The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the
Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he
gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual,
political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that
wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be
named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right
or working wrong.
In the Body, for example, as all doctors are agreed, the first
condition of complete health is, that each organ perform its function
unconsciously, unheeded; let but any organ announce its separate
existence, were it even boastfully, and for pleasure, not for pain,
then already has one of those unfortunate "false centres of
sensibility" established itself, already is derangement there. The
perfection of bodily wellbeing is, that the collective bodily
activities seem one; and be manifested, moreover, not in themselves,
but in the action they accomplish. If a Dr. Kitchiner boast that his
system is in high order, Dietetic Philosophy may indeed take credit;
but the true Peptician was that Countryman who answered that, "for his
part, he had no system." In fact, unity, agreement is always silent,
or soft-voiced; it is only discord that loudly proclaims itself. So
long as the several elements of Life, all fitly adjusted, can pour
forth their movement like harmonious tuned strings, it is a melody and
unison; Life, from its mysterious fountains, flows out as in celestial
music and diapason,—which also, like that other music of the spheres,
even because it is perennial and complete, without interruption and
without imperfection, might be fabled to escape the ear. Thus too, in
some languages, is the state of health well denoted by a term
expressing unity; when we feel ourselves as we wish to be, we say that
we are whole.
Few mortals, it is to be feared, are permanently blessed with that
felicity of "having no system;" nevertheless, most of us, looking back
on young years, may remember seasons of a light, aerial translucency
and elasticity and perfect freedom; the body had not yet become the
prison-house of the soul, but was its vehicle and implement, like a
creature of the thought, and altogether pliant to its bidding. We knew
not that we had limbs, we only lifted, hurled and leapt: through eye
and ear, and all avenues of sense, came clear unimpeded tidings from
without, and from within issued clear victorious force; we stood as in
the centre of Nature, giving and receiving, in harmony with it all;
unlike Virgil's Husbandmen, "too happy because we did not know our
blessedness." In those days, health and sickness were foreign
traditions that did not concern us; our whole being was as yet One,
the whole man like an incorporated Will. Such, were Rest or
ever-successful Labour the human lot, might our life continue to be: a
pure, perpetual, unregarded music; a beam of perfect white light,
rendering all things visible, but itself unseen, even because it was
of that perfect whiteness, and no irregular obstruction had yet broken
it into colours. The beginning of Inquiry is Disease: all Science, if
we consider well, as it must have originated in the feeling of
something being wrong, so it is and continues to be but Division,
Dismemberment, and partial healing of the wrong. Thus, as was of old
written, the Tree of Knowledge springs from a root of evil, and bears
fruits of good and evil. Had Adam remained in Paradise, there had been
no Anatomy and no Metaphysics.
But, alas, as the Philosopher declares, "Life itself is a disease; a
working incited by suffering;" action from passion! The memory of that
first state of Freedom and paradisaic Unconsciousness has faded away
into an ideal poetic dream. We stand here too conscious of many
things: with Knowledge, the symptom of Derangement, we must even do
our best to restore a little Order. Life is, in few instances, and at
rare intervals, the diapason of a heavenly melody; oftenest the fierce
jar of disruptions and convulsions, which, do what we will, there is
no disregarding. Nevertheless, such is still the wish of Nature on our
behalf; in all vital action, her manifest purpose and effort is, that
we should be unconscious of it, and, like the peptic Countryman, never
know that we "have a system." For indeed vital action everywhere is
emphatically a means, not an end; Life is not given us for the mere
sake of Living, but always with an ulterior external Aim: neither is
it on the process, on the means, but rather on the result, that
Nature, in any of her doings, is wont to entrust us with insight and
volition. Boundless as is the domain of man, it is but a small
fractional proportion of it that he rules with Consciousness and by
Forethought: what he can contrive, nay what he can altogether know and
comprehend, is essentially the mechanical, small; the great is ever,
in one sense or other, the vital; it is essentially the mysterious,
and only the surface of it can be understood. But Nature, it might
seem, strives, like a kind mother, to hide from us even this, that she
is a mystery: she will have us rest on her beautiful and awful bosom
as if it were our secure home; on the bottomless boundless Deep,
whereon all human things fearfully and wonderfully swim, she will have
us walk and build, as if the film which supported us there (which any
scratch of a bare bodkin will rend asunder, any sputter of a
pistol-shot instantaneously burn up) were no film, but a solid
rock-foundation. Forever in the neighbourhood of an inevitable Death,
man can forget that he is born to die; of his Life, which, strictly
meditated, contains in it an Immensity and an Eternity, he can
conceive lightly, as of a simple implement wherewith to do day-labour
and earn wages. So cunningly does Nature, the mother of all highest
Art, which only apes her from afar, body forth the Finite from the
Infinite; and guide man safe on his wondrous path, not more by
endowing him with vision, than, at the right place, with blindness!
Under all her works, chiefly under her noblest work, Life, lies a
basis of Darkness, which she benignantly conceals; in Life too, the
roots and inward circulations which stretch down fearfully to the
regions of Death and Night, shall not hint of their existence, and
only the fair stem with its leaves and flowers, shone on by the fair
sun, shall disclose itself, and joyfully grow.
However, without venturing into the abstruse, or too eagerly asking
Why and How, in things where our answer must needs prove, in great
part, an echo of the question, let us be content to remark farther, in
the merely historical way, how that Aphorism of the bodily Physician
holds good in quite other departments. Of the Soul, with her
activities, we shall find it no less true than of the Body: nay, cry
the Spiritualists, is not that very division of the unity, Man, into a
dualism of Soul and Body, itself the symptom of disease; as, perhaps,
your frightful theory of Materialism, of his being but a Body, and
therefore, at least, once more a unity, may be the paroxysm which was
critical, and the beginning of cure! But omitting this, we observe,
with confidence enough, that the truly strong mind, view it as
Intellect, as Morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind
acquainted with its strength; that here as before the sign of health
is Unconsciousness. In our inward, as in our outward world, what is
mechanical lies open to us: not what is dynamical and has vitality. Of
our Thinking, we might say, it is but the mere upper surface that we
shape into articulate Thoughts;—underneath the region of argument and
conscious discourse, lies the region of meditation; here, in its quiet
mysterious depths, dwells what vital force is in us; here, if aught is
to be created, and not merely manufactured and communicated, must the
work go on. Manufacture is intelligible, but trivial; Creation is
great, and cannot be understood. Thus if the Debater and Demonstrator,
whom we may rank as the lowest of true thinkers, knows what he has
done, and how he did it, the Artist, whom we rank as the highest,
knows not; must speak of Inspiration, and in one or the other dialect,
call his work the gift of a divinity.
But on the whole, "genius is ever a secret to itself;" of this old
truth we have, on all sides, daily evidence. The Shakspeare takes no
airs for writing Hamlet and the Tempest, understands not that it
is anything surprising: Milton, again, is more conscious of his
faculty, which accordingly is an inferior one. On the other hand, what
cackling and strutting must we not often hear and see, when, in some
shape of academical prolusion, maiden speech, review article, this or
the other well-fledged goose has produced its goose-egg, of quite
measurable value, were it the pink of its whole kind; and wonders why
all mortals do not wonder!
Foolish enough, too, was the College Tutor's surprise at Walter
Shandy: how, though unread in Aristotle, he could nevertheless argue;
and not knowing the name of any dialectic tool, handled them all to
perfection. Is it the skilfullest anatomist that cuts the best figure
at Sadler's Wells? Or does the boxer hit better for knowing that he
has a flexor longus and a flexor brevis? But indeed, as in the
higher case of the Poet, so here in that of the Speaker and Inquirer,
the true force is an unconscious one. The healthy Understanding, we
should say, is not the Logical, argumentative, but the Intuitive; for
the end of Understanding is not to prove and find reasons, but to know
and believe. Of logic, and its limits, and uses and abuses, there were
much to be said and examined; one fact, however, which chiefly
concerns us here, has long been familiar: that the man of logic and
the man of insight; the Reasoner and the Discoverer, or even Knower,
are quite separable,—indeed, for most part, quite separate
characters. In practical matters, for example, has it not become
almost proverbial that the man of logic cannot prosper? This is he
whom business-people call Systematic and Theoriser and Word-monger;
his vital intellectual force lies dormant or extinct, his whole
force is mechanical, conscious: of such a one it is foreseen that,
when once confronted with the infinite complexities of the real world,
his little compact theorem of the world will be found wanting; that
unless he can throw it overboard, and become a new creature, he will
necessarily founder. Nay, in mere Speculation itself, the most
ineffectual of all characters, generally speaking, is your dialectic
man-at-arms; were he armed cap-a-pie in syllogistic mail of proof, and
perfect master of logic-fence, how little does it avail him! Consider
the old Schoolmen, and their pilgrimage towards Truth: the
faithfullest endeavour, incessant unwearied motion, often great
natural vigour; only no progress: nothing but antic feats of one limb
poised against the other; there they balanced, somersetted and made
postures; at best gyrated swiftly, with some pleasure, like Spinning
Dervishes, and ended where they began. So is it, so will it always be,
with all System-makers and builders of logical card-castles; of which
class a certain remnant must, in every age, as they do in our own,
survive and build. Logic is good, but it is not the best. The
Irrefragable Doctor, with his chains of induction, his corollaries,
dilemmas and other cunning logical diagrams and apparatus, will cast
you a beautiful horoscope, and speak reasonable things; nevertheless
your stolen jewel, which you wanted him to find you, is not
forthcoming. Often by some winged word, winged as the thunderbolt is,
of a Luther, a Napoleon, a Goethe, shall we see the difficulty split
asunder, and its secret laid bare; while the Irrefragable, with all
his logical tools, hews at it, and hovers round it, and finds it on
all hands too hard for him.
Again, in the difference between Oratory and Rhetoric, as indeed
everywhere in that superiority of what is called the Natural over the
Artificial, we find a similar illustration. The Orator persuades and
carries all with him, he knows not how; the Rhetorician can prove that
he ought to have persuaded and carried all with him: the one is in a
state of healthy unconsciousness, as if he "had no system;" the other,
in virtue of regimen and dietetic punctuality, feels at best that "his
system is in high order." So stands it, in short, with all the forms
of Intellect, whether as directed to the finding of truth, or to the
fit imparting thereof: to Poetry, to Eloquence, to depth of Insight,
which is the basis of both these; always the characteristic of right
performance is a certain spontaneity, an unconsciousness; "the healthy
know not of their health, but only the sick." So that the old precept
of the critic, as crabbed as it looked to his ambitious disciple,
might contain in it a most fundamental truth, applicable to us all,
and in much else than Literature: "Whenever you have written any
sentence that looks particularly excellent, be sure to blot it out."
In like manner, under milder phraseology, and with a meaning purposely
much wider, a living Thinker has taught us: "Of the Wrong we are
always conscious, of the Right never."
But if such is the law with regard to Speculation and the Intellectual
power of man, much more is it with regard to Conduct, and the power,
manifested chiefly therein, which we name Moral. "Let not thy left
hand know what thy right hand doeth:" whisper not to thy own heart,
How worthy is this action; for then it is already becoming worthless.
The good man is he who works continually in welldoing; to whom
welldoing is as his natural existence, awakening no astonishment,
requiring no commentary; but there, like a thing of course, and as if
it could not but be so. Self-contemplation, on the other hand, is
infallibly the symptom of disease, be it or be it not the sign of
cure. An unhealthy Virtue is one that consumes itself to leanness in
repenting and anxiety; or, still worse, that inflates itself into
dropsical boastfulness and vain-glory: either way, there is a
self-seeking; an unprofitable looking behind us to measure the way we
have made: whereas the sole concern is to walk continually forward,
and make more way. If in any sphere of man's life, then in the Moral
sphere, as the inmost and most vital of all, it is good that there be
wholeness; that there be unconsciousness, which is the evidence of
this. Let the free, reasonable Will, which dwells in us, as in our
Holy of Holies, be indeed free, and obeyed like a Divinity, as is its
right and its effort: the perfect obedience will be the silent one.
Such perhaps were the sense of that maxim, enunciating, as is usual,
but the half of a truth: To say that we have a clear conscience, is to
utter a solecism; had we never sinned, we should have had no
conscience. Were defeat unknown, neither would victory be celebrated
by songs of triumph.
This, true enough, is an ideal, impossible state of being; yet ever
the goal towards which our actual state of being strives; which it is
the more perfect the nearer it can approach. Nor, in our actual world,
where Labour must often prove _in_effectual, and thus in all senses
Light alternate with Darkness, and the nature of an ideal Morality be
much modified, is the case, thus far, materially different. It is a
fact which escapes no one, that, generally speaking, whoso is
acquainted with his worth has but a little stock to cultivate
acquaintance with. Above all, the public acknowledgment of such
acquaintance, indicating that it has reached quite an intimate
footing, bodes ill. Already, to the popular judgment, he who talks
much about Virtue in the abstract, begins to be suspect; it is
shrewdly guessed that where there is a great preaching, there will be
little almsgiving. Or again, on a wider scale, we can remark that ages
of Heroism are not ages of Moral Philosophy; Virtue, when it can be
philosophised of, has become aware of itself, is sickly and beginning
to decline. A spontaneous habitual all-pervading spirit of Chivalrous
Valour shrinks together, and perks itself up into shrivelled Points of
Honour; humane Courtesy and Nobleness of mind dwindle into punctilious
Politeness, "avoiding meats;" "paying tithe of mint and anise,
neglecting the weightier matters of the law." Goodness, which was a
rule to itself, must now appeal to Precept, and seek strength from
Sanctions; the Freewill no longer reigns unquestioned and by divine
right, but like a mere earthly sovereign, by expediency, by Rewards
and Punishments: or rather, let us say, the Freewill, so far as may
be, has abdicated and withdrawn into the dark, and a spectral
nightmare of a Necessity usurps its throne; for now that mysterious
Self-impulse of the whole man, heaven-inspired, and in all senses
partaking of the Infinite, being captiously questioned in a finite
dialect, and answering, as it needs must, by silence,—is conceived as
non-extant, and only the outward Mechanism of it remains acknowledged:
of Volition, except as the synonym of Desire, we hear nothing; of
"Motives," without any Mover, more than enough.
So too, when the generous Affections have become well-nigh paralytic,
we have the reign of Sentimentality. The greatness, the
profitableness, at any rate the extremely ornamental nature of
high feeling, and the luxury of doing good; charity, love,
self-forgetfulness, devotedness and all manner of godlike
magnanimity,—are everywhere insisted on, and pressingly inculcated in
speech and writing, in prose and verse; Socinian Preachers proclaim
"Benevolence" to all the four winds, and have TRUTH engraved on their
watch-seals: unhappily with little or no effect. Were the limbs in
right walking order, why so much demonstrating of motion? The
barrenest of all mortals is the Sentimentalist. Granting even that he
were sincere, and did not wilfully deceive us, or without first
deceiving himself, what good is in him? Does he not lie there as a
perpetual lesson of despair, and type of bedrid valetudinarian
impotence? His is emphatically a Virtue that has become, through every
fibre, conscious of itself; it is all sick, and feels as if it were
made of glass, and durst not touch or be touched: in the shape of
work, it can do nothing; at the utmost, by incessant nursing and
caudling, keeps itself alive. As the last stage of all, when Virtue,
properly so called, has ceased to be practised, and become extinct,
and a mere remembrance, we have the era of Sophists, descanting of its
existence, proving it, denying it, mechanically "accounting" for
it;—as dissectors and demonstrators cannot operate till once the body
be dead.
Thus is true Moral genius, like true Intellectual, which indeed is but
a lower phasis thereof, "ever a secret to itself." The healthy moral
nature loves Goodness, and without wonder wholly lives in it: the
unhealthy makes love to it, and would fain get to live in it; or,
finding such courtship fruitless, turns round, and not without
contempt abandons it. These curious relations of the Voluntary and
Conscious to the Involuntary and Unconscious, and the small proportion
which, in all departments of our life, the former bears to the
latter,—might lead us into deep questions of Psychology and
Physiology: such, however, belong not to our present object. Enough,
if the fact itself become apparent, that Nature so meant it with us;
that in this wise we are made. We may now say, that view man's
individual Existence under what aspect we will, under the highest
spiritual, as under the merely animal aspect, everywhere the grand
vital energy, while in its sound state, is an unseen unconscious one;
or, in the words of our old Aphorism, "the healthy know not of their
health, but only the sick."
* * * * *
To understand man, however, we must look beyond the individual man and
his actions or interests, and view him in combination with his
fellows. It is in Society that man first feels what he is; first
becomes what he can be. In Society an altogether new set of spiritual
activities are evolved in him, and the old immeasurably quickened and
strengthened. Society is the genial element wherein his nature first
lives and grows; the solitary man were but a small portion of himself,
and must continue forever folded in, stunted and only half alive.
"Already," says a deep Thinker, with more meaning than will disclose
itself at once, "my opinion, my conviction, gains infinitely in
strength and sureness, the moment a second mind has adopted it." Such,
even in its simplest form, is association; so wondrous the communion
of soul with soul as directed to the mere act of Knowing! In other
higher acts, the wonder is still more manifest; as in that portion of
our being which we name the Moral: for properly, indeed, all communion
is of a moral sort, whereof such intellectual communion (in the act of
knowing) is itself an example. But with regard to Morals strictly so
called, it is in Society, we might almost say, that Morality begins;
here at least it takes an altogether new form, and on every side, as
in living growth, expands itself. The Duties of Man to himself, to
what is Highest in himself, make but the First Table of the Law: to
the First Table is now superadded a Second, with the Duties of Man to
his Neighbour; whereby also the significance of the First now assumes
its true importance. Man has joined himself with man; soul acts and
reacts on soul; a mystic miraculous unfathomable Union establishes
itself; Life, in all its elements, has become intensated, consecrated.
The lightning-spark of Thought, generated, or say rather
heaven-kindled, in the solitary mind, awakens its express likeness in
another mind, in a thousand other minds, and all blaze up together in
combined fire; reverberated from mind to mind, fed also with fresh
fuel in each, it acquires incalculable new light as Thought,
incalculable new heat as converted into Action. By and by, a common
store of Thought can accumulate, and be transmitted as an everlasting
possession: Literature, whether as preserved in the memory of Bards,
in Runes and Hieroglyphs engraved on stone, or in Books of written or
printed paper, comes into existence, and begins to play its wondrous
part. Polities are formed; the weak submitting to the strong; with a
willing loyalty, giving obedience that he may receive guidance: or say
rather, in honour of our nature, the ignorant submitting to the wise;
for so it is in all even the rudest communities, man never yields
himself wholly to brute Force, but always to moral Greatness; thus the
universal title of respect, from the Oriental Sheik, from the
Sachem of the Red Indians, down to our English Sir, implies only
that he whom we mean to honour is our senior. Last, as the crown and
all-supporting keystone of the fabric, Religion arises. The devout
meditation of the isolated man, which flitted through his soul, like a
transient tone of Love and Awe from unknown lands, acquires certainty,
continuance, when it is shared-in by his brother men. "Where two or
three are gathered together" in the name of the Highest, then first
does the Highest, as it is written, "appear among them to bless them;"
then first does an Altar and act of united Worship open a way from
Earth to Heaven; whereon, were it but a simple Jacob's-ladder, the
heavenly Messengers will travel, with glad tidings and unspeakable
gifts for men. Such is Society, the vital articulation of many
individuals into a new collective individual: greatly the most
important of man's attainments on this earth; that in which, and by
virtue of which, all his other attainments and attempts find their
arena, and have their value. Considered well, Society is the standing
wonder of our existence; a true region of the Supernatural; as it
were, a second all-embracing Life, wherein our first individual Life
becomes doubly and trebly alive, and whatever of Infinitude was in us
bodies itself forth, and becomes visible and active.
To figure Society as endowed with life is scarcely a metaphor; but
rather the statement of a fact by such imperfect methods as language
affords. Look at it closely, that mystic Union, Nature's highest work
with man, wherein man's volition plays an indispensable yet so
subordinate a part, and the small Mechanical grows so mysteriously and
indissolubly out of the infinite Dynamical, like Body out of
Spirit,—is truly enough vital, what we can call vital, and bears the
distinguishing character of life. In the same style also, we can say
that Society has its periods of sickness and vigour, of youth,
manhood, decrepitude, dissolution and new-birth; in one or other of
which stages we may, in all times, and all places where men inhabit,
discern it; and do ourselves, in this time and place, whether as
cooperating or as contending, as healthy members or as diseased ones,
to our joy and sorrow, form part of it. The question, What is the
actual condition of Society? has in these days unhappily become
important enough. No one of us is unconcerned in that question; but
for the majority of thinking men a true answer to it, such is the
state of matters, appears almost as the one thing needful. Meanwhile,
as the true answer, that is to say, the complete and fundamental
answer and settlement, often as it has been demanded, is nowhere
forthcoming, and indeed by its nature is impossible, any honest
approximation towards such is not without value. The feeblest light,
or even so much as a more precise recognition of the darkness, which
is the first step to attainment of light, will be welcome.
This once understood, let it not seem idle if we remark that here too
our old Aphorism holds; that again in the Body Politic, as in the
animal body, the sign of right performance is Unconsciousness. Such
indeed is virtually the meaning of that phrase, "artificial state of
society," as contrasted with the natural state, and indicating
something so inferior to it. For, in all vital things, men distinguish
an Artificial and a Natural; founding on some dim perception or
sentiment of the very truth we here insist on: the artificial is the
conscious, mechanical; the natural is the unconscious, dynamical.
Thus, as we have an artificial Poetry, and prize only the natural; so
likewise we have an artificial Morality, an artificial Wisdom, an
artificial Society. The artificial Society is precisely one that knows
its own structure, its own internal functions; not in watching, not in
knowing which, but in working outwardly to the fulfilment of its aim,
does the wellbeing of a Society consist. Every Society, every Polity,
has a spiritual principle; is the embodiment, tentative and more or
less complete, of an Idea: all its tendencies of endeavour,
specialties of custom, its laws, politics and whole procedure (as the
glance of some Montesquieu, across innumerable superficial
entanglements, can partly decipher), are prescribed by an Idea, and
flow naturally from it, as movements from the living source of motion.
This Idea, be it of devotion to a man or class of men, to a creed, to
an institution, or even, as in more ancient times, to a piece of land,
is ever a true Loyalty; has in it something of a religious, paramount,
quite infinite character; it is properly the Soul of the State, its
Life; mysterious as other forms of Life, and like these working
secretly, and in a depth beyond that of consciousness.
Accordingly, it is not in the vigorous ages of a Roman Republic that
Treatises of the Commonwealth are written: while the Decii are rushing
with devoted bodies on the enemies of Rome, what need of preaching
Patriotism? The virtue of Patriotism has already sunk from its
pristine all-transcendant condition, before it has received a name. So
long as the Commonwealth continues rightly athletic, it cares not to
dabble in anatomy. Why teach obedience to the Sovereign; why so much
as admire it, or separately recognise it, while a divine idea of
Obedience perennially inspires all men? Loyalty, like Patriotism, of
which it is a form, was not praised till it had begun to decline; the
Preux Chevaliers first became rightly admirable, when "dying for
their king" had ceased to be a habit with chevaliers. For if the
mystic significance of the State, let this be what it may, dwells
vitally in every heart, encircles every life as with a second higher
life, how should it stand self-questioning? It must rush outward, and
express itself by works. Besides, if perfect, it is there as by
necessity, and does not excite inquiry: it is also by nature infinite,
has no limits; therefore can be circumscribed by no conditions and
definitions; cannot be reasoned of; except musically, or in the
language of Poetry, cannot yet so much as be spoken of.
In those days, Society was what we name healthy, sound at heart. Not
indeed without suffering enough; not without perplexities, difficulty
on every side: for such is the appointment of man; his highest and
sole blessedness is, that he toil, and know what to toil at: not in
ease, but in united victorious labour, which is at once evil and the
victory over evil, does his Freedom lie. Nay, often, looking no deeper
than such superficial perplexities of the early Time, historians have
taught us that it was all one mass of contradiction and disease; and
in the antique Republic, or feudal Monarchy, have seen only the
confused chaotic quarry, not the robust labourer, or the stately
edifice he was building of it. If Society, in such ages, had its
difficulty, it had also its strength: if sorrowful masses of rubbish
so encumbered it, the tough sinews to hurl them aside, with
indomitable heart, were not wanting. Society went along without
complaint; did not stop to scrutinise itself, to say, How well I
perform, or, Alas, how ill! Men did not yet feel themselves to be "the
envy of surrounding nations;" and were enviable on that very account.
Society was what we can call whole, in both senses of the word. The
individual man was in himself a whole, or complete union; and could
combine with his fellows as the living member of a greater whole. For
all men, through their life, were animated by one great Idea; thus all
efforts pointed one way, everywhere there was wholeness. Opinion and
Action had not yet become disunited; but the former could still
produce the latter, or attempt to produce it; as the stamp does its
impression while the wax is not hardened. Thought, and the voice of
thought were also a unison; thus, instead of Speculation, we had
Poetry; Literature, in its rude utterance, was as yet a heroic Song,
perhaps too a devotional Anthem. Religion was everywhere; Philosophy
lay hid under it, peacefully included in it. Herein, as in the
life-centre of all, lay the true health and oneness. Only at a later
era must Religion split itself into Philosophies; and thereby, the
vital union of Thought being lost, disunion and mutual collision in
all provinces of Speech and Action more and more prevail. For if the
Poet, or Priest, or by whatever title the inspired thinker may be
named, is the sign of vigour and well-being; so likewise is the
Logician, or uninspired thinker, the sign of disease, probably of
decrepitude and decay. Thus, not to mention other instances, one of
them much nearer hand,—so soon as Prophecy among the Hebrews had
ceased, then did the reign of Argumentation begin; and the ancient
Theocracy, in its Sadducecisms and Phariseeisms, and vain jangling of
sects and doctors, give token that the soul of it had fled, and that
the body itself, by natural dissolution, "with the old forces still
at work, but working in reverse order," was on the road to final
disappearance.
* * * * *
We might pursue this question into innumerable other ramifications;
and everywhere, under new shapes, find the same truth, which we here
so imperfectly enunciate, disclosed; that throughout the whole world
of man, in all manifestations and performances of his nature, outward
and inward, personal and social, the Perfect, the Great is a mystery
to itself, knows not itself; whatsoever does know itself is already
little, and more or less imperfect. Or otherwise, we may say,
Unconsciousness belongs to pure unmixed life; Consciousness to a
diseased mixture and conflict of life and death: Unconsciousness is
the sign of creation; Consciousness, at best, that of manufacture. So
deep, in this existence of ours, is the significance of Mystery. Well
might the Ancients make Silence a god; for it is the element of all
godhood, infinitude, or transcendental greatness; at once the source
and the ocean wherein all such begins and ends. In the same sense too,
have Poets sung "Hymns to the Night;" as if Night were nobler than
Day; as if Day were but a small motley-coloured veil spread
transiently over the infinite bosom of Night, and did but deform and
hide from us its purely transparent, eternal deeps. So likewise have
they spoken and sung as if Silence were the grand epitome and complete
sum-total of all Harmony; and Death, what mortals call Death, properly
the beginning of Life. Under such figures, since except in figures
there is no speaking of the Invisible, have men endeavoured to express
a great Truth;—a Truth, in our Times, as nearly as is perhaps
possible, forgotten by the most; which nevertheless continues forever
true, forever all-important, and will one day, under new figures, be
again brought home to the bosoms of all.
But indeed, in a far lower sense, the rudest mind has still some
intimation of the greatness there is in Mystery. If Silence was made a
god of by the Ancients, he still continues a government-clerk among us
Moderns. To all quacks, moreover, of what sort soever, the effect of
Mystery is well known: here and there some Cagliostro, even in latter
days, turns it to notable account: the blockhead also, who is
ambitious, and has no talent, finds sometimes in "the talent of
silence," a kind of succedaneum. Or again, looking on the opposite
side of the matter, do we not see, in the common understanding of
mankind, a certain distrust, a certain contempt of what is altogether
self-conscious and mechanical? As nothing that is wholly seen through
has other than a trivial character; so anything professing to be
great, and yet wholly to see through itself, is already known to be
false, and a failure. The evil repute your "theoretical men" stand in,
the acknowledged inefficiency of "paper constitutions," and all that
class of objects, are instances of this. Experience often repeated,
and perhaps a certain instinct of something far deeper that lies under
such experiences, has taught men so much. They know beforehand, that
the loud is generally the insignificant, the empty. Whatsoever can
proclaim itself from the house-tops may be fit for the hawker, and for
those multitudes that must needs buy of him; but for any deeper use,
might as well continue unproclaimed. Observe too, how the converse of
the proposition holds; how the insignificant, the empty, is usually
the loud; and, after the manner of a drum, is loud even because of its
emptiness. The uses of some Patent Dinner Calefactor can be bruited
abroad over the whole world in the course of the first winter; those
of the Printing Press are not so well seen into for the first three
centuries: the passing of the Select-Vestries Bill raises more noise
and hopeful expectancy among mankind than did the promulgation of the
Christian Religion. Again, and again, we say, the great, the creative
and enduring is ever a secret to itself; only the small, the barren
and transient is otherwise.
* * * * *
If we now, with a practical medical view, examine, by this same test
of Unconsciousness, the Condition of our own Era, and of man's Life
therein, the diagnosis we arrive at is nowise of a flattering sort.
The state of Society in our days is, of all possible states, the least
an unconscious one: this is specially the Era when all manner of
Inquiries into what was once the unfelt, involuntary sphere of man's
existence, find their place, and, as it were, occupy the whole domain
of thought. What, for example, is all this that we hear, for the last
generation or two, about the Improvement of the Age, the Spirit of the
Age, Destruction of Prejudice, Progress of the Species, and the March
of Intellect, but an unhealthy state of self-sentience, self-survey;
the precursor and prognostic of still worse health? That Intellect do
march, if possible at double-quick time, is very desirable;
nevertheless, why should she turn round at every stride, and cry: See
you what a stride I have taken! Such a marching of Intellect is
distinctly of the spavined kind; what the Jockeys call "all action and
no go." Or at best, if we examine well, it is the marching of that
gouty Patient, whom his Doctors had clapt on a metal floor
artificially heated to the searing point, so that he was obliged to
march, and did march with a vengeance—nowhither. Intellect did not
awaken for the first time yesterday; but has been under way from
Noah's Flood downwards: greatly her best progress, moreover, was in
the old times, when she said nothing about it. In those same "dark
ages," Intellect (metaphorically as well as literally) could invent
glass, which now she has enough ado to grind into spectacles.
Intellect built not only Churches, but a Church, the Church, based
on this firm Earth, yet reaching up, and leading up, as high as
Heaven; and now it is all she can do to keep its doors bolted, that
there be no tearing of the Surplices, no robbery of the Alms-box. She
built a Senate-house likewise, glorious in its kind; and now it costs
her a well-nigh mortal effort to sweep it clear of vermin, and get the
roof made rain-tight.
But the truth is, with Intellect, as with most other things, we are
now passing from that first or boastful stage of Self-sentience into
the second or painful one: out of these often-asseverated declarations
that "our system is in high order," we come now, by natural sequence,
to the melancholy conviction that it is altogether the reverse. Thus,
for instance, in the matter of Government, the period of the
"Invaluable Constitution" must be followed by a Reform Bill; to
laudatory De Lolmes succeed objurgatory Benthams. At any rate, what
Treatises on the Social Contract, on the Elective Franchise, the
Rights of Man, the Rights of Property, Codifications, Institutions,
Constitutions, have we not, for long years, groaned under! Or again,
with a wider survey, consider those Essays on Man, Thoughts on Man,
Inquiries concerning Man; not to mention Evidences of the Christian
Faith, Theories of Poetry, Considerations on the Origin of Evil, which
during the last century have accumulated on us to a frightful extent.
Never since the beginning of Time was there, that we hear or read of,
so intensely self-conscious a Society. Our whole relations to the
Universe and to our fellow man have become an Inquiry, a Doubt;
nothing will go on of its own accord, and do its function quietly; but
all things must be probed into, the whole working of man's world be
anatomically studied. Alas, anatomically studied, that it may be
medically aided! Till at length indeed, we have come to such a pass,
that except in this same medicine, with its artifices and
appliances, few can so much as imagine any strength or hope to remain
for us. The whole Life of Society must now be carried on by drugs:
doctor after doctor appears with his nostrum, of Cooperative
Societies, Universal Suffrage, Cottage-and-Cow systems, Repression of
Population, Vote by Ballot. To such height has the dyspepsia of
Society reached; as indeed the constant grinding internal pain, or
from time to time the mad spasmodic throes, of all Society do
otherwise too mournfully indicate.
Far be it from us to attribute, as some unwise persons do, the disease
itself to this unhappy sensation that there is a disease! The
Encyclopedists did not produce the troubles of France; but the
troubles of France produced the Encyclopedists, and much else. The
Self-consciousness is the symptom merely; nay, it is also the attempt
towards cure. We record the fact, without special censure; not
wondering that Society should feel itself, and in all ways complain of
aches and twinges, for it has suffered enough. Napoleon was but a
Job's-comforter, when he told his wounded Staff-officer, twice
unhorsed by cannon-balls, and with half his limbs blown to pieces:
"Vous vous ecoutez trop!"
On the outward, as it were Physical diseases of Society, it were
beside our purpose to insist here. These are diseases which he who
runs may read; and sorrow over, with or without hope. Wealth has
accumulated itself into masses; and Poverty, also in accumulation
enough, lies impassably separated from it; opposed, uncommunicating,
like forces in positive and negative poles. The gods of this lower
world sit aloft on glittering thrones, less happy than Epicurus's
gods, but as indolent, as impotent; while the boundless living chaos
of Ignorance and Hunger welters terrific, in its dark fury, under
their feet. How much among us might be likened to a whited sepulchre;
outwardly all pomp and strength; but inwardly full of horror and
despair and dead-men's bones! Iron highways, with their wains
firewinged, are uniting all ends of the firm Land; quays and moles,
with their innumerable stately fleets, tame the Ocean into our pliant
bearer of burdens; Labour's thousand arms, of sinew and of metal,
all-conquering everywhere, from the tops of the mountain down to the
depths of the mine and the caverns of the sea, ply unweariedly for the
service of man: yet man remains unserved. He has subdued this Planet,
his habitation and inheritance; yet reaps no profit from the victory.
Sad to look upon: in the highest stage of civilisation, nine-tenths of
mankind must struggle in the lowest battle of savage or even animal
man, the battle against Famine. Countries are rich, prosperous in all
manner of increase, beyond example: but the Men of those countries are
poor, needier than ever of all sustenance outward and inward; of
Belief, of Knowledge, of Money, of Food. The rule, Sic vos non
vobis, never altogether to be got rid of in men's Industry, now
presses with such incubus weight, that Industry must shake it off, or
utterly be strangled under it; and, alas, can as yet but gasp and
rave, and aimlessly struggle, like one in the final deliration. Thus
Change, or the inevitable approach of Change, is manifest everywhere.
In one Country we have seen lava-torrents of fever-frenzy envelop all
things; Government succeed Government, like the phantasms of a dying
brain. In another Country, we can even now see, in maddest
alternation, the Peasant governed by such guidance as this: To labour
earnestly one month in raising wheat, and the next month labour
earnestly in burning it. So that Society, were it not by nature
immortal, and its death ever a new-birth, might appear, as it does in
the eyes of some, to be sick to dissolution, and even now writhing in
its last agony. Sick enough we must admit it to be, with disease
enough, a whole nosology of diseases; wherein he perhaps is happiest
that is not called to prescribe as physician;—wherein, however, one
small piece of policy, that of summoning the Wisest in the
Commonwealth, by the sole method yet known or thought of, to come
together and with their whole soul consult for it, might, but for late
tedious experiences, have seemed unquestionable enough.
But leaving this, let us rather look within, into the Spiritual
condition of Society, and see what aspects and prospects offer
themselves there. For after all, it is there properly that the secret
and origin of the whole is to be sought: the Physical derangements of
Society are but the image and impress of its Spiritual; while the
heart continues sound, all other sickness is superficial, and
temporary. False Action is the fruit of false Speculation; let the
spirit of Society be free and strong, that is to say, let true
Principles inspire the members of Society, then neither can disorders
accumulate in its Practice; each disorder will be promptly, faithfully
inquired into, and remedied as it arises. But alas, with us the
Spiritual condition of Society is no less sickly than the Physical.
Examine man's internal world, in any of its social relations and
performances, here too all seems diseased self-consciousness,
collision and mutually-destructive struggle. Nothing acts from within
outwards in undivided healthy force; everything lies impotent, lamed,
its force turned inwards, and painfully "listens to itself."
To begin with our highest Spiritual function, with Religion, we might
ask, Whither has Religion now fled? Of Churches and their
establishments we here say nothing; nor of the unhappy domains of
Unbelief, and how innumerable men, blinded in their minds, must "live
without God in the world;" but, taking the fairest side of the matter,
we ask, What is the nature of that same Religion, which still lingers
in the hearts of the few who are called, and call themselves,
specially the Religious? Is it a healthy religion, vital, unconscious
of itself; that shines forth spontaneously in doing of the Work, or
even in preaching of the Word? Unhappily, no. Instead of heroic martyr
Conduct, and inspired and soul-inspiring Eloquence, whereby Religion
itself were brought home to our living bosoms, to live and reign
there, we have "Discourses on the Evidences," endeavouring, with
smallest result, to make it probable that such a thing as Religion
exists. The most enthusiastic Evangelicals do not preach a Gospel, but
keep describing how it should and might be preached: to awaken the
sacred fire of faith, as by a sacred contagion, is not their
endeavour; but, at most, to describe how Faith shows and acts, and
scientifically distinguish true Faith from false. Religion, like all
else, is conscious of itself, listens to itself; it becomes less and
less creative, vital; more and more mechanical. Considered as a whole,
the Christian Religion of late ages has been continually dissipating
itself into Metaphysics; and threatens now to disappear, as some
rivers do, in deserts of barren sand.
Of Literature, and its deep-seated, wide-spread maladies, why speak?
Literature is but a branch of Religion, and always participates in its
character: however, in our time, it is the only branch that still
shows any greenness; and, as some think, must one day become the main
stem. Now, apart from the subterranean and tartarean regions of
Literature;—leaving out of view the frightful, scandalous statistics
of Puffing, the mystery of Slander, Falsehood, Hatred and other
convulsion-work of rabid Imbecility, and all that has rendered
Literature on that side a perfect "Babylon the mother of
Abominations," in very deed making the world "drunk" with the wine of
her iniquity;—forgetting all this, let us look only to the regions of
the upper air; to such Literature as can be said to have some attempt
towards truth in it, some tone of music, and if it be not poetical, to
hold of the poetical. Among other characteristics, is not this
manifest enough: that it knows itself? Spontaneous devotedness to the
object, being wholly possessed by the object, what we can call
Inspiration, has well-nigh ceased to appear in Literature. Which
melodious Singer forgets that he is singing melodiously? We have not
the love of greatness, but the love of the love of greatness. Hence
infinite Affectations, Distractions; in every case inevitable Error.
Consider, for one example, this peculiarity of Modern Literature, the
sin that has been named View-hunting. In our elder writers, there are
no paintings of scenery for its own sake; no euphuistic gallantries
with Nature, but a constant heartlove for her, a constant dwelling in
communion with her. View-hunting, with so much else that is of kin to
it, first came decisively into action through the Sorrows of Werter;
which wonderful Performance, indeed, may in many senses be regarded as
the progenitor of all that has since become popular in Literature;
whereof, in so far as concerns spirit and tendency, it still offers
the most instructive image; for nowhere, except in its own country,
above all in the mind of its illustrious Author, has it yet fallen
wholly obsolete. Scarcely ever, till that late epoch, did any
worshipper of Nature become entirely aware that he was worshipping,
much to his own credit; and think of saying to himself: Come, let us
make a description! Intolerable enough: when every puny whipster draws
out his pencil, and insists on painting you a scene; so that the
instant you discern such a thing as "wavy outline," "mirror of the
lake," "stern headland," or the like, in any Book, you must timorously
hasten on; and scarcely the Author of Waverley himself can tempt you
not to skip.
Nay, is not the diseased self-conscious state of Literature disclosed
in this one fact, which lies so near us here, the prevalence of
Reviewing! Sterne's wish for a reader "that would give up the reins of
his imagination into his author's hands, and be pleased he knew not
why, and cared not wherefore," might lead him a long journey now.
Indeed, for our best class of readers, the chief pleasure, a very
stinted one, is this same knowing of the Why; which many a Kames and
Bossu has been, ineffectually enough, endeavouring to teach us: till
at last these also have laid down their trade; and now your Reviewer
is a mere taster; who tastes, and says, by the evidence of such
palate, such tongue, as he has got, It is good, It is bad. Was it thus
that the French carried out certain inferior creatures on their
Algerine Expedition, to taste the wells for them, and try whether they
were poisoned? Far be it from us to disparage our own craft, whereby
we have our living! Only we must note these things: that Reviewing
spreads with strange vigour; that such a man as Byron reckons the
Reviewer and the Poet equal; that at the last Leipzig Fair, there was
advertised a Review of Reviews. By and by it will be found that all
Literature has become one boundless self-devouring Review; and as in
London routs, we have to do nothing, but only to see others do
nothing.—Thus does Literature also, like a sick thing,
superabundantly "listen to itself."
No less is this unhealthy symptom manifest, if we cast a glance on our
Philosophy, on the character of our speculative Thinking. Nay already,
as above hinted, the mere existence and necessity of a Philosophy is
an evil. Man is sent hither not to question, but to work: "the end of
man," it was long ago written, "is an Action, not a Thought." In the
perfect state, all Thought were but the picture and inspiring symbol
of Action; Philosophy, except as Poetry and Religion, would have no
being. And yet how, in this imperfect state, can it be avoided, can it
be dispensed with? Man stands as in the centre of Nature; his fraction
of Time encircled by Eternity, his handbreadth of Space encircled by
Infinitude: how shall he forbear asking himself, What am I; and
Whence; and Whither? How too, except in slight partial hints, in kind
asseverations and assurances, such as a mother quiets her fretfully
inquisitive child with, shall he get answer to such inquiries?
The disease of Metaphysics, accordingly, is a perennial one. In all
ages, those questions of Death and Immortality, Origin of Evil,
Freedom and Necessity, must, under new forms, anew make their
appearance; ever, from time to time, must the attempt to shape for
ourselves some Theorem of the Universe be repeated. And ever
unsuccessfully: for what Theorem of the Infinite can the Finite render
complete? We, the whole species of Mankind, and our whole existence
and history, are but a floating speck in the illimitable ocean of the
All; yet in that ocean; indissoluble portion thereof; partaking of
its infinite tendencies: borne this way and that by its deep-swelling
tides, and grand ocean currents;—of which what faintest chance is
there that we should ever exhaust the significance, ascertain the
goings and comings? A region of Doubt, therefore, hovers forever in
the background; in Action alone can we have certainty. Nay properly
Doubt is the indispensable inexhaustible material whereon Action
works, which Action has to fashion into Certainty and Reality; only on
a canvas of Darkness, such is man's way of being, could the
many-coloured picture of our Life paint itself and shine.
Thus if our eldest system of Metaphysics is as old as the Book of
Genesis, our latest is that of Mr. Thomas Hope, published only within
the current year. It is a chronic malady that of Metaphysics, as we
said, and perpetually recurs on us. At the utmost there is a better
and a worse in it; a stage of convalescence, and a stage of relapse
with new sickness: these forever succeed each other, as is the nature
of all Life-movement here below. The first, or convalescent stage, we
might also name that of Dogmatical or Constructive Metaphysics; when
the mind constructively endeavours to scheme out, and assert for
itself an actual Theorem of the Universe, and therewith for a time
rests satisfied. The second or sick stage might be called that of
Sceptical or Inquisitory Metaphysics; when the mind having widened its
sphere of vision, the existing Theorem of the Universe no longer
answers the phenomena, no longer yields contentment; but must be torn
in pieces, and certainty anew sought for in the endless realms of
denial. All Theologies and sacred Cosmogonies belong, in some measure,
to the first class; in all Pyrrhonism, from Pyrrho down to Hume and
the innumerable disciples of Hume, we have instances enough of the
second. In the former, so far as it affords satisfaction, a temporary
anodyne to doubt, an arena for wholesome action, there may be much
good; indeed in this case, it holds rather of Poetry than of
Metaphysics, might be called Inspiration rather than Speculation. The
latter is Metaphysics proper; a pure, unmixed, though from time to
time a necessary evil.
For truly, if we look into it, there is no more fruitless endeavour
than this same, which the Metaphysician proper toils in: to educe
Conviction out of Negation. How, by merely testing and rejecting what
is not, shall we ever attain knowledge of what is? Metaphysical
Speculation, as it begins in No or Nothingness, so it must needs end
in Nothingness; circulates and must circulate in endless vortices;
creating, swallowing—itself. Our being is made up of Light and
Darkness, the Light resting on the Darkness, and balancing it;
everywhere there is Dualism, Equipoise; a perpetual Contradiction
dwells in us: "where shall I place myself to escape from my own
shadow?" Consider it well, Metaphysics is the attempt of the mind to
rise above the mind; to environ, and shut in, or as we say,
comprehend the mind. Hopeless struggle, for the wisest, as for the
foolishest! What strength of sinew, or athletic skill, will enable the
stoutest athlete to fold his own body in his arms, and, by lifting,
lift up himself? The Irish Saint swam the Channel "carrying his head
in his teeth;" but the feat has never been imitated.
That this is the age of Metaphysics, in the proper, or sceptical
Inquisitory sense; that there was a necessity for its being such an
age, we regard as our indubitable misfortune. From many causes, the
arena of free Activity has long been narrowing, that of sceptical
Inquiry becoming more and more universal, more and more perplexing.
The Thought conducts not to the Deed; but in boundless chaos,
self-devouring, engenders monstrosities, fantasms, fire-breathing
chimeras. Profitable Speculation were this: What is to be done; and
How is it to be done? But with us not so much as the What can be got
sight of. For some generations, all Philosophy has been a painful,
captious, hostile question towards everything in the Heaven above, and
in the Earth beneath: Why art thou there? Till at length it has come
to pass that the worth and authenticity of all things seems dubitable
or deniable: our best effort must be unproductively spent not in
working, but in ascertaining our mere Whereabout, and so much as
whether we are to work at all. Doubt, which, as was said, ever hangs
in the background of our world, has now become our middle-ground and
foreground; whereon, for the time, no fair Life-picture can be
painted, but only the dark air-canvas itself flow round us,
bewildering and benighting.
Nevertheless, doubt as we will, man is actually Here; not to ask
questions, but to do work: in this time, as in all times, it must be
the heaviest evil for him, if his faculty of Action lie dormant, and
only that of sceptical Inquiry exert itself. Accordingly, whoever
looks abroad upon the world, comparing the Past with the Present, may
find that the practical condition of man in these days is one of the
saddest; burdened with miseries which are in a considerable degree
peculiar. In no time was man's life what he calls a happy one; in no
time can it be so. A perpetual dream there has been of Paradises, and
some luxurious Lubberland, where the brooks should run wine, and the
trees bend with ready-baked viands; but it was a dream merely; an
impossible dream. Suffering, contradiction, error, have their quite
perennial, and even indispensable abode in this Earth. Is not labour
the inheritance of man? And what labour for the present is joyous, and
not grievous? Labour, effort, is the very interruption of that ease,
which man foolishly enough fancies to be his happiness; and yet
without labour there were no ease, no rest, so much as conceivable.
Thus Evil, what we call Evil, must ever exist while man exists: Evil,
in the widest sense we can give it, is precisely the dark, disordered
material out of which man's Freewill has to create an edifice of order
and Good. Ever must Pain urge us to Labour; and only in free Effort
can any blessedness be imagined for us.
But if man has, in all ages, had enough to encounter, there has, in
most civilised ages, been an inward force vouchsafed him, whereby the
pressure of things outward might be withstood. Obstruction abounded;
but Faith also was not wanting. It is by Faith that man removes
mountains: while he had Faith, his limbs might be wearied with
toiling, his back galled with bearing; but the heart within him was
peaceable and resolved. In the thickest gloom there burnt a lamp to
guide him. If he struggled and suffered, he felt that it even should
be so; knew for what he was suffering and struggling. Faith gave him
an inward Willingness; a world of Strength wherewith to front a world
of Difficulty. The true wretchedness lies here: that the Difficulty
remain and the Strength be lost; that Pain cannot relieve itself in
free Effort; that we have the Labour, and want the Willingness. Faith
strengthens us, enlightens us, for all endeavours and endurances; with
Faith we can do all, and dare all, and life itself has a thousand
times been joyfully given away. But the sum of man's misery is even
this, that he feel himself crushed under the Juggernaut wheels, and
know that Juggernaut is no divinity, but a dead mechanical idol.
Now this is specially the misery which has fallen on man in our Era.
Belief, Faith has well-nigh vanished from the world. The youth on
awakening in this wondrous Universe, no longer finds a competent
theory of its wonders. Time was, when if he asked himself, What is
man, What are the duties of man? the answer stood ready written for
him. But now the ancient "ground-plan of the All" belies itself when
brought into contact with reality; Mother Church has, to the most,
become a superannuated Stepmother, whose lessons go disregarded; or
are spurned at, and scornfully gainsaid. For young Valour and thirst
of Action no Ideal Chivalry invites to heroism, prescribes what is
heroic: the old ideal of Manhood has grown obsolete, and the new is
still invisible to us, and we grope after it in darkness, one
clutching this phantom, another that; Werterism, Byronism, even
Brummelism, each has its day. For Contemplation and love of Wisdom, no
Cloister now opens its religious shades; the Thinker must, in all
senses, wander homeless, too often aimless, looking up to a Heaven
which is dead for him, round to an Earth which is deaf. Action, in
those old days, was easy, was voluntary, for the divine worth of human
things lay acknowledged; Speculation was wholesome, for it ranged
itself as the handmaid of Action; what could not so range itself died
out by its natural death, by neglect. Loyalty still hallowed
obedience, and made rule noble; there was still something to be loyal
to: the Godlike stood embodied under many a symbol in men's interests
and business; the Finite shadowed forth the Infinite; Eternity looked
through Time. The Life of man was encompassed and overcanopied by a
glory of Heaven, even as his dwelling-place by the azure vault.
How changed in these new days! Truly may it be said, the Divinity has
withdrawn from the Earth; or veils himself in that wide-wasting
Whirlwind of a departing Era, wherein the fewest can discern his
goings. Not Godhead, but an iron, ignoble circle of Necessity embraces
all things; binds the youth of these times into a sluggish thrall, or
else exasperates him into a rebel. Heroic Action is paralysed; for
what worth now remains unquestionable with him? At the fervid period
when his whole nature cries aloud for Action, there is nothing sacred
under whose banner he can act; the course and kind and conditions of
free Action are all but undiscoverable. Doubt storms-in on him through
every avenue; inquiries of the deepest, painfullest sort must be
engaged with; and the invincible energy of young years waste itself in
sceptical, suicidal cavillings; in passionate "questionings of
Destiny," whereto no answer will be returned.
For men, in whom the old perennial principle of Hunger (be it Hunger
of the poor Day-drudge who stills it with eighteenpence a-day, or of
the ambitious Placehunter who can nowise still it with so little)
suffices to fill up existence, the case is bad; but not the worst.
These men have an aim, such as it is; and can steer towards it, with
chagrin enough truly; yet, as their hands are kept full, without
desperation. Unhappier are they to whom a higher instinct has been
given; who struggle to be persons, not machines; to whom the Universe
is not a warehouse, or at best a fancy-bazaar, but a mystic temple and
hall of doom. For such men there lie properly two courses open. The
lower, yet still an estimable class, take up with worn-out Symbols of
the Godlike; keep trimming and trucking between these and Hypocrisy,
purblindly enough, miserably enough. A numerous intermediate class end
in Denial; and form a theory that there is no theory; that nothing is
certain in the world, except this fact of Pleasure being pleasant; so
they try to realise what trifling modicum of Pleasure they can come
at, and to live contented therewith, winking hard. Of these we speak
not here; but only of the second nobler class, who also have dared to
say No, and cannot yet say Yea; but feel that in the No they dwell as
in a Golgotha, where life enters not, where peace is not appointed
them. Hard, for most part, is the fate of such men; the harder the
nobler they are. In dim forecastings, wrestles within them the "Divine
Idea of the World," yet will nowhere visibly reveal itself. They have
to realise a Worship for themselves, or live unworshipping. The
Godlike has vanished from the world; and they, by the strong cry of
their soul's agony, like true wonder-workers, must again evoke its
presence. This miracle is their appointed task; which they must
accomplish, or die wretchedly: this miracle has been accomplished by
such; but not in our land; our land yet knows not of it. Behold a
Byron, in melodious tones, "cursing his day:" he mistakes earthborn
passionate Desire for heaven-inspired Freewill; without heavenly
loadstar, rushes madly into the dance of meteoric lights that hover on
the mad Mahlstrom; and goes down among its eddies. Hear a Shelley
filling the earth with inarticulate wail; like the infinite,
inarticulate grief and weeping of forsaken infants. A noble Friedrich
Schlegel, stupefied in that fearful loneliness, as of a silenced
battle-field, flies back to Catholicism; as a child might to its slain
mother's bosom, and cling there. In lower regions, how many a poor
Hazlitt must wander on God's verdant earth, like the Unblest on
burning deserts; passionately dig wells, and draw up only the dry
quicksand; believe that he is seeking Truth, yet only wrestle among
endless Sophisms, doing desperate battle as with spectre-hosts; and
die and make no sign!
To the better order of such minds any mad joy of Denial has long since
ceased: the problem is not now to deny, but to ascertain and perform.
Once in destroying the False, there was a certain inspiration; but now
the genius of Destruction has done its work, there is now nothing more
to destroy. The doom of the Old has long been pronounced, and
irrevocable; the Old has passed away; but, alas, the New appears not
in its stead; the Time is still in pangs of travail with the New. Man
has walked by the light of conflagrations, and amid the sound of
falling cities; and now there is darkness, and long watching till it
be morning. The voice even of the faithful can but exclaim: "As yet
struggles the twelfth hour of the Night: birds of darkness are on the
wing, spectres up-rear, the dead walk, the living dream.—Thou,
Eternal Providence, wilt cause the day to dawn!"[52]
[Footnote 52: Jean Paul's Hesperus. Vorrede.]
Such being the condition, temporal and spiritual, of the world at our
Epoch, can we wonder that the world "listens to itself," and struggles
and writhes, everywhere externally and internally, like a thing in
pain? Nay, is not even this unhealthy action of the world's
Organisation, if the symptom of universal disease, yet also the
symptom and sole means of restoration and cure? The effort of Nature,
exerting her medicative force to cast out foreign impediments, and
once more become One, become whole? In Practice, still more in
Opinion, which is the precursor and prototype of Practice, there must
needs be collision, convulsion; much has to be ground away. Thought
must needs be Doubt and Inquiry, before it can again be Affirmation
and Sacred Precept. Innumerable "Philosophies of Man," contending in
boundless hubbub, must annihilate each other, before an inspired Poesy
and Faith for Man can fashion itself together.
* * * * *
From this stunning hubbub, a true Babylonish confusion of tongues, we
have here selected two Voices; less as objects of praise or
condemnation, than as signs how far the confusion has reached, what
prospect there is of its abating. Friedrich Schlegel's Lectures,
delivered at Dresden, and Mr. Hope's Essay, published in London, are
the latest utterances of European Speculation: far asunder in external
place, they stand at a still wider distance in inward purport; are,
indeed, so opposite and yet so cognate that they may, in many senses,
represent the two Extremes of our whole modern system of Thought; and
be said to include between them all the Metaphysical Philosophies, so
often alluded to here, which, of late times, from France, Germany,
England, have agitated and almost overwhelmed us. Both in regard to
matter and to form, the relation of these two Works is significant
enough.
Speaking first of their cognate qualities, let us remark, not without
emotion, one quite extraneous point of agreement; the fact that the
Writers of both have departed from this world; they have now finished
their search, and had all doubts resolved: while we listen to the
voice, the tongue that uttered it has gone silent forever. But the
fundamental, all-pervading similarity lies in this circumstance, well
worthy of being noted, that both these Philosophers are of the
Dogmatic or Constructive sort: each in its way is a kind of Genesis;
an endeavour to bring the Phenomena of man's Universe once more under
some theoretic Scheme: in both there is a decided principle of unity;
they strive after a result which shall be positive; their aim is not
to question, but to establish. This, especially if we consider with
what comprehensive concentrated force it is here exhibited, forms a
new feature in such works.
Under all other aspects, there is the most irreconcilable opposition;
a staring contrariety, such as might provoke contrasts, were there far
fewer points of comparison. If Schlegel's Work is the apotheosis of
Spiritualism; Hope's again is the apotheosis of Materialism: in the
one, all Matter is evaporated into a Phenomenon, and terrestrial Life
itself, with its whole doings and showings, held out as a Disturbance
(Zerruettung) produced by the Zeitgeist (Spirit of Time); in the
other, Matter is distilled and sublimated into some semblance of
Divinity: the one regards Space and Time as mere forms of man's mind,
and without external existence or reality; the other supposes Space
and Time to be "incessantly created," and rayed-in upon us like a sort
of "gravitation." Such is their difference in respect of purport: no
less striking is it in respect of manner, talent, success and all
outward characteristics. Thus, if in Schlegel we have to admire the
power of Words, in Hope we stand astonished, it might almost be said,
at the want of an articulate Language. To Schlegel his Philosophic
Speech is obedient, dextrous, exact, like a promptly-ministering
genius; his names are so clear, so precise and vivid, that they almost
(sometimes altogether) become things for him: with Hope there is no
Philosophical Speech; but a painful, confused stammering, and
struggling after such; or the tongue, as in dotish forgetfulness,
maunders, low, long-winded, and speaks not the word intended, but
another; so that here the scarcely intelligible, in these endless
convolutions, becomes the wholly unreadable; and often we could ask,
as that mad pupil did of his tutor in Philosophy, "But whether is
Virtue a fluid, then, or a gas?" If the fact, that Schlegel, in the
city of Dresden, could find audience for such high discourse, may
excite our envy; this other fact, that a person of strong powers,
skilled in English Thought and master of its Dialect, could write the
Origin and Prospects of Man, may painfully remind us of the
reproach, that England has now no language for Meditation; that
England, the most calculative, is the least meditative, of all
civilised countries.
It is not our purpose to offer any criticism of Schlegel's Book; in
such limits as were possible here, we should despair of communicating
even the faintest image of its significance. To the mass of readers,
indeed, both among the Germans themselves, and still more elsewhere,
it nowise addresses itself, and may lie forever sealed. We point it
out as a remarkable document of the Time and of the Man; can recommend
it, moreover, to all earnest Thinkers, as a work deserving their best
regard; a work full of deep meditation, wherein the infinite mystery
of Life, if not represented, is decisively recognised. Of Schlegel
himself, and his character, and spiritual history, we can profess no
thorough or final understanding; yet enough to make us view him with
admiration and pity, nowise with harsh contemptuous censure; and must
say, with clearest persuasion, that the outcry of his being "a
renegade," and so forth, is but like other outcries, a judgment where
there was neither jury, nor evidence, nor judge. The candid reader, in
this Book itself, to say nothing of all the rest, will find traces of
a high, far-seeing, earnest spirit, to whom "Austrian Pensions," and
the Kaiser's crown, and Austria altogether, were but a light matter to
the finding and vitally appropriating of Truth. Let us respect the
sacred mystery of a Person; rush not irreverently into man's Holy of
Holies! Were the lost little one, as we said already, found "sucking
its dead mother, on the field of carnage," could it be other than a
spectacle for tears? A solemn mournful feeling comes over us when we
see this last Work of Friedrich Schlegel, the unwearied seeker, end
abruptly in the middle; and, as if he had not yet found, as if
emblematically of much, end with an "Aber—," with a "But—!" This
was the last word that came from the Pen of Friedrich Schlegel: about
eleven at night he wrote it down, and there paused sick; at one in the
morning, Time for him had merged itself in Eternity; he was, as we
say, no more.
Still less can we attempt any criticism of Mr. Hope's new Book of
Genesis. Indeed, under any circumstances, criticism of it were now
impossible. Such an utterance could only be responded to in peals of
laughter; and laughter sounds hollow and hideous through the vaults of
the dead. Of this monstrous Anomaly, where all sciences are heaped and
huddled together, and the principles of all are, with a childlike
innocence, plied hither and thither, or wholly abolished in case of
need; where the First Cause is figured as a huge Circle, with nothing
to do but radiate "gravitation" towards its centre; and so construct a
Universe, wherein all, from the lowest cucumber with its coolness, up
to the highest seraph with his love, were but "gravitation," direct or
reflex, "in more or less central globes,"—what can we say, except,
with sorrow and shame, that it could have originated nowhere save in
England? It is a general agglomerate of all facts, notions, whims and
observations, as they lie in the brain of an English gentleman; as an
English gentleman, of unusual thinking power, is led to fashion them,
in his schools and in his world: all these thrown into the crucible,
and if not fused, yet soldered or conglutinated with boundless
patience; and now tumbled out here, heterogeneous, amorphous,
unspeakable, a world's wonder. Most melancholy must we name the whole
business; full of long-continued thought, earnestness, loftiness of
mind; not without glances into the Deepest, a constant fearless
endeavour after truth; and with all this nothing accomplished, but the
perhaps absurdest Book written in our century by a thinking man. A
shameful Abortion; which, however, need not now be smothered or
mangled, for it is already dead; only, in our love and sorrowing
reverence for the writer of Anastasius, and the heroic seeker of
Light, though not bringer thereof, let it be buried and forgotten.
* * * * *
For ourselves, the loud discord which jars in these two Works, in
innumerable works of the like import, and generally in all the Thought
and Action of this period, does not any longer utterly confuse us.
Unhappy who, in such a time, felt not, at all conjunctures,
ineradicably in his heart the knowledge that a God made this Universe,
and a Demon not! And shall Evil always prosper, then? Out of all Evil
comes Good; and no Good that is possible but shall one day be real.
Deep and sad as is our feeling that we stand yet in the bodeful Night;
equally deep, indestructible is our assurance that the Morning also
will not fail. Nay already, as we look round, streaks of a day-spring
are in the east; it is dawning; when the time shall be fulfilled, it
will be day. The progress of man towards higher and nobler
developments of whatever is highest and noblest in him, lies not only
prophesied to Faith, but now written to the eye of Observation, so
that he who runs may read.
One great step of progress, for example, we should say, in actual
circumstances, was this same; the clear ascertainment that we are in
progress. About the grand Course of Providence, and his final Purposes
with us, we can know nothing, or almost nothing: man begins in
darkness, ends in darkness; mystery is everywhere around us and in us,
under our feet, among our hands. Nevertheless so much has become
evident to every one, that this wondrous Mankind is advancing
somewhither; that at least all human things are, have been and forever
will be, in Movement and Change:—as, indeed, for beings that exist in
Time, by virtue of Time, and are made of Time, might have been long
since understood. In some provinces, it is true, as in Experimental
Science, this discovery is an old one; but in most others it belongs
wholly to these latter days. How often, in former ages, by eternal
Creeds, eternal Forms of Government and the like, has it been
attempted, fiercely enough, and with destructive violence, to chain
the Future under the Past: and to say to the Providence, whose ways
with man are mysterious, and through the great deep: Hitherto shalt
thou come, but no farther! A wholly insane attempt; and for man
himself, could it prosper, the frightfullest of all enchantments, a
very Life-in-Death. Man's task here below, the destiny of every
individual man, is to be in turns Apprentice and Workman; or say
rather, Scholar, Teacher, Discoverer: by nature he has a strength for
learning, for imitating; but also a strength for acting, for knowing
on his own account. Are we not in a world seen to be Infinite; the
relations lying closest together modified by those latest discovered
and lying farthest asunder? Could you ever spell-bind man into a
Scholar merely, so that he had nothing to discover, to correct; could
you ever establish a Theory of the Universe that were entire,
unimprovable, and which needed only to be got by heart; man then were
spiritually defunct, the Species we now name Man had ceased to exist.
But the gods, kinder to us than we are to ourselves, have forbidden
such suicidal acts. As Phlogiston is displaced by Oxygen, and the
Epicycles of Ptolemy by the Ellipses of Kepler; so does Paganism give
place to Catholicism, Tyranny to Monarchy, and Feudalism to
Representative Government,—where also the process does not stop.
Perfection of Practice, like completeness of Opinion, is always
approaching, never arrived; Truth, in the words of Schiller, immer
wird, nie ist; never is, always is a-being.
Sad, truly, were our condition did we know but this, that Change is
universal and inevitable. Launched into a dark shoreless sea of
Pyrrhonism, what would remain for us but to sail aimless, hopeless; or
make madly merry, while the devouring Death had not yet engulfed us?
As indeed, we have seen many, and still see many do. Nevertheless so
stands it not. The venerator of the Past (and to what pure heart is
the Past, in that "moonlight of memory," other than sad and holy?)
sorrows not over its departure, as one utterly bereaved. The true Past
departs not, nothing that was worthy in the Past departs; no Truth or
Goodness realised by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here,
and, recognised or not, lives and works through endless changes. If
all things, to speak in the German dialect, are discerned by us, and
exist for us, in an element of Time, and therefore of Mortality and
Mutability; yet Time itself reposes on Eternity: the truly Great and
Transcendental has its basis and substance in Eternity; stands
revealed to us as Eternity in a vesture of Time. Thus in all Poetry,
Worship, Art, Society, as one form passes into another, nothing is
lost: it is but the superficial, as it were the body only, that
grows obsolete and dies; under the mortal body lies a soul which is
immortal; which anew incarnates itself in fairer revelation; and the
Present is the living sum-total of the whole Past.
In Change, therefore, there is nothing terrible, nothing supernatural:
on the contrary, it lies in the very essence of our lot and life in
this world. Today is not yesterday: we ourselves change; how can our
Works and Thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue
always the same? Change, indeed, is painful; yet ever needful: and if
Memory have its force and worth, so also has Hope. Nay, if we look
well to it, what is all Derangement, and necessity of great Change, in
itself such an evil, but the product simply of increased resources
which the old methods can no longer administer; of new wealth which
the old coffers will no longer contain? What is it, for example, that
in our own day bursts asunder the bonds of ancient Political Systems,
and perplexes all Europe with the fear of Change, but even this: the
increase of social resources, which the old social methods will no
longer sufficiently administer? The new omnipotence of the
Steam-engine is hewing asunder quite other mountains than the
physical. Have not our economical distresses, those barnyard
Conflagrations themselves, the frightfullest madness of our mad epoch,
their rise also in what is a real increase: increase of Men; of human
Force; properly, in such a Planet as ours, the most precious of all
increases? It is true again, the ancient methods of administration
will no longer suffice. Must the indomitable millions, full of old
Saxon energy and fire, lie cooped up in this Western Nook, choking one
another, as in a Blackhole of Calcutta, while a whole fertile
untenanted Earth, desolate for want of the ploughshare, cries: Come
and till me, come and reap me? If the ancient Captains can no longer
yield guidance, new must be sought after: for the difficulty lies not
in nature, but in artifice; the European Calcutta-Blackhole has no
walls but air ones and paper ones.—So too, Scepticism itself, with
its innumerable mischiefs, what is it but the sour fruit of a most
blessed increase, that of Knowledge; a fruit too that will not always
continue sour?
In fact, much as we have said and mourned about the unproductive
prevalence of Metaphysics, it was not without some insight into the
use that lies in them. Metaphysical Speculation, if a necessary evil,
is the forerunner of much good. The fever of Scepticism must needs
burn itself out, and burn out thereby the Impurities that caused it;
then again will there be clearness, health. The principle of life,
which now struggles painfully, in the outer, thin and barren domain of
the Conscious or Mechanical, may then withdraw into its inner
sanctuaries, its abysses of mystery and miracle; withdraw deeper than
ever into that domain of the Unconscious, by nature infinite and
inexhaustible; and that creatively work there. From that mystic
region, and from that alone, all wonders, all Poesies and Religions,
and Social Systems have proceeded: the like wonders, and greater and
higher, lie slumbering there; and, brooded on by the spirit of the
waters, will evolve themselves, and rise like exhalations from the
Deep.
Of our Modern Metaphysics, accordingly, may not this already be said,
that if they have produced no Affirmation, they have destroyed much
Negation? It is a disease expelling a disease: the fire of Doubt, as
above hinted, consuming away the Doubtful; that so the Certain come to
light, and again lie visible on the surface. English or French
Metaphysics, in reference to this last stage of the speculative
process, are not what we allude to here; but only the Metaphysics of
the Germans. In France or England, since the days of Diderot and Hume,
though all thought has been of a sceptico-metaphysical texture, so far
as there was any Thought, we have seen no Metaphysics; but only more
or less ineffectual questionings whether such could be. In the
Pyrrhonism of Hume and the Materialism of Diderot, Logic had, as it
were, overshot itself, overset itself. Now, though the athlete, to use
our old figure, cannot, by much lifting, lift up his own body, he may
shift it out of a laming posture, and get to stand in a free one. Such
a service have German Metaphysics done for man's mind. The second
sickness of Speculation has abolished both itself and the first.
Friedrich Schlegel complains much of the fruitlessness, the tumult and
transiency of German as of all Metaphysics; and with reason. Yet in
that wide-spreading, deep-whirling vortex of Kantism, so soon
metamorphosed into Fichteism, Schellingism, and then as Hegelism, and
Cousinism, perhaps finally evaporated, is not the issue visible
enough, That Pyrrhonism and Materialism, themselves necessary
phenomena in European culture, have disappeared; and a Faith in
Religion has again become possible and inevitable for the scientific
mind; and the word Free-thinker no longer means the Denier or
Caviller, but the Believer, or the Ready to believe? Nay, in the
higher Literature of Germany, there already lies, for him that can
read it, the beginning of a new revelation of the Godlike; as yet
unrecognised by the mass of the world; but waiting there for
recognition, and sure to find it when the fit hour comes. This age
also is not wholly without its Prophets.
Again, under another aspect, if Utilitarianism, or Radicalism, or the
Mechanical Philosophy, or by whatever name it is called, has still its
long task to do; nevertheless we can now see through it and beyond it:
in the better heads, even among us English, it has become obsolete; as
in other countries, it has been, in such heads, for some forty or even
fifty years. What sound mind among the French, for example, now
fancies that men can be governed by "Constitutions;" by the never so
cunning mechanising of Self-interests, and all conceivable adjustments
of checking and balancing; in a word, by the best possible solution of
this quite insoluble and impossible problem, Given a world of Knaves,
to produce an Honesty from their united action? Were not experiments
enough of this kind tried before all Europe, and found wanting, when,
in that doomsday of France, the infinite gulf of human Passion
shivered asunder the thin rinds of Habit; and burst forth
all-devouring as in seas of Nether Fire? Which cunningly-devised
"Constitution," constitutional, republican, democratic, sansculottic,
could bind that raging chasm together? Were they not all burnt up,
like paper as they were, in its molten eddies; and still the fire-sea
raged fiercer than before? It is not by Mechanism, but by Religion;
not by Self-interest, but by Loyalty, that men are governed or
governable.
Remarkable it is, truly, how everywhere the eternal fact begins again
to be recognised, that there is a Godlike in human affairs; that God
not only made us and beholds us, but is in us and around us; that the
Age of Miracles, as it ever was, now is. Such recognition we discern
on all hands and in all countries: in each country after its own
fashion. In France, among the younger nobler minds, strangely enough;
where, in their loud contention with the Actual and Conscious, the
Ideal or Unconscious is, for the time, without exponent; where
Religion means not the parent of Polity, as of all that is highest,
but Polity itself; and this and the other earnest man has not been
wanting, who could audibly whisper to himself: "Go to, I will make a
religion." In England still more strangely; as in all things, worthy
England will have its way: by the shrieking of hysterical women,
casting out of devils, and other "gifts of the Holy Ghost." Well might
Jean Paul say, in this his twelfth hour of the Night, "the living
dream"; well might he say, "the dead walk." Meanwhile let us rejoice
rather that so much has been seen into, were it through never so
diffracting media, and never so madly distorted; that in all dialects,
though but half-articulately, this high Gospel begins to be preached:
Man is still Man. The genius of Mechanism, as was once before
predicted, will not always sit like a choking incubus on our soul; but
at length, when by a new magic Word the old spell is broken, become
our slave, and as familiar-spirit do all our bidding. "We are near
awakening when we dream that we dream."
He that has an eye and a heart can even now say: Why should I falter?
Light has come into the world; to such as love Light, so as Light must
be loved, with a boundless all-doing, all enduring love. For the rest,
let that vain struggle to read the mystery of the Infinite cease to
harass us. It is a mystery which, through all ages, we shall only read
here a line of, there another line of. Do we not already know that the
name of the Infinite is GOOD, is GOD? Here on Earth we are as
Soldiers, fighting in a foreign land; that understand not the plan of
the campaign, and have no need to understand it; seeing well what is
at our hand to be done. Let us do it like Soldiers, with submission,
with courage, with a heroic joy. "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do,
do it with all thy might." Behind us, behind each one of us, lie Six
Thousand Years of human effort, human conquest: before us is the
boundless Time, with its as yet uncreated and unconquered Continents
and Eldorados, which we, even we, have to conquer, to create; and from
the bosom of Eternity there shine for us celestial guiding stars.
"My inheritance how wide and fair!
Time is my fair seed-field, of Time I'm heir."
Carlyle.