Chapter IX: Front Matter (9)

‘The intellectual faculties have been placed in the brain; but it was impossible to point out any organ, because organs have been sought for faculties which have no organ, namely, for common and general faculties.... General or common phenomena never have any particular organ. Secretion, for instance, is a common name, and secretion in general has no particular organ; but the particular secretions, as of saliva, bile, tears, &c. are attached to particular organs. Sensation is an expression which indicates the common function of the five external senses; therefore this common faculty has no particular organ, but every determinate sensation—as of sight, hearing, smelling, taste, or feeling—is attached to some particular organ.’ Page 273.

In the first place, then, Dr. Spurzheim himself assigns particular organs for common and general faculties; such as self-love, veneration, hope, covetousness, language, comparison, causality, wit, imitation, &c. He also talks of the organs of abstraction, individuality, invention, &c. It would be hard to deny that these mean more than one thing, and refer to more than to one class of sensations. In fact, the author all through his volume regularly confounds general principles with particular acts and mechanic exercises of the mind. Secondly, he either does not or will not apprehend the precise meaning of the terms _common_ or _general faculties_, as applied to the mind. _Sensation_ is a common function of the five external senses, that is, it belongs severally to the exercise of the five external senses: but _understanding_ is a common faculty of the mind—not because it belongs to any number of ideas in succession, but because it takes cognizance of a number of them together. UNDERSTANDING is perceiving the relations between objects and impressions, which the senses and particular or individual organs can never do. It is this superintending or _conscious_ faculty or principle which is aware both of the colour, form, and sound of an object; which connects its present appearance with its past history; which arranges and combines the multifarious impressions of nature into one whole; which balances the various motives of action, and renders man what he is—a rational and moral agent: but for this faculty we find no regular place or station assigned amongst that heap of organic _tumuli_, which could produce nothing but mistakes and confusion. The seat of this faculty is one, or its impressions are communicated to the same intelligent mind, which contemplates and reacts upon them all with more or less wisdom and comprehensive power. Thus the poet is not a being made up of a string of organs—an eye, an ear, a heart, a tongue—but is one and the same intellectual essence, looking out from its own nature on all the different impressions it receives, and to a certain degree moulding them into itself. It is _I_ who remember certain objects, who judge of them, who invent from them, who connect certain sounds that I hear, as of a thrush singing, with certain sights that I see, as the wood whence the notes issue. There is some bond, some conscious connexion brought about between these impressions and acts of the mind; that is, there is a principle of joint and common understanding in the mind, quite different from the ignorance in which the ear is left of what passes before the eye, &c. and which overruling and primary faculty of the soul, blending with all our thoughts and feelings, Dr. Spurzheim does not once try to explain, but does all he can to overturn.

‘Understanding,’ he continues, ‘being an expression which designates a general faculty, has no particular organ, but every determinate species of understanding is attached to a particular organ.’ _Ibid._

If so, how does it contrive to compare notes with the impressions of other particular organs? For example, how does the organ of wit combine with the organ of form or of individuality, to give a grotesque description of a particular person, without some common and intermediate faculty to which these several impressions are consciously referred? Will any one tell me that one of these detached and very particular organs perceives the stained _colour_ of an old cloak—[How would it apprehend any thing of the _age_ of the cloak?]—that another has a glimpse of its antiquated _form_; that a third supplies a _witty_ allusion or apt _illustration_ of what it knows nothing about; and that this patchwork process is clubbed by a number of organic impressions that have no law of subordination, nor any common principle of reference between them, to make a lively caricature?

‘Finally, it is the same with all common faculties of the understanding—of which philosophers and physiologists speak—namely, with _perception_, _memory_, or _recollection_, _judgment_, and _imagination_. These expressions are common, and the respective faculties have no organs; but every peculiar perception—memory, judgment, and imagination—as of space, form, colour, tune, and number, have their particular organs. If the common faculties of understanding were attached to particular organs, the person who possesses the organ of any common faculty ought to be endowed with all particular kinds of faculties. If there were an organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, any one who has the organ of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination, ought to possess all kinds of perception, of memory, of judgment, or of imagination. Now this is against all experience.’ _Ibid._

No more, than a person possessed of the general organ of sight must be acquainted equally with all objects of sight, whether they have ever fallen in his way, or whether he has studied them or not. But it is according to all experience, that some persons are distinguished more by memory, others more by judgment, others more by imagination, generally speaking. That is, upon whatever subject they exercise their attention, they show the same turn of mind or predominating faculty. Some people do every thing from impulse. It is their character under all impressions and in all studies and pursuits. Is there then an organ of impulse? An organ of tune is intelligible, because it denotes a general faculty exercised upon a particular class of impressions, _viz._ sounds. But what is an organ of wit? It means nothing; for it denotes a faculty without any specific objects: and yet _an organ_ means a faculty limited to specific objects. Wit is the faculty of combining suddenly and glancing over the whole range of art and nature; but an organ is shut up in a particular cell of sensation, and sees nothing beyond itself.

‘One has a great memory of one kind,’ proceeds our author, ‘and a very little memory of other things.’

Yes, partly from habit, but chiefly, I grant, from original character; not because certain things strike upon a certain part of the brain, but touch a certain quality or disposition of the mind. Thus, some remember trifles, others things of importance. Some retain forms, others feelings. Some have a memory of words, others of things. Some remember what regards their own interests, others what is interesting in itself, according to the bias and scope of their sensibility. All these results depend evidently not on a particular local impression, but on a variety of general causes combined in one common effect. Again: ‘a poet possesses one kind of imagination in a high degree; but has he therefore every kind of imagination, as that of inventing machines, of composing music, &c.?’ Page 275.

Or it may be retorted—Has he therefore every kind of poetical imagination? Does the same person write epigrams and epics, comedies and tragedies? Is there not light and serious poetry? Is not Mr. T. Moore just as likely to become Newton as to become Milton? Or as the wren the eagle? Yet Dr. Spurzheim has but one organ for poetry, as he says—‘We allow but one organ for tune.’ But is there not tune in poetry? Has not the poet an ear as well as the musician? How then does the author reconcile these common or analogous qualities, and the complex impressions from all the senses implied in poetry (for instance) with his detached, circumscribed, _local_ organs? His system is merely _nominal_, and a very clumsy specimen of nomenclature into the bargain.—Poetry relates to all sorts of impressions, from all sorts of objects, moral and physical. Music relates to one sort of impressions only, and so far there is an excuse for assigning it to a particular organ; but it also implies common and general faculties, such as retention, judgment, invention, &c. which essentially reside in the understanding or thinking principle at large. But suppose them to be cooped and cabined up in the particular organ:—do they not exist in different degrees, and is this difference expressed merely by the size of the organ?—It cannot be. The circumstance of size can only determine that such a one is a great musician; not what sort of a musician he is. Therefore this characteristic difference is not expressed by quantity, and therefore none of the differences themselves, or faculties of judgment, invention, refinement, &c. which form the great musician, can be expressed by quantity; and if none of these component parts of musical genius are so expressed, why then ‘it follows, as the night the day,’ that there can be no organ of music. There may be an organ peculiarly adapted for retaining musical impressions, but this (without including the intellectual operations, which is impossible) would only answer the purposes of a peculiarly fine and sensitive ear.

‘Natural philosophers were wrong in looking for organs of common faculties.’—[_That’s_ true.]—‘A speculative philosopher may be satisfied with vague and common expressions, which do not denote the particular and determinate qualities of the different beings; but these general or common considerations are not sufficient for a naturalist who endeavours to know the functions and faculties of every organic part in particular. Throughout all natural history, the expressions are the less significant the more general or common they are; and a distinct knowledge of any being requires a study of its peculiarities.’ Page 275.

Take away the human mind and its common functions, operations, and principles, and Dr. Spurzheim’s craniology gives a very satisfactory and categorical view of human nature. In material science, the common properties may be the least significant; but in the mind of man, the common principle (whatever it be) that feels, thinks, and acts, is the chief thing.

I do not believe then in the Doctor’s _organs_, either generally or particularly. I have only his word for them; and reason and common sense are against them. There may be an exception now and then, but there is every where a total want of classification and analytic power. The author, instead of giving the _rationale_ of any one thing, runs on with endless illustrations and assumptions of the same kind. The organs are sometimes general and sometimes particular; sometimes compound and sometimes simple. You know not what to make of them: they turn over like tumbler-pigeons. I should be inclined to admit the _organ of amativeness_ as a physical reinforcement of a mental passion; but hardly that of _philoprogenitiveness_—at least, it is badly explained here. I will give an instance or two. ‘A male servant,’ Dr. Spurzheim observes, ‘seldom takes care of children so well as a woman.’ Women, then, are fond of children generally; not of their own merely. Is not this an extension of the organic principle beyond its natural and positive limits? Again: ‘Little girls are fond of dolls,’ &c. Is there then an express organ for this; since dolls are not literally children? Oh no! it is only a modification of the _organ of philoprogenitiveness_. Well then, why should not this organ itself or particular propensity be a modification of philanthropy, or of an amiable disposition, good-nature, and generosity in general? There seems no assignable reason why most, if not all of these special organs should be considered as any thing more than so many manifestations or cases of general dispositions, capacities, &c. arising from general irritability, tenderness, firmness, quickness, comprehension, &c. of the mind or brain; just as the particular varieties and obliquities of organic faculties and affections are attributed by Spurzheim and Gall to a common law or principle combined with others, or with peculiar circumstances. The account of the _organ of inhabitiveness_ is a master-piece of confusion. It is an organ seated on the top of the head, and impelling you to live in high places, and then again in low places; on land and water; to be here and there and everywhere; which is the same and different, and is in short an organ, not for any particular thing, but for all sorts of contradictions. First, it is the same as the organ of pride, and accounts for the chamois climbing rocks, and the eagle the sky; for children mounting on chairs, and kings on thrones, &c. But then some animals prefer low marshy grounds, and some birds build in the hollows, and not on the tops of trees. Then it looks like a dispensation of Providence to people different regions of the earth; and one would think in this view that local prejudices would be resolved into a species of habitual attachment. But no, that would not be a _nostrum_. It is therefore said—‘Nature, which intended that all regions and countries should be inhabited, assigned to all animals their dwellings, and gave to every kind of animal its respective propensity to some particular region;’ that is, not to the place where it had been born and bred, but where _it was to be_ born and bred. People who prefer this mode of philosophy are welcome to it. No wonder our author finds it ‘difficult to point out the seat of this organ;’ yet he assures us, that ‘it must be deep-seated in the brain.’ The _organ of adhesiveness_ is evidently the same as the general faculty of attachment. The _organ of combativeness_ I conceive to be nothing but strength of bone and muscle, and some projection arising from and indicating these. The _organs of destructiveness and constructiveness_ are the same, but ‘so as with a difference’—that is, they express strong will, with greater or less impatience of temper and comprehensiveness of mind. The conqueror who overturns one state, builds up and aggrandises another. I can conceive persons who are gifted with the _organ of veneration_ to have expanded brains as well as swelling ideas. ‘The head of CHRIST,’ says our physiologist, ‘is always represented as very elevated.’—Yet he was remarkable for meekness as well as piety. Spurzheim says of the _organ of covetiveness_, that ‘it gives a desire for all that pleases.’ Again, Dr. Gall observed, that ‘persons of a firm and constant character have the top of the brain much developed;’ and this is called the _organ of determinativeness_. Now if so, are we to believe that the difference in resolute and irresolute persons is confined to this organ, and that the nerves, fibres, &c. of the rest of the brain are not lax or firm, in proportion as the person is of a generally weak or determined character? The whole question nearly turns upon this. Say that there is a particular prominence in this part, owing to a greater strength and size of the levers of the will at this place. This would prove nothing but the particular manifestation or development of a general power; just as the prominence of the muscles of the calf of the leg denotes general muscular strength. But the craniologist says that the strength of the whole body lies in the calf of the leg, and has its seat or organ there. Not so, in the name of common sense! When Dr. Spurzheim gets down to the visible region of the face, the eyes, forehead, &c. he makes sad work of it: an infinite number of distinctions are crowded one upon the back of the other, and to no purpose. Will any body believe that there are five or six different organs for the impressions of one sense (sight,) _viz._ colour, form, size, and so on? Do we see the form with one organ and the colour of the same object with another? There may be different organs to receive different material or concrete impressions, but surely only the mind can abstract the different impressions of the same sense from each other. The _organ of space_ appears to me to answer to the look of wild, staring curiosity. All that is not accounted for in this way, either from general conformation or from physiognomical expression, is a heap of crude, capricious, unauthenticated trash. I select one paragraph out of this puzzling chaos, as a sample of what the reader must expect from the whole.

‘What then is the _special_ faculty of the organ of _individuality_ and its sphere of activity? Persons endowed with this faculty in a high degree are attentive to _all_ that happens around them; to every object, to every phenomenon, to every fact: _hence also to motions_. This faculty neither learns the qualities of objects, nor _the details_ of facts: it knows only their existence. The qualities of the objects, and the particularities of the facts, are known by the assistance of other organs. _Besides_, this faculty has knowledge of _all internal faculties, and acts upon them_. It wishes to know all by experience; consequently it puts every organ into action: it wishes to hear, see, smell, taste, and touch; _to know all arts and sciences_; it is fond of instruction, collects facts, and leads to practical knowledge.’ Page 430.

In the next page he affirms that ‘crystallography is the result of the organ of form,’ and that we do not get the ideas of roughness and smoothness from the touch.—But I will end here, and turn to the amusing account of Dousterswivel in the ANTIQUARY![18]

ESSAY XV
ON EGOTISM

It is mentioned in the Life of Salvator Rosa, that on the occasion of an altar-piece of his being exhibited at Rome, in the triumph of the moment, he compared himself to Michael Angelo, and spoke against Raphael, calling him _hard_, _dry_, &c. Both these were fatal symptoms for the ultimate success of the work: the picture was in fact afterwards severely censured, so as to cause him much uneasiness; and he passed a great part of his life in quarrelling with the world for admiring his landscapes, which were truly excellent, and for not admiring his historical pieces, which were full of defects. Salvator wanted self-knowledge, and that respect for others, which is both a cause and consequence of it. Like many more, he mistook the violent and irritable workings of self-will (in a wrong direction) for the impulse of genius, and his insensibility to the vast superiority of others for a proof of his equality with them.

In the first place, nothing augurs worse for any one’s pretensions to the highest rank of excellence than his making free with those of others. He who boldly and unreservedly places himself on a level with the _mighty dead_, shows a want of sentiment—the only thing that can ensure immortality to his own works. When we forestal the judgment of posterity, it is because we are not confident of it. A mind that brings all others into a line with its own naked or assumed merits, that sees all objects in the foreground as it were, that does not regard the lofty monuments of genius through the atmosphere of fame, is coarse, crude, and repulsive as a picture without aerial perspective. Time, like distance, spreads a haze and a glory round all things. Not to perceive this, is to want a sense, is to be without imagination. Yet there are those who strut in their own self-opinion, and deck themselves out in the plumes of fancied self-importance as if they were crowned with laurel by Apollo’s own hand. There was nothing in common between Salvator and Michael Angelo: if there had, the consciousness of the power with which he had to contend would have over-awed and struck him dumb; so that the very familiarity of his approaches proved (as much as any thing else) the immense distance placed between them. Painters alone seem to have a trick of putting themselves on an equal footing with the greatest of their predecessors, of advancing, on the sole strength of their vanity and presumption, to the highest seats in the Temple of Fame, of talking of themselves and Raphael and Michael Angelo in the same breath! What should we think of a poet who should publish to the world, or give a broad hint in private, that he conceived himself fully on a par with Homer or Milton or Shakespear? It would be too much for a friend to say so of him. But artists suffer their friends to puff them in the true ‘King Cambyses’ vein’ without blushing. Is it that they are often men without a liberal education, who have no notion of any thing that does not come under their immediate observation, and who accordingly prefer the living to the dead, and themselves to all the rest of the world? Or that there is something in the nature of the profession itself, fixing the view on a particular point of time, and not linking the present either with the past or future?

Again, Salvator’s disregard for Raphael, instead of inspiring him with any thing like ‘vain and self-conceit,’ ought to have taught him the greatest diffidence in himself. Instead of anticipating a triumph over Raphael from this circumstance, he might have foreseen in it the sure source of his mortification and defeat. The public looked to find in _his_ pictures what he did not see in Raphael, and were necessarily disappointed. He could hardly be expected to produce that which when produced and set before him, he did not feel or understand. The genius for a particular thing does not imply taste in general or for other things, but it assuredly presupposes a taste or feeling for that particular thing. Salvator was so much offended with the _dryness_, _hardness_, &c. of Raphael, only because he was not struck, that is, did not sympathise with the divine mind within. If he had, he would have bowed as at a shrine, in spite of the homeliness or finicalness of the covering. Let no man build himself a spurious self-esteem on his contempt or indifference for acknowledged excellence. He will in the end pay dear for a momentary delusion: for the world will sooner or later discover those deficiences in him, which render him insensible to all merits but his own.

Of all modes of acquiring distinction and, as it were, ‘getting the start of the majestic world,’ the most absurd as well as disgusting is that of setting aside the claims of others in the lump, and holding out our own particular excellence or pursuit as the only one worth attending to. We thus set ourselves up as the standard of perfection, and treat every thing else that diverges from that standard as beneath our notice. At this rate, a contempt for any thing and a superiority to it are synonymous. It is a cheap and a short way of showing that we possess all excellence within ourselves, to deny the use or merit of all those qualifications that do not belong to us. According to such a mode of computation, it would appear that our value is to be estimated not by the number of acquirements that we _do_ possess, but of those in which we are deficient and to which we are insensible:—so that we can at any time supply the place of wisdom and skill by a due proportion of ignorance, affectation, and conceit. If so, the dullest fellow, with impudence enough to despise what he does not understand, will always be the brightest genius and the greatest man. If stupidity is to be a substitute for taste, knowledge, and genius, any one may dogmatise and play the critic on this ground. We may easily make a monopoly of talent, if the torpedo-touch of our callous and wilful indifference is to neutralise all other pretensions. We have only to deny the advantages of others to make them our own: illiberality will carve out the way to pre-eminence much better than toil or study or quickness of parts; and by narrowing our views and divesting ourselves at last of common feeling and humanity, we may arrogate every valuable accomplishment to ourselves, and exalt ourselves vastly above our fellow-mortals! That is, in other words, we have only to shut our eyes, in order to blot the sun out of heaven, and to annihilate whatever gives light or heat to the world, if it does not emanate from one single source, by spreading the cloud of our own envy, spleen, malice, want of comprehension, and prejudice over it. Yet how many are there who act upon this theory in good earnest, grow more bigoted to it every day, and not only become the dupes of it themselves, but by dint of gravity, by bullying and brow-beating, succeed in making converts of others!

A man is a political economist. Good: but this is no reason he should think there is nothing else in the world, or that every thing else is good for nothing. Let us suppose that this is the most important subject, and that being his favourite study, he is the best judge of that point, still it is not the only one—why then treat every other question or pursuit with disdain as insignificant and mean, or endeavour to put others who have devoted their whole time to it out of conceit with that on which they depend for their amusement or (perhaps) subsistence? I see neither the wit, wisdom, nor good-nature of this mode of proceeding. Let him fill his library with books on this one subject, yet other persons are not bound to follow the example, and exclude every other topic from theirs—let him write, let him talk, let him think on nothing else, but let him not impose the same pedantic humour as a duty or a mark of taste on others—let him ride the high horse, and drag his heavy load of mechanical knowledge along the iron rail-way of the master-science, but let him not move out of it to taunt or jostle those who are jogging quietly along upon their several _hobbies_, who ‘owe him no allegiance,’ and care not one jot for his opinion. Yet we could forgive such a person, if he made it his boast that he had read Don Quixote twice through in the original Spanish, and preferred Lycidas to all Milton’s smaller poems! What would Mr. —— say to any one who should profess a contempt for political economy? He would answer very bluntly and very properly, ‘Then you know nothing about it.’ It is a pity that so sensible a man and close a reasoner should think of putting down other lighter and more elegant pursuits by professing a contempt or indifference for them, which springs from precisely the same source, and is of just the same value. But so it is that there seems to be a tacit presumption of folly in whatever gives pleasure; while an air of gravity and wisdom hovers round the painful and pedantic.

A man comes into a room, and on his first entering, declares without preface or ceremony his contempt for poetry. Are we therefore to conclude him a greater genius than Homer? No: but by this cavalier opinion he assumes a certain natural ascendancy over those who admire poetry. To _look down_ upon any thing seemingly implies a greater elevation and enlargement of view than to _look up_ to it. The present Lord Chancellor took upon him to declare in open court that he would not go across the street to hear Madame Catalani sing. What did this prove? His want of an ear for music, not his capacity for any thing higher: So far as it went, it only showed him to be inferior to those thousands of persons who go with eager expectation to hear her, and come away with astonishment and rapture. A man might as well tell you he is deaf, and expect you to look at him with more respect. The want of any external sense or organ is an acknowledged defect and infirmity: the want of an internal sense or faculty is equally so, though our self-love contrives to give a different turn to it. We mortify others by _throwing cold water_ on that in which they have an advantage over us, or stagger their opinion of an excellence which is not of self-evident or absolute utility, and lessen its supposed value, by limiting the universality of a taste for it. Lord Eldon’s protest on this occasion was the more extraordinary, as he is not only a good-natured but a successful man. These little spiteful allusions are most apt to proceed from disappointed vanity, and an apprehension that justice is not done to ourselves. By being at the top of a profession, we have leisure to look beyond it. Those who really excel and are allowed to excel in any thing have no excuse for trying to gain a reputation by undermining the pretensions of others; they stand on their own ground; and do not need the aid of invidious comparisons. Besides, the consciousness of excellence produces a fondness for, a faith in it. I should half suspect that any one could not be a great lawyer, who denied that Madame Catalani was a great singer. The Chancellor must dislike her decisive tone, the rapidity of her movements! The late Chancellor (Erskine) was a man of (at least) a different stamp. In the exuberance and buoyancy of his animal spirits, he scattered the graces and ornaments of life over the dust and cobwebs of the law. What is there that is now left of him—what is there to redeem his foibles, or to recal the flush of early enthusiasm in his favour, or kindle one spark of sympathy in the breast, but his romantic admiration of Mrs. Siddons? There are those who, if you praise _Walton’s Complete Angler_, sneer at it as a childish or old-womanish performance: some laugh at the amusement of fishing as silly, others carp at it as cruel; and Dr. Johnson said that ‘a fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end, and a fool at the other.’ I would rather take the word of one who had stood for days, up to his knees in water, and in the coldest weather, intent on this employ, who returned to it again with unabated relish, and who spent his whole life in the same manner without being weary of it at last. There is something in this more than Dr. Johnson’s definition accounts for. A _fool_ takes no interest in any thing; or if he does, it is better to be a fool, than a wise man, whose only pleasure is to disparage the pursuits and occupations of others, and out of ignorance or prejudice to condemn them, merely because they are not _his_.

Whatever interests, is interesting. I know of no way of estimating the real value of objects in all their bearings and consequences, but I can tell at once their intellectual value by the degree of passion or sentiment the very idea and mention of them excites in the mind. To judge of things by reason or the calculations of positive utility is a slow, cold, uncertain, and barren process—their power of appealing to and affecting the imagination as subjects of thought and feeling is best measured by the habitual impression they leave upon the mind, and it is with this only we have to do in expressing our delight or admiration of them, or in setting a just mental value upon them. They ought to excite all the emotion which they do excite; for this is the instinctive and unerring result of the constant experience we have had of their power of affecting us, and of the associations that cling unconsciously to them. Fancy, feeling may be very inadequate tests of truth; but truth itself operates chiefly on the human mind through them. It is in vain to tell me that what excites the heart-felt sigh of youth, the tears of delight in age, and fills up the busy interval between with pleasing and lofty thoughts, is frivolous, or a waste of time, or of no use. You only by that give me a mean opinion of your ideas of utility. The labour of years, the triumph of aspiring genius and consummate skill, is not to be put down by a cynical frown, by a supercilious smile, by an ignorant sarcasm. Things barely of use are subjects of professional skill and scientific inquiry: they must also be beautiful and pleasing to attract common attention, and be naturally and universally interesting. A pair of shoes is good to wear: a pair of sandals is a more picturesque object; and a statue or a poem are certainly good to think and talk about, which are part of the business of life. To think and speak of them with contempt is therefore a wilful and studied solecism. Pictures are good things to go and see. This is what people do; they do not expect to eat or make a dinner of them; but we sometimes want to fill up the time before dinner. The progress of civilisation and refinement is from instrumental to final causes; from supplying the wants of the body to providing luxuries for the mind. To stop at the _mechanical_, and refuse to proceed to the _fine arts_, or churlishly to reject all ornamental studies and elegant accomplishments as mean and trivial, because they only afford employment to the imagination, create food for thought, furnish the mind, sustain the soul in health and enjoyment, is a rude and barbarous theory—

‘Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas.’

Before we absolutely condemn any thing, we ought to be able to show something better, not merely in itself, but in the same class. To know the best in each class infers a higher degree of taste; to reject the class is only a negation of taste; for different classes do not interfere with one another, nor can any one’s _ipse dixit_ be taken on so wide a question as abstract excellence. Nothing is truly and altogether despicable that excites angry contempt or warm opposition, since this always implies that some one else is of a different opinion, and takes an equal interest in it.

When I speak of what is interesting, however, I mean not only to a particular profession, but in general to others. Indeed, it is the very popularity and obvious interest attached to certain studies and pursuits, that excites the envy and hostile regard of graver and more recondite professions. Man is perhaps not naturally an egotist, or at least he is satisfied with his own particular line of excellence and the value that he supposes inseparable from it, till he comes into the world and finds it of so little account in the eyes of the vulgar; and he then turns round and vents his chagrin and disappointment on those more attractive, but (as he conceives) superficial studies, which cost less labour and patience to understand them, and are of so much less use to society. The injustice done to ourselves makes us unjust to others. The man of science and the hard student (from this cause, as well as from a certain unbending hardness of mind) come at last to regard whatever is generally pleasing and striking as worthless and light, and to proportion their contempt to the admiration of others; while the artist, the poet, and the votary of pleasure and popularity treat the more solid and useful branches of human knowledge as disagreeable and dull. This is often carried to too great a length. It is enough that ‘wisdom is justified of her children:’ the philosopher ought to smile, instead of being angry at the folly of mankind (if such it is), and those who find both pleasure and profit in adorning and polishing the airy ‘capitals’ of science and of art, ought not to grudge those who toil under-ground at the foundation, the praise that is due to their patience and self-denial. There is a variety of tastes and capacities that requires all the variety of men’s talents to administer to it. The less excellent must be provided for as well as the more excellent. Those who are only capable of amusement ought to be amused. If all men were forced to be great philosophers and lasting benefactors of their species, how few of us could ever do any thing at all! But nature acts more impartially, though not improvidently. Wherever she bestows a _turn_ for any thing on the individual, she implants a corresponding taste for it in others. We have only to ‘throw our bread upon the waters, and after many days we shall find it again.’ Let us do our best, and we need not be ashamed of the smallness of our talent, or afraid of the calumnies and contempt of envious maligners. When Goldsmith was talking one day to Sir Joshua of writing a fable in which little fishes were to be introduced, Dr. Johnson rolled about uneasily in his seat and began to laugh, on which Goldsmith said rather angrily—‘Why do you laugh? If you were to write a fable for little fishes, you would make them speak like great whales!’ The reproof was just. Johnson was in truth conscious of Goldsmith’s superior inventiveness, and of the lighter graces of his pen, but he wished to reduce every thing to his own pompous and oracular style. There are not only _books for children_, but books for all ages and for both sexes. After we grow up to years of discretion, we do not all become equally wise at once. Our own tastes change: the tastes of other individuals are still more different. It was said the other day, that ‘Thomson’s Seasons would be read while there was a boarding-school girl in the world.’ If a thousand volumes were written against _Hervey’s Meditations_, the Meditations would be read when the criticisms were forgotten. To the illiterate and vain, affectation and verbiage will always pass for fine writing, while the world stands. No woman ever liked Burke, or disliked Goldsmith. It is idle to set up an universal standard. There is a large class who, in spite of themselves, prefer Westall or Angelica Kauffman to Raphael; nor is it fit they should do otherwise. We may come to something like a fixed and exclusive standard of taste, if we confine ourselves to what will please the best judges, meaning thereby persons of the most refined and cultivated minds, and by persons of the most refined and cultivated minds, generally meaning _ourselves_![19]

To return to the original question. I can conceive of nothing so little or ridiculous as pride. It is a mixture of insensibility and ill-nature, in which it is hard to say which has the largest share. If a man knows or excels in, or has ever studied any two things, I will venture to affirm he will be proud of neither. It is perhaps excusable for a person who is ignorant of all but one thing, to think _that_ the sole excellence, and to be full of himself as the possessor. The way to cure him of this folly is to give him something else to be proud of. Vanity is a building that falls to the ground as you widen its foundation, or strengthen the props that should support it. The greater a man is, the less he necessarily thinks of himself, for his knowledge enlarges with his attainments. In himself he feels that he is nothing, a point, a speck in the universe, except as his mind reflects that universe, and as he enters into the infinite variety of truth, beauty, and power contained in it. Let any one be brought up among books, and taught to think words the only things, and he may conceive highly of himself from the proficiency he has made in language and in letters. Let him then be compelled to attempt some other pursuit—painting, for instance—and be made to feel the difficulties, the refinements of which it is capable, and the number of things of which he was utterly ignorant before, and there will be an end of his pedantry and his pride together. Nothing but the want of comprehension of view or generosity of spirit can make any one fix on his own particular acquirement as the limit of all excellence. No one is (generally speaking) great in more than one thing—if he extends his pursuits, he dissipates his strength—yet in that one thing how small is the interval between him and the next in merit and reputation to himself! But he thinks nothing of, or scorns or loathes the name of his rival, so that all that the other possesses in common goes for nothing, and the fraction of a difference between them constitutes (in his opinion) the sum and substance of all that is excellent in the universe! Let a man be wise, and then let us ask, will his wisdom make him proud? Let him excel all others in the graces of the mind, has he also those of the body? He has the advantage of fortune, but has he also that of birth, or if he has both, has he health, strength, beauty in a supreme degree? Or have not others the same, or does he think all these nothing because he does not possess them? The proud man fancies that there is no one worth regarding but himself: he might as well fancy there is no other being but himself. The one is not a greater stretch of madness than the other. To make pride justifiable, there ought to be but one proud man in the world, for if any one individual has a right to be so, nobody else has. So far from thinking ourselves superior to all the rest of the species, we cannot be sure that we are above the meanest and most despised individual of it: for he may have some virtue, some excellence, some source of happiness or usefulness within himself, which may redeem all other disadvantages: or even if he is without any such hidden worth, this is not a subject of exultation, but of regret, to any one tinctured with the smallest humanity, and he who is totally devoid of the latter, cannot have much reason to be proud of any thing else. Arkwright, who invented the spinning-jenny, for many years kept a paltry barber’s shop in a provincial town: yet at that time that wonderful machinery was working in his brain, which has added more to the wealth and resources of this country than all the pride of ancestry or insolence of upstart nobility for the last hundred years. We should be cautious whom we despise. If we do not know them, we can have no right to pronounce a hasty sentence: if we do, they may espy some few defects in us. _No man is a hero to his valet-de-chambre._ What is it then that makes the difference! The dress and pride. But he is the most of a hero who is least distinguished by the one, and most free from the other. If we enter into conversation upon equal terms with the lowest of the people, unrestrained by circumstance, unawed by interest, we shall find in ourselves but little superiority over them. If we know what they do not, they know what we do not. In general, those who do things for others, know more about them than those for whom they are done. A groom knows more about horses than his master. He rides them too: but the one rides behind, the other before! Hence the number of forms and ceremonies that have been invented to keep the magic circle of fancied self-importance inviolate. The late King sought but one interview with Dr. Johnson: his present Majesty is never tired of the company of Mr. Croker.

The collision of truth or genius naturally gives a shock to the pride of exalted rank: the great and mighty usually seek out the dregs of mankind, buffoons and flatterers, for their pampered self-love to repose on. Pride soon tires of every thing but its shadow, servility: but how poor a triumph is that which exists only by excluding all rivalry, however remote. He who invites competition (the only test of merit), who challenges fair comparisons, and weighs different claims, is alone possessed of manly ambition; but will not long continue vain or proud. Pride is ‘a cell of ignorance; travelling a-bed.’ If we look at all out of ourselves, we must see how far short we are of what we would be thought. The man of genius is poor;[20] the rich man is not a lord: the lord wants to be a king: the king is uneasy to be a tyrant or a God. Yet he alone, who could claim this last character upon earth, gave his life a ransom for others! The dwarf in the romance, who saw the shadows of the fairest and the mightiest among the sons of men pass before him, that he might assume the shape he liked best, had only his choice of wealth, or beauty, or valour, or power. But could he have clutched them all, and melted them into one essence of pride, the triumph would not have been lasting. Could vanity take all pomp and power to itself, could it, like the rainbow, span the earth, and seem to prop the heavens, after all it would be but the wonder of the ignorant, the pageant of a moment. The fool who dreams that he is great should first forget that he is a man, and before he thinks of being proud, should pray to be mad!—The only great man in modern times, that is, the only man who rose in deeds and fame to the level of antiquity, who might turn his gaze upon himself, and wonder at his height, for on him all eyes were fixed as his majestic stature towered above thrones and monuments of renown, died the other day in exile, and in lingering agony; and we still see fellows strutting about the streets, and fancying they are something!

Personal vanity is incompatible with the great and the _ideal_. He who has not seen, or thought, or read of something finer than himself, has seen, or read, or thought little; and he who has, will not be always looking in the glass of his own vanity. Hence poets, artists, and men of genius in general, are seldom coxcombs, but often slovens; for they find something out of themselves better worth studying than their own persons. They have an imaginary standard in their minds, with which ordinary features (even their own) will not bear a comparison, and they turn their thoughts another way. If a man had a face like one of Raphael’s or Titian’s heads, he might be proud of it, but not else; and, even then, he would be stared at as a _non-descript_ by ‘the universal English nation.’ Few persons who have seen the Antinous or the Theseus will be much charmed with their own beauty or symmetry; nor will those who understand the _costume_ of the antique, or Vandyke’s dresses, spend much time in decking themselves out in all the deformity of the prevailing fashion. A coxcomb is his own lay-figure, for want of any better models to employ his time and imagination upon.

There is an inverted sort of pride, the reverse of that egotism that has been above described, and which, because it cannot be every thing, is dissatisfied with every thing. A person who is liable to this infirmity, ‘thinks nothing done, while any thing remains to be done.’ The sanguine egotist prides himself on what he can do or possesses, the morbid egotist despises himself for what he wants, and is ever going out of his way to attempt hopeless and impossible tasks. The effect in either case is not at all owing to reason, but to temperament. The one is as easily depressed by what mortifies his latent ambition, as the other is elated by what flatters his immediate vanity. There are persons whom no success, no advantages, no applause can satisfy, for they dwell only on failure and defeat. They constantly ‘forget the things that are behind, and press forward to the things that are before.’ The greatest and most decided acquisitions would not indemnify them for the smallest deficiency. They go beyond the old motto—_Aut Cæsar, aut nihil_—they not only want to be at the head of whatever they undertake, but if they succeed in that, they immediately want to be at the head of something else, no matter how gross or trivial. The charm that rivets their affections is not the importance or reputation annexed to the new pursuit, but its novelty or difficulty. That must be a wonderful accomplishment indeed, which baffles their skill—nothing is with them of any value but as it gives scope to their restless activity of mind, their craving after an uneasy and importunate state of excitement. To them the pursuit is every thing, the possession nothing. I have known persons of this stamp, who, with every reason to be satisfied with their success in life, and with the opinion entertained of them by others, despised themselves because they could not do something which they were not bound to do, and which, if they could have done it, would not have added one jot to their respectability, either in their own eyes or those of any one else, the very insignificance of the attainment irritating their impatience, for it is the humour of such dispositions to argue, ‘If they cannot succeed in what is trifling and contemptible, how should they succeed in any thing else?’ If they could make the circuit of the arts and sciences, and master them all, they would take to some mechanical exercise, and if they failed, be as discontented as ever. All that they can do vanishes out of sight the moment it is within their grasp, and ‘nothing is but what is not.’ A poet of this description is ambitious of the thews and muscles of a prize fighter, and thinks himself nothing without them. A prose-writer would be a fine tennis-player, and is thrown into despair because he is not one, without considering that it requires a whole life devoted to the game to excel in it; and that, even if he could dispense with this apprenticeship, he would still be just as much bound to excel in rope-dancing, or horsemanship, or playing at cup and ball like the Indian jugglers, all which is impossible. This feeling is a strange mixture of modesty and pride. We think nothing of what we are, because we cannot be every thing with a wish. Goldsmith was even jealous of beauty in the other sex, and the same character is attributed to Wharton by Pope:

‘Though listening senates hung on all he spoke,
The club must hail him master of the joke.’

Players are for going into the church—officers in the army turn players. For myself, do what I might, I should think myself a poor creature unless I could beat a boy of ten years old at chuck-farthing, or an elderly gentlewoman at piquet!

The extreme of fastidious discontent and repining is as bad as that of over-weening presumption. We ought to be satisfied if we have succeeded in any one thing, or with having done our best. Any thing more is for health and amusement, and should be resorted to as a source of pleasure, not of fretful impatience, and endless pity, self-imposed mortification. Perhaps the jealous, uneasy temperament is most favourable to continued exertion and improvement, if it does not lead us to fritter away attention on too many pursuits. By looking out of ourselves, we gain knowledge: by being little satisfied with what we have done, we are less apt to sink into indolence and security. To conclude with a piece of egotism: I never begin one of these _Essays_ with a consciousness of having written a line before; and having got to the end of the volume, hope never to look into it again.

ESSAY XVI
HOT AND COLD

‘——Hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce,
Strive here for mastery.’— MILTON.

‘The Protestants are much cleaner than the Catholics,’ said a shopkeeper of Vevey to me. ‘They are so,’ I replied, ‘but why should they?’ A prejudice appeared to him a matter-of-fact, and he did not think it necessary to assign reasons for a matter-of-fact. That is not my way. He had not bottomed his proposition on proofs, nor rightly defined it.