receiving the judgment of others respecting persons; and whenever I
have done so I have bitterly repented of it.”
35.
H
e says, “I cannot worship the abstraction of Virtue. She only charms
me when she ad
226
dresses 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.
“I
n 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
227
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.
T
his 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.”
228
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.
“B
y 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
229
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?
230
LORD BACON.
(1849.)
40.
“I
t 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.
H
ere is an excellent passage—a severe commentary on the unsound,
un-christian, unphilosophical distinction between morals and politics
in government:
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—
“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.
“N
ow (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.
“G
enerally 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.
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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.
T
he 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 miscon
233
ceive 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.
“L
et 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.
A
propos 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.”
234
47.
“I
t 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.
“A
n 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
235
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.
H
e 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
236
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.
H
e 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.
“T
o 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
237
person.” Vile distinction! an excuse to himself for his dedication to the
King, and his flattery of Carr and Villiers.
52.
O
ur 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.
“I
f 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
238
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!
239
54.
I
t 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.
Y
et 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.
H
e 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
240
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.
C
hateaubriand tells us that when his mother and sisters urged him to
marry, he resisted strongly—he
241
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.
“L
e cynisme des mœurs 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.”
242
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.
C
hateaubriand 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.
“U
ne 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.
M
adame de Coeslin (whom he describes as an impersonation of
aristocratic morgue and all
243
the pretension and prejudices of the ancien régime), “lisant dans un
journal la mort de plusieurs rois, elle ôta ses lunettes et dit en se
mouchant, ‘Il y a donc une épizootie sur ces bêtes à couronne!”
I once counted among my friends an elderly lady of high rank, who
had spent the whole of a long life in intimacy with royal and princely
personages. In three different courts she had filled offices of trust and
offices of dignity. In referring to her experience she never either
moralised or generalised; but her scorn of “ces bêtes à couronne,”
was habitually expressed with just such a cool epigrammatic
bluntness as that of Madame de Coeslin.
63.
“L
’aristocratie a trois âges successifs; l’âge des supériorités, l’âge des
priviléges, l’âge des vanités; sortie du premier, elle dégénère dans le
second et s’éteint dans le dernier.”
In Germany they are still in the first epoch. In England we seem to
have arrived at the second. In France they are verging on the third.
64.
C
hateaubriand says of himself:—
“Dans le premier moment d’une offense je la sens à peine; mais elle
se grave dans ma mémoire; son souvenir au lieu de décroître,
s’augmente avec le
244
temps. Il dort dans mon cœur des mois, des années entières, puis il
se réveille à la moindre circonstance avec une force nouvelle, et ma
blessure devient plus vive que le prémier jour: mais si je ne pardonne
point à mes ennemis je ne leur fais aucun mal; je suis rancunier et ne
suis point vindicatif.”
A very nice and true distinction in point of feeling and character, yet
hardly to be expressed in English. We always attach the idea of
malign