and then falls
flat and still in the bloody foam.
O the old manhood of me, my noblest joy of all!
My children and grand-children, my white hair and beard,
My largeness, calmness, majesty, out of the long stretch of my life.
O ripen'd joy of womanhood! O happiness at last!
I am more than eighty years of age, I am the most venerable mother,
How clear is my mind--how all people draw nigh to me!
What attractions are these beyond any before? what bloom more than the
bloom of youth?
What beauty is this that descends upon me and rises out of me?
O the orator's joys!
To inflate the chest, to roll the thunder of the voice out from the
ribs and throat,
To make the people rage, weep, hate, desire, with yourself,
To lead America--to quell America with a great tongue.
O the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity
through materials and loving them, observing characters and
absorbing them,
My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch,
reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like,
The real life of my senses and flesh transcending my senses and flesh,
My body done with materials, my sight done with my material eyes,
Proved to me this day beyond cavil that it is not my material eyes which
finally see,
Nor my material body which finally loves, walks, laughs, shouts,
embraces, procreates.
O the farmer's joys!
Ohioan's, Illinoisian's, Wisconsinese', Kanadian's, Iowan's, Kansian's,
Missourian's, Oregonese' joys!
To rise at peep of day and pass forth nimbly to work,
To plough land in the fall for winter-sown crops,
To plough land in the spring for maize,
To train orchards, to graft the trees, to gather apples in the fall.
O to bathe in the swimming-bath, or in a good place along shore,
To splash the water! to walk ankle-deep, or race naked along the shore.
O to realize space!
The plenteousness of all, that there are no bounds,
To emerge and be of the sky, of the sun and moon and flying clouds, as
one with them.
O the joy of a manly self-hood!
To be servile to none, to defer to none, not to any tyrant known or
unknown,
To walk with erect carriage, a step springy and elastic,
To look with calm gaze or with a flashing eye,
To speak with a full and sonorous voice out of a broad chest,
To confront with your personality all the other personalities of the
earth.
Know'st thou the excellent joys of youth?
Joys of the dear companions and of the merry word and laughing face?
Joy of the glad light-beaming day, joy of the wide-breath'd games?
Joy of sweet music, joy of the lighted ball-room and the dancers?
Joy of the plenteous dinner, strong carouse, and drinking?
Yet O my soul supreme!
Know'st thou the joys of pensive thought?
Joys of the free and lonesome heart, the tender, gloomy heart?
Joys of the solitary walk, the spirit bow'd yet proud, the suffering
and the struggle?
The agonistic throes, the ecstasies, joys of the solemn musings day or
night?
Joys of the thought of Death, the great spheres, Time and Space?
Prophetic joys of better, loftier love's ideals, the divine wife, the
sweet, eternal, perfect comrade?
Joys all thine own, undying one, joys worthy thee, O soul?
O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave,
To meet life as a powerful conqueror,
No fumes, no ennui, no more complaints or scornful criticisms,
To these proud laws of the air, the water and the ground, proving my
interior soul impregnable,
And nothing exterior shall ever take command of me.
For not life's joys alone I sing, repeating--the joy of death!
The beautiful touch of Death, soothing and benumbing a few moments, for
reasons,
Myself discharging my excrementitious body to be burn'd, or render'd to
powder, or buried,
My real body doubtless left to me for other spheres,
My voided body nothing more to me, returning to the purifications,
further offices, eternal uses of the earth.
O to attract by more than attraction!
How it is I know not--yet behold! the something which obeys none of
the rest,
It is offensive, never defensive--yet how magnetic it draws.
O to struggle against great odds, to meet enemies undaunted!
To be entirely alone with them, to find how much one can stand!
To look strife, torture, prison, popular odium, face to face!
To mount the scaffold, to advance to the muzzles of guns with perfect
nonchalance!
To be indeed a God!
O to sail to sea in a ship!
To leave this steady unendurable land,
To leave the tiresome sameness of the streets, the sidewalks and the
houses,
To leave you, O you solid motionless land, and entering a ship,
To sail and sail and sail!
O to have life henceforth a poem of new joys!
To dance, clap hands, exult, shout, skip, leap, roll on, float on!
To be a sailor of the world bound for all ports,
A ship itself (see indeed these sails I spread to the sun and air),
A swift and swelling ship full of rich words, full of joys.
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Footnotes:
[1] Reprinted by permission of the Macmillan Company.
[2] Abridged from the President's address at the Dover meeting of the
British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1899.
[3] Some may already know that there is at least a third thing, argon.
[4] Without phosphorus, no thought.
[5] From _The Idea of a University_.
[6] From Macaulay's essay on Von Ranke's _History of the Popes_.
[7] Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons.
[8] The third lecture in _Sesame and Lilies_.
[9] That no reference should be made to religious questions.
[10] I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to set
forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what follows
to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth.
[11] The translator of Marcus Aurelius whom Arnold quotes.
[12] From the _Poetical Works_ of George Meredith; copyright 1897, 1898,
by George Meredith; published by Charles Scribner's Sons. Reprinted by
permission of the publishers.
[13] Published by the Macmillan Company, and here reprinted through their
courtesy.
[14] From _Society and Solitude_.
[15] From _The Conduct of Life_.
[16] From _The Conduct of Life_.
[17] "Everything which pertains to the human species, considered as a
whole, belongs to the order of physical facts. The greater the number of
individuals, the more does the influence of the individual will disappear,
leaving predominance to a series of general facts dependent on causes by
which society exists, and is preserved."--QUETELET.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The following misprints have been corrected:
"testimonal" corrected to "testimonial" (page 63)
"and and" corrected to "and" (page 114)
"immage" corrected to "image" (page 127)
"they they" corrected to "they" (page 130)
"eel" corrected to "feel" (page 133)
"furtune" corrected to "fortune" (page 271)
"interchan e" corrected to "interchange" (page 305)
"Geoge" corrected to "George" (advertisements)
Hyphenation variations have been retained from the original text.
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