Chapter VIII: Part II: Literature and Art (1)

Notes from Books.

1.

"A great advantage is derived from the occasional practice of reading together, for each person selects different beauties and starts different objections: while the same passage perhaps awakens in each mind a different train of associated ideas, or raises different images for the purposes of illustration."--_Francis Horner._

2.

"C'est ainsi que je poursuis la communication de quelque esprit fameux, non afin qu'il m'enseigne mais afin que je le connaisse, et que le connaissant, s'il le faut, je l'imite."--_Montaigne._

DR. ARNOLD.

3.

I sat up till half-past two this morning reading Dr. Arnold's "Life and Letters," and have my soul full of him to-day.

On the whole I cannot say that the perusal of this admirable book has changed any notion in my mind, or added greatly to my stock of ideas. There was no height of inspiration, or eloquence, or power, to which I looked _up_; no profound depth of thought or feeling into which I looked _down_; no _new_ lights; no _new_ guides; no absolutely _new_ aspects of things human or spiritual.

On the other hand, I never read a book of the kind with a more harmonious sense of pleasure and _approbation_,--if the word be not from me presumptuous. While I read page after page, the mind which was unfolded before me seemed to me a brother's mind--the spirit, a kindred spirit. It was the improved, the elevated, the enlarged, the enriched, the every-way superior reflection of my own intelligence, but it was certainly _that_. I felt it so from beginning to end. Exactly the reverse was the feeling with which I laid down the Life and Letters of Southey. I was instructed, amused, interested; I profited and admired; but with the _man_ Southey I had no sympathies: my mind stood off from his; the poetical intellect attracted, the material of the character repelled me. I liked the embroidery, but the texture was disagreeable, repugnant. Now with regard to Dr. Arnold, my entire sympathy with the character, with the _material_ of the character, did not extend to all its manifestations. I liked the texture better than the embroidery;--perhaps, because of my feminine organisation.

Nor did my admiration of the intellect extend to the acceptance of _all_ the opinions which emanated from it; perhaps because from the manner these were enunciated, or merely touched upon (in letters chiefly), I did not comprehend clearly the reasoning on which they may have been founded. Perhaps, if I had done so, I must have respected them more, perhaps have been convinced by them; so large, so candid, so rich in knowledge, and apparently so logical, was the mind which admitted them.

And yet this excellent, admirable man, seems to have _feared_ God, in the common-place sense of the word fear. He considered the Jews as out of the pale of equality; he was against their political emancipation from a hatred of Judaism. He subscribed to the Athanasian Creed, which stuck even in George the Third's orthodox throat. He believed in what Coleridge could not admit, in the existence of the spirit of evil as a person. He had an idea that the Church _of God_ may be destroyed by an Antichrist; he speaks of such a consummation as possible, as probable, as impending; as if any institution really from God could be destroyed by an adverse power!--and he thought that a lawyer could not be a Christian.

4.

Certain passages filled me with astonishment as coming from a churchman, particularly what he says of the sacraments (vol. ii. pp. 75. 113.); and in another place, where he speaks of "the _pestilent_ distinction between clergy and laity;" and where he says, "I hold that one form of Church government is exactly as much according to Christ's will as another." And in another place he speaks of the Anglican Church (with reference to Henry VIII. as its father, and Elizabeth as its foster-mother), as "the child of regal and aristocratical selfishness and unprincipled tyranny, who has never dared to speak boldly to the great, but has contented herself with lecturing the poor;" but he forgot at the moment the trial of the bishops in James's time, and their noble stand against regal authority.

5.

With regard to conservatism (vol. ii. pp. 19. 62.), he seems to mean--as I understand the whole passage,--that it is a good _instinct_ but a bad _principle_. Yet as a principle is it, as he says, "always wrong?" Though as the adversary of progress, it must be always wrong, yet as the adversary of change it _may_ be sometimes right.

6.

He remarks that most of those who are above sectarianism are in general indifferent to Christianity, while almost all who profess to value Christianity seem, when they are brought to the test, to care only for their own sect. "Now," he adds, "it is manifest to me, that all our education must be Christian, and not be sectarian." Yet the whole aim of education up to this time has been, in this country, eminently sectarian, and every statesman who has attempted to place it on a broader basis has been either wrecked or stranded.

"All sects," he says in another place, "have had among them marks of Christ's Catholic Church in the graces of his Spirit and the confession of his name," and he seems to wish that some one would compile a book showing side by side what professors of all sects have done for the good of Christ's Church,--the martyrdoms, the missionary labours of Catholics, Protestants, Arians, &c.; "a grand field," he calls it,--and so it were; but it lies fallow up to this time.

7.

"the philosophy of medicine, I imagine, is at zero; our practice is empirical, and seems hardly more than a course of guessing, more or less happy." In another place (vol. ii. p. 72.), he says, "yet I honour medicine as the most beneficent of all professions."

8.

He says (vol. ii. p. 42.), "Narrow-mindedness tends to wickedness, because it does not extend its watchfulness to every part of our moral nature." "Thus, a man may have one or more virtues, such as are according to his favourite ideas, in great perfection; and still be nothing, because these ideas are his idols, and, worshipping them with all his heart, there is a portion of his heart, more or less considerable, left without its proper object, guide, and nourishment; and so this portion is left to the dominion of evil," &c.

(One might ask _how_, if a man worship these ideas with _all_ his heart, a portion could be left? but the sense is so excellent, I cannot quarrel with a slight inaccuracy in the expression. I never quite understood before why it is difficult to subscribe to the truth of the phrase "He is a good but a narrow-minded man," but _felt_ the incompatibility.)

9.

He says "the word _useful_ implies the idea of good robbed of its nobleness." Is this true? the _useful_ is the _good_ applied to practical purposes; it need not, therefore, be less noble. The nobleness lies in the spirit in which it is so applied.

10.

Benthamism (what _is_ it?), Puritanism, Judaism, how he hates them! I suppose, because he _fears_ God and _fears_ for the Church of God. Hatred of all kinds seems to originate in fear.

11.

What he says of conscience, very remarkable!

"Men get embarrassed by the common cases of a misguided conscience: but a compass may be out of order as well as a conscience; and you can trace the deranging influence on the latter quite as surely as on the former. The needle may point due south if you hold a powerful magnet in that direction; still the compass, generally speaking, is a true and sure guide," &c.; and then he adds, "he who believes his conscience to be God's law, by obeying it obeys God."

I think there would be much to say about all this passage relating to conscience, nor am I sure that I quite understand it. Derangement of the intellect is madness; is not derangement of the conscience also madness? might it not be induced, as we bring on a morbid state of the other faculties, by over use and abuse? by giving it more than its due share of power in the commonwealth of the mind? It should preside, not tyrannise; rule, not exercise a petty cramping despotism. A healthy courageous conscience gives to the powers, instincts, impulses, fair play; and having once settled the order of government with a strong hand, is not always meddling though always watchful.

Then again, how is conscience "God's law?" Conscience is not the law, but the interpreter of the law; it does not teach the difference between right and wrong, it only impels us to do what we believe to be right, and smites us when we _think_ we have been wrong. How is it that many have done wrong, and every day do wrong for conscience' sake?--and does that sanctify the wrong in the eyes of God, as well as in those of John Huss?[1]

12.

"Prayer," he says, "and kindly intercourse with the poor, are the two great safeguards of spiritual life--its more than food and raiment."

True; but there is something higher than this fed and clothed spiritual life; something more difficult, yet less conscious.

13.

In allusion to Coleridge, he says very truly, that the power of contemplation becomes diseased and perverted when it is the main employment of life. But to the same great intellect he does beautiful justice in another passage. "Coleridge seemed to me to love truth really, and, therefore, truth presented herself to him, not negatively, as she does to many minds, who can see that the objections against her are unfounded, and therefore that she is to be received; but she filled him, as it were, heart and mind, imbuing him with her very self, so that all his being comprehended her fully, and loved her ardently; and that seems to me to be true wisdom."

14.

Very fine is a passage wherein he speaks against meeting what is wrong and bad with negatives, with merely proving the wrong to be wrong, and the false to be false, without substituting for either the positively good and true.

15.

He contrasts as the two forms of the present danger to the Church and to society, the prevalent epicurean atheism, and the lying and formal spirit of priestcraft. He seems to have had an impression that the Church of God may be "utterly destroyed"(?), or, he asks, "must we look forward for centuries to come to the mere alternations of infidelity and superstition, scepticism, and Newmanism?" It is very curious to see two such men as Arnold and Carlyle both overwhelmed with a terror of the magnitude of the mischiefs they see impending over us. They are oppressed with the anticipation of evil as with a sense of personal calamity. Something alike, perhaps, in the temperaments of these two extraordinary men;--large conscientiousness, large destructiveness, and small hope: there was great mutual sympathy and admiration.

16.

Very admirable what he says in favour of comprehensive reading, against exclusive reading in one line of study. He says, "Preserve proportion in your reading, keep your view of men and things extensive, and depend upon it a mixed knowledge is not a superficial one; as far as it goes the views that it gives are true; but he who reads deeply in one class of writers only, gets views which are almost sure to be perverted, and which are not only _narrow but false_."

17.

All his descriptions of natural scenery and beauty show his intense sensibility to them, but nowhere is there a trace of the love or the comprehension of art, as the reflection from the mind of man of the nature and the beauty he so loved. Thus, after dwelling on a scene of exquisite natural beauty, he says, "Much more beautiful, because made truly after God's own image, are the forms and colours of kind, and wise, and holy thoughts, words, and actions;" that is to say--although he knew not or made not the application--ART, in the high sense of the word, for that is the embodying in beautiful hues and forms, what is kind, wise, and holy; in one word--_good_. In fact, he says himself, art, physical science, and natural history, were not included within the reach of his mind; the first for want of taste, the second for want of time, and the third for want of inclination.

18.

He says, "The whole subject of the brute creation is to me one of such painful mystery, that I dare not approach it." This is very striking from such a man. How deep, consciously or unconsciously, does this feeling lie in many minds!

Bayle had already termed the acts, motives, and feelings of the lower order of animals, "un des plus profonds abîmes sur quoi notre raison peut s'exerciser."

There is nothing, as I have sometimes thought, in which men so blindly sin as in their appreciation and treatment of the whole lower order of creatures. It is affirmed that love and mercy towards animals are not inculcated by any direct precept of Christianity, but surely they are included in its spirit; yet it has been remarked that cruelty towards animals is far more common in Western Christendom than in the East. With the Mahometan and Brahminical races humanity to animals, and the sacredness of life in all its forms, is much more of a religious principle than among ourselves.

Bacon, in his "Advancement of Learning," does not think it beneath his philosophy to point out as a part of human morals, and a condition of human improvement, justice and mercy to the lower animals--"the extension of a noble and excellent principle of compassion to the creatures subject to man." "The Turks," he says, "though a cruel and sanguinary nation both in descent and discipline, give alms to brutes, and suffer them not to be tortured."

It should seem as if the primitive Christians, by laying so much stress upon a future life in contradistinction to this life, and placing the lower creatures out of the pale of hope, placed them at the same time out of the pale of sympathy, and thus laid the foundation for this utter disregard of animals in the light of our fellow creatures. The definition of virtue among the early Christians was the same as Paley's--that it was good performed for the sake of ensuring everlasting happiness--which of course excluded all the so-called brute creatures. Kind, loving, submissive, conscientious, much enduring, we know them to be; but because we deprive them of all stake in the future, because they have no selfish calculated aim, these are not virtues; yet if we say "a _vicious_ horse," why not say a _virtuous_ horse?

The following passage, bearing curiously enough on the most abstruse part of the question, I found in Hallam's Literature of the Middle Ages:--"Few," he says, "at present, who believe in the immateriality of the human soul, would deny the same to an elephant; but it must be owned that the discoveries of zoology have pushed this to consequences which some might not readily adopt. The spiritual being of a sponge revolts a little our prejudices; yet there is no resting-place, and we must admit this, or be content to sink ourselves into a mass of medullary fibre. Brutes have been as slowly emancipated in philosophy as some classes of mankind have been in civil polity; their souls, we see, were almost universally disputed to them at the end of the seventeenth century, even by those who did not absolutely bring them down to machinery. Even within the recollection of many, it was common to deny them any kind of reasoning faculty, and to solve their most sagacious actions by the vague word instinct. We have come of late years to think better of our humble companions; and, as usual in similar cases, the preponderant bias seems rather too much of a levelling character."

When natural philosophers speak of "the higher reason and more limited instincts of man," as compared with animals, do they mean savage man or cultivated man? In the savage man the instincts have a power, a range, a certitude, like those of animals. As the mental faculties become expanded and refined the instincts become subordinate. In tame animals are the instincts as strong as in wild animals? Can we not, by a process of training, substitute an entirely different set of motives and habits?

Why, in managing animals, do men in general make brutes of themselves to address what is most _brute_ in the lower creature, as if it had not been demonstrated that in using our higher faculties, our reason and benevolence, we develop sympathetically higher powers in _them_, and in subduing them through what is best within us, raise them and bring them nearer to ourselves?

In general the more we can gather of facts, the nearer we are to the elucidation of theoretic truth. But with regard to animals, the multiplication of facts only increases our difficulties and puts us to confusion.

"Can we otherwise explain animal instincts than by supposing that the Deity himself is virtually the active and present moving principle within them? If we deny them _soul_, we must admit that they have some spirit direct from God, what we call _unerring_ instinct, which holds the place of it." This is the opinion which Newton adopts. Then are we to infer that the reason of man removes him further from God than the animals, since we cannot offend God in our instincts, only in our reason? and that the superiority of the human animal lies in the power of sinning? Terrible power! terrible privilege! out of which we deduce the law of progress and the necessity for a future life.

The following passage bearing on the subject is from Bentham:--

"The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been withholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. It may come one day to be recognised that the number of legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the _os sacrum_, are reasons insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the caprice of a tormentor. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? is it the faculty of reason, or, perhaps, the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational as well as a more conversable animal than an infant of a day, a week, or even a month old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, 'can they reason?' nor 'can they speak?' but 'can they suffer?'"

I do not remember ever to have heard the kind and just treatment of animals enforced upon Christian principles or made the subject of a sermon.

19.

Once, when I was at Vienna, there was a dread of hydrophobia, and orders were given to massacre all the dogs which were found unclaimed or uncollared in the city or suburbs. Men were employed for this purpose, and they generally carried a short heavy stick, which they flung at the poor proscribed animal with such certain aim as either to kill or maim it mortally at one blow. It happened one day that, close to the edge of the river, near the Ferdinand's-Brücke, one of these men flung his stick at a wretched dog, but with such bad aim that it fell into the river. The poor animal, following his instinct or his teaching, immediately plunged in, redeemed the stick, and laid it down at the feet of its owner, who, snatching it up, dashed out the creature's brains.

I wonder what the Athenians would have done to such a man? they who banished the judge of the Areopagus because he flung away the bird which had sought shelter in his bosom?

20.

I return to Dr. Arnold. He laments the neglect of our cathedrals and the absurd confusion in so many men's minds "between what is really Popery, and what is but wisdom and beauty adopted by the Roman Catholics and neglected by us."

21.

He says, "Then, only, can opportunities of evil be taken from us, when we lose also all opportunity of doing or becoming good." An obvious, even common place thought, well and tersely expressed. The inextricable co-relation and apparent antagonism of good and evil were never more strongly put.

22.

The defeat of Varus by the Germans, and the defeat of the moors by Charles Martel, he ranked as the two most important battles in the history of the world. I see why. The first, because it decided whether the north of Europe was to be completely Latinised; the second, because it decided whether all Europe was to be completely Mahomedanised.

23.

"How can he who labours hard for his daily bread--hardly and with doubtful success--be made wise and good, and therefore how can he be made happy? This question undoubtedly the Church was meant to solve; for Christ's kingdom was to undo the evil of Adam's sin; but the Church has not solved it nor attempted to do so, and no one else has gone about it rightly. How shall the poor man find time to be educated?"

This question, which "the Church has not yet solved," men have now set their wits to solve for themselves.

24.

When in Italy he writes:--"It is almost awful to look at the beauty which surrounds me and then think of moral evil. It seems as if heaven and hell, instead of being separated by a great gulf from us and from each other, were close at hand and on each other's confines."

"Might but the sense of moral evil be as strong in me as is my delight in external beauty!"

A prayer I echo, Amen! if by the _sense_ he mean the abhorrence of it; otherwise, to be perpetually haunted with the perception of moral evil were dreadful; yet, on the other hand, I am half ashamed sometimes of a conscious shrinking within myself from the sense of moral evil, merely as I should shrink from external filth and deformity, as hateful to perception and recollection, rather than as hateful to God and subversive of goodness.

25.

Here is a very striking passage. He says, "A great school is very trying; it never can present images of rest and peace; and when the spring and activity of youth are altogether unsanctified by anything pure and elevated in its desires, it becomes a spectacle that is dizzying and almost more morally distressing than the shouts and gambols of a set of lunatics. It is very startling to see so much of sin combined with so little of sorrow. In a parish, amongst the poor, whatever of sin exists there is sure also to be enough of suffering: poverty, sickness, and old age are mighty tamers and chastisers. But, with boys of the richer classes, one sees nothing but plenty, health, and youth; and these are really awful to behold, when one must feel that they are unblessed. On the other hand, few things are more beautiful than when one does see all holy and noble thoughts and principles, not the forced growth of pain, or infirmity, or privation, but springing up as by God's immediate planting, in a sort of garden of all that is fresh and beautiful; full of so much hope for this world as well as for heaven."

To this testimony of a schoolmaster let us add the testimony of a schoolboy. De Quincey thus describes in himself the transition from boyhood to manhood: "Then first and suddenly were brought powerfully before me the change which was worked in the aspects of society by the presence of woman; woman, pure, thoughtful, noble, coming before me as Pandora crowned with perfections. Right over against this ennobling spectacle, with equal suddenness, I placed the odious spectacle of schoolboy society--no matter in what region of the earth,--schoolboy society, so frivolous in the matter of its disputes, often so brutal in the manner; so childish and yet so remote from simplicity; so foolishly careless, and yet so revoltingly selfish; dedicated ostensibly to learning, and yet beyond any section of human beings so conspicuously ignorant."

There is a reverse to this picture, as I hope and believe. If I have met with those who looked back on their school-days with horror, as having first contaminated them with "evil communication," I have met with others whose remembrances were all of sunshine, of early friendships, of joyous sports.

Nor do I think that a large school composed wholly of girls is in any respect better. In the low languid tone of mind, the petulant tempers, the small spitefulnesses, the cowardly concealments, the compressed or ill-directed energies, the precocious vanities and affectations, many such congregations of _Femmelettes_ would form a worthy pendant to the picture of boyish turbulence and vulgarity drawn by De Quincey.

I am convinced from my own recollections, and from all I have learned from experienced teachers in large schools, that one of the most fatal mistakes in the training of children has been the too early separation of the sexes. I say, _has been_, because I find that everywhere this most dangerous prejudice has been giving way before the light of truth and a more general acquaintance with that primal law of nature, which ought to teach us that the more we can assimilate on a large scale the public to the domestic training, the better for all. There exists still, the impression--in the higher classes especially--that in early education, the mixture of the two sexes would tend to make the girls masculine and the boys effeminate, but experience shows us that it is all the other way. Boys learn a manly and protecting tenderness, and the girls become at once more feminine and more truthful. Where this association has begun early enough, that is, before five years old, and has been continued till about ten or twelve, it has uniformly worked well; on this point the evidence is unanimous and decisive. So long ago as 1812, Francis Horner, in describing a school he visited at Enmore, near Bridgewater, speaks with approbation of the boys and the girls standing up together in the same class: it is the first mention, I find, of this innovation on the old collegiate, or charity-school plan,--itself a continuation of the monkish discipline. He says, "I liked much the placing the boys and girls together at an early age; it gave the boys a new spur to emulation." When I have seen a class of girls stand up together, there has been a sort of empty tittering, a vacancy in the faces, an inertness, which made it, as I thought, very up-hill work for the teacher; so when it was a class of boys, there has been often a sluggishness--a tendency to ruffian tricks--requiring perpetual effort on the part of the master. In teaching a class of boys and girls, accustomed to stand up together, there is little or nothing of this. They are brighter, readier, better behaved; there is a kind of mutual influence working for good; and if there be emulation, it is not mingled with envy or jealousy. Mischief, such as might be apprehended, is in this case far less likely to arise than where boys and girls, habitually separated from infancy, are first thrown together, just at the age when the feelings are first awakened and the association has all the excitement of novelty. A very intelligent schoolmaster assured me that he had had more trouble with a class of fifty boys, than with a school of three hundred boys and girls together (in the midst of whom I found him); and that there were no inconveniences resulting which a wise and careful and efficient superintendence could not control. "There is," said he, "not only more emulation, more quickness of brain, but altogether a superior healthiness of tone, body and mind, where the boys and girls are trained together till about ten years old; and it extends into their after life:--I should say because it is in accordance with the laws of God in forming us with mutual sympathies, moral and intellectual, and mutual dependence for help from the very beginning of life."

What is curious enough, I find many people--fathers, mothers, teachers,--who are agreed that in the schools for the lower classes, the two sexes may be safely and advantageously associated, yet have a sort of horror of the idea of such an innovation in schools for the higher classes. One would like to know the reason for such a distinction, instead of being encountered, as is usual, by a sneer or a vile innuendo.

NIEBUHR.

LIFE AND LETTERS, 1852.

26.

In a letter to a young student in philology there are noble passages in which I truly sympathise. He says, among other things: "I wish you had less pleasure in satires, not excepting those of Horace. Turn to the works which elevate the heart, in which you contemplate great men and great events, and live in a higher world. Turn away from those which represent the mean and contemptible side of ordinary circumstances and degenerate days: they are not suitable for the young, who in ancient times would not have been suffered to have them in their hands. Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Pindar,--these are the poets for youth." And again: "Do not read the ancient authors in order to make æsthetic reflections on them, but in order to drink in their spirit and to fill your soul with their thoughts; and in order to gain that by reading which you would have gained by reverently listening to the discourses of great men."

We should turn to works of art with the same feeling.

On the whole, all my own educational experience has shown me the dangerous--in some cases fatal--effects on the childish intellect, where precocious criticism was encouraged, and where caricatures and ugly disproportioned figures, expressing vile or ridiculous emotions, were placed before the eyes of children, as a means of amusement.

If I were a legislator I would forbid travesties and ridiculous burlesques of Shakspeare's finest and most serious dramas to be acted in our theatres. That this has been done and recently (as in the case of the Merchant of Venice) seems to me a national disgrace.

27.

It is strange, confounding, to hear Niebuhr speak thus of Goethe:--

"I am inclined to think that Goethe is utterly destitute of susceptibility to impressions from the fine arts."(!!) He afterwards does more justice to Goethe--certainly one of the profoundest critics in art who ever lived; although I am inclined to think that his was an educated perception rather than a natural sensibility. Niebuhr's criticism on Goethe's Italian travels,--on Goethe's want of sympathy with the people,--his regarding the whole country and nation simply as a sort of bazaar of art and antiquities, an exhibition of beauty and a recreation for himself: his habit of surveying all moral and intellectual greatness, all that speaks to the heart, with a kind of patronising superiority, as if created for his use,--and finding amusement in the folly, degeneracy, and corruption of the people;--all this appears to me admirable, and so far I had strong sympathy with Niebuhr; for I well remember that in reading Goethe's "Italianische Reise," I had the same perception of the artless and the superficial in point of feeling, in the midst of so much that was fine and valuable in criticism. It is well to be artistic in art, but not to walk about the world _en artiste_, studying humanity, and the deepest human interests, as if they were _art_.

Niebuhr afterwards says, in speaking of Rome, "I am sickened here of art, as I should be of sweetmeats instead of bread." So it _must_ be where art is separated wholly from morals.

28.

He speaks of the "wretched superstition," and the "utter incapacity for piety" in the people of the Roman States.

Superstition and the want of piety go together; and the combination is not peculiar to the Italians, nor to the Roman Catholic faith.

29.

In speaking of the education of his son, he deprecates the learning by rote of hymns. "To a happy child, hymns deploring the misery of human life are without meaning." (And worse.) "So likewise to a good child are those expressing self-accusation and contrition." (He might have added, and self-applause.)

I am quite sure, from my own experience of children who have been allowed to learn penitential psalms and hymns, that they think of wickedness as a sort of thing which gives them self-importance.

30.

"Only what the mind takes in willingly can it assimilate with itself, and make its own, part of its life."

A truism of the greatest value in education; but who thinks of it when cramming children's minds with all sorts of distasteful heterogeneous things?

31.

"When reflection has become too one-sided and too domineering over a deeply feeling heart, it is apt to lead us into errors in our treatment of others."

And all that follows--very wise! for the want of this reflection leaves us stranded and wrecked through feeling and perception merely.

32.

Very curious and interesting, as a trait of character and feeling, is the passage in which he represents himself, in the dangerous confinement of his second wife, as praying to his first wife for succour. "In my terrible anxiety," he says, "I prayed most earnestly, and entreated my Milly, too, for help. I comforted Gretchen by telling her that Milly would send help. When she was at the worst, she sighed out, 'Ah, cannot your Amelia send me a blessing?'"

This is curious from a Protestant and a philosopher. It shows that there may be something nearly allied to our common nature in the Roman Catholic invocation to the saints, and to the souls of the dead.

33.

Niebuhr, speaking of a lady (Madame von der Recke, I think,--the "Elise" of Goethe) who had patronised him, says, "I will receive roses and myrtles from female hands, but no laurels."

This makes one smile; for most of the laurels which Niebuhr will receive in this country will be through female hands--through the admirable translation and arrangement of his life and letters by Susanna Winkworth.

34.

The following I read with cordial agreement:--"While I am ready to adopt any well-grounded opinion" (regarding, I suppose, mere facts, or speculations as to things), "my inmost soul revolts against receiving the judgment of others respecting persons; and whenever I have done so I have bitterly repented of it."

35.

He says, "I cannot worship the abstraction of Virtue. She only charms me when she addresses herself to my heart, and speaks thus the love from which she springs. I really love nothing but what actually exists."

What _does_ actually exist to us but that which we believe in? and where we strongly love do we not believe sometimes in the _unreal_? is it not _then_ the existing and the actual to us?

36.

"A faculty of a quite peculiar kind, and for which we have no word, is the recognition of the incomprehensible. It is something which distinguishes the seer from the ordinary learned man."

But in religion this is _faith_. Does Niebuhr admit this kind of faith, "the recognition of the incomprehensible," in philosophy, and not in religion? for he often complains of the want in himself of any faith but an historic faith.

37.

"In times of good fortune it is easy to appear great--nay, even to act greatly; but in misfortune very difficult. The greatest man will commit blunders in misfortune, because the want of proportion between his means and his ends progressively increases, and his inward strength is exhausted in fruitless efforts."

This is true; but under all extremes of good or evil fortune we are apt to commit mistakes, because the tide of the mind does not flow equally, but rushes along impetuously in a flood, or brokenly and distractedly in a rocky channel, where its strength is exhausted in conflict and pain. The extreme pressure of circumstances will produce extremes of feeling in minds of a sensitive rather than a firm cast.

38.

This next passage is curious as a scholar's opinion of "free trade" in the year 1810; though I believe the phrase "free trade" was not even invented at that time--certainly not in use in the statesman's vocabulary.

"I presume you will admit that commerce is a good thing, and the first requisite in the life of any nation. It appears to me, that this much has now been palpably demonstrated, namely, that an advanced and complicated social condition like this in which we live can only be maintained by establishing mutual relationships between the most remote nations; and that the limitation of commerce would, like the sapping of a main pillar, inevitably occasion the fall of the whole edifice; and also that commerce is so essentially beneficial and in accordance with man's nature, that the well-being of each nation is an advantage to all the nations that stand in connection with it."

It is strange how long we have been (forty years, and more) in recognising these simple principles; and in Germany, where they were first enunciated, they are not recognised yet.

CHARACTER OF DEMADES.

(FROM NIEBUHR's LECTURES.)

39.

"By his wit and his talent, and more especially by his gift as an improvisatore, he rose so high that he exercised a great influence upon the people, and sometimes was more popular even than Demosthenes. With a shamelessness amounting to honesty, he bluntly told the people everything he felt and what all the populace felt with him. When hearing such a man the populace felt at their ease: he gave them the feeling that they might be wicked without being disgraced, and this excites with such people a feeling of gratitude. There is a remarkable passage in Plato, where he shows that those who deliver hollow speeches, without being in earnest, have no power or influence; whereas others, who are devoid of mental culture, but say in a straightforward manner what they think and feel, exercise great power. It was this which in the eighteenth century gave the materialist philosophy in France such enormous influence with the higher classes; for they were told there was no need to be ashamed of the vulgarest sensuality; formerly people had been ashamed, but now a man learned that he might be a brutal sensualist, provided he did not offend against elegant manners and social conventionalism. People rejoiced at hearing a man openly and honestly say what they themselves felt. Demades was a remarkable character. He was not a bad man; and I like him much better than Eschines."

What an excuse, what a sanction is here for the demagogues who direct the worst passions of men to the worst and the most selfish purposes, and the most debasing consequences! Demades "not a bad man?" then what _is_ a bad man?

LORD BACON.

(1849.)

40.

"It was not the pure knowledge of nature and universality, but it was the proud knowledge of good and evil, with an intent in man to give the law unto himself, which was the form of the first temptation."

But, in this sense, the first temptation is only the type of the perpetual and ever-present temptation--the temptation into which we are to fall through necessity, that we may rise through love.

41.

Here is an excellent passage--a severe commentary on the unsound, un-christian, unphilosophical distinction between morals and politics in government:--

"Although men bred in learning are perhaps to seek in points of convenience and reasons of state and accommodations for the present, yet, on the other hand, to recompense this they are perfect in those same plain grounds of religion, justice, honour, and moral virtue which, if they be well and watchfully pursued, there will be seldom use of those other expedients, no more than of physic in a sound, well-directed body."

42.

"Now (in the time of Lord Bacon, that is,) now sciences are delivered to be believed and accepted, and not to be farther discovered; and therefore, sciences stand at a clog, and have done for many ages."

In the present time, this is true only, or especially, of theology as an art, and divinity as a science; so made by the schoolmen of former ages, and not yet emancipated.

43.

"Generally he perceived in men of devout simplicity this opinion, that the secrets of nature were the secrets of God, part of that glory into which man is not to press too boldly."

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us on this side of the grave. But not the less will he keep his own secrets from us. Has he not proved it? who has opened that door to the knowledge of a future being which it has pleased him to keep shut fast, though watched by hope and by faith?

44.

The Christian philosophy of these latter times appears to be foreshadowed in the following sentence, where he speaks of such as have ventured to deduce and confirm the truth of the Christian religion from the principles and authorities of philosophers: "Thus with great pomp and solemnity celebrating the intermarriage of faith and sense as a lawful conjunction, and soothing the minds of men with a pleasing variety of matter, though, at the same time, rashly and unequally intermixing things divine and things human."

This last common-place distinction seems to me, however, unworthy of Bacon. It should be banished--utterly set aside. Things which are divine should be human, and things which are human, divine; not as a mixture, "a medley," in the sense of Bacon's words, but an interfusion; for nothing that we esteem divine can be anything to us but as we make it _ours_, _i. e._ humanise it; and our humanity were a poor thing but for "the divinity that stirs within us." We do injury to our own nature--we misconceive our relations to the Creator, to his universe, and to each other, so long as we separate and studiously keep wide apart the _divine_ and the _human_.

45.

"Let no man, upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied either in the book of God's word or the book of God's works." Well advised! But then he goes on to warn men that they do not "unwisely mingle or confound their learnings together:" mischievous this contradistinction between God's word and God's works; since both, if emanating from him, must be equally true. And if there be one truth, then, to borrow his own words in another place, "the voice of nature will consent, whether the voice of man do so or not."

46.

Apropos to education--here is a good illustration: "Were it not better for a man in a fair room to set up one great light or branching candlestick of lights, than to go about with a rushlight into every dark corner?"

And here is another: "It is one thing to set forth what ground lieth unmanured, and another to correct ill husbandry in that which _is_ manured."

47.

"It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle and generous, amiable, and pliant to government, whereas ignorance maketh them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous."

48.

"An impatience of doubt and an unadvised haste to assertion without due and mature suspension of the judgment, is an error in the conduct of the understanding."

"In contemplation, if a man begin with certainties he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties." Well said and profoundly true.

This is a celebrated and often-cited passage; an admitted principle in theory. I wish it were oftener applied in practice,--more especially in education. For it seems to me that in teaching children we ought not to be perpetually dogmatising. We ought not to be ever placing before them only the known and the definite; but to allow the unknown, the uncertain, the indefinite, to be suggested to their minds: it would do more for the growth of a truly religious feeling than all the catechisms of scientific facts and creeds of theological definitions that ever were taught in cut and dried question and answer. Why should not the young candid mind be allowed to reflect on the unknown, as such? on the doubtful, as such--open to inquiry and liable to discussion? Why will teachers suppose that in confessing their own ignorance or admitting uncertainties they must diminish the respect of their pupils, or their faith in truth? I should say from my own experience that the effect is just the reverse. I remember, when a child, hearing a very celebrated man profess his ignorance on some particular subject, and I felt awe-struck--it gave me a perception of the infinite,--as when looking up at the starry sky. What we unadvisedly cram into a child's mind in the same form it has taken in our own, does not always healthily or immediately assimilate; it dissolves away in doubts, or it hardens into prejudice, instead of mingling with the life as truth ought to do. It is the early and habitual surrendering of the mind to authority, which makes it afterwards so ready for deception of all kinds.

49.

He speaks of "legends and narrations of miracles wrought by martyrs, hermits, monks, which, though they have had passage for a time by the ignorance of the people, the superstitious simplicity of some, and the politic toleration of others, holding them but as divine poesies; yet after a time they grew up to be esteemed but as old wives' fables, to the great scandal and detriment of religion."

Very ambiguous, surely. Does he mean that it was to the great scandal and detriment of religion that they existed at all? or that they came to be regarded as old wives' fables?

50.

He says, farther on, "though truth and error are carefully to be separated, yet rarities and reports that seem incredible are not to be suppressed or denied to the memory of men."

"For it is not yet known in what cases and how far effects attributed to superstition do participate of natural causes."

51.

"To be speculative with another man to the end to know how to work him or wind him, proceedeth from a heart that is double and cloven, and not entire and ingenuous; which, as in friendship, it is a want of _integrity_, so towards princes or superiors it is a want of _duty_." (No occasion, surely, for the distinction here drawn; inasmuch as the want of integrity involves the want of _every_ duty.)

Then he speaks of "the stooping to points of necessity and convenience and outward basenesses," as to be accounted "submission to the occasion, not to the person." Vile distinction! an excuse to himself for his dedication to the King, and his flattery of Carr and Villiers.

52.

Our English Universities are only now beginning to show some sign (reluctant sign) of submitting to that re-examination which the great philosopher recommended two hundred and fifty years ago, when he says: "Inasmuch as most of the usages and orders of the universities were derived from more obscure times, it is the more requisite they be reexamined"--and more to the same purpose.

53.

"If that great Workmaster (God) had been of a human disposition, he would have cast the stars into some pleasant and beautiful works and orders like the frets in the roofs of houses; whereas, one can scarce find a posture in square or triangle or straight line amongst such an infinite number, so differing an harmony there is between the spirit of man and the spirit of nature."

Perhaps if our human vision could be removed to a sufficient distance to contemplate the whole of what we now see in part, what appears disorder might appear beautiful order. The stars which now appear as if flung about at random, would perhaps be resolved into some exquisitely beautiful and regular edifice. The fly on the cornice, "whose feeble ray scarce spreads an inch around," might as well discuss the proportions of the Parthenon as we the true figure and frame of God's universe.

I remember seeing, through Lord Rosse's telescope, one of those nebulæ which have hitherto appeared like small masses of vapour floating about in space. I saw it composed of thousands upon thousands of brilliant stars, and the effect to the eye--to mine at least--was as if I had had my hand full of diamonds, and suddenly unclosing it, and flinging them forth, they were dispersed as from a centre, in a kind of partly irregular, partly fan-like form; and I had a strange feeling of suspense and amazement while I looked, because they did not change their relative position, did not fall--though in act to fall--but seemed fixed in the very attitude of being flung forth into space;--it was most wondrous and beautiful to see!

54.

It is pleasant to me to think that Bacon's stupendous intellect believed in the moral progress of human societies, because it is my own belief, and one that I would not for worlds resign. I indeed believe that each human being must here (or hereafter?) work out his own peculiar moral life: but also that the whole race has a progressive moral life: just as in our solar system every individual planet moves in its own orbit, while the whole system moves on together; we know not whither, we know not round what centre--"_ma pur si muove!_"

55.

Yet he says in another place, with equal wit and sublimity, "Every obtaining of a desire hath a _show_ of advancement, as motion in a circle hath a _show_ of progression." Perhaps our movement may be _spiral_? and every revolution may bring us nearer and nearer to some divine centre in which we may be absorbed at last?

56.

He refers in this following passage to that theory of the angelic existences which we see expressed in ancient symbolic Art, first by variation of colour only, and later, by variety of expression and form. He says,--"We find, as far as credit is to be given to the celestial hierarchy of that supposed Dionysius, the senator of Athens, that the first place or degree is given to the Angels of Love, which are called Seraphim; the second to the Angels of Light, which are termed Cherubim; and the third, and so following, to Thrones, Principalities, and the rest (which are all angels of power and ministry); so as the angels of knowledge and illumination are placed before the angels of office and domination."

--But the Angels of LOVE are first and over all. In other words, we have here in due order of precedence, 1. LOVE, 2. KNOWLEDGE, 3. POWER,--the angelic Trinity, which, in unity, is our idea of GOD.

CHATEAUBRIAND.

("MEMOIRES D'OUTRE TOMBE." 1851.)

57.

Chateaubriand tells us that when his mother and sisters urged him to marry, he resisted strongly--he thought it too early; he says, with a peculiar naïveté, "Je ne me sentais aucune qualité de mari: toutes mes illusions étaient vivantes, rien n'était épuisé en moi, l'énergie même de mon existence avait doublé par mes courses," &c.

So then the "_existence épuisé_" is to be kept for the wife! "_la vie usée_"--"_la jeunesse abusée_," is good enough to make a husband! Chateaubriand, who in many passages of his book piques himself on his morality, seems quite unconscious that he has here given utterance to a sentiment the most profoundly immoral, the most fatal to both sexes, that even his immoral age had ever the effrontery to set forth.

58.

"Il paraît qu'on n'apprend pas à mourir en tuant les autres."

Nor do we learn to suffer by inflicting pain: nothing so patient as pity.

59.

"Le cynisme des moeurs ramène dans la société, en annihilant le sens moral, une sorte de barbares; ces barbares de la civilisation, propres à détruire comme les Goths, n'ont pas la puissance de fonder comme eux; ceux-ci étaient les énormes enfants d'une nature vierge; ceux-là sont les avortons monstrueux d'une nature dépravée."

We too often make the vulgar mistake that undisciplined or overgrown passions are a sign of strength; they are the signs of immaturity, of "enormous childhood."--And the distinction (above) is well drawn and true. The real savage is that monstrous, malignant, abject thing, generated out of the rottenness and ferment of civilisation. And yet extremes meet: I remember seeing on the shores of Lake Huron some Indians of a distant tribe of Chippawas, who in appearance were just like those fearful abortions of humanity which crawl out of the darkness, filth, and ignorance of our great towns, just so miserable, so stupid, so cruel,--only, perhaps, less _wicked_.

60.

Chateaubriand was always comparing himself with Lord Byron--he hints more than once, that Lord Byron owed some of his inspiration to the perusal of his works--more especially to Renée. In this he was altogether mistaken.

61.

"Une intelligence supérieure n'enfante pas le mal sans douleur, parceque ce n'est pas son fruit naturel, et qu'elle ne devait pas le porter."

62.