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THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
cMAROOR.lt cDOBBIMS
ENGLISH PROSE
ENGLISH PROSE
A SERIES OF RELATED ESSAYS FOR THE
DISCUSSION AND PRACTICE OF
THE ART OF WRITING
SELECTED AND EDITED
BY
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROE, PH.D.
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
AND
GEORGE ROY ELLIOTT, PH.D.
OF BOWDOIN COLLEGE
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK
323 EAST 2HRD STREET, CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT, 1913
BY
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
First Edition, October, 1913
Reprinted, July, 1914
College
Library
PREFACE
THE selections in the present volume, designed primarily
for the discussion and practice in college classes of the art
of composition, have been arranged under a scheme which
the editors believe to be new. There are nine related
groups. Each successive group represents a different phase
of life, beginning with character and personality, and con-
cluding with art and literature. The whole together, as
the table of contents will show, thus presents a body of
ideas that includes practically all the great departments
of human thought and interest.
It is evident that certain ideals of teaching composition
underlie the scheme. The editors believe heartily with
Pater that "the chief stimulus of good style is to possess a
full, rich, complex matter to grapple with ". Instruction in
writing, it is to be feared, too often neglects this sound
doctrine and places an emphasis upon formal matters that
seems disproportionate, especially when form is made to
appear as a thing apart. Form and content go together and
one must not suffer at the expense of the other. But a
sustained interest in the ways and means of correct expres-
sion is aroused only when the student feels that he has
something to express. Instructors often contend indeed that
the ideas of undergraduates are far to seek, and that most of
the time in the class-room is therefore best spent upon
formal exercises and drill. The editors do not share this
view. They believe that there is no class of people more
responsive to new ideas and impressions than college students,
*
100933
vi PREFACE
and none more eager, when normally stimulated, to express
themselves in writing. They have therefore aimed to present
a series of related selections that would arouse thought
and provoke oral discussion in the class-room, as well as
furnish suitable models of style. In most cases the pieces
are too long to be adequately handled in one class hour.
A live topic may well be discussed for several hours, until
its various sides have been examined and students are
awakened to the many questions at issue. The editors
have aimed, also, to supply selections so rich and vital
in content that instructors themselves will feel challenged
to add to the class discussion from their own knowledge
and experience, and so turn a stream of fresh ideas upon
"stock notions". Thus English composition, which in
many courses in our larger institutions is now almost the
only non-special study, can be made a direct means of liberal-
ization in the meaning and art of life, as well as an instru-
ment for correct and effective writing.
The present volume therefore differs from others in the
same field. Many recent collections contain pieces too
short and unrelated to satisfy the ideals suggested above
ideals which, the editors feel sure, are held by an increasing
number of teachers. And older and newer collections alike
have been constructed primarily with the purpose of illus-
trating the conventional categories, description, narration,
exposition. Teachers of composition everywhere are becom-
ing distrustful of an arrangement which is frankly at
variance with the actual practice of writing, and are of the
opinion that it is better to set the student to the task of
composition without- confining him too narrowly to one form
of discourse. The editors have deliberately avoided, how-
ever, the other extreme, which is reflected in one or two
recent volumes, of choosing pieces of one type to the exclu-
sion of all others. In collections of this kind variety in
form and subject-matter is fully as important as richness
of content. Instructors who believe in the use of the types
of discourse as the most practicable means of instruction,
PREFACE vii
will find all the types liberally represented in the present
volume. And in order to meet their requirements even
more adequately, the editors have included two short stories
at the end, as examples of narration with a plot.
Much attention has been given to the suggestions at the
end of the volume with the aim of making them practically
serviceable and, at the same time, as free as possible from
duplication of class work. This aim, the editors came to
believe, could best be attained by providing for each group
of selections definite suggestions of theme- subjects to be
derived by the student from supplementary readings closely
related to that group.
F. W. R.
G. R. E.
MADISON, WISCONSIN,
May, 1913.
CONTENTS
I. THE PERSONAL LIFE. PAGE
1. Self-Reliance RALPH WALDO EMERSON i
2. Early Education
at Ilerne Hill JOHN RUSKIN 17
3. A Crisis in My
Mental History JOHN STUART MILL 28
4. Old China CHARLES LAMB 40
II. EDUCATION.
5. What is Education? THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 47
6. Knowledge Viewed in
Relation to Learning. . . JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 52
7. Literature and Science MATTHEW ARNOLD 75
8. How to Read FREDERIC HARRISON 97
III. RECREATION AND TRAVELS.
9. On Going a Journey WILLIAM HA/LITT 116
10. Regrets of a Mountaineer. .LESLIE STEPHEN 128
IV. SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS.
11. Behavior RALPH WALDO EMERSON 154
12. Manners and Fashion HERBERT SPENCER 172
13. Talk and Talkers ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 184
V. PUBLIC AFFAIRS.
14- The Social Value
of the College-bred WILLIAM JAMES 197
15 The Law of
Human Progress HENRY GEORGE 206
16. The Morals of Trade. . . .HERBERT SPENCER 226
CONTENTS
VI. SCIENCE.
17. The Physical Basis of Life. .THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 240
1 8. Mental Powers of
Men and Animals CHARLES DARWIN 263
19. The Importance of Dust. . .ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 278
VII. NATURE.
20. The Battle of the Ants. . . .HENRY DAVID THOREAU 292
21. A Windstorm
in the Forests JOHN MUIR 296
22. Walden Pond HENRY DAVID THOREAU 306
23. Extracts from Modern
Painters JOHN RUSKIN 325
VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE.
24. The Stoics WILLIAM EDWARD HART-
POLE LECKY 335
25. Enthusiasm of Humanity. .JOHN ROBERT SEELEY 351
26. Loyalty and Insight JOSIAH ROYCE 365
IX. LITERATURE AND ART.
27. Poetry for Poetry's Sake. . .A. C. BRADLEY 389
28. Greek Tragedy G. LOWES DICKINSON 411
29. Shakespeare THOMAS CARLYLE 423
30. Charles Lamb WALTER PATER 437
31. Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 450
32. Markhcim ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 462
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS.
With some topics for Discussion and Composition. 481
ENGLISH PROSE
SELF-RELIANCE l
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
I READ the other day some verses written by an eminent
painter which were original and not conventional. Always
the soul hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject
be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more
value than any thought they may contain. To believe 5
your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in
your private heart is true for all men, that is genius.
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal
sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost and
our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets 10
of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind
is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato
and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions,
and spoke not what men, but what they thought. A man
should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which 15
flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of
the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without
notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius
we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back
to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of 20
art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They
teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-
humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices
1 From Essays, First Series, 1841; the second half of the essay has
here been omitted.
2 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say
with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought
and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with
shame our own opinion from another.
5 There is a time in every man's education when he arrives
at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation
is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as
his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good,
no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through
10 his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him
to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature,
and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor
does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face,
one character, one fact, makes much impression on him,
15 and another none. It is not without preestablished har-
mony, this sculpture in the memory. The eye was placed
where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that
particular ray. Bravely let him speak the utmost syllable
of his confession. We but half express ourselves, and are
20 ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents.
It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good
issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have
his work made manifest by cowards. It needs a divine
man to exhibit anything divine. A man is relieved and gay
25 when he has put his heart into his work and done his best;
but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no
peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In
the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends;
no invention, no hope.
30 Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.
Accept the place the divine providence has found for you,
the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events.
Great men have always done so, and confided themselves
childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their percep-
35tion that the Eternal was stirring at their heart, working
through their hands, predominating in all their being.
And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind
SELF-RELIANCE 3
the same transcendent destiny; and not pinched in a
corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but
redeemers and benefactors, pious aspirants to be noble clay
under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and
the Dark. 5
What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text in the
face and behavior of children, babes, and even brutes.
That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment
because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means
opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being 10
whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look
in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms
to nobody; all conform to it; so that one babe commonly
makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play
to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood 15
no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it
enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it
will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force,
because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next
room who spoke so clear and emphatic? Good Heaven ! it 20
is he! it is that very lump of bashfulness and phlegm
which for weeks has done nothing but eat when you were by,
and now rolls out these words like bell-strokes. It seems
he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful
or bold then, he will know how to make us seniors very 25
unnecessary.
The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and
would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to con-
ciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. How
is a boy the master of society ! independent, irresponsible, 30
looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass
by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, iir the
swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly,
eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about
consequences, about interests; he gives an independent, 35
genuine verdict. You must court him; he does not court
you. But the man is as it were clapped into jail by his
4 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with
eclat he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy
or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter
into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he
5 could pass again into his neutral, godlike independence!
Who can thus lose all pledge and, having observed, observe
again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaf-
frighted innocence, must always be formidable, must always
engage the poet's and the man's regards. Of such an
10 immortal youth the force would be felt. He would utter
opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not
private but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of
men and put them in fear.
These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they
15 grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society
everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every
one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in
which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread
to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture
20 of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity.
Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and
creators, but names and customs.
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He
who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered
25 by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our own mind.
Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of
the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I
was prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont
30 to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church.
On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of
traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested,
" But these impulses may be from below, not from above."
I replied, " They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am
35 the devil's child, I will live then from the devil." No
law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and
bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this;
SELF-RELIANCE 5
the only right is what is after my constitution; the only
wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the
presence of all opposition as if every thing were titular
and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily
we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and 5
dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual
affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go
upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If
malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall
that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause 10
of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Bar-
badoes, why should I not say to him, " Go love thy infant;
love thy wood-chopper; be good-natured and modest;
have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable
ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a 15
thousand miles off . Thy love afar is spite at home." Rough
and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer
than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have
some edge to it, else it is none. The doctrine of hatred
must be preached, as the counteraction of the doctrine of 20
love, when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother
and wife and brother when my genius calls me. I would
write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is
somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the
day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why 1 25
seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell
me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all
poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee,
thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the
dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and 30
to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to
whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; 'for
them I will go to prison if need be; but your miscellaneous
popular charities; the education at college of fools; the
building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many 35
now stand; alms to sots, and the thousandfold Relief
Societies; though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb
6 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar, which by-and-by
I shall have the manhood to withhold.
Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the excep-
tion than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men
5 do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or
charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily
non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an
apology or extenuation of their living in the world, as
invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are
10 penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life
is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not for a
spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain,
so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering
and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to
15 need diet and bleeding. My life should be unique; it should
be an alms, a battle, a conquest, a medicine. I ask primary
evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from
the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes
no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which
20 are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a priv-
ilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my
gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assur-
ance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the
25 people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in
intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between
greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will
always find those who think they know what is your duty
better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after
30 the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our
own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the
crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of
solitude.
The objection to conforming to usages that have become
35 dead to you is that it scatters your force. It loses your time
and blurs the impression of your character. If you main-
tain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible Society, vote
SELF-RELIANCE 7
with a great party either for the Government or against it,
spread your table like base housekeepers, under all these
screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.
And of course so much force is withdrawn from your proper
life. But do your thing, and I shall know you. Do your 5
work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must con-
sider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity.
If I know your sect I anticipate your argument. I hear a
preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of
one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know before- 10
hand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous
word? Do I not know that with all this ostentation of
examining the grounds of the institution he will do no such
thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to
look but at one side, the permitted side, not as a man, but ^5
as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these
airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most
men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief,
and attached themselves to some one of these communities
of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few 20
particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars.
Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the
real two, their four not the real four: so that every word
they say chagrins us and we know not where to begin to
set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us 25
in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We
come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by
degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying
experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself
also in the general history; I mean " the foolish face of praise," 30
the forced smile which we put on in company where we ^do
not feel at ease, in answer to conversation which does not
interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved but
moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the
outline of the face, and make the most disagreeable sensa-35
tion; a sensation of rebuke and warning which no brave
young man will suffer twice.
8 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
For non-conformity the world whips you with its dis-
pleasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate
a sour face. The bystanders look askance on him in the
public street or in the friend's parlor. If this aversation
shad its origin in contempt and resistance like his own he
might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour
faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep
cause, disguise no god, but are put on and off as the wind
blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of
10 the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and
the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows
the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their
rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being
very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine
15 rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant
and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute
force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl
and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion
to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.
20 The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our
consistency; a reverence for our past act or word because
the eyes of others have no other data for computing our
orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint
them.
25 But why should you keep your head over your shoulder?
Why drag about this monstrous corpse of your memory,
lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or
that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself;
what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on
30 your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory,
but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-
eyed present, and live ever in a new day. Trust your
emotion. In your metaphysics you have denied personality
to the Deity, yet when the devout motions of the soul come,
35 yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe
God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph
his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
SELF-RELIANCE 9
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,
adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.
He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.
Out upon your guarded lips! Sew them up with packthread, 5
do. Else if you would be a man speak what you think
to-day in words as hard as cannon balls, and to-morrow
speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though
it contradict every thing you said to-day. Ah, then,
exclaim the aged ladies, you shall be sure to be misunder- 10
stood! Misunderstood! It is a right fool's word. Is it so
bad then to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunder-
stood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus,
and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit
that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood. 15
I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies
of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the
inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the
curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge
and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian 20
stanza; read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells
the same thing. In this pleasing contrite wood-life which
God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought
without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will
be found symmetrical, though I mean it not and see it not. 25
My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of
insects. The swallow over my window should interweave
that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also.
We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills.
Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice 30
only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice
emit a breath every moment.
Fear never but you shall be consistent in whatever variety
of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.
For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however 35
unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of when
seen at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One
10 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is
a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. This is only microscopic
criticism. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it
straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine
5 action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine
actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singhy,
and what you have already done singly will justify you now.
Greatness always appeals to the future. If I can be great
enough now to do right and scorn eyes, I must have done
10 so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it
will, do right now. Always scorn appearances and you
always may. The force of character is cumulative. All
the foregone days of virtue work their health into this.
What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the
1 5 field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a
train of great days and victories behind. There they all
stand and shed an united light on the advancing actor.
He is attended as by a visible escort of angels to every man's
eye. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's
20 voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America
into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is
no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship
it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it
homage because it is not a trap for our love and homage,
25 but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old
immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.
I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity
and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous
henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear
30 a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us bow and apologize
never more. A great man is coming to eat at my house.
I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to
please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I
would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront
35 and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid content-
ment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom and trade
and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that
SELF-RELIANCE 11
there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor moving
wherever moves a man; that a true man belongs to no
other time or place, but is the center of things. Where
he is, there is nature. He measures you and all men and all
events. You are constrained to accept his standard. 5
Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat
else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds
you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation.
The man must be so much that he must make all circum-
stances indifferent put all means into the shade. This 10
all great men are and do. Every true man is a cause, a
country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers
and time fully to accomplish his thought; and posterity
seem to follow his steps as a procession. A man Caesar is
born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ 15
is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his
genius that he is confounded with virtue and the possible
of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one
man; as, the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox;
Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, 20
Milton called " the height of Rome;" and all history resolves
itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and
earnest persons.
Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under
his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down 25
with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper
in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street,
finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force
which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor
when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a 30
costly book has an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay
equipage, and seems to say like that, "Who are you, sir?"
Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his
faculties that they will come out and take possession. The
picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, ^5
but I am to settle its claim to praise. That popular fable
of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street,
12 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid
in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all
obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had
been insane owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes
5 so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot,
but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds
himself a true prince.
Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history
our imagination makes fools of us, plays us false. Kingdom
10 and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary
than private John and Edward in a small house and common
day's work: but the things of life are the same to both: the
sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to
Alfred and Scanderbeg and Gustavus? Suppose they were
15 virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends
on your private act to-day as followed their public and
renowned steps. When private men shall act with original
views, the luster will be transferred from the actions of kings
to those of gentlemen.
20 The world has indeed been instructed by its kings, who
have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught
by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due
from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have
everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great pro-
2S prietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his
own scale of men and things and reverse theirs, pay for
benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the
Law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they
obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and
30 comeliness, the right of every man.
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained
when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee?
What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance
may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that
35 science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable
elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and
impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear?
SELF-RELIANCE 13
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of
genius, the essence of virtue, and the essence of life, which
we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary
wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions.
In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot s
go, all things find their common origin. For the sense of
being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the
soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from
time, from man, but one with them and proceedeth obviously
from the same source whence their life and being also pro- 10
ceedeth. We first share the life by which things exist and
afterward see them as appearances in nature and forget
that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of
action and the fountain of thought. Here are the lungs
of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, of that inspira- 15
tion of man which cannot be denied without impiety and
atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which
makes us organs of its activity and receivers of its truth.
When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do
nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If 20
we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that
causes all metaphysics, all philosophy is at fault. Its
presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man
discerns between the voluntary acts of his mind and his in-
voluntary perceptions. And to his involuntary perceptions 25
he knows a perfect respect is due. He may err in the expres-
sion of them, but he knows that these things are so, like
day and night, not to be disputed. All my wilful actions
and acquisitions are but roving; the most trivial reverie,
the faintest native emotion, are domestic and divine. 30
Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of
perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily;
for they do not distinguish between perception and notion.
They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But
perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my 35
children will see it after me, and in course of time all
mankind, although it may chance that no one has seen it
14 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as
the sun.
The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure
that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be
5 that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one
thing, but all things; should fill the woild with his voice;
should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the center
of the present thought; and new date and new create the
whole. Whenever a mind is simple and receives a divine
10 wisdom, then old things pass away, means, teachers, texts,
temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into
the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation
to it, one thing as much as another. All things are dissolved
to their center by their cause, and in the universal miracle
1 5 petty and particular miracles disappear. This is and must
be. If therefore a man claims to know and speak of God
and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old
moldered nation in another country, in another world,
believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which
20 is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the
child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence
then this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators
against the sanity and majesty of the soul. Time and space
are but physiological colors which the eye maketh, but the
25 soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and
history is an impertinence and an injury if it be any thing
more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and
becoming.
Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he
30 dares not say " I think," " I am," but quotes some saint or
sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blow-
ing rose. These roses under my window make no reference
to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are;
they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them.
35 There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its
existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts;
in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless
SELF-RELIANCE 15
root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies
nature in all moments alike. There is no time to it. But
man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present,
but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the
riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the 5
future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives
with nature in the present, above time.
This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intel-
lects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the
phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or 10
Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few
texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by
rote the sentences of grandamcs and tutors, and, as they
grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance
to see, painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; 15
afterward, when they come into the point of view which
those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them
and are willing to let the words go; for at any time they can
use words as good when occasion comes. So was it with us,
so will it be, if we proceed. If we live truly, we shall see 20
truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is
for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception,
we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treas-
ures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice
shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle 25
of the corn.
And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains
unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the
far off remembering of the intuition: That thought, by
what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this: When 30
good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not
by any known or appointed way; you shall not discern Ihe
foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man;
you shall not hear any name; the way, the thought, the
good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude all 35
other being. You take the way from man, not to man. All
persons that ever existed are its fugitive ministers. There
16 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
shall be no fear in it. Fear and hope are alike beneath it.
It asks nothing. There is somewhat low even in hope. We
are then in vision. There is nothing that can be called grat-
itude, nor properly joy. The soul is raised over passion.
Sit seeth identity and eternal causation. It is a perceiving
that Truth and Right are. Hence it becomes a Tranquillity
out of the knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces
of nature; the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea; vast intervals
of time, years, centuries, are of no account. This which
10 1 think and feel underlay that former state of life and circum-
stances, as it does underlie my present and will always all
circumstances, and what is called life and what is called
death.
EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL l
JOHN RUSKIN
WHEN I was about four years old my father found himself
able to buy the lease of a house on Herne Hill, a rustic
eminence four miles south of the " Standard in Cornhill ";
of which the leafy seclusion remains, in all essential points
of character, unchanged to this day: certain Gothic splen- s
dours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours, being
the only serious innovations; and these are so graciously
concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the passing
viator remains unappalled by them; and I can still walk
up and down the piece of road between the Fox tavern and 10
the Herne Hill station, imagining myself four years old.
Our house was the northernmost of a group which stand
accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground
is for a small space level, as the snows are, (I understand),
on the dome of Mont Blanc; presently falling, however, 15
in what may be, in the London clay formation, considered
a precipitous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dul \vich)
on the east; and with a softer descent into Cold Harbor
lane on the west: on the south, no less beautifully declining
to the dale of the Effra, (doubtless shortened from Effrena, 20
signifying the " Unbridled " river; recently, I regret to say,
bricked over for the convenience of Mr. Biffin, chemist,
and others); while on the north, prolonged indeed with
slight depression some half mile or so, and receiving, in the
parish of Lambeth, the chivalric title of " Champion Hill," 25
it plunges down at last to efface itself in the plains of Peck-
ham, and the rural barbarism of Goose Green.
1 From ' rraeterita," 1885, Vol. I, Chapter II.
17
18 JOHN RUSKIN
The group, of which our house was the quarter, consisted
of two precisely similar partner-couples of houses, gardens
and all to match; still the two highest blocks of buildings
seen from Norwood on the crest of the ridge; so that the
5 house itself, three-storied, with garrets above, commanded,
in those comparatively smokeless days, a very notable view
from its garret windows, of the Norwood hills on one side,
and the winter sunrise over them; and of the valley of the
Thames on the other, with Windsor telescopically clear in
10 the distance, and Harrow, conspicuous always in fine weather
to open vision against the summer sunset. It had front
and back garden in sufficient proportion to its size; the front,
richly set with old evergreens, and well-grown lilac and
laburnum; the back, seventy yards long by twenty wide,
1 5 renowned over all the hill for its pears and apples, which
had been chosen with extreme care by our predecessor,
(shame on me to forget the name of a man to whom I owe
so much!) and possessing also a strong old mulberry tree,
a tall white-heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an
20 almost unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and
currant bush; decked, in due season, (for the ground was
wholly beneficent), with magical splendour of abundant
fruit: fresh green, soft amber, and rough-bristled crimson
bending the spinous branches; clustered pearl and pendent
25 ruby joyfully discoverable under the large leaves that looked
like vine.
The differences of primal importance which I observed
between the nature of this garden, and that of Eden, as I had
imagined it, were, that, in this one, all the fruit was forbidden ;
30 and there were no companionable beasts: in other respects
the little domain answered every purpose of paradise to me;
and the climate, in that cycle of our years, allowed me to
pass most of my life in it. My mother never gave me more
to learn than she knew I could easily get learnt, if I set
35 myself honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. She never
allowed anything to disturb me when my task was set; if
it was not said rightly by twelve o'clock, I was kept in till
EARLY EDUCATION AT IIERNE HILL 19
I knew it, and in general, even when Latin Grammar came
to supplement the Psalms, I was my own master for at least
an hour before half-past one dinner, and for the rest of the
afternoon.
My mother, herself finding her chief personal pleasure in 5
her flowers, was often planting or pruning beside me, at
least if I chose to stay beside her. I never thought of doing
anything behind her back which I would not have done before
her face; and her presence was therefore no restraint to me;
but, also, no particular pleasure, for, from having always I0
been left so much alone, I had generally my own little
affairs to see after; and, on the whole, by the time I was
seven years old, was already getting too independent,
mentally, even of my father and mother; and, having nobody
else to be dependent upon, began to lead a very small, I5
perky, contented, conceited, Cock-Robinson-Crusoe sort
of life, in the central point which it appeared to me, (as it
must naturally appear to geometrical animals), that I
occupied in the universe.
This was partly the fault of my father's modesty; and 20
partly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my
mother's judgment as to such matters than in his own, that
he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the
conduct of my education; on the other hand, in the fixed
purpose of making an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with the 25
superfinest of manners, and access to the highest circles of
fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, where I
entirely loved my aunt, and young baker-cousins, became
rarer and more rare: the society of our neighbours on the hill
could not be had without breaking up our regular and sweetly ,
selfish manner of living; and on the whole, I had nothing
animate to care for, in a childish way, but myself, some
nests of ants, which the gardener would never leave undis-
turbed for me, and a sociable bird or two; though I never
had the sense or perseverance to make one really tame. 35
But that was partly because, if ever I managed to bring
one to be the least trustful of me, the cats got it.
20 JOHN RUSKIN
Under these circumstances, what powers of imagination
I possessed, either fastened themselves on inanimate things,
the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, observable within the walls
of Eden, or caught at any opportunity of flight into
5 regions of romance, compatible with the objective realities
of existence in the nineteenth century, within a mile and a
quarter of Camberwell Green.
Herein my father, happily, though with no definite
intention other than of pleasing me, when he found he could
10 do so without infringing any of my mother's rules, became
my guide. I was particularly fond of watching him shave;
and was always allowed to come into his room in the morning
(under the one in which I am now writing), to be the motion-
less witness of that operation. Over his dressing-table
15 hung one of his own water-colour drawings, made under the
teaching of the elder Nasmyth; I believe, at the High
School of Edinburgh. It was done in the early manner of
tinting, which, just about the time when my father was at
the High School, Dr. Munro was teaching Turner; namely,
20 in gray under-tints of Prussian blue and British ink, washed
with warm colour afterwards on the lights. It represented
Conway Castle, with its Frith, and, in the foreground, a
cottage, a fisherman, and a boat at the water's edge.
When my father had finished shaving, he always told me a
25 story about this picture. The custom began without any
initial purpose of his, in consequence of my troublesome
curiosity whether the fisherman lived in the cottage, and where
he was going to in the boat. It being settled, for peace'
sake, that he did live in the cottage, and was going in the
3 o boat to fish near the castle, the plot of the drama afterwards
gradually thickened; and became, I believe, involved with
that of the tragedy of Douglas, and of the Castle Specter,
in both of which pieces my father had performed in private
theatricals, before my mother, and a select Edinburgh
35 audience, when he was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave
twenty, a model housekeeper, and very scornful and
religiously suspicious of theatricals. But she was never
EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL 21
weary of telling me, in later years, how beautiful my father
looked in his Highland dress, with the high black feathers.
In the afternoons, when my father returned (always
punctually) from his business, he dined, at half-past four,
in the front parlour, my mother sitting beside him to hear the 5
events of the day, and give counsel and encouragement with
respect to the same; chiefly the last, for my father was apt
to be vexed if orders for sherry fell the least short of their
due standard, even for a day or two. I was never present
at this time, however, and only avouch what I relate by 10
hearsay and probable conjecture; for between four and
six it would have been a grave misdemeanour in me if I so
much as approached the parlour door. After that, in summer
time, we were all in the garden as long as the day lasted;
tea under the white-heart cherry tree; or in winter and 15
rough weather, at six o'clock in the drawing-room, I
having my cup of milk, and slice of bread-and-butter, in a
little recess, with a table in front of it, wholly sacred to me;
and in which I remained in the evenings as an Idol in a niche,
while my mother knitted, and my father read to her, and 20
to me, so far as I chose to listen.
The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing towards
its close, was still the chief source of delight in all house-
holds caring for literature; and I can no more recollect the
time when I did not know them than when I did not know the 25
Bible; but I have still a vivid remembrance of my father's
intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw
down Count Robert of Paris, after reading three or four
pages; and knew that the life of Scott was ended: the
scorn being a very complex and bitter feeling in him, 30
partly, indeed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches
who were tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and
not a little, deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had
essentially caused the ruin. My father never could forgive
Scott his concealment of the Ballantyne partnership. 35
Such being the salutary pleasures of Herne Hill, I have
next with deeper gratitude to chronicle what I owe to my
22 JOHN RUSKIN
mother for the resolutely consistent lessons which so exercised
me in the Scriptures as to make every word of them familiar
to my ear in habitual music, yet in that familiarity rever-
enced, as transcending all thought, and ordaining all con-
5 duct.
This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal
authority; but simply by compelling me to read the book
thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with
fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which
10 never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate
verses with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my
voice, and correcting the false ones, till she made me under-
stand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetic-
ally. It might be beyond me altogether; that she did not
15 care about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of
it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end.
In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and
went straight through, to the last verse of the Apocalypse;
hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all; and began
20 again at Genesis the next day. If a name was hard, the
better the exercise in pronunciation, if the chapter was
tiresome, the better lesson in patience, if loathsome, the
better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being
so outspoken. After our chapters, (from two to three a day,
25 according to their length, the first thing after breakfast,
and no interruption from servants allowed, none from
visitors, who either joined in the reading or had to stay
upstairs, and none from any visitings or excursions, except
real travelling), I had to learn a few verses by heart, or
30 repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what
was already known; and, with the chapters thus gradually
possessed from the first word to the last, I had to learn the
whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which
are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which,
35 together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of
my ear in sound.
It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my
EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL 23
mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn,
and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive the
ngth Psalm has now become of all the most precious to
me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the
Law of God, in opposition to the abuse of it by modern 5
preachers of what they imagine to be His gospel.
But it is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long
morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, toil on both
sides equal, by which, year after year, my mother forced
me to learn these paraphrases, and chapters, (the eighth of 10
ist Kings being one try it, good reader, in a leisure hour!)
allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced;
while every sentence was required to be said over and over
again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect
a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the 15
accent of the " of " in the lines
" Shall any following spring revive
The ashes of the urn? "
I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true
instinct for rhythm, (being wholly careless on the subject 20
both of urns and their contents) , on reciting it with an accented
of. It was not, I say, till after three weeks' labor, that my
mother got the accent lightened on the " of " and laid on the
" ashes," to her mind. But had it taken three years she
would have done it, having once undertaken to do it. And, 25
assuredly, had she not done it, well, there's no knowing
what would have happened; but I'm very thankful she did.
I have just opened my oldest (in use) Bible, a small,
closely, and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in
Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers 30
to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow,
now, with age, and flexible, but not unclean, with much use,
except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of ist
Kings, and 32d Deuteronomy, are worn somewhat thin and
dark, the learning of these two chapters having cost me 35
much pains. My mother's list of the chapters with which,
24 JOHN KUSKIN
thus learned, she established my soul in life, has just fallen
out of it. I will take what indulgence the incurious reader
can give me, for printing the list thus accidentally occurrent:
Exodus, chapters isth and soth.
5 2 Samuel, ist, from i7th verse to end.
i Kings, 8th.
Psalms, ssd, 32d, goth, gist, iO3d, nath, ngth,
Proverbs, 2d, 3d, 8th, I2th.
Isaiah, 58th.
10 Matthew, 5th, 6th, yth.
Acts, 26th.
i Corinthians, i3th, isth.
James, 4th.
Revelation, 5th, 6th.
15 And, truly, though I have picked up the elements of a
little further knowledge in mathematics, meteorology,
and the like, in after life, and owe not a little to the teach-
ing of many people, this maternal installation of my mind in
that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most
20 precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my
education.
And it is perhaps already time to mark what advantage
and mischief, by the chances of life up to seven years old,
had been irrevocably determined for me.
25 I will first count my blessings (as a not unwise friend once
recommended me to do, continually; whereas I have a bad
trick of always numbering the thorns in my fingers and not
the bones in them).
And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had
30 been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act,
and word.
I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once
raised in any question with each other; nor seen an angry,
or even slightly hurt or offended, glance in the eyes of either.
35 I had never heard a servant scolded; nor even suddenly,
passionately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had never
seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter;
EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL 25
nor anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone
in due time. I had no conception of such a feeling -as
anxiety; my father's occasional vexation in the afternoons,
when he had only got an order for twelve butts after expect-
ing one for fifteen, as I have just stated, was never man- 5
ifested to me; and itself related only to the question whether
his name would be a step higher or lower in the year's list
of sherry exporters; for he never spent more than half his
income, and therefore found himself little incommoded by
occasional variations in the total of it. I had never done 10
any wrong that I knew of beyond occasionally delaying
the commitment to heart of some improving sentence, that
I might watch a wasp on the window pane, or a bird in the
cherry tree; and I had never seen any grief.
Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received 15
the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and
Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother,
simply as a ship her helm ; not only without idea of resistance,
but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and
force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action 20
as the law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith
was soon complete: nothing ever threatened me that was
not inflicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true.
Peace, obedience, faith; these three for chief good; next
to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind 25
on which I will not further enlarge at this moment, this
being the main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini
to say of me, in conversation authentically reported, a year
or two before his death, that I had " the most analytic mind
in Europe." An opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted 30
with Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur.
Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily
senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comfits,
or, except in carefulest restriction, fruit; and by fine prepara-
tion of what food was given me. Such I esteem the main 35
blessings of my childhood; next, let me count the equally
dominant calamities.
26 JOHN RUSKIN
First, that I had nothing to love.
My parents were in a sort visible powers of nature to
me, no more loved than the sun and the moon: only I should
have been annoyed and puzzled if either of them had gone
5 out; (how much, now, when both are darkened!) still
less did I love God; not that I had any quarrel with Him,
or fear of Him; but simply found what people told me was
His service, disagreeable; and what people told me was His
book, not entertaining. I had no companions to quarrel
10 with, neither; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank.
Not a servant was ever allowed to do anything for me, but
what it was their duty to do; and why should I have been
grateful to the cook for cooking, or the gardener for garden-
ing, when the one dared not give me a baked potato with-
15 out asking leave, and the other would not let my ants' nests
alone, because they made the walks untidy? The evil con-
sequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps
have been expected, that I grew up selfish or unaffectionate ;
but that, when affection did come, it came with violence
20 utterly rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who
never before had anything to manage.
For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to endure.
Danger or pain of any kind I knew not: my strength was
never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage
25 never fortified. Not that I was ever afraid of anything,
either ghosts, thunder, or beasts; and one of the nearest
approaches to insubordination which I was ever tempted
into as a child, was in passionate effort to get leave to play
with the lion's cubs in Wombwell's menagerie.
30 Thirdly, I was taught no precision nor etiquette of man-
ners; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I remained
unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shyness:
but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew conscious
of the rudeness arising from the want of social discipline,
35 and found it impossible to acquire, jn advanced life, dexterity
in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accomplishment,
or ease and tact in ordinary behaviour.
EARLY EDUCATION AT HERNE HILL 27
Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and
wrong, and powers of independent action, were left entirely
undeveloped; because the bridle and blinkers were never
taken off me. Children should have their times of being off
duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, 5
is certain, the little creature should be very early put for
periods of practice in complete command of itself; set on
the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by
its own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over
my youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, 10
unable for some time to do more than drift with its vortices.
My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenor of
my education at that time, must be, that it was at once too
formal and too luxurious; leaving my character, at the most
important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, 15
but not disciplined; and only by protection innocent,
instead of by practice virtuous.
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 1
JOHN STUART MILL
FROM the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and
especially from the commencement of the Westminster
Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life;
to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own
5 happiness was entirely identified with this object. The
personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow
labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as
many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and
permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole
10 reliance was placed on this; and I was accustomed to
felicitate myself on the certainty of a happy life which I
enjoyed, through placing my happiness in something durable
and distant, in which some progress might be always making,
while it could never be exhausted by complete attainment.
15 This did very well for several years, during which the general
improvement going on in the world and the idea of myself
as engaged with others in struggling to promote it, seemed
enough to fill up an interesting and animated existence.
But the time came when I awakened from this as from a
20 dream. It was in the autumn of 1826. I was in a dull
state of nerves, such as everybody is occasionally liable to;
unsusceptible to enjoyment or pleasurable excitement;
one of those moods when what is pleasure at other times,
becomes insipid or indifferent; the state, I should think,
25 in which converts to Methodism usually are, when smitten
by their first "' conviction of sin." In this frame of mind it
occurred to me to put the question directly to myself:
1 From Chapter V of the Autobiography, 1874.
28
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 29
" Suppose that all your objects in life were realised; that all
the changes in institutions and opinions which you are
looking forward to, could be completely effected at this
very instant : would this be a great joy and happiness to you?"
And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, 5
"No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole founda-
tion on which my life was constructed fell down. All my
happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit
of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could
there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to 10
have nothing left to live for.
At first I hoped that the cloud would pass away of itself;
but it did not. A night's sleep, the sovereign remedy for
the smaller vexations of life, had no effect on it. I awoke
to a renewed consciousness of the woful fact. I carried it 15
with me into all companies, into all occupations. Hardly
anything had power to cause me even a few minutes' oblivion
of it. For some months the cloud seemed to grow thicker
and thicker. The lines in Coleridge's " Dejection " I was
not then acquainted with them exactly describe my case: 20
" A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief
In word, or sigh, or tear."
In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those 25
memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had
always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them
now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus
all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of
mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn 30
itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others 1 of
what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make
confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in
the condition I was. I felt, too, that mine was not an inter-
esting, or in any way respectable distress. There was 35
nothing in it to attract sympathy. Advice, if I had known
30 JOHN STUART MILL
where to seek it, would have been most precious. The
words of Macbeth to the physician often occurred to my
thoughts. But there was no one on whom I could build
the faintest hope of such assistance. My father, to whom
5 it would have been natural to me to have recourse in any
practical difficulties, was the last person to whom, in such
a case as this, I looked for help. Everything convinced
me that he had no knowledge of any such mental state as
I was suffering from, and that even if he could be made
10 to understand it, he was not the physician who could heal
it. My education, which was wholly his work, had been
conducted without any regard to the possibility of its end-
ing in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain
of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was
1 5 probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power
of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none
to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible.
It was, however, abundantly intelligible to myself; and the
more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.
20 My course of study had led me to believe, that all mental
and moral feelings and qualities, whether of a good or of a
bad kind, were the results of association; that we love one
thing, and hate another, take pleasure in one sort of action
or contemplation, and pain in another sort, through the
25 clinging of pleasurable or painful ideas to those things,
from the effect of education or of experience. As a corollary
from this, I had always heard it maintained by my father,
and was myself convinced, that the object of education
should be to form the strongest possible associations of the
30 salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things benefi-
cial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful
to it. This doctrine appeared inexpugnable; but it now
seemed to me, on retrospect, that my teachers had occupied
themselves but superficially with the means of forming
35 and keeping up these salutary associations. They seemed
to have trusted altogether to the old familiar instruments,
praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, I did not
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 31
doubt that by these means, begun early, and applied unre-
mittingly, intense associations of pain and pleasure, espe-
cially of pain, might be created, and might produce desires
and aversions capable of lasting undiminished to the end of
life. But there must always be something artificial and 5
casual in associations thus produced. The pains and pleas-
ures thus forcibly associated with things, are not connected
with them by any natural tie; and it is therefore, I thought,
essential to the durability of these associations, that they
should have become so intense and inveterate as to beio
practically indissoluble, before the habitual exercise of the
power of analysis had commenced. For I now saw, or
thought I saw, what I had always before received with
incredulity that the habit of analysis has a tendency to
wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other 15
mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains
without its natural complements and correctives. The very
excellence of analysis (I argued) is that it tends to weaken
and undermine whatever is the result of prejudice; that it
enables us mentally to separate ideas which have only casually 20
clung together: and no associations whatever could ultimately
resist this dissolving force, were it not that we owe to analysis
our clearest knowledge of the permanent sequences in nature;
the real connections between Things, not dependent on our
will and feelings; natural laws, by virtue of which, in many 25
cases, one thing is inseparable from another in fact; which
laws, in proportion as they are clearly perceived and imagin-
atively realised, cause our ideas of things which are always
joined together in Nature, to cohere more and more closely
in our thoughts. Analytic habits may thus even strengthen ^
the associations between causes and effects, means and ends,
but tend altogether to weaken those which are, to speak
familiarly, a mere matter of feeling. They are therefore
(I thought) favourable to prudence and clear-sightedness,
but a perpetual worm at the root both of the passions and 3 -
of the virtues; and, above all, fearfully undermine all
desires, and all pleasures, which are the effects of associa-
32 JOHN STUART MILL
tion, that is, according to the theory I held, all except the
purely physical and organic; of the entire insufficiency of
which to make life desirable, no one had a stronger con-
viction than I had. These were the laws of human nature,
5 by which, as it seemed to me, I had been brought to my
present state. All those to whom I looked up, were of
opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings,
and the feelings which made the good of others, and espe-
cially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence,
10 were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the
truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling
would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feel-
ing. My education, I thought, had failed to create these
feelings in sufficient strength to resist the dissolving influence
15 of analysis, while the whole course of my intellectual cultiva-
tion had made precocious and premature analysis the
inveterate habit of my mind. I was thus, as I said to myself,
left stranded at the commencement of my voyage, with a
well-equipped ship and a rudder, but no sail; without any
20 real desire for the ends which I had been so carefully fitted
out to work for: no delight in virtue, or the general good,
but also just as little in anything else. The fountains of
vanity and ambition seemed to have dried up within me,
as completely as those of benevolence. I had had (as I
25 reflected) some gratification of vanity at too early an age:
I had obtained some distinction, and felt myself of some
importance, before the desire of distinction and of import-
ance had grown into a passion: and little as it was which I
had attained, yet having been attained too early, like all
30 pleasures enjoyed too soon, it had made me blase and indif-
ferent to the pursuit. Thus neither selfish nor unselfish
pleasures were pleasures to me. And there seemed no
power in nature sufficient to begin the formation of my
character anew, and create in a mind now irretrievably
35 analytic, fresh associations of pleasure with any of the
objects of human desire.
These were the thoughts which mingled with the dry
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 33
heavy dejection of the melancholy winter of 1826-7. Dur-
ing this time I was not incapable of my usual occupations.
I went on with them mechanically, by the mere force of
habit. I had been so drilled in a certain sort of mental
exercise, that I could still carry it on when all the spirit 5
had gone out of it. I even composed and spoke several
speeches at the debating society, how, or with what degree
of success, I know not. Of four years' continual speaking
at that society, this is the only year of which I remember
next to nothing. Two lines of Coleridge, in whom alone 10
of all writers I have found a true description of what I felt,
were often in my thoughts, not at this time (for I had never
read them), but in a later period of the same mental malady:
" Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live." 15
In all probability my case was by no means so peculiar as I
fancied it, and I doubt not that many others have passed
through a similar state; but the idiosyncrasies of my educa-
tion had given to the general phenomenon a special char-
acter, which made it seem the natural effect of causes that 20
it was hardly possible for time to remove. I frequently
asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when
life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered
to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it
beyond a year. When, however, not more than half that 25
duration of time had clasped, a small ray of light broke in
upon my gloom. I was reading, accidentally, Marmontel's
" Memoires," and came to the passage which relates his
father's death, the distressed position of the family, and the
sudden inspiration by which he, then a mere boy, felt and 30
made them feel that he would be everything to them 1
would supply the place of all that they had lost. A vivid
conception of the scene and its feelings came over me, and
I was moved to tears. From this moment my burden grew
lighter. The oppression of the thought that all feeling 35
was dead within me, was gone. I was no longer hopeless:
34 JOHN STUART MILL
I was not a stock or a stone. I had still, it seemed, some of
the material out of which all worth of character, and all
capacity for happiness, are made. Relieved from my ever
present sense of irremediable wretchedness, I gradually
S found that the ordinary incidents of life could again give
me some pleasure; that I could again find enjoyment,
not intense, but sufficient for cheerfulness, in sunshine
and sky, in books, in conversation, in public affairs; and
that there was, once more, excitement, though of a moderate
10 kind, in exerting myself for my opinions, and for the public
good. Thus the cloud gradually drew off, and I again
enjoyed life: and though I had several relapses, some of
which lasted many months, I never again was as miserable
as I had been.
15 The experiences of this period had two very marked
effects on my opinions and character. In the first place,
they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on
which I had before acted, and having much in common
with what at that time I certainly had never heard of,
20 the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle. I never,
indeed, wavered in the conviction that happiness is the
test of all rules of conduct, and the end of life. But I now
thought that this end was only to be attained by not making
it the direct end. Those only are happy (I thought) who
25 have their minds fixed on some object other than their own
happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement
of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a
means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something
else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of
30 life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a
pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without
being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they
are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a
scrutinising examination. Ask yourself whether you are
35 happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat,
not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose
of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 35
self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if
otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale hap-
piness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or
thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagina-
tion, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning. This 5
theory now became the basis of my philosophy of life. And
I still hold to it as the best theory for all those who have
but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for
enjoyment, that is, for the great majority of mankind.
The other important change which my opinions at this 10
time underwent, was that I, for the first time, gave its proper
place, among the prime necessities of human well-being,
to the internal culture of the individual. I ceased to attach
almost exclusive importance to the ordering of outward
circumstances, and the training of the human being for 15
speculation and for action.
I had now learnt by experience that the passive suscept-
ibilities needed to be cultivated as well as the active capac-
ities, and required to be nourished and enriched as well as
guided. I did not, for an instant, lose sight of, or under- 20
value, that part of the truth which I had seen before; I
never turned recreant to intellectual culture, or ceased to
consider the power and practice of analysis as an essential
condition both of individual and of social improvement.
But I thought that it had consequences which required to 25
be corrected, by joining other kinds of cultivation with it.
The maintenance of a due balance among the faculties,
now seemed to me of primary importance. The cultiva-
tion of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my
ethical and philosophical creed. And my thoughts and 30
inclinations turned in an increasing degree towards what-
ever seemed capable of being instrumental to that object.
I now began to find meaning in the things which I had read
or heard about the importance of poetry and art as instru-
ments of human culture. But it was some time longer before 35
I began to know this by personal experience. The only
one of the imaginative arts in which I had from childhood
36 JOHN STUART MILL
taken great pleasure, was music; the best effect of which
(and in this it surpasses perhaps every other art) consists
in exciting enthusiasm; in winding up to a high pitch those
feelings of an elevated kind which are already in the char-
5 acter, but to which this excitement gives a glow and a fervour,
which, though transitory at its utmost height, is precious
for sustaining them at other times. This effect of music I
had often experienced; but like all my pleasurable sus-
ceptibilities it was suspended during the gloomy period.
10 1 had sought relief again and again from this quarter, but
found none. After the tide had turned, and I was in proc-
ess of recovery, I had been helped forward by music, but
in a much less elevated manner. I at this time first became
acquainted with Weber's Oberon, and the extreme pleasure
15 which I drew from its delicious melodies did me good, by
showing me a source of pleasure to which I was as susceptible
as ever. The good, however, was much impaired by the
thought, that the pleasure of music (as is quite true of such
pleasure as this was, that of mere tune) fades with familiarity,
20 and requires either to be revived by intermittence, or fed
by continual novelty. And it is very characteristic both
of my then state, and of the general tone of my mind at this
period of my life, that I was seriously tormented by the
thought of the exhaustibility of musical combinations. The
25 octave consists only of five tones and two semi-tones, which
can be put together in only a limited number of ways, of
which but a small proportion are beautiful: most of these,
it seemed to me, must have been already discovered, and
there could not be room for a long succession of Mozarts
30 and Webers, to strike out, as these had done, entirely new
and surpassingly rich veins of musical beauty. This source
of anxiety may, perhaps, be thought to resemble that of the
philosophers of Laputa, who feared lest the sun should be
burnt out. It was, however, connected with the best
35 feature in my character, and the only good point to be
found in my very unromantic and in no way honourable
distress. For though my dejection, honestly looked at,
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 37
could not be called other than egotistical, produced by the
ruin, as I thought, of my fabric of happiness, yet the destiny
of mankind in general was ever in my thoughts, and could
not be separated from my own. I felt that the flaw in my
life, must be a flaw in life itself; that the question was, 5
whether, if the reformers of society and government could
succeed in their objects, and every person in the community
were free and in a state of physical comfort, the pleasures
of life, being no longer kept up by struggle and privation,
would cease to be pleasures. And I felt that unless I could 10
see my way to some better hope than this for human happiness
in general my dejection must continue; but that if I could
see such an outlet, I should then look on the world with
pleasure; content as far as I was myself concerned, with
any fair share of the general lot. 15
This state of my thoughts and feelings made the fact of
my reading Wordsworth for the first time (in the autumn
of 1828), an important event in my life. I took up the col-
lection of his poems from curiosity, with no expectation of
mental relief from it, though I had before resorted to poetry 20
with that hope. In the worst period of my depression, I
had read through the whole of Byron (then new to me),
to try whether a poet, whose peculiar department was
supposed to be that of the intenser feelings, could rouse
any feeling in me. As might be expected, I got no good 25
from this reading, but the reverse. The poet's state of
mind was too like my own. His was the lament of a man
who had worn out all pleasures, and who seemed to think
that life, to all who possess the good things of it, must nec-
essarily be the vapid, uninteresting thing which I found it. 30
His Harold and Manfred had the same burden on them
which I had; and I was not in a frame of mind to desire
any comfort from the vehement sensual passion of his Giaours,
or the sullenness of his Laras. But while Byron was exactly
what did not suit my condition, Wordsworth was exactly 35
what did. I had looked into the Excursion two or three
years before, and found little in it; and I should probably
38 JOHN STUART MILL
have found as little, had I read it at this time. But the
miscellaneous poems, in the two-volume edition of 1815
(to which little of value was added in the latter part of the
author's life), proved to be the precise thing for my mental
5 wants at that particular juncture.
In the first place, these poems addressed themselves
powerfully to one of the strongest of my pleasurable sus-
ceptibilities, the love of rural objects and natural scenery;
to which I had been indebted not only for much of the pleas-
ioure of my life, but quite recently for relief from one of my
longest relapses into depression. In this power of rural
beauty over me, there was a foundation laid for taking
pleasure in Wordsworth's poetry; the more so, as his scenery
lies mostly among mountains, which, owing to my early
isPyrenean excursion, were my ideal of natural beauty. But
Wordsworth would never have had any great effect on me,
if he had merely placed before me beautiful pictures of
natural scenery. Scott does this still better than Words-
worth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more
20 effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's
poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they
expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling,
and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of
beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feel-
25 ings which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw
from a source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative
pleasures, which could be shared in by all human beings;
which had no connection with struggle or imperfection, but
would be made richer by every improvement in the physical
30 or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to
learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness,
when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed.
And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under
their influence. There have certainly been, even in our
35 own age, greater poets than Wordsworth; but poetry of
deeper and loftier feeling could not have done for me at
that time what his did. I needed to be made to feel that
A CRISIS IN MY MENTAL HISTORY 39
there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contempla-
tion. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turn-
ing away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the
common feelings and common destiny of human beings. And
the delight which these poems gave me, proved that with cul- 5
ture of this sort, there was nothing to dread from the most
confirmed habit of analysis. At the conclusion of the Poems
came the famous Ode, falsely called Platonic, " Intimations of
Immortality :" in which, along with more than his usual sweet-
ness of melody and rhythm, and along with the two passages 10
of grand imagery but bad philosophy so often quoted, I
found that he too had had similar experience to mine; that
he also had felt that the first freshness of youthful enjoyment
of life was not lasting; but that he had sought for compensa-
tion, and found it, in the way in which he was now teaching 15
me to find it. The result was that I gradually, but com-
pletely, emerged from my habitual depression, and was
never again subject to it. I long continued to value Words-
worth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the
measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the 20
greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical
natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But
unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic
cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more
fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets 25
than he.
OLD CHINA 1
CHARLES LAMB
I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. When
I go to see any great house, I inquire for the china-closet,
and next for the picture-gallery. I cannot defend the order
of preference, but by saying that we have all some taste
5 or other, of too ancient a date to admit of our remembering
distinctly that it was an acquired one. I can call to mind
the first play, and the first exhibition, that I was taken to;
but I am not conscious of a time when china jars and saucers
were introduced into my imagination.
10 I had no repugnance then why should I now have?
to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured grotesques, that,
under the notion of men and women, float about, uncir-
cumscribed by any element in that w r orld before perspec-
tive a china tea-cup.
15 I like to see my old friends, whom distance cannot diminish,
figuring up in the air (so they appear to our optics), yet on
terra firma still for so we must in courtesy interpret that
speck of deeper blue, w y hich the decorous artist, to prevent
absurdity, had made to spring up beneath their sandals.
20 I love the men with women's faces, and women, if pos-
sible, with still more womanish expressions.
Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea to
a lady from a salver two miles off. See how distance
seems to set off respect! And here the same lady, or another
25 for likeness is identity on tea-cups is stepping into a
little fairy boat, moored on the hither side of this calm
garden river, with a dainty mincing foot, which in a right
1 From " Last Essays of Elia," 1833.
40
OLD CHINA 41
angle of incidence (as angles go in our world) must infallibly
land her in the midst of a flowery mead a furlong off on the
other side of the same strange stream!
Further on if far or near can be predicated of their world
see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the hays. 1 5
Here a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive so
objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere of fine
Cathay.
I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over our
Hyson (which we are old-fashioned enough to drink unmixed 10
still of an afternoon), some of these speciosa miracula? upon
a set of extraordinary old blue china (a recent purchase)
which we were now for the first time using; and could not
help remarking, how favourable circumstances had been to us
of late years, that we could afford to please the eye some- 15
times with trifles of this sort when a passing sentiment
seemed to overshade the brows of my companion. I am
quick at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget.
" I wish the good old times would come again," she
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not mean 20
that I want to be poor; but there was a middle state,"-
so she was pleased to ramble on," in which I am sure we
were a great deal happier. A purchase is but a purchase,
now that you have money enough and to spare. Formerly
it used to be a triumph. When we coveted a cheap luxury 25
(and, oh ! how much ado I had to get you to consent in those
times!) we were used to have a debate two or three days
before, and to weigh the for and against, and think what we
might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit upon,
that should be an equivalent. A thing was worth buying 30
then, when we felt the money that we paid for it.
" Do you remember the brown suit, which you made v to
hang upon you, till your friends cried shame upon you, it
grew so threadbare and all because of that folio Beaumont
and Fletcher, which you dragged home late at night from 35
1 The hays: an old English dance.
2 Speciosa miracula: beautiful marvels.
42 CHARLES LAMB
Barker's in Covent-garden? Do you remember how we
eyed it for weeks before we could make up our minds to
the purchase, and had not come to a determination till
it was near ten o'clock of the Saturday night, when you set
5 off from Islington, fearing you should be too late and
when the old bookseller with some grumbling opened his
shop, and by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bed-
ward) lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures and
when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as cumber-
10 some and when you presented it to me and when we
were exploring the perfectness of it (collating you called it)
and while I was repairing some of the loose leaves with
paste, which your impatience would not suffer to be left till
daybreak was there no pleasure in being a poor man?
15 or can those neat black clothes which you wear now, and
are so careful to keep brushed, since we have become rich
and finical, give you half the honest vanity with which you
flaunted it about in that overworn suit your old corbeau
for four or five weeks longer than you should have done,
20 to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen or
sixteen shillings was it? a great affair we thought it then
which you had lavished on the old folio. Now you can
afford to buy any book that pleases you, but I do not see
that you ever bring me home any nice old purchases now.
25 " When you came home with twenty apologies for laying
out a less number of shillings upon that print after Lionardo
which we christened the 'Lady Blanch'; when you looked
at the purchase, and thought of the money and thought
of the money, and looked again at the picture was there
30 no pleasure in being a poor man? Now, you have nothing
to do but to walk into Colnaghi's, and buy a wilderness of
Lionardos. Yet do you?
" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield,
and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a holiday
35 holidays and all other fun are gone now we are rich and
the little handbasket in which I used to deposit our day's
fare of savory cold lamb and salad and how you would
OLD CHINA 43
pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we
might go in and produce our store only paying for the ale
that you must call for and speculate upon the looks of
the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a
tablecloth and wish for such another honest hostess as s
Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant
banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing and sometimes
they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they
would look grudgingly upon us but we had cheerful looks
still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, 10
scarcely grudging Piscator 1 his Trout Hall? Now, when
we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom, moreover,
we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn, and order
the best of dinners, never debating the expense, which, after
all, never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 15
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a pre-
carious welcome.
" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in
the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit,
when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of 20
Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in
the Wood when we squeezed out our shilling apiece to sit
three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery
where you felt all the time that you ought not to have
brought me and more strongly I felt obligation to you 25
for having brought me and the pleasure was the better
for a little shame and when the curtain drew up, what
cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it
where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind
in Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used 30
to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying
a play socially; that the relish of such exhibitions mustvbe
in proportion to the infrequency of going; that the company
we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were
obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was .35
1 Piscator: The Angler the author's spokesman in Walton's " The
Complete Angler."
44 CHARLES LAMB
going on on the stage, because a word lost would have been a
chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. With
such reflections we consoled our pride then, and I appeal
to you whether, as a woman, I met generally with less atten-
5 tion and accommodation than I have done since in more
expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and
the crowding up those inconvenient staircases, was bad
enough, but there was still a law of civility to woman
recognised to quite as great an extent as we ever found in
10 the other passages and how a little difficulty overcome
heightened the snug seat, and the play, afterward! Now
we can only pay our money, and walk in. You cannot see,
you say, in the galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard
too, well enough then but sight, and all, I think, is gone
15 with our poverty.
" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before they
became quite common in the first dish of peas, while they
were yet dear to have them for a nice supper, a treat.
What treat can we have now? If we were to treat ourselves
20 now that is, to have dainties a little above our means,
it would be selfish and wicked. It is the very little more
that we allow ourselves beyond what the actual poor can get
at, that makes what I call a treat when two people living
together, as we have done, now and then indulge themselves
25 in a cheap luxury, which both like; while each apologises,
and is willing to take both halves of the blame to his single
share. I see no harm in people making much of themselves in
that sense of the word. It may give them a hint how to
make much of others. But now what I mean by the word
30 we never do make much of ourselves. None but the poor
can do it. I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons
as we were, just above poverty.
" I know what you were going to say, that it is mighty
pleasant at the end of the year to make all meet, and
35 much ado we used to have every Thirty-first Night of Dec-
ember to account for our exceedings many a long face
did you make over your puzzled accounts, and in contriving
OLD CHINA 45
to make it out how we had spent so much or that we had
not spent so much or that it was impossible we should
spend so much next year and still we found our slender
capital decreasing but then, betwixt ways, and projects,
and compromises of one sort or another and talk of curtail- 5
ing this charge, and doing without that for the future and
the hope that youth brings, and laughing spirits (in which
you were never poor till now), we pocketed up our loss, and
in conclusion, with ' lusty brimmers ' (as you used to quote
it out of hearty, cliccrful Mr. Cotton, 1 as you called him), 10
we used to welcome in the ' coming guest.' Now we have
no reckoning at all at the end of the old year; no flattering
promises about the new year doing better for us."
Bridget is so sparing of her speech, on most occasions,
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 15
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling at
the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination had
conjured up out of a clear income of poor hundred
pounds a year. " It is true we were happier when we were
poorer, but we were also younger, my cousin. I am afraid 20
we must put up with the excess, for if we were to shake the
superflux into the sea, we should not much mend ourselves.
That we had much to struggle with, as we grew up together,
we have reason to be most thankful. It strengthened and
knit our compact closer. We could never have been what 25
we have been to each other, if we had always had the suf-
ficiency which you now complain of. The resisting power,
those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, which circum-
stances can not straiten with us are long since passed
away. Competence to age is supplementary youth, a sorry 30
supplement indeed, but I fear the best that is to be had.
We must ride where we formerly walked: live better and
lie softer and shall be wise to do so than we had means
to do in those good old clays you speak of. Yet could those
days return, could you and I once more walk our thirty 35
miles a day, could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again be young,
1 Charles Cotton, a humorist of the seventeenth century.
46 CHARLES LAMB
and you and I be young to see them, could the good old one
shilling gallery days return they are dreams, my cousin,
now, but could you and I at this moment, instead of this
quiet argument, by our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on
5 this luxurious sofa be once more struggling up those incon-
venient staircases, pushed about and squeezed, and elbowed
by the poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers could I
once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, and the
delicious Thank God, we are safe, which always followed, when
10 the topmost stair, conquered, let in the first light of the whole
cheerful theatre down beneath us I know not the fathom
line that ever touched a descent so deep as I would be willing
to bury more wealth in than Croesus had, or the great
Jew R is supposed to have, to purchase it. And now
15 do just look at that merry little Chinese waiter holding an
umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of
that pretty insipid half-Madonna-ish chit of a lady in
that very blue summer-house."
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 1
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
WHAT is education? Above all things, what is our ideal
of a thoroughly liberal education? of that education
which, if we could begin life again, we would give ourselves
of that education which, if we could mould the fates to our
own will, we would give our children? Well, I know not 5
what may be your conceptions upon this matter, but I will
tell you mine, and I hope I shall find that our views are not
very discrepant.
Suppose it were perfectly certain that the life and for-
tune of every one of us would, one day or other, depend 10
upon his winning or losing a game of chess. Don't you think
that we should all consider it to be a primary duty to learn
at least the names and the moves of the pieces; to have
a notion of a gambit, and a keen eye for all the means of
giving and getting out of check? Do you not think that 15
we should look with a disapprobation amounting to scorn,
upon the father who allowed his son, or the state which
allowed its members, to grow up without knowing a pawn
from a knight?
Yet it is a vety plain and elementary truth, that the life, 20
the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and,
more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend
upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infi-
nitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a
game which has been played for untold ages, every man 25
and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of
1 From " A Liberal Education; and Where to Find It," 1868.
47
48 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
his or her own. The chess-board is the world, the pieces
are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game
are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the
other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is
S always fair, just and patient. But also we know, to our
cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the small-
est allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well,
the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing
generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength.
10 And one who plays ill is checkmated without haste, but
without remorse.
My metaphor will remind some of you of the famous
picture in which Retzsch has depicted Satan playing at
chess with man for his soul. Substitute for the mocking
1 5 fiend in that picture a calm, strong angel who is playing for
love, as we say, and would rather lose than win and I
should accept it as an image of human life.
Well, what I mean by Education is learning the rules of
this mighty game. In other words, education is {be instruo
sotion of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which
name I include not merely things and their forces, but men
and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of
the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in har-
mony w r ith those laws. For me, education means neither
25 more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call
itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it
fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever
may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the
other side.
30 It is important to remember that, in strictness, there is
no such thing as an uneducated man. Take an extreme
case. Suppose that an adult man, in the full vigour of his
faculties, could be suddenly placed in the world, as Adam is
said to have been, and then left to do as he best might.
35 How long would he be left uneducated? Not five minutes.
Nature would begin to teach him, through the eye, the ear,
the touch, the properties of objects. Pain and pleasure
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 49
would be at his elbow telling him to do this and avoid that;
and by slow degrees the man would receive an education
which, if narrow, would be thorough, real, and adequate
to his circumstances, though there would be no extras and
very few accomplishments. 5
And if to this solitary man entered a second Adam, or,
better still, an Eve, a new and greater world, that of social
and moral phenomena, would be revealed. Joys and woes,
compared with which all others might seem but faint
shadows, would spring from the new relations. Happiness x o
and sorrow would take the place of the coarser monitors,
pleasure and pain; but conduct would still be shaped by
the observation of the natural consequences of actions; or,
in other words, by the laws of the nature of man.
To every one of us the world was once as fresh and new 15
as to Adam. And then, long before we were susceptible
of any other modes of instruction, Nature took us in hand,
and every minute of waking life brought its educational
influence, shaping our actions into rough accordance with
Nature's laws, so that we might not be ended untimely by 20
too gross disobedience. Nor should I speak of this process
of education as past for any one, be he as old as he may.
For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first
day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes
to see them. And Nature is still continuing her patient 25
education of us in that great university, the universe, of
which we are all members Nature having no Test-Acts.
Those who take honours in Nature's university, who
learn the laws which govern men and things and obey them,
are the really great and successful men in this world. The 30
great mass of mankind are the " Poll," 1 who pick up just
enough to get through without much discredit. Those
who won't learn at all are plucked; and then you can't
come up again. Nature's pluck means extermination.
Thus the question of compulsory education is settled 5035
1 Poll (a slang term used at Cambridge University): those who take
a degree without honours.
50 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
far as Nature is concerned. Her bill on that question was
framed and passed long ago. But, like all compulsory
legislation, that of Nature is harsh and wasteful in its opera-
tion. Ignorance is visited as sharply as wilful disobedience
5 incapacity meets with the same punishment as crime.
Nature's discipline is not even a word and a blow, and the
blow first; but the blow without the word. It is left to you
to find out why your ears are boxed.
The object of what we commonly call education that
10 education in which man intervenes and which I shall dis-
tinguish as artificial education is to make good these
defects in Nature's methods; to prepare the child to receive
Nature's education, neither incapably nor ignorantly, nor
with wilful disobedience; and to understand the prelimi-
15 nary symptoms of her pleasure, without waiting for the box
on the ear. In short, all artificial education ought to be an
anticipation of natural education. And a liberal education
is an artificial education which has not only prepared a man
to escape the great evils of disobedience to natural laws,
20 but has trained him to appreciate and to seize upon the
rewards, which Nature scatters with as free a hand as her
penalties.
That man, I think, has had a liberal education who has
been so trained in youth that his body is the ready servant
25 of his will, and does with ease and pleasure all the work
that, as a mechanism, it is capable of; whose intellect is a
clear, cold, logic engine, with all its parts of equal strength,
and in smooth working order; ready, like a steam engine,
to be turned to any kind of work, and spin the gossamers
30 as well as forge the anchors of the mind; whose mind is
stored with a knowledge of the great and fundamental
truths of Nature and of the laws of her operations ; one who,
no stunted ascetic, is full of life and fire, but whose passions
are trained to come to heel by a vigorous will, the servant
35 of a tender conscience; who has learned to love all beauty,
whether of Nature or of art, to hate all vileness, and to
respect others as himself.
WHAT IS EDUCATION? 51
Such an one and no other, I conceive, has had a liberal
education; for he is, as completely as a man can be, in har-
mony with Nature. He will make the best of her, and she
of him. They will get on together rarely; she as his ever
beneficent mother; he as her mouthpiece, her conscious 5
self, her minister and interpreter.
KNOWLEDGE VIEWED IN RELATION TO
LEARNING l
JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
IT were well if the English, like the Greek language, pos-
sessed some definite word to express, simply and generally,
intellectual proficiency or perfection, such as " health," as
used with reference to the animal frame, and " virtue,"
5 with reference to our moral nature. I am not able to find
such a term; talent, ability, genius, belong distinctly to
the raw material, which is the subject-matter, not to that
excellence which is the result of exercise and training. When
we turn, indeed, to the particular kinds of intellectual
10 perfection, words are forthcoming for our purpose, as, for
instance, judgment, taste, and skill; yet even these belong,
for the most part, to powers or habits bearing upon
practice or upon art, and not to any perfect condition of
the intellect, considered in itself. Wisdom, again, is cer-
15 tainly a more comprehensive word than any other, but it
has a direct relation to conduct, and to human life. Knowl-
edge, indeed, and science express purely intellectual ideas
but still not a state or quality of the intellect; for knowledge,
in its ordinary sense, is but one of its circumstances, denot-
20 ing a possession or a habit; and science has been appro-
priated to the subject-matter of the intellect, instead of
belonging in English, as it ought to do, to the intellect itself.
The consequence is that, on an occasion like this, many
words are necessary, in order, first, to bring out and convey
25 what surely is no difficult idea in itself, that of the cultiva-
tion of the intellect as an end; next, in order to recommend
1 Discourse VI in " The Idea of a University," 1852.
52
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 53
what surely is no unreasonable object; and lastly, to describe
and make the mind realise the particular perfection in which
that object consists. Every one knows practically what are
the constituents of health or of virtue; and every one
recognises health and virtue as ends to be pursued; it is 5
otherwise with intellectual excellence, and this must be my
excuse, if I seem to anyone to be bestowing a good deal of
labour on a preliminary matter.
In default of a recognised term, I have called the per-
fection or virtue of the intellect by the name of philosophy, 10
philosophical knowledge, enlargement of mind, or illumina-
tion, terms which are not uncommonly given to it by writers
of this day: but, whatever name we bestow on it, it is, I
believe, as a matter of history, the business of a university
to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ 15
itself in the education of the intellect, just as the work of a
hospital lies in healing the sick or wounded, of a riding or
fencing school, or of a gymnasium, in exercising the limbs, of
an almshouse, in aiding and solacing the old, of an orphanage,
in protecting innocence, of a penitentiary, in restoring the 20
guilty. I say, a university, taken in its bare idea, and before
we view it as an instrument of the church, has this object and
this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor
mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind
neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; 25
here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when
it has done as much as this. It educates the intellect to
reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and
to grasp it.
This, I said in my foregoing discourse, was the object 30
of a university, viewed in itself, and apart from the Catholic
Church, or from the state, or from any other power which
may use it; and I illustrated this in various ways. I said
that the intellect must have an excellence of its own, for
there was nothing which had not its specific good; that the 35
word " educate " would not be used of intellectual culture,
as it is used, had not the intellect had an end of its own; that,
54 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
had it not such an end, there would be no meaning in calling
certain intellectual exercises " liberal," in contrast with
" useful," as is commonly done; that the very notion of a
philosophical temper implied it, for it threw us back upon
5 research and system as ends in themselves, distinct from
effects and works of any kind; that a philosophical scheme
of knowledge, or system of sciences, could not, from the
nature of the case, issue in any one definite art or pursuit, as
its end; and that, on the other hand, the discovery and
10 contemplation of truth, to which research and systematising
led, were surely sufficient ends, though nothing beyond them
were added, and that they had ever been accounted sufficient
by mankind.
Here then I take up the subject; and having determined
15 that the cultivation of the intellect is an end distinct and
sufficient in itself, and that, so far as words go, it is an enlarge-
ment or illumination, I proceed to inquire what this mental
breadth, or power, or light, or philosophy consists in. A
hospital heals a broken limb or cures a fever: what does
20 an institution effect, which professes the health, not of the
body, not of the soul, but of the intellect? What is this good,
which in former times, as well as our own, has been found
worth the notice, the appropriation of the Catholic Church?
I have then to investigate, in the discourses which follow,
25 those qualities and characteristics of the intellect in which
its cultivation issues or rather consists; and, with a view of
assisting myself in this undertaking, I shall recur to certain
questions which have already been touched upon. These
questions are three: viz. the relation of intellectual culture,
30 first, to mere knowledge; secondly, to professional knowledge;
and thirdly, to religious knowledge. In other words, are
acquirements and attainments the scope of a university educa-
tion? or expertncss in particular arts and pursuits? or moral
and religious proficiency? or something besides these three?
35 These questions I shall examine in succession, with the pur-
pose I have mentioned; and I hope to be excused, if, in this
anxious undertaking, I am led to repeat what, either in
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 55
these discourses or elsewhere, I have already put upon paper.
And first, of mere knowledge, or learning, and its connection
with intellectual illumination or philosophy.
I suppose the prima-facie 1 view which the public at large
would take of a university, considering it as a place of edu- 5
cation, is nothing more or less than a place for acquiring a
great deal of knowledge on a great many subjects. Memory
is one of the first developed of the mental faculties; a boy's
business when he goes to school is to learn, that is, to store
up things in his memory. For some years his intellect is 10
little more than an instrument for taking in facts, or a re-
ceptacle for storing them; he welcomes them as fast as they
come to him; he lives on what is without; he has his eyes
ever about him; he has a lively susceptibility of impressions;
he imbibes information of every kind; and little does he make 15
his own in a true sense of the word, living rather upon his
neighbours all around him. He has opinions, religious,
political and literary, and, for a boy, is very positive in them
and sure about them; but he gets them from his school-
fellows, or his masters, or his parents, as the case may be. 20
Such as he is in his other relations, such also is he in his
school exercises; his mind is observant, sharp, ready, reten-
tive; he is almost passive in the acquisition of knowledge.
I say this in no disparagement of the idea of a clever boy.
Geography, chronology, history, language, natural history, 25
he heaps up the matter of these studies as treasures for a
future day. It is the seven years of plenty with him: he
gathers in by handfuls, like the Egyptians, without counting;
and though, as time goes on, there is exercise for his argu-
mentative powers in the elements of mathematics, and for 30
his taste in the poets and orators, still, while at school, or
at least, till quite the last years of his time, he acquires,
and little more; and when he is leaving for the university,
he is mainly the creature of foreign influences and circum-
stances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, 35
as the case may be. Moreover, the moral habits, which
1 Prima-facie: based on one's first impression.
56 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
are a boy's praise, encourage and assist this result; that is,
diligence, assiduity, regularity, despatch, persevering applica-
tion; for these are the direct conditions of acquisition, and
naturally lead to it. Acquirements, again, are emphatically
5 producible, and at a moment; they are a something to
show, both for master and scholar; an audience, even though
ignorant themselves of the subjects of an examination, can
comprehend when questions are answered and when they are
not. Here again is a reason why mental culture is in the
10 minds of men identified with the acquisition of knowledge.
The same notion possesses the public mind, when it
passes on from the thought of a school to that of a university :
and with the best of reasons so far as this, that there is no
true culture without acquirements, and that philosophy pre-
15 supposes knowledge. It requires a great deal of reading,
or a wide range of information, to warrant us in putting
forth our opinions on any serious subject; and without such
learning the most original mind may be able indeed to dazzle,
to amuse, to refute, to perplex, but not to come to any
20 useful result or any trustworthy conclusion. There are
indeed persons who profess a different view of the matter,
and even act upon it. Every now and then you will find a
person of vigorous or fertile mind, who relies upon his own
resources, despises all former authors, and gives the world,
25 with the utmost fearlessness, his views upon religion, or
history, or any other popular subject. And his works may
sell for a while; he may get a name in his day; but this will
be all. His readers are sure to find on the long run that his
doctrines are mere theories, and not the expression of facts,
30 that they are chaff instead of bread, and then his popularity
drops as suddenly as it rose.
Knowledge then is the indispensable condition of expan-
sion of mind, and the instrument of attaining to it; this can-
not be denied, it is ever to be insisted on; I begin with it as
35 a first principle; however, the very truth of it carries men
too far, and confirms to them the notion that it is the whole
of the matter. A narrow mind is thought to be that which
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING -17
contains little knowledge; and an enlarged mind, that which
holds a great deal; and what seems to put the matter beyond
dispute is, the fact of the great number of studies which are
pursued in a university, by its very profession. Lectures
are given on every kind of subject; examinations are held; 5
prizes awarded. There are moral, metaphysical, physical pro-
fessors; professors of languages, of history, of mathematics,
of experimental science. Lists of questions are published,
wonderful for their range and depth, variety and difficulty;
treatises are written, which carry upon their very face the 10
evidence of extensive reading or multifarious information;
what then is wanting for mental culture to a person of large
reading and scientific attainments? what is grasp of mind
but acquirement? where shall philosophical repose be found,
but in the consciousness and enjoyment of large intellectual 15
possessions?
And yet this notion is, I conceive, a mistake, and my
present business is to show that it is one, and that the end of
a liberal education is not mere knowledge, or knowledge
considered in its matter; and I shall best attain my object, 20
by actually setting down some cases, which will be generally
granted to be instances of the process of enlightenment
or enlargement of mind, and others which are not, and thus,
by the comparison, you will be able to judge for yourselves,
gentlemen, whether knowledge, that is, acquirement, is 25
after all the real principle of the enlargement or whether that
principle is not rather something beyond it.
For instance, let a person, whose experience has hitherto
been confined to the more calm and unpretending scenery
of these islands, whether here or in England, go for the first 30
time into parts where physical nature puts on her wilder
and more awful forms, whether at home or abroad, as into
mountainous districts; or let one, who has ever lived in a
quiet village, go for the first time to a great metropolis,- 1 -
then I suppose he will have a sensation which perhaps he 35
never had before. He has a feeling not in addition or increase
of former feelings, but of something different in its nature.
58 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for a time that
he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress,
and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does
not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of
5 thoughts to which he was before a stranger.
Again, the view of the heavens which the telescope opens
upon us, if allowed to fill and possess the mind, may almost
whirl it round and make it dizzy. It brings in a flood of
ideas, and is rightly called an intellectual enlargement,
10 whatever is meant by the term.
And so again, the sight of beasts of prey and other foreign
animals, their strangeness, the originality (if I may use the
term) of their forms and gestures and habits, and their
variety and independence of each other, throw us out of
15 ourselves into another creation, and as if under another
Creator, if I may so express the temptation which may come
on the mind. We seem to have new faculties, or a new
exercise for our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge;
like a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear man-
20 acles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free.
Hence physical science generally, in all its departments,
as bringing before us the exuberant riches and resources,
yet the orderly course, of the universe, elevates and excites
the student, and at first, I may say, almost takes away his
25 breath, while in time it exercises a tranquillising influence
upon him.
Again the study of history is said to enlarge and enlighten
the mind, and why? because, as I conceive, it gives it a
power of judging of passing events and of all events, and a
30 conscious superiority over them, which before it did not
possess.
And in like manner, what is called seeing the world, enter-
ing into active life, going into society, travelling, gaining
acquaintance with the various classes of the community,
35 coming into contact with the principles and modes of thought
of various parties, interests, and races, their views, aims,
habits and manners, their religious creeds and forms of wor-
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 59
ship, gaining experience how various yet how alike men
are, how low-minded, how bad, how opposed, yet how
confident in their opinions; all this exerts a perceptible
influence upon the mind, which it is impossible to mistake,
be it good or be it bad, and is popularly called its enlargement. 5
And then again, the first time the mind comes across the
arguments and speculations of unbelievers, and feels what a
novel light they cast upon what he has hitherto accounted
sacred; and still more, if it gives in to them and embraces
them, and throws off as so much prejudice what it has 10
hitherto held, and, as if waking from a dream, begins to
realise to its imagination that there is now no such thing
as law and the transgression of law, that sin is a phantom,
and punishment a bugbear, that it is free to sin, free to
enjoy the world and the flesh; and still further, when it 15
does enjoy them, and reflects that it may think and hold
just what it will, that " the world is all before it where to
choose," and what system to build up as its own private
persuasion; when this torrent of wilful thoughts rushes
over and inundates it, who will deny that the fruit of the 20
tree of knowledge, or what the mind takes for knowledge,
has made it one of the gods, with a sense of expansion and
elevation, an intoxication in reality, still, so far as the
subjective state of the mind goes, an illumination? Hence
the fanaticism of individuals or nations, who suddenly cast 25
off their Maker. Their eyes are opened; and, like the
judgment-stricken king in the tragedy, they see two suns,
and a magic universe, out of which they look back upon
their former state of faith and innocence with a sort of
contempt and indignation, as if they were then but fools, and 30
the dupes of imposture.
On the other hand, religion has its own enlargement, and
an enlargement, not of tumult, but of peace. It is often
remarked of uneducated persons, who have hitherto thought
little of the unseen world, that, on their turning to God, 35
looking into themselves, regulating their hearts, reforming
their conduct, and meditating on death and judgment,
60 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
heaven and hell, they seem to become, in point of intellect,
different beings from what they were. Before, they took
things as they came, and thought no more of one thing than
another. But now every event has a meaning; they have
5 their own estimate of whatever happens to them ; they are
mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present with
the past; and the world, no longer dull, monotonous,
unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various and complicated
drama, with parts and an object, and an awful moral.
10 Now from these instances, to which many more might
be added, it is plain, first, that the communication of knowl-
edge certainly is either a condition or the means of that sense
of enlargement or enlightenment, of which at this day we
hear so much in certain quarters: this cannot be denied;
15 but next, it is equally plain, that such communication is
not the whole of the process. The enlargement consists,
not merely in the passive reception into the mind of a number
of ideas hitherto unknown to it, but in the mind's energetic
and simultaneous action upon and towards and among those
20 new ideas, which are rushing in upon it. It is the action
of a formative power, reducing to order and meaning the
matter of our acquirements; it is a making the objects
of our knowledge subjectively our own, or, to use a familiar
word, it is a digestion of what we receive, into the sub-
25 stance of our previous state of thought; and without this
no enlargement is said to follow. There is no enlargement,
unless there be a comparison of ideas one with another,
as they come before the mind, and a systematising of
them. We feel our minds to be growing and expanding
30 then, when we not only learn, but refer what we learn to what
we know already. It is not the mere addition to our knowl-
edge that is the illumination; but the locomotion, the move-
ment onwards, of that mental centre, to which both what we
know, and what we are learning, the accumulating mass
35 of our acquirements, gravitates. And therefore a truly great
intellect, and recognised to be such by the common opinion
of mankind, such as the intellect of Aristotle, or of St.
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 61
Thomas, or of Newton, or of Goethe (I purposely take
instances within and without the Catholic pale, when I
would speak of the intellect as such), is one which takes a.
connected view of old and new, past and present, far and
near, and which has an insight into the influence of all 5
these one on another; without which there is no whole and
no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things,
but also of their mutual and true relations; knowledge,
not merely considered as acquirement but as philosophy.
Accordingly, when this analytical, distributive, harmonis- 10
ing process is away, the mind experiences no enlargement,
and is not reckoned as enlightened or comprehensive,
whatever it may add to its knowledge. For instance, a
great memory, as I have already said, does not make a
philosopher, any more than a dictionary can be called a 15
grammar. There are men who embrace in their minds a
vast multitude of ideas, but with little sensibility about
their real relations towards each other. These may be
antiquarians, annalists, naturalists; they may be learned in
the law; they may be versed in statistics; they are most 20
useful in their own place; I should shrink from speaking
disrespectfully of them; still, there is nothing in such
attainments to guarantee the absence of narrowness of
mind. If they are nothing more than well-read men, or
men of information, they have not what specially deserves 25
the name of culture of mind, or fulfils the type of liberal
education.
In like manner, we sometimes fall in with persons who
have seen much of the world, and of the men who, in their day,
have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalise 30
nothing, and have no observation, in the true sense of the
word. They abound in information in detail, curious and
entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under
the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious
or political, they speak of every one and every thing, only as 35
so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and
lead to nothing, not discussing them, or teaching any truth,
62 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would
say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained
to any great culture of intellect or to philosophy.
The case is the same still more strikingly where the persons
sin question are beyond dispute men of inferior powers and
deficient education. Perhaps they have been much in
foreign countries, and they receive, in & passive, otiose, un-
fruitful way, the various facts which are forced upon them
there. Seafaring men, for example, range from one end of
10 the earth to the other; but the multiplicity of external
objects, which they have encountered, forms no symmetrical
and consistent picture upon their imagination; they see the
tapestry of human life, as it were on the wrong side, and it
tells no story. They sleep, and they rise up, and they find
15 themselves, now in Europe, now in Asia; they see visions of
great cities and wild regions; they are in the marts of com-
merce, or amid the islands of the South; they gaze on
Pompey's Pillar, or on the Andes; and nothing which
meets them carries them forward or backward, to any idea
20 beyond itself. Nothing has a drift or relation; nothing
has a history or a promise. Every thing stands by itself,
and comes and goes in its turn, like the shifting scenes of
a show, which leave the spectator where he was. Perhaps
you are near such a man on a particular occasion, and expect
25 him to be shocked or perplexed at something which occurs;
but one thing is much the same to him as another, or, if he
is perplexed, it is as not knowing what to say, whether it is
right to admire, or to ridicule or to disapprove, while con-
scious that some expression of opinion is expected from him;
30 for in fact he has no standard of judgment at all, and no
landmarks to guide him to a conclusion. Such is mere
acquisition, and, I repeat, no one would dream of calling
it philosophy.
Instances, such as these, confirm, by the contrast, the con-
35 elusion I have already drawn from those which preceded
them. That only is true enlargement of mind which is the
power of viewing many things at once as one whole, of
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 63 *
referring them severally to their true place in the universal
system, of understanding their respective values, and deter-
mining their mutual dependence. Thus is that form of
universal knowledge, of which I have on a former occasion
spoken, set up in the individual intellect, and constitutes its 5
perfection. Possessed of this real illumination, the mind
never views any part of the extended subject-matter of
knowledge without recollecting that it is but a part, or with-
out the associations which spring from this recollection. It
makes everything in some sort lead to everything else;io
it would communicate the image of the whole to every sep-
arate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like
a spirit, everywhere pervading and penetrating its com-
ponent parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just
as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function 15
in the body, as the word " creation " suggests the Creator,
and " subjects " a sovereign, so, in the mind of the philosopher
as we are abstractedly conceiving of him, the elements of
the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks,
offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one 20
with correlative functions, and as gradually by successive
combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre.
To have even a portion of this illuminative reason and true
philosophy is the highest state to which nature can aspire,
in the way of intellect; it puts the mind above the influences 25
of chance and necessity, above anxiety, suspense, unsettle-
ment, and superstition, which is the lot of the many.
Men, whose minds are possessed with some one object, take
exaggerated views of its importance, are feverish in the
pursuit of it, make it the measure of things which are utterly 30
foreign to it, and are startled and despond if it happens to
fail them. They are ever in alarm or in transport. Those
on the other hand who have no object or principle whatever
to hold by, lose their way every step they take. They ate
thrown out, and do not know what to think or say, at every 35
fresh juncture; they have no view of persons, or occurrences,
or facts, which come suddenly upon them, and they hang
64 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
upon the opinion of others for want of internal resources.
But the intellect, which has been disciplined to the perfec-
tion of its powers, which knows, and thinks while it knows,
which has learned to leaven the dense mass of facts and events
5 with the elastic force of reason, such an intellect cannot be
partial, cannot be exclusive, cannot be impetuous, cannot be
at a loss, cannot but be patient, collected, and majestically
calm, because it discerns the end in every beginning, the origin
in every end, the law in every interruption, the limit in each
10 delay; because it ever knows where it stands, and how its
path lies from one point to another. It is the rer/aaycuvos 1
of the Peripatetic, and has the nil admirari 2 of the Stoic,
Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Atque metus omnes, et incxorabile fatum
15 Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari. 3
There are men who, when in difficulties, originate at the
moment vast ideas or dazzling projects; who, under the
influence of excitement, are able to cast a light, almost as
if from inspiration, on a subject or course of action which
20 comes before them; who have a sudden presence of mind
equal to any emergency, rising with the occasion, and an
undaunted magnanimous bearing, and an energy and keen-
ness which is but made intense by opposition. This is
genius, this is heroism; it is the exhibition of a natural
25 gift, which no culture can teach, at which no institution can
aim: here, on the contrary, we are concerned, not with
mere nature, but with training and teaching. That per-
fection of the intellect, which is the result of education, and
its beau ideal, to be imparted to individuals in their respective
30 measures, is the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehen-
sion of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them,
each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it.
1 Four-square .
2 To be moved by nothing.
3 Happy is he who has come to know the sequences of things, and is
thus above all fear and the dread march of fate and the roar of greedy
Acheron.
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 65
It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is
almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature;
it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from
littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith,
because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty 5
and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it
with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres.
And now, if I may take for granted that the true and ade-
quate end of intellectual training and of a university is not
learning or acquirement, but rather, is thought or reason exer- 10
cised upon knowledge, or what may be called philosophy, I
shall be in a position to explain the various mistakes which at
the present day beset the subject of university education.
I say then, if we would improve the intellect, first
of all, we must ascend; we cannot gain real knowledge 15
on a level; we must generalise, we must reduce to method,
we must have a grasp of principles, and group and shape
our acquisitions by means of them. It matters not whether
our field of operation be wide or limited; in every case, to
command it, is to mount above it. Who has not felt the 20
irritation of mind and impatience created by a deep, rich
country, visited for the first time, with winding lanes, and
high hedges, and green steeps, and tangled woods, and every
thing smiling indeed, but in a maze? The same feeling comes
upon us in a strange city, when we have no map of its streets. 25
Hence you hear of practised travellers, when they first come
into a place, mounting some high hill or church tower, by way
of reconnoitring its neighbourhood. In like manner, you must
be above your knowledge, not under it, or it will oppress you;
and the more you have of it, the greater will be the load. 30
The learning of a Salmasius or a Burman, unless you are its
master, will be your tyrant. Imperat aid servit; 1 if you can
wield it with a strong arm, it is a great w eapon ; otherwise,
Vis consili expers
Mole ruit sua. 2 35
1 It rules or it serves.
* Brute force without intelligence falls by its own weight.
66 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
You will be overwhelmed, like Tarpeia, by the heavy wealth
which you have exacted from tributary generations.
Instances abound; there are authors who are as pointless
as they are inexhaustible in their literary resources. They
5 measure knowledge by bulk, as it lies in the rude block,
without symmetry, without design. How many commenta-
tors are there on the classics, how many on Holy Scripture,
from whom we rise up, wondering at the learning which has
passed before us, and wondering why it passed ! How many
10 writers are there of Ecclesiastical history, such as Mosheim
or Du Pin, who, breaking up their subject into details,
destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety
about the parts! The sermons, again, of the English divines
in the seventeenth century, how often are they mere reper-
i Stories of miscellaneous and officious learning! Of course
Catholics also may read without thinking; and in their case,
equally as with Protestants, it holds good, that such knowl-
edge is unworthy of the name, knowledge which they have not
thought through, and thought out. Such readers are only
20 possessed by their knowledge, not possessed of it; nay, in
matter of fact they are often even carried away by it, with-
out any volition of their own. Recollect, the memory can
tyrannise, as well as the imagination. Derangement, I
believe, has been considered as a loss of control over the
25 sequence of ideas. The mind, once set in motion, is hence-
forth deprived of the power of initiation, and becomes the
victim of a train of associations, one thought suggesting
another, in the way of cause and effect, as if by a mechanical
process, or some physical necessity. No one, who has had
30 experience of men of studious habits, but must recognise
the existence of a parallel phenomenon in the case of those
who have over-stimulated the memory. In such persons
reason acts almost as feebly and as impotently as in the
madman; once fairly started on any subject whatever,
35 they have no power of self-control; they passively endure
the succession of impulses which are evolved out of the
original exciting cause; they are passed on from one idea
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 67
to another and go steadily forward, plodding along one line
of thought in spite of the amplest concessions of the hearer,
or wandering from it in endless digression in spite of his
remonstrances. Now, if, as is very certain, no one would"
envy the madman the glow and originality of his conceptions, 5
why must we extol the cultivation of that intellect which
is the prey, not indeed of barren fancies but of barren facts,
of random intrusions from without, though not of morbid
imaginations from within? And in thus speaking, I am not
denying that a strong and ready memory is in itself a real 10
treasure; I am not disparaging a well-stored mind, though
it be nothing besides, provided it be sober, any more than
I would despise a bookseller's shop: it is of great value to
others, even when not so to the owner. Nor am I banishing,
far from it, the possessors of deep and multifarious learning 15
from my ideal University; they adorn it in the eyes of men;
I do but say that they constitute no type of the results at
which it aims; that it is no great gain to the intellect to have
enlarged the memory at the expense of faculties which are
indisputably higher. 20
Nor indeed am I supposing that there is any great danger,
at least in this day, of over-education; the danger is on the
other side. I will tell you, gentlemen, what has been the
practical error of the last twenty years, not to load the
memory of the student with a mass of undigested knowledge, 25
but to force upon him so much that he has rejected all.
It has been the error of distracting and enfeebling the mind
by an unmeaning profusion of subjects; of implying that a
smattering in a dozen branches of study is not shallowness,
which it really is, but enlargement, which it is not; of con- 30
sidering an acquaintance with the learned names of things
and persons and the possession of clever duodecimos, and
attendance on eloquent lecturers, and membership with
scientific institutions, and the sight of the experiments f>i
a platform and the specimens of a museum, that all this was 35
not dissipation of mind, but progress. All things now are
to be learned at once, not first one thing, then another,
68 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
not one well, but many badly. Learning is to be without
exertion, without attention, without toil; without ground-
ing, without advance, without finishing. There is to be
nothing individual in it; and this, forsooth, is the wonder
S of the age. What the steam engine does with matter,
the printing press is to do with the mind ; it is to act mechan-
ically, and the population is to be passively, almost uncon-
sciously enlightened, by the mere multiplication and dis-
semination of volumes. Whether it be the school boy,
10 or the school girl, or the youth at college, or the mechanic
in the town, or the politician in the senate, all have been the
victims in one way or other of this most preposterous and
pernicious of delusions. Wise men have lifted up their
voices in vain; and at length, lest their own institutions
1 5 should be outshone and should disappear in the folly of the
hour, they have been obliged, as far as they could with a
good conscience, to humour a spirit which they could not
withstand, and make temporising concessions at which
they could not but inwardly smile.
20 It must not be supposed that, because I so speak, there-
fore I have some sort of fear of the education of the people:
on the contrary, the more education they have, the better,
so that it is really education. Nor am I an enemy to the
cheap publication of scientific and literary works, which
25 is now in vogue: on the contrary, I consider it a great advan-
tage, convenience, and gain; th?t is, to those to whom
education has given a capacity for using them. Further,
I consider such innocent recreations as science and literature
are able to furnish will be a very fit occupation of the thoughts
30 and the leisure of young persons, and may be made the means
of keeping them from bad employments and bad companions.
Moreover, as to that superficial acquaintance with chem-
istry, and geology, and astronomy, and political economy,
and modern history, and biography, and other branches
35 of knowledge, which periodical literature and occasional
lectures and scientific institutions diffuse through the
community, I think it a graceful accomplishment, and a
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 69
suitable, nay, in this day a necessary accomplishment, in
the case of educated men. Nor, lastly, am I disparaging or
discouraging the thorough acquisition of any one of these .
studies, or denying that, as far as it goes, such thorough
acquisition is a real education of the mind. All I say is, 5
call things by their right names, and do not confuse to-
gether ideas which are essentially different. A thorough
knowledge of one science and a superficial acquaintance
with many, are not the same thing; a smattering of a hun-
dred things or a memory for detail, is not a philosophical 10
or comprehensive view. Recreations are not education;
accomplishments are not education. Do not say, the peo-
ple must be educated, when, after all, you only mean
amused, refreshed, soothed, put into good spirits and good
humour, or kept from vicious excesses. I do not say that 15
such amusements, such occupations of mind, are not a great
gain; but they are not education. You may as well call
drawing and fencing education as a general knowledge of
botany or conchology. Stuffing birds or playing stringed
instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, 20
but it is not education; it does not form or cultivate the
intellect. Education is a high word; it is the preparation
for knowledge, and it is the imparting of knowledge in
proportion to that preparation. We require intellectual
eyes to know withal, as bodily eyes for sight. We need 25
both objects and organs intellectual; we cannot gain them
without setting about it; we cannot gain them in our sleep,
or by haphazard. The best telescope does not dispense
with eyes; the printing press or the lecture room will assist
us greatly, but we must be true to ourselves, we must be 30
parties in the work. A university is, according to the usual
designation, an alma mater, knowing her children one by
one, not a foundry, or a mint, or a treadmill.
I protest to you, gentlemen, that if I had to choose between
a so-called university, which dispensed with residence and 35
tutorial superintendence, and gave its degrees to any per-
son who passed an examination in a wide range of subjects,
70 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
and a university which had no professors or examinations
at all, but merely brought a number of young men together
for three or four years, and then sent them away as the
University of Oxford is said to have done some sixty years
5 since, if I were asked which of these two methods was the
better discipline of the intellect, mind, I do not say which
is morally the better, for it is plain that compulsory study
must be a good and idleness an intolerable mischief, but if
I must determine which of the two courses was the more suc-
tocessful in training, moulding, enlarging the mind, which
sent out men the more fitted for their secular duties, which
produced better public men, men of the world, men whose
names would descend to posterity, I have no hesitation
in giving the preference to that university which did noth-
15 ing, over that which exacted of its members an acquaintance
with every science under the sun. And, paradox as this
may seem, still if results be the test of systems, the influence
of the public schools and colleges of England, in the course
of the last century, at least will bear out one side of the
20 contrast as I have drawn it. What would come, on the other
hand, of the ideal systems of education which have fas-
cinated the imagination of this age, could they ever take
effect, and whether they would not produce a generation
frivolous, narrow-minded, and resourceless, intellectually
25 considered, is a fair subject for debate; but so far is certain,
that the universities and scholastic establishments, to which
I refer, and which did little more than bring together first
boys and then youths in large numbers, these institutions,
with miserable deformities on the side of morals, with a
30 hollow profession of Christianity, and a heathen code of
ethics, I say, at least they can boast of a succession of
heroes and statesmen, of literary men and philosophers,
of men conspicuous for great natural virtues, for habits
of business, for knowledge of life, for practical judgment,
35 for cultivated tastes, for accomplishments, who have made
England what it is, able to subdue the earth, able to
domineer over Catholics.
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 71
How is this to be explained? I suppose as follows: When
a multitude of young men, keen, open-hearted, sympathetic,
and observant, as young men are, come together and freely
mix with each other, they are sure to learn one from another,
even if there be no one to teach them; the conversation 5
of all is a series of lectures to each, and they gain for them-
selves new ideas and views, fresh matter of thought, and
distinct principles for judging and acting, day by day.
An infant has to learn the meaning of the information
which its senses convey to it, and this seems to be its em- 10
ployment. It fancies all that the eye presents to it to be
close to it, till it actually learns the contrary, and thus by
practice does it ascertain the relations and uses of those
first elements of knowledge which are necessary for its
animal existence. A parallel teaching is necessary for our 15
social being, and it is secured by a large school or a college;
and this effect may be fairly called in its own department
an enlargement of mind. It is seeing the world on a small
field with little trouble; for the pupils or students come
from very different places, and with widely different notions, 20
and there is much to generalise, much to adjust, much to
eliminate, there are inter-relations to be defined, and conven-
tional rules to be established, in the process, by which the
whole assemblage is moulded together, and gains one tone
and one character. 25
Let it be clearly understood, I repeat it, that I am not
taking into account moral or religious considerations; I am
but saying that that youthful community will constitute
a whole, it will embody a specific idea, it will represent a
doctrine, it will administer a code of conduct, and it will 30
furnish principles of thought and action. It will give
birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take
the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, 1
as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it
has been born, and which imbues and forms more or less, 35
and one by one, every individual who is successively brought
1 Genius loci: spirit of the place.
72 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
under its shadow. Thus it is that, independent of direct
instruction on the part of superiors, there is a sort of self-
education in the academic institutions of Protestant Eng-
land; a characteristic tone of thought, a recognised standard
5 of judgment is found in them, which, as developed in the
individual who is submitted to it, becomes a twofold source
of strength to him, both from the distinct stamp it impresses
on his mind, and from the bond of union which it creates
between him and others, effects which are shared by the
10 authorities of the place, for they themselves have been edu-
cated in it, and at all times are exposed to the influence
of its ethical atmosphere. Here then is a real teaching,
whatever be its standards and principles, true or false;
and it at least tends towards cultivation of the intellect;
15 it at least recognises that knowledge is something more than
a sort of passive reception of scraps and details; it is a some-
thing, and it does a something, which never will issue from
the most strenuous efforts of a set of teachers with no
mutual sympathies and no intercommunion, of a set of
20 examiners with no opinions which they dare profess, and
with no common principles, who are teaching or questioning
a set of youths who do not know them, and do not know
each other, on a large number of subjects, different in kind,
and connected by no wide philosophy, three times a week,
25 or three times a year, or once in three years, in chill lecture-
rooms or on a pompous anniversary.
Nay, self-education in any shape, in the most restricted
sense, is preferable to a system of teaching which, professing
so much, really does so little for the mind. Shut your
30 college gates against the votary of knowledge, throw him
back upon the searchings and the efforts of his own mind;
he will gain by being spared an entrance into your babel.
Few indeed there are who can dispense with the stimulus
and support of instructors, or will do anything at all, if
35 left to themselves. And fewer still (though such great
minds are to be found), who will not, from such unassisted
attempts, contract a self-reliance and a self-esteem, which
KNOWLEDGE IN RELATION TO LEARNING 73
are not only moral evils, but serious hindrances to the attain-
ment of truth. And next to none, perhaps, or none, who will
not be reminded from time to time of the disadvantage under
which they lie, by their imperfect grounding, by the breaks,
deficiencies, and irregularities of their knowledge, by the 5
eccentricity of opinion and the confusion of principle which
they exhibit. They will be too often ignorant of what every
one knows and takes for granted, of that multitude of small
truths which fall upon the mind like dust, impalpable and
ever accumulating; they may be unable to converse, they 10
may argue perversely, they may pride themselves on their
worst paradoxes or their grossest truisms, they may be full
of their own mode of viewing things, unwilling to be put
out of their way, slow to enter into the minds of others;
but, with these and whatever other liabilities upon their 15
heads, they are likely to have more thought, more mind,
more philosophy, more true enlargement, than those earnest
but ill-used persons who are forced to load their minds
with a score of subjects against an examination, who have
too much on their hands to indulge themselves in thinking 20
or investigation, who devour premise and conclusion together
with indiscriminate greediness, who hold whole sciences on
faith, and commit demonstrations to memory, and who too
often, as might be expected, when their period of education
is passed, throw up all they have learned in disgust, having 25
gained nothing really by their anxious labours, except per-
haps the habit of application.
Yet such is the better specimen of the fruit of that ambi-
tious system which has of late years been making way among
us: for its result on ordinary minds, and on the common 50
run of students, is less satisfactory still; they leave their
place of education simply dissipated and relaxed by the
multiplicity of subjects, which they have never really
mastered, and so shallow as not even to know their shalknv-
ness. How much better, I say, it is for the active and 3}
thoughtful intellect, where such is to be found, to eschew
the college and the university altogether, than to submit
74 JOHN HENRY NEWMAN
to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious ! How
much more profitable for the independent mind, after the
mere rudiments of education, to range through a library at
random, taking down books as they meet him, and pursuing
5 the trains of thought which his mother wit suggests! How
much healthier to wander into the fields, and there with
the exiled prince to find " tongues in the trees, books in the
running brooks! " How much more genuine an education
is that of the poor boy in the poem 1 a poem, whether
10 in conception or execution, one of the most touching in
our language who, not in the wide world, but ranging day
by day around his widowed mother's home, " a dextrous
gleaner " in a narrow field and with only such slender outfit
as the village school and books a few
15 Supplied,
contrived from the beach, and the quay, and the fisher's
boat, and the inn's fireside, and the tradesman's shop,
and the shepherd's walk, and the smuggler's hut, and the
mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and the restless waves,
20 to fashion for himself a philosophy and a poetry of his own !
But in a large subject, I am exceeding my necessary limits.
Gentlemen, I must conclude abruptly; and postpone any
summing up of my argument, should that be necessary, to
another day.
1 Crabbe's Tales of the Hall. This poem, let me say, I read on its
first publication, above thirty years ago, with extreme delight, and have
never lost my love of it; and on taking it up lately, found I was even
more touched by it than heretofore. A work which can please in youth
and age, seems to fulfil (in logical language) the accidental definition
of a classic. (A further course of twenty years has passed, and I bear
the same witness in favour of this poem.)
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 1
MATTHEW ARNOLD
PRACTICAL people talk with a smile of Plato and of his
absolute ideas; and it is impossible to deny that Plato's
ideas do often seem unpractical and impracticable, and
especially when one views them in connection with the life
of a great workaday world like the United States. The 5
necessary staple of the life of such a world Plato regards
with disdain; handicraft and trade and the working pro-
fessions he regards with disdain; but what becomes of the
life of an industrial modern community if you take handi-
craft and trade and the working professions out of it? The 10
base mechanic arts and handicrafts, says Plato, bring about
a natural weakness in the principle of excellence in a man,
so that he cannot govern the ignoble growths in him, but
nurses them, and cannot understand fostering any other.
Those who exercise such arts and trades, as they have their 15
bodies, he says, marred by their vulgar businesses, so they
have their souls, too, bowed and broken by them. And
if one of these uncomely people has a mind to seek self-
culture and philosophy, Plato compares him to a bald little
tinker, who has scraped together money, and has got his 20
release from service, and has had a bath, and bought a new
coat, and is rigged out like a bridegroom about to marry
the daughter of his master who has fallen into poor and
helpless estate.
Nor do the working professions fare any better than trade 25
at the hands of Plato. He draws for us an inimitable picture
of the working lawyer, and of his life of bondage; he shows
1 From " Discourses in America," 1885.
75
76 MATTHEW ARNOLD
how this bondage from his youth up has stunted and warped
him, and made him small and crooked of soul, encompassing
him with difficulties which he is not man enough to rely on
justice and truth as means to encounter, but has recourse,
5 for help out of them, to falsehood and wrong. And so,
says Plato, this poor creature is bent and broken, and grows
up from boy to man without a particle of soundness in him,
although exceedingly smart and clever in his own esteem.
One cannot refuse to admire the artist who draws these
10 pictures. But we say to ourselves that his ideas show the
influence of a primitive and obsolete order of things, when the
warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone in honour,
and the humble work of the world was done by slaves. We
have now changed all that; the modern majority consists
15 in work, as Emerson declares; and in work, we may add,
principally of such plain and dusty kind as the work of
cultivators of the ground, handicraftsmen, men of trade
and business, men of the working professions. Above all
is this true in a great industrious community such as that of
20 the United States.
Now education, many people go on to say, is still mainly
governed by the ideas of men like Plato, who lived when the
warrior caste a'nd the priestly or philosophical class were
alone in honour, and the really useful part of the community
25 were slaves. It is an education fitted for persons of leisure
in such a community. This education passed from Greece
and Rome to the feudal communities of Europe, where
also the warrior caste and the priestly caste were alone held
in honour, and where the really useful and working part of
30 the community, though not nominally slaves as in the pagan
world, were practically not much better off than slaves, and
not more seriously regarded. And how absurd it is, people
end by saying, to inflict this education upon an industrious
modern community, where very few indeed are persons
35 of leisure, and the mass to be considered has not leisure,
but is bound, for its own great good, and for the great good of
the world at large, to plain labour and to industrial pursuits,
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 77
and the education in question tends necessarily to make
men dissatisfied with these pursuits and unfitted for
them!
That is what is said. So far I must defend Plato, as to
plead that his view of education and studies is in the general, 5
as it seems to me, sound enough, and fitted for all sorts and
conditions of men, whatever their pursuits may be. "An
intelligent man," says Plato, " will prize those studies which
result in his soul getting soberness, righteousness, and wisdom,
and will less value the others." I cannot consider that a 10
bad description of the aim of education, and of the motives
which should govern us in the choice of studies, whether we
are preparing ourselves for a hereditary seat in the English
House of Lords or for the pork trade in Chicago.
Still I admit that Plato's world was not ours, that his 15
scorn of trade and handicraft is fantastic, that he had no
conception of a great industrial community such as that of the
United States, and that such a community must and will
shape its education to suit its own needs. If the usual
education handed down to it from the past does not suit it, 20
it will certainly before long drop this and try another. The
usual education in the past has been mainly literary. The
question is whether the studies which were long supposed
to be the best for all of us are practically the best now;
whether others are not better. The tyranny of the past, 25
many think, weighs on us injuriously in the predominance
given to letters in education. The question is raised whether,
to meet the needs of our modern life, the predominance
ought not now to pass from letters to science; and naturally
the question is nowhere raised with more energy than 30
here in the United States. The design of abasing what
is called " mere literary instruction and education," and
of exalting what is called " sound, extensive, and practical
scientific knowledge," is, in this intensely modern world
of the United States, even more perhaps than in Europe, 35
a very popular design, and makes great and rapid progress.
I am going to ask whether the present movement for
78 MATTHEW ARNOLD
ousting letters from their old predominance in education,
and for transferring the predominance in education to the
natural sciences, whether this brisk and flourishing move-
ment ought to prevail, and whether it is likely that in the
5 end it really will prevail. An objection may be raised which
I will anticipate. My own studies have been almost wholly
in letters, and my visits to the field of the natural sciences
have been very slight and inadequate, although those
sciences have always strongly moved my curiosity. A man
10 of letters, it will perhaps be said, is not competent to dis-
cuss the comparative merits of letters and natural science
as means of education. To thb objection I reply, first of
all, that his incompetence if he attempts the discussion
but is really incompetent for it, will be abundantly visible;
15 nobody will be taken in; he will have plenty of sharp
observers and critics to save mankind from that danger.
But the line I am going to follow is, as you will soon dis-
cover, so extremely simple, that perhaps it may be followed
without failure even by one who for a more ambitious line
20 of discussion would be quite incompetent.
Some of you may possibly remember a phrase of mine
which has been the object of a good deal of comment; an
observation to the effect that in our culture, the aim being
to know ourselves and the world, we have, as the means to
25 this end, to know the best which has been thought and said in the
world. A man of science, who is also an excellent writer and
the very prince of debaters, Professor Huxley, in a dis-
course at the opening of Sir Josiah Mason's College at
Birmingham, laying hold of this phrase, expanded it by
30 quoting some more words of mine, which are these: " The
civilised world is to be regarded as now being, for intellectual
and spiritual purposes, one great confederation, bound to a
joint action and working to a common result; and whose
members have for their proper outfit a knowledge of Greek,
35 Roman, and Eastern antiquity, and of one another. Special
local and temporary advantages being put out of recount,
that modern nation will in the intellectual and spiritual
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 79
sphere make most progress, which most thoroughly carries
out this programme."
Now on my phrase, thus enlarged, Professor Huxley
remarks that when I speak of the above-mentioned knowl-
edge as enabling us to know ourselves and the world, I 5
I assert literature to contain the materials which suffice for
thus making us know ourselves and the world. But it is
not by any means clear, says he, that after having learned
all which ancient and modern literatures have to tell us,
we have laid a sufficiently broad and deep foundation fono
that criticism of life, that knowledge of ourselves and the
world, which constitutes culture. On the contrary, Pro-
fessor Huxley declares that he finds himself " wholly unable
to admit that either nations or individuals will really advance,
if their outfit draws nothing from the stores of physical 15
science. An army without weapons of precision, and with
no particular base of operations, might more hopefully
enter upon a campaign on the Rhine, than a man, devoid
of a knowledge of what physical science has done in the last
century, upon a criticism of life." 20
- This shows how needful it is for those who are to discuss
any matter together, to have a common understanding as
to the sense of the terms they employ, how needful, and
how difficult. What Professor Huxley says, implies just
the reproach which is so often brought against the study 25
of belles lettres, as they are called: that the study is an elegant
one, but slight and ineffectual; a smattering of Greek and
Latin and other ornamental things, of little use for any one
whose object is to get at truth, and to be a practical man.
So, too, M. Renan talks of the "superficial humanism "30
of a school course which treats us as if we were all going to be
poets, writers, preachers, orators, and he opposes this hu-
manism to positive science, or the critical search after truth.
And there is always a tendency in those who are remonstrat-
ing against the predominance of letters in education, 1035
understand by letters belles lettres, and by belles lettres a su-
perficial humanism, the opposite of science or true knowledge.
80 MATTHEW ARNOLD
But when we talk of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity,
for instance, which is the knowledge people have called the
humanities, I for my part mean a knowledge which is some-
thing more than a superficial humanism, mainly decorative.
5 " I call all teaching scientific," says Wolf, the critic of Homer,
" which is systematically laid out and followed up to its
original sources. For example: a knowledge of classical
antiquity is scientific when the remains of classical antiquity
are correctly studied in the original languages." There can
10 be no doubt that Wolf is perfectly right; that all learning
is scientific which is systematically laid out and followed
up to its original sources, and that a genuine humanism is
scientific.
When I speak of knowing Greek and Roman antiquity,
15 therefore, as a help to knowing ourselves and the world,
I mean more than a knowledge of so much vocabulary, so
much grammar, so many portions of authors in the Greek
and Latin languages; I mean knowing the Greeks and
Romans, and their life and genius, and what they were and
20 did in the world; what we get from them, and what is its
value. That, at least, is the ideal; and when we talk of
endeavouring to know Greek and Roman antiquity, as a help
to knowing ourselves and the world, we mean endeavour-
ing so to know them as to satisfy this ideal, however much
25 we may still fall short of it.
The same also as to knowing our own and other modern
nations, with the like aim of getting to understand ourselves
and the world. To know the best that has been thought
and said by the modern nations, is to know, says Professor
30 Huxley, " only what modern literatures have to tell us; il
is the criticism of life contained in modern literature." And
yet " the distinctive character of our times," he urges,
II lies in the vast and constantly increasing part which is
played by natural knowledge." And how, therefore, can a
35 man, devoid of knowledge of what physical science has
done in the last century, enter hopefully upon a criticism
of modern life?
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 81
Let us, I say, be agreed about the meaning of the terms
we are using. I talk of knowing the best which has been
thought and uttered in the world; Professor Huxley says this
means knowing literature. Literature is a large word; it may
mean everything written with letters or printed in a book. 5
Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia are thus literature.
All knowledge that reaches us through books is literature.
But by literature Professor Huxley means belles lettres.
He means to make me say, that knowing the best which has
been thought and said by the modern nations is knowing 10
their belles lettres and no more. And this is no sufficient
equipment, he argues, for a criticism of modern life. But
as I do not mean, by knowing ancient Rome, knowing
merely more or less of Latin belles lettres, and taking no
account of Rome's military, and political, and legal, and 15
administrative work in the world; and as, by knowing
ancient Greece, I understand knowing her as the giver of
Greek art, and the guide to a free and right use of reason
and to scientific method, and the founder of our mathematics
and physics and astronomy and biology, I understand 20
knowing her as all this, and not merely knowing certain
Greek poems, and histories, and treatises, and speeches,
so as to the knowledge of modern nations also. By know-
ing modern nations, I mean not merely knowing their belles
lettres, but knowing also what has been done by such men as 25
Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Darwin. " Our ancestors
learned," says Professor Huxley, " that the earth is the centre
of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of
things terrestrial; and more especially was it inculcated that
the course of nature has no fixed order, but that it could be, 30
and constantly was, altered." But for us now, continues
Professor Huxley, " the notions of the beginning and the end
of the world entertained by our forefathers are no longer
credible. It is very certain that the earth is not the chief
body in the material universe, and that the world is not 35
subordinated to man's use. It is even more certain that
nature is the expression of a definite order, with which noth-
82 MATTHEW ARNOLD
ing interferes." " And yet," he cries, " the purely classical
education advocated by the representatives of the humanists
in our day gives no inkling of all this!"
In due place and time I will just touch upon that vexed
5 question of classical education; but at present the question
is as to what is meant by knowing the best which modern
nations have thought and said. It is not knowing their
belles lettres merely which is meant. To know Italian belles
lettres is not to know Italy, and to know English belles lettres
10 is not to know England. Into knowing Italy and England
there comes a great deal more, Galileo and Newton amongst
it. The reproach of being a superficial humanism, a tincture
of belles lettres, may attach rightly enough to some other
disciplines; but to the particular discipline recommended
15 when I proposed knowing the best that has been thought
and said in the world, it does not apply. In that best I
certainly include what in modern times has been thought
and said by the great observers and knowers of nature.
There is, therefore, really no question between Professor
20 Huxley and me as to whether knowing the great results
of the modern scientific study of nature is not required as a
part of our culture, as well as knowing the products of lit-
erature and art. But to follow the processes by which those
results are reached, ought, say the friends of physical science,
25 to be made the staple of education for the bulk of mankind.
And here there does arise a question between those whom
Professor Huxley calls with playful sarcasm " the Levites of
culture," and those whom the poor humanist is sometimes
apt to regard as its Nebuchadnezzars.
30 The great results of the scientific investigation of nature
we are agreed upon knowing, but how much of our study-
are we bound to give to the processes by which those results
are reached? The results have their visible bearing on human
life. But all the processes, too, all the items of fact by which
35 those results are reached and established, are interesting.
All knowledge is interesting to a wise man, and the knowledge
of nature is interesting to all men. It is very interesting
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 83
to know, that, from the albuminous white of the egg, the
chick in the egg gets the materials for its flesh, bones, blood,
and feathers; while, from the fatty yolk of the egg, it gets
the heat and energy which enable it at length to break its
shell and begin the world. It is less interesting, perhaps, 5
but still it is interesting, to know that when a taper burns,
the wax is converted into carbonic acid and water. More-
over, it is quite true that the habit of dealing with facts,
which is given by the study of nature, is, as the friends of
physical science praise it for being, an excellent discipline. 10
The appeal, in the study of nature, is constantly to observa-
tion and experiment; not only is it said that the thing is so,
but we can be made to see that it is so. Not only does a
man tell us that when a taper burns the wax is converted
into carbonic acid and water, as a man may tell us, if he 15
likes, that Charon is punting his ferry boat on the river
Styx, or that Victor Hugo is a sublime poet, or Mr. Glad-
stone the most admirable of statesmen; but we are made
to see that the conversion into carbonic acid and water does
actually happen. This reality of natural knowledge it is, 20
which makes the friends of physical science contrast it, as a
knowledge of things, with the humanist's knowledge, which
is, they say, a knowledge of words. And hence Professor
Huxley is moved to lay it down that, " for the purpose of
attaining real culture, an exclusively scientific education is at 25
least as effectual as an exclusively literary education."
And a certain President of the Section for Mechanical
Science in the British Association is, in Scripture phrase,
" very bold," and declares that if a man, in his mental
training, " has substituted literature and history for natural 30
science, he has chosen the less useful alternative." But
whether we go these lengths or not, we must all admit that in
natural science the habit gained of dealing with facts' is a
most valuable discipline, and that every one should have
some experience of it. 35
More than this, however, is demanded by the reformers.
It is proposed to make the training in natural science the
84 MATTHEW ARNOLD
main part of education, for the great majority of mankind
at any rate. And here, I confess, I part company with the
friends of physical science, with whom up to this point I
have been agreeing. In differing from them, however, I
5 wish to proceed with the utmost caution and diffidence.
The smallness of my own acquaintance with the disciplines
of natural science is ever before my mind, and I am fearful of
doing these disciplines an injustice. The ability and
pugnacity of the partisans of natural science make them
10 formidable persons to contradict. The tone of tentative
inquiry, which befits a being -of dim faculties and bounded
knowledge, is the tone I would wish to take and not to depart
from. At present it seems to me, that those who are for
giving to natural knowledge, as they call it, the chief place
15 in the education of the majority of mankind, leave one
important thing out of their account: the constitution of
human nature. But I put this forward on the strength of
some facts not at all recondite, very far from it; facts capable
of being stated in the simplest possible fashion, and to which,
20 if I so state them, the man of science will, I am sure, be willing
to allow their due weight.
Deny the facts altogether, I think, he hardly can. He
can hardly deny, that when we set ourselves to enumerate
the powers which go to the building up of human life, and
25 say that they are the power of conduct, the power of intellect
and knowledge, the power of beauty, and the power of social
life and manners, he can hardly deny that this scheme,
though drawn in rough and plain lines enough, and not
pretending to scientific exactness, does yet give a fairly
30 true representation of the matter. Human nature is built
up by these powers; we have the need for them all. When
we have rightly met and adjusted the claims of them all,
we shall then be in a fair way for getting soberness and
righteousness, with wisdom. This is evident enough, and
35 the friends of physical science would admit it.
But perhaps they may not have sufficiently observed
another thing: namely, that the several powers just men-
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 85
tioned are not isolated, but there is, in the generality of
mankind, a perpetual tendency to relate them one to another
in divers ways. With one such way of relating them I am
particularly concerned now. Following our instinct for
intellect and knowledge, we acquire pieces of knowledge; 5
and presently, in the generality of men, there arises the desire
to relate these pieces of knowledge to our sense for conduct,
to our sense for beauty, and there is weariness and dis-
satisfaction if the desire is balked. Now in this desire lies,
I think, the strength of that hold which letters have upon us. 10
All knowledge is, as I said just now, interesting; and even
items of knowledge which from the nature of the case can-
not well be related, but must stand isolated in our thoughts,
have their interest. Even lists of exceptions have their
interest. If we are studying Greek accents, it is interesting 15
to know that pais and pas, and some other monosyllables
of the same form of declension, do not take the circumflex
upon the last syllable of the genitive plural, but vary, in
this respect, from the common rule. If we are studying
physiology, it is interesting to know that the pulmonary 20
artery carries dark blood and the pulmonary vein carries
bright blood, departing in this respect from the common
rule for the division of labour between the veins and the
arteries. But every one knows how we seek naturally to
combine the pieces of our knowledge together, to bring them 25
under general rules, to relate them to principles; and how
unsatisfactory and tiresome it would be to go on forever
learning lists of exceptions, or accumulating items of fact
which must stand isolated.
Well, that same need of relating our knowledge, which 30
operates here within the sphere of our knowledge itself, we
shall find operating, also, outside that sphere. We expe-
rience, as we go on learning and knowing, the vast majority
of us experience, the need of relating what we have learned
and known to the sense which we have in us for conduct, 1035
the sense which we have in us for beauty.
A certain Greek prophetess of Mantineia in Arcadia,
86 MATTHEW ARNOLD
Diotima by name, once explained to the philosopher Socrates
that love, and impulse, and bent of all kinds, is, in fact,
nothing else but the desire in men that good should for-
ever be present to them. This desire for good, Diotima
5 assured Socrates, is our fundamental desire, of which fun-
damental desire every impulse in us is only some one par-
ticular form. And therefore this fundamental desire it
is, I suppose, this desire in men that good should be for-
ever present to them, which acts in us when we feel the
10 impulse for relating our knowledge to our sense for conduct
and to our sense for beauty. At any rate, with men in
general the instinct exists. Such is human nature. And
the instinct, it will be admitted, is innocent, and human
nature is preserved by our following the lead of its innocent
15 instincts. Therefore, in seeking to gratify this instinct
in question, we are following the instinct of self-preserva-
tion in humanity.
But, no doubt, some kinds of knowledge cannot be made
to directly serve the instinct in question, cannot be directly
20 related to the sense for beauty, to the sense for conduct.
These are instrument-knowledges; they lead on to other
knowledges, which can. A man who passes his life in instru-
ment-knowledges is a specialist. They may be invaluable
as instruments to something beyond, for those who have
25 the gift thus to employ them ; and they may be disciplines
in themselves wherein it is useful for every one to have
some schooling. But it is inconceivable that the generality
of men should pass all their mental life with Greek accents
or with formal logic. My friend Professor Sylvester, who
30 is one of the first mathematicians in the world, holds tran-
scendental doctrines as to the virtue of mathematics, but
those doctrines are not for common men. In the very Sen-
ate House and heart of our English Cambridge I once
ventured, though not without an apology for my profane-
35 ness, to hazard the opinion that for the majority of man-
kind a little of mathematics, even, goes a long way. Of
course this is quite consistent with their being of immense
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 87
importance as an instrument to something else; but it is
the few who have the aptitude for thus using them, not the
bulk of mankind.
The natural sciences do not, however, stand on the same
footing with these instrument-knowledges. Experience 5
shows us that the generality of men will find more interest
in learning that, when a taper burns, the wax is converted
into carbonic acid and water, or in learning the explanation
of the phenomenon of dew, or in learning how the circulation
of the blood is carried on, than they find in learning that 10
the genitive plural of pals and pas does not take the cir-
cumflex on the termination. And one piece of natural
knowledge is added to another, and others are added to that,
and at last we come to propositions so interesting as Mr.
Darwin's famous proposition that " our ancestor was a hairy 15
quadruped furnished \vith a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in his habits." Or we come to propositions of such
reach and magnitude as those which Professor Huxley
delivers, when he says that the notions of our forefathers
about the beginning and the end of the world were all wrong 20
and that nature is the expression of a definite order with
which nothing interferes.
Interesting, indeed, these results of science are, important
they are, and we should all of us be acquainted with them.
But what I now wish you to mark is, that we are still, when 25
they are propounded to us and we receive them, we are still
in the sphere of intellect and knowledge. And for the gen-
erality of men there will be found, I say, to arise, w r hen they
have duly taken in the proposition that their ancestor was
" a hairy quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, 30
probably arboreal in his habits," there will be found to
arise an invincible desire to relate this proposition to the
sense in us for conduct, and to the sense in us for bea'uty.
But this the men of science will not do for us, and will
hardly even profess to do. They will give us other pieces 35
of knowledge, other facts, about other animals and their
ancestors, or about plants, or about stones, or about stars;
88 MATTHEW ARNOLD
and they may finally bring us to those great " general con-
ceptions of the universe, which are forced upon us all,"
says Professor Huxley, " by the progress of physical science."
But still it will be knowledge only which they give us; knowl-
5 edge not put for us into relation with our sense for conduct,
our sense for beauty, and touched with emotion by being
so put; not thus put for us, and therefore, to the majority
of mankind, after a certain while, unsatisfying, wearying.
Not to the born naturalist, I admit. But what do we
10 mean by a born naturalist? We mean a man in whom the
zeal for observing nature is so uncommonly strong and
eminent, that it marks him off from the bulk of mankind.
Such a man will pass his life happily in collecting natural
knowledge and reasoning upon it, and will ask for nothing,
1 5 or hardly anything, more. I have heard it said that the
sagacious and admirable naturalist whom we lost not very-
long ago, Mr. Darwin, once owned to a friend that for his
part he did not experience the necessity for two things which
most men find so necessary to them, religion and poetry;
20 science and the domestic affections, he thought, were enough.
To a born naturalist, I can well understand that this should
seem so. So absorbing is his occupation with nature, so
strong his love for his occupation, that he goes on acquiring
natural knowledge and reasoning upon it, and has little time
25 or inclination for thinking about getting it related to the
desire in man for conduct, the desire in man for beauty.
He relates it to them for himself as he goes along, so far as
he feels the need; and he draws from the domestic affec-
tions all the additional solace necessary. But then Darwins
30 are extremely rare. Another great and admirable master
of natural knowledge, Faraday, was a Sandemanian. That
is to say, he related his knowledge to his instinct for conduct
and to his instinct for beauty, by the aid of that respectable
Scottish sectary, Robert Sandeman. And so strong, in
35 general, is the demand of religion and poetry to have their
share in a man, to associate themselves with his knowing,
and to relieve and rejoice it, that probably, for one man
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 89
amongst us with the disposition to do as Darwin did in this
respect, there are at least fifty with the disposition to do as
Faraday.
Education lays hold upon us, in fact, by satisfying this
demand. Professor Huxley holds up to scorn mediaeval s
education, with its neglect of the knowledge of nature,
its poverty even of literary studies, its formal logic devoted
to " showing how and why that which the Church said was
true must be true." But the great mediaeval universities
were not brought into being, we may be sure, by the zeal 10
for giving a jejune and contemptible education. Kings
have been their nursing fathers, and queens have been their
nursing mothers, but not for this. The mediaeval universities
came into being, because the supposed knowledge, delivered
by Scripture and the Church, so deeply engaged men's 15
hearts, by so simply, easily, and powerfully relating itself
to their desire for conduct, their desire for beauty. All
other knowledge was dominated by this supposed knowl-
edge and was subordinated to it, because of the surpassing
strength of the hold which it gained upon the affections of 20
men, by allying itself profoundly with their sense for conduct,
their sense for beauty.
But now, says Professor Huxley, conceptions of the
universe fatal to the notions held by our forefathers have
been forced upon us by physical science. Grant to him 25
that they are thus fatal, that the new conceptions must
and will soon become current everywhere, and that every
one will finally perceive them to be fatal to the beliefs of
our forefathers. The need of humane letters, as they are
truly called, because they serve the paramount desire in 30
men that good should be forever present to them, the need
of humane letters to establish a relation between the, new
conceptions, and our instinct for beauty, our instinct for
conduct, is only the more visible. The middle age could
do without humane letters, as it could do without the study 35
of nature, because its supposed knowledge was made to
engage its emotions so powerfully. Grant that the supposed
90 MATTHEW ARNOLD
knowledge disappears, its power of being made to engage
the emotions will of course disappear along with it, but
the emotions themselves, and their claim to be engaged
and satisfied, will remain. Now if we find by experience
5 that humane letters have an undeniable power of engaging
the emotions, the importance of humane letters in a man's
training becomes not less, but greater, in proportion to the
success of modern science in extirpating what it calls " med-
iaeval thinking."
10 Have humane letters, then, have poetry and eloquence,
the power here attributed to them of engaging the emotions,
and do they exercise it? And if they have it and exercise
it, how do they exercise it, so as to exert an influence upon
man's sense for conduct, his sense for beauty? Finally,
1 5 even if they both can and do exert an influence upon the
senses in question, how are they to relate to them the results,
the modern results, of natural science? All these
questions may be asked. First, have poetry and eloquence
the power of calling out the emotions? The appeal is to
20 experience. Experience show's that for the vast majority
'of men, for mankind in general, they have the power. Next,
do they exercise it? They do. But then, how do they exer-
cise it so as to affect man's sense for conduct, his sense for
beauty? And this is perhaps a case for applying the
25 Preacher's words: "Though a man labor to seek it out,
yet he shall not find it; yea, further, though a wise man think
to know it, yet shall he not be able to find it." : Why
should it be one thing, in its effect upon the emotions, to
say, " Patience is a virtue," and quite another thing, in its
3 effect upon the emotions, to say with Homer,
r\rjTov yap Motpcu dvfj&v O^ffav avOpibiroLcnv -
" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to the
children of men " ? Why should it be one thing, in its
effect upon the emotions, to say with philosopher Spinoza,
1 From Kcclcsiastes, viii. 17.
'- From the " Iliad," xxiv, 49.
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 91
Felicitas in eo consistit quod homo suum esse conservare potest
" Man's happiness consists in his being able to preserve
his own essence," and quite another thing, in its effect upon
the emotions, to say with the Gospel, " What is a man
advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, 5
forfeit himself? " How does this difference of effect arise?
I cannot tell, and I am not much concerned to know; the
important thing is that it does arise, and that we can profit
by it. But how, finally, are poetry and eloquence to exercise
the power of relating the modern results of natural science 10
to man's instinct for conduct, his instinct for beauty? And
here again I answer that I do not know how they will exercise
it, but that they can and will exercise it I am sure. I do
not mean that modern philosophical poets and modern
philosophical moralists are to come and relate for us, in 15
express terms, the results of modern scientific research to
our instinct for conduct, our instinct for beauty. But I
mean that we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we
know the best that has been thought and uttered in the
world, we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence 20
of men who lived, perhaps, long ago, who had the most
limited natural knowledge, who had the most erroneous
conceptions about many important matters, we shall find
that this art, and poetry, and eloquence, have in fact not only
the power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also 25
the power, such is the strength and worth, in essentials,
of their authors' criticism of life, they have a fortifying,
and elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power,
capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of
modern science to our need for conduct, our need for beauty. 30
Homer's conceptions of the physical universe were, I imagine,
grotesque; but really, under the shock of hearing from
modern science that " the world is not subordinated to man's
use, and that man is not the cynosure of things terrestrial,"
I could, for my own part, desire no better comfort than 35
Homer's line which I quoted just now,
yap
92 MATTHEW ARNOLD
" for an enduring heart have the destinies appointed to
the children of men! "
And the more that men's minds are cleared, the more
that the results of science are frankly accepted, the more
5 that poetry and eloquence come to be received and studied
as what in truth they really are, the criticism of life by
gifted men, alive and active with extraordinary power at
an unusual number of points; so much the more will the
value of humane letters, and of art also, which is an utter-
loance having a like kind of power with theirs, be felt and
acknowledged, and their place in education be secured.
Let us therefore, all of us. avoid indeed as much as pos-
sible any invidious comparison between the merits of humane
letters, as means of education, and the merits of the natural
15 sciences. But when some President of a Section for Me-
chanical Science insists on making the comparison, and tells
us that " he who in his training has substituted literature
and history for natural science has chosen the less useful
alternative," let us make answer to him that the student
20 of humane letters only, will, at least, know also the great
general conceptions brought in by modern physical science;
for science, as Professor Huxley says, forces them upon us
all. But the student of the natural sciences only, will, by
our very hypothesis, know nothing of humane letters; not
25 to mention that in setting himself to be perpetually accu-
mulating natural knowledge, he sets himself to do what only
specialists have in general the gift for doing genially. And
so he will probably be unsatisfied, or at any rate incomplete,
and even more incomplete than the student of humane
30 letters only.
I once mentioned in a school report, how a young man in
one of our English training colleges having to paraphrase
the passage in Macbeth beginning,
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?
35 turned this line into, " Can you not wait upon the lunatic?"
And I remarked what a curious state of things it would be,
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 93
if every pupil of our national schools knew, let us say, that
the moon is two thousand one hundred and sixty miles in
diameter, and thought at the same time that a good para-
phase for
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased? 5
was, " Can you not wait upon the lunatic?" If one is driven
to choose, I think I would rather have a young person
ignorant about the moon's diameter, but aware that " Can
you not wait upon the lunatic?" is bad, than a young
person whose education had been such as to manage things 10
the other way.
Or to go higher than the pupils of our national schools.
I have in my mind's eye a member of our British Parliament
who comes to travel here in America, who afterwards relates
his travels, and who shows a really masterly knowledge of 15
the geology of this great country and of its mining capabil-
ities, but who ends by gravely suggesting that the United
States should borrow a prince from our Royal Family, and
should make him their king, and should create a House of
Lords of great landed proprietors after the pattern of ours; 20
and then America, he thinks, would have her future happily
and perfectly secured. Surely, in this case, the President
of the Section for Mechanical Science would himself hardly
say that our member of Parliament, by concentrating him-
self upon geology and mineralogy, and so on, and not attend- 25
ing to literature and history, had '" chosen the more useful
alternative."
If then there is to be separation and option between
humane letters on the one hand, and the natural sciences
on the other, the great majority of mankind, all who have 30
not exceptional and overpowering aptitudes for the study of
nature, would do well, I cannot but think, to choose to be
educated in humane letters rather than in the natural sciences.
Letters will call out their being at more points, will make them
live more. 35
I said that before I ended I would just touch on the ques-
tion of classical education, and I will keep my word. Even
if literature is to retain a large place in our education, yet
Latin and Greek, say the friends of progress, will certainly
have to go. Greek is the grand offender in the eyes of these
S gentlemen. The attackers of the established course of
study think that against Greek, at any rate, they have
irresistible arguments. Literature may perhaps be needed
in education, they say; but why on earth should it be Greek
literature? Why not French or German? Nay, " has not
ioan Englishman models in his own literature of every kind
of excellence?" As before, it is not on any weak pleadings
of my own that I rely for convincing the gainsay ers; it is on
the constitution of human nature itself, and on the instinct
of self-preservation in humanity. The instinct for beauty
15 is set in human nature, as surely as the instinct for knowl-
edge is set there, or the instinct for conduct. If the instinct
for beauty is served by Greek literature and art as it is
served by no other literature and art, we may trust to the
instinct of self-preservation in humanity for keeping Greek
20 as part of our culture. We may trust to it for even making
the study of Greek more prevalent than it is now. Greek
will come, I hope, some day to be studied more rationally
than at present; but it will be increasingly studied as men
increasingly feel the need in them for beauty, and how
25 powerfully Greek art and Greek literature can serve this
need. Women will again study Greek, as Lady Jane Grey
did; I believe that in that chain of forts, with which the fair
host of the Amazons are now engirdling our English univer-
sities, I find that here in America, in colleges like Smith
30 College in Massachusetts, and Vassar College in the State
of New York, and in the happy families of the mixed universi-
ties out West, they are studying it already.
Defuit una mihi symmetric, prisca, " The antique sym-
metry was the one thing wanting to me," said Leonardo da
35 Vinci; and he was an Italian. I will not presume to speak
for the Americans, but I am sure that, in the Englishman, the
_ want of this admirable symmetry of the Greeks is a thousand
LITERATURE AND SCIENCE 95
times more great and crying than in any Italian. The results
of the want show themselves most glaringly, perhaps, in our
architecture, but they show themselves, also, in all our art.
Fit details strictly combined, in view of a large general result
nobly conceived; that is just the beautiful symmetria prisca 5
of the Greeks, and it is just where we English fail, where
all our art fails. Striking ideas we have, and well-executed
details we have; but that high symmetry which, with
satisfying and delightful effect, combines them, we seldom
or never have. The glorious beauty of the Acropolis at 10
Athens did not come from single fine things stuck about on
that hill, a statue here, a gateway there; no, it arose from
all things being perfectly combined for a supreme total effect.
What must not an Englishman feel about our deficiencies
in this respect, as the sense for beauty, whereof this sym- 15
metry is an essential element, awakens and strengthens
within him! what will not one day be his respect and desire
for Greece and its symmetria prisca, when the scales drop
from his eyes as he walks the London streets, and he sees
such a lesson in meanness as the Strand, for instance, in 20
its true deformity! But here we are coming to our friend
Mr. Ruskin's province, and I will not intrude upon it, for
he is its very sufficient guardian.
And so we at last find, it seems, we find flowing in favor
of the humanities the natural and necessary stream of things, 25
which seemed against them when we started. The " hairy
quadruped furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably
arboreal in his habits," this good fellow carried hidden in his
nature, apparently, something destined to develop into a
necessity for humane letters. Nay, more: we seem finally 30
to be even led to the further conclusion that our hairy
ancestor carried in his nature, also, a necessity for Greek.
And therefore, to say the truth, I cannot really 'think
that humane letters are in much actual danger of being thrust
out from their leading place in education, in spite of the 35
array of authorities against them at this moment. So long
as human nature is what it is, their attractions will remain
96 MATTHEW ARNOLD
irresistible. As with Greek, so with letters generally: they
will some day come, we may hope, to be studied more ration-
ally, but they will not lose their place. What will happen
will rather be that there will be crowded into education
5 other matters besides, far too many; there will be, perhaps,
a period of unsettlement and confusion and false tendency;
but letters will not in the end lose their leading place. If
they lose it for a time, they will get it back again. We shall
be brought back to them by our wants and aspirations.
10 And a poor humanist may possess his soul in patience,
neither strive nor cry, admit the energy and brilliancy of the
partisans of physical science, and their present favor with
the public, to be far greater than his own, and still have a
happy faith that the nature of things works silently on
15 behalf of the studies which he loves, and that, while we shall
all have to acquaint ourselves with the great results reached
by modern science, and to give ourselves as much training in
its disciplines as we can conveniently carry, yet the majority
of men will always require humane letters; and so much the
20 more, as they have the more and the greater results of science
to relate to the need in man for conduct, and to the need in
him for beauty,
HOW TO READ l
FREDERIC HARRISON
IT is the fashion for those who have any connection with
letters to expatiate on the infinite blessings of literature,
and the miraculous achievements of the press: to extol,
as a gift above price, the taste for study and the love of
reading. Far be it from me to gainsay the inestimable 5
value of good books, or to discourage any man from reading
the best; but I often think that we forget that other side to
this glorious view of literature the misuse of books, the
debilitating waste of brain in aimless, promiscuous, vapid
reading, or even, it may be, in the poisonous inhalation ofio
mere literary garbage and bad men's worst thoughts.
For what can a book be more than the man who wrote it?
The brightest genius seldom puts the best of his own soul
into his printed page; and some famous men have certainly
put the worst of theirs. Yet are all men desirable com- 15
panions, much less teachers, able to give us advice, even of
those who get reputation and command a hearing? To put
out of the question that writing which is positively bad, are
we not, amidst the multiplicity of books and of writers, in
continual danger of being drawn off by what is stimulating 20
rather than solid, by curiosity after something accidentally
notorious, by what has no intelligible thing to recommend it,
except that it is new? Now, to stuff our minds with what is
simply trivial, simply curious, or that which at best has but
a low nutritive power, this is to close our minds to what is 25
solid and enlarging, and spiritually sustaining. Whether
1 From " The Choice of Books," 1891. Printed here by permission
of The Macmillan Company.
97
98 FREDERIC HARRISON
our neglect of the great books comes from our not reading
at all, or from an incorrigible habit of reading the little books,
it ends in just the same thing. And that thing is ignorance
of all the greater literature of the world. To neglect all
5 the abiding parts of knowledge for the sake of the evanescent
parts is really to know nothing worth knowing. It is in
the end the same, whether we do not use our minds for
serious study at all, or whether we exhaust them by an
impotent voracity for desultory " information " a thing
10 as fruitful as whistling. Of the two evils I prefer the former.
At least, in that case, the mind is healthy and open. It is
not gorged and enfeebled by excess in that which cannot
nourish, much less enlarge and beautify our nature.
But there is much more than this. Even to those who
15 resolutely avoid the idleness of reading what is trivial, a
difficulty is presented a difficulty every day increasing
by virtue even of our abundance of books. What are the
subjects, what are the class of books we are to read, in what
order, with what connection, to what ultimate use or object?
20 Even those who are resolved to read the better books are
embarrassed by a field of choice practically boundless. The
longest life, the greatest industry, joined to the most powerful
memory, would not suffice to make us profit from a hundredth
part of the world of books before us. If the great Newton
25 said that he seemed to have been all his life gathering a few
shells on the shore, whilst a boundless ocean of truth still
lay beyond and unknown to him, how much more to each of
us must the sea of literature be a pathless immensity beyond
our powers of vision or of reach an immensity in which
30 industry itself is useless without judgment, method, dis-
cipline; where it is of infinite importance what we can learn
and remember, and of utterly no importance what we may
have once looked at or heard of. Alas! the most of our
reading leaves as little mark even in our own education as
35 the foam that gathers round the keel of a passing boat ! For
myself, I am inclined to think the most useful help to read-
ing is to know what we should not read, what we can keep
HOW TO READ 99
out from that small cleared spot in the overgrown jungle
of " information," the corner which we can call our ordered
patch of fruit-bearing knowledge. The incessant accumula-
tion of fresh books must hinder any real knowledge of the
old; for the multiplicity of volumes becomes a bar upon our 5
use of any. In literature especially does it hold that we
cannot see the wood for the trees.
How shall we choose our books? Which are the best,
the eternal, indispensable books? To all to whom reading
is something more than a refined idleness these questions 10
recur, bringing with them the sense of bewilderment; and
a still, small voice within us is for ever crying out for some
guide across the Slough of Despond of an illimitable and ever-
swelling literature. How many a man stands beside it,
as uncertain of his pathway as the Pilgrim, when he who 15
dreamed the immortal dream heard him " break out with
a lamentable cry; saying, what shall I do? "
And this, which comes home to all of us at times, presses
hardest upon those who have lost the opportunity of sys-
tematic education, who have to educate themselves, or 20
who seek to guide the education of their young people.
Systematic reading is but little iu favour even amongst
studious men; in a true sense it is hardly possible for women.
A comprehensive course of home study, and a guide to books,
fit for the highest education of women, is yet a blank page 25
remaining to be filled. Generations of men of culture have
laboured to organise a system of reading and materials
appropriate for the methodical education of men in academic
lines. Teaching equal in mental calibre to any that is open
to men in universities, yet modified for the needs of those 30
who must study at home, remains in the dim pages of that
melancholy volume entitled Libri valde desiderati. 1
I do not aspire to fill one of those blank pages; but I
long to speak a word or two, as the Pilgrim did to Neigh-
bour Pliable, upon the glories that await those who will 35
pass through the narrow wicket-gate. On this, if one can
1 Books intensely desired.
100 FREDERIC HARRISON
find anything useful to say, it may be chiefly from the memory
of the waste labour and pitiful stumbling in the dark which
fill up so much of the travail that one is fain to call one's
own education. We who have wandered in the wastes so
5 long, and lost so much of our lives in our wandering, may
at least offer warnings to younger wayfarers, as men who
in thorny paths have borne the heat and burden of the
day might give a clue to their journey to those who have
yet a morning and a noon. As I look back and think of
10 those cataracts of printed stuff which honest compositors
set up, meaning, let us trust, no harm, and which at least
found them in daily bread, printed stuff which I and the
rest of us, to our infinitely small profit, have consumed with
our eyes, not even making an honest living of it, but much
15 impairing our substance, I could almost reckon the print-
ing press as amongst the scourges of mankind. I am grown
a w r iser and a sadder man, importunate, like that Ancient
Mariner, to tell each blithe wedding guest the tale of his
shipwreck on the infinite sea of printers' ink, as one escaped
20 by mercy and grace from the region where there is water,
water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
A man of power, who has got more from books than most
of his contemporaries, once said: " Form a habit of reading,
do not mind w r hat you read; the reading of better books
25 will come when you have a habit of reading the inferior."
We need not accept this obiter dictum 1 of Lord Sherbrooke.
A habit of reading idly debilitates and corrupts the mind
for all wholesome reading; the habit of reading wisely is
one of the most difficult habits to acquire, needing strong
30 resolution and infinite pains; and reading for mere reading's
sake, instead of for the sake of the good we gain from reading,
is one of the worst and commonest and most unwholesome
habits we have. And so our inimitable humorist has made
delightful fun of the solid books, which no gentleman's
35 library should be without, the Humes, Gibbons, Adarn
Smiths, which, he says, are not books at all, and prefers some
1 Thing said in passing..
HOW TO READ 101
" kindhearted play-book," or at times the Town and County
Magazine. Poor Lamb has not a little to answer for, in the
revived relish for garbage unearthed from old theatrical
dungheaps. Be it jest or earnest, I have little patience with
the Elia-tic philosophy of the frivolous. Why do we still 5
suffer the traditional hypocrisy about the dignity of litera-
ture literature, I mean, in the gross, which includes about
equal parts of what is useful and what is useless? Why are
books as books, writers as writers, readers as readers, meri-
torious, apart from any good in them, or anything that we 10
can get from them? Why do we pride ourselves on our
powers of absorbing print, as our grandfathers did on their
gifts in imbibing port, when we know that there is a mode
of absorbing print which makes it impossible that we can
ever learn anything good out of books? 15
Our stately Milton said in a passage which is one of the
watchwards of the English race, " as good almost kill a Man
as kill a good Book." But has he not also said that he
would " have a vigilant eye how Bookes demeane themselves,
as well as men; and do sharpest justice on them as male- 20
factors " ? . . . Yes! they do kill the good book who deliver
up their few and precious hours of reading to the trivial
book; they make it dead for them; they do what lies in
them to destroy " the precious life-blood of a master-spirit,
imbalm'd and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond 25
life; " they " spill that season 'd life of man preserved and
stor'd up in Bookes." For in the wilderness of books most
men, certainly all busy men, must strictly choose. If they
saturate their minds with the idler books, the " good book,"
which Milton calls "an immortality rather than a life, "30
is dead to them: it is a book sealed up and buried.
It is most right that in the great republic of letters there
should be freedom of intercourse and a spirit of equality.
Every reader who holds a book in his hand is free of the
inmost minds of men past and present; their lives both 35
within and without the pale of their uttered thoughts are
unveiled to him; he needs no introduction to the greatest;
102 FREDERIC HARRISON
he stands on no ceremony with them; he may, if he be so
minded, scribble " doggrel " on his Shelley, or he may
kick Lord Byron, if he please, into a corner. He hears
Burke perorate, and Johnson dogmatise, and Scott tell his
5 border tales, and Wordsworth muse on the hillside, without
the leave of any man, or the payment of any toll. In the
republic of letters there are no privileged orders or places
reserved. Every man who has written a book, even the
diligent Mr. Whitaker, is in one sense an author; " a book's
10 a book although there's nothing in't; " and every man
who can decipher a penny journal is in one sense a reader.
And your " general reader," like the grave-digger in Hamlet,
is hail-fellow with all the mighty dead; he pats the skull of
the jester; batters the cheek of lord, lady, or courtier; and
1 5 uses "imperious Cassar " to teach boys the Latin declen-
sions.
But this noble equality of all writers of all writers and
of all readers has a perilous side to it. It is apt to make
us indiscriminate in the books we read, and somewhat con-
20 temptuous of the mighty men of the past. Men who are most
observant as to the friends they make, or the conversation
they share, are carelessness itself as to the books to whom
they entrust themselves, and the printed language with which
they saturate their minds. Yet can any friendship or society
25 be more important to us than that of the books which form
so large a part of our minds and even of our characters? Do
we in real life take any pleasant fellow to our homes and chat
with some agreeable rascal by our firesides, we who will
take up any pleasant fellow's printed memoirs, we who de-
30 light in the agreeable rascal when he is cut up into pages and
bound in calf?
If any person given to reading were honestly to keep a
register of all the printed stuff that he or she consumes in a
year all the idle tales of which the very names and the
35 story are forgotten in a week, the bookmaker's prattle
about nothing at so much a sheet, the fugitive trifling about
silly things and empty people, the memoirs of the unmemo-
HOW TO READ 103
rable, and lives of those who never really lived at all of
what a mountain of rubbish would it be the catalogue: Exer-
cises for the eye and the memory, as mechanical as if we set
ourselves to learn the names, ages, and family histories of
every one who lives in our own street, the flirtations of their 5
maiden aunts, and the circumstances surrounding the birth
of their grandmother's first baby.
It is impossible to give any method to our reading till
we get nerve enough to reject. The most exclusive and
careful amongst us will (in literature) take boon companions 10
out of the street, as easily as an idler in a tavern. " I came
across such and such a book that I never heard mentioned,"
says one, " and found it curious, though entirely worthless."
" I strayed on a volume by I know not whom, on a subject
for which I never cared." And so on. There are curious 15
and worthless creatures enough in any pot-house all day
long; and there is incessant talk in omnibus, train, or street
by we know not whom, about we care not what. Yet if a
printer and a bookseller can be induced to make this gabble
as immortal as print and publication can make it, then it 20
straightway is literature, and in due time it becomes
" curious."
I have no intention to moralise or to indulge in a homily
against the reading of what is deliberately evil. There is
not so much need for this now, and I am not discoursing on 25
the whole duty of man. I take that part of our reading which
by itself is no doubt harmless, entertaining, and even gently
instructive. But of this enormous mass of literature how
much deserves to be chosen out, to be preferred to all the
great books of the world, to be set apart for those precious 30
hours which are all that the most of us can give to solid
reading? The vast proportion of books are books that we
shall never be able to read. A serious percentage of books
are not worth reading at all. The really vital books for us
we also know to be a very trifling portion of the whole. And 35
yet we act as if every book were as good as any other, as if
it were merely a question of order which we take up first, as
104 FREDERIC HARRISON
if any book were good enough for us, and as if all were alike
honourable, precious, and satisfying. Alas! books cannot
be more than the men who write them ; and as a fair propor-
tion of the human race now write books, with motives and
5 objects as various as human activity, books, as books, are
entitled a priori, until their value is proved, to the same
attention and respect as houses, steam-engines, pictures,
fiddles, bonnets, and other products of human industry.
In the shelves of those libraries which are our pride, libraries
10 public or private, circulating or very stationary, are to be
found those great books of the world rari nantes in gurgite
tiasto, 1 those books which are truly " the precious life-blood
of a master-spirit." But the very familiarity which their
mighty fame has bred in us makes us indifferent; we grow
15 weary of what every one is supposed to have read; and we
take down something which looks a little eccentric, some
worthless book, on the mere ground that we never heard
of it before.
Thus the difficulties of literature are in their way as great
20 as those of the world, the obstacles to finding the right
friends are as great, the peril is as great of being lost in a
Babel of voices and an ever-changing mass of beings. Books
are not wiser than men, the true books are not easier to find
than the true men, the bad books or the vulgar books are
25 not less obtrusive and not less ubiquitous than the bad or
vulgar men are everywhere; the art of right reading is as
long and difficult to learn as the art of right living. Those
who are on good terms with the first author they meet,
run as much risk as men who surrender their time to the
30 first passer in the street; for to be open to every book is
for the most part to gain as little as possible from any. A
man aimlessly wandering about in a crowded city is of all
men the most lonely; so he who takes up only the books
that he " comes across " is pretty certain to meet but few
35 that are worth knowing.
Now this danger is one to which we are specially exposed
1 Floating scattered on the vast abyss.
HOW TO READ 105
in this age. Our high-pressure life of emergencies, our
whirling industrial organisation or disorganisation have
brought us in this (as in most things) their peculiar dif-
ficulties and drawbacks. In almost everything vast oppor-
tunities and gigantic means of multiplying our products 5
bring with them new perils and troubles which are often at
first neglected. Our huge cities, where wealth is piled up
and the requirements and appliances of life extended beyond
the dreams of our forefathers, seem to breed in themselves
new forms of squalor, disease, blights, or risks to life such as 10
we are yet unable to master. So the enormous multiplicity
of modern books is not altogether favourable to the knowing
of the best. I listen with mixed satisfaction to the paeans
that they chant over the works which issue from the press
each day: how the books poured forth from Paternoster 15
Row might in a few years be built into a pyramid that
would fill the dome of St. Paul's. How in this mountain of
literature am I to find the really useful book? How, when
I have found it, and found its value, am I to get others to
read it? How am I to keep my head clear in the torrent 20
and din of works, all of which distract my attention, most
of which promise me something, whilst so few fulfil that
promise? The Nile is the source of the Egyptian's bread,
and without it he perishes of hunger. But the Nile may be
rather too liberal in his flood, and then the Egyptian runs 25
imminent risk of drowning.
And thus there never was a time, at least during the
last two hundred years, when the difficulties in the way of
making an efficient use of books were greater than they are
to-day, when the obstacles were more real between readers 30
and the right books to read, when it was practically so
troublesome to find out that which it is of vital importance
to know; and that not by the dearth, but by the plethora
of printed matter. For il comes to nearly the same thing
whether we are actually debarred by physical impossibility 35
from getting the right book into our hand, or whether we
are choked off from the right book by the obtrusive crowd
106 FREDERIC HARRISON
of the wrong books; so that it needs a strong character and
a resolute system of reading to keep the head cool in the
storm of literature around us. We read nowadays in the
market-place I would rather say in some large steam
5 factory of letter-press, where damp sheets of new print
whirl round us perpetually if it be not rather some noisy
book-fair where literary showmen tempt us with performing
dolls, and the gongs of rival booths are stunning our ears
from morn till night. Contrast with this pandemonium of
loLeipsic and Paternoster Row the sublime picture of our
Milton in his early retirement at Horton, when, musing over
his coming flight to the epic heaven, practising his pinions,
as he tells Diodati, he consumed five years of solitude in
reading the ancient writers " Et totum rapiunt me, mea
15 vita, libri." 1
Who now reads the ancient writers? Who systematically
reads the great writers, be they ancient or modern, whom
the consent of ages has marked out as classics: typical,
immortal, peculiar teachers of our race? Alas! the Paradise
20 Lost is lost again to us beneath an inundation of graceful
academic verse, sugary stanzas of ladylike prettiness, and
ceaseless explanations in more or less readable prose of what
John Milton meant or did not mean, or what he saw or did
not see, who married his great-aunt, and why Adam or
25 Satan is like that, or unlike the other. We read a perfect
library about the Paradise Lost, but the Paradise Lost
itself we do not read.
I am not presumptuous enough to assert that the larger
part of modern literature is not worth reading in itself, that
30 the prose is not readable, entertaining, one may say highly
instructive. Nor do I pretend that the verses which we
read so zealously in place of Milton's are not good verses.
On the contrary, I think them sweetly conceived, as musical
and as graceful as the verse of any age in our history. A
35 great deal of our modern literature is such that it is exceed-
1 " And here my books my life absorb me whole," Cowper's
translation of Milton's Latin Epistle to Diodati.
HOW TO READ 107
ingly difficult to resist it, and it is undeniable that it gives
us real information. It seems perhaps unreasonable to
many to assert that a decent readable book which gives us
actual instruction can be otherwise than a useful companion
and a solid gain. Possibly many people are ready to cry 5
out upon me as an obscurantist for venturing to doubt
a genial confidence in all literature simply as such. But
the question which weighs upon me with such really crush-
ing urgency is this: What are the books that in our little
remnant of reading time it is most vital for us to know? 10
For the true use of books is of such sacred value to us that
to be simply entertained is to cease to be taught, elevated,
inspired by books; merely to gather information of a chance
kind is to close the mind to knowledge of the urgent kind.
Every book that we take up without a purpose is an oppor- 15
tunity lost of taking up a book with a purpose every bit
of stray information which we cram into our heads without
any sense of its importance, is for the most part a bit of the
most useful information driven out of our heads and choked
off from our minds. It is so certain that information, i.e. ,20
the knowledge, the stored thoughts and observations of
mankind, is now grown to proportions so utterly incal-
culable and prodigious, that even the learned whose lives
are given to study can but pick up some crumbs that fall
from the table of truth. They delve and tend but a plot in 25
that vast and teeming kingdom, whilst those whom active
life leaves with but a few cramped hours of study can hardly
come to know the very vastness of the field before them,
or how infmitesimally small is the corner they can traverse
at the best. We know all is not of equal value. We know 30
that books differ in value as much as diamonds differ from
the sand on the seashore, as much as our living friend differs
from a dead rat. W r e know that much in the myriad-peo-
pled world of books very much in all kinds is trivial,
enervating, inane, even noxious. And thus, where we have 3^
infinite opportunities of wasting our efforts to no end, of
fatiguing our minds without enriching them, of clogging
108 FREDERIC HARRISON
the spirit without satisfying it, there, I cannot but think,
the very infinity of opportunities is robbing us of the actual
power of using them. And thus I come often, in my less
hopeful moods, to watch the remorseless cataract of daily
5 literature which thunders over the remnants of the past,
as if it were a fresh impediment to the men of our day in
the way of systematic knowledge and consistent powers of
thought, as if it were destined one day to overwhelm the
great inheritance of mankind in prose and verse.
10 I remember, when I was a very young man at college,
that a youth, in no spirit of paradox, but out of plenary
conviction, undertook to maintain before a body of serious
students, the astounding proposition that the invention
of printing had been one of the greatest misfortunes that
15 had ever befallen mankind. He argued that exclusive
reliance on printed matter had destroyed the higher method
of oral teaching, the dissemination of thought by the spoken
word to the attentive ear. He insisted that the formation
of a vast literary class looking to the making of books as
20 a means of making money, rather than as a social duty,
had multiplied books for the sake of the writers rather than
for the sake of the readers; that the reliance on books as a
cheap and common resource had done much to weaken
the powers of memory; that it destroyed the craving for
25 a general culture of taste, and the need of artistic expression
in all the surroundings of life. And he argued, lastly, that
the sudden multiplication of all kinds of printed matter had
been fatal to the orderly arrangement of thought, and had
hindered a system of knowledge and a scheme of education.
30 I am far from sharing this immature view. Of course I
hold the invention of printing to have been one of the most
momentous facts in the whole history of man. Without
it universal social progress, true democratic enlightenment,
and the education of the people would have been impossible,
35 or very slow, even if the cultured few, as is likely, could
have advanced the knowledge of mankind without it. We
place Gutenberg amongst the small list of the unique and
HOW TO READ 109
special benefactors of mankind, in the sacred choir of those
whose work transformed the conditions of life, whose work,
once done, could never be repeated. And no doubt the things
which our ardent friend regarded as so fatal a disturbance
of society were all inevitable and necessary, part of the great 5
revolution of mind through which men grew out of the
mediaeval incompleteness to a richer conception of life
and of the world.
Yet there is a sense in which this boyish anathema against
printing may become true to us by our own fault. We 10
may create for ourselves these very evils. For the art of
printing has not been a gift wholly unmixed with evils;
it must be used wisely if it is to be a boon to man at all;
it entails on us heavy responsibilities, resolution to use
it with judgment and self-control, and the will to resist its 15
temptations and its perils. Indeed, we may easily so act
that we may make it a clog on the progress of the human
mind, a real curse and not a boon. The power of flying
at will through space would probably extinguish civilisa-
tion and society, for it would release us from the whole- 20
some bondage of place and rest. The power of hearing
every word that had ever been uttered on this planet
would annihilate thought, as the power of knowing all
recorded facts by the process of turning a handle would
annihilate true science. Our human faculties and our 25
mental forces are not enlarged simply by multiplying our
materials of knowledge and our facilities for communica-
tion. Telephones, microphone?, pantoscopes, steam-presses,
and ubiquity-engines in general may, after all, leave the
poor human brain panting and throbbing under the strain 30
of its appliances, no bigger and no stronger than the brains
of the men who heard Moses speak, and saw Aristotle and
Archimedes pondering over a few worn rolls of crabbed
manuscript. Until some new Gutenberg or Watt can invent
a machine for magnifying the human mind, every fresh 35
apparatus for multiplying its work is a fresh strain on the
mind, a new realm for it to order and to rule.
110 FREDERIC HARRISON
And so, I say it most confidently, the first intellectual
task of our age is rightly to order and make serviceable
the vast realm of printed material which four centuries have
swept across our path. To organise our knowledge, to
5 systematise our reading, to save, out of the relentless
cataract of ink, the immortal thoughts of the greatest
this is a necessity, unless the productive ingenuity of man
is to lead us at last to a measureless and pathless chaos.
To know anything that turns up is, in the infinity of knowl-
10 edge, to know nothing. To read the first book we come
across, in the wilderness of books, is to learn nothing. To
turn over the pages of ten thousand volumes is to be prac-
tically indifferent to all that is good.
But this warns me that I am entering on a subject which
15 is far too big and solemn. It is plain that to organise our
knowledge, even to systematise our reading, to make a
working selection of books for general study, really implies
a complete scheme of education. A scheme of education
ultimately implies a system of philosophy, a view of man's
20 duty and powers as a moral and social being a religion.
Before a problem so great as this, on which readers have
such different ideas and wants, and differ so profoundly
on the very premises from which we start, before such a
problem as a general theory of education, I prefer to pause.
25 I will keep silence even from good words. I have chosen
my own part, and adopted my own teacher. But to ask
men to adopt the education of Auguste Comte, is almost
to ask them to adopt Positivism itself.
Nor will I enlarge on the matter for thought, for fore-
30 boding, almost for despair, that is presented to us by the
fact of our familiar literary ways and our recognised literary
profession. That things infinitely trifling in themselves:
men, events, societies, phenomena, in no way otherwise
more valuable than the myriad other things which flit
35 around us like the sparrows on the housetop, should be
glorified, magnified, and perpetuated, set under a literary
microscope and focussed in the blaze of a literary magic-
HOW TO READ 111
lantern not for what they are in themselves, but solely
to amuse and excite the world by showing how it can be
done all this is to me so amazing, so heart-breaking, that
I forbear now to treat it, as I cannot say all that I would.
The Choice of Books is really the choice of our education, 5
of a moral and intellectual ideal, of the whole duty of man.
But though I shrink from any so high a theme, a few words
are needed to indicate my general point of view in the matter.
In the first place, when we speak about books, let us avoid
the extravagance of expecting too much from books, the 10
pedant's habit of extolling books as synonymous with edu-
cation. Books are no more education than laws are virtue;
and just as profligacy is easy within the strict limits of law,
a boundless knowledge of books may be found with a narrow
education. A man may be, as the poet saith, " deep vers'dis
in books, and shallow in himself." We need to know in
order that we may feel rightly and act wisely. The thirst
after truth itself may be pushed to a degree where indul-
gence enfeebles our sympathies and unnerves us in action.
Of all men perhaps the book-lover needs most to be reminded 20
that man's business here is to know for the sake of living,
not to live for the sake of knowing.
A healthy mode of reading would follow the lines of a
sound education. And the first canon of a sound educa-
tion is to make it the instrument to perfect the whole nature 25
and character. Its aims are comprehensive, not special;
they regard life as a whole, not mental curiosity; they have
to give us, not so much materials, as capacities. So that,
however moderate and limited the opportunity for educa-
tion, in its way it should be always more or less symmetri-jo
cal and balanced, appealing equally in turn to the three
grand intellectual elements imagination, memory, reflec-
tion: and so having something to give us in poetry, in
history, in science, and in philosophy.
And thus our reading will be sadly one-sided, however 35
voluminous it be, if it entirely close to us any of the great
types and ideals which the creative instinct of man has
112 FREDERIC HARRISON
produced, if it shut out from us either the ancient world, or
other European poetry, as important almost as our own.
When our reading, however deep, runs wholly into " pockets,"
and exhausts itself in the literature of one age, one country,
5 one type, then we may be sure that it is tending to narrow
or deform our minds. And the more it leads us into curious
byways and nurtures us into indifference for the beaten
highways of the world, the sooner we shall end, if we be
not specialists and students by profession, in ceasing to
10 treat our books as the companions and solace of our lifetime,
and in using them as the instruments of a refined sort of
self-indulgence.
A wise education, and so judicious reading, should leave no
great type of thought, no dominant phase of human nature,
15 wholly a blank. Whether our reading be great or small,
so far as it goes, it should be general. If our lives admit of
but a short space for reading, all the more reason that, so
far as may be, it should remind us of the vast expanse of
human thought, and the wonderful variety of human nature.
20 To read, and yet so to read that we see nothing but a corner
of literature, the loose fringe, or flats and wastes of letters,
and by reading only deepen our natural belief that this
island is the hub of the universe, and the nineteenth century
the only age worth notice, all this is really to call in the aid
25 of books to thicken and harden our untaught prejudices.
Be it imagination, memory, or reflection that we address
that is, in poetry, history, science, or philosophy, our first
duty is to aim at knowing something at least of the best,
at getting some definite idea of the mighty realm whose
30 outer rim we are permitted to approach.
But how are we to know the best; how are we to gain this
definite idea of the vast world of letters? There are some who
appear to suppose that the " best " are known only to
experts in an esoteric way, who may reveal to inquirers
35 what schoolboys and betting-men describe as "tips."
There are no " tips " in literature; the " best " authors
are never dark horses; we need no " crammers '' and
HOW TO READ 113
" coaches " to thrust us into the presence of the great
writers of all time. " Crammers " will only lead us wrong.
It is a thing far easier and more common than many imagine,
to discover the best. It needs no research, no learning,
and is only misguided by recondite information. The world 5
has long ago closed the great assize of letters and judged the
first places everywhere. In such a matter the judgment
of the world, guided and informed by a long succession of
accomplished critics, is almost unerring. When some
Zoilus finds blemishes in Homer, and prefers, it may be, 10
the work of some Apollonius of his own discovering, we
only laugh. There may be doubts about the third and
fourth rank; but the first and the second are hardly open
to discussion. The gates which lead to the Elysian fields
may slowly wheel back on their adamantine hinges to admit 15
now and then some new and chosen modern. But the
company of the masters of those who know, and in especial
degree of the great poets, is a roll long closed and complete,
and they who are of it hold ever peaceful converse together.
Hence we may find it a useful maxim that, if our reading 20
be utterly closed to the great poems of the world, there is
something amiss with our reading. If you find Milton,
Dante, Calderon, Goethe, so much " Hebrew-Greek " to
you; if your Homer and Virgil, your Moliere and Scott,
rest year after year undisturbed on their shelves beside your 25
school trigonometry and your old college text-books; if
you have never opened the Cid, the Nibelungen, Crusoe,
and Don Quixote since you were a boy, and are wont to leave
the Bible and the Imitation for some wet Sunday after-
noon know, friend, that your reading can do you little 30
real good. Your mental digestion is ruined or sadly out of
order. No doubt, to thousands of intelligent educated men
who call themselves readers, the reading through a Ganto
of The Purgatorio, or a Book of the Paradise Lost, is a task
as irksome as it would be to decipher an ill- written manu-35
script in a language that is almost forgotten. But, although
we are not to be always reading epics, and are chiefly in the
114 . FREDERIC HARRISON
mood for slighter things, to be absolutely unable to read
Milton or Dante with enjoyment, is to be in a very bad way.
Aristophanes, Theocritus, Boccaccio, Cervantes, Moliere
are often as light as the driven foam; but they are not
slight enough for the general reader. Their humour is too
bright and lovely for the groundlings. They are, alas!
" classics," somewhat apart from our everyday ways; they
are not banal enough for us; and so for us they slumber
" unknown in a long night," just because they are immortal
10 poets, and are not scribblers of to-day.
When will men understand that the reading of great books
is a faculty to be acquired, not a natural gift, at least not
to those who are spoiled by our current education and habits
of life? Ceci tuera cela, 1 the last great poet might have said
15 of the first circulating library. An insatiable appetite for
new novels makes it as hard to read a masterpiece as it seems
to a Parisian boulevardier to live in a quiet country. Until
a man can truly enjoy a draft of clear water bubbling from a
mountain side, his taste is in an unwholesome state. And so
20 he who finds the Heliconian spring insipid should look to the
state of his nerves. Putting aside the iced air of the dif-
ficult mountain tops of epic, tragedy, or psalm, there are some
simple pieces which may serve as an unerring test of a
healthy or a vicious taste for imaginative work. If the Cid,
25 the Vita Xuova, the Canterbury Talcs, Shakespeare's Sonnets,
and Lycidas pall on a man; if he care not for Malory's
Morte d 'Arthur and the Red Cross Knight; if he thinks
Crusoe and the Vicar books for the young; if he thrill not
with The Ode to the West Wind, and The Ode to a Grecian
30 Urn; if he have no stomach for Christabel or the lines written
on The Wye above T intern Abbey, he should fall on his knees
and pray for a cleanlier and quieter spirit.
The intellectual system of most of us in these days needs
" to purge and to live cleanly." Only by a course of treat-
35 ment shall we bring our minds to feel at peace with the grand
pure works of the world. Something we ought all to know
1 This will destroy that.
HOW TO READ 115
of the masterpieces of antiquity, and of the other nations
of Europe. To understand a great national poet, such as
Dante, Calderon, Corneille, or Goethe, is to know other
types of human civilisation in ways which a library of his-
tories does not sufficiently teach. The great masterpieces 5
of the world are thus, quite apart from the charm and solace
they give us, the master instruments of a solid education.
ON GOING A JOURNEY 1
WILLIAM HAZLITT
ONE of the pleasantest things in the world is going a
journey; but I like to go by myself. I can enjoy society
in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for
me. I am then never less alone than when alone.
5 "The fields his study, nature was his book."
I cannot see the wit of walking and talking at the same
time. When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like
the country. I am not for criticising hedge-rows and black
cattle. I go out of town in order to forget the town and all
10 that is in it. There are those who for this purpose go to
watering-places, and carry the metropolis with them. I
like more elbow-room, and fewer encumbrances. I like
solitude, when I give myself up to it, for the sake of solitude;
nor do I ask for
15 " a friend in my retreat,
\Yhom I may whisper solitude is sweet."
The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think,
feel, do just as one pleases. We go a journey chiefly to be
free of all impediments and of all inconveniences; to leave
20 ourselves behind, much more to get rid of others. It is
because I want a little breathing-space to muse on indif-
ferent matters, where Contemplation
"May plume her feathers and let grow her wings,
That in the various bustle of resort
25 Were all too ruffled, and sometimes impair'd,"
1 From "Table-Talk," 1821-2.
116
ON GOING A JOURNEY 117
that I absent myself from the town for a while, without
feeling at a loss the moment I am left by myself. Instead
of a friend in a postchaise or in a Tilbury, to exchange good
things with, and vary the same stale topics over again,
for once let me have a truce with impertinence. Give me 5
the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath
my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march
to dinner and then to thinking! It is hard if I cannot
start some game on these lone heaths. I laugh, I run, I
leap, I sing for joy. From the point of yonder rolling cloud, 10
I plunge into my past being, and revel there, as the sun-
burnt Indian plunges headlong into the wave that wafts
him to his native shore. Then long-forgotten things,
like " sunken wrack and sumless treasuries," burst upon
my eager sight, and I begin to feel, think, and be myself 15
again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts
at wit or dull commonplaces, mine is that undisturbed
silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence. No
one likes puns, alliterations, antitheses, arguments, and
analysis better than I do; but I sometimes had rather be 20
without them. "Leave, oh, leave me to my repose!"
I have just now other business in hand, which would seem
idle to you, but is with me " very stuff of the conscience."
Is not this wild rose sweet without a comment? Does not
this daisy leap to my heart set in its coat of emerald. Yet 25
if I were to explain to you the circumstance that has so
endeared it to me, you would only smile. Had I not better
then keep it to myself, and let it serve me to brood over,
from here to yonder craggy point, and from thence onward to
the far-distant horizon? I should be but bad company all 30
that way, and therefore prefer being alone. I have heard
it said that you may, when the moody fit comes on, walk
or ride on by yourself, and indulge your reveries. But 'this
looks like a breach of manners, a neglect of others, and you
are thinking all the time that you ought to rejoin your 35
party. " Out upon such half-faced fellowship," say I. I
like to be either entirely to myself, or entirely at the disposal
118 WILLIAM HAZLITT
of others; to talk or be silent, to walk or sit still, to be sociable
or solitary. I was pleased with an observation of Mr.
Cobbett's that " he thought it a bad French custom to
drink our wine with our meals, and that an Englishman
Sought to do only one thing at a time." So I cannot talk
and think, or indulge in melancholy musing and lively
conversation by fits and starts. " Let me have a companion
of my way," savs Sterne, " were it but to remark how the
shadows lengthen as the sun declines." It is beautifully
10 said: but in my opinion, this continual comparing of notes
interferes with the involuntary impression of things upon
the mind, and hurts the sentiment. If you only hint what
you feel in a kind of dumb show, it is insipid: if you have
to explain it, it is making a toil of a pleasure. You cannot
15 read the book of nature, without being perpetually put
to the trouble of translating it for the benefit of others.
I am for the synthetical method on a journey, in preference
to the analytical. I am content to lay in a stock of ideas
then, and to examine and anatomise them afterwards. I
20 want to see my vague notions float like the down of the
thistle before the breeze, and not to have them entangled
in the briars and thorns of controversy. For once, I like
to have it all my own way; and this is impossible unless
you are alone, or in such company as I do not covet. I
25 have no objection to argue a point with any one for twenty
miles of measured road, but not for pleasure. If you remark
the scent of a beanfield crossing the road, perhaps your
fellow-traveller has no smell. If you point to a distant
object, perhaps he is short-sighted, and has to take out his
30 glass to look at it. There is a feeling in the air, a tone in
the colour of a cloud which hits your fancy, but the effect
of which you are unable to account for. There is then no
sympathy, but an uneasy craving after it, and a dissatisfac-
tion which pursues you on the way, and in the end probably
35 produces ill humour. Now I never quarrel with myself,
and take all my own conclusions for granted till I find it
necessary to defend them against objections. It is not
ON GOING A JOURNEY 119
merely that you may not be of accord on the objects and
circumstances that present themselves before you these
may recall a number of objects, and lead to associations too
delicate and refined to be possibly communicated to others.
Yet these I love to cherish, and sometimes still fondly 5
clutch them, when I can escape from the throng to do so.
To give way to our feelings before company, seems extrava-
gance or affectation; and on the other hand, to have to
unravel this mystery of our being at every turn, and to make
others take an equal interest in it (otherwise the end is not 10
answered) is a task to which few are competent. We must
" give it an understanding, but no tongue." My old friend
C , however, could do both. He could go on in the
most delightful explanatory way over hill and dale, a sum-
mer's day, and convert a landscape into a didactic poem 15
or a Pindaric ode. " He talked far above singing." If I
could so clothe my ideas in sounding and flowing words,
I might perhaps wish to have some one with me to admire
the swelling theme; or I could be more content, were it
possible for me still to hear his echoing voice in the woods 20
of All-Foxden. They had " that fine madness in them which
our first poets had;" and if they could have been caught
by some rare instrument, would have breathed such strains
as the following.
" Here be woods as green 2 5
As any, air likewise as fresh and sweet
As when smooth Zephyrus plays on the fleet
Face of the curled stream, with flow'rs as many
As the young spring gives, and as choice as any;
Here be all new delights, cool streams and wells, 3
Arbours o'ergrown with woodbine, caves and dells;
Choose where thou wilt, while I sit by and sing,
Or gather rushes to make many a ring
For thy long fingers; tell thee tales of love,
How the pale Phoebe, hunting in a grove, 35
First saw the boy Endymion, from whose eyes
She took eternal fire that never dies;
How she convey'd him softly in a sleep,
His temples bound with poppy, to the steep
120 WILLIAM HAZLITT
Head of old Latmos, where she stoops each night,
Gilding the mountain with her brother's light,
To kiss her sweetest."
FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS.
5 Had I words and images at command like these, I would
attempt to wake the thoughts that lie slumbering on golden
ridges in the evening clouds: but at the sight of nature
my fancy, poor as it is, droops and closes up its leaves,
like flowers at sunset. I can make nothing out on the spot :
10 1 must have time to collect myself.
In general, a good thing spoils out-of-door prospects:
it should be reserved for Table-talk. L is for this
reason, I take it, the worst company in the world out of
doors; because he is the best within. I grant, there is one
1 5 subject on which it is pleasant to talk on a journey; and
that is, what one shall have for supper when we get to our
inn at night. The open air improves this sort of conversa-
tion or friendly altercation, by setting a keener edge on
appetite. Every mile of the road heightens the flavour
20 of the viands we expect at the end of it. How fine it is
to enter some old town, walled and turreted, just at the
approach of nightfall, or to come to some straggling village,
with the lights streaming through the surrounding gloom;
and then after inquiring for the best entertainment that the
25 place affords, to "take one's ease at one's inni" These
eventful moments in our lives' history are too precious,
too full of solid, heartfelt happiness to be frittered and
dribbled away in imperfect, sympathy. I would have them
all to myself, and drain them to the last drop: they will
30 do to talk of or to write about afterwards. What a delicate
speculation it is, after drinking whole goblets of tea,
"The cups that cheer, but not inebriate,''
and letting the fumes ascend into the brain, to sit consider-
ing what we shall have for supper eggs and a rasher, a
35 rabbit smothered in onions, or an excellent veal-cutlet!
ON GOING A JOURNEY 121
Sancho l in such a situation once fixed upon cow-heel;
and his choice, though he could not help it, is not to be
disparaged. Then in the intervals of pictured scenery and
Shandean contemplation, to catch the preparation and the
stir in the kitchen Procul, procul este profani! 2 These 5
hours are sacred to silence and to musing, to be treasured
up in the memory, and to feed the source of smiling thoughts
hereafter. I would not waste them in idle talk; or if I
must have the integrity of fancy broken in upon, I would
rather it were by a stranger than a friend. A stranger 10
takes his hue and character from the time and place; he
is a part of the furniture and costume of an inn. If he is a
Quaker, or from the West Riding of Yorkshire, so much
the better. I do not even try to sympathise with him, and
he breaks no squares. I associate nothing with my travelling 15
companion but present objects and passing events. In
his ignorance of me and my affairs, I in a manner forget
myself. But a friend reminds one of other things, rips up
old grievances, and destroys the abstraction of the scene.
He comes in ungraciously between us and our imaginary 20
character. Something is dropped in the course of conversa-
tion that gives a hint of your profession and pursuits; or
from having some one with you that knows the less sublime
portions of your history, it seems that other people do. You
are no longer a citizen of the world: but your " unhoused 25
free condition is put into circumscription and confine."
The incognito of an inn is one of its striking privileges
" lord of one's self, uncumber'd with a name." Oh! it is
great to shake off the trammels of the world and of public
opinion to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting 30
personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the
creature of the moment, clear of all ties to hold to the
universe only by a dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing
but the score of the evening and no longer seeking for
applause and meeting with contempt, to be known by no 35
1 Sancho Panza, a character in Cervantes' romance, "Don Quixote."
2 Aloof, O keep aloof, ye unitiatcd !
122 WILLIAM HAZLITT
other title than the Gentleman in the parlour! One may
take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of
uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indef-
initely respectable and negatively right worshipful. We
S baffle prejudice and disappoint conjecture; and from being
so to others, begin to be objects of curiosity and wonder
even to ourselves. We are no more those hackneyed com-
monplaces that we appear in the world: an inn restores us
to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I have
10 certainly spent some enviable hours at inns sometimes
when I have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to
solve some metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-
common, where I found out the proof that likeness is not
a case of the association of ideas at other times, when there
15 have been pictures in the room, as at St. Neot's (I think
it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings of the
Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn
on the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging
some of Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly
20 (for a theory that I had, not for the admired artist) with
the figure of a girl who had ferried me over the Severn,
standing up in the boat between me and the twilight at
other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a
peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half
25 the night to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at
an inn at Bridgewater, after being drenched in the rain all
day; and at the same place I got through two volumes of
Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the tenth of April,
1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the
30 inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken.
The letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes
his feelings as he first caught a glimpse from the heights of
the Jura of the Pays de Vaud, which I had brought with
me as a bon bouche 1 , to crown the evening with. It was my
35 birthday, and I had for the first time come from a place in
the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The road
1 A titbit.
ON GOING A JOURNEY 123
to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and
on passing a certain point, you come all at once upon the
valley, which opens like an amphitheatre, broad, barren
hills rising in majestic state on either side, with " green upland
swells that echo to the bleat of flocks" below, and the river 5
Dee babbling over its stony bed in the midst of them. The
valley at this time " glittered green with sunny showers,"
and a budding ash-tree dipped its tender branches in the
chiding stream. How proud, how glad I was to walk along
the high road that overlooks the delicious prospect, repeating 10
the lines which I have just quoted from Mr. Coleridge's
poems! But besides the prospect which opened beneath
my feet, another also opened to my inward sight, a heavenly
vision, on which were written, in letters large as Hope could
make them, these four words, LIBERTY, GENIUS, LOVE, 15
VIRTUE; which have since faded into the light of common
day, or mock my idle gaze.
"The beautiful is vanished, and returns not."
Still I would return some time or other to this enchanted spot;
but I would return to it alone. What other self could 1 20
find to share that influx of thoughts, of regret, and delight,
the fragments of which I could hardly conjure up to myself,
so much have they been broken and defaced! I could stand
on some tall rock, and overlook the precipice of years that
separates me from what I then was. I was at that time 25
going shortly to visit the poet whom I have above named.
Where is he now? Not only I myself have changed; the
world, which was then new to me, has become old and
incorrigible. Yet will I turn to thee in thought, O sylvan
Dee, in joy, in youth and gladness as thou then wert; and 30
thou shalt always be to me the river of Paradise, where I
will drink of the waters of life freely!
There is hardly any thing that shows the short-sightedness
or capriciousness of the imagination more than travelling
does. With change of place we change our ideas; nay, our 35
opinions and feelings. We can by an effort indeed transport
124 WILLIAM HAZLITT
ourselves to old and long-forgotten scenes, and then the
picture of the mind revives again; but we forget those that
we have just left. It seems that we can think but of one
place at a time. The canvas of the fancy is but of a certain
5 extent, and if we paint one set of objects upon it, they
immediately efface every other. We cannot enlarge our
conceptions, we only shift our point of view. The land-
scape bares its bosom to the enraptured eye, we take our fill
of it, and seem as if we could form no other image of beauty
10 or grandeur. We pass on, and think no more of it: the
horizon that shuts it from our sight, also blots it from our
memory like a dream. In travelling through a wild barren
country, I can form no idea of a woody and cultivated
one. It appears to me that all the world must be barren,
15 like what I see of it. In the country we forget the town,
and in town we despise the country. " Beyond Hyde Park,"
says Sir Fopling Flutter, "all is a desert." All that part
of the map that we do not see before us is a blank. The
world in our conceit of it is not much bigger than a nutshell.
20 It is not one prospect expanded into another, county joined
to county, kingdom to kingdom, lands to seas, making an
image voluminous and vast; the mind can form no larger
idea of space than the eye can take in at a single glance.
The rest is a name written in a map, a calculation of
25 arithmetic. For instance, what is the true signification
of that immense mass of territory and population, known
by the name of China, to us? An inch of paste-board on
a wooden globe, of no more account than a China orange!
Things near us are seen of the size of life: things at a
30 distance are diminished to the size of the understanding.
We measure the universe by ourselves, and even compre-
hend the texture of our own being only piecemeal. In
this way, however, we remember an infinity of things and
places. The mind is like a mechanical instrument that
35 plays a great variety of tunes, but it must play them in
succession. One idea recalls another, but it at the same time
excludes all others. In trying to renew old recollections,
ON GOING A JOURNEY 125
we cannot as it were unfold the whole web of our existence;
we must pick out the single threads. So in coming to a
place where we have formerly lived and with which we
have intimate associations, every one must have found that
the feeling grows more vivid the nearer we approach the 5
spot, from the mere anticipation of the actual impression:
we remember circumstances, feelings, persons, faces, names,
that we had not thought of for years; but for the time all
the rest of the world is forgotten!
To return to the question I have quitted above. I ro
have no objection to go to see ruins, aqueducts, pictures,
in company with a friend or a party, but rather the con-
trary, for the former reason reversed. They are intelligible
matters, and will bear talking about. The sentiment here
is not tacit, but communicable and overt. Salisbury Plain 15
is barren of criticism, but Stonehenge will bear a discussion
antiquarian, picturesque, and philosophical. In setting
out on a party of pleasure, the first consideration always
is where we shall go to; in taking a solitary ramble, the
question is what we shall meet with by the way. " The 20
mind is its own place;" nor are we anxious to arrive at
the end of our journey. I can myself do the honours
indifferently well to works of art and curiosity. I once
took a party to Oxford with no mean eclat showed them
that seat of the Muses at a distance, 25
"With glistering spires and pinnacles adorn'd"-
descanted on the learned air that breathes from the grassy
quadrangles and stone walls of halls and colleges was at
home in the Bodleian; and at Blenheim quite superseded
the powdered Ciceroni that attended us, and that pointed 30
in vain with his wand to commonplace beauties in match-
less pictures. As another exception to the above reasoning,
I should not feel confident in venturing on a journey in a
foreign country without a companion. I should want at
intervals to hear the sound of my own language. There 1835
an involuntary antipathy in the mind of an Englishman to
126 WILLIAM HAZLITT
foreign manners and notions that requires the assistance
of social sympathy to carry it off. As the distance from
home increases, this relief, which was at first a luxury,
becomes a passion and an appetite. A person would almost
5 feel stifled to find himself in the deserts of Arabia without
friends and countrymen: there must be allowed to be some-
thing in the view of Athens or old Rome that claims the
utterance of speech; and I own that the Pyramids are too
mighty for any single contemplation. In such situations,
10 so opposite to all one's ordinary train of ideas, one seems
a species by one's self, a limb torn off from society, unless
one can meet with instant fellowship and support. Yet I
did not feel this want or craving very pressing once, when
I first set my foot on the laughing shores of France. Calais
1 5 was peopled with novelty and delight. The confused, busy
murmur of the place was like oil and wine poured into my
ears; nor did the mariners' hymn, which was sung from
the top of an old crazy vessel in the harbour, as the sun
went down, send an alien sound into my soul. I only
20 breathed the air of general humanity. I walked over "the
vine-covered hills and gay regions of France," erect and
satisfied; for the image of man was not cast down and
chained to the foot of arbitrary thrones: I was at no loss
for language, for that of all the great schools of painting
25 was open to me. The whole is vanished like a shade.
Pictures, heroes, glory, freedom, all are fled: nothing
remains but the Bourbons and the French people! There
is undoubtedly a sensation in travelling into foreign parts
that is to be had nowhere else: but it is more pleasing at
30 the time than lasting. It is too remote from our habitual
associations to be a common topic of discourse or reference,
and, like a dream or another state of existence, does not
piece into our daily modes of life. It is an animated but a
momentary hallucination. It demands an effort to exchange
35 our actual for our ideal identity; and to feel the pulse of
our old transports revive very keenly, we must "jump"
all our present comforts and connections. Our romantic
ON GOING A JOURNEY 127
and itinerant character is not to be domesticated. Dr.
Johnson remarked how little foreign travel added to the
facilities of conversation in those who had been abroad. In
fact, the time we have spent there is both delightful and
in one sense instructive; but it appears to be cut out of 5
our substantial, downright existence, and never to join
kindly on to it. We are not the same, but another, and
perhaps more enviable individual, all the time we are out
of our own country. We are lost to ourselves, as well as
our friends. So the poet somewhat quaintly sings, 10
"Out of my country and myself I go."
Those who wish to forget painful thoughts, do well to absent
themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall
them: but we can be said only to fulfil our destiny in the
place that gave us birth. I should on this account like well 15
enough to spend the whole of my life in travelling abroad,
if I could any where borrow another life to spend afterwards
at home!
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 1
LESLIE STEPHEN
I HAVE often felt a sympathy, which almost rises to the
pathetic, when looking on at a cricket-match or boat-
race. Something of the emotion with which Gray regarded
the " distant spires and antique towers" rises within me.
5 It is not, indeed, that I feel very deeply for the fine ingenuous
lads who, as somebody says, are about to be degraded into
tricky, selfish Members of Parliament. I have seen too
much of them. They are very fine animals; but they are
rather too exclusively animal. The soul is apt to be in too
10 embryonic a state within these cases of well-strung bone and
muscle. It is impossible for a mere athletic machine,
however finely constructed, to appeal very deeply to one's
finer sentiments. I can scarcely look forward with even
an affectation of sorrow for the time when, if more sophis-
15 ticated, it will at least have made a nearer approach to the
dignity of an intellectual being. It is not the boys who
make me feel a touch of sadness; their approaching eleva-
tion to the dignity of manhood will raise them on the whole
in the scale of humanity; it is the older spectators whose
20 aspect has in it something affecting. The shaky old gentle-
man, who played in the days when it was decidedly less
dangerous to stand up to bowling than to a cannon-ball,
and who now hobbles about on rheumatic joints, by the
help of a stick; the corpulent elder, who rowed when boats
25 had gangways down their middle, and did not require as
delicate a balance as an acrobat's at the top of a living
pyramid these are the persons whom I cannot see without
1 From "The Playground of Europe," 1871.
128
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 129
an occasional sigh. They are really conscious that they have
lost something which they can never regain; or, if they
momentarily forget it, it is even more forcibly impressed
upon the spectators. To see a respectable old gentleman
of sixty, weighing some fifteen stone, suddenly forget a 5
third of his weight and two-thirds of his years, and attempt
to caper like a boy, is indeed a startling phenomenon. To
the thoughtless, it may be simply comic; but, without being
a Jaques, one may contrive also to suck some melancholy
out of it. 10
Now, as I have never caught a cricket-ball, and, on the
contrary, have caught numerous crabs in my life, the
sympathy which I feel for these declining athletes is not
due to any great personal interest in the matter. But I
have long anticipated that a similar day would come for me, 15
when I should no longer be able to pursue my favourite sport
of mountaineering. Some day I should find that the ascent
of a zigzag was as bad as a performance on the treadmill;
that I could not look over a precipice without a swimming
in the head; and that I could no more jump a crevasse 20
than the Thames at Westminster. None of these things
have come to pass. So far as I know, my physical powers
are still equal to the ascent of Mont Blanc or the Jungfrau.
But I am no less effectually debarred it matters not how
from mountaineering. I wander at the foot of the gigantic 25
Alps, and look up longingly to the summits, which are
apparently so near, and yet know that they are divided
from me by an impassable gulf. In some missionary work
I have read that certain South Sea Islanders believed in a
future paradise where the good should go on eating for ever 30
with insatiable appetites at an inexhaustible banquet.
They were to continue their eternal dinner in a house with
open wickerwork sides; and it was to be the punishment
of the damned to crawl outside in perpetual hunger and look
in through the chinks as little boys look in through the 35
windows of a London cookshop. With similar feelings
I lately watched through a telescope the small black dots,
130 LESLIE STEPHEN
which were really men, creeping up the high flanks of Mont
Blanc or Monte Rosa. The eternal snows represented for
me the Elysian fields, into which entrance was sternly for-
bidden, and I lingered about the spot with a mixture of
5 pleasure and pain, in the envious contemplation of my
more fortunate companions.
I know there are those who will receive these assertions
with civil incredulity. Some persons assume that every
pleasure with which they cannot sympathise is necessarily
10 affectation, and hold, as a particular case of that doctrine,
that Alpine travellers risk their lives merely from fashion or
desire of notoriety. Others are kind enough to admit that
there is something genuine in the passion, but put it on a
level with the passion for climbing greased poles. They
15 think it derogatory to the due dignity of Mont Blanc that
he should be used as a greased pole, and assure us that the
true pleasures of the Alps are those which are within reach
of the old and the invalids, who can only creep about villages
and along high-roads. I cannot well argue with such detrac-
20 tors from what I consider a noble sport. As for the first
class, it is reduced almost to a question of veracity. I say
that I enjoy being on the top of a mountain, or, indeed,
halfway up a mountain; that climbing is a pleasure to me,
and would be so if no one else climbed and no one ever heard
25 of my climbing. They reply that they don't believe it.
No more argument is possible than if I were to say that I
liked eating olives, and some one asserted that I really eat
them only out of affectation. My reply would be simply
to go on eating olives; and I hope the reply of mountaineers
30 will be to go on climbing Alps. The other assault is more
intelligible. Our critics admit that we have a pleasure;
'but assert that it is a puerile pleasure that it leads to an
irreverent view of mountain beauty, and to oversight of
that which should really most impress a refined and noble
35 mind. To this I shall only make such an indirect reply
as may result from a frank confession of my own regrets
at giving up the climbing business perhaps for ever. I
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 131
am sinking, so to speak, from the butterfly to the cater-
pillar stage, and, if the creeping thing is really the highest
of the two, it will appear that there is something in the
substance of my lamentations unworthy of an intellectual
being. Let me try. By way of preface, however, I admit 5
that mountaineering, in my sense of the word, is a sport.
It is a sport which, like fishing or shooting, brings one into
contact with the sublimest aspects of nature; and, without
setting their enjoyment before one as an ultimate end or aim,
helps one indirectly to absorb and be penetrated by their 10
influence. Still it is strictly a sport as strictly as cricket,
or rowing, or knurr and spell and I have no wish to place
it on a different footing. The game is won when a moun-
tain-top is reached in spite of difficulties; it is lost when one
is forced to retreat; and, whether won or lost, it calls into 15
play a great variety of physical and intellectual energies,
and gives the pleasure which always accompanies an energetic
use of our faculties. Still it suffers in some degree from this
undeniable characteristic, and especially from the tinge
which has consequently been communicated to narratives 20
of mountain adventures. There are two ways which have
been 'appropriated to the description of all sporting exploits.
One is to indulge in fine writing about them, to burst out
in sentences which swell to paragraphs, and in paragraphs
which spread over pages; to plunge into ecstasies about 25
infinite abysses and overpowering splendours, to compare
mountains to archangels lying down in eternal winding-
sheets of snow, and to convert them into allegories about
man's highest destinies and aspirations. This is good when
it is well done. Mr. Ruskin has covered the Matterhorn, 30
for example, with a whole web of poetical associations, in
language which, to a severe taste, is perhaps a trifle too fine,
though he has done it with an eloquence which his bitterest
antagonists must freely acknowledge. Yet most humble
writers will feel that if they try to imitate Mr. Ruskin'sas
eloquence they will pay the penalty of becoming ridiculous.
It is not every one who can with impunity compare Alps
132 LESLIE STEPHEN
to archangels. Tall talk is luckily an object of suspicion
to Englishmen, and consequently most writers, and especially
those who frankly adopt the sporting view of the mountains,
adopt the opposite scheme: they affect something like
5 cynicism; they mix descriptions of scenery with allusions
to fleas or to bitter beer; they shrink with the prevailing
dread of Englishmen from the danger of overstepping the
limits of the sublime into its proverbial opposite; and
they humbly try to amuse us because they can't strike
10 us with awe. This, too, if I may venture to say so, is good
in its way and place; and it seems rather hard to these luck-
less writers when people assume that, because they make
jokes on a mountain, they are necessarily insensible to its
awful sublimities. A sense of humour is not incompatible
15 with imaginative sensibilty; and even Wordsworth might
have been an equally powerful prophet of nature if he could
sometimes have descended from his stilts. In short, a man
may worship mountains, and yet have a quiet joke with
them when he is wandering all day in their tremendous
20 solitudes.
Joking, however, is, it must be admitted, a dangerous
habit. I freely avow that, in my humble contributions
to Alpine literature, I have myself made some very poor and
very unseasonable witticisms. I confess my error, and
25 only wish that I had no w r orse errors to confess. Still I
think that the poor little jokes in which we mountaineers
sometimes indulge have been made liable to rather harsh
constructions. We are accused, in downright earnest,
not merely of being flippant, but of an arrogant contempt
30 for all persons whose legs are not as strong as our own. We
are supposed seriously to wrap ourselves in our own conceit,
and to brag intolerably of our exploits. Now I will not
say that no mountaineer ever swaggers: the quality called
by the vulgar " bounce " is unluckily confined to no pro-
35 fession. Certainly I have seen a man intolerably vain because
he could raise a hundred-weight with his little finger; and I
dare say that the " champion bill-poster," whose name is
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 133
advertised on the walls of this metropolis, thinks excellence
in bill-posting the highest virtue of a citizen. So some men
may be silly enough to brag in all seriousness about moun-
tain exploits. However, most lads of twenty learn that it
is silly to give themselves airs about mere muscular eminence; 5
and especially is this true of Alpine exploits first, because
they require less physical prowess than almost any other
sport, and secondly, because a good amateur still feels him-
self the hopeless inferior of half the Alpine peasants whom
he sees. You cannot be very conceited about a game in 10
which the first clodhopper you meet can give you ten minutes'
start in 1m hour. Still a man writing in a humorous vein
naturally adopts a certain bumptious tone, just as our
friend " Punch " ostentatiously declares himself to be
omniscient and infallible. Nobody takes him at his word, 15
or supposes that the editor of " Punch " is really the most
conceited man in all England. But we poor mountaineers
are occasionally fixed w r ith our own careless talk by some
outsider who is not in the secret. We know ourselves to
be a small sect, and to be often laughed at; we reply by 20
assuming that we are the salt of the earth, and that our
amusement is the first and noblest of all amusements. Our
only retort to the good-humoured ridicule with which we are
occasionally treated is to adopt an affected strut, and to
carry it off as if we were the finest fellows in the world. We 25
make a boast of our shame, and say, if you laugh we must
crow. But we don't really mean anything: if we did, the
only word which the English language would afford where-
with to describe us would be the very unpleasant antithesis
to wise men, and certainly I hold that we have the average 30
amount of common sense. When, therefore, I see us taken
to task for swaggering, I think it a trifle hard that this merely
playful affectation of superiority should be made a serious
fault. For the future I would promise to be careful, if it
were worth avoiding the misunderstanding of men who 35
won't take a joke. Meanwhile, I can only state that when
Alpine travellers indulge in a little swagger about their
134 LESLIE STEPHEN
i >
own performances and other people's incapacity, they don't
mean more than an infinitesimal fraction of what they say,
and that they know perfectly well that when history comes
to pronounce a final judgment upon the men of the time,
5 it won't put mountain-climbing on a level with patriotism,
or even with excellence in the fine arts.
The reproach of real bond fide arrogance is, so far as I
know, very little true of Alpine travellers. With the excep-
tion of the necessary fringe hanging on to every set of
10 human beings consisting of persons whose heads are weaker
than their legs the mountaineer, so far as my experience
has gone, is generally modest, enough. Perhaps he some-
times flaunts his ice-axes and ropes a little too much before
the public eye at Charaonix, as a yachtsman occasionally
15 flourishes his nautical costume at Cowes; but the fault
may be pardoned by those not inexorable to human weak-
nesses. This opinion, I know, cuts at the root of the most
popular theory as to our ruling passion. If we do not
climb the Alps to gain notoriety, for what purpose can we
20 possibly climb them? That same unlucky trick of joking is
taken to indicate that we don't care much about the
scenery; for w r ho, with a really susceptible soul, could be
facetious under the cliffs of Jungfrau or the ghastly preci-
pices of the Matterhorn? Hence people who kindly excuse
-.25 us from the blame of notoriety-hunting generally accept
the " greased-pole " theory. We are, it seems, overgrown
schoolboys, who, like other schoolboys, enjoy being in dirt,
and danger, and mischief, and have as much sensibility for
natural beauty as the mountain mules. And against this,
30 as a more serious complaint, I wish to make my feeble
protest, in order that my lamentations on quitting the
profession may not seem unworthy of a thinking being.
Let me try to recall some of the impressions which moun-
taineering has left with me, and see whether they throw
35 any light upon the subject. As I gaze at the huge cliffs
where I may no longer wander, I find innumerable recol-
lections arise some of them dim, as though belonging to a
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 135
past existence; and some so brilliant that I can scarcely
realise my exclusion from the scenes to which they belong.
I am standing at the foot of what, to my mind, is the most
glorious of all Alpine wonders the huge Oberland precipice,
on the slopes of the Faulhorn or the Wengern Alp. Innu- 5
merable tourists have done all that tourists can do to
cocknify (if that is the right derivative from cockney) the
scenery; but, like the Pyramids or a Gothic cathedral,
it throws off the taint of vulgarity by its imperishable
majesty. Even on turf strewn with sandwich-papers and 10
empty bottles, even in the presence of hideous peasant-
women singing "Stand-er auf" for five centimes, we cannot
but feel the influence of Alpine beauty. When the sunlight
is dying off the snows, or the full moon lighting them up
with ethereal tints, even sandwich-papers and singing women 15
may be forgotten. How does the memory of scrambles
along snow aretes, of plunges luckily not too deep into
crevasses, of toil through long snowfields, towards a refuge
that seemed to recede as we advanced where, to quote
Tennyson with due alteration, to the traveller toiling in 20
immeasurable snow
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill
The chalet sparkles like a grain of salt;
how do such memories as these harmonise with the sense of
superlative sublimity? 25
One element of mountain beauty is, we shall all admit,
their vast size and steepness. That a mountain is very
big, and is faced by perpendicular walls of rock, is the first
thing which strikes everybody, and is the whole essence
and outcome of a vast quantity of poetical description. 30
Hence the first condition towards a due appreciation of moun-
tain scenery is that these qualities should be impressed upon
the imagination. The mere dry statement that a moun-
tain is so many feet in vertical height above the sea, and
contains so many tons of granite, is nothing. Mont Blanc 35
is about three miles hk r h. What of that? Three miles is
136 LESLIE STEPHEN
an hour's walk for a lady an eighteen-penny cab-fare
the distance from Hyde Park Corner to the Bank an
express train could do it in three minutes, or a racehorse
in five. It is a measure which we have learnt to despise,
5 looking at it from a horizontal point of view; and accord-
ingly most persons, on seeing the Alps for the first time,
guess them to be higher, as measured in feet, than they
really are. What, indeed, is the use of giving measures in
feet to any but the scientific mind? Who cares whether
10 the moon is 250,000 or 2,500,000 miles distant? Mathe-
maticians try to impress upon us that the distance of the
fixed stars is only expressible by a row of figures which
stretches across a page; suppose it stretched across two or
across a dozen pages, should we be any the wiser, or have,
15 in the least degree, a clearer notion of the superlative dis-
tances? We civilly say, "Dear me!" when the astronomer
looks to us for the appropriate stare, but we only say it
with the mouth; internally our remark is, "You might as
well have multiplied by a few more millions whilst you were
20 about it." Even astronomers, though not a specially
imaginative race, feel the impotence of figures, and try to
give us some measure which the mind can grasp a little more
conveniently. They tell us about the cannon-ball which
might have been flying ever since the time of Adam, and
25 not yet have reached the heavenly body, or about the stars
which may not yet have become visible, though the light
has been flying to us at a rate inconceivable by the mind
for an inconceivable number of years; and they succeed in
producing a bewildering and giddy sensation, although the
30 numbers are too vast to admit of any accurate appre-
hension.
We feel a similar need in the case of mountains. Besides
the bare statement of figures, it is necessary to have some
means for grasping the meaning of the figures. The bare
35 tens and thousands must be clothed with some concrete
images. The statement that a mountain is 15,000 feet
high is, by itself, little more impressive than that it is 3,000;
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 137
we want something more before we can mentally compare
Mont Blanc and Snowdon. Indeed, the same people who
guess of a mountain's height at a number of feet much
exceeding the reality, show, when they are cross-examined,
that they fail to appreciate in any tolerable degree the real 5
meaning of the figures. An old lady one day, about n A.M.,
proposed to walk from the ^ggischhorn to the Jungfrau-
Joch, and to return for luncheon the distance being a good
twelve hours' journey for trained mountaineers. Every
detail of which the huge mass is composed is certain to be 10
underestimated. A gentleman the other day pointed out
to me a grand ice-cliff at the end of a hanging glacier, which
must have been at least 100 feet high, and asked me whether
that snow was three feet deep. Nothing is more common
than for tourists to mistake some huge pinnacle of rock, 15
as big as a church tower, for a traveller. The rocks of the
Grands Mulcts, in one corner of which the chalet is hidden,
are often identified with a party ascending Mont Blanc;
and I have seen boulders as big as a house pointed out
confidently as chamois. People who make these blunders 20
must evidently see the mountains as mere toys, however
many feet they may give them at a random guess. Huge
overhanging cliffs are to them steps within the reach of
human legs; yawning crevasses are ditches to be jumped;
and foaming waterfalls are like streams from penny squirts. 25
Everyone knows the avalanches on the Jungfrau, and the
curiously disproportionate appearance of the little puffs of
white smoke, which are said to be the cause of the thunder;
but the disproportion ceases to an eye that has learnt really
to measure distance, and to know that these smoke-puffs 30
represent a cataract of crashing blocks of ice.
Now the first merit of mountaineering is that it enables
one to have what theologians would call an experimental
faith in the size of mountains to substitute a real living
belief for a dead intellectual assent. It enables one, first, 35
to assign something like its true magnitude to a rock or
snow-slope; and, secondly, to measure that magnitude in
138 LESLIE STEPHEN
terms of muscular exertion instead of bare mathematical
units. Suppose that we are standing upon the Wengern
Alp; between the Monch and the Eiger there stretches a
round white bank, with a curved outline, which we may
5 roughly compare to the back of one of Sir E. Landseer's
lions. The ordinary tourists the old man, the woman, or
the cripple, who are supposed to appreciate the real beauties
of Alpine scenery may look at it comfortably from their
hotel. They may see its graceful curve, the long straight
10 lines that are ruled in delicate shading down its sides, and
the contrast of the blinding white snow with the dark blue
sky above; but they will probably guess it to be a mere
bank a snowdrift, perhaps, which has been piled by the
last storm. If you pointed out to them one of the great
15 rocky teeth that projected from its summit, and said that
it was a guide, they would probably remark that he
looked very small, and would fancy that he could jump
over the bank with an effort. Now a mountaineer knows,
to begin with, that it is a massive rocky rib, covered with
20 snow, lying at a sharp angle, and varying perhaps from
500 to 1,000 feet in height. So far he might be accom-
panied by men of less soaring ambition; by an engineer who
had been mapping the country, or an artist who had been
carefully observing the mountains from their bases. They
25 might learn in time to interpret correctly the real meaning
of shapes at which the uninitiated guess at random. But
the mountaineer can go a step further, and it is the next
step which gives the real significance to those delicate
curves and lines. He can translate the 500 or 1,000 feet
30 of snow-slope into a more tangible unit of measurement.
To him, perhaps, they recall the memory of a toilsome
ascent, the sun beating on his head for five or six hours,
the snow returning the glare with still more parching effect;
a stalwart guide toiling all the weary time, cutting steps
35 in hard blue ice, the fragments hissing and spinning down
the long straight grooves in the frozen snow till they lost
themselves in the yawning chasm below; and step after step
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 139
taken along the slippery staircase, till at length he trium-
phantly sprang upon the summit of the tremendous wall
that no human foot had scaled before. The little black
knobs that rise above the edge represent for him huge
impassable rocks, sinking on one side in scarped slippery 5
surfaces towards the snowfield, and on the other stooping
in one tremendous cliff to a distorted glacier thousands of
feet below. The faint blue line across the upper neve,
scarcely distinguishable to the eye, represents to one
observer nothing but a trifling undulation; a second, perhaps, 10
knows that it means a crevasse ; the mountaineer remembers
that it is the top of a huge chasm, thirty feet across, and
perhaps ten times as deep, with perpendicular sides of
glimmering blue ice, and fringed by thick rows of enormous
pendent icicles. The marks that are scored in delicate 15
lines, such as might be ruled by a diamond on glass, have
been cut by innumerable streams trickling in hot weather
from the everlasting snow, or ploughed by succeeding
avalanches that have slipped from the huge upper snow-
fields above. In short, there is no insignificant line or mark 20
that has not its memory or its indication of the strange
phenomena of the upper world. True, the same picture is
painted upon the retina of all classes of observers; and so
Porson and a schoolboy and a peasant might receive the
same physical impression from a set of black and white 25
marks on the page of a Greek play; but to one they would
be an incoherent conglomeration of unmeaning and capri-
cious lines, to another they would represent certain sounds
more or less corresponding to some English words; whilst
to the scholar they would reveal some of the noblest poetry 30
in the world, and all the associations of successful intel-
lectual labour. I do not say that the difference is quite
so great in the case of the mountains; still I am certain
that no one can decipher the natural writing on the face
of a snow-slope or a precipice who has not wandered amongst 35
their recesses, and learnt by slow experience what is indi-
cated by marks which an ignorant observer would scarcely
140 LESLIE STEPHEN
notice. True, even one who sees a mountain for the first
time may know that, as a matter of fact, a scar on the face
of a cliff means, for example, a recent fall of a rock; but
between the bare knowledge and the acquaintance with all
S which that knowledge implies the thunder of the fall, the
crash of the smaller fragments, the bounding energy of the
descending mass there is almost as much difference as
between hearing that a battle has been fought and being
present at it yourself. We have all read descriptions of
10 Waterloo till we are sick of the subject; but I imagine that
our emotions on seeing the shattered well of Hougomont
are very inferior to those of one of the Guard who should
revisit the place where he held out for a long day against
the assaults of the French army.
15 Now to an old mountaineer the Oberland cliffs are full of
memories; and, more than this, he has learnt the language
spoken by every crag and every wave of glacier. It is strange
if they do not affect him rather more powerfully than the
casual visitor who has never been initiated by practical
20 experience into their difficulties. To him, the huge but-
tress which runs down from the Monch is something more
than an irregular pyramid, purple with white patches at
the bottom and pure white at the top. He fills up the bare
outline supplied by the senses with a thousand lively images.
25 He sees tier above tier of rock, rising in a gradually ascend-
ing scale of difficulty, covered at first by long lines of the
debris that have been splintered by frost from the higher
wall, and afterwards rising bare and black and threatening.
He knows instinctively which of the ledges has a dangerous
30 look where such a bold mountaineer as John Lauener
might slip on the polished surface, or be in danger of an
avalanche from above. He sees the little shell-like swelling
at the foot of the glacier crawling down the steep slope above,
and knows that it means an almost inaccessible wall of ice;
35 and the steep snowfields that rise towards the summit are
suggestive of something very different from the picture
which might have existed in the mind of a German student,
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 141
who once asked me whether it was possible to make the
ascent on a mule.
Hence, if mountains owe their influence upon the imagi-
nation in a great degree to their size and steepness, and
apparent inaccessibility as no one can doubt that they 5
do, whatever may be the explanation of the fact that people
like to look at big, steep, inaccessible objects the advan-
tages of the mountaineer are obvious. He can measure
those qualities on a very different scale from the ordinary
traveler. He measures the size, not by the vague abstract 10
term of so many thousand feet, but by the hours of labour,
divided into minutes each separately felt of strenuous
muscular exertion. The steepness is not expressed in
degrees, but by the memory of the sensation produced when
a snow-slope seems to be rising up and smiting you in the 15
face; when, far away from all human help, you are cling-
ing like a fly to the slippery side of a mighty pinnacle in
mid air. And as for the inaccessibility, no one can measure
the difficulty of climbing a hill who has not wearied his
muscles and brain in struggling against the opposing obsta- 20
cles. Alpine travellers, it is said, have removed the romance
from the mountains by climbing them. What they have
really done is to prove that there exists a narrow line by which
a way may be found to the top of any given mountain;
but the clue leads through innumerable inaccessibilities; 25
true, you can follow one path, but to right and left are
cliffs which no human foot will ever tread, and whose
terrors can only be realised when you are in their imme-
diate neighbourhood. The cliffs of the Matterhorn do not
bar the way to the top effectually, but it is only by forcing 30
a passage through them that you can really appreciate
their terrible significance.
Hence I say that the qualities which strike every sensitive
observer are impressed upon the mountaineer with tenfold
force and intensity. If he is as accessible to poetical 35
influences as his neighbours and I don't know why he
should be less so he has opened new avenues of access
142 LESLIE STEPHEN
between the scenery and his mind. He has learnt a lan-
guage which is but partially revealed to ordinary men. An
artist is superior to an unlearned picture-seer, not merely
because he has greater natural sensibility, but because he
5 has improved it by methodical experience; because his
senses have been sharpened by constant practice, till he
can catch finer shades of colouring, and more delicate
inflexions of line; because, also, the lines and colours have
acquired new significance, and been associated with a thou-
10 sand thoughts with which the mass of mankind has never
cared to connect them. The mountaineer is improved by a
similar process. But I know some sceptical critics will
ask, does not the way in which he is accustomed to regard
mountains rather deaden their poetical influence? Doesn't
15 he come to look at them as mere instruments of sport, and
overlook their more spiritual teaching? Does not all the
excitement of personal adventure and the noisy apparatus
of guides, and ropes, and axes, and tobacco, and the fun
of climbing, rather dull his perceptions and incapacitate
20 him from perceiving
The silence that is in the starry sky,
The sleep that is among the lonely hills?
Well, I have known some stupid and unpoetical moun-
taineers; and, since T have been dismounted from my
25 favourite hobby, I think T have met some similar specimens
among the humbler class of tourists. There are persons,
I fancy, who " do " the Alps; who look upon the Lake of
Lucerne as one more task ticked off from their memorandum
book, and count up the list of summits visible from the
30 Gornergrat without being penetrated with any keen sense of
sublimity. And there are mountaineers who are capable of
making a pun on the top of Mont B lane and capable of
nothing more. Still I venture to deny that even punning
is incompatible with poetry, or that those who make the
35 pun can have no deeper feeling in their bosoms which they
are perhaps too shamefaced to utter.
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 143
The fact is that that which gives its inexpressible charm
to mountaineering is the incessant series of exquisite natural
scenes, which are for the most part enjoyed by the moun-
taineer alone. This is, I am aware, a round assertion; but
I will try to support it by a few of the visions which are 5
recalled to me by these Oberland cliffs, and which I have
seen profoundly enjoyed by men who perhaps never men-
tioned them again, and probably in describing their adven-
tures scrupulously avoided the danger of being sentimental.
Thus every traveller has occasionally done a sunrise, 10
and a more lamentable proceeding than the ordinary view
of a sunrise can hardly be imagined. You are cold, miserable,
breakfastless; have risen shivering from a warm bed, and
in your heart long only to creep into bed again. To the
mountaineer all this is changed. He is beginning a day full 15
of the anticipation of a pleasant excitement. He has,
perhaps, been waiting anxiously for fine weather, to try
conclusions with some huge giant not yet scaled. He moves
out with something of the feeling with which a soldier goes
to the assault of a fortress, but without the same probability 20
of coming home in fragments; the danger is trifling enough
to be merely exhilatory, and to give a pleasant tension to
the nerves; his muscles feel firm and springy, and his stomach
no small advantage to the enjoyment of scenery is in
excellent order. He looks at the sparkling stars with keen 25
satisfaction, prepared .to enjoy a fine sunrise with all his
faculties at their best, and with the added pleasure of a
good omen for his day's work. Then a huge dark mass
begins to mould itself slowly out of the darkness, the sky
begins to form a background of deep purple, against which 30
the outline becomes gradually more definite; one by one,
the peaks catch the exquisite Alpine glow, lighting up in
rapid succession, like a vast illumination; and when at last
the steady sunlight settles upon them, and shows every
rock and glacier, without even a delicate film of mist to 55
obscure them, he feels his heart bound, and steps out gaily
to the assault just as the people on the Rigi are giving thanks
144 LESLIE STEPHEN
that the show is over and that they may go to bed. Still
grander is the sight when the mountaineer has already reached
some lofty ridge, and, as the sun rises, stands between the day
and the night the valley still in deep sleep, with the mists
5 lying between the folds of the hills, and the snow-peaks
standing out clear and pale white just before the sun reaches
them, whilst a broad band of orange light runs all round the
vast horizon. The glory of sunsets is equally increased in
the thin upper air. The grandest of all such sights that live
10 in my memory is that of a sunset from the Aiguille du
Goute. The snow at our feet was glowing with rich light,
and the shadows in our footsteps a vivid green by the con-
trast. Beneath us was a vast horizontal floor of thin level
mists suspended in mid air, spread like a canopy over the
1 5 whole boundless landscape, and tinged with every hue of
sunset. Through its rents and gaps we could see the lower
mountains, the distant plains, and a fragment of the Lake
of Geneva lying in a more sober purple. Above us rose the
solemn mass of Mont Blanc in the richest glow of an Alpine
20 sunset. The sense of lonely sublimity was almost oppressive,
and although half our party was suffering from sickness,
I believe even the guides w y ere moved to a sense of solemn
beauty.
These grand scenic effects are occasionally seen by ordinary
25 travellers, though the ordinary traveller is for the most
part out of temper at 3 A.M. The mountaineer can enjoy
them, both because his frame of mind is properly trained to
receive the natural beauty, and because he alone sees them
with their best accessories, amidst the silence of the eternal
30 snow, and the vast panoramas visible from the loftier
summits. And he has a similar advantage in most of the
great natural phenomena of the cloud and the sunshine.
No sight in the Alps is more impressive than the huge rocks
of a black precipice suddenly frowning out through the
35 chasms of a storm-cloud. But grand as such a sight may
be from the safe verandahs of the inn at Grindelwald, it is
far grander in the silence of the Central Alps amongst the
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 145
savage wilderness of rock and snow. Another characteristic
effect of the High Alps often presents itself when one has
been climbing for two or three hours, with nothing in sight
but the varying wreaths of mist that chased each other
monotonously along the rocky ribs up whose snow-covered 5
backbone we were laboriously fighting our way. Suddenly
there is a puff of wind, and looking round we find that we
have in an instant pierced the clouds, and emerged, as it
were, on the surface of the ocean of vapour. Beneath us
stretches for hundreds of miles the level fleecy floor, andio
above us shines out clear in the eternal sunshine every
mountain, from Mont Blanc to Monte Rosa and the Jung-
frau. What, again, in the lower regions, can equal the
mysterious charm of gazing from the edge of a torn rocky
parapet into an apparently fathomless abyss, where nothing^
but w r hat an Alpine traveller calls a " strange formless
wreathing of vapour " indicates the storm-wind that is
raging below us? I might go on indefinitely recalling the
strangely impressive scenes that frequently startle the
traveller in the waste upper world; but language is feeble 20
indeed to convey even a glimmering of what is to be seen to
those who have not seen it for themselves, whilst to them
it can be little more than a peg upon which to hang their
own recollections. These glories, in which the mountain
Spirit reveals himself to his true worshippers, are only to be 25
gained by the appropriate service of climbing at some risk,
though a very trifling risk, if he is approached with due
form and ceremony into the furthest recesses of his shrines.
And without seeing them, I maintain that no man has
really seen the Alps. 30
The difference between the exoteric and the esoteric
school of mountaineers may be indicated by their different
view of glaciers. At Grindelwald, for example, it is v the
fashion to go and " see the glaciers " heaven save the
mark! Ladies in costumes, heavy German professors, 35
Americans doing the Alps at a gallop, Cook's tourists, and
other varieties of a well-known genus, go off in shoals and
146 LESLIE STEPHEN
see what? A gigantic mass of ice, strangely torn with a
few of the exquisite blue crevasses, but denied and prostrate
in dirt and ruins. A stream foul with mud oozes out from
the base; the whole mass seems to be melting fast away;
5 the summer sun has evidently got the best of it in these
lower regions, and nothing can resist him but the great
mounds of decaying rock that strew the surface in confused
lumps. It is as much like the glacier of the upper regions
as the melting fragments of snow T in a London street are like
10 the surface of the fresh snow that has just fallen in a country
field. And by way of improving its attractions a perpetual
picnic is going on, and the ingenious natives have hewed
a tunnel into the ice, for admission to which they charge
certain centimes. The unlucky glacier reminds me at his
15 latter end of a wretched whale stranded on a beach, dis-
solving into masses of blubber, and hacked by remorseless
fishermen, instead of plunging at his ease in the deep blue
water. Far above, w r here the glacier begins his course, he
is seen only by the true mountaineer. There are vast
20 amphitheatres of pure snow, of which the glacier known
to tourists is merely the insignificant drainage, but whose
very existence they do not generally suspect. They are
utterly ignorant that from the top of the icefall which they
visit you may walk for hours on the eternal ice. After a
25 long climb you come to the region where the glacier is truly
at its noblest; where the surface is a spotless white; where
the crevasses are enormous rents sinking to profound depths,
with walls of the purest blue; where the glacier is torn and
shattered by the energetic forces which mould it, but has an
30 expression of superabundant power, like a full stream fretting
against its banks and plunging through the vast gorges
that it has hewn for itself in the course of centuries. The
bases of the mountains are immersed in a deluge of cockney-
ism fortunately a shallow deluge whilst their summits
35 rise high into the bracing air, where everything is pure and
poetical.
The difference which I have thus endeavoured to indicate
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 147
is more or less traceable in a wider sense. The mountains
are exquisitely beautiful, indeed, from whatever points of
view we contemplate them; and the mountaineer would
lose much if he never saw the beauties of the lower valleys,
of pasturages deep in flowers, and dark pine-forests with the 5
summits shining from far off between the stems. Only, as
it seems to me, he has the exclusive prerogative of thoroughly
enjoying one and that the most characteristic, though by
no means only, element of the scenery. There may be a
very good dinner spread before twenty people; but if nine- 10
teen of them were teetotalers, and the twentieth drank his
wine like a man, he would be the only one to do it full justice;
the others might praise the meat or the fruits, but he would
alone enjoy the champagne; and in the great feast which
Nature spreads before us (a stock metaphor, which emboldens 15
me to make the comparison), the high mountain scenery
acts the part of the champagne. Unluckily, too, the tee-
totalers are very apt, in this case also, to sit in judgment
upon their more adventurous neighbours. Especially are
they pleased to carp at the views from high summits. 1 20
have been constantly asked, with a covert sneer, " Did
it repay you?" a question which involves the assumption
that one wants to be repaid, as though the labour were not
itself part of the pleasure, and which implies a doubt that
the view is really enjoyable. People are always demonstrat- 25
ing that the lower views are the most beautiful; and at the
same time complaining that mountaineers frequently turn
back without looking at the view from the top, as though
that would necessarily imply that they cared nothing for
scenery. In opposition to which I must first remark that, 30
as a rule, every step of an ascent has a beauty of its own,
which one is quietly absorbing even when one is not directly
making it a subject of contemplation, and that the View
from the top is generally the crowning glory of the whole.
It will be enough if I conclude with an attempt to illus-,35
trate this last assertion: and I will do it by still referring
to the Oberland. Every visitor with a soul for the beautiful
148 LESLIE STEPHEN
admires the noble form of the Wetterhorn the lofty snow-
crowned pyramid rising in such light and yet massive lines
from its huge basement of perpendicular cliffs. The Wetter-
horn has, however, a further merit. To my mind and I
5 believe most connoisseurs of mountain tops agree with me
it is one of the most impressive summits in the Alps. It
is not a sharp pinnacle like the Weisshorn, or a cupola like
Mont Blanc, or a grand rocky tooth like the Monte Rosa,
but a long and nearly horizontal knife-edge, which, as seen
10 from either end, has of course the appearance of a sharp-
pointed cone. It is when balanced upon this ridge
sitting astride of the knife-edge on which one can hardly
stand without giddiness that one fully appreciates an
Alpine precipice. Mr. Justice Wills has admirably dc-
15 scribed the first ascent, and the impression it made upon him,
in a paper which has become classical for succeeding adven-
turers. Behind you the snow-slope sinks with perilous
steepness towards the wilderness of glacier and rock through
which the ascent has lain. But in front the ice sinks with
20 even greater steepness for a few feet or yards. Then it
curves over and disappears, and the next thing that the eye
catches is the meadowland of Grindelwald, some 9,000 feet
below. I have looked down many precipices, where the
eye can trace the course of every pebble that bounds down
25 the awful slopes, and where I have shuddered as some dis-
lodged fragment of rock showed the course which, in case
of accident, fragments of my own body would follow. A
precipice is always, for obvious reasons, far more terrible
from above than from below. The creeping, tingling sensa-
30 tion which passes through one's limbs even when one
knows oneself to be in perfect safety testifies to the thrilling
influence of the sight. But I have never so realised the
terrors of a terrific cliff as when I could not see it. The
awful gulf which intervened between me and the green
35 meadows struck the imagination by its invisibility. It
was like the view which may be seen from the ridge of a
cathedral roof, where the eaves have for their immediate
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 149
background the pavement of the streets below; only this
cathedral was 9,000 feet high. Now, any one standing at the
foot of the Wetterhorn may admire their stupendous mas-
si veness and steepness; but, to feel their influence enter
in the very marrow of one's bones, it is necessary to stand s
at the summit, and to fancy the one little slide down the
short ice-slope, to be followed apparently by a bound into
clear air and a fall down to the houses, from heights where
only the eagle ventures to soar.
This is one of the Alpine beauties, which, of course, is 10
beyond the power of art to imitate, and which people are
therefore apt to ignore. But it is not the only one to be
seen on the high summits. It is often said that these views
are not " beautiful " apparently because they won't go
into a picture, or, to put it more fairly, because no picture 15
can in the faintest degree imitate them. But without
quarrelling about words, I think that, even if " beautiful "
be not the most correct epithet, they have a marvellously
stimulating effect upon the imagination. Let us look
round from this wonderful pinnacle in mid air, and 20
note one or two of the most striking elements of the
scenery.
You are, in the first place, perched on a cliff, whose presence
is the more felt because it is unseen. Then you are in a
region over which eternal silence is brooding. Not a sound 25
ever comes there, except the occasional fall of a splintered
fragment of rock, or a layer of snow; no stream is heard
trickling, and the sounds of animal life are left thousands of
feet below. The most that you can hear is some mysterious
noise made by the wind eddying round the gigantic rocks 530
sometimes a strange flapping sound, as if an unearthly
flag were shaking its invisible folds in the air. The enormous
tract of country over which your view extends most *of it
dim and almost dissolved into air by distance intensifies
the strange influence of the silence. You feel the force of the 35
line I have quoted from Wordsworth
The sleep that is among the lonely hills.
150 LESLIE STEPHEN
None of the travellers whom you can see crawling at your
feet has the least conception of what is meant by the silent
solitudes of the High Alps. To you, it is like a return to
the stir of active life, when, after hours of lonely wandering,
5 you return to hear the tinkling of the cow-bells below; to them
the same sound is the ultimate limit of the habitable world.
Whilst your mind is properly toned by these influences,
you become conscious of another fact, to which the com-
mon variety of tourists is necessarily insensible. You
10 begin to find out for the first time what the mountains really
are. On one side, you look back upon the huge reservoirs
from which the Oberland glaciers descend.. You see the
vast stores from which the great rivers of Europe are replen-
ished, the monstrous crawling masses that are carving the
1 5 mountains into shape, and the gigantic bulwarks that
separate two great quarters of the world. From below
these wild regions are half invisible; they are masked by
the outer line of mountains; and it is not till you are able
to command them from some lofty point that you can appre-
20 date the grandeur of the huge barriers, and the snow that
is piled within their folds. There is another half of the view
equally striking. Looking towards the north, the whole of
Switzerland is couched at your feet; the Jura and the
Black Forest lie on the far horizon. And then you know
25 what is the nature of a really mountainous country. From
below everything is seen in a kind of distorted perspective.
The people of the valley naturally think that the valley is
everything that the country resembles old-fashioned maps,
where a few sporadic lumps are distributed amongst towns
30 and plains. The true proportions reveal themselves as you
ascend. The valleys, you can now see, are nothing but
narrow trenches scooped out amidst a tossing waste of
mountain, just to carry off the drainage. The great ridges
run hither and thither, having it all their own way, wild
35 and untamable regions of rock or open grass or forest,
at whose feet the valleys exist on sufferance. Creeping about
amongst the roots of the hills, you half miss the hills them-
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 151
selves; you quite fail to understand the massiveness of the
mountain chains, and, therefore, the wonderful energy of
the forces that have heaved the surface of the world into
these distorted shapes. And it is to a half-conscious sense
of the powers that must have been at work that a great part 5
of the influence of mountain scenery is due. Geologists
tell us that a theory of catastrophes is unphilosophical ;
but, whatever may be the scientific truth, our minds are
impressed as though we were witnessing the results of some
incredible convulsion. At Stonehenge we ask what human 10
beings could have erected these strange grey monuments,
and in the mountains we instinctively ask what force can
have carved out the Matterhorn, and placed the Wetter-
horn on its gigantic pedestal. Now, it is not till we reach
some commanding point that we realise the amazing extent 15
of country over which the solid ground has been shaking
and heaving itself in irresistible tumult.
Something, it is true, of this last effect may be seen from
such mountains as the Rigi or the Faulhorn. There, too,
one seems to be at the centre of a vast sphere, the earth 20
bending up in a cup-like form to meet the sky, and the
blue vault above stretching in an arch majestical by its
enormous extent. There you seem to see a sensible frac-
tion of the world at your feet. But the effect is far less
striking when other mountains obviously look down upon 25
you; when, as it were, you are looking at the waves of the
great ocean of hills merely from the crest of one of the
waves themselves, and not from some lighthouse that rises
far over their heads; for the Wetterhorn, like the Eiger,
Monch, and Jungfrau, owes one great beauty to the fact 30
that it is on the edge of the lower country, and stands
between the real giants and the crowd of inferior, though
still enormous, masses in attendance upon them. And, in
the next place, your mind is far better adapted to receive
impressions of sublimity when you are alone, in a silent 35
region, with a black sky above and giant cliffs all round;
with a sense still in your mind, if not of actual danger, still
152 LESLIE STEPHEN
of danger that would become real with the slightest relax-
ation of caution, and with the world divided from you by
hours of snow and rock.
I will go no further, not because I have no more to say,
5 but because descriptions of scenery soon become weari-
some, and because I have, I hope, said enough to show that
the mountaineer may boast of some intellectual pleasures;
that he is not a mere scrambler, but that he looks for poetical
impressions, as well as for such small glory as his achieve-
10 ments may gain in a very small circle. Something of what
he gains fortunately sticks by him: he does not quite forget
the mountain language; his eye still recognises the space
and the height and the glory of the lofty mountains. And
yet there is some pain in wandering ghostlike among the
15 scenes of his earlier pleasures. For my part, I try in vain
to hug myself in a sense of comfort. I turn over in bed
when I hear the stamping of heavily nailed shoes along the
passage of an inn about 2 A.M. I feel the skin of my nose
complacently when I see others returning with a glistening
20 tight aspect about that unluckily prominent feature, and
know that in a day or two it will be raw and blistered and
burning. I think, in a comfortable inn at night, of the
miseries of those who are trying to sleep in damp hay, or
on hard boards of chalets, at once cold and stuffy and haunted
25 by innumerable fleas. I congratulate myself on having a
whole skin and unfractured bones, and on the small danger
of ever breaking them over an Alpine precipice. But yet
I secretly know that these consolations are feeble. It is
little use to avoid early rising and discomfort, and even
30 fleas, if one also loses the pleasures to which they were the
sauce rather too piquante a sauce occasionally, it must be
admitted. The philosophy is all very well which recom-
mends moderate enjoyment, regular exercise, and a careful
avoidance of risk and over-excitement. That is, it is all
3 5 very well so long as risk and excitement and immoderate
enjoyment are out of your power; but it does not stand
the test of looking on and seeing them just beyond your
THE REGRETS OF A MOUNTAINEER 153
reach. In time, no doubt, a man may grow calm; he may
learn to enjoy the pleasures and the exquisite beauties of
the lower regions though they, too, are most fully enjoyed
when they have a contrast with beauties of a different, and
pleasures of a keener excitement. When first debarred, at 5
any rate, one feels like a balloon full of gas, and fixed by
immovable ropes to the prosaic ground. It is pleasant to
lie on one's back in a bed of rhododendrons, and look up
to a mountain top peering at one from above a bank of cloud;
but it is pleasantest when one has qualified oneself for repose 10
by climbing the peak the day before and becoming familiar
with its terrors and its beauties. In time, doubtless, one
may get reconciled to anything; one may settle down to
be a caterpillar, even after one has known the pleasures of
being a butterfly; one may become philosophical, and have 15
one's clothes let out; and even in time, perhaps though it
is almost too terrible to contemplate be content with a
mule or a carriage, or that lowest depth to which human
beings can sink, and for which the English language happily
affords no name, a chaise a porteurs: and even in such 20
degradation the memory of better times may be pleasant;
for I doubt much whether it is truth the poet sings
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.
Certainly, to a philosophical mind, the sentiment is doubt-
ful. For my part, the fate which has cut me off, if I may 25
use the expression, in the flower of my youth, and doomed
me to be a non-climbing animal in future, is one which ought to
exclude grumbling. I cannot indicate it more plainly, for I
might so make even the grumbling in which I have already
indulged look like a sin. I can only say that there are some 30
very delightful things in which it is possible to discover an
infinitesimal drop of bitterness, and that the mountaineer who
undertakes to cut himself off from his favourite pastime, even
for reasons which he will admit in his wildest moods to be more
than amply sufficient, must expect at times to feel certain 35
pangs of regret, however quickly they may be smothered.
BEHAVIOR 1
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
THE soul which animates nature is not less significantly
published in the figure, movement, and gesture of animated
bodies, than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. This
silent and subtle language is Manners; not what, but how.
5 Life expresses. A statue has no tongue, and needs none.
Good tableaux do not need declamation. Nature tells every
secret once. Yes, but in man she tells it all the time, by
form, attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of the face, and
by the whole action of the machine. The visible carriage or
10 action of the individual, as resulting from his organization
and his will combined, we call manners. What are they but
thought entering the hands and feet, controlling the move-
ments of the body, the speech and behavior?
There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to
1 5 boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things;
each once a stroke of genius or of love, now repeated and
hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with
which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.
If they are superficial, so are the dew-drops which give such a
20 depth to the morning meadows. Manners are very com-
municable: men catch them from each other. Consuelo, in
the romance, boasts of the lessons she had given the nobles in
manners, on the stage: and, in real life, Talma taught Napo-
leon the arts of behavior. Genius invents fine manners,
25 which the baron and the baroness copy very fast, and, by
the advantage of a palace, better the instruction. They
stereotype the lesson they have learned into a mode.
1 Chapter V of " The Conduct of Life," 1860.
154
BEHAVIOR 155
The power of manners is incessant, an element as uncon-
cealable as fire. The nobility cannot in any country be dis-
guised, and no more in a republic or a democracy than in a
kingdom. No man can resist their influence. There are
certain manners which are learned in good society, of that 5
force, that, if a person have them, he or she must be con,-
sidered, and is everywhere welcome, though without beauty,
or wealth, or genius. Give a boy address and accomplish-
ments, and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes
where he goes. He has not the trouble of earning or owning 10
them; they solicit him to enter and possess. We send girls
of a timid, retreating disposition to the boarding-school, to
the riding-school, to the ballroom, or wheresoever they can
come into acquaintance and nearness of leading persons of
their own sex; where they might learn address, and see it 15
near at hand. The power of a woman of fashion to lead, and
also to daunt and repel, derives from their belief that she
knows resources and behaviors not known to them; but
when these have mastered her secret, they learn to confront
her, and recover their self-possession. 20
Every day bears witness to their gentle rule. People who
would obtrude, now do not obtrude. The mediocre circle
learns to demand that which belongs to a high state of nature
or of culture. Your manners are always under examination,
and by committees little suspected, a police in citizen's 25
clothes, but are awarding or denying you very high prizes
when you least think of it.
We talk much of utilities, but 'tis our manners that asso-
ciate us. In hours of business, we go to him who knows, or
has, or does this or that which we want, and we do not let our 30
taste or feeling stand in the way. But this activity over, we
return to the indolent state, and wish for those we can be at
ease with ; those who will go where we go, whose manners do
not offend us, whose social tone chimes with ours. When we
reflect on their persuasive and cheering force; how they 35
recommend, prepare, and draw people together; how, in all
clubs, manners make the members; how manners make the
156 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
fortune of the ambitious youth; that, for the most part, his
manners marry him, and, for the most part, he marries
manners; when we think what keys they are, and to what
secrets; what high lessons and inspiring tokens of character
5 they convey; and what divination is required in us, for the
reading of this fine telegraph; we see what range the subject
has, and what relations to convenience, power, and beauty.
Their first service is very low, when they are the minor
morals; but 'tis the beginning of civility, to make us, I
10 mean, endurable to each other. We prize them for their
rough-plastic, abstergent force; to get people out of the
quadruped state; to get them washed, clothed, and set up
on end; to slough their animal husks and habits; compel
them to be clean; overawe their spite and meanness, teach
15 them to stifle the base, and choose the generous expression,
and make them know how much happier the generous
behaviors are.
Bad behavior the laws cannot reach. Society is invested
with rude, cynical, restless, and frivolous persons who prey
20 upon the rest, and whom a public opinion concentrated into
good manners, forms accepted by the sense of all, can reach;
the contradictors and railers at public and private tables,
who are like terriers, who conceive it the duty of a dog of
honor to growl at any passer-by, and do the honors of the
25 house by barking him out of sight; I have seen men who
neigh like a horse when you contradict them, or say some-
thing which they do not understand; then the overbold,
who make their own invitation to your hearth ; the persever-
ing talker, who gives you his society in large, saturating doses;
30 the pitiers of themselves, a perilous class; the frivolous
Asmodeus, who relies on you to find him in ropes of sand to
twist; the monotones; in short, every stripe of absurdity;
these are social inflictions which the magistrate cannot cure
or defend you from, and which must be intrusted to the
35 restraining force of custom, and proverbs, and familiar rules
of behavior impressed on young people in their school-days.
In the hotels on the banks of the Mississippi, they print, or
BEHAVIOR 157
used to print, among the rules of the house, that " No gentle-
man can be permitted to come to the public table without his
coat; " and in the same country, in the pews of the churches,
little placards plead with the worshipper against the fury of
expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacrincingly undertook 5
the reformation of our American manners in unspeakable
particulars. I think the lesson was not quite lost; that it
held bad manners up, so that the churls could see the de-
formity. Unhappily, the book had its own deformities. It
ought not to need to print in a reading room a caution to 10
strangers not to speak loud; nor to persons who look over
fine engravings, that they should be handled like cobwebs
and butterflies' wings; nor to persons who look at marble
statues, that they shall not smite them with canes. But,
even in the perfect civilization of this city, such cautions are 15
not quite needless in the Athenaeum and City Library.
Manners are factitious, and grow out of circumstances as
well as out of character. If you look at the pictures of patri-
cians and of peasants, of different periods and countries, you
will see how well they match the same classes in our towns. 20
The modern aristocrat not only is well drawn in Titian's
Venetian doges, and in Roman coins and statues, but also in
the pictures which Commodore Perry brought home of digni-
taries in Japan. Broad lands and great interests not only
arrive to such heads as can manage them, but form manners 25
of power. A keen eye, too, will see nice gradations of rank,
or see in the manners the degree of homage the party is wont
to receive. A prince who is accustomed every day to be
courted and deferred to by the highest grandees, acquires a
corresponding expectation, and a becoming mode of receiv-3o
ing and replying to this homage.
There are always exceptional people and modes. English
grandees affect to be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, 'and,
under the finish of dress, and levity of behavior, hides the
terror of his war. But Nature and Destiny are honest, and 35
never fail to leave their mark, to hang out a sign for each and
for every quality. It is much to conquer one's face, and
158 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
perhaps the ambitious youth thinks he has got the whole
secret when he has learned that disengaged manners are
commanding. Don't be deceived by a facile exterior.
Tender men sometimes have strong wills. We had, in
5 Massachusetts, an old statesman, who had sat all his life in
courts and in chairs of state, without overcoming an extreme
irritability of face, voice, and bearing: when he spoke, his
voice would not serve him; it cracked, it broke, it wheezed,
it piped; little cared he; he knew that it had got to pipe,
10 or wheeze, or screech his argument and his indignation.
When he sat down, after speaking, he seemed in a sort of
fit, and held on to his chair with both hands: but under-
neath all this irritability was a puissant will, firm and advanc-
ing, and a memory in which lay in order and method, like
15 geologic strata, every fact of his history, and under the
control of his will.
Manners are partly factitious, but, mainly, there must be
capacity for culture in the blood. Else all culture is vain.
The obstinate prejudice in favor of blood, which lies at the
20 base of the feudal and monarchical fabrics of the old world,
has some reason in common experience. Every man,
mathematician, artist, soldier, or merchant, looks with
confidence for some traits and talents in his own child, which
he \vould not dare to presume in the child of a stranger. The
25 Orientalists are very orthodox on this point. " Take a
thorn-bush," said the emir Abdel-Kader, " and sprinkle it
for a whole year with water, it will yield nothing but thorns.
Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, and it will always
produce dates. Nobility is the date-tree, and the Arab
30 populace is a bush of thorns."
A main fact in the history of manners is the wonderful
expressiveness of the human body. If it were made of glass,
or of air, and the thoughts were written on steel tablets
within, it could not publish more truly its meaning than now.
35 Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your
look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature
is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues.
BEHAVIOR 159
Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose
the whole movement. They carry the liquor of life flowing
up and down in these beautiful bottles, and announcing to
the curious how it is with them. The face and eyes reveal
what the spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it has. The 5
eyes indicate the antiquity of the soul, or through how many
"forms it has already ascended. It almost violates the pro-
prieties, if we say above the breath here what the confessing
eyes do not hesitate to utter to every street passenger.
Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and so far seems imper- 10
feet. In Siberia, a late traveller found men who could
see the satellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. In
some respects the animals excel us. The birds have a
longer sight, beside the advantage by their wings of a higher
observatory. A cow can bid her calf, by secret signal, prob- 15
ably of the eye, to run away, or to lie down and hide itself.
The jockeys say of certain horses, that " they look over the
whole ground." The outdoor life, and hunting, and labor,
give equal vigor to the human eye. A farmer looks out at
you as strong as the horse; his eye-beam is like the stroke 20
of a staff. An eye can threaten like a loaded and levelled
gun, or can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered
mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance
with joy.
The eye obeys exactly the action of the mind. When a 25
thought strikes us, the eyes fix, and remain gazing at a
distance; in enumerating the names of persons or of coun-
tries, as France, Germany, Spain, Turkey, the eyes wink
at each new name. There is no nicety of learning sought by
the mind, which the eyes do not vie in acquiring. "An 30
artist," said Michael Angelo, "must have his measuring tools
not in the hand, but in the eye;" and there is no end to the
catalogue of its performances, whether in indolent vision
(that of health and beauty) or in strained vision (that of
art and labor). 35
Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and
there, far and near. They speak all languages. They wait
160 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave
of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches,
neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude,
and come again, and go through and through you, in a
5 moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is
discharged from one soul into another through them! The
glance is natural magic. The mysterious communication
established across a house between two entire strangers
moves all the springs of wonder. The communication by
10 the glance is in the greatest part not subject to the control of
the will. It is the bodily symbol of identity of nature. We
look into the eyes to know if this other form is another self,
and the eyes will not lie, but make a faithful confession
what inhabitant is there. The revelations are sometimes
15 terrific. The confession of a low, usurping devil is there
made, and the observer shall seem to feel the stirring of owls,
and bats, and horned hoofs, where he looked for innocence
and simplicity. 'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that
appears at the windows of the house does at once invest
20 himself in a new form of his own to the mind of the beholder.
The eyes of men converse as much as their tongues, with
the advantage, that the ocular dialect needs no dictionary,
but is understood all the world over. \Vhen the eyes say one
thing, and the tongue another, a practised man relies on
25 the language of the first. If the man is off his center, the
eyes show it. You can read in the eyes of your companion,
whether your argument hits him, though his tongue will not
confess it. There is a look by which a man shows he is going
to say a good thing, and a look when he has said it. Vain
30 and forgotten are all the fine offers and offices of hospitality,
if there is no holiday in the eye. How many furtive inclina-
tions avowed by the eye, though dissembled by the lips!
One comes away from a company, in which, it may easily
happen, he has said nothing, and no important remark has
35 been addressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy with the
society he shall not have a sense of this fact, such a stream
of life has been flowing into him, and out from him, through
BEHAVIOR 1G1
the eyes. There are eyes, to be sure, that give no more
admission into the man than blue-berries. Others are
liquid and deep, wells that a man might fall into; others
are aggressive and devouring, seem to call out the police,
4ake all too much notice, and require crowded Broadways, 5
and the security of millions, to protect individuals against
them. The military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling under
clerical, now under rustic brows. 'Tis the city of Lacedaemon ;
'tis a stack of bayonets. There are asking eyes, asserting
eyes, prowling eyes; and eyes full of fate, some of good, and 10
some of sinister omen. The alleged power to charm down
insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power behind the eye. It
must be a victory achieved in the will before it can be signified
in the eye. 'Tis very certain that each man carries in his
eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of 15
men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete
man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.
Whoever looked on him would consent to his will, being
certified that his aims were generous and universal. The
reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud 20
at the bottom of our eye.
If the organ of sight is such a vehicle of power, the other
features have their own. A man finds room in the few
square inches of the face for the traits of all his ancestors;
for the expression of all his history, and his wants. The 25
sculptor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will tell you how
significant a feature is the nose; how its forms express strength
or weakness of will, and good or bad temper. The nose of
Julius Caesar, of Dante, and of Pitt, suggest " the terrors of
the beak." What refinement, and what limitations, the 30
teeth betray! " Beware you don't laugh," said the wise
mother, " for then you show all your faults."
Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, which he called
" Theorie de la demarche,'' 1 in which he says: " The look, the
voice, the respiration, and the attitude or walk, are identical. 35
But, as it has not been given to man, the power to stand
1 Theory of trait and demeanor.
162 HALPH WALDO EMERSON
guard, at once, over these four different simultaneous expres-
sions of his thought, watch that one which speaks out the
truth, and you will know the whole man."
Palaces interest us mainly in the exhibition of manners,
5 which, in the idle and expensive society dwelling in them,
are raised to a high art. The maxim of courts is, that
manner is power. A calm and resolute bearing, a polished
speech, an embellishment of trifles, and the art of hiding all
uncomfortable feeling, are essential to the courtier: and
10 Saint Simon, and Cardinal de Retz, and Rcederer, and an
encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct you, if you wish, in
those potent secrets. Thus, it b a point of pride with kings
to remember faces and names. It is reported of one prince,
that his head had the air of leaning downwards, in order not
15 to humble the crowd. There are people who come in ever
like a child with a piece of good news. It was said of the
late Lord Holland, that he always came down to breakfast
with the air of a man who had just met with some signal
good-fortune. In Notre Dame, the grandee took his place
20 on the dais, with the look of one who is thinking of some-
thing else. But we must not peep and eavesdrop at palace-
doors.
Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.
A scholar may be a well-bred man, or he may not. The
25 enthusiast is introduced to polished scholars in society, and is
chilled and silenced by finding himself not in their element.
They all have somewhat which he has not, and, it seems,
ought to have. But if he finds the scholar apart from his
companions, it is then the enthusiast's turn, and the scholar
30 has no defence, but must deal on his terms. Now they must
fight the battle out on their private strengths. What is the
talent of that character so common, the successful man of
the world, in all marts, senates, and drawing-rooms?
Manners: manners of power; sense to see his advantage, and
35 manners up to it. See him approach his man. He knows
that troops behave as they are handled at first; that is his
cheap secret; just what happens to every two persons who
BEHAVIOR 163
meet on any affair, one instantly perceives that he has
the key of the situation, that his will comprehends the
other's will, as the cat does the mouse; and he has
only to use courtesy, and furnish good-natured reasons
to his victim to cover up the chain, lest he be shamed into 5
resistance.
The theater in which this science of manners has a formal
importance is not with us a court, but dress-circles, wherein,
after the close of the day's business, men and women meet
at leisure, for mutual entertainment, in ornamented drawing- 10
rooms. Of course, it has every variety of attraction and
merit; but, to earnest persons, to youths or maidens who
have great objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. A
well-dressed, talkative company, where each is bent to amuse
the other, yet the high-born Turk who came hither fancied 15
that every woman seemed to be suffering for a chair; that all
the talkers were brained and exhausted by the deoxygenated
air; it spoiled the best persons: it put all on stilts. Yet
here are the secret biographies written and read. The aspect
of that man is repulsive; I do not wish to deal with him. The 20
other is irritable, shy, and on his guard. The youth looks
humble and manly: I choose him. Look on this woman.
There is not beauty, nor brilliant sayings, nor distinguished
power, to serve you; but all see her gladly; her whole air
and impression are healthful. Here come the sentimentalists, 25
and the invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold in coming
into the world, and has always increased it since. Here are
creep-mouse manners, and thievish manners. " Look at
Northcote," said Fuseli; " he looks like a rat that has seen a
cat." In the shallow company, easily excited, easily tired, 30
here is the columnar Bernard: the Alleghanies do not express
more repose than his behavior. Here are the sweet following
eyes of Cecile: it seemed always that she demanded the
heart. Nothing can be more excellent in kind than the
Corinthian grace of Gertrude's manners, and yet Blanche, 35
who has no manners, has better manners than she; for the
movements of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit which is
164 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
sufficient for the moment, and she can afford to express
every thought by instant action.
Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a
contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion
5 is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and
seldom wastes her attentions. Society is very swift in its
instincts, and, if you do not belong to it, resists and sneers
at you; or quietly drops you. The first weapon enrages the
party attacked; the second is still more effective, but is not
10 to be resisted, as the date of the transaction is not easily
found. People grow up and grow old under this infliction,
and never suspect the truth, ascribing the solitude which acts
on them very injuriously to any cause but the right one.
The basis of good manners is self-reliance. Necessity is the
1 5 law of all who are not self-possessed. These who are not
self-possessed, obtrude, and pain us. Some men appear to
feel that they belong to a Pariah caste. They fear to offend,
they bend and apologize, and walk through life with a timid
step. As we sometimes dream that we are in a well-dressed
20 company without any coat, so Godfrey acts ever as if he
suffered from some mortifying circumstance. The hero
should find himself at home, wherever he is; should impart
comfort by his own security and good-nature to all beholders.
The hero is suffered to be himself. A person of strong mind
25 comes to perceive that for him an immunity is secured so
long as he renders to society that service which is native and
proper to him, an immunity from all the observances, yea,
and duties, which society so tyrannically imposes on the rank
and file of its members. " Euripides," says Aspasia, " has
30 not the fine manners of Sophocles; but," she adds good-
humoredly, " the movers and masters of our souls have
surely a right to throw out their limbs as carelessly as they
please on the world that belongs to them, and before the
creatures they have animated." l
35 Manners require time, as nothing is more vulgar than haste.
Friendship should be surrounded with ceremonies and
1 From Landor's " Pericles and Aspasia."
BEHAVIOR 165
\
respects, and not crushed into corners. Friendship requires
more time than poor busy men can usually command. Here
comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of sentiment leading
and inwrapping him like a divine cloud or holy ghost. 'Tis
a great destitution to both that this should not be entertained 5
with large leisures, but, contrariwise, should be balked by
importunate affairs.
But through this lustrous varnish the reality is ever shin-
ing. 'Tis hard to keep the what from breaking through this
pretty painting of the how. The core will come to the sur- 10
face. Strong will and keen perception overpower old manners
and create new; and the thought of the present moment
has a greater value than all the past. In persons of character,
we do not remark manners, because of their instantaneousness.
We are surprised by the thing done, out of all power to watch 15
the way of it. Yet nothing is more charming than to recog-
nize the great style which runs through the actions of such.
People masquerade before us in their fortunes, titles, offices,
and connections, as academic or civil presidents, or senators,
or professors, or great lawyers, and impose on the frivolous, 20
and a good deal on each other, by these fames. At least, it
is a point of prudent good manners to treat these reputations
tenderly, as if they were merited. But the sad realist knows
these fellows at a glance, and they know him; as when in
..Paris the chief of the police enters a ballroom, so many dia- 25
monded pretenders shrink and make themselves as incon-
spicuous as they can, or give him a supplicating look as they
pass. " I had received," said a sybil, " I had received at
birth the fatal gift of penetration:" and these Cassandras
are always born. 30
Manners impress as they indicate real power. A man who
is sure of his point, carries a broad and contented expression,
which everybody reads. And you cannot rightly train one
to an air and manner, except by making him the kind of man
of whom that manner is the natural expression. Nature for 35
ever puts a premium on reality. What is done for effect, is
seen to be done for effect; what is done for love, is felt to be
166 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
done for love. A man inspires affection and honor, because
he was not lying in wait for these. The things of a man for
which we visit him, were done in the dark and the cold. A
little integrity is better than any career. So deep are the
5 sources of this surface-action, that even the size of your
companion seems to vary w r ith his freedom of thought.
Not only is he larger, when at ease, and his thoughts generous,
but everything around him becomes variable with expression.
No carpenter's rule, no rod and chain, will measure the
10 dimensions of any house or house-lot: go into the house:
if the proprietor is constrained and deferring, 'tis of no
importance how large his house, how beautiful his grounds,
you quickly come to the end of all; but if the man is self-
possessed, happy, and at home, his house is deep-founded,
15 indefinitely large and interesting, the roof and dome buoyant
as the sky. Under the humblest roof, the commonest person
in plain clothes sits there massive, cheerful, yet formidable,
like the Egyptian colossi.
Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor Junius, nor Cham-
2opollion has set down the grammar-rules of this dialect,
older than Sanscrit; but they who cannot yet read English,
can read this. Men take each other's measure when they
meet for the first time, and every time they meet. How
do they get this rapid knowledge, even before they speak, of
25 each other's power and dispositions? One would say, that
the persuasion of their speech is not in what they say, or,
that men do not convince by their argument, but by their
personality, by who they are, and what they said and did
heretofore. A man already strong is listened to, and every-
30 thing he says is applauded. Another opposes him with
sound argument, but the argument is scouted, until by-and-
by it gets into the mind of some weighty person; then it
begins to tell on the community.
Self-reliance is the basis of behavior, as it is the guaranty
35 that the powers are not squandered in too much demonstra-
tion. In this country,, where school education is universal,
we have a superficial culture, and a profusion of reading and
BEHAVIOR 167
writing and expression. We parade our nobilities in poems
and orations, instead of working them up into happiness.
There is a whisper out of the ages to him who can understand
it, " Whatever is known to thyself alone, has always very
great value." There is some reason to believe, that, when a 5
man does not write his poetry, it escapes by other vents
through him, instead of the one vent of writing; clings to his
form and manners, whilst poets have often nothing poetical
about them except their verses. Jacobi said that, " when
a man has fully expressed his thought, he has somewhat less 10
possession of it." One would say, the rule is, What a man
is irresistibly urged to say, helps him and us. In explaining
his thought to others, he explains it to himself: but when he
opens it for show, it corrupts him.
Society is the stage on which manners are shown; novels 15
are their literature. Novels are the journal or record of
manners; and the new importance of these books derives
from the fact, that the novelist begins to penetrate the sur-
face, and treats this part of life more worthily. The novels
used to be all alike, and had a quite vulgar tone. The novels 20
used to lead us on to a foolish interest in the fortunes of the
boy and girl they described. The boy was to be raised from
a humble to a high position. He was in want of a wife and
a castle, and the object of the story was to supply him with
one or both. We watched sympathetically, step by step, his 25
climbing, until, at last, the point is gained, the wedding day
is fixed, and we follow the gala procession home to the castle,
when the doors are slammed in our face, and the poor reader
is left outside in the cold, not enriched by so much as an idea,
or a virtuous impulse. 30
But the victories of character are instant, and victories for
all. Its greatness enlarges all. We are fortified by every
heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful as Bibles, if they
teach you the secret, that the best of life is conversation,
and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect under- 35
standing between sincere people. 'Tis a French definition of
friendship, ricn quc s'entcndrc, good understanding. The
168 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
highest compact we can make with our fellow is, " Let
there be truth between us two for evermore." That is
the charm in all good novels, as it is the charm in all
good histories, that the heroes mutually understand,
5 from the first, and deal loyally, and with a profound
trust in each other. It is sublime to feel and say of
another, I need never meet, or speak, or write to him: we
need not reinforce ourselves, or send tokens of remem-
brance: I rely on him as on myself: if he did thus or
10 thus, I know it was right.
In all the superior people I have met, I notice directness,
truth spoken more truly, as if everything of obstruction, of
malformation, had been trained away. What have they to
conceal? What have they to exhibit? Between simple and
1 5 noble persons, there is always a quick intelligence: they
recognize at sight, and meet on a better ground than the
talents and skills they may chance to possess, namely, on
sincerity and uprightness. For, it is not what talents or
genius a man has, but how he is to his talents, that con-
2ostitutes friendship and character. The man that stands by
himself, the universe stands by him also. It is related of the
monk Basle, that, being excommunicated by the Pope, he
was, at his death, sent in charge of an angel to find a fit place
of suffering in hell; but, such was the eloquence and good-
25 humor of the monk, that, wherever he went, he was received
gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most uncivil angels:
and, when he came to discourse with them, instead of con-
tradicting or forcing him, they took his part, and adopted
his manners: and even good angels came from far to see
30 him, and take up their abode with him. The angel that was
sent to find a place of torment for him, attempted to remove
him to a worse pit, but with no better success; for such was
the contented spirit of the monk, that he found something to
praise in every place and company, though in hell, and made
35 a kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting angel returned
with his prisoner to them that sent him, saying, that no
phlcgethon could be found that would burn him; for
BEHAVIOR 109
that, in whatever condition, Basle remained incorrigibly
Basle. The legend says, his sentence was remitted, and
he was allowed to go into heaven, and was canonized
as a saint.
There is a stroke of magnanimity in the correspondence 5
of Bonaparte with his brother Joseph, when the latter was
King of Spain, and complained that he missed in Napoleon's
letters the affectionate tone which had marked their childish
correspondence. " I am sorry," replies Napoleon, "you
think you shall find your brother again only in the Elysiamo
Fields. It is natural that at forty he should not feel towards
you as he did at twelve. But his feelings towards you have
greater truth and strength. His friendship has the features
of his mind."
How much we forgive to those who yield us the rare 15
spectacle of heroic manners! We will pardon them the want
of books, of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. How
tenaciously we remember them! Here is a lesson which I
brought along with me in boyhood from the Latin School,
and which ranks with the best of Roman anecdotes. Marcus 20
Scaurus was accused by Quintus Varius Hispanus, that he
had excited the allies to take arms against the Republic.
But he, full of firmness and gravity, defended himself in this
manner: " Quintus Varius Hispanus alleges that Marcus
Scaurus, President of the Senate, excited the allies to arms 125
Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, denies it. There
is no witness. Which do you believe, Romans?" " Utri
creditis, Quiritcs? " When he had said these words, he was
absolved by the assembly of the people.
I have seen manners that make a similar impression with 30
personal beauty; that give the like exhilaration, and refine
us like that; and, in memorable experiences, they v are
suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and
ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the
acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show 35
self-control: you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but
king over your word; and every gesture and action shall
170 RALPH WALDO EMERSON
indicate power at rest. Then they must be inspired by the
good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form,
or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around
us. 'Tis good to give a stranger a meal, or a night's lodging.
S 'Tis better to be hospitable to his good meaning and thought,
and give courage to a companion. We must be as courteous
to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give
the advantage of a good light. Special precepts are not to
be thought of: the talent of well-doing contains them all.
10 Every hour will show a duty as paramount as that of my
whim just now; and yet I will write it, that there is one
topic peremptorily forbidden to all well-bred, to all rational
mortals, namely, their distempers. If you have not slept, or
if you have slept, or if you have headache, or sciatica, or
15 leprosy, or thunder-stroke. I beseech you, by all angels, to
hold your peace, and not pollute the morning, to which
all the housemates bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by
corruption and groans. Come out in the azure. Love the
day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape. The
20 oldest and the most deserving person should come very
modestly into any newly awaked company, respecting the
divine communications, out of which all must be presumed
to have newly come. An old man who added an elevating
culture to a large experience of life, said to me, " When you
25 come into the room, I think I will study how to make
humanity beautiful to you."
As respects the delicate question of culture, I do not think
that any other than negative rules can be laid down. For
positive rules, for suggestion, nature alone inspires it. Who
30 dare assume to guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners?
the golden mean is so delicate, difficult, say frankly un-
attainable. What finest hands would not be clumsy to
sketch the genial precepts of the young girl's demeanor?
The chances seem infinite against success; and yet success is
35 continually attained. There must not be secondariness, and
'tis a thousand to one that her air and manner will at once
betray that she is not primary, but that there is some other
BEHAVIOR 171
one or many of her class, to whom she habitually post-
pones herself. But nature lifts her easily, and without
knowing it, over these impossibilities, and we are continually
surprised with graces and felicities not only unteachable,
but undescribable. 5
MANNERS AND FASHION 1
HERBERT SPENCER
SOME who shun drawing-rooms do so from inability to
bear the restraints prescribed by a genuine refinement,
and they would be greatly improved by being kept under
these restraints. But it is not less true that, by adding to
5 the legitimate restraints, which are based on convenience
and a regard for others, a host of factitious restraints based
only on convention, the refining discipline, which would else
have been borne with benefit, is rendered unbearable, and
so misses its end. Excess of government invariably defeats
10 itself by driving away those to be governed. And if over all
who desert its entertainments in disgust either at their
emptiness or their formality, society thus loses its salutary
influence if such not only fail to receive that moral culture
which the company of ladies, when rationally regulated,
15 would give them, but, in default of other relaxation, are
driven into habits and companionships which often end in
gambling and drunkenness; must we not say that here, too,
is an evil not to be passed over as insignificant?
Then consider what a blighting effect these multitudinous
20 preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they
profess to subserve. Who, on calling to mind the occasions
of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to
have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How
delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save
25 those dictated by good nature! How pleasant the little
unpretended gatherings of book-societies, and the like;
or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well
1 From " Illustrations of Universal Progress," 1864.
172
MANNERS AND FASHION 173
known to each other! Then, indeed, we may see that " a
man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Cheeks
flush, and eyes sparkle. The witty grow brilliant, and even
the dull are excited into saying good things. There is an
overflow of topics; and the right thought, and the right 5
words to put it in, spring up unsought. Grave alternates
with gay: now serious converse, and now jokes, anecdotes,
and playful raillery. Everyone's best nature is shown,
everyone's best feelings are in pleasurable activity; and,
for the time, life seems well worth having. 10
Go now and dress for some half-past eight dinner, or some
ten o'clock " at home;" and present yourself in spotless
attire, with every hair arranged to perfection. How great
the difference! The enjoyment seems in the inverse ratio
of the preparation. These figures, got up with such finish 15
and precision, appear but half alive. They have frozen each
other by their primness; and your faculties feel the numb-
ing effects of the atmosphere the moment you enter it. All
those thoughts, so nimble and so apt awhile since, have
disappeared have suddenly acquired a preternatural power 20
of eluding you. If you venture a remark to your neighbour,
there comes a trite rejoinder, and there it ends. No subject
you can hit upon outlives half a dozen sentences. Nothing
that is said excites any real interest in you; and you feel
that all you say is listened to with apathy. By some strange 25
magic, things that usually give pleasure seem to have lost
all charm.
You have a taste for art. Weary of frivolous talk, you
turn to the table, and find that the book of engravings and
the portfolio of photographs are as flat as the conversation. 30
You are fond of music. Yet the singing, good as it is, you
hear with utter indifference; and say " Thank you " w\th a
sense of being a profound hypocrite. Wholly at ease though
you could be, for your own part, you find that your sym-
pathies will not let you. You see young gentlemen feeling 35
whether their ties are properly adjusted, looking vacantly
round, and considering what they shall do next. You
174 HERBERT SPENCER
see ladies sitting disconsolately, waiting for some one to
speak to them, and wishing they had the wherewith to
occupy their fingers. You see the hostess standing about
the doorway, keeping a factitious smile on her face, and
5 racking her brain to find the requisite nothings with which
to greet her guests as they enter. You see numberless
traits of weariness and embarrassment; and, if you have
any fellow-feeling, these cannot fail to produce a feeling of
discomfort. The disorder is catching; and do what you
10 will you cannot resist the general infection. You struggle
against it; you make spasmodic efforts to be lively; but
none of your sallies or your good stories do more than raise
a simper or a forced laugh: intellect and feeling are alike
asphyxiated. And when, at length, yielding to your dis-
15 gust, you rush away, how great is the relief when you get
into the fresh air, and see the stars! How you " Thank
God, that's over!" and half resolve to avoid all such boredom
for the future !
What, now, is the secret of this perpetual miscarriage and
20 disappointment? Does not the fault lie with all these needless
adjuncts these elaborate dressings, these set forms, these
expensive preparations, these many devices and arrangements
that imply trouble and raise expectation? Who that has
lived thirty years in the world has not discovered that
25 Pleasure is coy; and must not be too directly pursued, but
must be caught unawares? An air from a street-piano,
heard while at work, will often gratify more than the choicest
music played at a concert by the most accomplished musi-
cians. A single good picture seen in a dealer's window, may
30 give keener enjoyment than a whole exhibition gone through
with catalogue and pencil. By the time we have got ready
our elaborate apparatus by which to secure happiness, the
happiness is gone. It is too subtle to be contained in these
receivers, garnished with compliments, and fenced round
35 with etiquette. The more we multiply and complicate
appliances, the more certain are we to drive it away.
The reason is patent enough. These higher emotions to
MANNERS AND FASHION 175
which social intercourse ministers, are of extremely complex
nature; they consequently depend for their production upon
very numerous conditions; the more numerous the condi-
tions, the greater the liability that one or other of them will
be disturbed, and the emotions consequently prevented. 5
It takes a considerable misfortune to destroy appetite; but
cordial sympathy with those around may be extinguished
by a look or a word. Hence it follows, that the more
multiplied the unnecessary requirements with which social
intercourse is surrounded, the less likely are its pleasures toio
be achieved. It is difficult enough to fulfil continuously all
the essentials to a pleasurable communion with others: how
much more difficult, then, must it be continuously to fulfil
a host of non-essentials also! It is, indeed, impossible. The
attempt inevitably ends in the sacrifice of the first to the 15
last the essentials to the non-essentials. What chance
is there of getting any genuine response from the lady who is
thinking of your stupidity in taking her in to dinner on the
wrong arm? How are you likely to have agreeable converse
with the gentleman who is fuming internally because he is ?o
not placed next to the hostess? Formalities, familiar as they
may become, necessarily occupy attention necessarily
multiply the occasions for mistake, misunderstanding, and
jealousy, on the part of one or other necessarily distract
all minds from the thoughts and feelings that should occupy 25
them necessarily, therefore, subvert those conditions under
which only any sterling intercourse is to be had.
And this indeed is the fatal mischief which these conven-
tions entail a mischief to which every other is secondary.
They destroy those highest of our pleasures which they 30
profess to subserve. All institutions are alike in this,
that however useful, and needful even, they originally * were,
they not only in the end cease to be so, but become detri-
mental. While humanity is growing, they continue fixed;
daily get more mechanical and unvital; and by and by tend 35
to strangle what they before preserved. It is not simply
that they become corrupt and fail to act; they become
176 HERBERT SPENCER
obstructions. Old forms of government finally grow so
oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk
of reigns of terror. Old creeds end in being dead formulas,
which no longer aid but distort and arrest the general mind ;
5 while the State-churches administering them, come to
be instruments for subsidising conservatism and repressing
progress. Old schemes of education, incarnated in public
schools and colleges, continue filling the heads of new
generations with what has become relatively useless knowl-
10 edge, and, by consequence, excluding knowledge which is
useful. Not an organisation of any kind political, religious,
literary, philanthropic but what, by its ever-multiplying
regulations, its accumulating wealth, its yearly addition of
officers, and the creeping into it of patronage and party
15 feeling, eventually loses its original spirit, and sinks into a
mere lifeless mechanism, worked with a view to private
ends a mechanism which not merely fails of its first pur-
pose, but is a positive hindrance to it.
Thus is it, too, with social usages. We read of the Chinese
20 that they have "ponderous ceremonies transmitted from
time immemorial," which make social intercourse a burden.
The court forms prescribed by monarchs for their own
exaltation, have, in all times and places, ended in consuming
the comfort of their lives. And so the artificial observances
25 of the dining-room and saloon, in proportion as they are
many and strict, extinguish that agreeable communion which
they were originally intended to secure. The dislike with
which people commonly speak of society that is " formal,"
and " stiff," and " ceremonious," implies the general
30 recognition of this fact; and this recognition, logically
developed, involves that all usages of behaviour which are
not based on natural requirements, are injurious. That
these conventions defeat their own ends is no new assertion.
Swift, criticising the manners of his clay, says " Wise men
35 are often more uneasy at the over-civility of these refiners
than they could possibly be in the conversation of peasants
and mechanics."
MANNERS AND FASHION 177
But it is not only in these details that the self-defeating
action of our arrangements is traceable: it is traceable
in the very substance and nature of them. Our social
intercourse, as commonly managed, is a mere semblance of
the reality sought. What is it that we want? Some sym- 5
pathetic converse with our fellow-creatures: some converse
that shall not be mere dead words, but the vehicle of living
thoughts and feelings converse in which the eyes and the
face shall speak, and the tones of the voice be full of mean-
ing converse which shall make us feel no longer alone, 10
but shall draw us closer to another, and double our own
emotions by adding another's to them. Who is there that
has not, from time to time, felt how cold and flat is all this
talk about politics and science, and the new books and the
new men, and how a genuine utterance of fellow-feeling 15
outweighs the whole of it? Mark the words of Bacon:
" For a crowd is not a company, and faces are but a gallery
of pictures, and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is
no love."
If this be true, then it is only after acquaintance has 20
grown into intimacy, and intimacy has ripened into friend-
ship, that the real communion which men need becomes
possible. A rationally-formed circle must consist almost
wholly of those on terms of familiarity and regard, with but
one or two strangers. What folly, then, underlies the 25
whole system of our grand dinners, our " at homes," our
evening parties assemblages made up of many who never
met before, many others who just bow to each other, many
others who though familiar feel mutual indifference, with
just a few real friends lost in the general mass! You need 30
but look round at the artificial expression of face, to see at
once how it is. All have their disguises on; and how can
there be sympathy between masks? No wonder that in
private every one exclaims against the stupidity of these
gatherings. No wonder that hostesses get them up rather 35
because they must than because they wish. No wonder
that the invited go less from the expectation of pleasure
178 HERBERT SPENCER
than from fear of giving offence. The whole thing is a
gigantic mistake an organised disappointment.
And then note, lastly, that in this case, as in all others,
when an organisation has become effete and inoperative
5 for its legitimate purpose, it is employed for quite other
ones quite opposite ones. What is the usual plea put
in for giving and attending these tedious assemblies? " I
admit that they are stupid and frivolous enough," replies
every man to your criticisms; " but then, you know, one
10 must keep up one's connections." And could you get from
his wife a sincere answer, it would be " Like you, I am sick
of these frivolities; but then, we must get our daughters
married." The one knows that there is a profession to
push, a practice to gain, a business to extend: or parliament-
is ary influence, or county patronage, or votes, or office, to be
got: position, berths, favours, profit. The other's thoughts
run upon husbands and settlements, wives and dowries.
Worthless for their ostensible purpose of daily bringing
human beings into pleasurable relations with each other,
20 these cumbrous appliances of our social intercourse are now
perseveringly kept in action with a view to the pecuniary
and matrimonial results which they indirectly produce.
Who then shall say that the reform of our system of
observances is unimportant? When we see how this system
25 induces fashionable extravagance, with its entailed bank-
ruptcy and ruin when we mark how greatly it limits the
amount of social intercourse among the less wealthy classes
when we find that many who most need to be disciplined by
mixing with the refined are driven away by it, and .led into
30 dangerous and often fatal courses when we count up the
many minor evils it inflicts, the extra work which its costli-
ness entails on all professional and mercantile men, the damage
to public taste in dress and decoration by the setting up of
its absurdities as standards for imitation, the injury to
35 health indicated in the faces of its devotees at the close of
the London season, the mortality of milliners and the like,
which its sudden exigencies yearly involve; and when to
MANNERS AND FASHION 179
all-tic
icse we add its fatal sin, that it blights, withers up, and
kills that high enjoyment it professedly ministers to that
enjoyment which is a chief end of our hard struggling in
life to obtain shall we not conclude that to reform our
system of etiquette and fashion, is an aim yielding to few in 5
urgency?
There needs, then, a protestantism in social usages. Forms
that have ceased to facilitate and have become obstructive
whether political, religious, or other have ever to be swept
away; and eventually are so swept away in all cases. Signs 10
are not wanting that some change is at hand. A host of
satirists, led on by Thackeray, have been for years engaged
in bringing our sham-festivities, and our fashionable follies,
into contempt; and in their candid moods, most men laugh
at the frivolities with which they and the world in general 15
are deluded. Ridicule has always been a revolutionary
agent. That which is habitually assailed with sneers and
sarcasms cannot long survive. Institutions that have lost
their roots in men's respect and faith are doomed; and the
day of their dissolution is not far off. The time is approach- 20
ing, then, when our system of social observances must pass
through some crisis, out of which it will come purified and
comparatively simple.
How this crisis will be brought about, no one can with any
certainty say. Whether by the continuance and increase 25
of individual protests, or whether by the union of many
persons for the practice and propagation of some better
system, the future alone can decide. The influence of
dissentients acting without cooperation, seems, under the
present state of things, inadequate. Standing severally 30
alone, and having no well-defined views; frowned on by
conformists, and expostulated with even by those who
secretly sympathise with them; subject to petty persecu-
tions, and unable to trace any benefit produced by their
example; they are apt, one by one, to give up their attempts 35
as hopeless. The young convention-breaker eventually
finds that he pays too heavily for his nonconformity. Hat-
180 HERBERT SPENCER
ing, for example, everything that bears about it any remnant
of servility, he determines, in the ardour of his independence,
that he will uncover to no one. But what he means simply
as a general protest, he finds that ladies interpret into a
5 personal disrespect. Though he sees that, from the days of
chivalry downwards, these marks of supreme consideration
paid to the other sex have been but a hypocritical counter-
part to the actual subjection in which men have held them
a pretended submission to compensate for a real domina-
lotion; and though he sees that when the true dignity of
women is recognised, the mock dignities given to them will
be abolished, yet he does not like to be thus misunderstood,
and so hesitates in his practice.
In other cases, again, his courage fails him. Such of his
15 unconventionalities as can be attributed only to eccentricity,
he has no qualms about: for, on the whole, he feels rather
complimented than otherwise in being considered a dis-
regarder of public opinion. But when they are liable to be
put down to ignorance, to ill-breeding, or to poverty, he
20 becomes a coward. However clearly the recent innovation
of eating some kinds of fish with knife and fork proves the
fork-and-bread practice to have had little but caprice for
its basis, yet he dares not wholly ignore that practice while
fashion partially maintains it. Though he thinks that a
25 silk handkerchief is quite as appropriate for drawing-room
use as a white cambric one, he is not altogether at ease
in acting out his opinion. Then, too, be begins to per-
ceive that his resistance to prescription brings round dis-
advantageous results which he had not calculated upon.
30 He had expected that it would save him from a great deal
of social intercourse of a frivolous kind that it would offend
the fools, but not the sensible people; and so would serve
as a self-acting test by which those worth knowing would
be separated from those not worth knowing. But the fools
35 prove to be so greatly in the majority that, by offending
them, he closes against himself nearly all the avenues through
which the sensible people are to be reached. Thus he finds
MANNERS AND FASHION 181
/
that his nonconformity is frequently misinterpreted; that
there are but few directions in which he dares to carry it
consistently out; that the annoyances and disadvantages
which it brings upon him are greater than he anticipated;
and that the chances of his doing any good are very remote. 5
Hence he gradually loses resolution, and lapses, step by step,
into the ordinary routine of observances.
Abortive as individual protests thus generally turn out,
it may possibly be that nothing effectual will be done until
there arises some organised resistance to this invisible despot- 10
ism, by which our modes and habits are dictated. It may
happen, that the government of Manners and Fashion will
be rendered less tyrannical, as the political and religious
governments have been, by some antagonistic union. Alike
in Church and State, men's first emancipations from excess 15
of restriction were achieved by numbers, bound together by
a common creed or a common political faith. What remained
undone while there were but individual schismatics or
rebels, was effected when there came to be many acting in
concert. It is tolerably clear that these earliest instalments 20
of freedom could not have been obtained in any other way;
for so long as the feeling of personal independence was
weak and the rule strong, there could never have been a
sufficient number of separate dissentients to produce the
desired results. Only in these later times, during which the 25
secular and spiritual controls have been growing less coercive,
and the tendency towards individual liberty greater, has it
become possible for smaller and smaller sects and parties
to fight against established creeds and laws; until now
men may safely stand even alone in their antagonism. 30
The failure of individual nonconformity to customs, as
above illustrated, suggests that an analogous series of changes
may have to be gone through in this case also. It is true that
the lex non scripta differs from the lex scripta in this, that,
being unwritten, it is more readily altered; and that it has, 35
from time to time, been quietly ameliorated. Nevertheless,
we shall find that the analogy holds substantially good.
182 HERBERT SPENCER
For in this case, as in the others, the essential revolution is
not the substituting of any one set of restraints for any
other, but the limiting or abolishing the authority which
prescribes restraints. Just as the fundamental change
5 inauguarated by the Reformation, was not a superseding
of one creed by another, but an ignoring of the arbiter who
before dictated creeds just as the fundamental change
which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this
particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the
10 freedom of all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought
out in this supplementary government of which we are
treating, is not the replacing of absurd usages by sensible
ones, but the dethronement of that secret, irresponsible
power which now imposes our usages, and the assertion of
15 the right of all individuals to choose their own usages. In
rules of living, a West-end clique is our Pope; and we are
all papists, with but a mere sprinkling of heretics. On all
who decisively rebel, comes down the penalty of excom-
munication, with its long catalogue of disagreeable and,
20 indeed, serious consequences.
The liberty of the subject asserted in our constitution,
and ever on the increase, has yet to be wrested from this
subtler tyranny. The right of private judgment, which
our ancestors wrung from the church, remains to be claimed
25 from this dictator of our habits. Or, as before said, to free
us from these idolatries and superstitious conformities,
there has still to come a protestantism in social usages.
Parallel, therefore, as is the change to be wrought out, it
seems not improbable that it may be wrought out in an anal-
3oogous way. That influence which solitary dissentients fail
to gain, and that perseverance which they lack, may come
into existence when they unite. That persecution which
the world now visits upon them from mistaking their non-
conformity for ignorance or disrespect, may diminish when
35 it is seen to result from principle. The penalty which
exclusion now entails may disappear when they become
numerous enough to form visiting circles of their own.
MANNERS AND FASHION 183
And when a successful stand has been made, and the brunt
of the opposition has passed, that large amount of secret
dislike to our observances which now pervades society,
may manifest itself with sufficient power to effect the desired
emancipation. 5
Whether such will be the process, time alone can decide.
That community of origin, growth, supremacy, and decadence
which we have found among all kinds of government, sug-
gests a community in modes of change also. On the other
hand, Nature often performs substantially similar opera- 10
tions, in ways apparently different. Hence these details
can never be foretold.
Society, in all its developments, undergoes the process
of exuviation. These old forms which it successively throws
off, have all been once vitally united with it have severally 15
served as the protective envelopes within which a higher
humanity w r as being evolved. They are cast aside only
when they become hindrances only when some inner and
better envelope has been formed; and they bequeath to
us all that there was in them of good. The periodical aboli- 20
tions of tyrannical laws have left the administration of
justice not only uninjured, but purified. Dead and buried
creeds have not carried with them the essential morality
they contained, which still exists, uncontaminated by the
sloughs of superstition. And all that there is of justice and 25
kindness and beauty, embodied in our cumbrous forms of
etiquette, will live perennially when the forms themselves
have been forgotten,
TALK AND TALKERS l
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON
" Sir, we had a good talk." JOHNSON.
" As we must account for every idle word, so we must for every idle
silence." FRANKLIN.
THERE can be no fairer ambition than to excel in talk;
to be affable, gay, ready, clear and welcome; to have a
fact, a thought, or an illustration, pat to every subject;
and not only to cheer the flight of time among our intimates",
5 but bear our part in that great international congress, always
sitting, where public wrongs are first declared, public errors
first corrected, and the course of public opinion shaped,
day by day, a little nearer to the right. No measure comes
before Parliament but it has been long ago prepared by the
10 grand jury of the talkers; no book is written that has not
been largely composed by their assistance. Literature in
many of its branches is no other than the shadow of good
talk; but the imitation falls far short of the original in life,
freedom, and effect. There are always two to a talk, giving
15 and taking, comparing experience and according conclusions.
Talk is fluid, tentative, continually " in further search and
progress;" while written words remain fixed, become idols
even to the writer, found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve
flies of obvious error in the amber of the truth. Last and
20 chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can
only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy
1 The first of two papers on this subject written in 1881-2; reprinted
here, by permission of the publishers, from " Memories and Portraits "
in the Biographical Edition of Stevenson's Works, Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1907.
184
TALK AND TALKERS 185
free and may call a spade a spade. It cannot, even if it
would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like
literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dis-
solved in laughter, and speech runs forth out of the con-
temporary groove into the open fields of nature, cheery and 5
cheering, like schoolboys out of school. And it is in talk
alone that we can learn our period and ourselves. In short,
the first duty of a man is to speak; that is his chief business
in this world; and talk, which is the harmonious speech of
two or more, is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It 10
costs nothing in money; it is all profit; it completes our
education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be
enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
The spice of life is battle; the friendliest relations are
still a kind of contest; and if we would not forego all that is 15
valuable in our lot, we must continually face some other per-
son, eye to eye, and wrestle a fall whether in love or enmity.
It is still by force of body, or power of character or intellect,
that we attain to worthy pleasures. Men and women
contend for each other in the lists of love, like rival mes- 20
merists; the active and adroit decide their challenges in
the sports of the body; and the sedentary sit down to chess
or conversation. All sluggish and pacific pleasures are,
to the same- degree, solitary and selfish; and every dura-
ble bond between human beings is founded in or height- 25
ened by some element of competition. Now, the relation
that has the least root in matter is undoubtedly that airy
one of friendship; and hence, I suppose, it is that good talk
most commonly arises among friends. Talk is, indeed,
both the scene and instrument of friendship. It is in talk 30
alone that the friends can measure strength, and enjoy that
amicable counter-assertion of personality which is the gauge
of relations and the sport of life.
A good talk is not to be had for the asking. Humours
must first be accorded in a kind of overture or prologue; 35
hour, company and circumstance be suited; and then, at
a fit juncture, the subject, the quarry of two heated minds,
186 EGBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
springs up like a deer out of the wood. Not that the talker
has any of the hunter's pride, though he has all and more
than all his ardour. The genuine artist follows the stream
of conversation as an angler follows the windings of a brook,
snot dallying where he fails to " kill." He trusts implicitly
to hazard; and he is rewarded by continual variety, con-
tinual pleasure, and those changing prospects of the truth
that are the best of education. There is nothing in a sub-
ject, so called, that we should regard it as an idol, or follow
10 it beyond the promptings of desire. Indeed, there are few
subjects; and so far as they are truly talkable, more than
the half of them may be reduced to three: that I am I,
that you are you, and that there are other people dimly
understood to be not quite the same as either. Wherever
i Stalk may range, it still runs half the time on these eternal
lines. The theme being set, each plays on himself as on
an instrument; asserts and justifies himself; ransacks
his brain for instances and opinions, and brings them forth
new-minted, to his own surprise and the admiration of his
20 adversary. All natural talk is a festival of ostentation;
and by the laws of the game each accepts and fans the
vanity of the other. It is from that reason that we ven-
ture to lay ourselves so open, that we dare to be so
warmly eloquent, and that we swell in each other's eyes
25 to such a vast proportion. For talkers, once launched,
begin to overflow the limits of their ordinary selves, tower
up to the height of their secret pretensions, and give them-
selves out for the heroes, brave, pious, musical, and wise,
that in their most shining moments they aspire to be. So
30 they weave for themselves with words and for a while
inhabit a palace of delights, temple at once and theatre,
where they fill the round of the world's dignities, and feast
with the gods, exulting in Kudos. 1 And when the talk is
over, each goes his way, still flushed with vanity and admira-
35 tion, still trailing clouds of glory; each declines from the
height of his ideal orgy, not in a moment, but by slow
1 Kudos (Greek) : glory.
TALK AND TALKERS 187
/
declension. I remember, in the entr'acte of an afternoon
performance, coming forth into the sunshine, in a beautiful
green, gardened corner of a romantic city; and as I sat
and smoked, the music moving in my blood, I seemed to
sit there and evaporate The Flying Dutchman (for it was 5
that I had been hearing) with a wonderful sense of life,
warmth, well-being, and pride; and the noises of the city,
voices, bells and marching feet, fell together in my ears
like a symphonious orchestra. In the same way, the excite-
ment of a good talk lives for a long while after in the blood, 10
the heart still hot within you, the brain still simmering, and
the physical earth swimming around you with the colours
of the sunset.
Natural talk, like ploughing, should turn up a large
surface of life, rather than dig mines into geological strata. 15
Masses of experience, anecdote, incident, cross-lights, quo-
tation, historical instances, the whole flotsam and jetsam
of two minds forced in and in upon the matter in hand
from every point of the compass, and from every degree
of mental elevation and abasement these are the material 20
with which talk is fortified, the food on which the talkers
thrive. Such argument as is proper to the exercise should
still be brief and seizing. Talk should proceed by instances;
by the apposite, not the expository. It should keep close
along the lines of humanity, near the bosoms and businesses 25
of men, at the level where history, fiction and experience
intersect and illuminate each other. I am I, and You are
You, with all my heart; but conceive how these lean prop-
ositions change and brighten when, instead of words,
the actual you and I sit cheek by jowl, the spirit housed 30
in the live body, and the very clothes uttering voices to
corroborate the story in the face. Not less surprising is
the change when we leave off to speak of generalities
the bad, the good, the miser, and all the characters of Theo-
phrastus and call up other men, by anecdote or instance, 35
in their very trick and feature; or trading on a common
knowledge, toss each other famous names, still glowing
188 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
with the hues of life. Communication is no longer by
words, but by the instancing of whole biographies, epics,
systems of philosophy, and epochs of history, in bulk. That
which is understood excels that which is spoken in quantity
5 and quality alike; ideas thus figured and personified, change
hands, as we may say, like coin; and the speakers imply
without effort the most obscure and intricate thoughts.
Strangers who have a large common ground of reading will,
for this reason, come the sooner to the grapple of genuine
10 converse. If they know Othello and Napoleon, Consuelo
and Clarissa Harlowe, Vautrin and Steenie Steenson, they
can leave generalities and begin at once to speak by figures.
Conduct and art are the two subjects that arise most
frequently and that embrace the widest range of facts.
15 A few pleasures bear discussion for their own sake, but
only those which are most social or most radically human;
and even these can only be discussed among their devotees.
A technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether
in athletics, art, or law; I have heard the best kind of talk
20 on technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both
know and love their business. No human being ever spoke
of scenery for above two minutes at a time, which makes
me suspect we hear too much of it in literature. The
weather is regarded as the very nadir and scoff of conversa-
25 tional topics. And yet the weather, the dramatic element
in scenery, is far more tractable in language, and far more
human both in import and suggestion than the stable
features of the landscape. Sailors and shepherds, and the
people generally of coast and mountain, talk well of it;
30 and it is often excitingly presented in literature. But the
tendency of all living talk draws it back and back into the
common focus of humanity. Talk is a creature of the street
and market-place, feeding on gossip; and its last resort
is still in a discussion on morals. That is the heroic form of
35 gossip; heroic in virtue of its high pretensions; but still
gossip, because it turns on personalities. You can keep
no men long, nor Scotchmen at all, off moral or theological
TALK AND TALKERS 189
discussion. These are to all the world what law is to lawyers;
they are everybody's technicalities; the medium through
which all consider life, and the dialect in which they express
their judgments. I knew three young men who walked
together daily for some two months in a solemn and beau- 5
tiful forest and in cloudless summer weather; daily they
talked with unabated zest, and yet scarce wandered that
whole time beyond two subjects theology and love. And
perhaps neither a court of love ' nor an assembly of divines
would have granted their premises or welcomed their con- 10
elusions.
Conclusions, indeed, are not often reached by talk any
more than by private thinking. That is not the profit.
The profit is in the exercise, and above all in the experience;
for when we reason at large on any subject, we review our 15
state and history in life. From time to time, however, and
specially, I think, in talking art, talk becomes effective, con-
quering like war, widening the boundaries of knowledge
like an exploration. A point arises; the question takes a
problematical, a baffling, yet a likely air; the talkers begin 20
to feel lively presentiments of some conclusion near at
hand; towards this they strive with emulous ardour, each
by his own path, and struggling for first utterance; and then
one leaps upon the summit of that matter with a shout,
and almost at the same moment the other is beside him; 25
and behold they are agreed. Like enough, the progress is
illusory, a mere cat's cradle having been wound and un-
wound out of words. But the sense of joint discovery is
none the less giddy and inspiriting. And in the life of the
talker such triumphs, though imaginary, are neither few 30
nor far apart; they are attained with speed and pleasure,
in the hour of mirth; and by the nature of the process,
they are always worthily shared.
There is a certain attitude combative at once and defer-
ential, eager to fight yet most averse to quarrel, which 35
1 Court of love: a mediaeval institution for the discussion of questions
of chivalrv.
190 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
marks out at once the talkable man. It is not eloquence,
not fairness, not obstinacy, but a certain proportion of all
of these that I love to encounter in my amidable adversar-
ies. They must not be pontiffs holding doctrine, but hunts-
5 men questing after elements of truth. Neither must they
be boys to be instructed, but fellow-teachers with whom I
may wrangle and agree on equal terms. We must reach
some solution, some shadow of consent; for without that,
eager talk becomes a torture. But we do not wish to reach
10 it cheaply, or quickly, or without the tussle and effort
wherein pleasure lies.
The very best talker, with me, is one whom I shall call
Spring-Heel'd Jack. I say so, because I never knew any
one who mingled so largely the possible ingredients of
15 converse. In the Spanish proverb, the fourth man neces-
sary to compound a salad, is a madman to mix it: Jack is
that madman. I know not which is more remarkable: the
insane lucidity of his conclusions, the humorous eloquence
of his language, or his power of method, bringing the whole
20 of life into the focus of the subject treated, mixing the con-
versational salad like a drunken god. He doubles like
the serpent, changes and flashes like the shaken kaleido-
scope, transmigrates bodily into the views of others, and so,
in the twinkling of an eye and with a heady rapture, turns
25 questions inside out and flings them empty before you on
the ground, like a triumphant conjuror. It is my common
practice when a piece of conduct puzzles me, to attack it
in the presence of Jack with such grossness, such partiality
and such wearing iteration, as at length shall spur him up
30 in its defence. In a moment he transmigrates, dons the
required character, and with moonstruck philosophy justifies
the act in question. I can fancy nothing to compare with
the vim of these impersonations, the strange scale of language,
flying from Shakespeare to Kant, and from Kant to Major
35 Dyngwell
" As fast as a musician scatters sounds
Out of an instrument "
TALK AND TALKERS 191
the sudden, sweeping generalisations, the absurd irrelevant
particularities, the wit, wisdom, folly, humour, eloquence
and bathos, each startling in its kind, and yet all luminous
in the admired disorder of their combination. A talker of
a different calibre, though belonging to the same school, is 5
Burly. Burly is a man of great presence; he commands a
larger atmosphere, gives the impression of a grosser mass
of character than most men. It has been said of him that
his presence could be felt in a room you entered blindfold;
and the same, I think, has been said of other powerful con- 10
stitutions condemned to much physical inaction. There
is something boisterous and piratic in Burly's manner of
talk which suits well enough with this impression. He
will roar you down, he will bury his face in his hands, he
will undergo passions of revolt and agony; and meanwhile 15
his attitude of mind is really both conciliatory and receptive;
and after Pistol has been out-Pistol'd, and the welkin rung
for hours, you begin to perceive a certain subsidence in these
spring torrents, points of agreement issue, and you end arm-
in-arm, and in a glow of mutual admiration. The outcry 20
only serves to make your final union the more unexpected
and precious. Throughout there has been perfect sincerity,
perfect intelligence, a desire to hear although not always to
listen, and an unaffected eagerness to meet concessions.
You have, with Burly, none of the dangers that attend 25
debate with Spring-Heel'd Jack; who may at any moment
turn his powers of transmigration on yourself, create for
you a view you never held, and then furiously fall on you
for holding it. These, at least, are my two favourites,
and both are loud, copious, intolerant talkers. This argues 30
that I myself am in the same category; for if we love talk-
ing at all, we love a bright, fierce adversary, who will hold
his ground, foot by foot, in much our own manner, sell
his attention dearly, and give us our full measure of the dust
and exertion of battle. Both these men can be beat from 35
a position, but it takes six hours to do it; a high and hard
adventure, worth attempting. With both you can pass
192 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
days in an enchanted country of the mind, with people,
scenery and manners of its own; live a \life apart, more
arduous, active and glowing than any real existence; and
come forth again when the talk is over, as out of a theatre
S or a dream, to find the east wind still blowing and the chim-
ney-pots of the old battered city still around you. Jack
has the far finer mind, Burly the far more honest; Jack
gives us the animated poetry, Burly the romantic prose, of
similar themes; the one glances high like a meteor and makes
10 a light in darkness; the other, with many changing hues of
fire, burns at the sea-level, like a conflagration; but both
have the same humour and artistic interests, the same un-
quenched ardour in pursuit, the same gusts of talk and thun-
derclaps of contradiction.
15 Cockshot 1 is a different article, but vastly entertaining,
and has been meat and drink to me for many a long evening.
His manner is dry, brisk and pertinacious, and the choice
of words not much. The point about him is his extraor-
dinary readiness and spirit. You can propound nothing
20 but he has either a theory about it ready-made, or will
have one instantly on the stocks, and proceed to lay its
timbers and launch it in your presence. " Let me see,"
he will say. " Give me a moment. I should have some
theory for that." A blither spectacle than the vigour
25 with which he sets about the task, it were hard to fancy.
He is possessed by a demoniac energy, welding the elements
for his life, and bending ideas, as an athlete bends a horse-
shoe, with a visible and lively effort. He has, in theorising,
a compass, an art; wha't I would call the synthetic gusto;
30 something of a Herbert Spencer, who should see the fun of
the thing. You are not bound, and no more is he, to place
your faith in these brand-new opinions. But some of them
are right enough, durable even for life; and the poorest
serve for a cock-shy as when idle people, after picnics,
35 float a bottle on a pond and have an hour's diversion ere
it sinks. Whichever they are, serious opinions or humours
1 The Late Fleeming Jenkin Author's note.
TALK AND TALKERS 193
of the moment, he still defends his ventures with inde-
fatigable wit and spirit, hitting savagely himself, but taking
punishment like a man. He knows and never forgets that
people talk, first of all, for the sake of talking; conducts
himself in the ring, to use the old slang, like a thorough 5
" glutton," and honestly enjoys a telling facer from his
adversary. Cockshot is bottled effervescency, the sworn
foe of sleep. Three-in-the-morning Cockshot, says a victim.
His talk is like the driest of all imaginable dry champagnes.
Sleight of hand and inimitable quickness are the qualities 10
by which he lives. Athelred, on the other hand, presents
you with the spectacle of a sincere and somewhat slow nature
thinking aloud. He is the most unready man I ever knew
to shine in conversation. You may see him sometimes
wrestle with a refractory jest for a minute or two together, 15
and perhaps fail to throw it in the end. And there is some-
thing singularly engaging, often instructive, in the simplic-
ity with which he thus exposes the process as well as the
result, the works as well as the dial of the clock. Withal
he has his hours of inspiration. Apt words come to him 20
as if by accident, and, coming from deeper down, they smack
the more personally, they have the more of fine old crusted
humanity, rich in sediment and humour. There are sayings
of his in which he has stamped himself into the very grain
of the language; you would think he must have worn the 25
words next his skin and slept with them. Yet it is not as a
sayer of particular good things that Athelred is most to be
regarded, rather as the stalwart woodman of thought. I
have pulled on a light cord often enough, while he has been
wielding the broad-axe; and between us, on this unequal 30
division, many a specious fallacy has fallen. I have known
him to battle the same question night after night for years,
keeping it in the reign of talk, constantly applying it and
re-applying it to life with humorous or grave intention,
and all the while, never hurrying, nor flagging, nor taking 35
an unfair advantage of the facts. Jack at a given moment,
when arising, as it were, from the tripod, can be more
194 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
radiantly just to those from whom heNiiffers; but then the
tenor of his thoughts is even calumnious; while Athelred,
slower to forge excuses, is yet slower to condemn, and sits
over the welter of the world, vacillating but still judicial,
5 and still faithfully contending with his doubts.
Both the last talkers deal much in points of conduct and
religion studied in the " dry light " of prose. Indirectly
and as if against his will the same elements from time to
time appear in the troubled and poetic talk of Opalstein.
10 His various and exotic knowledge, complete although
unready sympathies, and fine, full, discriminative flow of
language, fit him out to be the best of talkers; so perhaps
he is with some, not quite with me proxime accessit, 1 I
should say. He sings the praises of the earth and the arts,
15 flowers and jewels, wine and music, in a moonlight, seren-
ading manner, as to the light guitar; even wisdom comes
from his tongue like singing; no one is, indeed, more tune-
ful in the upper notes. But even while he sings the song
of the Sirens, he still hearkens to the barking of the Sphinx.
20 Jarring Byronic notes interrupt the flow of his Horatian
humours. His mirth has something of the tragedy of the
world for its perpetual background; and he feasts like Don
Giovanni to a double orchestra, one lightly sounding for
the dance, one pealing Beethoven in the distance. He is
25 not truly reconciled either with life or with himself; and
this instant war in his members sometimes divides the man's
attention. He does not always, perhaps not often, frankly
surrender himself in conversation. He brings into the
talk other thoughts than those which he expresses; you
30 are conscious that he keeps an eye on something else, that
he does not shake off the world, nor quite forget himself.
Hence arise occasional disappointments; even an occasional
unfairness for his companions, who find themselves one day
giving too much, and the next, when they are wary out of
35 season, giving perhaps too little. Purcel is in another
class from any I have mentioned. He is no debater, but
1 Proxime accessit: he comes very close to it.
TALK AND TALKERS 195
appears in conversation, as occasion rises, in two distinct
characters, one of which I admire and fear, and the other
love. In the first, he is radiantly civil and rather silent,
sits on a high, courtly hilltop, and from that vantage-ground
drops you his remarks like favours. He seems not to share 5
in our sublunary contentions; he wears no sign of interest;
when on a sudden there falls in a crystal of wit, so polished
that the dull do not perceive it, but so right that the sen-
sitive are silenced. True talk should have more body and
blood, should be louder, vainer and more declaratory of the 10
man; the true talker should not hold so steady an advan-
tage over whom he speaks with; and that is one reason
out of a score why I prefer my Purcel in his second char-
acter, when he unbends into a strain of graceful gossip,
singing like the fireside kettle. In these moods he has 15
an elegant homeliness that rings of the true Queen Anne.
I know another person who attains, in his moments, to the
insolence of a Restoration comedy, speaking, I declare, as
Congreve wrote; but that is a sport of nature, and scarce
falls under the rubric, for there is none, alas! to give him 20
answer.
One last remark occurs: It is the mark of genuine con-
versation that the sayings can scarce be quoted with their
full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have
their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and 25
with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic;
it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should
represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the
best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and
candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches 30
round from one to another, there would be the greatest
loss in significance and perspicuity. It is for this reason
that talk depends so wholly on our company. We should
like to introduce Falstaff and Mercutio, or Falstaff and Sir
Toby; but Falstaff in talk with Cordelia seems even pain- 35
ful. Most of us, by the Protean quality of man, can talk
to some degree with all; but the tiue talk, that strikes out
196 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
all the slumbering best of us, comes only with the
peculiar brethren of our spirits, is founded as deep as
love in the constitution of our being, and is a thing to
relish with all our energy, while yet we have it, and to
5 be grateful for forever.
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 1
WILLIAM JAMES
I
OF what use is a college training? We who have had it
seldom hear the question raised we might be a little non-
plussed to answer it offhand. A certain amount of medita-
tion has brought me to this as the pithiest reply which I
myself can give: The best claim that a college education
can possibly make on your respect, the best thing it can
aspire to accomplish for you, is this: that it should help
you to know a good man when you sec him. This is as true
of women's as of men's colleges; but that it is neither I0
a joke nor a one-sided abstraction I shall now endeavor to
show.
What talk do we commonly hear about the contrast
between college education and the education which business
or technical or professional schools confer? The college x -
education is called higher because it is supposed to be so
general and so disinterested. At the " schools " you get
a relatively narrow practical skill, you are told, whereas the
" colleges " give you the more liberal culture, the broader
outlook, the historical perspective, the philosophic atmos- ,,
phere, or something which phrases of that sort try to express.
You are made into an efficient instrument for doing a defi-
nite thing, you hear, at the schools; but, apart from that,
you may remain a crude and smoky kind of petroleum,
incapable of spreading light. The universities and colleges, ,.
on the other hand, although they may leave you less efficient
1 First published in iqoS. Reprinted by permission from Memories
and Studies, 1911. (Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co.)
197
198 WILLIAM JAMES
for this or that practical task, suffuse your whole mentality
with something more important than skill. They redeem you,
make you well-bred; they make " good company " of you
mentally. If they find you with a naturally boorish or
5 caddish mind, they cannot leave you so, as a technical
school may leave you. This, at least, is pretended; this is
what we hear among college-trained people when they com-
pare their education with every other sort. Now, exactly
how much does this signify?
10 It is certain, to begin with, that the narrowest trade
or professional training does something more for a man than
to make a skillful practical tool of him it makes him also
a judge of other men's skill. Whether his trade be pleading
at the bar or surgery or plastering or plumbing, it develops
15 a critical sense in him for that sort of occupation. He
understands the difference between second-rate and first-
rate work in his whole branch of industry; he gets to know
a good job in his own line as soon as he sees it; and getting
to know this in his own line, he gets a faint sense of what
20 good work may mean anyhow, that may, if circumstances
favor, spread into his judgments elsewhere. Sound work,
clean work, finished work; feeble work, slack work, sham
work these words express an identical contrast in many
different departments of activity. In so far, then, even
25 the humblest manual trade may beget in one a certain
small degree of power to judge of good work generally.
Now, what is supposed to be the line of us who have
the higher college training? Is there any broader line
since our education claims primarily not to be " narrow "
30 in which we also are made good judges between what
is first-rate and what is second-rate only? What, is especially
taught in the colleges has long been known by the name of
the " humanities," and these are often identified with
Greek and Latin. But it is only as literatures, not as lan-
35 guages, that Greek and Latin have any general humanity-
value; so that in a broad sense the humanities mean litera-
ture primarily, and in a still broader sense the study of
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 109
masterpieces in almost any field of human endeavor. Litera-
ture keeps the primacy; for it not only consists of master-
pieces, but is largely about masterpieces, being little more
than an appreciative chronicle of human master-strokes,
so far as it takes the form of criticism and history. You 5
can give humanistic value to almost anything by teaching
it historically. Geology, economics, mechanics, are human-
ities when taught with reference to the successive achieve-
ments of the geniuses to which these sciences owe their
being. Not taught thus, literature remains grammar, 10
art a catalogue, history a list of dates, and natural science
a sheet of formulas and weights and measures.
The sifting of human creations! nothing less than this
is what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially
this means biography; what our colleges should teach is, 15
therefore, biographical history, not that of politics merely,
but of anything and everything so far as human efforts
and conquests are factors that have played their part.
Studying in this way, we learn what types of activity have
stood the test of time; we acquire standards of the excellent 20
and durable. All our arts and sciences and institutions are
but so many quests of perfection on the part of men; and
when we see how diverse the types of excellence may be,
how various the tests, how flexible the adaptations, we gain
a richer sense of what the terms " better " and " worse "25
may signify in general. Our critical sensibilities grow both
more acute and less fanatical. We sympathize with men's
mistakes even in the act of penetrating them; we feel the
pathos of lost causes and misguided epochs even while we
applaud what overcame them. 30
Such words are vague and such ideas are inadequate,
but their meaning is unmistakable. What the colleges
teaching humanities by examples which may be special,
but which must be typical and pregnant -should at least
try to give us, is a general sense of what, under various 35
disguises, superiority has always signified and may still
signify. The feeling for a good human job anywhere, the
200 WILLIAM JAMES
\
admiration of the really admirable, the disesteem of what is
cheap and trashy and impermanent this is what we call the
critical sense, the sense for ideal values. It is the better
part of what men know as wisdom. Some of us are wise
5 in this way naturally and by genius; some of us never become
so. But to have spent one's youth at college, in contact
with the choice and rare and precious, and yet still to be a
blind prig or vulgarian, unable to scent out human excel-
lence or to divine it amid its accidents, to know it only when
10 ticketed and labeled and forced on us by others, this indeed
should be accounted the very calamity and shipwreck of a
higher education.
The sense for human superiority ought, then, to be con-
sidered our line, as boring subways is the engineer's line and
1 5 the surgeon's is appendicitis. Our colleges ought to have
lit up in us a lasting relish for the better kind of man, a
loss of appetite for mediocrities, and a disgust for cheap-
jacks. We ought to smell, as it were, the difference of
quality in men and their proposals when we enter the world
20 of affairs about us. Expertness in this might well atone for
some of our awkwardness at accounts, for some of our
ignorance of dynamos. The best claim we can make for
the higher education, the best single phrase in which we
can tell what it ought to do for us, is, then, exactly what I
25 said: it should enable us to know a good man when we see him.
That the phrase is anything but an empty epigram follows
from the fact that if you ask in what line it is most important
that a democracy like ours should have its sons and daughters
skillful, you see that it is this line more than any other.
30" The people in their wisdom " this is the kind of wisdom
most needed by the people. Democracy is on its trial,
and no one knows how it will stand the ordeal. Abounding
about us are pessimistic prophets. Fickleness and vio-
lence used to be, but are no longer, the vices which they
35 charge to democracy. What its critics now affirm is that
its preferences are inveterately for the inferior. So it was
in the beginning, they say, and so it will be world without
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 201
end. Vulgarity enthroned and institutionalized, elbowing
everything superior from the highway, this, they tell us,
is our irremediable destiny; and the picture papers of the
European continent are already drawing Uncle Sam with the
hog instead of the eagle for his heraldic emblem. The 5
privileged aristocracies of the foretime, with all their iniqui-
ties, did at least preserve some taste for higher human
quality and honor certain forms of refinement by their
enduring traditions. But when democracy is sovereign, its
doubters say, nobility will form a sort of invisible church, 10
and sincerity and refinement, stripped of honor, preced-
ence, and favor, will have to vegetate on sufferance in pri-
vate corners. They will have no general influence. They
will be harmless eccentricities.
Now, who can be absolutely certain that this may not be 15
the career of democracy? Nothing future is quite secure;
states enough have inwardly rotted; and democracy as a
whole may undergo self-poisoning. But, on the other hand,
democracy is a kind of religion, and we are bound not to
admit its failure. Faiths and Utopias are the noblest exercise 20
of human reason, and no one with a spark of reason in him
will sit down fatalistically before the croaker's picture.
The best of us are filled with the contrary vision of a
democracy stumbling through every error till its institutions
glow with justice and its customs shine with beauty. Our 25
better men shall show the way and we shall follow them;
so we are brought round again to the mission of the higher
education in helping us to know the better kind of man
whenever we see him.
The notion that a people can run itself and its affairs 30
anonymously is now well known to be the silliest of absurd-
ities. Mankind does nothing save through initiatives on the
part of inventors, great or small, and imitation by the' rest
of us these are the sole factors active in human progress.
Individuals of genius show the way, and set the patterns, 35
which common people then adopt and follow. The rivalry
of the patterns is the history of the world. Our democratic
202 WILLIAM JAMES
\
problem thus is statable in ultra-simple terms: Who are the
kind of men from whom our majorities shall take their cue?
Whom shall they treat as rightful leaders? We and our
leaders are the x and the y of the equation here; all other
S historic circumstances, be they economical, political, or
intellectual, are only the background of occasion on which
the living drama works itself out between us.
In this very simple way does the value of our educated
class define itself: we more than others should be able to
10 divine the worthier and better leaders. The terms here
are monstrously simplified, of course, but such a bird's-eye
view lets us immediately take our bearings. In our democracy,
where everything else is so shifting, we alumni and alumnae
of the colleges are the only permanent presence that cor-
15 responds to the aristocracy in older countries. We have
continuous traditions, as they have; our motto, too, is
noblesse oblige; and, unlike them, we stand for ideal interests
solely, for we have no corporate selfishness and wield no
powers of corruption. We ought to have our own class-
so consciousness. " Les intellectuals!" What prouder club
name could there be than this one, used ironically by the
party of " red blood," the party of every stupid prejudice
and passion, during the anti-Dreyfus craze, to satirize the
men in France who still retained some critical sense and
25 judgment! Critical sense, it has to be confessed, is not an
exciting term, hardly a banner to carry in processions.
Affections for old habit, currents of self-interest, and gales
of passion are the forces that keep the human ship moving;
and the pressure of the judicious pilot's hand upon the
30 tiller is a relatively insignificant energy. But the affections,
passions, and interests are shifting, successive, and dis-
traught; they blow in alternation while the pilot's hand is
steadfast. He knows the compass, and, with all the lee-
ways he is obliged to tack toward, he always makes some
35 headway. A small force, if it never lets up, will accumulate
effects more considerable than those of much greater forces
if these work inconsistently. The ceaseless whisper of the
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 203
more permanent ideals, the steady tug of truth and justice,
give them but time, must warp the world in their
direction.
This bird's-eye view of the general steering function of
{he college-bred amid the driftings of democracy ought to 5
help us to a wider vision of what our colleges themselves
should aim at. If we are to be the yeast cake for democ-
racy's dough, if we are to make it rise with culture's pref-
erences, we must see to it that culture spreads broad sails.
We must shake the old double reefs out of the canvas into 10
the wind and sunshine, and let in every modern subject, sure
that any subject will prove humanistic, if its setting be kept
only wide enough.
Stevenson says somewhere to his reader: " You think
you are just making this bargain, but you are really laying 15
down a link in the policy of mankind." Well, your technical
school should enable you to make your bargain splendidly;
but your college should show you just the place of that kind
of bargain a pretty poor place, possibly in the whole
policy of mankind. That is the kind of liberal outlook, of 20
perspective, of atmosphere, which should surround every
subject as a college deals with it.
We of the colleges must eradicate a curious notion which
numbers of good people have about such ancient seats of
learning as Harvard. To many ignorant outsiders, that 25
name suggests little more than a kind of sterlized conceit
and incapacity for being pleased. In Edith Wyatt's exquisite
book of Chicago sketches called " Every One his Own Way,"
there is a couple who stand for culture in the sense of exclu-
siveness, Richard Elliot and his feminine counterpart feeble 30
caricatures of mankind, unable to know any good thing
when they see it, incapable of enjoyment unless a printed
label gives them leave. Possibly this type of culture may
exist near Cambridge and Boston, there may be specimens
there, for priggishness is just like painters' colic or any other 35
trade disease. But every good college makes its students
immune against this malady, of which the microbe haunts
204 WILLIAM JAMES
\
the neighborhood-printed pages. It does so by its general
tone being too hearty for the microbe's life. Real culture
lives by sympathies and admirations, not by dislikes and
disdains under all misleading wrappings it pounces unerr-
5 ingly upon the human core. If a college, through the inferior
human influences that have grown regnant there, fails to
catch the robuster tone, its failure is colossal, for its social
function stops: democracy gives it a wide berth, turns
toward it a deaf ear.
10 " Tone," to be sure, is a terribly vague word to use, but
there is no other, and this whole meditation is over questions
of tone. By their tone are all things human either lost or
saved. If democracy is to be saved it must catch the higher,
healthier tone. If we are to impress it with our preferences,
15 we ourselves must use the proper tone, which we, in turn,
must have caught from our own teachers. It all reverts in
the end to the action of innumerable imitative individuals
upon each other and to the question of whose tone has the
highest spreading power. As a class, we college graduates
20 should look to it that ours has spreading power. It ought
to have the highest spreading power.
In our essential function of indicating the better men,
we now have formidable competitors outside. McClure's
Magazine, the American Magazine, Collier's Weekly, and,
25 in its fashion, the World's Work, constitute together a real
popular university along this very line. It would be a pity
if any future historian were to have to write words like
these: " By the middle of the twentieth century the higher
institutions of learning had lost all influence over public
30 opinion in the United States. But the mission of raising the
tone of democracy, which they had proved themselves so
lamentably unfitted to exert, was assumed with rare enthu-
siasm and prosecuted with extraordinary skill and success
by a new educational power; and for the clarification of
35 their human sympathies and elevation of their human pref-
erences, the people at large acquired the habit of resorting
exclusively to the guidance of certain private literary
THE SOCIAL VALUE OF THE COLLEGE-BRED 205
adventures, commonly designated in the market by the
affectionate name of ten-cent magazines."
Must not we of the colleges see to it that no historian shall
ever say anything like this? Vague as the phrase of knowing
a good man when you see him may be, diffuse and indefinite 5
as one must leave its application, is there any other formula
that describes so well the result at which our institutions
ought to aim? If they do that, they do the best thing con-
ceivable. If they fail to do it, they fail in very deed. It
surely is a fine synthetic formula. If our faculties andi
graduates could once collectively come to realize it as the
great underlying purpose toward which they have always
been more or less obscurely groping, great clearness would
be shed over many of their problems; and, as for their
influence in the midst of our social system, it would embark 1 5
upon a new career of strength.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS *
HENRY GEORGE
WHAT, then, is the law of human progress the law
under which civilization advances?
It must explain clearly and definitely, and not by vague
generalities or superficial analogies, why, though mankind
started presumably with the same capacities and at the 5
same time, there now exist such wide differences in social
development. It must account for the arrested civiliza-
tions and for the decayed and destroyed civilizations; for
the general facts as to the rise of civilization, and for the
petrifying or enervating force which the progress of civiliza- 10
tion has heretofore always evolved. It must account for
retrogression a well as for progression; for the differences
in general character between Asiatic and European civiliza-
tions; for the difference between classical and modern
civilizations; for the different rates at which progress goes 15
on; and for those bursts, and starts, and halts of progress
which are so marked as minor phenomena. And, thus,
it must show us what are the essential conditions of progress,
and what social adjustments advance and what retard it.
It is not difficult to discover such a law. We have but 20
to look and we may see it. I do not pretend to give it
scientific precision, but merely to point it out.
The incentives to progress are the desires inherent in
human nature the desire to gratify the wants of the
1 Chapter III, Book X, of " Progress and Poverty; " copyright,
iQoj, by Henry George, Richard F. George, and Anna G. de Mille.
The chapter is here reprinted by permission of Mr. Henry George,
Junior, and the publishers, Messrs. Doubleday, Page and Company.
206
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 207
animal nature, the wants of the intellectual nature, and
the wants of the sympathetic nature; the desire to be, to
know, and to do desires that short of infinity can never
be satisfied, as they grow by what they feed on.
Mind is the instrument by which man advances, and by 5
which each advance is secured and made the vantage ground
for new advances. Though he may not by taking thought
add a cubit to his stature, man may by taking thought
extend his knowledge of the universe and his power over it,
in what, so far as we can see. is an infinite degree. The I0
narrow span of human life allows the individual to go but
a short distance, but though each generation may do but
little, yet generations, succeeding to the gain of their pred-
ecessors, may gradually elevate the status of mankind,
as coral polyps, building one generation upon the work of J 5
the other, gradually elevate themselves from the bottom
of the sea.
Mental power is, therefore, the motor of progress, and
men tend to advance in proportion to the mental power
expended in progression the mental power which is devoted 2
to the extension of knowledge, the improvement of methods,
and the betterment of social conditions.
Now mental power is a fixed quantity that is to say,
there is a limit to the work a man can do with his mind, as
there is to the work he can do with his body; therefore, 2 5
the mental power which can be devoted to progress is only
what is left after what is required for non-progressive
purposes.
These non-progressive purposes in which mental power
is consumed may be classified as maintenance and con- 3
flict. By maintenance I mean, not only the support of
existence, but the keeping up of the social condition and
the holding of advances already gained. By conflict I
mean not merely warfare and preparation for warfare,
but all expenditure of mental power in seeking the grati-35
fication of desire at the expense of others, and in resistance
to such aggression,
208 HENRY GEORGE
\
To compare society to a boat. Her progress through
the water will not depend upon the exertion of her crew,
but upon the exertion devoted to propelling her. This
will be lessened by any expenditure of force required for
5 bailing, or any expenditure of force in fighting among them-
selves, or in pulling in different directions.
Now, as in a separated state the whole powers of man
are required to maintain existence, and mental power is
set free for higher uses only by the association of men in
10 communities, which permits the division of labor and
all the economies which come with the co-operation of
increased numbers, association is the first essential of
progress. Improvement becomes possible as men come
together in peaceful association, and the wider and closer
15 the association, the greater the possibilities of improve-
ment. And as the wasteful expenditure of mental power
in conflict becomes greater or less as the moral law which
accords to each an equality of rights is ignored or is recog-
nized, equality (or justice) is the second essential of progress.
20 Thus association in equality is the law of progress. Asso-
ciation frees mental power for expenditure in improvement,
and equality, or justice, or freedom for the terms here
signify the same thing, the recognition of the moral law
prevents the dissipation of this power in fruitless struggles.
25 Here is the law of progress, which will explain all diver-
sities, all advances, all halts, and retrogressions. Men tend
to progress just as they come closer together, and by co-
operation with each other increase the mental power that may
be devoted to improvement; but just as conflict is pro-
3ovoked, or association develops inequality of condition and
power, this tendency to progression is lessened, checked,
and finally reversed.
Given the same innate capacity, and it is evident that
social development will go on faster or slower, will stop
35 or turn back, according to the resistances it meets. In
a general way these obstacles to improvement may, in
relation to the society itself, be classed as external and
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 209
internal the first operating with greater force in the earlier
stages of civilization, the latter becoming more important
in the later stages.
Man is social in his nature. He does not require to be
caught and tamed in order to induce him to live with his 5
fellows. The utter helplessness with which he enters the
world, and the long period required for the maturity of his
powers, necessitate the family relation; which, as we may
observe, is wider, and in its extensions stronger, among
the ruder than among the more cultivated peoples. Thej
first societies are families, expanding into tribes, still holding
a mutual blood relationship, and even when they have be-
come great nations claiming a common descent.
Given beings of this kind, placed on a globe of such
diversified surface and climate as this, and it is evident 15
that, even with equal capacity, and an equal start, social
development must be very different. The first limit or
resistance to association will come from the conditions of
physical nature, and as these greatly vary with locality,
corresponding differences in social progress must show 20
themselves. The net rapidity of increase, and the closeness
with which men, as they increase, can keep together, will,
in the rude state of knowledge in which reliance for sub-
sistence must be principally upon the spontaneous offerings
of nature, very largely depend upon climate, soil, and 25
physical conformation. Where much animal food and warm
clothing are required; where the earth seems poor and
niggard; where the exuberant life of tropical forests mocks
barbarous man's puny efforts to control; where mountains,
deserts, or arms of the sea separate and isolate men; asso-3o
ciation, and the power of improvement which it evolves,
can at first go but a little way. But on the rich plains of
warm climates, where human existence can be maintained
with a smaller expenditure of force, and from a much smaller
area, men can keep closer together, and the mental power 35
which can at first be devoted to improvement is much
greater. Hence civilization naturally first arises in the
210 HENRY GEORGE
great valleys and table-lands where we find its earliest
monuments.
But these diversities in natural conditions, not merely
thus directly produce diversities in social development,
shut, by producing diversities in social development, bring
out in man himself an obstacle, or rather an active coun-
terforce, to improvement. As families and tribes are
separated from each other, the social feeling ceases to operate
between them, and differences arise in language, custom,
10 tradition, religion in short, in the whole social web which
each community, however small or large, constantly spins.
With these differences, prejudices grow, animosities spring
up, contact easily produces quarrels, aggression begets
aggression, and wrong kindles revenge. 1 And so between
15 these separate social aggregates arises the feeling of Ishmael
and the spirit of Cain, warfare becomes the chronic and
seemingly natural relation of societies to each other, and
the powers of men are expended in attack or defense, in
mutual slaughter and mutual destruction of wealth, or in
20 warlike preparations. How long this hostility persists,
the protective tariffs and the standing armies of the civilized
world to-day bear witness; how difficult it is to get over
the idea that it is not theft to steal from a foreigner, the
difficulty in procuring an international copyright act will
1 How easy it is for ignorance to pass into contempt and dislike;
how natural it is for us to consider any difference in manners, cus-
toms, religion, etc., as proof of the inferiority of those who differ from
us, any one who has emancipated himself in any degree from prejudice,
and who mixes with different classes, may see in civilized society. In
religion, for instance, the spirit of the hymn
" I'd rather be a Baptist, and wear a shining face,
Than for to be a Methodist and always fall from grace,"
is observable in all denominations. As the English Bishop said,
" Orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is any other doxy," while
the universal tendency is to classify all outside of the orthodoxies and
heterodoxies of the prevailing religion as heathens or atheists. And
the like tendency is observable as to all other differences. Author's
note.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 211
show. Can we wonder at the perpetual hostilities of tribes
and clans? Can we wonder that when each community
was isolated from the others when each, uninfluenced
by the others, was spinning its separate web of social environ-
ment, which no individual can escape, that war should have 5
been the rule and peace the exception? " They were even
as we are."
Now, warfare is the negation of association. The separa-
tion of men into diverse tribes, by increasing warfare, thus
checks improvement; while in the localities where a large 10
increase in numbers is possible without much separation,
civilization gains the advantage of exemption from tribal
war, even when the community as a whole is carrying on
warfare beyond its borders. Thus, where the resistance
of nature to the close association of men is slightest, the 15
counterforce of warfare is likely at first to be least felt;
and in the rich plains where civilization first begins, it may
rise to a great height while scattered tribes are yet bar-
barous. And thus, when small, separated communities
exist in a state of chronic warfare which forbids advance, 20
the first step to their civilization is the advent of some
conquering tribe or nation that unites these smaller com-
munities into a larger one, in which internal peace is pre-
served. Where this power of peaceable association is broken
up, either by external assaults or internal dissensions, the 25
advance ceases and retrogression begins.
But it is not conquest alone that has operated to pro-
mote association, and, by liberating mental power from
the necessities of warfare, to promote civilization. If
the diversities of climate, soil, and configuration of the 30
earth's surface operate at first to separate mankind, they
also operate to encourage exchange. And commerce,
which is in itself a form of association or co-operation,
operates to promote civilization, not only directly, but
by building up interests which are opposed to warfare, 35
and dispelling the ignorance which is the fertile mother
of prejudices and animosities.
212 HENRY GEORGE
\
And so of religion. Though the forms it has assumed
and the animosities it has aroused have often sundered
men and produced warfare, yet it has at other times been
the means of promoting association. A common worship
5 has often, as among the Greeks, mitigated war and furnished
the basis of union, while it is from the triumph of Chris-
tianity over the barbarians of Europe that modern civiliza-
tion springs. Had not the Christian Church existed when
the Roman Empire went to pieces, Europe, destitute of
10 any bond of association, might have fallen to a condition
not much above that of the North American Indians or
only received civilization with an Asiatic impress from the
conquering scimiters of the invading hordes which had
been welded into a mighty power by a religion which, spring-
15 ing up in the deserts of Arabia, had united tribes separated
from time immemorial, and, thence issuing, brought into the
association of a common faith a great part of the human race.
Looking over what we know of the history of the world,
we thus see civilization everywhere springing up where
20 men are brought into association, and everywhere disap-
pearing as this association is broken up. Thus the Roman
civilization, spread over Europe by the conquests which
insured internal peace, was overwhelmed by the incursions
of the northern nations that broke society again into dis-
25 connected fragments; and the progress that now goes on
in our modern civilization began as the feudal system again
began to associate men in larger communities, and the
spiritual supremacy of Rome to bring these communities
into a common relation, as her legions had done before. As
30 the feudal bonds grew into national autonomies, and Chris-
tianity worked the amelioration of manners, brought forth
the knowledge that during the dark days she had hidden,
bound the threads of peaceful union in her all-pervading
organization, and taught association in her religious orders,
35 a greater progress became possible, which, as men have been
brought into closer and closer association and co-operation,
has gone on with greater and greater force.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 213
But we shall never understand the course of civilization,
and the varied phenomena which its history presents,
without a consideration of what I may term the internal
resistances, or counter forces, which arise in the heart of
advancing society, and which can alone explain how a 5
civilization once fairly started should either come of itself
to a halt or be destroyed by barbarians.
The mental power, which is the motor of social progress,
is set free by association, which is, what, perhaps, it may
be more properly called, an integration. Society in thisio
process becomes more complex; its individuals more depen-
dent upon each other. Occupations and functions are
specialized. Instead of wandering, population becomes
fixed. Instead of each man attempting to supply all of
his wants, the various trades and industries are separated rs
one man acquires skill in one thing, and another in another
thing. So, too, of knowledge, the body of which constantly
tends to become vaster than one man can grasp, and is
separated into different parts, which different individuals
acquire and pursue. So, too, the performance of religious 20
ceremonies tends to pass into the hands of a body of men
specially devoted to that purpose, and the preservation
of order, the administration .of justice, the assignment of
public duties and the distribution of awards, the conduct
of war, etc., to be made the special functions of an organized 25
government. In short, to use the language in which Herbert
Spencer has defined evolution, the development of society
is, in relation to its component individuals, the passing from
an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent
heterogeneity. The lower the stage of social development, 30
the more society resembles one of those lowest of animal
organisms which are without organs or limbs, and from
which a part may be cut and yet live. The higher the stage
of social development, the more society resembles those
higher organisms in which functions and powers are spe-35
cialized, and each member is vitally dependent on the others.
Now, this process of integration, of the specialization
214 HENRY GEORGE
of functions and powers, as it goes on in society, is, by
virtue of what is probably one of the deepest laws of
human nature, accompanied by a constant liability to
inequality. I do not mean that inequality is the necessary
5 result of social growth, but that it is the constant tendency
of social growth if unaccompanied by changes in social
adjustments, which, in the new conditions that growth
produces, will secure equality. I mean, so to speak, that
the garment of laws, customs, and political institutions,
10 which each society weaves for itself,, is constantly tending
to become too tight as the society develops. I mean, so to
speak, that man, as he advances, threads a labyrinth, in
which, if he keeps straight ahead, he will infallibly lose his
way, and through which reason and justice can alone keep
15 him continuously in an ascending path.
For, while the integration which accompanies growth
tends in itself to set free mental power to work improve-
ment, there is, both with increase of numbers and with
increase in complexity of the social organization, a counter
20 tendency set up to the production of a state of inequality,
which wastes mental power, and, as it increases, brings
improvement to a halt.
To trace to its highest expression the law which thus
operates to evolve with progress the force which stops
25 progress, would be, it seems to me, to go far to the solu-
tion of a problem deeper than that of the genesis of the
material universe the problem of the genesis of evil. Let
me content myself with pointing out the manner in which,
as society develops, there arise tendencies which check
30 development.
There are two qualities of human nature which it will
be well, however, to first call to mind. The one is the
power of habit the tendency to continue to do things in
the same way; the other is the possibility of mental and
35 moral deterioration. The effect of the first in social develop-
ment is to continue habits, customs, laws and methods,
long after they have lost their original usefulness, and the
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 215
effect of the other is to permit the growth of institutions
and modes of thought from which the normal perceptions
of men instinctively revolt.
Now the growth and development of society not merely
tend to make each more and more dependent upon all, 5
and to lessen the influence of individuals, even over their
own conditions, as compared with the influence of society;
but the effect of association or integration is to give rise
to a collective power which is distinguishable from the sum
of individual powers. Analogies, or, perhaps, rather illustra- I0
tions of the same law, may be found in all directions. As
animal organisms increase in complexity, there arise, above
the life and power of the parts, a life and power of the
integrated whole; above the capability of involuntary
movements, the capability of voluntary movements. The x S
actions and impulses of bodies of men are, as has often been
observed, different from those which, under the same circum-
stances, would be called forth in individuals. The fighting
qualities of a regiment may be very different from those of
the individual soldiers. But there is no need of illustrations. 20
In our inquiries into the nature and rise of rent, we traced
the very thing to which I allude. Where population is
sparse, land has no value; just as men congregate together,
the value of land appears and rises a clearly distinguishable
thing from the values produced by individual effort; a 25
value which springs from association, which increases as
association grows greater, and disappears as association is
broken up. And the same thing is true of power in other
forms than those generally expressed in terms of wealth.
Now, as society grows, the disposition to continue previous 30
social adjustments tends to lodge this collective power,
as it arises, in the hands of a portion of the community;
and this unequal distribution of the wealth and power
gained as society advances tends to produce greater inequal-
ity, since aggression grows by what it feeds on, and the idea 35
of justice is blurred by the habitual toleration of injustice.
In this way the patriarchal organization of society can
216 HENRY GEORGE
easily grow into hereditary monarchy, in which the king
is as a god on earth, and the masses of the people mere
slaves of his caprice. It is natural that the father should
be the directing head of the family, and that at his death
5 the eldest son, as the oldest and most experienced member
of the little community, should succeed to the headship.
But to continue this arrangement as the family expands, is
to lodge power in a particular line, and the power thus
lodged necessarily continues to increase, as the common
10 stock becomes larger and larger, and the power of the com-
munity grows. The head of the family passes into the hered-
itary king, who comes to look upon himself and to be looked
upon by others as a being of superior rights. With the
growth of the collective power as compared with the power
15 of the individual, his power to reward and to punish increases,
and so increase the inducements to flatter and to fear him;
until finally, if the process be not disturbed, a nation grovels
at the foot of a throne, and a hundred thousand men toil
for fifty years to prepare a tomb for one of their own mortal
20 kind.
So the war-chief of a little band of savages is but one of
their number, whom they follow as their bravest and most
wary. But when large bodies come to act together, personal
selection becomes more difficult, a blinder obedience becomes
25 necessary and can be enforced, and from the very necessities
of warfare when conducted on a large scale absolute power
arises.
And so of the specialization of function. There is a
manifest gain in productive power when social growth has
30 gone so far that instead of every producer being summoned
from his work for fighting purposes, a regular military force
can be specialized; but this inevitably tends to the con-
centration of power in the hands of the military class or
their chiefs. The preservation of internal order, the
35 administration of justice, the construction and care of public
works, and, notably, the observances of religion, all tend
in similar manner to pass into the hands of special classes,
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 217
whose disposition it is to magnify their function and extend
their power.
But the great cause of inequality is in the natural monopoly
which is given by the possession of land. The first per-
ceptions of men seem always to be that land is common 5
property; but the rude devices by which this is at first
recognized such as annual partitions or cultivation in
common are consistent with only a low stage of develop-
ment. The idea of property, which naturally arises with
reference to things of human production, is easily transferred 10
to land, and an institution which when population is sparse
merely secures to the improver and user the due reward
of his labor, finally, as population becomes dense and rent
arises, operates to strip the producer of his wages. Not
merely this, but the appropriation of rent for public purposes, 15
which is the only way in which, with anything like a high
development, land can be readily retained as common prop-
erty, becomes, when political and religious power passes into
the hands of a class, the ownership of the land by that class,
and the rest of the community become merely tenants. 20
And wars and conquests, which tend to the concentration
of political power and to the institution of slavery, naturally
result, where social growth has given land a value, in the
appropriation of the soil. A dominant class, who con-
centrate power in their hands, will likewise soon concentrate 25
ownership of the land. To them will fall large partitions
of conquered land, which the former inhabitants will till
as tenants or serfs, and the public domain, or common
lands, which in the natural course of social growth are left
for a while in every country, and in which state the primitive 30
system of village culture leaves pasture and woodland, are
readily acquired, as we see by modern instances. 'And
inequality once established, the ownership of land tends to
concentrate as development goes on.
I am merely attempting to set forth the general fact 35
that as a social development goes on, inequality tends to
establish itself, and not to point out the particular sequence,
218 HENRY GEORGE
which must necessarily vary with different conditions.
But this main fact makes intelligible all the phenomena
of petrifaction and retrogression. The unequal distribution
of the power and wealth gained by the integration of men in
5 society tends to check, and finally to counterbalance, the
force by which improvements are made and society advances,
On the one side, the masses of the community are compelled
to expend their mental powers in merely maintaining
existence. On the other side, mental power is expended in
10 keeping up and intensifying the system of inequality, in
ostentation, luxury, and warfare. A community divided
into a class that rules and a class that is ruled into the
very rich and the very poor may " build like giants and
finish like jewelers;" but it will be monuments of ruthless
15 pride and barren vanity, or of a religion turned from its office
of elevating man into an instrument for keeping him down.
Invention may for a while to some degree go on ; but it will
be the invention of refinements in luxury, not the inventions
that relieve toil and increase power. In the arcana of temples
20 or in the chambers of court physicians knowledge may still
be sought; but it will be hidden as a secret thing, or if it
dares come out to elevate common thought or brighten
common life, it will be trodden down as a dangerous innova-
tor. For as it tends to lessen the mental power devoted
25 to improvement, so does inequality tend to render men
adverse to improvement. How strong is the disposition to
adhere to old methods among the classes who are kept in
ignorance by being compelled to toil for a mere existence,
is too well known to require illustration, and on the other
30 hand the conservatism of the classes to whom the existing
social adjustment gives special advantages is equally appar-
ent. This tendency to resist innovation, even though it be
improvement, is observable in every special organization in
religion, in law, in medicine, in science, in trade guilds; and it
35 becomes intense just as the organization is close. A close
corporation has always an instinctive dislike of innovation
and innovators, which is but the expression of an instinctive
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 210
fear that change may tend to throw down the barriers which
hedge it in from the common herd, and so rob it of importance
and power; and it is always disposed to guard carefully its
special knowledge or skill.
It is in this way that petrifaction succeeds progress, s
The advance of inequality necessarily brings improvement
to a halt, and as it still persists or provokes unavailing
reactions, draws even upon the mental power necessary for
maintenance, and retrogression begins.
These principles make intelligible the history of civiliza- 10
tion.
In the localities w r here climate, soil, and physical con-
formation tended least to separate men as they increased,
and where, accordingly, the first civilizations grew up,
the internal resistances to progress would naturally develop 15
in a more regular and thorough manner than where smaller
communities, which in their separation had developed
diversities, were afterward brought together into a closer
association. It is this, it seems to me, which accounts for
the general characteristics of the earlier civilizations as 20
compared with the later civilizations of Europe. Such
homogeneous communities, developing from the first without
the jar of conflict between different customs, laws, religions,
etc., would show a much greater uniformity. The con-
centrating and conservative forces would all, so to speak, 25
pull together. Rival chieftains would not counterbalance
each other, nor diversities of belief hold the growth of priestly
influence in check. Political and religious power, wealth
and knowledge, would thus tend to concentrate in the
same centres. The same causes which tended to produce 30
the hereditary king and hereditary priest would tend to
produce the hereditary artisan and laborer, and to separate
society into castes. The power which association sets 'free
for progress would thus be wasted, and barriers to further
progress be gradually raised. The surplus energies of the 35
masses would be devoted to the construction of temples,
palaces, and pyramids; to ministering to the pride and
220 HENRY GEORGE
pampering the luxury of their rulers; and should any dis-
disposition to improvement arise among the classes of leisure
it would at once be checked by the dread of innovation.
Society developing in this way must at length stop in a
5 conservatism which permits no further progress.
How long such a state of complete petrifaction, when
once reached, will continue, seems to depend upon external
causes, for the iron bonds of the social environment which
grows up repress disintegrating forces as well as improve-
loment. Such a community can be most easily conquered,
for the masses of the people are trained to a passive acqui-
escence in a life of hopeless labor. If the conquerors merely
take the place of the ruling class, as the Hyksos did in Egypt
and the Tartars in China, everything will go* on as before.
15 If they ravage and destroy, the glory of palace and temple
remains but in ruins, population becomes sparse, and knowl-
edge and art are lost.
European civilization differs in character from civiliza-
tions of the Egyptian type because it springs not from the
20 association of a homogeneous people developing from the
beginning, or at least for a long time, under the same con-
ditions, but from the association of peoples who in separa-
tion had acquired distinctive social characteristics, and whose
smaller organizations longer prevented the concentration
25 of power and wealth in one centre. The physical conforma-
tion of the Grecian peninsula is such as to separate the peo-
ple at first into a number of small communities. As those
petty republics and nominal kingdoms ceased to waste their
energies in warfare, and the peaceable co-operation of
30 commerce extended, the light of civilization blazed up. But
the principle of association was never strong enough to save
Greece from inter-tribal war, and when this was put an end
to by conquest, the tendency to inequality, which had been
combated with various devices by Grecian sages and states-
35 men, worked its result, and Grecian valor, art, and literature
became things of the past. And so in the rise and exten-
sion, the decline and fall, of Roman civilization, may be seen
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 221
/
the working of these two principles of association and
equality, from the combination of which springs progress.
Springing from the association of the independent hus-
bandmen and free citizens of Italy, and gaining fresh strength
from conquests which brought hostile nations into common 5
relations, the Roman power hushed the world in peace.
But the tendency to inequality, checking real progress from
the first, increased as the Roman civilization extended.
The Roman civilization did not petrify as did the homoge-
neous civilizations where the strong bonds of custom andio
superstition that held the people in subjection probably
also protected them, or at any rate kept the peace between
rulers and ruled; it rotted, declined and fell. Long before
Goth or Vandal had broken through the cordon of the
legions, even while her frontiers were advancing, Rome was 15
dead at the heart. Great estates had ruined Italy. In-
equality had dried up the strength and destroyed the vigor
of the Roman world. Government became despotism,
which even assassination could not temper; patriotism became
servility; vices the most foul flouted themselves in public; 20
literature sank to puerilities; learning was forgotten; fer-
tile districts became waste without the ravages of war
everywhere inequality produced decay, political, mental,
moral, and material. The barbarism which overwhelmed
Rome came not from without, but from within. It was the 25
necessary product of the system which had substituted
slaves and colonii for the independent husbandmen of
Italy, and carved the provinces into estates of senatorial
families.
Modern civilization owes its superiority to the growth 30
of equality with the growth of association. Two great
causes contributed to this the splitting up of concentrated
power into innumerable little centers by the influx of the
Northern nations, and the influence of Christianity. With-
out the first there would have been the petrifaction and slow 35
decay of the Eastern Empire, where church and state were
closely married and loss of external power brought no relief
222 HENRY GEORGE
of internal tyranny. And but for the other there would
have been barbarism without principle of association or
amelioration. The petty chiefs and allodial lords who
everywhere grasped local sovereignty held each other in
5 check. Italian cities recovered their ancient liberty, free
towns were founded, village communities took root, and
serfs acquired rights in the soil they tilled. The leaven of
Teutonic ideas of equality worked through the disorganized
and disjointed fabric of society. And although society was
10 split up into an innumerable number of separated fragments,
yet the idea of closer association was always present it
existed in the recollections of a universal empire; it existed
in the claims of a universal church.
Though Christianity became distorted and alloyed in
15 percolating through a rotting civilization; though pagan
gods were taken into her pantheon, and pagan forms into
her ritual, and pagan ideas into her creed; yet her essential
idea of the equality of men was never wholly destroyed.
And two things happened of the utmost moment to incipient
20 civilization the establishment of the papacy and the
celibacy of the clergy. The first prevented the spiritual
power from concentrating in the same lines as the temporal
power; and the latter prevented the establishment of a
priestly caste, during a time when all power tended to
25 hereditary form.
In her efforts for the abolition of slavery; in her Truce
of God; in her monastic orders; in her councils which
united nations, and her edicts which ran without regard
to political boundaries; in the low-born hands in which
30 she placed a sign before which the proudest knelt; in her
bishops who by consecration became the peers of the greatest
nobles; in her " Servant of Servants," for so his official title
ran, who, by virtue of the ring of a simple fisherman, claimed
the right to arbitrate between nations, and whose stirrup
35 was held by kings; the Church, in spite of everything, was
yet a promoter of association, a witness for the natural
equality of men; and by the Church herself was nurtured
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 223
a spirit that, when her early work of association and emancipa-
tion was well-nigh done when the ties she had knit had
become strong, and the learning she had preserved had been
given to the world broke the chains with which she would
have fettered the human mind, and in a great part of Europe 5
rent her organization.
The rise and growth of European civilization is too vast
and complex a subject to be thrown into proper perspective
and relation in a few paragraphs; but in all its details, as
in its main features, it illustrates the truth that progress 10
goes on just as society tends toward closer association and
greater equality. Civilization is co-operation. Union and
liberty are its factors. The great extension of association
not alone in the growth of larger and denser communities,
but in the increase of commerce and the manifold exchanges 15
which knit each community together and link them with
other though widely separated communities; the growth
of international and municipal law; the advances in security
of property and of person, in individual liberty, and towards
democratic government advances, in short, towards the 20
recognition of the equal rights to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness it is these that make our modern
civilization so much greater, so much higher, than any that
has gone before. It is these that have set free the mental
power which has rolled back the veil of ignorance which 25
hid all but a small portion of the globe from men's knowl-
edge; which has measured the orbits of the circling spheres
and bids us see moving, pulsing life in a drop of water;
which has opened to us the antechamber of nature's mys-
teries and read the secrets of a long-buried past; which has 30
harnessed in our service physical forces beside which man's
efforts are puny; and increased productive power by a thou-
sand great inventions.
In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as
pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak 35
even of war and slavery as means of human progress. But
war, which is the opposite of association, can aid progress
224 HENRY GEORGE
only when it prevents further war or breaks down anti-
social barriers which are themselves passive war.
As for slavery, I cannot see how it could ever have aided
in establishing freedom, and freedom, the synonym of equality
5 is, from the very rudest state in which man can be imagined,
the stimulus and condition of progress. Auguste Comte's
idea that the institution of slavery destroyed cannibalism
is as fanciful as Elia 's humorous notion of the way mankind
acquired a taste for roast pig. It assumes that a propensity
10 that has never been found developed in man save as the
result of the most unnatural conditions the direst want or
the most brutalizing superstitions 1 is an original impulse,
and that he, even in his lowest state the highest of all animals,
has natural appetites which the nobler brutes do not show.
15 And so of the idea that slavery began civilization by giving
slave owners leisure for improvement.
Slavery never did and never could aid improvement.
Whether the community consist of a single master and a
single slave, or of thousands of masters and millions of
20 slaves, slavery necessarily involves a waste of human power;
for not only is slave labor less productive than free labor,
but the power of masters is likewise wasted in holding and
watching their slaves, and is called away from directions
in which real improvement lies. From first to last, slavery,
25 like every other denial of the natural equality of men, has
hampered and prevented progress. Just in proportion as
slavery plays an important part in the social organization does
improvement cease. That in the classical world slavery
was so universal, is undoubtedly the reason why the mental
30 activity which so polished literature and refined art never
hit on any of the great discoveries and inventions which
distinguish modern civilization. No slave-holding people
1 The Sandwich Islanders did honor to their good chiefs by eating
their bodies. Their bad and tyrannical chiefs they would not touch.
The New Zealanders had a notion that by eating their enemies they
acquired their strength and valor. And this seems to be the general
origin of eating prisoners of war. Author's note.
THE LAW OF HUMAN PROGRESS 225
ever were an inventive people. In a slave-holding community
the upper classes may become luxurious and polished; but
never inventive. Whatever degrades the laborer and robs
him of the fruits of his toil stifles the spirit of invention and
forbids the utilization of inventions and discoveries even 5
when made. To freedom alone is given the spell of power
which summons the genii in whose keeping are the treasures
of earth and the viewless forces of the air.
The law of human progress, what is it but the moral
law? Just as social adjustments promote justice, just asio
they acknowledge the equality of right between man and
man, just as they insure to each the perfect liberty which
is bounded only by the equal liberty of every other, must
civilization advance. Just as they fail in this, must advanc-
ing civilization come to a halt and recede. Political 15
economy and social science cannot teach any lessons that
are not embraced in the simple truths that were taught to
poor fishermen and Jewish peasants by One who eighteen
hundred years ago was crucified the simple truths which,
beneath the warpings of selfishness and the distortions of 20
superstition, seem to underlie every religion that has ever
striven to formulate the spiritual yearnings of man.
THE MORALS OF TRADE l
HERBERT SPENCER
ON all sides we have found the result of long personal
experience, to be the conviction that trade is essentially
corrupt. In tones of disgust or discouragement, reprehen-
sion or derision, according to their several natures, men in
5 business have one after another expressed or implied this
belief. Omitting the highest mercantile classes, a few of
the less common trades, and those exceptional cases where
an entire command of the market has been obtained, the
uniform testimony of competent judges is, that success
10 is incompatible with strict integrity. To live in the com-
mercial world it appears necessary to adopt its ethical code:
neither exceeding nor falling short of it neither being less
honest nor more honest. Those who sink below its standard
are expelled; while those who rise above it are either pulled
15 down to it or ruined. As, in self-defence, the civilised man
becomes savage among savages; so, it seems that in self-
defence, the scrupulous trader is obliged to become as little
scrupulous as his competitors. It has been said that the
law of the animal creation is " Eat and be eaten; " and
20 of our trading community it may be similarly said that its
law is Cheat and be cheated. A system of keen competi-
tion, carried on, as it is, without adequate moral restraint,
is very much a system of commercial cannibalism. Its
alternatives are Use the same weapons as your antago-
25 nists, or be conquered and devoured.
Of questions suggested by these facts, one of the most
obvious is Are not the prejudices that have ever been enter-
tained against trade and traders, thus fully justified? do
1 From " Essays: Moral, Political and Aesthetic," 1864.
226
THE MORALS OF TRADE 227
not these meannesses and dishonesties, and the moral deg-
radation they imply, warrant the disrespect shown to men
in business? A prompt affirmative answer will probably
be looked for; but we very much doubt whether it should
be given. We are rather of opinion that these delinquencies 5
are products of the average English character placed under
special conditions. There is no good reason for assuming
that the trading classes are intrinsically worse than other
classes. Men taken at random from higher and lower
ranks, would, most likely, if similarly circumstanced, doio
much the same. Indeed the mercantile world might readily
recriminate. Is it a solicitor who comments on their mis-
doings? They may quickly silence him by referring to
the countless dark stains on the reputation of his fraternity.
Is it a barrister? His frequent practice of putting in pleas 15
which he knows are not valid; and his established habit
of taking fees for work that he does not perform; make his
criticism somewhat suicidal. Does the condemnation come
through the press? The condemned may remind those
who write, of the fact that it is not quite honest to utter 20
a positive verdict on a book merely glanced through, or to
pen glowing eulogies on the mediocre work of a friend
while slighting the good one of an enemy; and may further
ask whether those who, at the dictation of an employer,
write what they disbelieve, are not guilty of the serious 25
offence of adulterating public opinion.
Moreover, traders might contend that many of their
delinquencies are thrust on them by the injustice of their
customers. They, and especially drapers, might point to
the fact that the habitual demand for an abatement of price, 30
is made in utter disregard of their reasonable profits; and
that to protect themselves against attempts to gain by v their
loss, they are obliged to name prices greater than those they
intend to take. They might also urge that the strait to
which they are often brought by the non-payment of accounts 35
due from their wealthier customers, is itself a cause of their
malpractices: obliging them, as it does, to use all means,
228 HERBERT SPENCER
illegitimate as well as legitimate, for getting the wherewith
to meet their engagements. In proof of the wrongs inflicted
on them by the non-trading classes, they might instance
the well-known cases of large shopkeepers in the West-end,
5 who have been either ruined by the unpunctuality of their
customers, or have been obliged periodically to stop pay-
ment, as the only way of getting their bills settled. And
then, after proving that those without excuse show this
disregard of other men's claims, traders might ask whether
10 they, who have the excuse of having to contend with a merci-
less competition, are alone to be blamed if they display
a like disregard in other forms.
Nay, even to the guardians of social rectitude members
of the legislature they might use the tu quoque argument:
15 asking whether bribery of a customer's servant, is any worse
than bribery of an elector? or whether the gaining of suf-
frages by claptrap hustings-speeches, containing insincere
professions adapted to the taste of the constituency, is not
as bad as getting an order for goods by delusive representa-
2otions respecting their quality? No; it seems probable
that close inquiry would show few if any classes to be free
from immoralities that are as great, relatively to the tempta-
tions, as those which we have been exposing. Of course they
will not be so petty or so gross where the circumstances do
25 not prompt pettiness or grossness; nor so constant and
organised where the class-conditions have not tended to
make them habitual. But, taken with these qualifica-
tions, we think that much might be said for the proposi-
tion that the trading classes, neither better nor worse intrin-
3osically than other classes, are betrayed into their flagitious
habits by external causes.
Another question, here naturally arising, is " Are not
these evils growing worse?" Many of the facts we have
cited seem to imply that they are. And yet there are many
35 other facts which point as distinctly the other way. In
weighing the evidence, we must bear in mind, that the much
greater public attention at present paid to such matters,
THE MORALS OF TRADE 229
is itself a source of error is apt to generate the belief that
evils now becoming recognised, are evils that have recently
arisen; when in truth they have merely been hitherto dis-
regarded, or less regarded. It has been clearly thus with
crime, with distress, with popular ignorance; and it is very 5
probably thus with trading-dishonesties. As it is true of
individual beings, that their height in the scale of creation
may be measured by the degree of their self-consciousness;
so, in a sense, it is true of societies. Advanced and highly-
organised societies are distinguished from lower ones by the 10
evolution of something that stands for a social self-con-
sciousness a consciousness in each citizen, of the state of
the aggregate of citizens. Among ourselves there has,
happily, been of late years a remarkable growth of this
social self-consciousness; and we believe that to this is 15
chiefly ascribable the impression that commercial mal-
practices are increasing.
Such facts as have come down to us respecting the trade
of past times, confirm this view. In his " Complete English
Tradesman," Defoe mentions, among other manoeuvres 20
of retailers, the false lights which they introduced into
their shops, for the purpose of giving delusive appearances
to their goods. He comments on the " shop rhetorick,"
the " flux of falsehoods," which tradesmen habitually
uttered to their customers; and quotes their defence as 25
being that they could not live without lying. He says,
too, that there was scarce a shopkeeper who had not a
bag of spurious or debased coin, from which he gave change
whenever he could; and that men, even the most honest,
triumphed in their skill in getting rid of bad money. These 30
facts show that the mercantile morals of that day were,
at any rate, not better than ours; and if we call to mind
the numerous Acts of Parliament passed in old times to
prevent frauds of all kinds, we perceive the like implication.
As much may, indeed, be safely inferred from the genera^
state of society.
When, reign after reign, governments debased the coinage,
230 HERBERT SPENCER
the moral tone of the middle classes could scarcely have been
higher than now. Among generations whose sympathy
with the claims of fellow-creatures was so weak, that the
slave-trade was not only thought justifiable, but the ini-
5 tiator of it was rewarded by permission to record the feat
in his coat of arms, it is hardly possible that men respected
the claims of their fellow-citizens more than at present.
Times characterized by an administration of justice so
inefficient that there were in London nests of criminals
10 who defied the law, and on all high roads robbers who eluded
it, cannot have been distinguished by just mercantile deal-
ings. While, conversely, an age which, like ours, has seen
so many equitable social changes thrust on the legislature by
public opinion, is very unlikely to be an age in which the
15 transactions between individuals have been growing more
inequitable. Yet, on the other hand, it is undeniable that
many of the dishonesties we have described are of modern
origin. Not a few of them have become established during
the last thirty years; and others are even now arising.
20 How are the seeming contradictions to be reconciled?
We believe the reconciliation is not difficult. It lies
in the fact that while the great and direct frauds have been
diminishing, the small and indirect frauds have been increas-
ing: alike in variety and in number. And this admission
25 we take to be quite consistent with the opinion that the
standard of commercial morals is higher than it was. For,
if we omit, as excluded from the question, the penal restraints
religious and legal and ask what is the ultimate moral
restraint to the aggression of man on man, we find it
30 to be sympathy with the pain inflicted. Now the keen-
ness of the sympathy, depending on the vividness with
which this pain is realised, varies with the conditions of the
case. It may be active enough to check misdeeds which
will cause great suffering; and yet not be active enough to
35 check misdeeds which will cause but slight annoyance.
While sufficiently acute to prevent a man from doing that
which will entail immediate injury on a given person, it
THE MORALS OF TRADE 231
may not be sufficiently acute to prevent him from doing
that which will entail remote injuries on unknown persons.
And we find the facts to agree with this deduction, that the
moral restraint varies according to the clearness with which
the evil consequences are conceived. Many a one who s
would shrink from picking a pocket does not scruple to
adulterate his goods; and he who never dreams of passing
base coin, will yet be a party to joint-stock-bank decep-
tions. Hence, as we say, the multiplication of the more
subtle and complex forms of fraud, is consistent with a gen- 10
eral progress in morality; provided it is accompanied with
a decrease in the grosser forms of fraud.
But the question which most concerns us is, not whether
the morals of trade are better or worse than they have been,
but rather why are they so bad? Why in this civilised 15
state of ours, is there so much that betrays the cunning
selfishness of the savage? Why, after the careful inculca-
tions of rectitude during education, comes there in after-
life all this knavery? Why, in spite of all the exhorta-
tions to which the commercial classes listen every Sunday, 20
do they next morning recommence their evil deeds? What
is this so potent agency which almost neutralises the dis-
cipline of education, of law, of religion?
Various subsidiary causes that might be assigned, must
be passed over, that we may have space to deal with the 25
chief cause. In an exhaustive statement, something would
have to be said on the credulity of consumers, which leads
them to believe in representations of impossible advantages;
and something, too, on their greediness, which, ever prompt-
ing them to look for more than they ought to get, encourages 30
the sellers to offer delusive bargains. The increased difficulty
of living consequent on growing pressure of population,
might perhaps come in as a part cause; and that greater
cost of bringing up a family, which results from the higher
standard of education, might be added. But all these 35
are relatively insignificant. The great inciter of these
trading malpractices is, intense desire for wealth. And
232 HERBERT SPENCER
if we ask Why this intense desire? the reply is It results
from the indiscriminate respect paid to wealth.
To be distinguished from the common herd to be some-
body to make a name, a position this is the universal
5 ambition; and to accumulate riches, is alike the surest
and the easiest way of fulfilling this ambition. Very early
in life all learn this. At school, the court paid to one whose
parents have called in their carriage to see him, is con-
spicuous; while the poor boy, whose insufficient stock of
10 clothes implies the small means of his family, soon has burnt
into his memory the fact that poverty is contemptible.
On entering the world, the lessons that may have been taught
about the nobility of self-sacrifice, the reverence due to
genius, the admirableness of high integrity, are quickly
15 neutralised by experience: men's actions proving that these
are not their standards of respect. It is soon perceived
that while abundant outward marks of deference from
fellow-citizens, may almost certainly be gained by direct-
ing every energy to the accumulation of property, they are
20 but rarely to be gained in any other way; and that even
in the few cases where they are otherwise gained, they
are not given with entire unreserve; but are commonly
joined with a more or less manifest display of patronage.
When, seeing this, the young man further sees that while
25 the acquisition of property is quite possible with his mediocre
endowments, the acquirement of distinction by brilliant
discoveries, or heroic acts, or high achievements in art,
implies faculties and feelings which he does not possess;
it is not difficult to understand why he devotes himself
30 heart and soul to business.
We do not mean to say that men act on the consciously
reasoned-out conclusions thus indicated; but we mean that
these conclusions are the unconsciously-formed products
of their daily experience. From early childhood, the say-
35 ings and doings of all around them have generated the idea
that wealth and respectability are two sides of the same
thing. This idea, growing with their growth, and strength-
THE MORALS OF TRADE 233
ening with their strength, becomes at last almost what we
may call an organic conviction. And this organic convic-
tion it is, which prompts the expenditure of all their energies
in money-making. We contend that the chief stimulus
is not the desire for the wealth itself; but for the applause 5
and position which the wealth brings. And in this belief,
we find ourselves at one with various intelligent traders
with whom we have talked on the matter.
It is incredible that men should make the sacrifices,
mental and bodily, which they do, merely to get the material 10
benefits which money purchases. Who would undertake
an extra burden of business for the purpose of getting a
cellar of choice wines for his own drinking? He who does
it, does it that he may have choice wines to give his guests
and gain their praises. What merchant would spend an 15
additional hour at his office daily, merely that he might
move into a larger house in a better quarter? In so far as
health and comfort are concerned, he knows he will be a
loser by the exchange; and would never be induced to make
it, were it not for the increased social consideration which 20
the new house will bring him. Where is the man who would
lie awake at nights devising means of increasing his income
in the hope of being able to provide his wife with a carriage,
were the use of the carriage the sole consideration? It is
because of the eclat which the carnage will give, that he 25
enters on these additional anxieties. So manifest, so trite,
indeed, are these truths, that we should be ashamed of
insisting on them, did not our argument require it.
For if the desire for that homage which wealth brings, is
the chief stimulus to these strivings after wealth, then is 30
the giving of this homage (when given, as it is, with but
little discrimination) the chief cause of the dishonesties
into, which these strivings betray mercantile men. When
the shopkeeper, on the strength of a prosperous yea,r and
favourable prospects, has yielded to his wife's persuasions, 35
and replaced the old furniture with new, at an outlay greater
than his income covers when, instead of the hoped-for
234 HERBERT SPENCER
increase, the next year brings a decrease in his returns
when he finds that his expenses are out-running his revenue;
then does he fall under the strongest temptation to adopt
some newly-introduced adulteration or other malpractice.
5 When, having by display gained a certain recognition, the
wholesale trader begins to give dinners appropriate only
to those of ten times his income, with expensive other enter-
tainments to match when, having for a time carried on this
style at a cost greater than he can afford, he finds that he
10 cannot discontinue it without giving up his position: then
is he most strongly prompted to enter into larger transac-
tions; to trade beyond his means; to seek undue credit; to
get into that ever-complicating series of misdeeds, which
ends in disgraceful bankruptcy. And if these are the facts
1 5 the undeniable facts then is it an unavoidable conclusion
that the blind admiration which society gives to mere wealth,
and the display of wealth, is the chief source of these mul-
titudinous immoralities.
Yes, the evil is deeper than appears draws its nutriment
20 from far below the surface. This gigantic system of dis-
honesty, branching out into every conceivable form of fraud,
has roots that run underneath our whole social fabric, and,
sending fibres into every house, suck up strength from our
daily sayings and doings. In every dining-room a rootlet
25 finds food, when the conversation turns on So-and-so's
successful speculations, his purchase of an estate, his probable
worth on this man's recent large legacy, and the other's
advantageous match; for being thus talked about is one
fo;m of that tacit respect which men struggle for. Every
30 drawing-room furnishes nourishment, in the admiration
awarded to costliness to silks that are " rich," that is,
expensive; to dresses that contain an enormous quantity
of material, that is, are expensive; to laces that are hand-
made, that is, expensive; to diamonds that are rare, that is,
35 expensive; to china that is old, that is, expensive. And
from scores of small remarks and minutiae of behaviour,
which, in all circles, hourly imply how completely the idea
THE MORALS OF TRADE 235
of respectability involves that of costly externals, there is
drawn fresh pabulum.
We are all implicated. We all, whether with self-appro-
bation or not, give expression to the established feeling.
Even he who disapproves this feeling, finds himself unable S
to treat virtue in threadbare apparel with a cordiality as
great as that which he would show to the same virtue
endowed with prosperity. Scarcely a man is to be found
who would not behave with more civility to a knave in
broadcloth than to a knave in fustian. Though for theio
deference which they have shown to the vulgar rich, or the
dishonestly successful, men afterwards compound with their
consciences by privately venting their contempt; yet when
they again come face to face with these imposing externals
covering worthlessness, they do as before. And so long as 15
imposing worthlessness gets the visible marks of respect,
while the disrespect felt for it is hidden, it naturally flourishes.
Hence, then, is it that men persevere in these evil practices
which all condemn. They can so purchase a homage,
which if not genuine, is yet, so far as appearances go, as 20
good as the best. To one whose wealth has been gained by a
life of frauds, what matters it that his name is in all circles
a synonym of roguery? Has he not been conspicuously
honoured by being twice elected mayor of his town? (we
state a fact) and does not this, joined to the personal con- 25
sideration shown him, outweigh in his estimation all that
is said against him: of which he hears scarcely anything?
When, not many years after the exposure of his inequitable
dealing, a trader attains to the highest civic distinction
which the kingdom has to offer; and that, too, through the 30
instrumentality of those who best know his delinquency;
is not the fact an encouragement to him, and to all others,
to sacrifice rectitude to aggrandisement? If, after listening
to a sermon that has by implication denounced the dis-
honesties he has been guilty of, the rich ill-doer finds, on 35
leaving church, that his neighbours cap to him; does not
this tacit approval go far to neutralise the effect of all he
236 HERBERT SPENCER
has heard? The truth is, that with the great majority of
men, the visible expression of social opinion is far the most
efficient of incentives and restraints. Let any one who
wishes to estimate the strength of this control, propose to
5 himself to walk through the streets in the dress of a dustman,
or hawk vegetables from door to door. Let him feel, as he
probably will, that he had rather do something morally
wrong than commit such a breach of usage, and suffer the
resulting derision. And he will then better estimate how
10 powerful a curb to men is the open disapproval of their
fellows; and how, conversely, the outward applause of
their fellows is a stimulus surpassing all others in intensity.
Fully realising which facts, he will see that the immoralities
of trade are in great part traceable to an immoral public
15 opinion.
Let none infer, from what has been said, that the payment
of respect to wealth rightly acquired and rightly used, is
deprecated. In its original meaning, and in due degree, the
feeling which prompts such respect is good. Primarily,
20 wealth is the sign of mental power; and this is always respect-
able. To have honestly-acquired property, implies intel-
ligence, energy, self-control; and these are worthy of the
homage that is indirectly paid to them by admiring their
results. Moreover, the good administration and increase
25 of inherited property, also requires its virtues; and therefore
demands its share of approbation. And besides being
applauded for their display of faculty, men who gain and
increase wealth are to be applauded as public benefactors.
For he who as manufacturer or merchant, has, without
30 injustice to others, realised a fortune, is thereby proved
to have discharged his functions better than those who
have been less successful. By greater skill, better judgment,
or more economy than his competitors, he has afforded the
public greater advantages. His extra profits are but a
35 share of the extra produce obtained by the same expenditure:
the other share going to the consumers. And similarly, the
landowner who, by judicious outlay, has increased the value
THE MORALS OF TRADE 237
(that is, the productiveness) of his estate, has thereby
added to the stock of national capital. By all means, then,
let the right acquisition and proper use of wealth, have their
due share of admiration.
But that which we condemn as the chief cause of com- 5
mercial dishonesty, is the indiscriminate admiration of wealth
an admiration that has little or no reference to the char-
acter of the possessor. When, as very generally happens,
the external signs are reverenced, where they signify no
internal worthiness nay, even where they cover internal 10
unworthiness; then does the feeling become vicious. It
is this idolatry which worships the symbol apart from the
thing symbolised, that is the root of all these evils we have
been exposing. So long as men pay homage to those social
benefactors who have grown rich honestly, they give a 15
wholesome stimulus to industry; but when they accord a
share of their homage to those social malefactors who have
grown rich dishonestly, then do they foster corruption
then do they become accomplices in all these frauds of
commerce. 20
,\ As for remedy, it manifestly follows that there is none
save a purified public opinion. When that abhorrence
which society now shows to direct theft, is shown to theft
of all degrees of indirectness, then will these mercantile
vices disappear. When not only the trader who adulterates 25
or gives short measure, but also the merchant who over-
trades, the bank-director who countenances an exaggerated
report, and the railway-director who repudiates his guarantee,
come to be regarded as of the same genus as the pickpocket,
and are treated with like disdain; then will the morals of 30
trade become what they should be.
We have little hope, however, that any such higher tone
of public opinion will shortly be reached. The present
condition of things appears to be, in great measure, a neces-
sary accompaniment of our present phase of progress. 35
Throughout the civilised world, especially in England, and
above all in America, social activity is almost wholly expended
238 HERBERT SPENCER
in material development. To subjugate Nature, and bring
the powers of production and distribution to their highest
perfection, is the task of our age; and probably of many
future ages. And as in times when national defence and
5 conquest were the chief desiderata, military achievement
was honoured above all other things; so now, when the
chief desideratum is industrial growth, honour is most
conspicuously given to that which generally indicates the
aiding of industrial growth. The English nation at present
10 displays what we may call the commercial diathesis; and
the undue admiration for wealth appears to be its con-
comitant a relation still more conspicuous in the worship
of " the almighty dollar " by the Americans. And while
the commercial diathesis, with its accompanying standard
15 of distinction, continues, we fear the evils we have been
delineating can be but partially cured. It seems hopeless
to expect that men will distinguish between that wealth
which represents personal superiority and benefits done to
society, from that which does not. The symbols, the exter-
2onals, have all the world through swayed the masses; and
must long continue to do so. Even the cultivated, w r ho
are on their guard against the bias of associated ideas, and
try to separate the real from the seeming, cannot escape
the influence of current opinion. We must, therefore,
25 content ourselves with looking for a slow amelioration.
Something, however, may even now be done by vigorous
protest against adoration of mere success. And it is impor-
tant that it should be done, considering how this vicious
sentiment is being fostered. When we have one of our
30 leading moralists preaching, with increasing vehemence, the
doctrine of sanctification by force when we are told that
while a selfishness troubled with qualms of conscience is
contemptible, a selfishness intense enough to trample down
every thing in the unscrupulous pursuit of its ends, is worthy
;,5of all admiration when we find that if it be sufficiently
great, power, no matter of what kind or how directed, is
held up for our reverence; we may fear lest the prevalent
THE MORALS OF TRADE 239
applause of mere success, together with the commercial
vices which it stimulates, should be increased rather than
diminished. Not at all by this hero-worship grown into
brute- worship, is society to be made better; but by exactly
the opposite by a stern criticism of the means through 5
which success has been achieved; and by according honour
to the higher and less selfish modes of activity.
And happily the signs of this more moral public opinion
are already showing themselves. It is becoming a tacitly-
received doctrine that the rich should not, as in by-gone 10
times, spend their lives in personal gratification; but should
devote them to the general welfare. Year by year is the
improvement of the people occupying a larger share of the
attention of the upper classes. Year by year are they
voluntarily devoting more and more energy to furthering 15
the material and mental progress of the masses. And those
among them who do not join in the discharge of these high
functions, are beginning to be looked upon with more or less
contempt by their own order. This latest and most hope-
ful fact in human history this new and better chivalry 20
promises to evolve a higher standard of honour; and so to
ameliorate many evils: among others those which we have
detailed. When wealth obtained by illegitimate means
inevitably brings nothing but disgrace when to wealth
rightly acquired is accorded only its due share of homage, 25
while the greatest homage is given to those who consecrate
their energies and their means to the noblest ends; then
may we be sure that along with other accompanying bene-
fits, the morals of trade will be greatly purified.
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 1
THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
IN order to make the title of this discourse generally intel-
ligible, I have translated the term " Protoplasm," which
is the scientific name of the substance of which I am about
to speak, by the words " the physical basis of life." I
5 suppose that, to many, the idea that there is such a thing
as a physical basis, or matter, of life may be novel so
widely spread is the conception of life as a something which
works through matter, but is independent of it; and even
those who are aware that matter and life are inseparably
10 connected, may not be prepared for the conclusion plainly
suggested by the phrase, " the physical basis or matter of
life," that there is some one kind of matter which is common
to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are
bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity.
15 In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this
appears almost shocking to common sense.
What, truly, can seem to be more obviously different
from one another, in faculty, in form, and in substance,
than the various kinds of living beings? What community
20 of faculty can there be between the brightly-coloured lichen,
which so nearly resembles a mere mineral incrustation of
the bare rock on which it grows, and the painter, to whom
it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, whom it feeds
with knowledge?
1 The substance of this paper was contained in an address which
was delivered in Edinburgh in 1868. The paper was published in
" Lay Sermons," 1870.
240
OX THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 241
Again, think of the microscopic fungus a mere infinitesi-
mal ovoid particle, which finds space and duration enough
to multiply into countless millions in the body of a living
fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, the luxuriance of
flower and fruit, which lies between this bald sketch of a 5
plant and the giant pine of California, towering to the
dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the Indian fig, which
covers acres with its profound shadow, and endures while
nations and empires come and go around its vast circumfer-
ence. Or, turning to the other half of the world of life, 10
picture to yourselves the great Finner whale, hugest of
beasts that live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or ninety
feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, with easy roll, among
waves in which the stoutest ship that ever left dockyard
would flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with the invis- 15
ible animalcules mere gelatinous specks, multitudes of
which could, in fact, dance upon the point of a needle with
the same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen could, in
imagination. With these images before your minds, you
may well ask, what community of form, or structure, is 20
there between the animalcule and the whale; or between the
fungus and the fig-tree? And, a fortiori, 1 between all four?
Finally, if we regard substance, or material composition,
what hidden bond can connect the flower which a girl wears
in her hair and the blood which courses through her youthful 25
veins; or, what is there in common between the dense and
resisting mass of the oak, or the strong fabric of the tor-
toise, and those broad disks of glassy jelly which may be
seen pulsating through the waters of a calm sea, but which
drain away to mere films in the hand which raises them 30
out of their element?
Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind
of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the con-
ception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the
diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate 35
to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a
1 a forliori: with stronger reason.
242 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
threefold unity namely, a unity of power or faculty, a
unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition does
pervade the whole living world.
No very abstruse argumentation is needed, in the first
5 place, to prove that the powers, or faculties, of all kinds of
living matter, diverse as they may be in degree, are substan-
tially similar in kind.
Goethe has condensed a survey of all powers of mankind
into the well-known epigram:
10 " Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit? Es will sich ernahren,
Kinder zeugen, und die nahren so gut es vermag.
* * * * * *
Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stelF er sich wie er auch will." L
In physiological language this means, that all the multi-
farious and complicated activities of man are comprehen-
15 sible under three categories. Either they are immediately
directed towards the maintenance and development of the
body, or they effect transitory changes in the relative posi-
tions of parts of the body, or they tend towards the contin-
uance of the species. Even those manifestions of intellect,
20 of feeling, and of will, which we rightly name the higher
faculties, are not excluded from this classification, inas^
much as to every one but the subject of them, they are
known only as transitory changes in the relative positions of
parts of the body. Speech, gesture, and every other form of
25 human action are, in the long run, resolvable into muscular
contraction, and muscular contraction is but a transitory
change in the relative positions of the parts of a muscle.
But the scheme which is large enough to embrace the activi-
ties of the highest form of life, covers all those of the lower
30 creatures. The lowest plant, or animalcule, feeds, grows,
and reproduces its kind. In addition, all animals manifest
1 Why does the populace rush so and make clamor? It wishes to
eat, bring forth children, and feed these as well as it may. . . . Xo man
can do better, strive how he will.
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 243
those transitory changes of form which we class under
irritability and contractility; and it is morel than probable
that when the vegetable world is thoroughly explored, we
shall find all plants in possession of the same powers, at one
time or other of their existence. 5
I am not now alluding to such phenomena, at once rare
and conspicuous, as those exhibited by the leaflets of the
sensitive plants, or the stamens of the barberry, but to much
more widely spread, and at the same time, more subtle and
hidden, manifestions of vegetable contractility. You are 10
doubtless aware that the common nettle owes its stinging
property to the innumerable stiff and needle-like, though
exquisitely delicate, hairs which cover its surface. Each
stinging-needle tapers from a broad base to a slender sum-
mit, which, though rounded at the end, is of such micro- 15
scopic fineness that it readily penetrates, and breaks off in,
the skin. The whole hair consists of a very delicate outer
case of wood, closely applied to the inner surface of which
is a layer of semi-fluid matter, full of innumerable granules
of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lining is protoplasm, 20
which thus constitutes a kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid,
and roughly corresponding in form with the interior of the
hair which it fills. When viewed with a sufficiently high
magnifying power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle hair
is seen to be in a condition of unceasing activity. Local 25
contractions of the whole thickness of its substance pass
slowly and gradually from point to point, and give rise to
the appearance of progressive waves, just as the bending
of successive stalks of corn by a breeze produces the apparent
billows of a corn-field. 30
But, in addition to these movements, and independently
of them, the granules are driven, in relatively rapid streams,
through channels in the protoplasm which seem to have a
considerable amount of persistence. Most commonly,, the
currents in adjacent parts of the protoplasm take similar 35
directions; and, thus, there is a general stream up one side
of the hair and down the other. But this does not prevent
244 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
the existence of partial currents which take different routes;
and sometimes trains of granules may be seen coursing
swiftly in opposite directions within a twenty-thousandth
of an inch of one another; while, occasionally, opposite
5 streams come into direct collision, and, after a longer or
shorter struggle, one predominates. The cause of these
currents seems to lie in contractions of the protoplasm which
bounds the channels in which they flow, but which are so
minute that the best microscopes show only their effects,
10 and not themselves.
The spectacle afforded by the wonderful energies prisoned
within the compass of the microscopic hair of a plant, which
we commonly regard as a merely passive organism, is not
easily forgotten by one who has watched its display, con-
15 tinued hour after hour, without pause or sign of weakening.
The possible complexity of many other organic forms, seem-
ingly as simple as the protoplasm of the nettle, dawns upon
one; and the comparison of such a protoplasm to a body
with an internal circulation, which has been put forward
20 by an eminent physiologist, loses much of its startling
character. Currents similar to those of the hairs of the nettle
have been observed in a great multitude of very different
plants, and weighty authorities have suggested that they
probably occur, in more or less perfection, in all young vege-
25 table cells. If such be the case, the wonderful noonday
silence of a tropical forest is, after all, due only to the dull-
ness of our hearing; and could our ears catch the murmur
of these tiny Maelstroms, as they whirl in the innumerable
myriads of living cells which constitute each tree, we should
30 be stunned, as with the roar of a great city.
Among the lower plants, it is the rule rather than the
exception, that contractility should be still more openly
manifested at some periods of their existence. The pro-
toplasm of AlgcB and Fungi becomes, under many circum-
35 stances, partially, or completely, freed from its woody case,
and exhibits movements of its whole mass, or is propelled
by the contractility of one, or more, hair-like prolongations
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 245
of its body, which are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as
the conditions of the manifestation of the phenomena of
contractility have yet been studied, they are the same for
the plant as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks
influence both, and in the same way, though it may be in 5
different degrees. It is by no means my intention to suggest
that theie is no difference in faculty between the lowest
plant and the highest, or between plants and animals.
But the difference between the powers of the lowest plant,
or animal, and those of the highest, is one of degree, notio
of kind, and depends, as Milne-Edwards long ago so well
pointed out, upon the extent to which the principle of the
division of labour is carried out in the living economy.
In the lowest organism all parts are competent to perform
all functions, and one and the same portion of protoplasm 15
may successfully take on the function of feeding, moving,
or reproducing apparatus. In the highest, on the contrary,
a great number of parts combine to perform each function,
each part doing its allotted share of the work with great
accuracy and efficiency, but being useless for any other 20
purpose.
On the other hand, notwithstanding all the fundamental
resemblances which exist between the powers of the proto-
plasm in plants and in animals, they present a striking
difference (to which I shall advert more at length presently), 25
in the fact that plants can manufacture fresh protoplasm
out of mineral compounds, whereas animals are obliged to
procure it ready made, and hence, in the long run, depend
upon plants. Upon what condition this difference in the
powers of the two great divisions of the world of life depends, 30
nothing is at present known.
With such qualifications as arise out of the last-mentioned
fact, it may be truly said that the acts of all living things are
fundamentally one. Is any such unity predicable of their
forms? Let us seek in easily verified facts for a reply to 35
this question. If a drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's
finger, and viewed with proper precautions, and under a
246 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
sufficiently high microscopic power, there will be seen,
among the innumerable multitude of little, circular, dis-
coidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in it and give it its
colour, a comparatively small number of colourless corpus-
5 cles, of somewhat larger size and very irregular shape. If
the drop of blood be kept at the temperature of the body,
*these colourless corpuscles will be seen to exhibit a marvel-
lous activity, changing their forms with great rapidity,
drawing in and thrusting out prolongations of their sub-
10 stance, and creeping about as if they were independent
organisms.
The substance which is thus active is a mass of proto-
plasm, and its activity differs in detail, rather than in prin-
ciple, from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. Under
15 sundry circumstances the corpuscle dies and becomes dis-
tended into a round mass, in the midst of which is seen a
smaller spherical body, which existed, but was more or less
hidden, in the living corpuscle, and is called its nucleus.
Corpuscles of essentially similar structure are to be found
20 in the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and scattered through
the whole framework of the body. Nay, more: in the earliest
condition of the human organism, in that state in which it
has but just become distinguishable from the egg in which
it arises, it is nothing but an aggregation of such corpuscles,
25 and every organ of the body was, once, no more than such
an aggregation.
Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm turns out to be
what may be termed the structural unit of the human body.
As a matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, is a mere
30 multiple of such units; and in its perfect condition, it is a
multiple of such units, variously modified.
But does the formula which expresses the essential struc-
tural character of the highest animal cover all the rest, as
the statement of its powers and faculties covered that of
35 all others? Very nearly. Beast and fowl, reptile and fish,
mollusk, worm, and polype, are all composed of struc-
tural units of the same character, namely, masses of proto-
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 247
plasm with a nucleus. There are sundry very low ani-
mals, each of which, structurally, is a mere colourless
blood-corpuscle, leading an independent life. But, at the
very bottom of the animal scale, even this simplicity
becomes simplified, and all the phenomena of life are mani- 5
fested by a particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. Nor
are such organisms insignificant by reason of their want of
complexity. It is a fair question whether the protoplasm
of those simplest forms of life, which people an immense
extent of the bottom of the sea, would not outweigh that of 10
all the higher living beings which inhabit the land put
together. And in ancient times, no less than at the present
day, such living beings as these have been the greatest of
rock builders.
What has been said of the animal world is no less true 15
of plants. Imbedded in the protoplasm at the broad, or
attached, end of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal
nucleus. Careful examination further proves that the
whole substance of the nettle is made up of a repetition of
such masses of nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a 20
wooden case, which is modified in form, sometimes into
a woody fibre, sometimes into a duct or spiral vessel, some-
times into a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back to its
earliest state, the nettle arises as the man does, in a particle
of nucleated protoplasm. And in the lowest plants, as in 25
the lowest animals, a single mass of such protoplasm may
constitute the whole plant, or the protoplasm may exist
without a nucleus.
Under these circumstances it may well be asked, how
is one mass of non-nucleated protoplasm to be distinguished 30
from another? why call one " plant " and the other
" animal "?
The only reply is that, so far as form is concerned, plants
and animals are not separable, and that, in many cas.es, it
is a mere matter of convention whether we call a given 35
organism an animal or a plant. There is a living body called
sEthalium septic-urn, which appears upon decaying vege-
248 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
table substances, and, in one of its forms, is common upon
the surfaces of tan-pits. In this condition it is, to all intents
and purposes, a fungus, and formerly was always regarded
as such; but the remarkable investigations of De Bary have
5 shown that, in another condition, the jEthalium is an ac-
tively locomotive creature, and takes in solid matters,
upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most
characteristic feature of animality. Is this a plant; or is
it an animal? Is it both; or is it neither? Some decide in
10 favour of the last supposition, and establish an intermediate
kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's Land for all these
questionable forms. But, as it is admittedly impossible
to draw any distinct boundary line between this no man's
land and the vegetable world on the one hand, or the animal
15 on the other, it appears to me that this proceeding merely
doubles the difficulty which, before, was single.
Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of
all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint
it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not
20 by nature, from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.
Thus it becomes clear that all living powers are cognate,
and that all living forms are fundamentally of one character.
The researches of the chemist have revealed a no less strik-
ing uniformity of material composition in living matter.
25 In perfect strictness, it is true that chemical investiga-
tion can tell us little or nothing, directly, of the composi-
tion of living matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs
die in the act of analysis, and upon this very obvious
ground, objections, which I confess seem to me to be some-
30 what frivolous, have been raised to the drawing of any
conclusions whatever respecting the composition of actually
living matter, from that of the dead matter of life, which
alone is accessible to us. But objectors of this class do not
seem to reflect that it is also, in strictness, true that we
35 know nothing about the composition of any body what-
ever, as it is. The statement that a crystal of calc-spar
consists of carbonate of lime, is quite true, if we only mean
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 249
that, by appropriate processes, it may be resolved into car-
bonic acid and quicklime. If you pass the same carbonic
acid over the very quicklime thus obtained, you will obtain
carbonate of lime again; but it will not be calc-spar, nor
anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said that chemical 5
analysis teaches nothing about the chemical composition
of calc-spar? Such a statement would be absurd; but it is
hardly more so than the talk one occasionally hears about
the uselessness of applying the results of chemical analysis
to the living bodies which have yielded them. 10
One fact, at any rate, is out of reach of such refinements,
and this is, that all the forms of protoplasm which have
yet been examined contain the four elements, carbon,
hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in very complex union,
and that they behave similarly towards several reagents. 15
To this complex combination, the nature of which has
never been determined with exactness, the name of Pro-
tein has been applied. And if we use this term with such
caution as may properly arise out of our comparative igno-
rance of the things for which it stands, it may be truly said 20
that all protoplasm is proteinaceous, or, as the white, or
albumen, of an egg is one of the commonest examples of a
nearly pure proteine matter, we may say that all living
matter is more or less albuminoid.
Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say that all forms of 25
protoplasm are affected by the direct action of electric
shocks; and yet the number of cases in which the contrac-
tion of protoplasm is shown to be affected by this agency
increases every day.
Nor can it be affirmed with perfect confidence, that all 30
forms of protoplasm are liable to undergo that peculiar
coagulation at a temperature of 4o-5o Centigrade, which
has been called " heat-stiffening," though Kuhne's beautiful
researches have proved this occurrence to take pla.ce in
so many and such diverse living beings, that it is hardly 35
rash to expect that the law holds good for all.
250 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
Enough has, perhaps, been said, to prove the existence of
a general uniformity in the character of the protoplasm, or
physical basis, of life, in whatever group of living beings it
may be studied. But it will be understood that this general
5 uniformity by no means excludes any amount of special
modifications of the fundamental substance. The mineral,
carbonate of lime, assumes an immense diversity of charac-
ters, though no one doubts that, under all these Protean
changes, is one and the same thing.
10 And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin,
of the matter of life?
Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused
throughout the universe in molecules, which are inde-
structible and unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless
15 transmigration, unite in innumerable permutations, into the
diversified forms of life we know? Or, is the matter of life
composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the
manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up
of ordinary matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter
20 when its work is done?
Modern science does not hesitate a moment between
these alternatives. Physiology writes over the portals of
life
" Debemur morti nos nostraque," x
25 with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached
to that melancholy line. Under whatever disguise it takes
refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the living
protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into
its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying,
30 and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live
unless it died.
In the wonderful story of the Peau de Chagrin, the hero
becomes possessed of a magical wild ass' skin, which yields
him the means of gratifying all his wishes. But its sur-
35 face represents the duration of the proprietor's life; and
1 We and ours must die.
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 251
for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in proportion to
the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last
handbreath of the peau de chagrin, disappear with the
gratification of a last wish.
Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought 5
and speculation, and his shadowing forth of physiological
truth in this strange story may have been intentional. At
any rate, the matter of life is a veritable peau de chagrin,
and for every vital act it is somewhat the smaller. All
work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or 10
indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.
Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical
loss; and, in the strictest sense, he burns that others may
have light so much eloquence, so much of his body re-
solved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is cleans
that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But,
happily, the protoplasmic peau de chagrin differs from
Balzac's in its capacity of being repaired, and brought
back to its full size, after every exertion.
For example, this present lecture, whatever its intellect- 20
ual worth to you, has a certain physical value to me, which
is, conceivably, expressible by the number of grains of
protoplasm and other bodily substance wasted in main-
taining my vital processes during its delivery. My peau de
chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end of the discourse 25
than it was at the beginning. By and by, I shall probably
have recourse to the substance commonly called mutton,
for the purpose of stretching it back to its original size.
Now this mutton was once the living protoplasm, more or
less modified, of another animal a sheep. As I shall eat 30
it, it is the same matter altered, not only by death, but by
exposure to sundry artificial operations in the process of
cooking.
But these changes, whatever be their extent, have not
rendered it incompetent to resume its old functions as mat- 35
ter of life. A singular inward laboratory, which I possess,
will dissolve a certain portion of the modified protoplasm;
252 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
the solution so formed will pass into my veins; and the
subtle influences to which it will then be subjected will con-
vert the dead protoplasm into living protoplasm, and tran-
substantiate sheep into man.
5 Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing to be trifled
with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of
the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful meta-
morphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own
place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the crustacean might,
10 and probably would, return the compliment, and demon-
strate our common nature by turning my protoplasm into
living lobster. Or, if nothing better were to be had, I might
supply my wants with mere bread, and I should find the
protoplasm of the wheat-plant to be convertible into man
15 with no more trouble than that of the sheep, and with far
less, I fancy, than that of the lobster.
Hence it appears to be a matter of no great moment
what animal, or what plant, I lay under contribution for
protoplasm, and the fact speaks volumes for the general
20 identity of that substance in all living beings. I share this
catholicity of assimilation with other animals, all of which,
so far as we know, could thrive equally well on the proto-
plasm of any of their fellows, or of any plaiTt; but here the
assimilative powers of the animal world cease. A solution
25 of smelling-salts in water, with an infinitesimal propor-
tion of some other saline matters, contains all the elemen-
tary bodies which enter into the composition of protoplasm ;
but, as I need hardly say, a hogshead of that fluid would
not keep a hungry man from starving, nor would it save
30 any animal whatever from a like fate. An animal cannot
make protoplasm, but must take it ready-made from some
other animal, or some plant the animal's highest feat of
constructive chemistry being to convert dead protoplasm
into that living matter of life which is appropriate to itself.
35 Therefore, in seeking for the origin of protoplasm, we
must eventually turn to the vegetable world. A fluid con-
taining carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts, which
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 253
offers such a Barmecide feast l to the animal, is a table richly
spread to multitudes of plants; and, with a due supply of
only such materials, many a plant will not only maintain
itself in vigour, but grow and multiply until it has increased
a million-fold, or a million million-fold, the quantity of 5
protoplasm which it originally possessed; in this way build-
ing up the matter of life, to an indefinite extent, from the
common matter of the universe.
Thus, the animal can only raise the complex substance of
dead protoplasm to the higher power, as one may say, ofio
living protoplasm; while the plant can raise the less complex
substances carbonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts
to the same stage of living protoplasm, if not to the same
level. But the plant also has its limitations. Some of the
fungi, for example, appear to need higher compounds to 15
start with; and no known plant can live upon the uncom-
pounded elements of protoplasm. A plant supplied with
pure carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus,
sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly die as the animal
in his bath of smelling-salts, though it would be surrounded 20
by all the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, indeed, need
the process of simplification of vegetable food be carried so
far as this, in crder to arrive at the limit of the plant's
thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and all the other
needful constituents be supplied except nitrogenous salts, 25
and an ordinary plant will still be unable to manufacture
protoplasm.
Thus the matter of life, so far as we know it (and we have
no right to speculate on any other), breaks up, in conse-
quence of that continual death which is the condition of its 30
manifesting vitality, into carbonic acid, water, and nitrog-
enous compounds, which certainly possess no properties
but those of ordinary matter. And out of these same forms
of ordinary matter, and from none which are simpler,, the
1 In one of the Arabian Nights stories, a nobleman called Barme-
cide set before a bcgger a number of empty dishes supposed to contain
a feast.
251 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
vegetable world builds up all the protoplasm which keeps
the animal world a-going. Plants are the accumulators of
the power which animals distribute and disperse.
But it will be observed, that the existence of the matter
5 of life depends on the pre-existence of certain compounds;
namely, carbonic acid, water, and certain nitrogenous
bodies. Withdraw any one of these three from the world,
and all vital phenomena come to an end. They are as
necessary to the protoplasm of the plant, as the proto-
10 plasm of the plant is to that of the animal. Carbon, hydro-
gen, oxygen, and nitrogen are all lifeless bodies. Of these,
carbon and oxygen unite in certain proportions and under
certain conditions, to give rise to carbonic acid; hydrogen
and oxygen produce water; nitrogen and other elements
15 give rise to nitrogenous salts. These new compounds,
like the elementary bodies of which they are composed,
are lifeless. But when they are brought together, under
certain conditions, they give rise to the still more complex
body, protoplasm, and this protoplasm exhibits the phe-
20 nomena of life.
I see no break in this series of steps in molecular compli-
cation, and I am unable to understand why the language
which is applicable to any one term of the* series may not
be used to any of the others. We think fit to call different
25 kinds of matter carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen,
and to speak of the various powers and activities of these
substances as the properties of the matter of which they
are composed.
When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in a certain pro-
30 portion, and an electric spark is passed through them, they
disappear, and a quantity of water, equal in weight to the
sum of their weights, appears in their place. There is not
the slightest parity between the passive and active powers
of the water and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which
35 have given rise to it. At 32 Fahrenheit, and far below that
temperature, oxygen and hydrogen are elastic gaseous
bodies, whose particles tend to rush away from one another
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 255
with great force. Water, at the same temperature, is a
strong though brittle solid, whose particles tend to cohere
into definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes build up
frosty imitations of the most complex forms of vegetable
foliage. 5
Nevertheless we call these, and many other strange phe-
nomena, the properties of the water, and we do not hesitate
to believe that, in some way or another, they result from the
properties of the component elements of the water. We do
not assume that a something called " aquosity " entered into 10
and took possession of the oxidated hydrogen as soon as it
was formed, and then guided the aqueous particles to their
places in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the leaflets of
the hoar-frost. On the contrary, we live in the hope and in
the faith that, by the advance of molecular physics, we shall 15
by and by be able to see our way as clearly from the con-
stituents of water to the properties of water, as we are now
able to deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its
parts and the manner in which they are put together.
Is the case in any way changed when carbonic acid, water, 20
and nitrogenous salts disappear, and in their place, under
the influence of pre-existing living protoplasm, an equivalent
weight of the matter of life makes its appearance?
It is true that there is no sort of parity between the prop-
erties of the components and the properties of the resultant, 25
but neither was there in the case of the water. It is also true
that what I have spoken of as the influence of pre-existing
living matter is something quite unintelligible; but does
anybody quite comprehend the modus opcrandi l of an
electric spark, which traverses a mixture of oxygen and 30
hydrogen?
What justification is there, then, for the assumption of the
existence in the living matter of a something which has no
representative, or correlative, in the not living matter which
gave rise to it? What better philosophical status has 35
" vitality " than " aquosity "? And why should " vitality "
1 Mode of working.
256 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
hope for a better fate than the other " itys " which have
disappeared since Martinus Scriblerus accounted for the
operation of the meat-jack by its inherent " meat-roasting
quality," and scorned the " materialism " of those who
5 explained the turning of the spit by a certain mechanism
worked by the draught of the chimney?
If scientific language is to possess a definite and constant
signification whenever it is employed, it seems to me that
we are logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, or physi-
iocal basis of life, the same conceptions as those which are
held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena exhib-
ited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm, living or dead, its properties.
If the properties of water may be properly said to result
15 from the nature and disposition of its component molecules,
I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the
properties of protoplasm result from the nature and dis-
position of its molecules.
But I bid you beware that, in accepting these conclusions,
20 you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which,
in most people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's and
leads to the antipodes of heaven. It may seem a small
thing to admit that the dull vital actions 7)f a fungus, or a
foraminifer, are the properties of their protoplasm, and are
25 the direct results of the nature of the matter of which they
are composed. But if, as I have endeavoured to prove to
you, their protoplasm is essentially identical with, and most
readily converted into, that of any animal, I can discover
no logical halting-place between the admission that such is
30 the case, and the further concession that all vital action may,
with equal propriety, be said to be the result of the molec-
ular forces of the protoplasm which displays it. And if so,
it must be true, in the same sense and to the same extent,
that the thoughts to which I am now giving utterance, and
35 your thoughts regarding them, are the expression of molec-
ular changes in that matter of life which is the source of
our other vital phenomena,
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 257
Past experience leads me to be tolerably certain that, when
the propositions I have just placed before you are accessible
to public comment and criticism, they will be condemned by
many zealous persons, and perhaps by some few of the wise
and thoughtful. I should not wonder if " gross and brutal 5
materialism " were the mildest phrase applied to them in
certain quarters. And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the
propositions are distinctly materialistic. Nevertheless two
things are certain: the one, that I hold the statements to be
substantially true; the other, that I, individually, am noio
materialist, but, on the contrary, believe materialism to
involve grave philosophical error.
This union of materialistic terminology with the repu-
diation of materialistic philosophy I share with some of the
most thoughtful men with whom I am acquainted. And, 15
when I first undertook to deliver the present discourse, it
appeared to me to be a fitting opportunity to explain how
such a union is not only consistent with, but necessitated
by, sound logic. I purposed to lead you through the terri-
tory of vital phenomena to the materialistic slough in which 20
you find yourselves now plunged, and then to point out to you
the sole path by which, in my judgment, extrication is
possible.
Let us suppose that knowledge is absolute, and not relative,
and therefore, that our conception of matter represents 25
that which it really is. Let us suppose, further, that we do
know more of cause and effect than a certain definite order
of succession among facts, and that we have a knowledge of
the necessity of that succession and hence, of necessary laws
and I, for my part, do not see what escape there is from 30
utter materialism and necessarianism. For it is obvious
that our knowledge of what we call the material world is,
to begin with, at least as certain and definite as that of the
spiritual world, and that our acquaintance with law is of as
old a date as our knowledge of spontaneity. Further, 135
take it to be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible to
258 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
prove that anything whatever may not be the effect of a
material and necessary cause, and that human logic is
equally incompetent to prove that any act is really sponta-
neous. A really spontaneous act is one which, by the
5 assumption, has no cause; and the attempt to prove such a
negative as this is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And
while it is thus a philosophical impossibility to demonstrate
that any given phenomenon is not the effect of a material
cause, any one who is acquainted with the history of sci-
10 ence w T ill admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant,
and now, more than ever, means, the extension of the prov-
ince of what we call matter and causation, and the con-
comitant gradual banishment from all regions of human
thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.
15 I have endeavoured, in the first part of this discourse, to
give you a conception of the direction towards which modern
physiology is tending; and I ask you, what is the difference
between the conception of life as the product of a certain
disposition of material molecules, and the old notion of an
20 Archaeus l governing and directing blind matter within each
living body, except this that here, as elsewhere, matter
and law have devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as
surely as every future grows out of past and present, so will
the physiology of the future gradually extend the realm of
25 matter and law until it is co-extensive with knowledge, with
feeling, and with action.
The consciousness of this great truth weighs like a night-
mare, I believe, upon many of the best minds of these days.
They watch what they conceive to be the progress of mate-
3orialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels
when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the
face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to
drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their
freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be de-
35 based by the increase of his wisdom.
1 Archaeus: a spirit, having essentially the same form as the body
within which it resided.
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 259
If the " New Philosophy " be worthy of the reprobation
with which it is visited, I confess their fears seem to me to
be well founded. While, on the contrary, could David
Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their perplex-
ities, and chide them for doing even as the heathen, and 5
falling down in terror before the hideous idols their own
hands have raised.
For, after all, what do we know of this terrible " matter,"
except as a name for the unknown and hypothetical cause
of states of our own consciousness? And what do we know 10
of that " spirit " over whose threatened extinction by matter
a great lamentation is arising, like that which was heard at
the death of Pan, except that it is also a name for an un-
known and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of con-
sciousness? In other words, matter and spirit are but names 15
for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural phenomena.
And what is the dire necessity and " iron " law under
which men groan? Truly, most gratuitously invented
bugbears. I suppose if there be an " iron " law, it is that of
gravitation; and if there be a physical necessity, it is that a 20
stone, unsupported, must fall to the ground. But what is
all we really know, and can know, about the latter phe-
nomenon? Simply, that, in all human experience, stones have
fallen to the ground under these conditions; that we have
not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so cir-25
cumstanced will not fall to the ground; and that we have,
on the contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall.
It is very convenient to indicate that all the conditions
of belief have been fulfilled in this case, by calling the state-
ment that unsupported stones will fall to the ground, "a 30
law of Nature." But when, as commonly happens, we
change will into must, we introduce an idea of necessity
which most assuredly does not lie in the observed facts,
and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For
my part, I utterly repudiate and anathematise the intruder. 35
Fact I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity
save an empty shadow of my own mind's throwing?
260 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
But, if it is certain that we can have no knowledge of the
nature of either matter or spirit, and that the notion of
necessity is something illegitimately thrust into the per-
fectly legitimate conception of x law, the materialistic position
5 that there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and
necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most
baseless of theological dogmas. The fundamental doctrines
of materialism, like those of spiritualism, and most other
" isms," lie outside " the limits of philosophical inquiry,"
10 and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irre-
fragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume
called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed
if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter
the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does
15 him gross injustice.
If a man asks me what the politics of the inhabitants of
the moon are, and I reply that I do not know; that neither
I, nor any one else, has any means of knowing; and that,
under these circumstances, I decline to trouble myself about
20 the subject at all; I do not think he has any right to call me
a sceptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, I conceive
that I am simply honest and truthful, and show a proper
regard for the economy of time. So Hume's strong and
subtle intellect takes up a great many problems about which
25 we are naturally curious, and shows us that they are essen-
tially questions of lunar politics, in their essence incapable
of being answered, and therefore not worth the attention of
men who have work to do in the world. And he thus ends
one of his essays:
30 " If we take in hand any volume of Divinity, or school metaphysics,
for instance, let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concern-
ing quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reason-
ing concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to
the flames; for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." 1
1 Hume's Essay " Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," in
the Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding. [Many critics of
this passage seem to forget that the subject-matter of Ethics and
ON THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF LIFE 261
Permit me to enforce this most wise advice. Why trouble
ourselves about matters of which, however important they
may be, we do know nothing, and can know nothing? We
live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the
plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little 5
corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and some-
what less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do
this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only
two beliefs: the first, that the order of Nature is ascertain-
able by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlim- 10
ited; the second, that our volition 1 counts for something
as a condition of the course of events.
Each of these beliefs can be verified experimentally, as
often as we like to try. Each, therefore, stands upon the
strongest foundation upon which any belief can rest, and 15
forms one of our highest truths. If we find that the ascer-
tainment of the order of nature is facilitated by using one
terminology, or one set of symbols, rather than another,
it is our clear duty to use the former; and no harm can
accrue, so long as we bear in mind that we are dealing merely 20
with terms and symbols.
In itself it is of little moment whether we express the
phenomena of matter in terms of spirit; or the phenomena
of spirit in terms of matter: matter may be regarded as a
form of thought, thought may be regarded as a property of 25
matter each statement has a certain relative truth. But
with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic ter-
minology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects
thought with the other phenomena of the universe, and
suggests inquiry into the nature of those physical conditions, 30
or concomitants of thought, which are more or less accessible
to us, and a knowledge of which may, in future, help us to
exercise the same kind of control over the world of thought
/Esthetics consists of matters of fact and existence. 1892.] Author's
note.
1 Or, to speak more accurately, the physical state of which volition
is the expression. 1892. Author's note.
262 THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY
as we already possess in respect of the material world;
whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic, terminology is
utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and con-
fusion of ideas.
5 Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science
advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the
phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic for-
mulae and symbols.
But the man of science, who, forgetting the limits of philo-
icsophical inquiry, slides from these formulas and symbols
into what is commonly understood by materialism, seems to
me to place himself on a level with the mathematician
who should mistake the ar's and y's with which he works his
problems, for real entities and with this further disadvan-
15 tage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders
of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors
of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and
destroy the beauty of a life.
COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL POWERS OF
MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS l
CHARLES DARWIN
MY object in this chapter is to show that there is no
fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals
in their mental faculties. Each division of the subject
might have been extended into a separate essay, but must
here be treated briefly. As no classification of the mental 5
powers has been universally accepted, I shall arrange my
remarks in the order most convenient for my purpose; and
will select those facts which have struck me most, with the
hope that they may produce some effect on the reader.
As man possesses the same senses as the lower animals, 10
liis fundamental intuitions must be the same. Man has
also some lev. instinct? in common, as that of self-preserva-
tion, sexual love, the love of the mother for her new-born
offspring, the desire possessed by the latter to suck, and so
forth. But man, perhaps, has somewhat fewer instincts 15
than those possessed by the animals which come next to
him in the series. The orang in the Eastern islands and the
chimpanzee in Africa build platforms on which they sleep;
and as both species follow the same habit, it might be
argued that this was due to instinct, but we cannot feel 20
sure that it is not the result of both animals having similar
wants and possessing similar powers of reasoning. These
apes, as we may assume, avoid the many poisonous fruits
of the tropics, and man has no such knowledge; but as
our domestic animals, when taken to foreign lands, and when 25
1 From Chapter III of "The Descent of Man," 1871. All except
three of the author's foot-notes have been omitted.
203
264 CHARLES DARWIN
first turned out in the spring, often eat poisonous herbs,
which they afterward avoid, we cannot feel sure that the
apes do not learn from their own experience or from that
of their parents what fruits to select. It is, however, cer-
5 tain, as we shall presently see, that apes have an instinctive
dread of serpents, and probably of other dangerous animals.
The fewness and the comparative simplicity of the instincts
in the higher animals are remarkable in contrast with
those of the lower animals. Cuvier maintained that instinct
10 and intelligence stand in an inverse ratio to each other; and
some have thought that the intellectual faculties of the
higher animals have been gradually developed from their
instincts. But Pouchet, in an interesting essay, has shown
that no such inverse ratio really exists. Those insects which
15 possess the most wonderful instincts are certainly the
most intelligent. In the vertebrate series, the least intel-
ligent members, namely fishes and amphibians, do not
possess complex instincts; and among mammals the animal
most remarkable for its instincts, namely the beaver, is
20 highly intelligent, as will be admitted by every one who
has read Mr. Morgan's excellent work. 1
But although, as we learn from the ^bove-mentioned
insects and the beaver, a high degree of intelligence is cer-
tainly compatible with complex instincts, and although
25 actions, at first learned voluntarily, can soon through habit
be performed with the quickness and certainty of a reflex
action, yet it is not improbable that there is a certain amount
of interference between the development of free intelligence
and of instinct, since the latter implies some inherited modi-
3ofication of the brain. Little is known about the functions
of the brain, but we can perceive that as the intellectual
powers become highly developed the various parts of the
brain must be connected by very intricate channels of the
freesf intercommunication; and as a consequence each
35 separate part would perhaps tend to be less well fitted to
answer to particular sensations or associations in a definite
1 " The American Beaver and his Works," 1868. Author's note.
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 2G5
and inherited that is, instinctive manner. There seems
even to exist some relation between a low degree of intel-
ligence and a strong tendency to the formation of fixed,
though not inherited, habits; for as a sagacious physician
remarked to me, persons who are slightly imbecile tend 5
to act in everything by routine or habit; and they are ren-
dered much happier if this is encouraged.
I have thought this digression worth giving, because we
may easily underrate the mental powers of the higher animals,
and especially of man, when we compare their actions founded 10
on the memory of past events, on foresight, reason and imag-
ination, with exactly similar actions instinctively performed
by the lower animals; in this latter case the capacity of
performing such actions has been gained, step by step,
through the variability of the mental organs and natural 15
selection, without any conscious intelligence on the part
of the animal during each successive generation. No
doubt, as Mr. Wallace has argued, much of the intelligent
work done by man is due to imitation and not to reason;
but there is this great difference between his actions and 20
many of those performed by the lower animals, namely,
that man cannot, on his first trial, make, for instance, a
stone hatchet or a canoe, through his power of imitation.
He has to learn his work by practice; a beaver, on the
other hand, can make its dam or canal, and a bird its nest, 25
as well, or nearly as well, and a spider its wonderful web
quite as well, the first time it tries as when old and
experienced.
To return to our immediate subject: the lower animals,
like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness and 30
misery. Happiness is never better exhibited than by young
animals, such as puppies, kittens, lambs, etc., when playing
together, like our own children. Even insects play to-
gether, as has been described by that excellent observer,
P. Huber, who saw ants chasing and pretending to bite each 35
other, like so many puppies.
The fact that the lower animals are excited bv the same
266 CHARLES DARWIN
emotions as ourselves is so well established that it will not
be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror
acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the mus-
cles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be
S relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the off-
spring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild ani-
mals. It is, I think, impossible to read the account given
by Sir E. Tennent, of the behaviour of the female elephants
used as decoys, without admitting that they intentionally
10 practise deceit, and well know what they are about. Cour-
age and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the in-
dividuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs.
Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered and easily turn
sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are cer-
15 tainly inherited. Every one knows how liable animals are
to furious rage and how plainly they show it. Many, and
probably true, anecdotes have been published on the long-
delayed and artful revenge of various animals. The accu-
rate Rengger and Brehm 1 state that the American and
20 African monkeys which they kept tame certainly revenged
themselves. Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scru-
pulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the
following story of which he was himself an eye-witness: At
the Cape of Good Hope an officer had often plagued a cer-
25 tain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one
Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily
made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the
officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many by-
standers. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and
30 triumphed whenever he saw his victim.
The love of a dog for his master is notorious; as an old
writer quaintly says: '' A dog is the only thing on this earth
that luvs you more than he luvs himself." In the agony
1 All the following statements, given on the authority of these two
naturalists, are taken from Rengger's " Naturgesch. der Siiugethiere
von Paraguay," 1830, s. 41-57, and from Brehm's " Thierleben,"
B.i, s. 10-87. Author's note.
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 267
of death a dog has been known to caress his master, and
every one has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection,
who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless the
operation was fully justified by an increase of our knowl-
edge, or unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse 5
to the last hour of his life.
As Whewell has well asked: " Who that reads the touch-
ing instances of maternal affection, related so often of the
women of all nations and of the females of all animals, can
doubt that the principle of action is the same in the twoio
cases? " We see maternal affection exhibited in the most
trifling details; thus, Rengger observed an American
monkey (a Cebus) carefully driving away the flies which
plagued her infant; and Duvaucel saw a Hylobates washing
the face of her young ones in a stream. So intense is the 15
grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young that it
invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under
confinement by Brehm in N. Africa. Orphan monkeys
were always adopted and carefully guarded by the other
monkeys, both males and females. One female baboon 20
had so capacious a heart that she not only adopted young
monkeys of other species, but stole young dogs and cats,
which she continually carried about. Her kindness, however,
did not go so far as to share her food with her adopted
offspring, at which Brehm was surprised, as his monkeys 25
always divided everything quite fairly with their own young
ones. An adopted kitten scratched this affectionate baboon,
who certainly had a fine intellect, for she was much astonished
at being scratched, and immediately examined the kitten's
feet, and without more ado bit off the claws. 1 In the Zoo- 30
logical Gardens I heard from the keeper that an old baboon
(C. chacma) had adopted a Rhesus monkey; but when
: A critic, without any grounds ("Quarterly Review," July, 1871,
p. 72), disputes the possibility of this act as described by Brehm, for
the sake of discrediting my work. Therefore I tried, and found that
I could readily seize with my own teeth the sharp little claws of a kitten
nearly five weeks old. Author's note.
268 CHARLES DARWIN
a young drill and mandrill were placed in the cage she seemed
to perceive that these monkeys, though distinct species,
were her nearer relatives, for she at once rejected the Rhesus
and adopted both of them. The young Rhesus, as I saw,
5 was greatly discontented at being thus rejected, and it
would, like a naughty child, annoy and attack the young
drill and mandrill whenever it could do so with safety; this
conduct exciting great indignation in the old baboon. Mon-
keys will also, according to Brehm, defend their master when
10 attacked by any one, as well as dogs to whom they arc
attached, from the attacks of other dogs. But we here
trench on the subjects of sympathy and fidelity to which
I shall recur. Some of Brehm's monkeys took much delight
in teasing a certain old dog whom they disliked, as well as
15 other animals, in various ingenious ways.
Most of the more complex emotions are common to the
higher animals and ourselves. Every one has seen how
jealous a dog is of his master's affections if lavished on any
other creature; and I have observed the same fact with
20 monkeys. This shows that animals not only love, but
have a desire to be loved. Animals manifestly feel emula-
tion. They love approbation or praise; and a dog carry-
ing a basket for his master exhibits in a^liigh degree self-
complacency or pride. There can, I think, be no doubt
25 that a dog feels shame, as distinct from fear, and some-
thing very like modesty when begging too often for food.
A great dog scorns the snarling of a little dog, and this may
be called magnanimity. Several observers have stated
that monkeys certainly dislike being laughed at; and they
30 sometimes invent imaginary offenses. In the Zoological
Gardens I saw a baboon who always got into a furious rage
when his keeper took out a letter or book and read it aloud
to him; and his rage was so violent that, as I witnessed on
one occasion, he bit his own leg till the blood flowed. Dogs
35 show what may be fairly called a sense of humour as distinct
from mere play ; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown
to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 269
then squatting down with it on the ground close before him,
will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away.
The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeat-
ing the same maneuver, and evidently enjoying the practi-
cal joke. 5
We will now turn to the more intellectual emotions and
faculties, which are very important, as forming the basis
for the development of the higher mental powers. Animals
manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from ennui, as may
be seen with dogs, and, according to Rengger, with mon- 10
keys. All animals feel Wonder and many exhibit Curiosity.
They sometimes suffer from this latter quality, as when
the hunter plays antics and thus attracts them; I have
witnessed this with deer, and so it is with the wary chamois,
and with some kinds of wild ducks. Brehm gives a curious 15
account of the instinctive dread, which his monkeys exhibited,
for snakes; but their curiosity was so great that they could
not desist from occasionally satiating their horror in a most
human fashion by lifting up the lid of the box in which the
snakes were kept. I was so much surprised at his account 20
that I took a stuffed and coiled-up snake into the monkey-
house at the Zoological Gardens, and the excitement thus
caused was one of the most curious spectacles which I ever
beheld. Three species of Cercopithecus were the most
alarmed; they dashed about their cages and uttered sharp 25
signal cries of danger, which were understood by the other
monkeys. A few young monkeys and one old Anubis
baboon alone took no notice of the snake. I then placed
the stuffed specimen on the ground in one of the larger
compartments. After a time all the monkeys collected 30
round it in a large circle, and, staring intently, presented
a most ludicrous appearance. They became extremely
nervous; so that when a wooden ball, with which they were
familiar as a plaything, was accidentally moved in the sr<raw,
under which it was partly hidden, they all instantly started 35
away. These monkeys behaved very differently when a
dead fish, a mouse, a living turtle, and other new objects
270 CHARLES DARWIN
were placed in their cages; for though at first frightened,
they soon approached, handled, and examined them. I
then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth
loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. One
S of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened
the bag a little, peeped in, and instantly dashed away.
Then I witnessed what Brehm has described; for monkey
after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one
side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the
10 upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the
bottom. It would almost appear as if monkeys had some
notion of zoological affinities, for those kept by Brehm
exhibited a strange, although mistaken, instinctive dread
of innocent lizards and frogs. An orang, also, has been
15 known to be much alarmed at the first sight of a turtle.
The principle of Imitation is strong in man, and especially,
as I have myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid
states of the brain this tendency is exaggerated to an extraor-
dinary degree; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the
20 commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain,
unconsciously imitate every word which is uttered, whether
in their own or a foreign language, and^every gesture or
action which is performed near them. Desor has remarked
that no animal voluntarily imitates an action performed
25 by man, until, in the ascending scale, we come to monkeys,
which are well known to be ridiculous mockers. Animals,
however, sometimes imitate each other's actions; thus
two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs,
learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackal, but whether
30 this can be called voluntary imitation is another question.
Birds imitate the songs of their parents, and sometimes
of other birds; and parrots are notorious imitators of any
sound which they often hear. Bureau de la Malle gives an
account of a dog reared by a cat, who learned to imitate
35 the well-known action of a cat licking her paws, and thus
washing her ears and face; this was also witnessed by the
celebrated naturalist Audouin. I have received several
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 271
confirmatory accounts; in one of these, a dog had not been
suckled by a cat, but had been brought up with one, together
with kittens, and had thus acquired the above habit, which
he ever afterward practised during his life of thirteen
years. Bureau de la Malle's dog likewise learned from the 5
kittens to play with a ball by rolling it about with his fore-
paws and springing on it. A correspondent assures me
that a cat in his house used to put her paws into jugs of milk
having too narrow a mouth for her head. A kitten of this
cat soon learned the same trick, and practised it ever after- 10
ward whenever there was an opportunity.
The parents of many animals, trusting to the principle
of imitation in their young, and more especially to their
instinctive or inherited tendencies, may be said to educate
them. We see this when a cat brings a live mouse to her 15
kittens; and Bureau de la Malle has given a curious account
(in the paper above quoted) of his observations on hawks
which taught their young dexterity, as well as judgment
of distances, by first dropping through the air dead mice
and sparrows, which the young generally failed to catch, 20
and then bringing them live birds and letting them loose.
Hardly any faculty is more important for the intellectual
progress of man than Attention. Animals clearly manifest
this power, as when a cat watches by a hole and prepares
to spring on its prey. Wild animals sometimes become 25
so absorbed when thus engaged that they may be easily
approached. Mr. Bartlett has given me a curious proof
of how variable this faculty is in monkeys. A man who
trains monkeys to act in plays used to purchase common
kinds from the Zoological Society at the price of five pounds 30
for each; but he offered to give double the price if he might
keep three or four of them for a few days in order to select
one. When asked how he could possibly learn so soon
whether a particular monkey would turn out a good actor,
he answered that it all depended on their power of atten-35
tion. If when he was talking and explaining anything to a
monkey its attention was easily distracted, as by a fly on
272 CHARLES DARWIN
the wall or other trifling object, the case was hopeless.
If he tried by punishment to make an inattentive monkey
act, it turned sulky. On the other hand, a monkey which
carefully attended to him could always be trained.
5 It is almost superfluous to state that animals have
excellent memories for persons and places. A baboon at
the Cape of Good Hope, as I have been informed by Sir
Andrew Smith, recognised him with joy after an absence
of nine months. I had a dog who was savage and averse
10 to all strangers, and I purposely tried his memory after an
absence of five years and two days. I went near the stable
where he lived and shouted to him in my old manner; he
showed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and
obeyed me exactly as if I had parted with him only half an
15 hour before. A train of old associations, dormant during
five years, had thus been instantaneously awakened in
his mind. Even ants, as P. Huber has clearly shown,
recognised their fellow-ants belonging to the same com-
munity after a separation of four months. Animals can
20 certainly by some means judge of the intervals of time
between recurrent events.
The Imagination is one of the highest prerogatives of man.
By this faculty he may unite former images and ideas,
independently of the will, and thus create brilliant and novel
25 results. A poet, as Jean Paul Richter remarks, " who
must reflect whether he shall make a character say yes or
no to the devil with him; he is only a stupid corpse."
The value of the products of our imagination depends of
course on the number, accuracy, and clearness of our impres-
3osions, on our judgment and taste in selecting or rejecting
the involuntary combinations, and to a certain extent on
our power of voluntarily combining them. As dogs, cats,
horses, and probably all the higher animals, even birds,
have vivid dreams, and this is shown by their movements
35 and the sounds uttered, we must admit that they possess
some power of imagination. There must be something
special which causes dogs to howl in the night, and especially
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 273
during moonlight, in that remarkable and melancholy manner
called baying. All dogs do not do so; and, according to
Houzeau, they do not then look at the moon, but at some
fixed point near the horizon. Houzeau thinks that their
imaginations are disturbed by the vague outlines of the s
surrounding objects, and conjure up before them fantastic
images; if this be so, their feelings may almost be called
superstitious.
Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I presume,
be admitted that Reason stands at the summit. Only a 10
few persons now dispute that animals possess some power
of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause,
deliberate, and resolve. It is a significant fact, that the
more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a
naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the Ie?si5
to unlearned instincts. In future chapters we shall see
that some animals extremely low in the scale apparently
display a certain amount of reason. No doubt it is often
difficult to distinguish between the power of reason and that
of instinct. For instance, Dr. Hayes, in his work on " The 20
Open Polar Sea," repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead
of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged
and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their
weight might be more evenly distributed. This was often
the first warning which the travellers received that the ice 25
was becoming thin and dangerous. Now, did the dogs
act thus from the experience of each individual, or from the
example of the older and wiser dogs, or from an inherited
habit, that is from instinct? This instinct may possibly
have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first 30
employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the
Arctic wolves, the parent-stock of the Esquimau dog, may
have acquired an instinct impelling them not to attack
their prey in a close pack, when on thin ice.
We can only judge by the circumstances under which 35
actions are performed, whether they are due to instinct,
or to reason, or to the mere association of ideas; this latter
274 CHARLES DARWIN
principle, however, is intimately connected with reason.
A curious case has been given by Professor Mobius, of a
pike, separated by a plate of glass from an adjoining aqua-
rium stocked with fish, and who often dashed himself with
5 such violence against the glass in trying to catch the other
fishes, that he was sometimes completely stunned. The
pike went on thus for three months, but at last learned
caution, and ceased to do so. The plate of glass was then
removed, but the pike would not attack these particular
10 fishes, though he would devour others which were after-
ward introduced; so strongly was the idea of a violent
shock associated in his feeble mind with the attempt on his
former neighbours. If a savage who had never seen a large
plate-glass window, were to dash himself even once against
15 it, he would for a long time afterward associate a shock with
a window-frame; but, very differently from the pike, he
would probably reflect on the nature of the impediment,
and be cautious under analogous circumstances. Now
with monkeys, as we shall presently see, a painful or merely
20 a disagreeable impression, from an action once performed,
is sometimes sufficient to prevent the animal from repeating
it. If we attribute this difference betvs*een the monkeys
and the pike solely to the association of ideas being so much
stronger and more persistent in the one than the other,
25 though the pike often received much the more severe injury,
can we maintain in the case of man that a similar difference
implies the possession of a fundamentally different mind?
Houzeau relates that, while crossing a wide and arid
plain in Texas, his two dogs suffered greatly from thirst,
30 and that between thirty and forty times they rushed down
the hollows to search for water. These hollows were not
valleys, and there were no trees in them, or any other dif-
ference in the vegetation, and as they were absolutely dry,
there could have been no smell of damp earth. The dogs
35 behaved as if they knew that a dip in the ground offered
them the best chance of finding water, and Houzeau has
often witnessed the same behaviour in other animals.
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 275
I have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small
object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one
of the elephants in the Zoological Gardens, he blows through
his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the cur-
rent reflected on all sides may drive the object within his 5
reach. Again, a well-known ethnologist, Mr. Westropp,
informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately
making with his paw a current in some water, which was
close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating
bread within his reach. These actions of the elephant 10
and bear can hardly be attributed to instinct or inherited
habit, as they would be of little use to an animal in a state
of nature. Now, what is the difference between such
actions, when performed by an uncultivated man, and by
one of the higher animals? 15
The savage and the dog have often found water at a low
level, and the coincidence under such circumstances has
become associated in their minds. A cultivated man would
perhaps make some general proposition on the subject;
but from all that we know of savages it is extremely doubt- 20
ful whether they would do so, and a dog would certainly
not. But a savage, as well as a dog, would search in the
same way, though frequently disappointed, and in both
it seems to be equally an act of reason, whether or not any
general proposition on the subject is consciously placed 25
before the mind. The same would apply to the elephant
and the bear making currents in the air or water. The
savage would certainly neither know nor care by what
law the desired movements were effected; yet his act would
be guided by a rude process of reasoning, as surely as would 30
a philosopher in his longest chain of deductions. There
would no doubt be this difference between him and one
of the higher animals, that he would take notice of much
slighter circumstances and conditions, and would observe
any connection between them after much less experience, 35
and this would be of paramount importance. I kept a
daily record of the actions of one of my infants, and when
276 CHARLES DARWIN
he was about eleren months old, and before he could speak
a single word, I was continually struck with the greater
quickness with which all sorts of objects and sounds were
associated together in his mind, compared with that of the
5 most intelligent dogs I ever knew. But the higher animals
differ in exactly the same way in this power of association
from those low in the scale, such as the pike, as well as in
that of drawing inferences and of observation.
The promptings of reason, after very short experience,
10 are well shown by the following actions of American mon-
keys, which stand low in their order. Rengger, a most
careful observer, states that when he first gave eggs to his
monkeys in Paraguay they smashed them and thus lost
much of their contents; afterward they gently hit one end
1 5 against some hard body, and picked off the bits of shell
with their fingers. After cutting themselves only once
with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or
would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of sugar
were often given them wrapped up in paper; and Rengger
20 sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily
unfolding it they got stung; after this had once happened
they always held the packet to their ea*s to detect any
movement within.
The following cases relate to dogs. Mr. Colquhoun
25 winged two wild ducks, which fell on the farther side of a
stream; his retriever tried to bring over both at once, but
could not succeed; she then, though never before known
to ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over
the other, and returned for the dead bird. Colonel Hutchin-
30 son relates that two partridges were shot at once, one being
killed, the other wounded; the latter ran away and was
caught by the retriever, who on her return came across
the dead bird: " She stopped, evidently greatly puzzled,
and after one or two trials, finding she could not take it
35 up without permitting the escape of the winged bird, she
considered a moment, then deliberately murdered it by giving
it a severe crunch, and afterward brought away both
MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND LOWER ANIMALS 277
together. This was the only known instance of her ever
having wilfully injured any game." Here we have reason,
though not quite perfect, for the retriever might have
brought the wounded bird first and then returned for the
dead one, as in the case of the two wild-ducks. I give the 5
above cases as resting on the evidence of two independent
witnesses and because in both instances the retrievers,
after deliberation, broke through a habit which is inherited
by them (that of not killing the game retrieved), and because
they show how strong their reasoning faculty must have 10
been to overcome a fixed habit.
I will conclude by quoting a remark by the illustrious
Humboldt. " The muleteers in South America say, ' I will
not give you the mule whose step is easiest, but la mas
rational the one that reasons best;' " and, as he adds, 15
" this popular expression, dictated by long experience,
combats the system of animated machines better perhaps
than all the arguments of speculative philosophy." Never-
theless some writers even yet deny that the higher animajs
possess a trace of reason; and they endeavour to explain 20
away, by what appears to be mere verbiage, all such facts
as those above given.
It has, I think, now been shown that man and the higher
animals, especially the Primates, have some few instincts
in common. All have the same senses, intuitions, and 25
sensations similar passions, affections, and emotions, even
the more complex ones, such as jealousy, suspicion, emula-
tion, gratitude and magnanimity; they practise deceit and
are revengeful; they are sometimes susceptible to ridicule,
and even have a sense of humour; they feel wonder and 30
curiosity; they possess the same faculties of imitation,
attention, deliberation, choice, memory, imagination, the
association of ideas, and reason, though in very different
degrees.
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST: A SOURCE OF
BEAUTY AND ESSENTIAL TO LIFE 1
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
THE majority of persons, if asked what were the uses of
dust, would reply that they did not know it had any, but
they were sure it was a great nuisance. It is true that dust,
in our towns and in our houses, is often not only a nuisance
shut a serious source of disease: while in many countries
it produces ophthalmia, often resulting in total blindness.
Dust, however, as it is usually perceived by us, is, like dirt,
only matter in the wrong place, and whatever injurious or
disagreeable effects it produces are largely due to our own
10 dealings with nature. So soon as we dispense with horse-
power and adopt purely mechanical means of traction and
conveyance, we can almost wholly abolish disease-bearing
dust from our streets, and ultimately from all our highways;
while another kind of dust, that caused by the imperfect
15 combustion of coal, may be got rid of with equal facility
so soon as we consider pure air, sunlight, and natural beauty
to be of more importance to the population as a whole than
are the prejudices or the vested interests of those who pro-
duce the smoke.
20 But though we can thus minimize the dangers and the
inconveniences arising from the grosser forms of dust, we
cannot wholly abolish it; and it is, indeed, fortunate we
cannot do so, since it has now been discovered that it is to
the presence of dust we owe much of the beauty, and per-
1 Chapter IX of " The Wonderful Century," copyright, 1898, by
Dodd, Mead and Company. The chapter is here reprinted by permis-
sion of the author, Dr. Wallace, and of the publishers.
278
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 279
haps even the very habitability of the earth we live upon.
Few of the fairy tales of science are more marvelous than
these recent discoveries as to the varied effects and import-
ant uses of dust in the economy of nature.
The question why the sky and the deep ocean are both 5
blue did not much concern the earlier physicists. It was
thought to be the natural color of pure air and water, so
pale as not to be visible when small quantities were seen,
and only exhibiting its true tint when we looked through
great depth of atmosphere or of organic water. But this 10
theory did not explain the familiar facts of the gorgeous
tints seen at sunset and sunrise, not only in the atmosphere
and on the clouds near the horizon, but also in equally re-
splendent hues when the invisible sun shines upon Alpine
peaks and snowfields. A true theory should explain all 15
these colors, which comprise almost every tint of the rain-
bow.
The explanation was found through experiments on the
visibility or non-visibility of air, which were made by the
late Professor Tyndall about the year 1868. Everyone 20
has seen the floating dust in a sunbeam when sunshine
enters a partially darkened room; but it is not generally
known that if there was absolutely no dust in the air the
path of the sunbeam would be totally black and invisible,
while if only very little dust was present in very minute 25
particles the air would be as blue as the summer sky.
This was proved by passing a ray of electric light length-
ways through a long glass cylinder filled with air of varying
degrees of purity as regards dust. In the air of an ordinary
room, however clean and well ventilated, the interior of the 30
cylinder appears brilliantly illuminated. But if the cylinder
is exhausted and then filled with air which is passed slowly
through a fine gauze of intensely heated platinum wire,
so as to burn up all the floating dust particles, which are
mainly organic, the light will pass through the cylinder 35
without illuminating the interior, which, viewed laterally,
will appear as if filled with a dense black cloud. If, now,
280 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
more air is passed into the cylinder through the heated
gauze, but so rapidly that the dust particles are not wholly
consumed, a slight blue haze will begin to appear, which
will gradually become a pure blue, equal to that of a summer
5 sky. If more and more dust particles are allowed to enter,
the blue becomes paler, and gradually changes to the colour-
less illumination of the ordinary air.
The explanation of these phenomena is that the number
of dust particles in ordinary air is so great that they reflect
10 abundance of light of all wave-lengths, and thus cause the
interior of the vessel containing them to appear illuminated
with white light. The air which is passed slowly over
white-hot platinum has had the dust particles destroyed,
thus showing that they were almost wholly of organic origin,
15 which is also indicated by their extreme lightness, causing
them to float permanently in the atmosphere. The dust
being thus got rid of, and pure air being entirely transparent,
there is nothing in the cylinder to reflect the light, which is
sent through its centre in a beam of parallel rays so that
20 none of it strikes against the sides; hence the inside of the
cylinder appears absolutely dark. But when the larger
dust particles are wholly or partially burtit, so that only
the very smallest fragments remain, a blue light appears,
because these are so minute as to reflect chiefly the more
25 refrangible rays, which are of shorter wave-length those
at the blue end of the spectrum and which are thus scat-
tered in all directions, while the red and yellow rays pass
straight on as before.
We have seen that the air near the earth's surface is full
30 of rather coarse particles which reflect all the rays, and
which therefore produce no one colour. But higher up the
particles necessarily become smaller and smaller, since the
comparatively rare atmosphere will support only the very
smallest and lightest. These exist throughout a great
35 thickness of air, perhaps from one mile to ten miles high or
even more, and blue or violet rays being reflected from the
innumerable particles in this great mass of air, which is
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 281
nearly uniform in all parts of the world as regards the presence
of minute dust particles, produces the constant and nearly
uniform tint we call sky-blue. A certain amount of white or
yellow light is no doubt reflected from the coarser dust in
the lower atmosphere, and slightly dilutes the blue and 5
renders it not quite so deep and pure as it otherwise would
be. This is shown by the increasing depth of the sky-colour
when seen from the tops of lofty mountains, while from the
still greater heights attained in balloons the sky appears
of a blue-black colour, the blue reflected from the com- 10
paratively small amount of dust particles being seen against
the intense black of stellar space. It is for the same reason
that the " Italian skies " are of so rich a blue, because the
Mediterranean Sea on one side and the snowy Alps on the
other do not furnish so large a quantity of atmospheric 15
dust in the lower strata of air as in less favorably situated
countries, thus leaving the blue reflected by the more
uniformly distributed fine dust of the higher strata undiluted.
But these Mediterranean skies are surpassed by those of
the central Pacific ocean, where, owing to the small area 20
of land, the lower atmosphere is more free from coarse dust
than in any other part of the world.
If we look at the sky on a perfectly fine summer's day, we
shall find that the blue colour is the most pure and intense
overhead, and when looking high up in a direction opposite 25
to the sun. Near the horizon it is always less bright, while
in the region immediately around the sun it is more or less
yellow. The reason of this is that near the horizon we look
through a very great thickness of the lower atmosphere,
which is full of the larger dust particles reflecting white 30
light, and this dilutes the pure blue of the higher atmosphere
seen beyond. And in the vicinity of the sun a good deal
of the blue light is reflected back into space by the finer
dust, thus giving a yellowish tinge to that which reaches
us reflected chiefly from the coarse dust of the lower atmos- 35
phere. At sunset and sunrise, however, this last effect is
greatly intensified, owing to the great thickness of the
282 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
strata of air through which the light reaches us. The
enormous amount of this dust is well shown by the fact
that, then only, we can look full at the sun, even when
the whole sky is free from clouds and there is no appar-
Sent mist. But the sun's rays then reach us after having
passed, first, through an enormous thickness of the higher
strata of the air, the minute dust of which reflects most of
the blue rays away from us, leaving the complementary
yellow light to pass on. Then, the somewhat coarser dust
10 reflects the green rays, leaving a more orange coloured light
to pass on; and finally some of the yellow is reflected, leav-
ing almost pure red. But owing to the constant presence
of air currents, arranging both the dust and vapour in strata
of varying extent and density, and of high or low clouds,
15 which both absorb and reflect the light in varying degrees,
we see produced all those wondrous combinations of tints
and those gorgeous everchanging colours, which are a con-
stant source of admiration and delight to all who have
the advantage of an uninterrupted view to the west, and
20 who are accustomed to watch for these not un frequent
exhibitions of nature's kaleidoscopic colour-painting. With
every change in the altitude of the sun thadisplay changes
its character; and most of all when it has sunk below
the horizon, and, owing to the more favourable angles, a
25 larger quantity of the coloured light is reflected toward us.
Especially is this the case when there is a certain amount
of cloud. The clouds, so long as the sun is above the horizon,
intercept much of the light and colour; but, when the great
luminary has passed away from our direct vision, his light
30 shines more directly on the under sides of all the clouds and
air strata of different densities; a new and more brilliant
light flushes the western sky, and a display of gorgeous
ever-changing tints occurs which are at once the delight of
the beholder and the despair of the artist. And all this
35 unsurpassable glory we owe to dust !
A remarkable confirmation of this theory was given during
the two or three years after the great eruption of Krakatoa,
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 283
near Java. The volcanic debris was shot up from the
crater many miles high, and the heavier portion of it fell
upon the sea for several hundred miles around, and was
found to be mainly composed of very thin flakes of volcanic
glass. Much of this was of course ground to impalpable 5
dust by the violence of the discharge, and was carried up to a
height of many miles. Here it was caught by the return
currents of air continually flowing northward and south-
ward above the equatorial zone; and since, when these
currents reach the temperate zone, where the surface rota- 10
tion of the earth is less rapid, they continually flow east-
ward, the fine dust was thus carried at a great altitude com-
pletely around the earth. Its effects were traced some
months after the eruption in the appearance of brilliant
sunset glows of an exceptional character, often flushing 15
w r ith crimson the whole western half of the visible sky.
These glows continued in diminishing splendour for about
three years; they were seen all over the temperate zone;
and it was calculated that, before they finally disappeared,
some of this fine dust must have travelled three times round 20
the globe.
The same principle is thought to explain the exquisite
blue colour of the deep seas and oceans and of many lakes
and springs. Absolutely pure water, like pure air, is colour-
less, but all seas and lakes, however clear and translucent, 25
contain abundance of very finely divided matter, organic
or inorganic, which, as in the atmosphere, reflects the blue
rays in such quantity as to overpower the white or coloured
light reflected from the fewer and more rapidly sinking
particles of larger size. The oceanic dust is derived from 30
many sources. Minute organisms are constantly dying near
the surface, and their skeletons, or fragments of them, fall
slowly to the bottom. The mud brought down by rivers,
though it cannot be traced on the ocean floor morcj than
about 150 miles from land, yet no doubt furnishes many 35
particles of organic matter which are carried by surface
currents to enormous distances and are ultimately dissolved
284 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
before they reach the bottom. A more important source
of finely divided matter is to be found in volcanic dust which,
as in the case of Krakatoa, may remain for years in the
atmosphere, but which must ultimately fall upon the sur-
5 face of the earth and ocean. This can be traced in all the
deep-sea oozes. Finally there is meteoric dust, which is
continually falling to the surface of the earth, but in such
minute quantities and in such a finely-divided state that
it can be detected only in the oozes of the deepest oceans,
10 where both inorganic and organic debris is almost absent.
The blue of the ocean varies in different parts from a pure
blue somewhat lighter than that of the sky, as seen about the
northern tropic in the Atlantic, to a deep indigo tint, as seen
in the north temperate portions of the same ocean: owing,
1 5 probably, to differences in the nature, quantity, and dis-
tribution of the solid matter which causes the colour. The
Mediterranean, and the deeper Swiss lakes, are also a blue
of various tints, due also to the presence of suspended matter,
which Professor Tyndall thought might be so fine that it
20 would require ages of quiet subsidence to reach the bottom.
All the evidence goes to show, therefore, that the exquisite
blue tints of sky and ocean, as well as alMhe sunset hues
of sky and cloud, of mountain peak and Alpine snows, are
due to the finer particles of that very dust which, in its
25 coarser forms, we find so annoying and even dangerous.
But if this production of colour and beauty were the only
useful function of dust, some persons might be disposed to
dispense with it in order to escape its less agreeable effects.
It has, however, been recently discovered that dust has
30 another part to play in nature; a part so important that it
is doubtful whether we could even live without it. To the
presence of dust in the higher atmosphere we owe the for-
mation of mists, clouds, and gentle beneficial rains, instead
of water spouts and destructive torrents.
35 It is barely twenty years ago since the discovery was made,
first in France by Coulier and Mascart, but more thoroughly
worked out by Mr. John Aitken in 1880. He found that if
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 285
a jet of steam is admitted into two large glass receivers,
one filled with ordinary air, the other with air which has
been filtered through cotton wool so as to keep back all
particles of solid matter, the first will be instantly filled
with condensed vapour in the usual cloudy form, while the s
other vessel will remain quite transparent. Another experi-
ment was made, more nearly reproducing what occurs in
nature. Some water was placed in the two vessels pre-
pared as before. When the water had evaporated sufficiently
to saturate the air the vessels were slightly cooled; a dense 10
cloud was at once formed in the one while the other remained
quite clear. These experiments, and many others, show that
the mere cooling of vapour in air will not condense it into
mist clouds or rain, unless particles of solid matter are present
to form nuclei upon which condensation can begin. The 15
density of the cloud is proportionate to the number of the
particles; hence the fact that the steam issuing from the
safety-valve or the chimney of a locomotive forms a dense
white cloud, shows that the air is really full of dust particles,
most of which are microscopic but none the less serving 20
as centres of condensation for the vapour. Hence, if there
were no dust in the air, escaping steam would remain in-
visible; there would be no cloud in the sky; and the vapour
in the atmosphere, constantly accumulating through evapo-
ration from seas and oceans and from the earth's surface, 25
would have to find some other means of returning to its
source.
One of these modes would be the deposition of dew, which
is itself an illustration of the principle that vapour requires
solid or liquid surfaces to condense upon; dew forms most 30
readily and abundantly on grass, on account of the numerous
centres of condensation this affords. Dew, however, is
now formed only on clear cold nights after warm or moist
days. The air near the surface is warm and contains much
vapour, though below the point of saturation. But the 35
innumerable points and extensive surfaces of grass radiate
heat quickly, and becoming cool, lower the temperature of
286 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
the adjacent air, which then reaches saturation point and
condenses the contained atmosphere on the grass. Hence,
if the atmosphere at the earth's surface became super-
saturated with aqueous vapour, dew would be continuously
S deposited, especially on every form of vegetation, the result
being that everything, including our clothing, would be
constantly dripping wet. If there were absolutely no par-
ticles of solid matter in the upper atmosphere, all the mois-
ture would be returned to the earth in the form of dense
10 mists, and frequent and copious dews, which in forests
would form torrents of rain by the rapid condensation on
the leaves. But if we suppose that solid particles were
occasionally carried higher up through violent winds or
tornadoes, then on those occasions the super-saturated
1 5 atmosphere would condense rapidly upon them, and while
falling would gather almost all the moisture in the atmos-
phere in that locality, resulting in masses or sheets of water,
which would be so ruinously destructive by the mere weight
and impetus of their fall that it is doubtful whether they
20 would not render the earth almost wholly uninhabitable.
The chief mode of discharging the atmospheric vapour
in the absense of dust would, however, be*by contact with
the higher slopes of all mountain ranges. Atmospheric
vapour, being lighter than air, would accumulate in enormous
25 quantities in the upper strata of the atmosphere, which
would be always super-saturated and ready to condense
upon any solid or liquid surfaces. But the quantity of land
comprised in the upper half of all the mountains of the
world is a very small fraction of the total surface of the globe,
30 and this would lead to very disastrous results. The air in
contact with the higher mountain slopes \vould rapidly
discharge its water, which would run down the mountain
sides in torrents. This condensation on every side of the
mountains would leave a partial vacuum which would set
35 up currents from every direction to restore the equilibrium,
thus bringing in more super-saturated air to suffer conden-
sation and add its supply of water, again increasing the
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 287
in-draught of more air. The result would be that winds
would be constantly blowing toward every mountain range
from all directions, keeping up the condensation and dis-
charging, day and night and from one year's end to another,
an amount of water equal to that which falls during 5
the heaviest tropical rains. All of the rain that now
falls over the whole surface of the earth and ocean, with
the exception of a few desert areas, would then fall only
on rather high mountains or steep isolated hills, tearing down
their sides in huge torrents, cutting deep ravines, and ren- 10
dering all growth of vegetation impossible. The mountains
would therefore be so devasted as to be uninhabitable,
and would be equally incapable of supporting either vege-
table or animal life.
But this constant condensation on the mountains would 15
probably check the deposit on the lowlands in the form of
dew, because the continual up-draught toward the higher
slopes would withdraw almost the whole of the vapour as it
arose from the oceans, and other water-surfaces, and thus
leave the lower strata over the plains almost or quite dry. 20
And if this were the case there would be no vegetation,
and therefore no animal life, on the plains and lowlands,
which would thus be all arid deserts cut through by the
great rivers formed by the meeting together of the innu-
merable torrents from the mountains. 25
Now, although it may not be possible to determine with
perfect accuracy what would happen under the supposed
condition of the atmosphere, it is certain that the total
absence of dust would so fundamentally change the meteor-
ology of our globe as, not improbably, to render it unin-3o
habitable by man, and equally unsuitable for the larger
portion of its existing animal and vegetable life.
Let us now briefly summarise what we owe to the univer-
sality of dust, and especially to that most finely divjded
portion of it which is constantly present in the atmosphere 35
up to the height of many miles. First of all it gives us the
pure blue of the sky, one of the most exquisitely beautiful
288 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
colours in nature. It gives us also the glories of the sunset
and the sunrise, and all those brilliant hues seen in high
mountain regions. Half the beauty of the world would
vanish with the absence of dust. But, what is far more
5 important than the colour of sky and beauty of sunset, dust
gives us also diffused daylight, or skylight, that most equable,
and soothing, and useful, of all illuminating agencies.
Without dust the sky would appear absolutely black, and
the stars would be visible even at noonday. The sky
10 itself would therefore give us no light. We should have
bright glaring sunlight or intensely dark shadows, with
hardly any half-tones. From this cause alone the world
would be so totally different from what it is that all vegetable
and animal life would probably have developed into very
15 different forms, and even our own organisation would have
been modified in order that we might enjoy life in a world of
such harsh and violent contrasts.
In our houses we should have little light except when the
sun shone directly into them, and even then every spot
20 out of its direct rays would be completely dark, except for
light reflected from the walls. It would be necessary to
have windows all around and the walls all wfcite; and on the
north side of every house a high white wall would have to be
built to reflect the light and prevent that side from being in
25 total darkness. Even then we should have to live in a
perpetual glare, or shut out the sun altogether and use
artificial light as being a far superior article.
Much more important would be the effects of a dust-
free atmosphere in banishing clouds, or mist, or the " gentle
30 rain of heaven," and in giving us in their place perpetual
sunshine, desert lowlands, and mountains devastated by
unceasing floods and raging torrents, so as, apparently, to
render all life on the earth impossible.
There are a few other phenomena, apparently due to the
35 same general causes, which may here be referred to. Every-
one must have noticed the difference in the atmospheric
effects and general character of the light in spring and autumn,
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 289
at times when the days are of the same length, and con-
sequently when the sun has the same altitude at correspond-
ing hours. In spring we have a bluer sky and greater
transparency of the atmosphere; in autumn, even on very
fine days, there is always a kind of yellowish haze, resulting 5
in a want of clearness in the air and purity of colour in the
sky. These phenomena are quite intelligible when we
consider that during winter less dust is formed, and more
is brought down to the earth by rain and snow, resulting
in the transparent atmosphere of spring, while exactly 10
opposite conditions during summer bring about the mellow
autumnal light. Again, the well-known beneficial effects
of rain on vegetation, as compared with any amount of
artificial watering, though, no doubt, largely due to the
minute quantity of ammonia which the rain brings down 15
with it from the air, must yet be partly derived from the
organic or mineral particles which serve as the nuclei of
every raindrop, and which, being so minute, are the more
readily dissolved in the soil and appropriated as nourish-
ment by the roots of plants. 20
It will be observed that all these beneficial effects of dust
are due to its presence in such quantities as are produced
by natural causes, since both gentle showers as well as ample
rains and deep blue skies are present throughout the vast
equatorial forest districts, where dust-forming agencies 25
seem to be at a minimum. But in all densely-populated
countries there is an enormous artificial production of dust
from our ploughed fields, from our roads and streets, where
dust is continually formed by the iron-shod hoofs of innum-
erable horses, but chiefly from our enormous combustion of 30
fuel pouring into the air volumes of smoke charged with
unconsumed particles of carbon. This superabundance
of dust, probably many times greater than that which would
be produced under the more natural conditions which pre-
vailed when our country was more thinly populated, must 35
almost certainly produce some effect on our climate; and
the particular effect it seems calculated to produce is the
290 ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
increase of cloud and fog, but not necessarily any increase
of rain. Rain depends on the supply of aqueous vapour
by evaporation; on temperature, which determines the
dew point; and on changes in barometric pressure, which
S determine the winds. There is probably always and every-
where enough atmospheric dust to serve as centres of
condensation at considerable altitudes, and thus to initiate
rainfall when the other conditions are favourable; but the
presence of increased quantities of dust at the lower levels
10 must lead to the formation of denser clouds, although the
minute water-vesicles cannot descend as rain, because, as
they pass down into warmer and dryer strata of air, they
are again evaporated.
Now, there is much evidence to show that there has been
15 a considerable increase in the amount of cloud, and conse-
quent decrease in the amount of sunshine, in all parts of
our country. It is an undoubted fact that in the Middle
Ages England was a wine-producing country, and this
implies more sunshine than we have now. Sunshine has
20 a double effect, in heating the surface soil and thus causing
more rapid growth, besides its direct effect in ripening the
fruit. This is well seen in Canada, where, Notwithstanding
a six months' winter of extreme severity, vines are grown
as bushes in the open ground, and produce fruit equal to
25 that of our ordinary greenhouses. Some years back one of
our gardening periodicals obtained from gardeners of forty
or fifty years' experience a body of facts clearly indicating a
comparatively recent change of climate. It was stated
that in many parts of the country, especially in the north,
30 fruits were formerly grown successfully and of good quality
in gardens where they cannot be grown now; and this
occurred in places sufficiently removed from manufacturing
centres to be unaffected by any direct deleterious influence
of smoke. But an increase of cloud, and consequent diminu-
35tion of sunshine, would produce just such a result; and this
increase is almost certain to have occurred owing to the
enormously increased amount of dust thrown into the
THE IMPORTANCE OF DUST 291
atmosphere as our country has become more densely pop-
ulated, and especially owing to the vast increase of our
smoke-producing manufactories. It seems highly probable,
therefore, that to increase the wealth of our capitalist-
manufacturers we are allowing the climate of our whole 5
country to be greatly deteriorated in a way which diminishes
both its productiveness and its beauty, thus injuriously
affecting the enjoyment and the health of the whole popula-
tion, since sunshine is itself an essential condition of healthy
life. When this fact is thoroughly realised we shall surely 10
put a stop to such a reckless and wholly unnecessary pro-
duction of injurious smoke and dust.
In conclusion, we find that the much-abused and all-
pervading dust, which, when too freely produced, deteri-
orates our climate and brings us dirt, discomfort, and 15
even disease, is, nevertheless, under natural conditions,
an essential portion of the economy of nature. It gives
us much of the beauty of natural scenery, as due to varying
atmospheric effects of sky, and cloud, and sunset tints,
and thus renders life more enjoyable; while, as an essential 20
condition of diffused daylight and of moderate rainfalls
combined with a dry atmosphere, it appears to be absolutely
necessary for our existence upon the earth, perhaps even
for the very development of terrestrial, as opposed to
aquatic life. The overwhelming importance of the small 25
things, and even of the despised things, of our world has
'never, perhaps, been so strikingly brought home to us as
in these recent investigations into the wide-spread and far-
reaching beneficial influences of Atmospheric Dust.
THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS l
HENRY DAVID- THOREAU
ONE day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather
my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red,
the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black,
fiercely contending with one another. Having once got
5 hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled
on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was sur-
prised to find that the chips were covered with such com-
batants, that it was not a duellum, but a belhim, a war
between two races of ants, the red always pitted against
io the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The
legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales
in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with
the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only
battle which I have ever witnessed, the ocly battlefield I
15 ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war;
the red republicans on the one hand, and the black impe-
rialists on the other. On every side they were engaged
in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear,
and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched
20 a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in
a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day pre-
pared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out.
The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice
to his adversary's front, and through all the tumblings on
25 that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his
feelers near the root, having already caused the other to
go by the board; w r hile the stronger black one dashed him
1 From Chapter XII of " Walden," 1854.
THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS 293
from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had
already divested him of several of his members. They
fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither
manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident
that their battle-cry was Conquer or Die. In the mean- 5
while there came along a single red ant on the hill-side of
this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had
despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle;
probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose
mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon 10
it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished
his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his
Patroclus. 1 He saw this unequal combat from afar,
for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the reds; he
drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within 15
half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his oppor-
tunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced
his operations near the root of his right foreleg, leaving the
foe to select among his own members; and so there were
three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been 20
invented which put all other locks and cements to shame.
I should not have wondered by this time to find that they
had their respective musical bands stationed on some
eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while,
to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. 1 25
was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men.
The more you think of it, the less the difference. And
certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord his-
tory, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a
moment's comparison with this, whether for the numbers 30
engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.
For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden.
Concord Fight ! Two killed on the patriots' side, and Luther
Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttock,
"Fire! for God's sake, fire!" and thousands shared the 35
1 Patroclus, in Homer's Iliad, was the friend whose death at the
hands of the Trojans roused Achilles to action.
294 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one nireling there.
I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as
much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax
on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important
5 and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the
battle of Bunker Hill, at least.
I took up the chip on which the three I have particularly
described were struggling, carried it into my house, and
placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to
10 see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned
red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at
the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remain-
ing feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what
vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose
1 5 breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce;
and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with
ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled
half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked
again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes
20 from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging
on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-
bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he
was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without
feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know
25 not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them;
which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished.
I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in
that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that com-
bat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des
solnvalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry
would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned
which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but
I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings
excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the
35 ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door.
Kirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have
long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though
THE BATTLE OF THE ANTS 295
they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears
to have witnessed them. " tineas Sylvius," say they,
" after giving a very circumstantial account of one con-
tested with great obstinacy by a great and small species
on the trunk of a pear tree," adds that " ' This action was 5
fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the
presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who
related the whole history of the battle with the greatest
fidelity.' A similar engagement between great and small
ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones i
being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their
own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey
to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion
of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden." The
battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of 15
Polk, five years before the passage of Webster's Fugitive-
Slave Bill.
A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS l
JOHN MUIR
THE mountain winds, like the dew and rain, sunshine and
snow, are measured and bestowed with love on the forests,
to develop their strength and beauty. However restricted
the scope of other forest influences, that of the winds is
5 universal. The snow bends and trims the upper forests
every winter, the lightning strikes a single tree here and there,
while avalanches mow down thousands at a swoop as a
gardener trims out a bed of flowers. But the winds go to
every tree, fingering every leaf and branch and furrowed
10 bole; not one is forgotten: the Mountain Pine towering
with outstretched arms on the rugged buttresses of the
icy peaks, the lowliest and most retiring tenant of the
dells they seek and find them all, caressing them tenderly,
bending them in lusty exercise, stimulating their growth,
15 plucking off a leaf or limb as required, or removing an entire
tree or grove, now w T hispering and cooing through the
branches like a sleepy child, now roaring like the ocean;
the winds blessing the forests, the forests the winds, with
ineffable beauty and harmony as the sure result.
20 After one has seen pines six feet in diameter bending like
grasses before a mountain gale, and ever and anon some
giant falling with a crash that shakes the hills, it seems
astonishing that any, save the lowest thick-set trees, could
ever have found a period sufficiently stormless to establish
25 themselves; or once established, that they should not sooner
or later have been blown down. But when the storm is
1 From " The Mountains of California," copyright 1894. Printed
here by permission of the Century Company.
296
A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS 297
over, and we behold the same forests tranquil again, tower-
ing fresh and unscathed in erect majesty, and consider what
centuries of storms have fallen upon them since they were
first planted: hail, to break the tender seedlings; lightning,
to scorch and shatter; snow, winds, and avalanches, to 5
crush and overwhelm, -while the manifest result of all
this wild storm-culture is the glorious perfection we behold :
then faith in Nature's forestry is established, and we cease
to deplore the violence of her most destructive gales, or of
any other storm implement whatsoever. 10
There are two trees in the Sierra forests that are never
blown down, so long as they continue in sound health.
These are the Juniper and the Dwarf Pine of the summit
peaks. Their stiff, crooked roots grip the storm-beaten
ledges like eagles' claws; while their lithe, cord like branches 15
bend round compliantly, offering but slight holds for winds,
however violent. The other alpine conifers the Needle
Pine, Mountain Pine, Two-leaved Pine, and Hemlock
Spruce are never thinned out by this agent to any destruc-
tive extent, on account of their admirable toughness and 20
the closeness of their growth. In general the same is true
of the giants of the lower zones. The kingly Sugar Pine,
towering aloft to a height of more than two hundred feet,
offers a fine mark to storm- winds; but it is not densely
foliaged, and its long horizontal arms swing round com- 25
pliantly in the blast, like tresses of green, fluent algae in a
brook: while the Silver Firs in most places keep their ranks
well together in united strength.
The Yellow or Silver Pine is more frequently overturned
than any other tree on the Sierra, because its leaves and 30
branches form a larger mass in proportion to its height;
while in many places it is planted sparsely, leaving open
lanes through which storms may enter with full force.
Furthermore, because it is distributed along the lower
portion of the range, which was the first to be left bare on 35
the breaking up of the ice-sheet at the close of the glacial
winter, the soil it is growing upon has been longer exposed
298 JOHN MUIR
to post-glacial weathering, and consequently is in a more
crumbling, decayed condition than the fresher soils farther
up the range, and therefore offers a less secure anchorage
for the roots. While exploring the forest zones of Mount
5 Shasta, I discovered the path of a hurricane strewn with
thousands of pines of this species. -<keat and small had
been uprooted or wrenched off by sheer force, making a
clean gap, like that made by a snow avalanche. But hur-
ricanes capable of doing this class of work are rare in the
10 Sierra; and when we have explored the forests from one
extremity of the range to the other, we are compelled to
believe that they are the most beautiful on the face of the
earth, however we may regard the agents that have made
them so.
15 There is always something deeply exciting, not only in the
sounds of winds in the woods, which exert more or less
influence over every mind, but in their varied water-like
flow as manifested by the movements of the trees, espe-
cially those of the conifers. By no other trees are they
20 rendered so extensively and impressively visible; not even
by the lordly tropic palms or tree-ferns responsive to the
gentlest breeze. The waving of a forest of4he giant Sequoias
is indescribably impressive and sublime; but the pines
seem to me the best interpreters of winds. They are mighty
25 waving golden-rods, ever in tune, singing and writing wind-
music all their long century lives. Little, however, of this
noble tree- waving and tree-music will you see or hear in
the strictly alpine portion of the forests. The burly Juniper
whose girth sometimes more than equals its. height, is about
30 as rigid as the rocks on which it grows. The slender lash-
like sprays of the Dwarf Pine stream out in wavering ripples,
but the tallest and slenderest are far too unyielding to wave
even in the heaviest gales. They only shake in quick,
short vibrations. The Hemlock Spruce, however, and the
35 Mountain Pine, and some of the tallest thickets of the Two-
leaved species, bow in storms with considerable scope and
gracefulness. But it is only in the lower and middle zones
A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS 299
that the meeting of winds and woods is to be seen in all its
grandeur.
One of the most beautiful and exhilarating storms I ever
enjoyed in the Sierra occurred in December, 1874, when I
happened to be exploring one of the tributary valleys of the s
Yuba River. The sky and the ground and the trees had been
thoroughly rain-washed and were dry again. The day was
intensely pure: one of those incomparable bits of Cali-
fornia winter, warm and balmy and full of white sparkling
sunshine, redolent of all the purest influences of the spring, 10
and at the same time enlivened with one of the most bracing
wind-storms conceivable. Instead of camping out, as I
usually do, I then chanced to be stopping at the house of a
friend. But when the storm began to sound, I lost no time
in pushing out into the woods to enjoy it. "For on such 15
occasions Nature has always something rare to show us,
and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one
would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof.
It was still early morning when I found myself fairly
adrift. Delicious sunshine came pouring over the hills, 20
lighting the tops of the pines, and setting free a steam of
summery fragrance that contrasted strangely with the wild
tones of the storm. The air was mottled with pine-tassels
and bright green plumes, that went flashing past in the sun-
light like birds pursued. But there was not the slightest 25
dustiness; nothing less pure than leaves, and ripe pollen,
and flecks of withered bracken and moss. I heard trees
falling for hours at the rate of one every two or three minutes:
some uprooted, partly on account of the loose, water-soaked
condition of the ground; others broken straight across, 30
where some weakness caused by fire had determined the
spot. The gestures of the various trees made a delightful
study. Young Sugar Pines, light and feathery as squirrel-
tails, were bowing almost to the ground; while the grand
old patriarchs, whose massive boles had been tried' in a 35
hundred storms, waved solemnly above them, their long,
arching branches streaming fluently on the gale, and every
300 JOHN MUIR
needle thrilling and ringing and shedding of! keen lances
of light like a diamond. The Douglas Spruces, with long
sprays drawn out in level tresses, and needles massed in a
gray, shimmering glow, presented a most striking appearance
5 as they stood in bold relief along the hilltops. The madronos
in the dells, with their red bark and large glossy leaves
tilted every way, reflected the sunshine in throbbing spangles
like those one so often sees on the rippled surface of a glacier
lake. But the Silver Pines were now the most impressively
10 beautiful of all. Colossal spires two hundred feet in height
waved like supple golden-rods chanting and bowing low as
if in worship; while the whole mass of their long, tremulous
foliage was kindled into one continuous blaze of white sun-
fire. The force of the gale was such that the most stead-
15 fast monarch of them all rocked down to its roots, with a
motion plainly perceptible when one leaned against it.
Nature was holding high festival, and every fiber of the most
rigid giants thrilled with glad excitement.
I drifted on through the midst of this passionate music
20 and motion, across many a glen, from ridge to ridge; often
halting in the lee of a rock for shelter, or to gaze and listen.
Even when the grand anthem had swelled to its highest
pitch, I could distinctly hear the varying tones of individual
trees Spruce, and Fir, and Pine, and leafless Oak and
25 even the infinitely gentle rustle of the withered grasses at
my feet. Each was expressing itself in its own way sing-
ing its own song, and making its own peculiar gestures
manifesting a richness of variety to be found in no other
forest I have yet seen. The coniferous woods of Canada
30 and the Carolinas and Florida, are made up of trees that
resemble one another about as nearly as blades of grass,
and grow close together in much the same way. Coniferous
trees, in general, seldom possess individual character, such
as is manifest among Oaks and Elms. But the California
35 forests are made up of a greater number of distinct species
than any other in the world. And in them we find, not
only a marked differentiation into special groups, but also
A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS 301
a marked individuality in almost every tree, giving rise
to storm effects indescribably glorious.
Toward midday, after a long, tingling scramble through
copses of hazel and ceanothus, I gained the summit of the
highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred 5
to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees,
to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the ^olian
music of its topmost needles. But under the circumstances
the choice of a tree was a serious matter. One whose instep
was not very strong seemed in danger of being blown down, 10
or of being struck by others in case they should fall; another
was branchless to a considerable height above the ground,
and at the same time too large to be grasped with arms and
legs in climbing; while others were not favorably situated
for clear views. After cautiously casting about, I made 15
choice of the tallest of a group of Douglas Spruces that
were growing close together like a tuft of grass, no one of
which seemed likely to fall unless all the rest fell with it.
Though comparatively young, they were about a hundred
feet high, and their lithe, brushy tops were rocking and 20
swirling in wild ecstasy. Being accustomed to climb trees
in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in
reaching the top of this one; and never before did I enjoy
so noble an exhileration of motion. The slender tops fairly
flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and 25
swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing
indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves,
while I clung with muscles firm-braced, like a bobolink
on a reed.
In its widest sweeps my tree-top described an arc of from 30
twenty to thirty degrees; but I felt sure of its elastic temper,
having seen others of the same species still more severely
tried bent almost to the ground indeed, in heavy snows
without breaking a fiber. I was therefore safe, and free to
take the wind into my pulses and enjoy the excited forest 35
from my superb outlook. The view from here must be
extremely beautiful in any weather. Now my eye roved
302 JOHN MUIR
over the piny hills and dales as over fields of waving grain,
and felt the light running in ripples and broad swelling
undulations across the valleys from ridge to ridge, as the
shining foliage was stirred by corresponding waves of air.
5 Oftentimes these waves of reflected light would break one
another in regular order, they would seem to bend forward
in concentric curves, and disappear on some hillside, like sea
waves on a shelving shore. The quantity of light reflected
from the bent needles was so great as to make whole groves
10 appear as if covered with snow, while the black shadows
beneath the trees greatly enhanced the effect of the silvery
splendor.
Excepting only the shadows, there was nothing somber in
all this wild sea of pines. On the contrary, notwithstand-
15 ing this was the winter season, the colors were remarkably
beautiful. The shafts of the pine and libocedrus were
brown and purple, and most of the foliage was well tinged
with yellow; the laurel groves, with the pale under sides
of their leaves turned upward, made masses of gray; and
20 then there was many a dash of chocolate color from clumps
of manzanita, and jet of vivid crimson from the bark of the
madronos; while the ground on the hillsides, appearing here
and there through openings between the groves, displayed
masses of pale purple and brown.
25 The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with
this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass
of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls;
the quick, tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising
to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur;
30 the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic
click of leaf on leaf all this was heard in easy analysis when
the attention was calmly bent.
The varied gestures of the multitude were seen to find
advantage, so that one could recognize the different species
35 at a distance of several miles by this means alone, as well
as by their forms and colors and the way they reflected
the light. All seemed strong and comfortable, as if really
A WIND-STORM JN THE FORESTS 303
enjoying the storm, while responding to its most enthu-
siastic greetings. We hear much nowadays concerning
the universal struggle for existence, but no struggle in the
common meaning of the word was manifest here; no recog-
nition of danger by any tree; no deprecation: but rather 5
an invincible gladness, as remote from exultation as from
fear.
I kept my lofty perch for hours, frequently closing my
eyes to enjoy the music by itself, or to feast quietly on the
delicious fragrance that was streaming past. The fra- 10
grance of the woods was less marked than that produced
during warm rain, when so many balsamic buds and leaves
are steeped like tea; but from the chafing of resiny branches
against each other, and the incessant attrition of myriads
of needles, the gale was spiced to a very tonic degree. And 15
besides the fragrance from these local sources, there were
traces of scents brought from afar. For this wind came
first from the sea, rubbing against its fresh, briny waves,
then distilled through the redwoods, threading rich ferny
gulches, and spreading itself in broad undulating currents 20
over many a flower-enameled ridge of the coast mountains,
then across the golden plains, up the purple foot-hills, and
into these piny woods with the varied incense gathered
by the way.
Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however 25
much or little we may be able to read them; telling their
wanderings even by their scents alone. Mariners detect
the flowery perfume of land-winds far at sea, and sea-
winds carry the fragrance of dulce and tangle far inland,
where it is quickly recognized, though mingled with the 30
scents of a thousand land-flowers. As an illustration of
this, I may tell here that 1 breathed sea-air on the Firth of
Forth, in Scotland, while a boy; then was taken to Wis-
consin, where I remained nineteen years; then, without
in all this time having breathed one breath of the sea, 135
walked quietly, alone, from the middle of the Mississippi
Valley to the Gulf of Mexico, on a botanical excursion;
304 JOHN MUIR
and while in Florida, far from the coast, my attention wholly
bent on the splendid tropical vegetation about me, I sud-
denly recognized a sea-breeze, as it came sifting through
the palmettos and blooming vine-tangles, which at once
5 awakened and set free a thousand dormant associations,
and made me a boy again in Scotland, as if all the inter-
vening years had been annihilated.
Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear
them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though
10 far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become
at times about as visible as flowing water. When the north
winds in winter are making upward sweeps over the curving
summits of the High Sierra, the fact 'is sometimes published
with flying snow-banners a mile long. Those portions
1 5 of the winds thus embodied can scarce be wholly invisible,
even to the darkest imagination. And when we look around
over an agitated forest, we may see something of the wind
that stirs it, by its effects upon the trees. Yonder it de-
scends in a rush of water-like ripples, and sweeps over the
20 bending pines from hill to hill. Nearer, we see detached
plumes and leaves, now speeding by on level currents, now
whirling in eddies, or escaping over the edges ofthe whirls,
soaring aloft on grand, upswelling domes of air, or tossing
on flame-like crests. Smooth, deep currents, cascades,
25 falls, and swirling eddies, sing around every tree and leaf,
and over all the varied topography of the region with tell-
ing changes of form, like mountain rivers conforming to
the features of their channels.
After tracing the Sierra streams from their fountains
30 to the plains, marking where they bloom white in falls,
glide in crystal plumes, surge gray and foam-filled in
bowlder-choked gorges, and slip through the woods in long,
tranquil reaches after thus learning their language and
forms in detail, we may at length hear them chanting all
35 together in one grand anthem, and comprehend them all
in clear inner vision, covering the range like lace. But
even this spectacle is far less sublime and not a whit more
A WIND-STORM IN THE FORESTS 305
substantial than what we may behold of these storm-streams
of air in the mountain woods.
We all travel the Milky Way together, trees and men;
but it never occurred to me until this storm day, while
swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary 5
sense. They make many journeys; not extensive ones,
it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back
again, are only little more than tree-wavings many of them
not so much.
When the storm began to abate, I dismounted and saun- 10
tered down through the calming woods. The storm-tonts
died away, and turning toward the east, I beheld the count-
less hosts of the forests hushed and tranquil, towering
above one another on the slopes of the hills like a devout
audience. The setting sun filled them with amber light, 15
and seemed to say, while they listened, " My peace I give
unto you."
As I gazed on the impressive scene, all the so-called ruin
of the storm was forgotten; and never before did these
noble woods appear so fresh, so joyous, so immortal. 20
WALDEN POND '
HENRY DAVID TIIOREAU
OCCASIONALLY, after my hoeing was done for the day,
I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing
on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a
duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds
5 of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I
arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of Coenobites.
There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in
all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my
house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen ;
10 and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to
arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the
pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not
many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in
his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which
15 harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Our inter-
course was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far
more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by
speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had none to
commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with
20 a paddle on the side of my boat, filing the surrounding
woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up
as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited
a growl from every w r ooded vale and hillside.
In warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing
25 the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed,
hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed
bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest.
1 From Chapter IX of " Walden," 1854.
306
WALDEN POND 307
Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from
time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion,
and making a fire close to the water's edge, which we
thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch
of worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far 5
in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air
like sky-rockets, which, coming down into the pond, were
quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping
in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took
our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made 10
my home by the shore.
Sometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the
family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and,
partly with a view to the next day's dinner, spent the hours
of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded 15
by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the
creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. These
experiences were very memorable and valuable to me,
anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods
from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of 20
small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their
tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen
line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwell-
ing forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of
line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, 25
now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative
of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain
blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind.
At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some
horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It 30
was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts
had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other
spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt
your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed
as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well 35
as downward into this element which was scarcely more
dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook.
308 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though
very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it
much concern one who has not long frequented it, or lived
by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth
sand purity as to merit a particular description. It is a
clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and
three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-
one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine
and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except
10 by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise
abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet,
though on the southeast and east they attain to about one
hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a
quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively wood-
15 land. All our Concord waters have two colors at least, one
when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close
at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows
the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue
at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great
20 distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are
sometimes of a dark slate color. The sea^, however, is said
to be blue one day and green another without any percep-
tible change in the atmosphere. I have seen our river,
when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water
25 and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider
blue " to be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid."
But looking directly down into our waters from a boat,
they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue
at one time and green at another, even from the same point
30 of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it par-
takes of the color of both. Viewed from a hilltop it reflects
the color of the sky, but near at hand it is of a yellowish
tint next the shore w T here you can see the sand, then a light
green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green
35 in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from
a hilltop, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have
referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally
WALDEX POND 309
green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring,
before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the
result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the
sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion,
also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat 5
of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted
through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal
about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters,
when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface
of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because 10
there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little dis-
tance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such
a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision,
so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless
and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable 15
silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky
itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite
sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in com-
parison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it,
like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud 20
vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of
its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal
quantity of air. It is well-known that a large plate of glass
will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its
" body," but a small piece of the same will be colorless. 25
How large a body of Walden water would be required to
reflect a green tint I have never proved. The water of
our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking
directly down on it, and like that of most ponds, imparts
to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but 30
this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of
the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more
unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and dis-
torted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit
studies for a Michael Angelo. 35
The water is so transparent that the bottom can easily
be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet.
310 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Paddling over it, you may see many feet beneath the
surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only
an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their
transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic
5 fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter,
many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through
the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed
my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had
directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the
10 holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of
curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the
hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its
head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro
with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood
15 erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle
rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole
directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting
down the longest birch which I could find in the neighbor-
hood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached
20 to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the
knob of the handle, and drew it by a line, along the birch,
and so pulled the axe out again.
The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white
stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand
25 beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap
will carry you into water over your head; and were it not
for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last
to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side.
Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a
30 casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all
in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows
recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a
closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even
a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and
35 potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all
which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants
are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The
WALDEN POND 311
stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the
bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where
there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay
of the leaves, which have been wafted on to it so many
successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on 5
anchors even in midwinter.
We have one other pond just like this, White Pond in
Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly;
but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within
a dozen miles of this center, I do not know a third of this 10
pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance
have drunk at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away,
and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an
intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning when
Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden, Walden Pond was 15
already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle
spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind,
and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had
not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them.
Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had 20
clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now
wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only
Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews.
Who knows in how may unremembered nations' literatures
this has been the Castalian Fountain? 1 or what nymphs 25
presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first
water which Concord wears in her coronet.
Yet perchance the first who came to this well have left
some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to
detect encircling the pond, even where a thickwood has 30
just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in
the steep hillside, alternately rising and falling, approach-
ing and receding from the water's edge, as old probably as
the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters,
and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the 35
1 The Castalian Fountain on Mount Parnassus was sacred to Apollo
and the Muses.
312 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct
to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just
after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating
white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious
5 a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is
hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints
it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The orna-
mented grounds of villas which will one day be built here
may still preserve some trace of this.
10 The pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not,
and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual,
many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the
winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding
to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when
1 5 it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least
five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow
sand-bar running into it, very deep water on one side, on
which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from
the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been
20 possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the other hand,
my friends used to listen with incredulity -*vhen I told them
that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat
in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only
shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a
25 meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years,
and now, in the summer of '52, is just five feet higher than
when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and
fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a dif-
ference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet
30 the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in
amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which
affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has
begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation,
whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many
35 years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise
and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen
years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever
WALDEX POND 313
known it. Flint's Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the
disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the
smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden,
and recently attained their greatest height at the same time
with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation 5
goes, of White Pond.
This rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this
use at least: the water standing at this great height for a
year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it,
kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its 10
edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens,
and others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed
shore; for, unlike many ponds, and all waters which are
subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water
is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house, a row 15
of pitch-pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped
over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroach-
ments; and their size indicates how many years have
elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctua-
tion the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore 20
is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession.
These are the lips of the lake on which no beaid grows. It
licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at
its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass
of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their 25
stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet
from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves;
and I have known the high blueberry bushes about the
shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant
crop under these circumstances. 30
Some have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so
regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradi-
tion the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their
youth that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-
wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens 35
as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used
much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one
314 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were
thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only
one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the
pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the
5 hill shook, these stones rolled down its side and became the
present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once
there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this
Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account
of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remem-
lobers so well when he first came here with his divining-rod,
saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel
pointed ' steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a
well here. As for the stones, many still think that they
are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves
1 5 on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are
remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they
have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of
the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are
most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfor-
aotunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the
paver. If the name was not derived from that of some
English locality Saffron Walden, for instance one might
suppose that is was called, originally, Walled-in Pond.
The pond was my well ready dug. For four months in
25 the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I
think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the
town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air
is colder than springs and wells which are protected from
it. The temperature of the pond water which had stood
30 in the room where I sat from five o'clock in the afternoon
till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the ther-
mometer having been up to 65 or 70 some of the time,
owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42, or one degree
colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the
35 village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling Spring
the same day was 45, or the warmest of any water tried,
though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, when,
VVALDEN POND 315
besides, shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled
with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so
warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account
of its depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a
pailful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, 5
and remained so during the day; though I also resorted
to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a
a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of
the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the
shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet 10
deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the
luxury of ice.
There have been caught in Walden, pickerel, one weigh-
ing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried
off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely 15
set down at eight pounds because he did not see him, perch
and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners,
chivins or roach (Leucisus pulchellus], a very few breams,
and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds I am
thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly 20
its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have
heard of here; also, I have a faint recollection of a little
fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish
back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention
here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this 25
pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not
abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time
lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds:
a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught
in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections 30
and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and
another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but pep-
pered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots,
intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones very much, like
a trout. The specific name reticulatus * would not apply 35
to this; it should be guttatus 2 rather. These are all very
1 With net-like markings. a Speckled.
316 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The
shiners, pouts, and perch, also, and indeed all the fishes
which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and
firmer fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds,
5 as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished
from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make
new varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race
of frogs and tortoises, and a few mussels in it; muskrats
and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a
10 travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed
off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle
which had secreted himself under the boat in the night.
Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-
bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the
ispeetweets (Totanus macularius) " teter " along its stony
shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk
sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it
is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair-Haven. At
most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals
20 of consequence which frequent it now.
You may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the
sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet
deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some cir-
cular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height,
25 consisting of small stones less than, a hen's egg in size, where
all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians
could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so,
when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are
too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that.
30 They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are
no suckers or lampreys here, I know not by what fish they
could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin.
These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom.
The shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I
35 have in my mind's eye the western indented with deep
bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped
southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other
WALDEN POND 317
and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has
never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as
when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which
rise from the water's edge; for the water in which it is
reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, 5
but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable
boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in
its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a
cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to
expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most i
vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has
woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just grada-
tions from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees.
There are few traces of man's hand to be seen. The water
laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago. 15
A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive
feature. It is earth's eye; looking into which the beholder
measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile
trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe
it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhang- 20
ing brows.
Standing on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of
the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight
haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen
whence came the expression, "the glassy surface of a 25
lake." When you invert your head, it looks like a thread
of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleam-
ing against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum
of the atmosphere from another. You would think that
you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that 30
the swallows which skim over might perch on it. Indeed,
they sometimes dive below the line, as it were by mistake,
and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward
you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your
eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they 35
are equally bright ; and if, between the two, you survey its
surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except
318 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over
its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the
finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes
itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch
sit. It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc
of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash
where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water;
sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and
there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface,
10 which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like
molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes
in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass.
You may often detect a yet smoother and darker w^ater,
separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom
15 of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hilltop'you can
see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner
picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly
disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful
with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised
20 this piscine murder will out and fnfai my distant perch
I distinguish the circling undulations when they are half
a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-
bug (Gyrlnus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth
surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water
25 slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two
diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling
it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated
there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently,
in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously
30 glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they com-
pletely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of
those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun
is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as
this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles
35 which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible
surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great
expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently
WALDEN POND 319
smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is
jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth
again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond
but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty,
as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle 5
pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills
of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How
peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of
man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and
stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when 10
covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an
oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar
falls, how sweet the echo!
In such a day in September or October, Walden is a per-
fect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my 15
eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so lair, so pure, and at
the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the sur-
face of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations
come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no
stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, 20
whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no
dust, can dim its surface ever fresh a mirror in which all
impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the
sun's hazy brush this the light dust-cloth which retains
no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float 25
as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected
in its bosom still.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is
continually receiving new life and motion from above. It
is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On 30
land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is
rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across
it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that
we can look down on its surface. \Ve shall, perhaps, look
down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where 35
a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.
The skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the
320 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come;
and then and in November, usually, on a calm day, there
is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One Novem-
ber afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain storm of
5 several days' duration, when the sky was still completely
overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the
pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to
distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the
bright tints of October, but the somber November colors
10 of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently
as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat
extended almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed
appearance to the reflections. But, as I was looking over
the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glim-
i5mer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts
might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being
so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bot-
tom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was sur-
prised to find myself surrounded by^nyriads of small perch,
20 about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green
water, sporting there and constantly rising to the surface
and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such
transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the
clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon,
25 and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or
hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing
just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like
sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in
the pond, apparently improving the short season before
30 winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight,
sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight
breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I
approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a
sudden plash and rippling with their tails, as if one had
35 struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took
refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist
increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped
WALDEN POND 321
much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred
black points, three inches long, at once above the surface.
Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some
dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain
hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste 5
to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already
the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on
my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But
suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the
perch, which the noise of my oars had scared into the depths, 10
and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a
dry afternoon after all.
An old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty
years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells
me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with 15
ducks and other water fowl, and that there were many
eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old
log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of
two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was
cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted 20
a great many years before it became water-logged and per-
haps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it was;
it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his
anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man,
a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told 25
him once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that
he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the
shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into
deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old
log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same 30
material but more graceful construction, which perchance
had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were,
fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most
proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I 'first
looked into these depths there were many large trunks 35
to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either
been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last
322 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly
disappeared.
When I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was com-
pletely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods,
5 and in some of its coves grape vines had run over the trees
next the water and formed bowers under which a boat
could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep,
and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you
looked down from the west end, it had the appearance
10 of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle.
I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating
over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my
boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats,
in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused
1 5 by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what
shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness
was the most attractive and productive industry. Many
a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the
most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money,
20 in sunny hours and summer days, afrid spent them lavishly;
nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the
workshop or at the teacher's desk. But since I left those
shores the wood-choppers have still further laid them waste,
and now for many a year there will be no more rambling
25 through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through
which you see the water. My Muse may be excused if she
is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing
when their groves are cut down?
Now the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log
3 o canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and
the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of
going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring
its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least,
to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with! to earn
35 their Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug!
That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard
throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with
WALDEN POND 323
his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on
Walden shore; that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in
his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the
country's champion, the Moore of Moore Hall, l to meet
him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between 5
the ribs of the bloated pest?
Nevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps
Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many
men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor.
Though the wood-choppers have laid bare first this shore 10
and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it,
and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men
have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same
water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in
me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all 15
its ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and
see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its
surface as of yore. It struck me again to-night, as if I had
not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years Why,
here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered 20
so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter
another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the
same thought is welling up to its surface that was then;
it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker,
ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man, 25
surely, in whom there was no guile! He rounded this water
with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and
in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that
it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say,
Walden, is it you? 30
It is no dream of mine,
To ornament a line;
I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven
Than I live to Walden even.
I am its stony shore, 35
And the breeze that passes o'er;
1 The hero of an old ballad.
324 HENRY DAVID THOREAU
In the hollow of my hand
Are its water and its sand,
And its deepest resort
Lies high in my thought.
5 The cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the
engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers
who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men
for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or
his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of
10 serenity and purity once at least during the day. Though
seen but once, it helps to wash out State-street and the
engine's soot. One proposes that it be called " God's Drop."
I have said that Walden has no visible inlet or outlet,
but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related
15 to Flint's Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of
small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other
directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower,
by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other
geological period it may have flowed; and by a little dig-
so ging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither
again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit
in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity,
who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters
of Flint's Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should
25 ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?
SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
A. LEAFAGE OF TREES 1
ONE of the most remarkable characters of natural leafage
is the constancy with which, while the leaves are arranged
on the spray with exquisite regularity, that regularity is
modified in their actual effect. For as in every group of
leaves some are seen sideways, forming merely long lines, 5
some foreshortened, some crossing each other, every one
differently turned and placed from all the others, the forms
of the leaves, though in themselves similar, give rise to a
thousand strange and differing forms in the group; and
the shadows of some, passing over the others, still farther 10
disguise and confuse the mass until the eye can distinguish
nothing but a graceful and flexible disorder of innumerable
forms, with here and there a perfect leaf on the extremity,
or a symmetrical association of one or two, just enough
to mark the specific character and to give unity and grace, 15
but never enough to repeat in one group what was done in
another, never enough to prevent the eye from feeling that,
however regular and mathematical may be the structure
of parts, what is composed out of them is as various and
infinite as any other part of nature. Nor does this take 20
place in general effect only. Break off an elm bough three
feet long, in full leaf, and lay it on the table before you, and
try to draw it, leaf for leaf. It is ten to one if in the whole
bough (provided you do not twist it about as you work)
you find one form of leaf exactly like another; perhaps you 25
will not even have one complete. Every leaf will be oblique,
or foreshortened, or curled, or crossed by another, or shaded
1 From " Modern Painters," Vol. I, 1843, Pt. II, Sec. VI Chapter I.
325
320 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
by another, or have something or other the matter with it;
and though the whole bough will look graceful, and sym-
metrical, you will scarcely be able to tell how or why it does
so, since there is not one line of it like another. . . .
5 But if Nature is so various when you have a bough on
the table before you, what must she be when she retires from
you, and gives you her whole mass and multitude? The
leaves then at the extremities become as fine as dust, a mere
confusion of points and lines between you and the sky,
10 a confusion which you might as well hope to draw sea-sand
particle by particle, as to imitate leaf for leaf. This, as it
comes down into the body of the tree, gets closer, but never
opaque; it is always transparent, with crumbling lights in
it letting you through to the sky; then, out of this, come,
1 5 heavier and heavier, the masses of illumined foliage, all
dazzling and inextricable, save here and there a single leaf
on the extremities; then, unde- these, you get deep passages
of broken irregular gloom, passing into transparent, green-
lighted, misty hollows; the twisted, stems glancing through
20 them in their pale and entangled infinity, and the shafted
sunbeams, rained from above, running along the lustrous
leaves for an instant; then lost, then caught again on some
emerald bank or knotted root, to be sent up again with a
faint reflex on the white under-sides of dim groups of droop-
25 ing foliage, the shadows of the upper boughs running in
grey network down the glossy stems, and resting in quiet
chequers upon the glittering earth; but all penetrable and
transparent, and, in proportion, inextricable and incom-
prehensible, except where across the labyrinth and the mys-
30 tery of the dazzling light and dream-like shadow, falls, close
to us, some solitary spray, some wreath of two or three
motionless, large leaves, the type and embodying of all that
in the rest we feel and imagine, but can never see.
SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN 327
B. WATER l
OF all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper
nature, and without assistance or combination, water is
the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all
the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds;
then as the instrument by which the earth we have con- 5
templated was modelled into symmetry, and its crags
chiselled into grace; then as, in the form of snow, it robes
the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light
which we could not have conceived if we had not seen ; then
as it exists in the foam of the torrent, in the iris which spans 10
it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep
crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the
broad lake and glancing river; finally, in that which is to
all human minds the best emblem of unwearied, uncon-
querable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity 15
of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this
universal element, for glory and for beauty? or how shall
we follow its eternal changefulness of feeling? It is like
trying to paint a soul.
To suggest the ordinary appearance of calm water, to 20
lay on canvas as much evidence of surface and reflection
as may make us understand that water is meant, is, per-
haps, the easiest task of art; and even ordinary running
or falling water may be sufficiently rendered, by observing
careful curves of projection with a dark ground, and breaking 25
a little white over it, as we see done with judgment and
truth by Ruysdael. But to paint the actual play of hue
on the reflective surface, or to give the forms and fury of
water when it begins to show itself; to give the flashing
and rocket-like velocity of a noble cataract, or the precision 30
and grace of the sea wave, so exquisitely modelled, though
so mockingly transient, so mountainous in its form, yet so
cloudlike in its motion, with its variety and delicacy of colour,
1 From " Modern Painters," Vol. I, Pt. II, Sec. V, Chapter I.
328 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
when every ripple and wreath has some peculiar passage of
reflection upon itself alone, and the radiating and scintillat-
ing sunbeams are mixed with the dim hues of transparent
depth and dark rock below to do this perfectly is beyond
5 the power of man; to do it even partially has been granted
to but one or two, even of those few who have dared to
attempt it. ...
The fact is that there is hardly a road-side pond or pool
which has not as much landscape in it as above it. It is not
10 the brown, muddy, dull thing we suppose it to be; it has a
heart like ourselves, and in the bottom of that there are the
boughs of the tall trees, and the blades of the shaking grass,
and all manner of hues of variable pleasant light out of the
sky. Nay, the ugly gutter, that stagnates over the drain-
is bars in the heart of the foul city, is not altogether base;
down in that, if you will look deep enough, you may see the
dark serious blue of far-off sky, and the passing of pure
clouds. It is at your own will that you see in that despised
stream either the refuse of the street, or the image of the
20 sky. So it is with almost all other things that we unkindly
despise.
C. THE MOUNTAIN GLORY l
THE best image which the world can give of Paradise is
in the slope of the meadows, orchards, and corn-fields on the
_ sides of a great Alp, with its purple rocks and eternal snows
above; this excellence not being in any wise a matter referable
to feeling, or individual preferences, but demonstrable
by calm enumeration of the number of lovely colours on the
rocks, the varied grouping of the trees, and quantity of noble
incidents in stream, crag, or cloud, presented to the eye at
any given moment.
For consider, first, the difference produced in the whole
tone of landscape colour by the introductions of purple,
violet, and deep ultramarine blue, which we owe to moun-
1 From " Modern Painters," Vol. IV, 1856, Chapter XX.
SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN 329
tains. In an ordinary lowland landscape we have the blue
of the sky; the green of grass, which I will suppose (and this
is an unnecessary concession to the lowlands) entirely fresh
and bright; the green of trees; and certain elements of
purple, far more rich and beautiful than we generally should 5
think, in their bark and shadows (bare hedges and thickets,
or tops of trees, in subdued afternoon sunshine, are nearly
perfect purple, and of an exquisite tone), as well as in ploughed
fields, and dark ground in general. But among mountains,
in addition to all this, large unbroken spaces of pure violet 10
and purple are introduced in their distances; and even near,
by films of cloud passing over the darkness of ravines or
forests, blues are produced of the most subtle tenderness;
these azures and purples passing into rose-colour of other-
wise wholly unattainable delicacy among the upper summits, 15
the blue of the sky being at the same time purer and deeper
than in the plains. Nay, in some sense, a person who has
never seen the rose-colour of the rays of dawn crossing a
blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly
be said to know what tender ness in colour means at all ; bright 20
tenderness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower,
but this grave tenderness of the faraway hill-purples he
cannot conceive.
Together with this great source of pre-eminence in mass
of colour, we have to estimate the influence of the finished 25
inlaying and enamel-work of the colour- jewellery on every
stone; and that of the continual variety in species of flower;
most of the mountain flowers being, besides, separately
lovelier than the lowland ones. The wood hyacinth and the
wild rose are, indeed, the only supreme flowers that the 30
lowlands can generally show; and the wild rose is also a
mountaineer, and more fragrant in the hills, while the wood
hyacinth, at its best, cannot match even the dark bell-gentian,
leaving the light-blue star-gentian in its uncontested queen-
liness, and the Alpine rose and Highland heather wholly 35
without similitude. The violet, lily of the valley, crocus,
and wood anemone are, I suppose, claimable partly by the
330 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
plains as well as the hills; but the large orange lily and
narcissus I have never seen but on hill pastures, and the
exquisite oxalis is pre-eminently a mountaineer.
To this supremacy in mosses and flowers we have next
5 to add an inestimable gain in the continual presence and
power of water. Neither in its clearness, its colour, its
fantasy of motion, its calmness of space, depth, and reflec-
tion, or its wrath, can water be conceived by a lowlander,
out of sight of sea. A sea wave is far grander than any
10 torrent but of the sea and its influences we are not now
speaking; and the sea itself, though it can be clear, is never
calm, among our shores, in the sense that a mountain lake
can be calm. The sea seems only to pause; the mountain
lake to sleep, and to dream. Out of sight of the ocean a
1 5 lowlander cannot be considered ever to have seen water at
all. The mantling of the pools in the rock shadows, with the
golden flakes of light sinking down through them like falling
leaves, the ringing of the thin currents among the shallows,
the flash and the cloud of the Cascade, the earthquake and
20 foam-fire of the cataract, the long lines of alternate mirror
and mist that lull the imagery of the hills reversed in the
blue of morning, all these things belong to those hills as
their undivided inheritance.
To this supremacy in wave and stream is joined a no less
25 manifest pre-eminence in the character of trees. It is
possible among plains, in the species of trees which properly
belong to them, the poplars of Amiens, for instance, to
obtain a serene simplicity of grace, which, as I said, is a
better help to the study of gracefulness, as such, than any
30 of the wilder groupings of the hills; so, also, there are cer-
tain conditions of symmetrical luxuriance developed in the
park and avenue, rarely rivalled in their way among moun-
tains; and yet the mountain superiority in foliage is, on the
whole, nearly as complete as it is in water: for exactly as
35 there are some expressions in the broad reaches of a navigable
lowland river, such as the Loire or Thames, not, in their
way, to be matched among the rock rivers, and yet for all
SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN 331
that a lowlander cannot be said to have truly seen the ele-
ment of water at all; so even in the richest parks and
avenues he cannot be said to have truly seen trees. For
the resources of trees are not developed until they have
difficulty to contend with; neither their tenderness of 5
brotherly love and harmony, till they are forced to choose
their ways of various life where there is contracted room
for them, talking to each other with their restrained branches.
The various action of trees rooting themselves in inhospitable
rocks, stooping to look into ravines, hiding from the search 10
of glacier winds, reaching forth to the rays of rare sunshine,
crowding down together to drink at sweetest streams,
climbing hand in hand among the difficult slopes, opening in
sudden dances round the mossy knolls, gathering into com-
panies at rest among the fragrant fields, gliding in grave 15
procession over the heavenward ridges nothing of this can
be conceived among the unvexed and unvaried felicities
of the lowland forest: while to all these direct sources of
greater beauty are added, first the power of redundance,
the mere quantity of foliage; visible in the folds and on the 20
promontories of a single Alp being greater than that of an
entire lowland landscape (unless a view from some cathedral
tower); and to this charm of redundance, that of clearer
visibility, tree after tree being constantly shown in successive
height, one behind another, instead of the mere tops and 25
flanks of masses, as in the plains; and the forms of multitudes
of them continually defined against the clear sky, near and
above, or against white clouds entangled among their
branches, instead of being confused in dimness of distance.
Finally, to this supremacy in foliage we have to add the 30
still less questionable supremacy in clouds. There is no
effect of sky possible in the lowlands which ma}- not in equal
perfection be seen among the hills; but there are effects
by tens of thousands, for ever invisible and inconceivable
to the inhabitant of the plains, manifested among the hills 35
in the course of one day. The mere power of familiarity
with the clouds, of walking with them and above them,
332 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
alters and renders clear our whole conception of the baseless
architecture of the sky; and for the beauty of it, there is
more in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an
avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes,
Sthan in all the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the
plains from one horizon to the other. And of the nobler
cloud manifestations, the breaking of their troublous
seas against the crags, their black spray sparkling with
lightning; or the going forth of the morning along their
10 pavements of moving marble, level-laid between dome and
dome of snow; of these things there can be as little imagina-
tion or understanding in an inhabitant of the plains as of
the scenery of another planet than his own.
And, observe, all these superiorities are matters plainly
15 measurable and calculable, not in any wise to be referred
to estimate of sensaticn. Of the grandeur or expression of
the hills I have not spoken; how far they arc great, or strong,
or terrible, I do not for the moment consider, because vast-
ness, and strength, and terror, are not to all minds subjects
20 of desired contemplation. It mfcy make no difference to
some men whether a natural object be large or small, whether
it be strong or feeble. But loveliness of colour, perfectness
of form, endlessness of change, wonderfulness of structure,
are precious to all undiseased human minds; and the supe-
25 riority of the mountains in all these things to the lowland
is, I repeat, as measurable as the richness of a painted win-
dow matched with a white one, or the wealth of a museum
compared with that of a simply furnished chamber.
They seem to have been built for the human race, as at once
3 their schools and cathedrals; full of treasures of illuminated
manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons to the
worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in
holiness for the worshipper.
SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN 333
D. SPLENDOURS OF SUNSET l
WE have been speaking hitherto of what is constant and
necessary in nature, of the ordinary effects of daylight on
ordinary colours, and we repeat again that no gorgeousness
of the pallet can reach even these. But it is a widely dif-
ferent thing when Nature herself takes a colouring fit, and 5
does something extraordinary, something really to exhibit
her power. She has a thousand ways and means of ris-
ing above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifesta-
tions of her capability of colour are in these sunsets among
the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before 10
the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when
this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-
forms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour,
which would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and
which give, therefore, fair field to the tone of light. There is, 15
then, no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity,
of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the
horizon becomes one molten mantling sea of colour and
fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple
and wave into unsullied shadowless crimson, and purple, 20
and scarlet, and colours for which there are no words in
language, and no ideas in the mind things which can only
be conceived while they are visible; the intense hollow
blue of the upper sky melting through it all, showing here
deep, and pure, and lightless; there, modulated by the 25
filmy formless body of the transparent vapour, till it is
lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold. The concur-
rence of circumstances necessary to produce the sunsets
of which I speak does not take place above five or
six times in a summer, and then only for a space of from 30
five to ten minutes, just as the sun reaches the horizon.
Considering how seldom people think of looking for a sun-
set at all, and how seldom, if they do, they are in a position
1 From " Modern Painters," Vol. I, Ft. II, Sec. II. Chapter II.
334 SELECTIONS FROM RUSKIN
from which it can be fully seen, the chances that their
attention should be awake, and their position favourable,
during these few flying instants of the year, are almost as
nothing. What can the citizen, who can see only the red
5 light on the canvas of the wagon at the end of the street,
and the crimson colour of the bricks of his neighbour's
chimney, know of the flood of fire which deluges the sky
from the horizon to the zenith? What can even the quiet
inhabitant of the English lowlands, whose scene for the
to manifestation of the fire of heaven is limited to the tops of
hayricks, and the rooks' nests in the old elm trees, know
of the mighty passages of splendour which are tossed from
Alp to Alp over the azure of a thousand miles of champaign?
Even granting the constant vigour of observation, and
1 5 supposing the possession of such impossible knowledge,
it needs but a moment's reflection to prove how incapable
the memory is of retaining for any time the distinct image of
the sources even of its most vivid impressions. What
recollection have we of the sunsets which delighted us last
20 year? We may know that the}' were magnificent, or glow-
ing, but no distinct image of colour or form is retained
nothing of whose degree (for the great difficulty with the
memory is to retain, not facts, but degrees of fact) we could
be so certain as to say of anything now presented to us,
25 that it is like it. If we did say so, we should be wrong;
for we may be quite certain that the energy of an impression
fades from the memory, and becomes more and more
indistinct every day; and thus we compare a faded and
indistinct image with the decision and certainty of one
5 o present to the senses. How constantly do we affirm that
the thunderstorm of last week was the most terrible one we
ever saw in our lives, because we compare it, not with the
thunderstorm of last year, but with the faded and feeble
recollection of it.
THE STOICS 1
WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
THE Stoics asserted two cardinal principles that virtue
was the sole legitimate object to be aspired to, and that it
involved so complete an ascendancy of the reason as alto-
gether to extinguish the affections. The Peripatetics and
many other philosophers, who derived their opinions chiefly 5
from Plato, endeavoured to soften down the exaggeration
of these principles. They admitted that virtue was an object
wholly distinct from interest, and that it should be the
leading motive of life; but they maintained that happiness
was also a good, and a certain regard for it legitimate. They 10
admitted that virtue consisted in the supremacy J of the
reason over the affections, but they allowed the exercise
of the latter within restricted limits. The main distinguish-
ing features, however, of stoicism, the unselfish ideal and the
controlling reason, were acquiesced in, and each represents^
an important side of the ancient conception of excellence
which we must now proceed to examine.
In the first we may easily trace the intellectual expression
of the high spirit of self-sacrifice which the patriotic enthu-
siasm had elicited. The spirit of patriotism has this peculiar 20
characteristic, that while it has evoked acts of heroism
which are both very numerous and very sublime, it has
done so without presenting any prospect of personal
immortality as a reward. Of all the forms of human heroism,
it is probably the most unselfish. The Spartan and the 25
Roman died for his country because he loved it/ The
1 From Chapter II, Vol. I, of '' History of European Morals," 1869.
The author's foot-notes have been omitted.
335
336 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
martyr's ecstasy of hope had no place in his dying hour.
He gave up all he had, he closed his eyes, as he believed, for
ever, and he asked for no reward in this world or in the next.
Even the hope of posthumous fame the most refined and
5 supersensual of all that can be called reward could exist
only for the most conspicuous leaders. It was examples of
this nature that formed the culminations or ideals of ancient
systems of virtue, and they naturally led men to draw a
very clear and deep distinction between the notions of
10 interest and of duty. It may indeed be truly said, that
while the conception of what constituted duty was often
very imperfect in antiquity, the conviction that duty, as
distinguished from every modification of selfishness, should
be the supreme motive of life, was more clearly enforced
15 among the Stoics than in any later society.
The reader will probably have gathered from the last
chapter that there are four distinct motives which moral
teachers may propose for the purpose of leading men to
virtue. They may argue that the disposition of events is
20 such that prosperity will attend a virtuous life, and adversity
a vicious one a proposition they may prove by pointing to
the normal course of affairs, anck by asserting the existence
of a special Providence in behalf of the good in the present
world, and of rewards and punishments in the future. As
25 far as these latter arguments are concerned, the efficacy
of such teaching rests upon the firmness with which certain
theological tenets are held, while the force of the first con-
siderations will depend upon the degree and manner in which
society is organised, for there are undoubtedly some con-
3oditions of society in which a perfectly upright life has not
even a general tendency to prosperity. The peculiar
circumstances and dispositions of individuals will also
influence largely the way in which they receive such teaching,
and, as Cicero observed, " what one utility has created,
35 another will often destroy."
They may argue, again, that vice is to the mind what
disease is to the bodv, and that a state of virtue is in con-
THE STOICS 337
sequence a state of health. Just as bodily health is desired
for its own sake, as being the absence of a painful or at least
displeasing state, so a well-ordered and virtuous mind may
be valued for its own sake, and independently of all the
external good to which it may lead, as being a condition of 5
happiness; and a mind distracted by passion and vice may
be avoided, not so much because it is an obstacle in the
pursuit of prosperity, as because it is in itself essentially
painful and disturbing. This conception of virtue and vice
as states of health or sickness, the one being in itself a good, 10
and the other in itself an evil, was a fundamental proposition
in the ethics of Plato. It was admitted, but only to a sub-
sidiary place, by the Stoics, and has passed more or less
into all the succeeding systems. It is especially favourable
to large and elevating conceptions of self-culture, for it 15
leads men to dwell much less upon isolated acts of virtue
or vice than upon the habitual condition of mind from which
they spring.
It is possible, in the third place, to argue in favour of virtue
by offering as a motive that sense of pleasure which follows 20
the deliberate performance of a virtuous act. This emotion
is a distinct and isolated gratification following a distinct
action, and may therefore be easily separated from that
habitual placidity of temper which results from the extinc-
tion of vicious and perturbing impulses. It is this theory 25
which is implied in the common exhortations to enjoy " the
luxury of doing good/' and though especially strong in
acts of benevolence, in which case sympathy with the
happiness created intensifies the feeling, this pleasure attends
every kind of virtue. 30
These three motives of action have all this common
characteristic, that they point as their ultimate end to the
happiness of the agent. The first seeks that happiness
in external circumstances; the second and third in psycho-
logical conditions. There is, however, a fourth kind of 35
motive which may be urged, and which is the peculiar
characteristic of the intuitive school of moralists and the
338 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
stumbling-block of its opponents. It is asserted that we are
so constituted that the notion of duty furnishes in itself a
natural motive of action of the highest order, and wholly
distinct from all the refinements and modifications of self-
5 interest. The coactive force of this motive is altogether
independent of surrounding circumstances, and of all forms
of belief. It is equally true for the man who believes and
for the man who rejects the Christian faith, for the believer
in a future world and for the believer in the mortality of the
10 soul. It is not a question of happiness or unhappiness, of
reward or punishment, but of a generically different nature.
Men feel that a certain course of life is the natural end of
their being, and they feel bound, even at the expense of
happiness, to pursue it. They feel that certain acts are
15 essentially good and noble, and others essentially base and
vile, and this perception leads them to pursue the one and
to avoid the other, irrespective of all considerations of
enjoyment.
The school of philosophy we are reviewing furnishes the
20 most perfect of all historical examples of the power which
the higher of these motives can exercise over the mind.
The coarser forms of self-interest were in stoicism absolutely
condemned. It was one of the first principles of these
philosophers that all things that are not in our power
25 should be esteemed indifferent; that the object of all mental
discipline should be to withdraw the mind from all the
gifts of fortune, and that prudence must in consequence
be altogether excluded from the motives of virtue. To
enforce these principles they continually dilated upon the
30 vanity of human things, and upon the majesty of the inde-
pendent mind, and they indulged, though scarcely more
than other sects, in many exaggerations about the impassive
tranquillity of the sage. In the Roman empire stoicism
flourished at a period which, beyond almost any other,
35 seemed most unfavourable to such teaching. There were
reigns when, in the emphatic words of Tacitus, " virtue
was a sentence of death." In no period had brute force
THE STOICS 330
more completely triumphed, in none was the thirst for mate-
rial advantages more intense, in very few was vice more
ostentatiously glorified. Yet in the midst of all these
circumstances the Stoics taught a philosophy which was
not a compromise, not an attempt to moderate the popular 5
excesses, but which in its austere sanctity was the extreme
antithesis of all that the prevailing examples and their
own interests could dictate. And these men were no im-
passioned fanatics, fired with the prospect of coming glory.
They were men from whose motives of action the belief 10
in the immortality of the soul was resolutely excluded.
In the scepticism that accompanied the first introduction
of philosophy into Rome, in the dissolution of the old
fables about Tartarus- and the Styx, and the dissemination
of Epicureanism among the people, this doctrine, notwith- 15
standing the beautiful reasonings of Cicero and the religious
faith of a few who clung like Plutarch to the mysteries in
which it was perpetuated, had sunk very low. An interlocu-
tor in Cicero expressed what was probably a common feeling,
when he acknowledged that, with the writings of Plato 20
before him, he could believe and realise it; but when he
closed the book, the reasonings seemed to lose their power,
and the world of spirits grew pale and unreal. If Ennius
could elicit the plaudits of a theatre when he proclaimed that
the gods took no part in human affairs, Caesar could assert 25
in the senate, without scandal and almost without dissent,
that death was the end of all things. Pliny, perhaps the
greatest of all the Roman scholars, adopting the sentiment
of all the school of Epicurus, describes the belief in a future
life as a form of madness, a puerile and a pernicious illusion. 30
The opinions of the Stoics were wavering and uncertain.
Their first doctrine was that the soul of man has a future
and independent, but not an eternal existence, that it sur-
vives until the conflagration that was to destroy the world
when all finite things would be absorbed in the all-pervading 35
soul of nature. Chrysippus, however, restricted to the best
and noblest souls this future existence, which Cleanthes had
340 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
awarded to all, and among the Roman Stoics even this was
greatly doubted. The belief that the human soul is a de-
tached fragment of the Deity, naturally led to the belief
that after death it would be reabsorbed in the parent Spirit.
5 The doctrine that there is no real good but virtue deprived
the Stoics of the argument for a future world derived from
unrequited merit and unpunished crimes, and the earnest-
ness with which they contended that a good man should act
irrespectively of reward, inclined them, as it is said to have
10 inclined some Jewish thinkers, to the denial of the existence
of the reward. Panaetius, the founder of Roman stoicism,
maintained that the soul perished with the body, and his
opinion was followed by Epictetus and Cornutus. Seneca
contradicted himself on the subject. Marcus Aurelius
15 never rose beyond a vague and mournful aspiration. Those
who believed in a future world believed it faintly and uncer-
tainly, and even when they accepted it as a fact, they shrank
from proposing it as a motive. The whole system of
stoical ethics, which carried self-sacrifice to a point that has
20 scarcely been equalled, and exercised an influence which
has rarely been surpassed, was evolved without any assistance
from the doctrine of a future life. Pagan antiquity has
bequeathed us few nobler treatises of morals than the
" De Officiis " of Cicero, which was avowedly nn expansion
25 of a work of Panaetius. It has left us no grander example
than that of Epictetus, the sickly, deformed slave of a master
who was notorious for his barbarity, enfrancished late in
life, but soon driven into exile by Domitian, who, while
sounding the very abyss of human misery, and looking
30 forward to death as to simple decomposition, was yet so
filled with the sense of the Divine presence, that his life
was one continued hymn to Providence, and his writings
and his example, which appeared to his contemporaries
almost the ideal of human goodness, have not lost their
35 consoling power through all the ages and the vicissitudes
they have survived.
There was, however, another form of immortality which
THE STOICS 341
exercised a much greater influence among the Roman
moralists. The desire for reputation, and especially for
posthumoiis reputation that " last infirmity of noble
minds " assumed an extraordinary prominence among the
springs of Roman heroism, and was also the origin of that 5
theatrical and overstrained phraseology which the greatest
of ancient moralists rarely escaped. But we should be alto-
gether in error if we inferred, as some have done, that
paganism never rose to the conception of virtue concealing
itself from the world, and consenting voluntarily to degrada- 10
tion. No characters were more highly appreciated in antiq-
uity than those of men who, through a sense of duty, opposed
the strong current of popular favour; of men like Fabius,
who consented for the sake of their country to incur the
reputation that is most fatal to a soldier; of men like Cato, 15
who remained unmoved among the scoffs, the insults, and the
ridicule of an angry crowd. Cicero, expounding the prin-
ciples of stoicism, declared that no one has attained to true
philosophy who has not learnt that all vice should be avoided,
" though it were concealed from the eyes of gods and men," 20
and that no deeds are more laudable than those which are
done without ostentation, and far from the sight of men.
The writings of the Stoics are crowded with sentences to
the same effect. " Nothing for opinion, all for conscience."
" He who wishes his virtue to be blazed abroad is not labour- 25
ing for virtue but for fame." " No one is more virtuous
than the man who sacrifices the reputation of a good man
rather than sacrifice his conscience." " I do not shrink
from praise, but I refuse to make it the end and term of
right." " If you do anything to please men, you have 30
fallen from your estate." " Even a bad reputation nobly
earned is pleasing." " A great man is not the less great
when he lies vanquished and prostrate in the dust." " Never
forget that it is possible to be at once a divine man, yet a
man unknown to all the world." " That which is beautiful 35
is beautiful in itself; the praise of man adds nothing to its
quality." Marcus Aurelius, following an example that is
342 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
ascribed to Pythagoras, made it a special object of mental
discipline, by continually meditating on death, and evok-
ing, by an effort of the imagination, whole societies that
had passed away, to acquire a realised sense of the vanity of
S posthumous fame. The younger Pliny painted faithfully
the ideal of stoicism when he described one of his friends
as a man " who did nothing for ostentation but all for con-
science; who sought the reward of virtue in itself, and not
in the praise of man." Nor were the Stoics less emphatic
10 in distinguishing the obligation from the attraction of
virtue. It was on this point that they separated from the
more refined Epicureans, who were often willing to sublimate
to the highest degree the kind of pleasure they proposed
as an object, provided only it were admitted that pleasure
15 is necessarily the ultimate end of our actions. But this the
Stoics firmly denied. " Pleasure," they argued, " is the
companion, not the guide, of our course." " We do not
love virtue because it gives us pleasure, but it gives us
pleasure because we love it." " The wise man will not sin,
20 though both gods and men should overlook the deed, for
it is not through the fear of punishment or of shame that he
abstains from sin. It is from the desire and obligation of
what is just and good." " To ask to be paid for virtue
is as if the eye demanded a recompense for seeing, or the
25 feet for walking." In doing good, man " should be like
the vine which has produced grapes, and asks for nothing
more after it has produced its proper fruit." His end,
according to these teachers, is not to find peace either in
life or in death. It is to do his duty, and to tell the truth.
30 The second distinguishing feature of stoicism I have
noticed was the complete suppression of the affections to
make way for the absolute ascendency of reason. There
are two great divisions of character corresponding very
nearly to the stoical and epicurean temperaments I have
35 described that in which the will predominates, and that
in which the desires are supreme. A good man of the first
class is one whose will, directed by a sense of duty, pursues
THE STOICS 343
(he course he believes to be right, in spite of strong tempta-
tions to pursue an opposite course, arising cither from his
own passions and tendencies, or from the circumstances that
surround him. A good man of the second class is one who
is so happily constituted that his sympathies and desires 5
instinctively tend to virtuous ends. The first character
is the only one to which we can, strictly speaking, attach
the idea of merit, and is also the only one which is capable
of rising to high efforts of continuous and heroic self-sacrifice;
but on the other hand, there is a charm in the spontaneous 10
action of the unforced desires which disciplined virtue can
perhaps never attain. The man who is consistently generous
through a sense of duty, when his natural temperament
impels him to avarice, and when every exercise of benevolence
causes him a pang, deserves in the very highest degree our 15
admiration; but he whose generosity costs him no effort,
but is the natural gratification of his affections, attracts
a far larger measure of our love. Corresponding to these
two casts of character, we find two distinct theories of
education, the aim of the one being chiefly to strengthen 20
the will, and that of the other to guide the desires. The
principal examples of the first are the Spartan and stoical
systems of antiquity, and, with some modifications, the
asceticism of the Middle Ages. The object of these systems
\\as to enable men to endure pain, to repress manifest and 25
acknowledged desires, to relinquish enjoyments, to estab-
lish an absolute empire over their emotions. On the other
hand, there is a method of education which was never
more prevalent than in the present day, which exhausts
its efforts in making virtue attractive, in associating it with 30
all the charms of imagination and of prosperity, and in thus
insensibly drawing the desires in the wished for direction.
As the first system is especially suited to a disturbed and
military society, which requires and elicits strong efforts
of the will, and is therefore the special sphere of heroic 35
virtues, so the hitter belongs naturally to a tranquil and
highly organised civilisation, which is therefore very favour-
344 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
able to the amiable qualities, and it is probable that as
civilisation advances, the heroic type will, in consequence,
become more and more rare, and a kind of self-indulgent
goodness more common. The circumstances of the ancient
5 societies led them to the former type, of which the Stoics
furnished the extreme expression in their doctrine that the
affections are of the nature of a disease a doctrine which
they justified by the same kind of arguments as those which
are now often employed by metaphysicians to prove that
10 love, anger and the like, can only be ascribed by a figure
of speech to the Deity. Perturbation, they contended, is
necessarily imperfection, and none of its forms can in con-
sequence be ascribed to a perfect being. We have a clear
intuitive perception that reason is the highest, and should
15 be the directing power of an intelligent being; but every
act which is performed at the instigation of the emotions
is withdrawn from the empire of reason. Hence it was
inferred that while the will should be educated to act ha-
bitually in the direction of virtue, even the emotions that
20 seem most fitted to second it should be absolutely proscribed.
Thus Seneca has elaborated at length the distinction between
clemency and pity, the first being one of the highest virtues,
and the latter a positive vice. Clemency, he says, is an
habitual disposition to gentleness in the application of
25 punishments. It is that moderation which remits some-
thing of an incurred penalty; it is the opposite of cruelty,
which is an habitual disposition to rigour. Pity, on the
other hand, bears to clemency the same kind of relation as
superstition to religion. It is the weakness of a feeble
30 mind that flinches at the sight of suffering. .Clemency is an
act of judgment, but pity disturbs the judgment. Clemency
adjudicates upon the proportion between suffering and guilt.
Pity contemplates only suffering, and gives no thoughts to
its cause. Clemency, in the midst of its noblest efforts,
35 is perfectly passionless; pity is unreasoning emotion. Clem-
ency is an essential characteristic of the sage; pity is only
suited for weak women and for diseased minds. " The
THE STOICS 345
sage will console those who weep, but without weeping
with them; he will succour the shipwrecked, give hos-
pitality to the proscribed, and alms to the poor, . . . restore
the son to the mother's tears, save the captive from the arena,
and even bury the criminal; but in all, his mind and his 5
countenance will be alike untroubled. He will feel no
pity. He will succour, he will do good, for he is born to
assist his fellows, to labour for the welfare of mankind, and
to offer each one his part. His countenance and his soul
will betray no emotion as he looks upon the withered legs, 10
the tattered rags, the bent and emaciated frame of the beggar.
But he will help those who are worthy, and, like the gods,
his leaning will be towards the wretched. ... It is only
diseased eyes that grow moist in beholding tears in other
eyes, as it is no true sympathy, but only weakness of nerves, 15
that leads some to laugh always when others laugh, or to
yawn when others yawn."
Cicero, in a sentence which might be adopted as the motto
of stoicism, said that Homer " attributed human qualities
to the gods; it would have been better to have imparted 20
divine qualities to men." The remarkable passage I have
just cited serves to show the extremes to which the Stoics
pushed this imitation. And indeed, if we compare the
different virtues that have flourished among Pagans and
Christians, we invariably find that the prevailing type of 25
excellence among the former is that in which the will and
judgment, and among the latter, that in which the emotions
are most prominent. Friendship rather than love, hospitality
rather than charity, magnanimity rather than tenderness,
clemency rather than sympathy, are the characteristics of 30
ancient goodness. The Stoics, who carried the suppression
of the emotions farther than any other school, laboured
with great zeal to compensate the injury thus done to the
benevolent side of our nature, by greatly enlarging' the
sphere of reasoned and passionless philanthropy. They 35
taught, in the most emphatic language, the fraternity of
all men, and the consequent duty of each man consecrating
346 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTTOLE LECKY
his life to the welfare of others. They developed this gen-
eral doctrine in a series of detailed precepts, which, for the
range, depth, and beauty of their charity, have never been
surpassed. They even extended their compassion to crime,,
5 and adopting the paradox of Plato, that all guilt is ignorance,
treated it as an involuntary disease, and declared that the
only legitimate ground of punishment is prevention. But
however fully they might recognise in theory their prin-
ciples with the widest and most active benevolence, they
10 could not wholly counteract the practical evil of a system
which declared war against the whole emotional side of our
being, and reduced human virtue to a kind of majestic
egotism; proposing as examples such men as Anaxagoras,
who when told that his son had died, simply observed,
15 " I never supposed that I had begotten an immortal," or as
Stilpo, who when his country had been ruined, his native
city captured, and his daughters carried away as slaves or
as concubines, boasted that he had lost nothing, for the sage
is independent of circumstances. The framework or theory
20 of benevolence might be there, but the animating spirit
was absent. Men who taught that the husband or the
father should look with perfect indifference on the death of
his wife or his child, and that the philosopher, though he
may shed tears of pretended sympathy in order to console
25 his suffering friend, must suffer no real emotion to penetrate
his breast, could never found a true or lasting religion of
benevolence. Men who refused to recognise pain and
sickness as evils were scarcely likely to be very eager to
relieve them in others.
30 In truth, the Stoics, who taught that all virtue was con-
formity to nature, were, in this respect, eminently false
to their own principle. Human nature, as revealed to us by
reason, is a composite thing, a constitution of many parts
differing in kind and dignity, a hierarchy in which many
35 powers are intended to co-exist, but in different positions
of ascendency or subordination. To make the higher
part of our nature our whole nature is not to restore but to
THE STOICS 347
mutilate humanity, and this mutilation has never been
attempted without producing grave evils. As philan-
thropists, the Stoics, through their passion for unity, were
led to the extirpation of those emotions which nature intended
as the chief springs of benevolence. As speculative phi- 5
losophers, they were entangled by the same desire in a
long train of pitiable paradoxes. Their famous doctrines
that all virtues are equal, or, more correctly, are the same,
that all vices are equal, that nothing is an evil which does
not affect our will, and that pain and bereavement are, 10
in consequence, no ills, though partially explained away
and frequently disregarded by the Roman Stoics, were yet
sufficiently prominent to give their teaching something of an
unnatural and affected appearance. Prizing only a single
object, and developing only a single side of their nature, 15
their minds became narrow and their views contracted.
Thus, while the Epicureans, urging men to study nature
in order to banish superstition, endeavoured to correct the
ignorance of physical science which was one of the chief
impediments to the progress of the ancient mind, the Stoics 20
for the most part disdained a study which was other than
the pursuit of virtue. While the Epicurean poet painted
in magnificent language the perpetual progress of mankind,
the Stoic was essentially retrospective, and exhausted his
strength in vain efforts to restore the simplicity of a by- 25
gone age. While, too, the school of Zeno produced many
of the best and greatest men who have ever lived, it must
be acknowledged that its records exhibit a rather unusual
number of examples of high professions falsified in action,
and of men who, displaying in some forms the most undoubted 30
and transcendent virtue, fell in others far below the average
of mankind. The elder Cato, who, though not a philosopher,
was a model of philosophers, was conspicuous for his inhu-
manity to his slaves. Brutus was one of the most extor-
tionate usurers of his time, and several citizens of Salamis35
died of starvation, imprisoned because they could not pay
the sum he demanded. No one eulogised more eloquently
348 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
the austere simplicity of life which stoicism advocated than
Sallust, who in a corrupt age was notorious for his rapacity.
Seneca himself was constitutionally a nervous and timid
man, endeavouring, not always with success, to support
5 himself by a sublime philosophy. He guided, under cir-
cumstances of extreme difficulty, the cause of virtue, and
his death is one of the noblest antiquity records; but his
life was deeply marked by the taint of flattery, and not
free from the taint of avarice, and it is unhappily certain
10 that, after its accomplishment, he lent his pen to conceal
or varnish one of the worst crimes of Nero. The courage
of Luca.n failed signally under torture, and the flattery
which he bestowed upon Nero, in his " Pharsalia," ranks
with the Epigrams of Martial as probably the extreme limit
15 of sycophancy to which Roman literature descended.
While, too, the main object of the Stoics was to popularise
philosophy, the high standard of self-control they exacted
rendered their system exceedingly unfit for the great majority
of mankind, and for the ordinary condition of affairs. Life
20 is history, not poetry. It consists mainly of little things,
rarely illumined by flashes of great heroism, rarely broken
by great dangers, or demanding great exertions. A moral
system, to govern society, must accomodate itself to common
characters and mingled motives. It must be capable of
25 influencing natures that can never rise to an heroic level.
It must tincture, modify, and mitigate where it cannot
eradicate or transform. In Christianity there are always a
few persons seeking by continual and painful efforts to
reverse or extinguish the ordinary feelings of humanity,
30 but in the great majority of cases the influence of the religious
principle upon the mind, though very real, is not of a nature
to cause any serious strain or struggle. It is displayed
in a certain acquired spontaneity of impulse. It softens the
character, purifies and directs the imagination, blends
35 insensibily with the habitual modes of thought, and, with-
out revolutionising, gives a tone and bias to all the forms
of action. But stoicism was simply a school of heroes.
THE STOICS 349
It recognised no gradations of virtue or vice. It condemned
all emotions, all spontaneity, all mingled motives, all the
principles, feelings, and impulses upon which the virtue
of common men mainly depends. It was capable of acting
only on moral natures that were strung to the highest 5
tension, and it was therefore naturally rejected by the
multitude.
The central conception of this philosophy of self-control
was the dignity of man. Pride, which looks within, making
man seek his own approbation, as distinguished from vanity, 10
which looks without, and shapes its conduct according to
the opinions of others, was not only permitted in stoicism,
it was its leading moral agent. The sense of virtue, as I
have elsewhere observed, occupies in this system much the
same place as the sense of sin in Christianity. Sin, in the 15
conception of the ancients, was simply disease, and they
deemed it the part of a wise man to correct it, but not to
dwell upon its circumstances. In the many disquisitions
which Epictetus and others have left us concerning the
proper frame of mind in which man should approach death, 20
repentance for past sin has absolutely no place, nor do the
ancients appear to have ever realised the purifying and
spiritualising influence it exercises upon the character.
And while the reality of moral disease was fully recognised,
while an ideal of lofty and indeed unattainable excellence 25
was continually proposed, no one doubted the essential
excellence of human nature, and very few doubted the
possibility of man acquiring by his own will a high degree
of virtue.
The doctrine of suicide was the culminating point of 30
Roman stoicism. The proud, self-reliant, unbending char-
acter of the philospher, could only be sustained when he
felt that he had a sure refuge against the extreme forms
of suffering or of despair. Although virtue is not a mere
creature of interest, no great system has ever yet flourished 35
which did not present an ideal of happiness as well as an
ideal of duty. Stoicism taught men to hope little, but to
350 WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY
fear nothing. It did not array death in brilliant colours,
as the path to positive felicity, but it endeavoured to divest
it, as the end of suffering, of every terror. Life lost much of
its bitterness when men had found a refuge from the storms
5 of fate, a speedy deliverance from dotage and pain. Death
ceased to be terrible when it was regarded rather as a remedy
than as a sentence. Life and death in the stoical system were
attuned to the same key. The deification of human virtue,
the total absence of all sense of sin, the proud stubborn
10 will that deemed humiliation the worst of stains, appeared
alike in each. The type of its own kind was perfect. All
the virtues and all the majesty that accompany human
pride, when developed to the highest point, and directed to
the noblest ends, were here displayed. All those which
15 accompany humility and self-abasement were absent.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY l
JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
THE first method of training this passion which Christ
employed was the direct one of making it a point of duty
to feel it. To love one's neighbour as oneself was, he said,
the first and greatest L:iv. And in the Sermon on the
Mount he requires the passion to be felt in such strength 5
as to include those whom we have most reason to hate
our enemies and those who maliciously injure us and
delivers an imperative precept, " Love your enemies."
It has been shown that to do this is not, as might at
first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but theio
further question suggests itself, Can it be done to order?
Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Cer-
tainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere
effort of will summon up a passion which does not arise
of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. 15
Yet if this position be really untenable, how is it possible
to obey Christ's commands?
The difficulty seems to admit of only one solution. We
are not commanded to create by an effort of will a feeling
of love in ourselves which otherwise would have had no 20
existence; the feeling must arise naturally or it cannot
arise at all. But a number of causes which are removable
may interfere to prevent the feeling from arising or to
stifle it as it arises, and we are commanded to remove these
hindrances. It is natural to man to love his kind, and 25
Christ commands us only to give nature play. He v does
1 Chapter XIV of " Eccc Homo, a Survey of the Life and work of
Jesus Christ," 1865.
351
352 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
not expect us to procure for ourselves hearts of some new
supernatural texture, but merely the heart of flesh for the
heart of stone.
What, then, are the causes of this paralysis of the heart?
5 The experience of human life furnishes us readily with
the answer. It constantly happens that one whose affec-
tions were originally not less lively than those of most
men is thrown into the society of persons destitute of
sympathy or tenderness. In this society each person is
10 either totally indifferent to his neighbour or secretly en-
deavouring to injure or overreach him. The new-comer
is at first open-hearted and cordial; he presumes every
one he meets to be a friend, and is disposed to serve and
expects to be served by all alike. But his advances are
15 met by some with cautious reserve, by others with icy
coldness, by others with hypocritical warmth followed by
treacherous injury, by others with open hostility. The
heart which naturally grew warm at the mere sight of a
human being, under the operation of this new experience
20 slowly becomes paralysed. There seats itself gradually in
the man's mind a presumption concerning every new face
that it is the face of an enemy, and a habit of gathering
himself into an attitude of self-defence whenever he deals
\vith a fellow-creature. If when this new disposition has
25 grown confirmed and habitual, he be introduced into a
society of an opposite kind and meet with people as friendly
and kind as he himself was originally, he will not at first
be able to believe in their sincerity, and the old kindly
affections from long disuse will be slow to rouse themselves
30 within him. Now to such a person the imperative mood
of the verb to love may fairly be used. He may properly
be told to make an effort, to shake off the distrust that
oppresses him, not to suffer unproved suspicions, causeless
jealousies, to stifle by the mere force of prejudice and mis-
35 taken opinion the warmth of feeling natural to him.
But we shall have a closer illustration if we suppose the
cold-hearted society itself to be addressed by a preacher
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 353
who wishes to bring them to a better mind. He too may
fairly use the imperative mood of the verb to love. For
he may say, " Your mutual coldness does not spring from
an original want of the power of sympathy. If it did,
admonitions would indeed be useless. But it springs from 5
a habit of thought which you have formed, a maxim which
has been received among you, that all men are devoted
to self-interest, that kindness is but feebleness and invites
injury. If you will at once and by a common act throw
off this false opinion of human nature, and adopt a new 10
plan of life for yourselves and new expectations of each
other, you will find the old affections natural to all of you,
weakened indeed and chilled, but existing and capable of
being revived by an effort."
Such a preacher might go further and say, " If but a 15
small minority are convinced by my words, yet let that
minority for itself abandon the selfish theory, let it renounce
the safety which that theory affords in dealing with selfish
men, let it treat the enemy as if he were indeed the friend
he ought to be, let it dare to forego retaliation and even 20
self-defence. By this means it will shame many into
kindness; by despising self-interest for itself it will some-
times make it seem despicable to others; by sincerity and
persistency it will gradually convert the majority to a higher
law of intercourse. 25
The world has been always more or less like this cold-
hearted society; the natural kindness and fellow-feeling
of men have always been more or less repressed by low-
minded maxims and cynicism. But in the time of Christ,
and in the last decrepitude of ethnic morality, the selfish- 30
ness of human intercourse was much greater than the
present age can easily understand. That system of morality,
even in the times when it was powerful and in many respects
beneficial, had made it almost as much a duty to hate, for-
eigners as to love fellow-citizens. Plato congratulates the 35
Athenians on having shown in their relations to Persia,
beyond all the other Greeks, " a pure and heartfelt hatred
354 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
of the foreign nature." 1 Instead of opposing, it had
sanctioned and consecrated the savage instinct which
leads us to hate whatever is strange or unintelligible, to
distrust those who live on the further side of a river, to
5 suppose that those whom we hear talking together in a
foreign tongue must be plotting some mischief against
ourselves. The lapse of time and the fusion of races doubt-
less diminished this antipathy considerably, but at the
utmost it could but be transformed into an icy indifference,
10 for no cause was in operation to convert it into kindness.
On the other hand, the closeness of the bond which united
fellow-citizens was considerably relaxed. Common interests
and common dangers had drawn it close; these in the wide
security of the Roman Empire had no longer a place. It
1 5 had depended upon an imagined blood-relationship; fellow-
citizens could now no longer feel themselves to be united
by the tie of blood. Every town was full of resident aliens
and emancipated slaves, persons between whom and the
citizens nature had established no connection, and whose
20 presence in the city had originally been barely tolerated
from motives of expediency. The selfishness of modern
times exists in defiance of morality, in ancient times it was
approved, sheltered, and even in part enjoined by morality.
We are therefore to consider the ancient world as a
25 society of men in whom natural humanity existed but had
been, as it were, crusted or frosted over. Inveterate feuds
and narrow-minded local jealousies, arising out of an iso-
lated position or differences of language and institutions,
had created endless divisions between man and man. And
30 as the special virtues of antiquity, patriotism and all that
it implies, had been in a manner caused and fostered by these
very divisions, they were not regarded as evils but rather
cherished as essential to morality. Selfishness, therefore,
was not a mere abuse or corruption arising out of the infirmity
35 of human nature, but a theory and almost a part of moral
philosophy. Humanity was cramped by a mistaken preju-
1 Plato, Alenexcnus. Author's note.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 355
dice, by a perverse presumption of the intellect. In a case
like this it was necessary and proper to prescribe humanity
by direct authoritative precept. Such a precept would have
been powerless to create the feeling, nor would it have done
much to protect it from being overpowered by the opposite 5
passion, but the opposite passion of selfishness was at this
period justified by authority and claimed to be on the side
of reason and law. Precept is fairly matched against
precept, and what the law of love and the golden rule did
for mankind was to place for the first time the love of man as 10
man distinctly in the list of virtues, to dissipate the exclusive
prejudices of ethnic morality, and to give selfishness the
character of sin.
When a theory of selfishness is rife in a whole community,
it is a bold and hazardous step for a part of the community 15
to abandon it. For in the society of selfish people selfish-
ness is simply self-defence; to renounce it is to evacuate
one's entrenched position, to surrender at discretion to the
enemy. If society is to disarm, it should do so by com-
mon consent. Christ, however, though he confidently ex- 20
pected ultimately to gather all mankind into his society,
did not expect to do so soon. Accordingly he commands
his followers not to wait for this consummation but, in
spite of the hazardous nature of the step, to disarm at
once. They are sent forth " as sheep in the midst of 25
wolves." Injuries they are to expect, but they are neither
to shun nor to retaliate them. Harmless they are to be
as doves. The discipline of suffering will wean them more
and more from self, and make the channels of humanity
freer within them; and sometimes their patience may shame 30
the spoiler; he may grow weary of rapacity which meets
with no resistance, and be induced to envy those who can
forego without reluctance that which he devotes every
thought to acquire.
But we shall soon be convinced that Christ could not 35
design by a mere edict, however authoritative, to give this
passion of humanity strength enough to make it a living
356 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
and infallible principle of morality in every man, when we
consider, first, what an ardent enthusiasm he demanded
from his followers, and secondly, how frail and tender a
germ this passion naturally is in human nature. Widely
S diffused indeed it is, and seldom entirely eradicated; but
for the most part, at least in the ancient world, it was
crushed under a weight of predominant passions and inter-
ests; it had seldom power enough to dictate any action,
but made itself felt in faint misgivings and relentings,
10 which sometimes restrained men from extremes of cruelty.
Like Enceladus under JEtna., it lay fettered at the bottom
of human nature, now and then making the mass above
it quake by an uneasy change of posture. To make this
outraged and enslaved passion predominant, to give it,
15 instead of a veto rarely used, the whole power of government,
to train it from a dim misgiving into a clear and strong
passion, required much more than a precept. The precept
had its use; it could make men feel it right to be humane
and desire to be so, but it could never inspire them with an
20 enthusiasm of humanity. From what source was this
inspiration to be derived?
Humanity, we have already observed, is neither a love
for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual
of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in
25 each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he
who is truly humane considers every human being as such
interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise
each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the
tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable
30 presumption with regard to human beings is not a causeless
prepossession, it is no idle superstition of the mind, nor is
it a natural instinct. It is a feeling founded on the actual
observation and discovery of interesting and noble qualities
in particular human beings, and it is strong or weak in
35 proportion as the person who has the feeling has known
many or few noble and amiable human beings. There are
men who have been so unfortunate as to live in the perpetual
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 357
society of the mean and the base; they have never, except
in a few faint glimpses, seen anything glorious or good in
human nature. With these the feeling of humanity has
a perpetual struggle for existence, their minds tend by a
fatal gravitation to the belief that the happiness or misery 5
of such a paltry race is wholly unimportant; they may arrive
finally at a fixed condition, in which it may be said of them
without qualification, that " man delights not them, nor
woman neither." In this final stage they are men who,
beyond the routine of life, should not be trusted, being 10
" fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils." On the other
hand, there are those whose lot it has been from earliest
childhood to see the fair side of humanity, who have been
surrounded with clear and candid countenances, in the
changes of which might be traced the working of passions 15
strong and simple, the impress of a firm and tender nature,
wearing when it looked abroad the glow of sympathy, and
when it looked within the bloom of modesty. They have
seen, and not once or twice, a man forget himself; they have
witnessed devotion, unselfish sorrow, unaffected delicacy, 20
spontaneous charity, ingenuous self-reproach; and it may be
that on seeing a human being surrender for another's good
not something but his uttermost all, they have dimly sus-
pected in human nature a glory connecting it with the
divine. In these the passion of humanity is warm and 25
ready to become on occasion a burning flame; their whole
minds are elevated, because they are possessed with the
dignity of that nature they share, and of the society in the
midst of which they move.
But it is not absolutely necessary to humanity that a 30
man shall have seen many men whom he can respect. The
most lost cynic will get a new heart by learning thoroughly
to believe in the virtue of one man. Our estimate of human
nature is in proportion to the best specimen of it we have
witnessed. This then it is which is wanted to raise the 35
feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept
of love has been given, an image must be set before the
358 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or
type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to
raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it
sacred with reflected glory.
5 Did not Christ do this? Did the command to love go
forth to those who had never seen a human being they
could revere? Could his followers turn upon him and say,
How can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants
and contemptible passions, whose little life is most harm-
lolessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleep-
ing; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when
his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired? Of
this race Christ himself was a member, and to this day is
it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the
15 best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest,
that a human brain was behind his forehead and a human
heart beating in his breast, and that within the w T hole
creation of God nothing more elevated or more attractive
has yet been found than he? And if it be answered that there
20 was in his nature something exceptional and peculiar, that
humanity must not be measured by the stature of Christ,
let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished
it to be measured, delighting to call himself the Son of Man,
delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. If
25 some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be
incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or
destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as Christ?
Are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies
than he was? Is our standard higher than his? And yet he
30 associated by preference with these meanest of the race;
no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that
they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the com-
mon Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable
of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing
35 of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most
hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what
was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 359
An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by
the love Christ bore to it. And it was because the Edict
of Universal Love went forth to men whose hearts were
in no cynical mood but possessed with a spirit of devotion
to a man, that words which at any other time, however 5
grandly they might sound, would have been but words,
penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the
power of love was given. Therefore also the first Christians
were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, and
instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man in man 10
could simply say and feel that they loved Christ in every
man.
We have here the very kernel of the Christian moral
scheme. We have distinctly before us the end Christ
proposed to himself, and the means he considered ade- 15
quate to the attainment of it. His object was, instead
of drawing up, after the example of previous legislators,
a list of actions prescribed, allowed, and prohibited, to
give his disciples a universal test by which they might
discover what it was right and what it was wrong to do. 20
Now as the difficulty of discovering what is right arises
commonly from the prevalence of self-interest in our minds,
and as we commonly behave rightly to anyone for whom
we feel affection or sympathy, Christ considered that he
who could feel sympathy for all would behave rightly 1025
all. But how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of
men such enlargement? How to make them capable of a
universal sympathy? Christ believed it possible to bind
men to their kind, but on one condition that they were
first bound fast to himself. He stood forth as the represent- 30
ative of men, he identified himself with the cause and with
the interests of all human beings, he was destined, as he
began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his
life for them. Few of us sympathise originally and directly
with this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature 35
itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. But it is not so hard
to love and venerate him who felt it. So vast a passion of
360 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate
and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree
approached save by some of his imitators. And as love
provokes love, many have found it possible to conceive for
5 Christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can
describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man
within them, that they have said, " I live no more, but
Christ lives in me." Now such a feeling carries with it of
necessity the feeling of love for all human beings. It
10 matters no longer what quality men may exhibit; amiable
or unamiable, as the brothers of Christ, as belonging to
his sacred and consecrated kind, as the objects of his love
in life and death, they must be dear to all to whom he is
dear. And those who would for a moment know his heart
15 and understand his life must begin by thinking of the whole
race of man, and of each member of the race, with awful
reverence and hope.
Love, wheresoever it appears, is in its measure a law-
making power. " Love is dutiful in thought and deed."
20 And as the lover of his country is free from the temptation
to treason, so is he who loves Christ secure from the tempta-
tion to injure any human being, whether it be himself or
another. He is indeed much more than this. He is bound
and he is eager to benefit and bless to the utmost of his
25 power all that bear his Master's nature, and that not merely
with the good gifts of the earth, but with whatever cherishes
and trains best the Christ within them. But for the present
we are concerned merely with the power of this passion
to lift the man out of sin. The injuries he committed lightly
30 when he regarded his fellow-creatures simply as animals
who added to the fierceness of the brute an ingenuity and
forethought that made them doubly noxious, become horrible
sacrilege when he sees in them no longer the animal but the
Christ. And that other class of crimes which belongs more
35 especially to ages of civilisation, and arises out of a cynical
contempt for the species, is rendered equally impossible
to the man who hears with reverence the announcement,
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 3G1
" The good deeds you did to the least of these my brethren
you did to me."
There are two objections which may suggest themselves
at this point, the one to intellectual, the other to practical
men. The intellectual man may say, " To discover what 5
it is right to do in any given case is not the province of
any feeling or passion however sublime, but requires the
application of the same intellectual power which solves
mathematical problems. The common acts of life may
no doubt be performed correctly by unintellectual people, 10
but this is because these constantly recurring problems
have been solved long ago by clever people, and the vulgar
are now in possession of the results. Whenever a new com-
bination occurs it is a matter for casuists; the best inten-
tions will avail little; there is doubtless a great difference 15
between a good man and a bad one; the one will do what
is right when he knows it, and the other will not; but in
respect for the power of ascertaining what it is right to do,
supposing their knowledge of casuistry to be equal, they arc
on a par. Goodness or the passion of humanity, or Chris- 20
tian love, may be a motive inducing men to keep the law,
but it has no right to be called the law-making power. And
what has Christianity added to our theoretic knowledge
of morality? It may have made men practically more moral,
but has it added anything to Aristotle's Ethics?" 25
Certainly Christianity has no ambition to invade the
provinces of the moralist or the casuist. But the difficulties
which beset the discovery of the right moral course are of
two kinds. There are the difficulties which arise, from the
blinding and confusing effect of selfish passions, and which 30
obscure from the view the end which should be aimed at
in action; when these have been overcome there arises a
new set of difficulties concerning the means by which the end
should be attained. In dealing with your neighbour 'the
first thing to be understood is that his interest is to be 0)11-3-
sidered as well as your own; but when this has been settled,
it remains to be considered what his interest is. The latter
362 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
class of difficulties requires to be dealt with by the intellectual
or calculating faculty. The former class can only be dealt
with by the moral force of sympathy. Now it is true that
the right action will not be performed without the operation
5 of both these agencies. But the moral agency is the dom-
inant one throughout; it is that without which the very
conception of law is impossible; it overcomes those difficulties
which in the vast majority of practical cases are the most
serious. The calculating casuistical faculty is, as it were,
10 in its employ, and it is no more improper to call it the law-
making power, although it does not ultimately decide
what action is to be performed, than to say that a house
was built by one who did not with his own hands lay the
bricks and spread the mortar.
15 The objection which practical men take is a very important
one, as the criticisms of such men always are, being founded
commonly upon large observation and not perverted by
theory. They say that the love of Christ does not in practice
produce the nobleness and largeness of character which has
20 been represented as its proper and natural result; that
instead of inspiring those w T ho feel it with reverence and
hope for their kind, it makes them exceedingly narrow in
their sympathies, disposed to deny and explain away even
the most manifest virtues displayed by men, and to despair
25 of the future destiny of the great majority of their fellow-
creatures; that instead of binding them to their kind, it
divides them from it by a gulf which they themselves pro-
claim to be impassable and eternal, and unites them only
in a gloomy conspiracy of misanthropy with each other;
30 that it is indeed A law-making power, but that the laws it
makes are little-minded and vexatious prohibitions of things
innocent, demoralising restraints upon the freedom of joy
and the healthy instincts of nature ; that it favours hyprocrisy,
moroseness, and sometimes lunacy; that the only vice it
35 has power to check is thoughtlessness, and its only beneficial
effect is that of forcing into activity, though not always into
healthy activity, the faculty of serious reflection.
THE ENTHUSIASM OF HUMANITY 363
This may be a just picture of a large class of religious
men, but it is impossible in the nature of things that such
effects should be produced by a pure personal devotion
to Christ. We are to remember that nothing has been
subjected to such multiform and grotesque perversion as 5
Christianity. Certainly the direct love of Christ, as it was
felt by its first followers, is a rare thing among modern
Christians. His character has been so much obscured by
scholasticism, as to have lost in a great measure its attractive
power. The prevalent feeling towards him now among 10
religious men is an awful fear of his supernatural great-
ness, and a disposition to obey his commands arising partly
from dread of future punishment and hope of reward, and
partly from a nobler feeling of loyalty, which, however, is
inspired rather by his office than his person. Beyond 15
this we may discern in them an uneasy conviction that he
requires a more personal devotion, which leads to spasmodic
efforts to kindle the feeling by means of violent raptures
of panegyric and by repeating over and getting by rote the
ardent expressions of those who really had it. That is 20
wanting for the most part which Christ held to be all in all,
spontaneous warmth, free and generous devotion. That
the fruits of a Christianity so hollow should be poor and
sickly is not surprising.
But that Christ's method, when rightly applied, is really 25
of mighty force may be shown by an argument which the
severest censor of Christians will hardly refuse to admit.
Compare the ancient with the modern world: " Look on
this picture and on that." One broad distinction in the
characters of men forces itself into prominence. Among 30
all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely
one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet
" holy." In other words, there were not more than one or
two, if any, who besides being virtuous in their actions
were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, 3 -
and besides abstaining from vice regarded even a vicious
thought with horror, Probably no one will deny that in
364 JOHN ROBERT SEELEY
Christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we
call holiness, has existed. Few will maintain that it has
been exceedingly rare. Perhaps the truth is, that there
has scarcely been a town in any Christian country since the
5 time of Christ where a century has passed without exhibit-
ing a character of such elevation that his mere presence has
shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been
felt at times like the presence of God Himself. And if this
be so, has Christ failed? or can Christianity die?
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 1
JOSIAII ROYCE
UPON an occasion like this, when the children, the ser-
vants, and the friends of this institution meet for their
annual festival, there is one word that best expresses the
spirit of the occasion. It is the word " loyalty," loyalty
to your College, to its ideals, to its life, and to the unity and 5
effectiveness of this life. And amongst the ideals that
inspire the life of your College, and make that life effective
and united, there is one which is prominent in all your minds,
whatever your special studies, your practical aims, or your
hopes. It is the ideal of furthering, in all your minds, what 10
we may call insight, the ideal of learning to see life as it is,
to know the world as we men need to know it, and to guide
our purposes as we ought to guide them. It is also the
ideal of teaching to others the art of just such insight.
is These two words, then, " loyalty " and " insight," name, 15
one of them, the spirit in which, upon such occasions as this,
we all meet ; the other, the ideal that determines the studies
and the researches of any modern institution of learning.
Upon each day of its year of work your College says to its
children and to its servants and to its community: " Let us 20
know, let us see, let us comprehend, let us guide life by
wisdom, and in turn let us discover new wisdom for the sake
of winning new life." But upon a day like the present one,
the work of the year being laid aside, your College asks and
receives your united expression of loyalty to its cause. 25
1 Commencement address delivered at Simmons College, Boston.
Published in "William James and Other Essays," copyright, 1911.
Printed here by permission of The Macmillan Company.
365
366 JOSIAH ROYCE
Perhaps some of you may feel that for just this moment
you have left behind, at least temporarily, the task of
winning insight. You enjoy, for the hour, the fruits of
toil. Study and research cease, you may say, for to-day,
5 while the spirit of loyalty finds its own free expression and
takes content in its holiday.
I agree that the holidays and the working days have a
different place in our lives. But it is my purpose in this
address to say something about the connections between the
to spirit which rules this occasion the spirit of loyalty and
the ideal by which the year's work has to be guided, the
ideal of furthering true insight. The loyalty that now fills
your minds is merely one expression of a certain spirit which
ought to pervade all our lives not only in our studies,
1 5 but in our homes, in our offices, in our political and civic
life not merely upon holidays, or upon other great occasions,
but upon our working days; and most of all w r hen our tasks
seem commonplace and heavy. And, on the other hand,
the insight which you seek to get whenever, in the academic
20 world, you work in the laboratory or in the field, in the library
or in the classroom or alone in your study, the insight that
you try both to embody in your practical life and to enrich
through your researches, just this insight, I say, is best
to be furthered by a right cultivation of the spirit of loyalty.
25 I suppose that when I utter these words, you w r ill easily
give to them a certain general assent. But I want to devote
this address to making just such words mean more to you
than at first they may appear to mean.
First, then, let me tell you \vhat I myself mean by the
30 term "loyalty." Then let me deal with my principal
thesis, which is that the true spirit of loyalty is not merely
a proper accompaniment of all serious work, but is an espe-
cially important source of a very deep insight into the mean-
ing of life, and, as I personally believe, into the nature of
35 the whole universe.
Three sorts of persons, I have noticed, are fond of using
the term " loyalty." These are quite different types of
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 367
persons; or, in any case, they use the word upon very dif-
ferent occasions. But these very differences are to my
mind important. The first type of those who love to use
the term " loyalty " consists of those who employ it to
express a certain glow of enthusiastic devotion, the type 5
of the lovers, of the students when the athletic contests
are near, of the partisans in the heat of a political contest,
or of the friends of an institution upon a day like this. To
such persons, or at least at such moments, loyalty is con-
ceived as something brilliantly emotional, as a passion ofio
devotion. The second class of those who are fond of the
word " loyalty " are the warriors and their admirers. To
such persons loyalty means a willingness to do dangerous
service, to sacrifice life, to toil long and hard for the flag
that one follows. But for a third type of those who employ 15
the word, loyalty especially means steady, often unobtrusive,
fidelity to more or less formal obligations, such as the business
world and the workshop impose upon us. Such persons
think of loyalty as, first of all, faithfulness in obeying the
law of the land, or in executing the plans of one's official 20
superiors, or in serving one's employer or one's client or one's
chief, or one's fraternity or other social union. In this
sense the loyal servant may be obscure and unemotional.
But he is trustworthy. Now, a word which thus so forcibly
appeals to the lovers who want to express their passionate 25
devotion, and also to the soldiers who want to name that
obstinate following of the flag which makes victory possible;
a word which business men also sometimes use to characterize
the quietly and industriously faithful employee who obeys
orders, who betrays no secrets, and who regards the firm's 30
interest as his own; well, such a word, I think, is not as
much ambiguous as deep in its meaning. For, after all,
loyal emotions, loyal sacrifice of life, loyal steadiness in
obscure service, are but various symptoms of a certain
spirit which lies beneath all its various expressions. This 35
spirit is a well-known one. All the higher life of society
depends upon it. It may manifest itself as enthusiasm upon
368 JOSIAH ROYCE
an occasion like this, or as contempt for death upon the battle
field, or as quiet service when the toil of life is grim, or as the
cool fidelity that pursues the daily routine of office or of
workshop or of kitchen with a steady persistence and with a
5 simple acceptance of traditional duties or of the day's toil.
But the spirit thus manifested is not exhausted by any of
its symptoms. The appearances of loyalty are manifold.
Its meaning is one. And I myself venture to state what
the true spirit of loyalty is by defining the term thus: By
10 loyalty I mean the thorough-going, the voluntary, and the
practical devotion of a self to a cause. And by a cause I
mean something of the nature that the true lover has in
mind when he is wisely devoted to his love; that the faith-
ful member of a family serves when the family itself is the
15 cause dear to him; that the member of a fraternity, or the
child of a college, or the devoted professional man, or the
patriot, or the martyr, or the faithful workman conceives
when he thinks of that to which he gives his life. As all
these illustrations suggest, the cause to which one can be
20 loyal is never a mere collection of individuals; nor is it ever
a mere abstract principle. This cause, whether in the church
or the army or the workshop, in the home or in the friendship,
is some sort of unity whereby many persons are joined in one
common life. The cause to which a loyal man is devoted
25 is of the nature of an institution, or of a home life, or of a
fraternity, wherein two or more persons aim to become one;
or of a religion, wherein the unity of the spirit is sought
through the communion of the faithful. Loyalty respects
individuals, but aims to bring them together into one com-
30 mon life. Its command to the loyal is: " Be ' one undivided
soul of many a soul ' ". It recognizes that, when apart,
individuals fail; but that when they try to unite their lives
into one common higher selfhood, to live as if they were
the expressions, the instruments, the organs of one ideally
35 beautiful social group, they win the only possible fulfillment
of the meaning of human existence. Through loyalty to
such a cause, through devotion to an ideally united social
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 369
group, and only through such loyalty, can the problems of
human personality be solved. By nature, and apart from
some cause to which we are loyal, each of us is .but a mass of
caprices, a chaos of distracting passions, a longing for hap-
piness that is never fulfilled, a seeking for success which 5
never attains its goal. Meanwhile, no merely customary
morality ever adequately guides our lives. Mere social
authority never meets our needs. But a cause, some unity
of many lives in one, some call upon the individual to give
himself over to the service of an idealized community 10
this gives sense to life. This, when we feel its presence, as
we do upon this occasion, we love, as the lovers love the
common life of friendship that is to make them one, or as
the mothers delight in the life that is to unite themselves
and their children in the family, or as the devout feel that 15
through their communion in the life of their church they
become one with the Divine Spirit. For such a cause we
can make sacrifices, such as the soldier makes in following
the flag. For what is the fortune of any detached self
as compared with the one cause of the whole country? 20
And just such a voluntary devotion to a cause can ennoble
the routine of the humblest daily business, in the office, in
the household, in the school, at the desk, or in the market
place, if one only finds the cause that can hold his devotion
be this cause his business firm or his profession or his house- 25
hold or his country or his church, or all these at once. For
all these causes have their value in this: that through the
business firm, or the household, or the profession, or the
spiritual community, the lives of many human selves are
woven into one, so that our fortunes and interests are no 30
longer conceived as detached and private, but as a giving of
ourselves in order that the social group to which we are
devoted should live its own united life.
With this bare indication of what I mean by loyalty, I jnay
now say that of late years I have attempted to show in detail, 35
in various discussions of our topic, that the spirit of loyalty,
rightly understood, and practically applied, furnishes an
370 JOSIAH ROYCE
adequate solution for all the problems of the moral life.
The whole moral law can be summed up in the two command-
ments: first, Be loyal; and secondly, So choose, so serve,
and so unify the life causes to which you yourself are loyal
5 that, through your choice, through your service, through
your example, and through your dealings with all men, you
may, as far as in you lies, help other people to be loyal to
their own causes; may avoid cheating them of their oppor-
tunities for loyalty; may inspire them with their own best
10 type of loyalty, and may so best serve the one great cause
of the spread of loyalty among mankind. Or, if I may
borrow and adapt for a worthy end Lincoln's immortal
words, the moral law is this: Let us so live, so love, and so
serve, that loyalty " of the people, by the people, for the
75 people, shall not perish from the earth," but shall prosper
and abound.
The scheme of life thus suggested is, I believe, adequate.
I next want to tell what bearing the spirit of loyalty has
upon insight.
20 The insight that all of us most need and desire is an insight,
first, into the business of life itself, and next into the nature
and meaning of the real world in which we live. Our fore-
fathers used to center all their views of life and of the world
about their religion. Many of the leading minds of to-day
25 center their modern insight about the results of science.
In consequence, what I may call the general problems of
insight, and the views of life and of the world which most of
us get from our studies, have come of late to appear very
different from the views and the problems which our own
30 leading countrymen a century ago regarded as most important.
The result is that the great problem of the philosophy of
life to-day may be defined as the effort to see whether, and
how, you can cling to a genuinely ideal and spiritual
interpretation of your own nature and of your duty, while
35 abandoning superstition, and while keeping in close touch
with the results of modern knowledge about man and nature.
Let me briefly indicate what I mean by this problem of a
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 371
modern philosophy of life. From the modern point of view
great stress has been laid upon the fact that man, as we know
man, appears to be subject to the laws of the natural world.
Modern knowledge makes these laws appear very far-reach-
ing, very rigid, and very much of the type that we call me- 5
chanical. We have, therefore, most of us, learned not to
expect miraculous interferences with the course of nature as
aids in our human conflict with destiny. We have been
taught to regard ourselves as the products of a long process
of natural evolution. We have come to think that man's 10
control over nature has to take the general form which our
industrial arts illustrate, and which our recent contests with
disease, such as the wars with tuberculosis and with yellow
fever, exemplify. Man, we have been led to say, wins his
way only by studying nature and by applying his carefully 15
won empirical knowledge to the guidance of his arts. The
business of life so we have been moved to assert must
therefore be guided simply by an union of plain common
sense with the scientific study of nature. The real world,
we have been disposed to say, is, on the whole, so far as we 20
can know it, a mechanism. Therefore the best ideal of life
involves simply the more or less complete control of this
mechanism for useful and humane ends. Such, I say, is
one very commonly accepted result to which modern knowl-
edge seems to have led men. The practical view of life and 25
of its business which expresses this result has been, for many
of us, twofold. First, we have been led to this well-known
precept: If you want to live wisely, you must, at all events,
avoid superstition. That is, you must not try to guide human
life by dealing with such supernatural powers, good and evil, 30
as the mythologies of the past used to view as the con-
trolling forces of human destiny. You must take natural
laws as you find them. You must believe about the real
world simply what you can confirm by the verdict of human
experience. You must put no false hopes either in magic 35
arts or in useless appeals to the gods. You must, for instance,
fight tuberculosis not by prayer, but by knowing the con-
372 JOSIAH ROYCE
ditions that produce it and the natural processes that tend
to destroy its germs. And so, in general, in order to live
well and wisely you must be a naturalist and not a super-
naturalist. Or in any case you must conform your common
5 sense not to the imagination that in the past peopled the
dream world of humanity with good and evil spirits, but to
the carefully won insight that has shown us f .hat our world
is one where natural law reigns unyielding, defying equally
our magic arts and our prayerful desires for divine aid.
10 But secondly, side by side with this decidedly positive
advice, many of us have been brought to accept a practical
attitude towards the world which has seemed to us negative
and discouraging. This second attitude may be expressed
in the sad precept : Hope not to find this world in any univer-
15 sal sense a world of ideal values. Nature is indifferent to
values. Values are human, and merely human. Man can
indeed give to his own life much of what he calls value,
if he uses his natural knowledge for human ends. But when
he sets out upon this task, he ought to know that, however
20 sweet and ideal human companionship may be as it exists
among men, humanity as a whole must fight its battle with
nature and with the universe substantially alone, com-
fortless except for the comforts that it wins precisely as it
builds its houses; namely, by using the mechanisms of
25 nature for its own purposes. The world happens, indeed,
to give man some power to control natural conditions. But
even this power is due to the very fact that man also is one
of nature's products, a product possessing a certain stabil-
ity, a certain natural plasticity and docility, a limited range
30 of natural initiative. As a rock may deflect a stream, so
man, himself a natural mechanism, may turn the stream of
nature's energies into paths that are temporarily useful for
human purposes. But from the modern point of view the
ancient plaint of the Book of Job remains true, both for the
35 rock and for the man:
" The \vaters wear away stones,
And the hope of frail man thou destroyest."
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 373
In the end, our relations to the universe thus seem to
remain relations to an essentially foreign power, which cares
for our ideals as the stormy sea cares for the boat, and as the
bacteria care for the human organism upon which they prey.
If we ourselves, as products of nature, are sufficiently strong 5
mechanisms, we may be able to win, while life lasts, many
ideal goods. But just so, if the boat is well enough built,
it may weather one or another passing storm. If the body
is well knit, it may long remain immune to disease. Yet
in the end the boat and the human body fail. And in noio
case, so this view asserts, does the real world essentially
care for or help or encourage our ideals. Our ideals are as
foreign to the real natural world as the interests of the ship's
company are to the ocean that may tolerate, but also may
drown them. Be free from superstition, then; and next 15
avoid false hopes. Such are the two theses that seem to
embody for many minds the essentally modern view of things
and the essential result for the philosophy of life of what we
have now learned.
But hereupon the question arises whether this is indeed 20
the last word of insight; whether this outcome of modern
knowledge does indeed tell the whole story of our relations
to the real world. That this modern view has its own share
of deeper truth we all recognize. But is this the whole
truth? Have we no access whatever to any other aspect of 25
reality than the one which this naturalistic view emphasizes?
And again, the question still arises: Is there any place left
for a religion that can be free from superstition, that can
accept just so much of the foregoing modern results as are
indeed established, and that can yet supplement them by an 30
insight which may show the universe to be, after all, some-
thing more than a mechanism? In sum, are we merely
stones that deflect the stream for a while, until the waters
wear them away? Or are there spiritual hopes of humanity
which the mechanism of nature cannot destroy? Is the phi- 35
losophy of life capable of giving us something more than a
naturalism humanized merely by the thought that man,
374 JOSIAH ROYCE
being, after all, a well-knit and plastic mechanism, can for
a time mold nature to his ends? So much for the great
problem of modern insight. Let us turn to consider the
relation of the spirit of loyalty to this problem.
5 What light can a study of the spirit of loyalty, as I just
defined loyalty what light, I say, can such a study throw
upon this problem? Very little so some of you may say;
for any discussion of the spirit of loyalty can tell us nothing
to make nature's mechanism more comprehensible. One
10 who favors loyalty as a way of solving life's problems tells
us about a certain ideal of human life, an ideal which, as
I have asserted, does tend to solve our personal moral prob-
lems precisely in so far as we are able to express this ideal
in our practical lives. In order to be loyal you indeed have
1 5 no need to believe in any of the well-known miracles of
popular tradition. And equally, in order to be loyal, you
have no need, first, to decide whether nature is or is not
a mechanism; or whether the modern view of reality, as
just summarized, is or is not adequate; or whether the gods
20 exist; or whether man is or is not one of nature's products
and temporarily well-knit and plastic machines. Our
doctrine of loyalty is founded not upon a decision about
nature's supposed mechanism, but upon a study of man's
own inner and deeper needs. It is a doctrine about the
25 plan and the business of human life. It seems, therefore,
to be neutral as to every so-called conflict between science
and religion.
But now, in answer to these remarks, I have to show
that the doctrine of loyalty, once rightly understood, has
30 yet a further application. It is a doctrine that, when more
fully interpreted, helps us toward a genuine insight, not
only into the plan of life, but into the nature of things. The
philosophy of loyalty has nothing to say against precisely
so much of naturalism as is indeed an established result of
35 common sense and of the scientific study of nature. The
theory of the loyal life involves nothing superstitious no
trust in magic, no leaning upon the intervention of such
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 375
spiritual agencies as the old mythologies conceived. And
yet, as I shall insist, nobody can understand and practise
the loyal spirit without tending thereby to get a true view
of the nature of things, a genuine touch with reality, which
cannot be gained without seeing that, however much of a 5
mechanism nature may appear to be, the real world is some-
thing much more than a mechanism, and much more signif-
icant than are the waters which wear away stones.
Let me indicate what I mean by repeating in brief my
doctrine of loyalty with reference to the spirit which itio
involves, and with reference to the view of the realities of
human life which it inevitably includes.
Whoever is loyal has found some cause, I have said, a
cause to which, by his inner interests, he is indeed attracted
so that the cause is fascinating to his sentiments. But 15
the cause is also one to which the loyal man is meanwhile
practically and voluntarily devoted, so that his loyalty
is no mere glow of enthusiasm, but is an affair of his deeds
as well as of his emotions. Loyalty I therefore denned
as the thorough-going and practical devotion of a self to 20
a cause. Why loyalty is a duty; how loyalty is possible
for every normal human being; how it can appear early
in youth, and then grow though life; how it can be at once
faithful to its own, and yet can constantly enlarge its scope;
how it can become universally human in its interests with- 25
out losing its concreteness, and without failing to keep in
touch with the personal affections and the private concerns
of the loyal person; how loyalty is a virtue for all men,
however humble and however exalted they may be; how
the loyal service of the tasks of a single possibly narrow 30
life can be viewed as a service of the cause of universal
loyalty, and so of the interests of all humanity; how all
special duties of life can be stated in terms of a duly general-
ized spirit of loyalty; and how moral conflicts can be solved,
and moral divisions made, in the light of the principle of 35
loyalty; all this I have asserted, although here is indeed
no time for adequate discussion. But hereupon I want
376 JOSIAH ROYCE
to concentrate our whole attention, not upon the conse-
quences and applications of the doctrine of loyalty, but
upon the most central characteristic of the loyal spirit.
This central characteristic of the loyal spirit consists in the
5 fact that it conceives and values its cause as a reality, as
an object that has a being of its own; while the type of
reality which belongs to a cause is different from the type
of reality which we ascribe either to a thing in the physical
world or to a law of nature. A cause is never a mere
10 mechanism. It is an essentially spiritual reality. If the
loyal human being is right in the account which he gives
of his cause, then the real world contains beings which
are not mere natural objects, and is subject to laws which,
without in the least running counter to the laws of outer
1 5 nature, are the laws of an essentially spiritual realm, whose
type of being is superior to that possessed by the order of
nature which our industrial arts use. Either, then, loyalty
is altogether a service of myths, or else the causes which
the loyal serve belong to a realm of real being which is above
20 the level of mere natural fact and natural law. In the
latter case the real world is not indifferent to our human
search for values. The modern naturalistic and mechanical
views of reality are not, indeed, false within their own proper
range, but they are inadequate to tell us the whole truth.
25 And reality contains, further, and is characterized by, an
essentially spiritual order of being.
1 have been speaking to persons who, as I have trusted,
well know, so far as they have yet had time to learn the les-
sons of life, something of what loyalty means. Come,
30 then, let us consider what is the sort of object that you
have present to your mind when you are loyal to a cause.
If your cause is a reality, what kind of a being is it? If
causes are realities, then in what sort of a real world do
you live?
35 I have already indicated that, while loyalty always
includes personal affections, while you can never be loyal
to what you take to be a merely abstract principle, never-
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 377
theless, it is equally true that you can never be genuinely
loyal merely to an individual human being, taken just as
this detached creature. You can, indeed, love your friend,
viewed just as this individual. But love for an individual
is so far just a fondness for a fascinating human presence, 5
and is essentially capricious, whether it lasts or is transient.
You can be, and should be, loyal to your friendship, to the
union of yourself and your friend, to that ideal comrade-
ship which is neither of you alone, and which is not the mere
doublencss that consists of you and your friend taken as two 10
detached beings who happen to find one another's presence
agreeable. Loyalty to a friendship involves your willing-
ness actively and practically to create and maintain a life
which is to be the united life of yourself and your friend-
not the life of your friend alone, nor the life of yourself 15
and your friend as you exist apart, but the common life,
the life above and inclusive of your distinctions, the one
life that you are to live as friends. To the tie, to the unity,
to the common life, to the union of friends, you can be loyal.
Without such loyalty friendship consists only of its routine 20
of more or less attractive private sentiments and mere meet-
ings, each one of which is one more chance experience,
heaped together with other chance experiences. But with
such true loyalty your friendship becomes, at least in ideal,
a new life a life that neither of you could have alone; a 25
life that is not a mere round of separate private amusements,
but that belongs to a new type of dual yet unified personal-
ity. Nor are you loyal to your friendship merely as to an
abstraction. You are loyal to it as to the common better
self of both of you, a self that lives its own real life. Either 30
such a loyalty to your friendship is a belief in myths, or
else such a type of higher and unified dual personality
actually possesses a reality of its own, a reality that you
cannot adequately describe by reporting, as (o the taker
of a census, that you and your friend are two creatures, 35
with two distinct cases of a certain sort of fondness to be
noted down, and with each a separate life into which, as an
378 JOSIAH ROYCE
incident, some such fondness enters. No; were a census
of true friendship possible, the census taker should be
required to report: Here are indeed two friends; but here
is also the ideal and yet, in some higher sense, real life
5 of their united personality present, a life which belongs
to neither of them alone, and which also does not exist merely
as a parcel of fragments, partly in one, partly in the other of
them. It is the life of their common personality. It is
a new spiritual person on a higher level.
10 Or again, you are loyal to some such union as a family
or a fraternity represents. Or you are loyal to your class,
your college, your community, your country, your church.
In all these cases, with endless variety in the details, your
loyalty has for its object each time, not merely a group of
1 5 detached personalities, but some ideally significant common
life; an union of many in one; a community which also
has the value of a person, and which, nevertheless, cannot
be found distributed about in a collection of fragments
found inside the detached lives of the individual members
20 of the family, the club, the class, the college, the country,
the church. If this common life to which you are loyal is
a reality, then the real human world does not consist of
separate creatures alone, of the mere persons who flock
in the streets and who live in the different houses. The
25 human world, if the loyal are right, contains personality
that is not merely shut up within the skin, now of this,
now of that, human creature. It contains personalities
that no organism confines within its bounds; that no single
life, that no crowd of detached lives, comprises. Yet this
30 higher sort of common personality, if the loyal are right,
is as real as we separate creatures are real. It is no abstrac-
tion. It lives. It loves, and we love it. We enter into
it. It is ours, and we belong to it. It works through us,
the fellow servants of the common cause. Yet we get our
35 worth through it, the goal of our whole moral endeavor.
For those who are not merely loyal, but also enlightened,
loyalty, never losing the definiteness and the concreteness
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 379
of its devotion to some near and directly fascinating cause,
sees itself to be in actual spiritual unity with the common
cause of all the loyal, whoever they are. The great cause
for all the loyal is in reality the cause of the spread and the
furtherance of the cause of the universal loyalty of all man- 5
kind: a cause which nobody can serve except by choosing
his own nearer and more appreciated cause the private
cause which is directly his own his family, his community,
his friendship, his calling, and the calling of those who
serve with him. Yet such personal service your special 10
life cause, your task, your vocation is your way of furthering
the ends of universal humanity. And if you are enlightened,
you know this fact. Through your loyalty you, then,
know yourself to be kin to all the loyal. You hereupon
conceive the loyal as one brotherhood, one invisible church 15
for which and in which you live. The spirit dwells in this
invisible church, the holy spirit that wills the unity of all
in fidelity and in service. Hidden from you by all the
natural estrangements of the present life, this common life
of all the loyal, this cause which is the one cause of all the 20
loyal, is that for which you live. In spirit you are really
sundered from none of those who themselves live in the spirit.
All this, I say, is what it is the faith of all the loyal to
regard as the real life in which we live and move and have
our being, precisely in so far as men come to understand what 25
loyalty is. Thus, then, in general, to be loyal is to believe
that there are real causes. And to be universally loyal is
to believe that the one cause of loyalty itself, the invisible
church of all the loyal, is a reality; something as real as
we are. But causes are never detached human beings 530
nor are causes ever mere crowds, heaps, collections, aggrega-
tions of human beings. Causes are at once personal (if
by person you mean the ordinary human individual in his
natural character) and M/>er-personal. Persons they v are,
because only where persons are found can causes be defined. 35
Super-personal they are, because no mere individual human
creature, and no mere pairs or groups or throngs of human
380 JOSIAH ROYCE
beings, can ever constitute unified causes. You cannot
be loyal to a crowd as a crowd. A crowd can shout, as at a
game or a political convention. But only some sort of organ-
ized unity of social life can either do the work of an unit or
5 hold the effective loyalty of the enlightened worker who
does not merely shout with the throng. And so when you
are really loyal to your country, your country does not
mean to you merely the crowd, the mass of your separate
fellow citizens. Still less does it mean the mere organs,
10 or the separate servants of the country, the custom house,
the War Department, the Speaker of the House, or any other
office or official. When you sing " My country, 'tis of thee,"
you do not mean, " My post-office, 'tis of thee," nor yet,
" My fellow citizens, 'tis of you, just as the creatures who
T 5 crowd the street and who overfill the railway cars," that I
sing. If the poet continues in his own song to celebrate the
land, the " rocks and rills," the " woods and templed hills,"
he is still speaking only of symbols. What he means is the
country as an invisible but, in his opinion, perfectly real
20 spiritual unity. General Nogi, in a recent Japanese publica-
tion about Bushido, expressed his own national ideal beau-
tifully in the words: " Here the sovereign and the people
are of one family and have together endured the joys and
sorrows of thousands of years." It is that sort of being
25 whereof one speaks when one expresses true loyalty to the
country. The country is the spiritual entity that is none
of us and all of us nore of us because it is our unity; all
of us because in it we all find our patriotic unity.
Such, then, is the idea that the loyal have of the real
30 nature of the causes which they serve. I repeat, If the loyal
are right, then the real world contains other beings than
mechanisms and individual human and animal minds. It
contains spiritual unities which are as real as we are, but
which certainly do not belong to the realm of a mere nature
35 mechanism. Does not all this put the problems of our
philosophy of life in a new light?
But I have no doubt that you may at once reply: All this
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 381
speech about causes is after all merely more or less pleasing
metaphor. As a fact, human beings are just individual
natural creatures. They throng and struggle for existence,
and love and hate and enjoy and sorrow and die. These
causes are, after all, mere dreams, or at best entities as we 5
have just described. The friends like to talk of being one;
but there are always two or more of them, and the unity
is a pretty phrase. The country is, in the concrete, the
collection of the countrymen, with names, formulas, songs,
and so on, attached, by way of poetical license or of convenient 10
abbreviation or of pretty fable. The poet really meant
simply that he was fond of the landscape, and was not
wholly averse to a good many of his countrymen, and was
in any case fond of a good song. Loyalty, like the rest
of human life, is an illusion. Nature is real. The unity 15
of the spirit is a fancy.
This, I say, may be your objection. But herewith we
indeed stand in the presence of a certain very deep philo-
sophical problem concerning the true definition of what we
mean by reality. Into this problem I have neither time nor 20
wish to enter just now. But upon one matter I must,
nevertheless, stoutly insist. It is a matter so simple, so
significant, so neglected, that I at once need and fear to
mention it to you, need to mention it, because it puts our
philosophy into a position that quite transforms the signif- 25
icance of that whole modern view of nature upon which
I have been dwelling since the outset of this lecture; fear
to mention it, because the fact that it is so commonly
neglected shows how hard to be understood it has proved.
That disheartening view of the foreign and mechanical 30
nature of the real world which our sciences and our indus-
trial arts have impressed upon the minds of so many of us;
that contempt for superstition; that denial of the super-
natural, which seems to the typical modern man the begin-
ning of wisdom; to what is all this view of reality due? 35
To the results, and, as I believe, to the really important
results, of the modern study of natural science. But what
382 JUSIAH ROYCE
is the study of natural science? Practically considered,
viewed as one of the great moral activities of mankind,
the study of science is a very beautiful and humane expression
of a certain exalted form of loyally. Science is, practically
5 considered, the outcome of the absolutely devoted labors
of countless seekers for natural truth. But how do we
human beings get at what we call natural truth? By obser-
vation so men say and by experience. But by whose
experience? By the united, by the synthesized, by the
10 revised, corrected, rationally criticized, above all by the
common, experience of many individuals. The possibility
of science rests upon the fact that human experience may be
progressively treated so as to become more and more an
unity. The detached individual records the transit of a
1 5 star, observes a precipitate in a test tube, stains a prep-
aration and examines it under a microscope, collects in
the field, takes notes in a hospital and loyally contributes
his little fragment of a report to the ideally unified and
constantly growing totality called scientific human experi-
2oence. In doing this he employs his memory, and so con-
ceives his own personal life as an unity. But equally
he aims and herein consists his scientific loyalty to
bring his personal experience into unity with the whole
course of human experience in so far as it bears upon his
25 own science. The collection of mere data is never enough.
It is in the unity of their interpretation that the achieve-
ments of science lie. This unity is conceived in the form
of scientific theories; is verified by the comparative and
critical conduct of experiments. But in all such work how
30 manifold are the presuppositions which we make when we
attempt such unification! Here is no place to enumerate
these presuppositions. Some of them you find discussed
in the textbooks of the logic of science. Some of them
are instinctive, and almost never get discussed at all. But
35 it is here enough to say that we all presuppose that human
experience has, or can by the loyal efforts of truth seekers be
made to possess, a real unity, superior in its nature and sig-
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 383
nificance to any detached observer's experience, more genuinely
real than is the mere collection of the experiences of any set
of detached observers, downer large. The student of natural
science is loyal to the cause of the enlargement of this organ-
ized and criticized realm of the common human experience. 5
Unless this unity of human experience is a genuine reality,
unless all the workers are living a really common life, unless
each man is, potentially at least, in a live spiritual unity
with his fellows, science itself is a mere metaphor, its truth
is an illusion, its results are myths. For science is conceived 10
as true only by conceiving the experiences of countless
observers as the sharing of a common realm of experience.
If, as we all believe, the natural sciences do throw a real,
if indeed an inadequate, light upon the nature of things,
then they do so because no one man's experience is dis- 1.5
connected from the real whole of human experience. They
do so because the cause to which the loyal study of science
is devoted, the cause of the enlargement of human experience,
is a cause that has a supernatural, or, as Professor Miinster-
berg loves to say, an over-individual, type of reality. Man- 20
kind is not a mere collection of detached individuals, or
man could possess no knowledge of any unity of scientific
truth. If men are really only many, and if they have no
such unity of conscious experience as loyalty everywhere
presupposes, then the cause of science also is a vain illusion, 25
and we have no unified knowledge of nature, only various
private fancies about nature. If we know, however ill,
nature's mechanism, we do so because human experience
is not merely a collection of detached observations, but
forms an actual spiritual unity, whose type is not that of 30
a mechanism, whose connections are ideally significant,
whose constitution is essentially that which the ideal of
unified truth requires.
So, then, I insist, the dilemma is upon our hands. Either
the sciences constitute a progressive, if imperfect, insight 35
into real truth and then the cause of the unity of human
experience is a real cause that really can be served exactly
384 JOSIAH ROYCE
as the lover means to be loyal to his friendship and the patriot
to his country; and then also human life really possesses
such unity as the loyal presuppose or else none of this
is so. But then loyalty and science alike deal with meta-
5 phors and with myths. In the first case the spiritual unity
of the life that we lead is essentially vindicated. Causes
such as the loyal serve are real. The cause of science also
is real. But in that case an essentially spiritual realm,
that of the rational unity of human experience, is real;
10 and possesses a grade both of reality and of worth which
is superior to the grade of reality that the phenomena of
nature's mechanism exhibit to us. In the other case the
sciences whose results are supposed to be discouraging and
unspiritual vanish, with all their facts, into the realm of
15 fable, together with the world that all the loyal, including
the faithful followers of the sciences, believe to be real.
I have here no time to discuss the paradoxes of a totally
skeptical philosophy. It is enough to say that such a total
skepticism is, indeed, self-refuting. The only rational
20 view of life depends upon maintaining that what the loyal
always regard as a reality, namely, their cause, is, indeed,
despite all special illusions of this or of that, form of imperfect
loyalty, essentially a type of reality which rationally sur-
vives all criticisms and underlies all doubts.
2 5 " They reckon ill who leave me out;
When me thy fly, I am the wings."
This is what the genuine object of loyalty, the unity of the
spiritual life, always says to us when we examine it in the
right spirit. But the one source of our deepest insight into
30 this unity of the spirit which underlies all the varieties,
and which leads us upward to itself past all the sunderings
and doubts of existence, is the loyal spirit itself. Loyalty
asserts: " My cause is real. I know that my cause liveth."
But the cause, however imperfectly interpreted, is always
35 some sort of unity of the spiritual life in which we learn
to share whenever we begin to be loyal. The more we
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 385
grow in loyalty and in insight into the meaning of our loyalty,
the more we learn to think of some vast range of the unity
of spiritual life as the reality to which all the other realities
accessible to us are in one way or another subordinate, so
that they express this unity, and show more or less what it 5
means. I believe that a sound critical philosophy justifies
the view that the loyal, precisely in so far as they view their
cause as real, as a personal, but also as an over-individual,
realm of genuine spiritual life, are comprehending, as far as
they go, the deepest nature of things. 10
Religion, in its higher sense, always involves a practical
relation to a spiritual world which, in its significance, in
its inclusiveness, in its unity, and in its close and comfort-
ing touch with our most intense personal concerns, fulfils
in a supreme degree the requirements which loyalty makes 15
when it seeks for a worthy cause. One may have a true
religion without knowing the reason why it is true. One
may also have false religious beliefs. But in any case the
affiliation of the spirit of the higher religion with the spirit
of loyalty has been manifest, I hope, from the outset of this 20
discussion of loyalty. By religious insight one may very
properly mean any significant and true view of an object
of religious devotion which can be obtained by any reason-
able means.
In speaking of loyalty and insight I have also given an 25
indication of that source of religious insight which I believe
to be, after all, the surest, the most accessible, the most
universal, and, in its deepest essence, the most rational.
The problem of the modern philosophy of life is, we have
said, the problem of keeping the spirit of religion, without 30
falling a prey to superstition. At the outset of this lecture
I told briefly why, in the modern world, we aim to avoid
superstition. The true reason for this aim you now see
better than at first I could state that reason. We have
learned, and wisely learned, that the great cause of the study 35
of nature by scientific methods is one of the principal special
causes to which man can be devoted; for nothing serves
386 JOSIAH ROYCE
more than the pursuit of the sciences serves to bind into
unity the actual work of human civilization. To this cause
of scientific study we have all learned to be, according to
our lights, loyal. But the study of science makes us averse
S to the belief in magic arts, in supernatural interferences,
in special providences. The scientific spirit turns from the
legends and the superstitions that in the past have sun-
dered men, have inflamed the religious wars, have filled
the realm of imagination with good and evil spirits. Turns
10 from these to what? To a belief in a merely mechanical
reality? To a doctrine that the real world is foreign to our
ideals? To an assurance that life is vain?
No; so to view the mission of the study of science is to
view that mission falsely. The one great lesson of the
15 triumph of science is the lesson of the vast significance of
loyalty to the cause of science. And this loyalty depends
upon acknowledging the reality of a common, a rational, a
significant unity of human experience, a genuine cause which
men can serve. When the sciences teach us to get rid of
20 superstition, they do this by virtue of a loyalty to the pur-
suit of truth which is, as a fact, loyalty to the cause of the
spiritual unity of mankind: an unity which the students
of science conceive in terms of an unity of our human
experience of nature, but which, after all, they more or
25 less unconsciously interpret just as all the other loyal souls
interpret their causes; namely, as a genuine living reality, a
life superior in type to the individual lives which we lead
worthy of devoted service, significant, and not merely
an incidental play of a natural mechanism. This unity of
30 human experience reveals to us nature's mechanisms, but is
itself no part of the mechanism which it observes.
If, now, we do as our general philosophy of loyalty would
require: if we take all our loyalties, in whatever forms they
may appear, as more or less enlightened but always practical
35 revelations that there is an unity of spiritual life which is
above our present natural level, which is worthy of our
devotion, which can give sense to life, and which consists
LOYALTY AND INSIGHT 387
of facts that are just as genuinely real as are the facts and
the laws of outer nature well, can we not thus see our
way towards a religious insight which is free from super-
stition, which is indifferent to magic and to miracle, which
accepts all the laws of nature just in so far as they are indeed 5
known, but which nevertheless stoutly insists: " This world
is no mere mechanism; it is full of a spiritual unity that
transcends mere nature?"
I believe that we can do this. I believe that what I have
merely hinted to you is capable of a much richer development I0
than 1 have here given to these thoughts. I believe, in
brief, that in our loyalties we find our best sources of a
genuinely religious insight.
Men have often said, " The true source of religious
insight is revelation; for these matters are above the powers *5
of human reason." Now, I am not here to discuss or to
criticize anybody's type of revelation. But this I know,
and this the believers in various supposed revelations have
often admitted that unless the aid of some interior spir-
itual insight comes to be added to the merely external 20
revelation, one can be left in doubt by all possible signs and
wonders whereby the revelation undertakes to give us
convincing external evidence. Religious faith, indeed,
relates to that which is above us, but it must arise from that
which is within us. And any faith which has indeed a 25
worthy religious object is either merely a mystic ecstasy,
which must then be judged, if at all, only by its fruits, or
else it is a loyalty, which never exists without seeking to
bear fruit in works. Now my thesis is that loyalty is
essentially adoration with service, and that there is no 33
true adoration without practical loyalty. If I am right,
all of the loyal are grasping in their own ways, and according
to their lights, some form and degree f religious truth.
They have won religious insight; for they view something,
at least, of the genuine spiritual world in its real unity, and 35
they devote themselves to that unity, to its enlargement and
enrichment. And therefore they approach more and more
388 JUSIAH ROYCE
to the comprehension of that true spiritual life whereof,
as I suppose, the real world essentially consists.
Therefore I find in the growth of the spirit of loyalty
which normally belongs to any loyal life the deepset source
5 of a genuinely significant religious insight which belongs to
just that individual in just his stage of development.
In brief: Be loyal; grow in loyalty. Therein lies the
source of a religious insight free from superstition. Therein
also lies the solution of the problems of the philosophy of
10 life.
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE l
A. C. BRADLEY
THE words " Poetry for poetry's sake " recall the famous
phrase " Art for Art." It is far from my purpose to examine
the possible meanings of that phrase, or all the questions it
involves. I propose to state briefly what I understand
by " Poetry for poetry's sake," and then, after guarding s
against one or two misapprehensions of the formula, to
consider more fully a single problem connected with it.
And I must premise, without attempting to justify them,
certain explanations. We are to consider poetry in its
essence, and apart from the flaws which in most poems 10
accompany their poetry. We are to include in the idea
of poetry the metrical form, and not to regard this as a
mere accident or a mere vehicle. And, finally, poetry being
poems, we are to think of a poem as it actually exists; and,
without aiming here at accuracy, we may say that an actual 15
poem is the succession of experiences sounds, images,
thoughts, emotions through which we pass when we are
reading as poetically as we can. Of course this imaginative
experience if I may use the phrase for brevity differs
with every reader and every time of reading: a poem exists 20
in innumerable degrees. But that insurmountable fact
lies in the nature of things and does not concern us now.
What then does the formula " Poetry for poetry's sake "
tell us about this experience? It says, as 1 understand it,
these things. First, this experience is an end in itself, is 25
worth having on its own account, has an intrinsic value.
1 From " Oxford Lectures on Poetry," 1909. Printed by courtesy
of The Macmillan Company.
389
390 A. C. BRADLEY
Next, its poetic value is this intrinsic worth alone. Poetry
may have also an ulterior value as a means to culture or
religion; because it conveys instruction, or softens the
passions, or furthers a good cause; because it brings the
S poet fame or money or a quiet conscience. So much the
better: let it be valued for these reasons too. But its ulterior
worth neither is nor can directly determine its poetic worth
as a satisfying imaginative experience; and this is to be
judged entirely from within. And to these two positions
10 the formula would add, though not of necessity, a third.
The consideration of ulterior ends, whether by the poet
in the act of composing or by the reader in the act of expe-
riencing, tends to lower poetic value. It does so because
it tends to change the nature of poetry by taking it out of
15 its own atmosphere. For its nature is to be not a part,
nor yet a copy, of the real world (as we commonly under-
stand that phrase), but to be a world by itself, independent,
complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must
enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time
20 the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to
you in the other world of reality.
Of the more serious misapprehensions to which these
statements may give rise I will glance only at one or two.
The offensive consequences often drawn from the formula
25 " Art for Art " will be found to attach not to the doctrine
that Art is an end in itself, but to the doctrine that Art is
the whole or supreme end of human life. And as this latter
doctrine, which seems to me absurd, is in any case quite
different from the former, its consequences fall outside my
30 subject. The formula " Poetry is an end in itself " has noth-
ing to say on the various questions of moral judgment which
arise from the fact that poetry has its place in a many-
sided life. For anything it says, the intrinsic value of poetry
might be so small, and its ulterior effects so mischievous,
35 that it had better not exist. The formula only tells us that
we must not place in antithesis poetry and human good,
for poetry is one kind of human good; and that we must
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 391
not determine the intrinsic value of this kind of good by
direct reference to another. If we do, we shall find our-
selves maintaining what we did not expect. If poetic value
lies in the stimulation of religious feelings, Lead kindly
Light is no better poem than many a tasteless version of 5
a Psalm: if in the excitement of patriotism, why is Scots,
who. hae superior to We don't want to fight? if in the mitiga-
tion of the passions, the Odes of Sappho will win but little
praise: if in instruction, Armstrong's Art of preserving
Health should win much. I0
Again, our formula may be accused of cutting poetry
away from its connection with life. And this accusation
raises so huge a problem that I must ask leave to be dogmatic
as well as brief. There is plenty of connection between life
and poetry, but it is, so to say, a connection underground. *S
The two may be called different forms of the same thing:
one of them having (in the usual sense) reality, but seldom
fully satisfying imagination ; while the other offers something
which satisfies imagination but has not full " reality."
They are parallel developments which nowhere meet, or, 20
if I may use loosely a word which will be serviceable later,
they are analogues. Hence we understand one by help of
the other, and even, in a sense, care for one because of the
other; but hence also, poetry neither is life, nor, strictly
speaking, a copy of it. They differ not only because one has 25
more mass and the other a more perfect shape, but because
they have different kinds of existence. The one touches
us as beings occupying a given position in space and time,
and having feelings, desires, and purposes due to that posi-
tion: it appeals to imagination, but appeals to much besides. 3
What meets us in poetry has not a position in the same series
of time and space, or, if it has or had such a position, it is
taken apart from much that belonged to it there; and
therefore it makes no direct appeal to those feelings, desires,
and purposes, but speaks only to contemplative imagina-35
tion imagination the reverse of empty or emotionless,
imagination saturated with the results of " real " experience,
392 A. C. BRADLEY
but still contemplative. Thus, no doubt, one main reason
why poetry has poetic value for us is that it presents to us
in its own way something which we meet in another form in
nature or life; and yet the test of its poetic value for us lies
5 simply in the question whether it satisfies our imagination;
the rest of us, our knowledge or conscience, for example,
judging it only so far as they appear transmuted in our
imagination. So also Shakespeare's knowledge or his
moral insight, Milton's greatness of soul, Shelley's " hate of
10 hate " and " love of love", and that desire to help men or
make them happier which may have influenced a poet in
hours of meditation all these have, as such, no poetical
worth: they have that worth only when, passing through
the unity of the poet's being, they reappear as qualities
15 of imagination, and then are indeed mighty powers in the
world of poetry.
I come to a third misapprehension, and so to my main
subject. This formula, it is said, empties poetry of its
meaning: it is really a doctrine of form for form's sake.
20 " It is of no consequence what a poet says, so long as he says
the thing well. The what is poetically indifferent: it is
the how that counts. Matter, subject, content, substance,
determines nothing; there is no subject with which poetry
may not deal: the form, the treatment, is everything.
25 Nay, more: not only is the matter indifferent, but it is
the secret of Art to ' eradicate the matter by means of the
form, ' phrases and statements like these meet us every-
where in current criticism of literature and the other arts.
They are the stock-in-trade of writers who understand of
3 them little more than the fact that somehow or other they
are not " bourgeois." But we find them also seriously used
by writers whom we must respect, whether they are anony-
mous or not; something like one or another of them might
be quoted, for example, from Professor Saintsbury, the late
35 R. A. M. Stevenson, Schiller, Goethe himself; and they
are the watchwords of a school in the one country where
/Esthetics has flourished. They come, as a rule, from men
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 393
who either practise one of the arts, or, from study of it,
are interested in its methods. The general reader a being
so general that I may say what I will of him is outraged
by them. He feels that he is being robbed of almost all
that he cares for in a work of art. " You are asking me," 5
he says, " to look at the Dresden Madonna as if it were a
Persian rug. You are telling me that the poetic value of
Hamlet lies solely in its style and versification, and that my
interest in the man and his fate is only an intellectual or
moral interest. You allege that, if I want to enjoy theio
poetry of Crossing the Bar, I must not mind what Tennyson
says there, but must consider solely his way of saying it.
But in that case I can care no more for a poem than I do
for a set of nonsense verses; and I do not believe that the
authors of Hamlet and Crossing the Bar regarded their poems 15
thus."
These antitheses of subject, matter, substance on the one
side, form, treatment, handling on the other, are the field
through which I especially want, in this lecture, to indicate
a way. It is a field of battle; and the battle is waged for 20
no trivial cause; but the cries of the combatants are terribly
ambiguous. Those phrases of the so-called formalist may
each mean five or six different things. Taken in one sense
they seem to me chiefly true; taken as the general reader
not unnaturally takes them, they seem to me false, and 25
mischievous. It would be absurd to pretend that I can end
in a few minutes a controversy which concerns the ultimate
nature of Art, and leads perhaps to problems not yet soluble;
but we can at least draw some plain distinctions which,
in this controversy, are too often confused. 30
In the first place, then, let us take " subject " in one par-
ticular sense; let us understand by it that which we have in
view when, looking at the title of an unread poem, we say
that the poet has chosen this or that for his subject. The
subject in this sense, so far as I can discover, is generally 35
something real or imaginary, as it exists in the minds of
fairly cultivated people. The subject of Paradise Lost
394 A. C. BRADLEY
would be the story of the Fall as that story exists in the gen-
eral imagination of a Bible-reading people. The subject
of Shelley's stanzas To a Skylark would be the ideas which
arise in the mind of an educated person when, without
5 knowing the poem, he hears the word "skylark." If the
title of a poem conveys little or nothing to us, the " subject "
appears to be either what we should gather by investigating
the title in a dictionary or other book of the kind, or else such
a brief suggestion as might be offered by a person who had
10 read the poem, and who said, for example, that the subject
of The Ancient Mariner was a sailor who killed an albatross
and suffered for his deed.
Now the subject, in this sense (and I intend to use the
word in no other), is not, as such, inside the poem, but
J S outside it. The contents of the stanzas To a Skylark are
not the ideas suggested by the word " skylark " to the
average man; they belong to Shelley just as much as the
language does. The subject, therefore, is not the matter
of the poem at all; and its opposite is not the form of the
20 poem, but the whole poem. The subject is one thing; the
poem, matter and form alike, another thing. This being
so, it is surely obvious that the poetic value cannot lie in
that subject, but lies entirely in its opposite, the poem.
How can the subject determine the value when on one
2 S and the same subject poems may be written of all degrees
of merit and demerit; or when a perfect poem may be com-
posed on a subject so slight as a pet sparrow, and, if Macaulay
may be trusted, a nearly worthless poem on a subject so
stupendous as the omnipresence of the Deity? The " for-
3malist" is here perfectly right. Nor is he insisting on
something unimportant. He is fighting against our tendency
to take the work of art as a mere copy or reminder of some-
thing already in our heads, or at the best as a suggestion
of some idea as little removed as possible from the familiar.
35 The sightseer who promenades a picture-gallery, remarking
that this portrait is so like his cousin, or that landscape
the very image of his birthplace, or who, after satisfying
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 395
himself that one picture is about Elijah, passes on rejoicing
to discover the subject, and nothing but the subject, of the
next what is he but an extreme example of this tendency?
Well, but the very same tendency vitiates much of our
criticism, much criticism of Shakespeare, for example, 5
which, with all its cleverness and partial truth, still shows
that the critic never passed from his own mind into Shake-
speare's; and it may be traced even in so fine a critic as
Coleridge, as when he dwarfs the sublime struggle of Hamlet
into the image of his own unhappy weakness. Hazlitt by I0
no means escaped its influence. Only the third of that great
trio, Lamb, appears almost always to have rendered the
conception of the composer.
Again, it is surely true that we cannot determine before-
hand what subjects are fit for Art, or name any subject on J 5
which a good poem might not possibly be written. To
divide subjects into two groups, the beautiful or elevating,
and the ugly or vicious, and to judge poems according as
their subjects belong to one of these groups or the other,
is to fall into the same pit, to confuse with our pre-concep- ~
tions the meaning of the poet. What the thing is in the
poem he is to be judged by, not by the thing as it was before
he touched it; and how can we venture to say beforehand
that he cannot make a true poem out of something which
to us was merely alluring or dull or revolting? The question 2 5
whether, having done so, he ought to publish his poem;
whether the thing in the poet's work will not be still confused
by the incompetent Puritan or the incompetent sensualist
with the thing in his mind, does not touch this point; it
is a further question, one of ethics, not of art. No doubt 3
the upholders of " Art for art's sake " will generally be in
favour of the courageous course, of refusing to sacrifice
the better or stronger part of the public to the weaker or
worse; but their maxim in no way binds them to this view.
Rossetti suppressed one of the best of his sonnets, a sonnet 35
chosen for admiration by Tennyson, himself extremely
sensitive about the moral effect of poetry; suppressed it,
396 A. C. BRADLEY
I believe, because it was called fleshly. One may regret
Rossetti's judgment and at the same time respect his scrupu-
lousness; but in any case he judged in his capacity of citizen,
not in his capacity of artist.
5 So far then the " formalist " appears to be right. But
he goes too far, I think, if he maintains that the subject is
indifferent and that all subjects are the same to poetry.
And he does not prove his point by observing that a good
poem might be written on a pin's head, and a bad one on
10 the Fall of Man. That truth shows that the subject settles
nothing, but not that it counts for nothing. The Fall
of Man is really a more favourable subject than a pin's
head. The Fall of Man, that is to say, offers opportunities
of poetic effects wider in range and more penetrating in
J 5 appeal. And the fact is that such a subject, as it exists
in the general imagination, has some aesthetic value before
the poet touches it. It is, as you may choose to call it, an
inchoate poem or the debris of a poem. It is not an abstract
idea or a bare isolated fact, but an assemblage of figures,
20 scenes, actions, and events, which already appeal to emo-
tional imagination ; and it is already in some degree organized
and formed. In spite of this a bad poet would make a bad
poem on it; but then we should say he was unworthy of the
subject. And we should not say this if he wrote a bad poem
25 on a pin's head. Conversely, a good poem on a pin's head
would almost certainly transform its subject far more than
a good poem on the Fall of Man. It might revolutionize
its subject so completely that we should say, " The sub-
ject may be a pin's head, but the substance of the poem has
30 very little to do with it/'
This brings us to another and a different antithesis.
Those figures, scenes, events, that form part of the subject
called the Fall of Man, are not the substance of Paradise
Lost; but in Paradise Lost there are figures, scenes, and
35 events resembling them in some degree. These, with much
more of the same kind, may be described as its substance,
and may then be contrasted with the measured language
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 397
of the poem, which will be called its form. Subject is the
opposite not of form but of the whole poem. Substance
is within the poem, and its opposite, form, is also within
the poem. I am not criticizing this antithesis at present,
but evidently it is quite different from the other. It is 5
practically the distinction used in the old-fashioned criticism
of epic and drama, and it flows down, not unsullied, from
Aristotle. Addison, for example, in examining Paradise
Lost considers in order the fable, the characters, and the
sentiments; these will be the substance: then he considers 10
the language, that is, the style and numbers; this will
be the form. In like manner, the substance or meaning
of a lyric may be distinguished from the form.
Now I believe it will be found that a large part of the
controversy we are dealing with arises from a confusion 1 5
between these two distinctions of substance and form, and
of subject and poem. The extreme formalist lays his whole
weight on the form because he thinks its opposite is the
mere subject. The general reader is angry, but makes the
same mistake, and gives to the subject praises that rightly 20
belong to the substance. I will read an example of what
I mean. I can only explain the following words of a good
critic by supposing that for the moment he has fallen into
this confusion: " The mere matter of all poetry to wit,
the appearances of nature and the thoughts and feelings 25
of men being unalterable, it follows that the difference
between poet and poet will depend upon the manner of
each in applying language, metre, rhyme, cadence, and what
not, to this invariable material." What has become here
of the substance of Paradise Lost the story, scenery, 30
characters, sentiments as they are in the poem? They
have vanished clean away. Nothing is left but the form
on one side, and on the other not even the subject, but a
supposed invariable material, the appearances of nature
and the thoughts and feelings of men. Is it surprising 35
that the whole value should then be found in the form?
So far we have assumed that this antithesis of substance
398 A. C. BRADLEY
and form is valid, and that it always has one meaning.
In reality it has several, but we will leave it in its present
shape, and pass to the question of its validity. And this
question we are compelled to raise, because we have to deal
5 with the two contentions that the poetic value lies wholly
or mainly in the substance, and that it lies wholly or mainly
in the form. Now these contentions, whether false or true,
may seem at least to be clear; but we shall find, I think, that
they are both of them false, or both of them nonsense: false
10 if they concern anything outside the poem, nonsense if
they apply to something in it. For what do they evidently
imply? They imply that there are in a poem two parts,
factors, or components, a substance and a form; and that
you can conceive them distinctly and separately, so that
15 when you are speaking of the one you are not speaking of
the other. Otherwise how can you ask the question,
In which of them does the value lie? But really in a poem,
apart from defects, there are no such factors or components;
and therefore it is strictly nonsense to ask in which of them
20 the value lies. And on the other hand, if the substance and
the form referred to are not in the poem, then both the
contentions are false, for its poetic value lies in itself.
What I mean is neither new nor mysterious; and it will
l)e clear, I believe, to any one who reads poetry poetically
25 and who closely examines his experience. When you are
reading a poem, I would ask not analysing it, and much
less criticizing it, but allowing it, as it proceeds, to make its
full impression on you through the exertion of your recreat-
ing imagination do you then apprehend and enjoy as one
30 thing a certain meaning or substance, and as another thing
certain articulate sounds, and do you somehow compound
these two? Surely you do not, any more than you apprehend
apart, when you see some one smile, those lines in the face
which express a feeling, and the feeling that the lines express.
35 Just as there the lines and their meaning are to you one thing,
not two, so in poetry the meaning and the sounds are one:
there is, if I may put it so, a resonant meaning, or a meaning
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 399
resonance. If you read the line, " The sun is warm, the
sky is clear," you do not experience separately the image
of a warm sun and clear sky, on the one side, and certain
unintelligible rhythmical sounds on the other; nor yet do
you experience them together, side by side; but you 5
experience the one in the other. And in like manner when
you are really reading Hamlet, the action and the characters
are not something which you conceive apart from the words;
you apprehend them from point to point in the words, and
the words as expressions of them. Afterwards, no doubt, 10
when you are out of the poetic experience but remember
it, you may by analysis decompose this unity, and attend to
a substance more or less isolated, and a form more or less
isolated. But these are things in your analytic head, not
in the poem, which is poetic experience. And if you want 15
to have the poem again, you cannot find it by adding together
these two products of decomposition; you can only find
it by passing back into poetic experience. And then what
you recover is no aggregate of factors, it is a unity in which
you can no more separate a substance and a form than you 20
can separate living blood and the life in the blood. This
unity has, if you like, various " aspects " or " sides," but
they are not factors or parts; if you try to examine one,
you find it is also the other. Call them substance and form
if you please, but these are not the reciprocally exclusive 25
substance and form to which the two contentions must
refer. They do not " agree," for they are not apart: they
are one thing from different points of view, and in that sense
identical. And this identity of content and form, you will
say, is no accident; it is of the essence of poetry in so far 30
as it is poetry, and of all art in so far as it is art. Just as
there is in music not sound on one side and a meaning on
the other, but expressive sound, and if you ask what is the
meaning you can only answer by pointing to the sounds;
just as in painting there is not a meaning plus paint, but a 35
meaning in paint, or significant paint, and no man can
really express the meaning in any other way than in paint
400 A. C. BRADLEY
and in this paint; so in a poem the true content and the true
form neither exist nor can be imagined apart. When then
you are asked whether the value of a poem lies in a substance
got by decomposing the poem, and present, as such, only
5 in reflective analysis, or whether the value lies in a form
arrived at and existing in the same way, you will answer,
" It lies neither in one, nor in the other, nor in any addi-
tion of them, but in the poem, where they are not."
We have then, first, an antithesis of subject and poem.
10 This is clear and valid; and the question in which of them
does the value lie is intelligible; and its answer is, In the
poem. We have next a distinction of substance and form.
If the substance means ideas, images, and the like taken
alone, and the form means the measured language taken
15 by itself, this is a possible distinction, but it is a distinction
of things not in the poem, and the value lies in neither of
them. If substance and form mean anything in the poem,
then each is involved in the other, and the question in which
of them the value lies has no sense. No doubt you may
20 say, speaking loosely, that in this poet or poem the aspect
of substance is the more noticeable, and in that the aspect
of form; and you may pursue interesting discussions on this
basis, though no principle or ultimate question of value
is touched by them. And apart from that question, of
25 course, I am not denying the usefulness and necessity of the
distinction. We cannot dispense with it. To consider
separately the action or the characters of a play, and sepa-
rately its style or versification, is both legitimate and valuable,
so long as we remember what we are doing. But the true
30 critic in speaking of these apart does not really think of
them apart; the whole, the poetic experience, of which they
are but aspects, is always in his mind; and he is always
aiming at a richer, truer, more intense repetition of that
experience. On the other hand, when the question of
35 principle, of poetic value, is raised, these aspects must fall
apart into components, separately conceivable; and then
there arise two heresies, equally false, that the value lies
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 401
in one of two things, both of which are outside the poem,
and therefore where its value cannot lie.
On the heresy of the separable substance a few additional
words will suffice. This heresy is seldom formulated, but
perhaps some unconscious holder of it may object: 5
" Surely the action and the characters of Hamlet are in the
play; and surely I can retain these, though I have forgotten
all the words. I admit that I do not possess the whole
poem, but I possess a part, and the most important part."
And I would answer: " If we are not concerned with anyio
question of principle, I accept all that you say except the
last words, which do raise such a question. Speaking
loosely, I agree that the action and characters, as you per-
haps conceive them, together with a great deal more, are
in the poem. Even then, however, you must not claim 15
to possess all of this kind that is in the poem; for in forget-
ting the words you must have lost innumerable details of
the action and the characters. And, when the question
of value is raised, I must insist that the action and characters,
as you conceive them, are not in Hamlet at all. If they are, 20
point them out. You cannot do it. What you find at any
moment of that succession of experiences called Hamlet
is words. In these words, to speak loosely again, the action
and characters (more of them than you can conceive apart)
are focussed; but your experience is not a combination of 25
them, as ideas, on the one side, with certain sounds on the
other; it is an experience of something in which the two
are indissolubly fused. If you deny this, to be sure I can
make no answer, or can only answer that I have reason to
believe that you cannot read poetically, or else are mis- 30
interpreting your experience. But if you do not deny this,
then you will admit that the action and characters of the
poem, as you separately imagine them, are no part of it,
but a product of it in your reflective imagination, a faint
analogue of one aspect of it taken in detachment frohi the 35
whole. Well, I do not dispute, I would even insist, that,
in the case of co long a poem as Hamlet, it may be neces-
A. C. BRADLEY
sary from time to time to interrupt the poetic experience,
in order to enrich it by forming such a product and dwelling
on it. Nor, in a wide sense of ' poetic,' do I question the
poetic value of this product, as you think of it apart from
S the poem. It resembles our recollections of the heroes
of history or legend, who move about in our imaginations,
' forms more real than living man,' and are worth much
to us though we do not remember anything they said.
Our ideas and images of the ' substance ' of a poem have
10 this poetic value, and more, if they are at all adequate.
But they cannot determine the poetic value of the poem,
for (not to speak of the competing claims of the ' form ')
nothing that is outside the poem can do that, and they,
as such, are outside it."
15 Let us turn to the so-called form style and versification.
There is no such thing as mere form in poetry. All form
is expression. Style may have indeed a certain aesthetic
worth in partial abstraction from the particular matter it
conveys, as in a well-built sentence you may take pleasure
20 in the build almost apart from the meaning. Even so style
is expressive presents to sense, for example, the order,
ease, and rapidity with which ideas move in the writer's
mind but it is not expressive of the meaning of that par-
ticular sentence. And it is possible, interrupting poetic
25 experience, to decompose it and abstract for comparatively
separate consideration this nearly formal element of style.
But the aesthetic value of style so taken is not considerable;
you could not read with pleasure for an hour a composition
which had no other merit. And in poetic experience you
30 never apprehend this value by itself; the style is here
expressive also of a particular meaning, or rather is one
aspect of that unity whose other aspect is meaning. So
that what you apprehend may be called indifferently an
expressed meaning or a significant form. Perhaps on this
35 point I may in Oxford appeal to authority, that of Matthew
Arnold and Walter Pater, the latter at any rate an authority
whom the formalist will not despise. What is the gist of
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE
Pater's teaching about style, if it is not that in the end
the one virtue of style is truth or adequacy; that the word,
phrase, sentence, should express perfectly the writer's per-
ception, feeling, image, or thought; so that, as we read a
descriptive phrase of Keats's, we exclaim, " That is the thing 5
itself "; so that, to quote Arnold, the words are " symbols
equivalent with the thing symbolized," or, in our technical
language, a form identical with its content? Hence in true
poetry it is, in strictness, impossible to express the meaning
in any but its own words, or to change the words without 10
changing the meaning. A translation of such poetry is
not really the old meaning in a fresh dress; it is a new prod-
uct, something like the poem, though, if one chooses to say
so, more like it in the aspect of meaning than in the aspect
of form. 15
No one who understands poetry, it seems to me, would
dispute this, were it not that, falling away from his experi-
ence, or misled by theory, he takes the word " meaning "
in a sense almost ludicrously inapplicable to poetry. People
say, for instance, " steed " and " horse " have the same mean- 20
ing; and in bad poetry they have, but not in poetry that
is poetry.
" Bring forth the horse! " The horse was brought:
In truth he was a noble steed!
says Byron in Mazeppa. If the two words mean the same 25
here, transpose them:
" Bring forth the steed! " The steed was brought:
In truth he was a noble horse!
and ask again if they mean the same. Or let me take a
line certainly very free from " poetic diction: " 30
To be or not to be, that is the question.
You may say that this means the same as " What is just
now occupying my attention is the comparative disadvan-
tages of continuing to live or putting an end to myself."
And for practical purposes the purpose, for example, of 3 5
404 A. C. BRADLEY
a coroner it does. But as the second version altogether
misrepresents the speaker at that moment of his existence,
while the first does represent him, how can they for any
but a practical or logical purpose be said to have the same
S sense? Hamlet was well able to " unpack his heart with
words," but he will not unpack it with our paraphrases.
These considerations apply equally to versification. If
I take the famous line which describes how the souls of the
dead stood waiting by the river, imploring a passage from
10 Charon:
Tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore,
and if I translate it, " and were stretching forth their hands
in longing for the further bank," the charm of the original
15 has fled. Why has it fled? Partly (but we have dealt with
that) because I have substituted for five words, and those
the words of Virgil, twelve words, and those my own. In
some measure because I have turned into rhythmless prose
a line of verse which, as mere sound, has unusual beauty.
20 But much more because in doing so I have also changed
the meaning of Virgil's line. What that meaning is / can-
not say: Virgil has said it. But I can see this much, that
the translation conveys a far less vivid picture of the out-
stretched hands and of their remaining outstretched, and a
25 far less poignant sense of the distance of the shore and the
longing of the souls. And it does so partly because this
picture and this sense are conveyed not only by the obvious
meaning of the words, but through the long-drawn sound of
" tendebantque," through the time occupied by the five
30 syllables and therefore by the idea of "ulterioris," and
through the identity of the long sound " or " in the penult-
imate syllables of " ulterioris amore " all this, and much
more, apprehended not in this analytical fashion, nor as
added to the beauty of mere sound and to the obvious mean-
35 ing, but in unity with them and so as expressive of the poetic
meaning of the whole.
It is always so in fine poetry, The value of versification,
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 405
when it is indissolubly fused with meaning, can hardly be
exaggerated. The gift for feeling it, even more perhaps
than the gift for feeling the value of style, is the specific
gift for poetry, as distinguished from other arts. But
versification, taken, as far as possible, all by itself, has a 5
very different worth. Some aesthetic worth it has; how
much you may experience by reading poetry in a language
of which you do not understand a syllable. The pleasure
is quite appreciable, but it is not great; nor in actual
poetic experience do you meet with it, as such, at all. For, 10
I repeat, it is not added to the pleasure of the meaning when
you read poetry that you do understand: by some mystery
the music is then the music of the meaning, and the two are
one. However fond of versification you might be, you
would tire very soon of reading verses in Chinese; and before 15
long of reading Virgil and Dante if you were ignorant of
their languages. But take the music as it is in the poem,
and there is a marvellous change. Now
It gives a very echo to the seat
Where Love is throned; 20
or " carries far into your heart," almost like music itself,
the sound
Of old, unhappy, far-off things
And battles long ago.
What then is to be said of the following sentence of the 2 S
critic quoted before: " But when any one who knows what
poetry is reads
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence,
he sees that, quite independently of the meaning, . . .30
there is one note added to the articulate music of the world
a note that never will leave off resounding till the eternal
silence itself gulfs it?" I must think that the writer is
deceiving himself. For I could quite understand his enthu-
siasm, if it were an enthusiasm for the music of the meaning; 35
406 A. C. BRADLEY
but as for the music, " quite independently of the mean-
ing," so far as I can hear it thus (and I doubt if any one who
knows English can quite do so), I find it gives some pleasure,
but only a trifling pleasure. And indeed I venture to doubt
5 whether, considered as mere sound, the words are at all
exceptionally beautiful, as Virgil's line certainly is.
When poetry answers to its idea and is purely or almost
purely poetic, we find the identity of form and content;
and the degree of purity attained may be tested by the
10 degree in which we feel it hopeless to convey the effect of a
poem or passage in any form but its own. Where the notion
of doing so is simply ludicrous, you have quintessential
poetry. But a great part even of good poetry, especially
in long works, is of a mixed nature; and so we find in it
15 no more than a partial agreement of a form and substance
which remain to some extent distinct. This is so in many
passages of Shakespeare (the greatest of poets when he
chose, but not always a conscientious poet) ; passages where
something was wanted for the sake of the plot, but he did
20 not care about it or was hurried. The conception of the
passage is then distinct from the execution, and neither is
inspired. This is so also, I think, wherever we can truly
speak of merely decorative effect. We seem to perceive
that the poet had a truth or fact philosophical, agricultural,
25 social distinctly before him, and then, as we say, clothed
it in metrical and coloured language. Most argumentative,
didactic, or satiric poems are partly of this kind; and in
imaginative poems anything which is really a mere '' con-
ceit " is mere decoration. We often deceive ourselves in
30 this matter, for what we call decoration has often a new
and genuinely poetic content of its own ; but wherever there
is mere decoration, we judge the poetry to be not wholly
poetic. And so when Wordsworth inveighed against poetic
diction, though he hurled his darts rather wildly, what he
35 was rightly aiming at was a phraseology, not the living
body of a new content, but the mere worn-out body of an
old one.
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 407
In pure poetry it is otherwise. Pure poetry is not the
decoration of a preconceived and clearly denned matter:
it springs from the creative impulse of a vague imaginative
mass pressing for development and definition. If the poet
already knew exactly what he meant to say, why should he S
write the poem? The poem would in fact already be written.
For only its completion can reveal, even to him, exactly
what he wanted. When he began and while he was at
work, he did not possess his meaning; it possessed him.
It was not a fully formed soul asking for a body: it was anio
inchoate soul in the inchoate body of perhaps two or three
vague ideas and a few scattered phrases. The growing
of this body into its full stature and perfect shape was the
same thing as the gradual self-definition of the meaning.
And this is the reason why such poems strike us as creations, 15
not manufactures, and have the magical effect which mere
decoration cannot produce. This is also the reason why,
if we insist on asking for the meaning of such a poem, we
can only be answered " It means itself."
And so at last I may explain why I have troubled myself 20
and you with what may seem an arid controversy about
mere words. It is not so. These heresies which would
make poetry a compound of two factors a matter common
to it with the merest prose, plus a. poetic form, as the one
heresy says: a poetical substance plus a negligible form, as 25
the other says are not only untrue, they are injurious to
the dignity of poetry. In an age already inclined to shrink
from those higher realms where poetry touches religion and
philosophy, the formalist heresy encourages men to taste
poetry as they would a line wine, which has indeed an 3
aesthetic value, but a small one. And then the natural man,
finding an empty form, hurls into it the matter of cheap
pathos, rancid sentiment, vulgar humour, bare lust, ravenous
vanity everything which, in Schiller's phrase, the form
should extirpate, but which no mere form can extirpate. 35
And the other heresy which is indeed rather a practice
408 A. C. BRADLEY
than a creed encourages us in the habit so dear to us of
putting our own thoughts or fancies into the place of the
poet's creation. What he meant by Hamlet, or the Ode
to a Nightingale, or Abt Vogler, we say, is this or that which
Swe knew already; and so we lose what he had to tell us.
But he meant what he said, and said what he meant.
Poetry in this matter is not, as good critics of painting
and music often affirm, different from the other arts; in all
of them the content is one thing with the form. What
10 Beethoven meant by his symphony, or Turner by his pic-
ture, was not something which you can name, but the pic-
ture and the symphony. Meaning they have, but what
meaning can be said in no language but their own : and we
know this, though some strange delusion makes us think
T 5 the meaning has less worth because we cannot put it into
words. Well, it is just the same with poetry. But because
poetry is words, we vainly fancy that some other words
than its own will express its meaning. And they will do
so no more or, if you like to speak loosely, only a little
20 more than words will express the meaning of the Dresden
Madonna. Something a little like it they may indeed
express. And we may find analogues of the meaning of
poetry outside it, which may help us to appropriate it.
The other arts, the best ideas of philosophy or religion,
25 much that nature and life offer us or force upon us, are akin
to it. But they are only akin. Nor is it the expression
of them. Poetry does not present to imagination our high-
est knowledge or belief, and much less our dreams and
opinions; but it, content and form in unity, embodies in
3 its own irreplaceable way something which embodies itself
also in other irreplaceable ways, such as philosophy or
religion. And just as each of these gives a satisfaction
which the other cannot possibly give, so we find in poetry,
which cannot satisfy the needs they meet, that which by
35 their natures they cannot afford us. But we shall not find
it fully if we look for something else.
POETRY FOR POETRY'S SAKE 409
And now, when all is said, the question will still recur,
though now in quite another sense, What does poetry
mean? This unique expression, which cannot be replaced
by any other, still seems to be trying to express something
beyond itself. And this, we feel, is also what the other arts, 5
and religion, and philosophy are trying to express: and that
is what impels us to seek in vain to translate the one into
the other. About the best poetry, and not only the best,
there floats an atmosphere of infinite suggestion. The
poet speaks to us of one thing, but in this one thing there i
seems to lurk the secret of all. He said what he meant,
but his meaning seems to beckon away beyond itself, or
rather to expand into something boundless, which is only
focussed in it; something also which, we feel, would satisfy
not only the imagination, but the whole of us; that some- 15
thing within us, and without, which everywhere
makes us seem
To patch up fragments of a dream,
Part of which comes true, and part
Beats and trembles in the heart. 20
Those who are susceptible to this effect of poetry find it
not only, perhaps not most, in the ideals which she has
sometimes described, but in a child's song by Christina
Rossetti about a mere crown of wind-flowers, and in tragedies
like Lear, where the sun seems to have set for ever. They 25
hear this spirit murmuring its undertone through the Aeneid,
and catch its voice in the song of Keats's nightingale, and its
light upon the figures on the Urn, and it pierces them no
less in Shelley's hopeless lament, world, life, time,
than in the rapturous ecstasy of his Life of Life. This 30
all-embracing perfection cannot be expressed in poetic words
or words of any kind, nor yet in music or in colour, v but
the suggestion of it is in much poetry, if not all, and poetry
has in this suggestion, this " meaning," a great part of its
410 A. C. BRADLEY
value. We do it wrong, and we defeat our own purposes
when we try to bend it to them:
We do it wrong, being so majestical,
To offer it the show of violence;
For it is as the air invulnerable,
And our vain blows malicious mockery.
It is a spirit. It comes we know not whence. It will not
speak at our bidding, nor answer in our language. It is
not our servant; it is our master.
GREEK TRAGEDY 1
G. LOWES DICKINSON
THE character of Greek tragedy was determined from the
very beginning by the fact of its connection with religion.
The season at which it was performed was the festival of
Dionysus; about his altar the chorus danced; and the object
of the performance was the representation of scenes out of 5
the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was
thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle
of legends familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom
might be allowed to the poet in his treatment of the theme,
whatever the reflections he might embroider upon it, the 10
speculative or ethical views, the criticism of contemporary
life, all must be subservient to the main object originally
proposed, the setting forth, for edification as well as for
delight, of some episodes in the lives of those heroes of the
past who were considered not only to be greater than their 15
descendants, but to be the sons of gods and worthy them-
selves of worship as divine.
By this fundamental condition the tragedy of the Greeks
is distinguished sharply, on the one hand from the Shake-
spearian drama, on the other from the classical drama of 20
the French. The tragedies of Shakespeare are devoid,
one might say, or at least comparatively devoid, of all
preconceptions. He was free to choose what subject he
liked and to treat it as he would; and no sense of obligation
to religious or other points of view, no feeling for traditions 25
descended from a sacred past and not lightly to be handled
by those who were their trustees for the future, sobered
1 From " The Greek View of Life," 1909 (sixth edition). By permis-
sion of Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co.
411
412 G. LOWES DICKINSON
or restrained for evil or for good his half-barbaric genius.
He flung himself upon life with the irresponsible ardour
of the discoverer of a new continent; shaped and re-shaped
it as he chose; carved from it now the cynicism of Measure
5 for Measure, now the despair of Hamlet and of Lear, now
the radiant magnanimity of The Tempest, and departed
leaving behind him not a map or chart, but a series of
mutually incompatible landscapes.
What Shakespeare gave, in short, was a many-sided repre-
zosentation of life; what the Greek dramatist gave was an
interpretation. But an interpretation not simply personal
to himself, but representative of the national tradition and
belief. The men whose deeds and passions he narrated were
the patterns and examples on the one hand, on the other
15 the warnings of his race; the gods who determined the
fortunes they sang, were working still among men; the
moral laws that ruled the past ruled the present too; and
the history of the Hellenic race moved, under a visible
providence, from its divine origin onward to an end that
20 would be prosperous or the reverse according as later gen-
erations should continue to observe the worship and tradi-
tions of their fathers descended from heroes and gods.
And it is the fact that in this sense it was representative
of the national consciousness, that distinguishes the Greek
25 tragedy from the classical drama of the French. For the
latter, though it imitated the ancients in outward form,
was inspired with a totally different spirit. The kings and
heroes whose fortunes it narrated were not the ancestors
of the French race; they had no root in its affections, no
30 connection with its religious beliefs, no relation to its
ethical conceptions. The whole ideal set forth was not
that which really inspired the nation, but at best that which
\vas supposed to inspire the court; and the whole drama,
like a tree transplanted to an alien soil, withers and dies
35 for lack of the nourishment which the tragedy of the Greeks
unconsciously imbibed from its encompassing air of national
tradition.
GREEK TRAGEDY 413
Such then was the general character of the Greek tragedy
an interpretation of the national ideal. Let us now pro-
ceed to follow out some of the consequences involved in
this conception.
In the first place, the theme represented is the life and 5
fate of ancient heroes of personages, that is to say, greater
than ordinary men, both for good and for evil, in their
qualities and in their achievements, pregnant with fateful
issues, makers or marrers of the fortunes of the world.
Tragic and terrible their destiny may be, but never contempti- 10
ble or squalid. Behind all suffering, behind sin and crime,
must lie redeeming magnanimity. A complete villain, says
Aristotle, is not a tragic character, for he has no hold upon
the sympathies; if he prosper, it is an outrage on common
human feeling; if he fall into disaster, it is merely what he 15
deserves. Neither is it admissible to represent the mis-
fortunes of a thoroughly good man, for that is merely pain-
ful and distressing; and least of all is it tolerable gratuitously
to introduce mere baseness, or madness, or other aberrations
from human nature. The true tragic hero is a man of high 20
place and birth who having a nature not ignoble has fallen
into sin and pays in suffering the penalty of his act. Noth-
ing could throw more light on the distinguishing char-
acteristics of the Greek drama than these few remarks of
Aristotle, and nothing could better indicate how close, in 25
the Greek mind, was the connection between aesthetic and
ethical judgments. The canon of Aristotle would exclude
as proper themes for tragedy the character and fate, say, of
Richard III the absolutely bad man suffering his appro-
priate desert; or of Kent and Cordelia the absolutely 30
good, brought into unmerited affliction; and that not merely
because such themes offend the moral sense, but because
by so offending they destroy the proper pleasure of the
tragic art. The whole aesthetic effect is limited by ethical
presuppositions; and to outrage these is to defeat the very 35
purpose of tragedy.
Specially interesting in this connection are the strictures
411 G. LOWES DICKINSON
passed on Euripides in the passage of the Frogs of
Aristophanes to which allusion has already been made.
Euripides is there accused of lowering the tragic art by
introducing what? Women in love! The central theme
5 of modern tragedy ! It is the boast of /Eschylus that there
is not one of his plays which touches on this subject:
" I never allow'd of your lewd Sthenobceas
Or filthy detestable Pbuedras not I !
Indeed I should doubt if my drama throughout
10 Exhibit an instance of woman in love! " x
And there can be little doubt that with a Greek audience
this would count to him as a merit, and that the shifting of
the centre of interest by Euripides from the sterner passions
of heroes and of kings to this tenderer phase of human feel-
15 ing would be felt even by those whom it charmed to be a
declension from the height of the older tragedy.
And to this limitation of subject corresponds a limitation
of treatment. The Greek tragedy is composed from a
definite point of view, with the aim not merely to represent
20 but also to interpret the theme. Underlying the whole
construction of the plot, the dialogue, the reflections, the
lyric interludes, is the intention to illustrate some general
moral law, some common and typical problem, some funda-
mental truth. Of the elder dramatists at any rate, /Eschylus
25 and Sophocles, one may even say that it was their purpose
however imperfectly achieved to " justify the ways of
God to man." To represent suffering as the punishment
of sin is the constant bent of /Eschylus; to justify the law
of God against the presumption of man is the central idea
30 of Sophocles. In either case the whole tone is essentially
religious. To choose such a theme as Lear, to treat it as
Shakespeare has treated it, to leave it, as it were, bleeding
from a thousand wounds, in mute and helpless entreaty
for the healing that is never to be vouchsafed this would
35 have been repulsive, if not impossible, to a Greek tragedian.
1 From Aristophanes' " Frogs," 1. 1043. Translated by Frere.
GREEK TRAGEDY 415
Without ever descending from concrete art to the abstrac-
tions of mere moralising, without ever attempting to sub-
stitute a verbal formula for the full and complex perception
that grows out of a representation of life, the ancient drama-
tists were nevertheless, in the whole apprehension of their s
theme, determined by a more or less conscious speculative
bias; the world to them was not merely a splendid chaos,
it was a divine plan; and even in its darkest hollows, its
passes most perilous and bleak, they have their hand, though
doubtful perhaps and faltering, upon the clue that is to lead 10
them up to the open sky.
It is consonant with this account of the nature of Greek
tragedy that it should have laid more stress upon action
than upon character. The interest was centred on the
universal bearing of certain acts and situations, on the light 15
which the experience represented threw on the whole ten-
dency and course of human life, not on the sentiments and
motives of the particular personages introduced. The
characters are broad and simple, not developing for the
most part, but fixed, and fitted therefore to be the mediums 20
of direct action, of simple issues, and typical situations.
In the Greek tragedy the general point of view predomi-
nates over the idiosyncrasies of particular persons. It
is human nature that is represented in the broad, not
this or that highly specialised variation; and what we 25
have indicated as the general aim, the interpretation of
life, is never obscured by the predominance of excep-
tional and so to speak, accidental characteristics. Alan is
the subject of the Greek drama; the subject of the modern
novel is Tom and Dick. 30
Finally, to the realisation of this general aim, the whole
form of the Greek drama was admirably adapted. It
consisted very largely of conversations between two persons,
representing two opposed points of view, and giving occasion
for an almost scientific discussion of every problem of action 35
raised in the play; and between these conversations were
inserted lyric odes in which the chorus commented on the
416 G. LOWES DICKINSON
situation, bestowed advice or warning, praise or blame, and
finally summed up the moral of the whole. Through the
chorus, in fact, the poet could speak in his own person, and
impose upon the whole tragedy any tone which he desired.
5 Periodically he could drop the dramatist and assume the
preacher; and thus ensure that his play should be, what
we have seen was its recognised ideal, not merely a repre-
sentation but an interpretation of life.
But this without ceasing to be a work of art. In attempt-
10 ing to analyse in abstract terms the general character of the
Greek tragedy we have necessarily thrown into the shade
what after all was its primary and most essential aspect;
an aspect, however, of which a full appreciation could only
be attained not by a mere perusal of the test, but by what is
15 unfortunately for ever beyond our power, the witnessing
of an actual representation as it was given on the Greek
stage. For from a purely aesthetic point of view the Greek
drama must be reckoned among the most perfect of art
forms.
20 Taking place in the open air, on the sunny slope of a hill,
valley and plain or islanded sea stretching away below to
meet the blazing blue of a cloudless sky, the moving pageant,
thus from the first set in tune with nature, brought to a
focus of splendour the rays of every separate art. More
25 akin to an opera than to a play it had, as its basis, music.
For the drama had developed out of the lyric ode, and
retained throughout what was at first its only element,
the dance and song of a mimetic chorus. By this centre
of rhythmic motion and pregnant melody the burden of
30 the tale was caught up and echoed and echoed again, as the
living globe divided into spheres of answering song, the
clear and precise significance of the plot, never obscure to
the head, being thus brought home in music to the passion
of the heart, the idea embodied in lyric verse, the verse
35 transfigured by song, and song and verse reflected as in a
mirror to the eye by the swing and beat of the limbs they
stirred to consonance of motion. And while such was the
GREEK TRAGEDY 417
character of the odes that broke the action of the play, the
action itself was an appeal not less to the ear and to the eye
than to the passion and the intellect. The circumstances
of the representation, the huge auditorium in the open air,
lent themselves less to " acting " in our sense of the term, 5
than to attitude and declamation. The actors raised on
high boots above their natural height, their faces hidden
in masks and their tones mechanically magnified, must
have relied for their effects not upon facial play, or rapid
and subtle variations of voice and gesture, but upon a 10
certain statuesque beauty of pose, and a chanting intona-
tion of that majestic iambic verse whose measure would
have been obscured by a rapid and conversational delivery.
The representation would thus become moving sculpture
to the eye, and to the ear, as it were, a sleep of music between 15
the in tenser interludes of the chorus; and the spectator
without being drawn away by an imitative realism from the
calm of impassioned contemplation into the fever and
fret of a veritable actor on the scene, received an impres-
sion based throughout on that clear intellectual foundation, 20
that almost prosaic lucidity of sentiment and plot, which
is preserved to us in the written text, but raised by the accom-
panying appeal to the sense, made as it must have been
made by such artists as the Greeks, by the grouping of
forms and colours, the recitative, the dance and the song, 25
to such a greatness and height of aesthetic significance as
can hardly have been realised by any other form of art
production.
The nearest modern analogy to what the ancient drama
must have been is to be found probably in the operas of 30
Wagner, who indeed was strongly influenced by the tragedy
of the Greeks. It was his ideal like theirs, to combine the
various branches of art, employing not only music but
poetry, sculpture, painting and the dance, for the representa-
tion of his dramatic theme; and his conception also to "make 35
art the interpreter of life, reflecting in a national drama the
national consciousness, the highest action and the deepest
418 G. LOWES DICKINSON
passion and thought of the German race. To consider
how far in this attempt he falls short of or goes beyond
the achievement of the Greeks, and to examine the wide
dissimilarities that underlie the general identity of aim,
5 would be to wander too far afield from our present theme.
But the comparison may be recommended to those who
are anxious to form a concrete idea of what the effect of
a Greek tragedy may have been, and to clothe in imagina-
tion the dead bones of the literary text with the flesh and
10 blood of a representation to the sense.
Meantime, to assist the reader to realise with somewhat
greater precision the bearing of the foregoing remarks,
it may be worth while to give an outline sketch of one of
the most celebrated of the Greek tragedies, the Agamemnon
15 of ^Eschylus.
The hero of the drama belongs to that heroic house whose
tragic history was among the most terrible and the most
familiar to a Greek audience. Tantalus, the founder of
the family, for some offence against the gods, was suffering
20 in Hades the punishment which is christened by his name.
His son Pelops was stained with the blood of Myrtilus.
Of the two sons of the next generation, Thyestes seduced
the wife of his brother Atreus; and Atreus in return killed
the sons of Thyestes, and made the father unwittingly eat
25 the flesh of the murdered boys. Agamemnon, son of Atreus,
to propitiate Artemis, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia,
and in revenge was murdered by Clytemnestra his wife.
And Clytemnestra was killed by Orestes, her son, in atone-
ment for the death of Agamemnon. For generations
30 the race had been dogged by crime and punishment; and
in choosing for his theme the murder of Agamemnon the
dramatist could assume in his audience so close a familiar-
ity with the past history of the House that he could call
into existence by an allusive word that sombre background
35 of woe to enhance the terrors of his actual presentation.
The figures he brought into vivid relief joined hands with
menacing forms that faded away into the night of the future
GREEK TRAGEDY 419
and the past; while above them hung, intoning doom, the
phantom host of Furies.
Yet at the outset of the drama all promises well. The
watchman on the roof of the palace, in the tenth year of his
watch, catches sight at last of the signal iire that announces 5
the capture of Troy and the speedy return of Agamemnon.
With joy he proclaims to the House the long-delayed
and welcome news; yet even in the moment of exultation
lets slip a doubtful phrase hinting at something behind,
which he dares not name, something which may turn to 10
despair the triumph of victory. Hereupon enter the chorus
of Argive elders, chanting as they move to the measure of
a stately march. They sing how ten years before Agamem-
non and Menelaus had led forth the host of Greece, at the
bidding of the 7eus who protects hospitality, to recover 15
for Menelaus Helen his wife, treacherously stolen by Paris.
Then, as they take their places and begin their rhythmic
dance, in a strain of impassioned verse that is at once a nar-
rative and a lyric hymn, they tell, or rather present in a
series of vivid images, flashing as by illumination of light- 20
ning out of a night of veiled and sombre boding, the tale of
the deed that darkened the starting of the host the sacri-
fice of Iphigenia to the goddess \vhose wrath was delaying
the fleet at Aulis. In verse, in music, in pantomime, the
scene lives again the struggle in the father's heart, the 25
insistence of his brother chiefs, the piteous glance of the girl,
and at last the unutterable end; while above and through
it all rings like a knell of fate the refrain that is the motive
of the whole drama :
" Sing \voc, sing woe, but may the Good prevail." 30
At the conclusion of the ode enters Clytemnestra. She
makes a formal announcement to the chorus of the fall of
Troy; describes the course of the signal-fire from beacon
to beacon as it sped, and pictures in imagination the sdenes
even then taking place in the doomed city. On her with- 35
drawal the chorus break once more into song and dance.
420 G. LOWES DICKINSON
To the music of a solemn hymn they point the moral of the
fall of Troy, the certain doom of violence and fraud descended
upon Paris and his House. Once more the vivid pictures
flash from the night of woe Helen in her fatal beauty
5 stepping lightly to her doom, the widower's nights of mourn-
ing haunted by the ghost of love, the horrors of the war
that followed, the slain abroad and the mourners at home,
the change of living flesh and blood for the dust and ashes
of the tomb. At last with a return to their original theme,
10 the doom of insolence, the chorus close their ode and announce
the arrival of a messenger from Troy. Talthybius, the
herald, enters as spokesman of the army and king, describ-
ing the hardships they have suffered and the joy of the
triumphant issue. To him Clytemnestra announces, in
15 words of which the irony is patent to the audience, her
sufferings in the absence of her husband and her delight at
the prospect of his return. He will find her, she says, as
he left her, a faithful watcher of the home, her loyalty sure,
her honour undefiled. Then follows another choral ode,
20 similar in theme to the last, dwelling on the woe brought by
the act of Paris upon Troy, the change of the bridal song to
the trump of war and the dirge of death; contrasting, in a
profusion of splendid tropes, the beauty of Helen with the
curse to which it is bound; and insisting once more on the
25 doom that attends insolence and pride. At the conclusion
of this song the measure changes to a march, and the chorus
turn to welcome the triumphant king. Agamemnon enters,
and behind him the veiled and silent figure of a woman.
After greeting the gods of his House, the King, in brief and
30 stilted phrase, acknowledges the loyalty of the chorus, but
hints at much that is amiss which it must be his first charge
to set right. Hereupon enters Clytemnestra, and in a
speech of rhetorical exaggeration tells of her anxious waiting
for her lord and her inexpressible joy at his return. In
35 conclusion she directs that purple cloth be spread upon his
path that he may enter the house as befits a conqueror.
After a show of resistance, Agamemnon yields the point,
GREEK TRAGEDY 421
and the contrast at which the dramatist aims is achieved.
With the pomp of an eastern monarch, always repellent to
the Greek mind, the King steps across the threshold, steps,
as the audience knows, to his death. The higher the reach
of his power and pride the more terrible and swift is the 5
nemesis; and Clytemnestra follows in triumph with the
enigmatic cry upon her lips: " Zeus who art god of fulfilment,
fulfil my prayers." As she withdraws the chorus begin a
song of boding fear, the more terrible that it is still indefinite.
Something is going to happen the presentiment is sure. 10
But what, but what? They search the night in vain.
Meantime, motionless and silent waits the figure of the
veiled woman. It is Cassandra, the prophetess, daughter
of Priam of Troy, whom Agamemnon has carried home as
his prize. Clytemnestra returns to urge her to enter the 15
house; she makes no sign and utters no word. The queen
changes her tone from courtesy to anger and rebuke; the
figure neither stirs nor speaks; and Clytemnestra at last
with an angry threat leaves her and returns to the palace.
Then, and not till then, a cry breaks from the stranger's 20
lips, a passionate cry to Apollo who gave her her fatal gift.
All the sombre history of the House to which she has been
brought, the woe that has been and the woe that is to come,
passes in pictures across her inner sense. In a series of
broken ejaculations, not sentences but lyric cries, she evokes 25
the scenes of the past and of the future. Blood drips from
the palace; in its chambers the Furies crouch; the murdered
sons of Thyestes wail in its haunted courts; and ever among
the visions of the past that one of the future floats and fades,
clearly discerned, impossible to avert, the murder of a hus- 30
band by a wife; and in the rear of that, most pitiful of all,
the violent death of the seer who sees in vain and may not
help. Between Cassandra and the Chorus it is a duet of
anguish and fear; in the broken lyric phrases a phantom
music wails; till at last, at what seems the breaking-point, 35
the tension is relaxed, and dropping into the calmer iambic
recitative, Cassundra tells her message in plainer speech
422 G. LOWES DICKINSON
and clearly proclaims the murder of the King. Then, with
a last appeal to the avenger that is to come, she enters the
palace alone to meet her death. The stage is empty Sud-
denly a cry is heard from within; again, and then again;
5 while the chorus hesitate the deed is done; the doors are
thrown open, and Clytemnestra is seen standing over the
corpses of her victims. All disguise is now thrown off;
the murderess avows and triumphs in her deed; she justifies
it as vengeance for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and sees in
10 herself not a free human agent but the incarnate curse of
the House of Tantalus. And now for the first time appears
the adulterer /Egisthus, who has planned the whole behind
the scenes. He too is an avenger, for he is the son of that
Thyestes who was made to feed on his own children's flesh.
15 The murder of Agamemnon is but one more link in the long
chain of hereditary guilt; and with that exposition of the
pitiless law of punishment and crime this chapter of the
great drama comes to a close. But the Agamemnon is
only the first of a series of three plays closely connected
20 and meant to be performed in succession; and the problem
raised in the first of them, the crime that cries for punish-
ment and the punishment that is itself a new crime, is solved
in the last by a reconciliation of the powers of heaven and
hell, and the pardon of the last offender in the person of
25 Orestes. To sketch, however, the plan of the other dramas
of the trilogy would be to trespass too far upon our space
and time. It is enough to have illustrated, by the example
of the Agamemnon, the general character of a Greek
tragedy; and those who care to pursue the subject further
30 must be referred to the text of the plays themselves.
SHAKESPEARE 1
THOMAS CARLYLE
As Dante, the Italian man, was sent into our world to
embody musically the Religion of the Middle Ages, the
Religion of our Modern Europe, its Inner Life; so Shakes-
peare, we may say, embodies for us the Outer Life of our
Europe as developed then, its chivalries, courtesies, humours, 5
ambitions, what practical way of thinking, acting, looking
at the world, men then had. As in Homer we may still
construe Old Greece; so in Shakespeare and Dante, after
thousands of years, what our modern Europe was, in Faith
and in Practice, will still be legible. Dante has given usio
the Faith or soul; Shakespeare, in a not less noble way,
has given us the Practice or body. This latter also we
were to have; a man was sent for it, the man Shakespeare.
Just when that chivalry way of life had reached its last
finish, and was on the point of breaking down into slow or 15
swift dissolution, as we now see it everywhere, this other
sovereign Poet, with his seeing eye, with his perennial
singing voice, was sent to take note of it, to give long-endur-
ing record of it. Two fit men: Dante, deep, fierce as the
central fire of the world; Shakespeare, wide, placid, far- 20
seeing, as the Sun, the upper light of the world. Italy pro-
duced the one world- voice; we English had the honour of
producing the other.
Curious enough how, as it were by mere accident, this
man came to us. I think always, so great, quiet, complete 25
and self-sufficing is this Shakespeare, had the Warwickshire
1 From Lecture III, " The Hero as Poet," in " Heroes and Hero-
Worship," 1841.
423
424 THOMAS CARLYLE
Squire not prosecuted him for deer-stealing, we had perhaps
never heard of him as a Poet! The woods and skies, the
rustic Life of Man in Stratford there, had been enough
for this man! But indeed that strange outbudding of our
5 whole English Existence, which we call the Elizabethan
Era, did not it too come as of its own accord? The " Tree
Igdrasil " buds and withers by its own laws, too deep for
our scanning. Yet it does bud and wither, and every bough
and leaf of it is there, by fixed eternal laws; not a Sir Thomas
10 Lucy but comes at the hour fit for him. Curious, I say,
and not sufficiently considered: how everything does
co-operate with all; not a leaf rotting on the highway but
is indissoluble portion of solar and stellar systems; no
thought, word or act of man but has sprung withal out of
15 all men, and works sooner or later, recognisably or irrec-
ognisably, on all men! It is all a Tree: circulation of sap
and influences, mutual communication of every minutest
leaf with the lowest talon of a root, with every other greatest
and minutest portion of the whole. The Tree Igdrasil,
20 that has its roots down in the Kingdoms of Hela and Death,
and whose boughs overspread the highest Heaven!
In some sense it may be said that this glorious Elizabethan
Era with its Shakespeare, as the outcome and flowerage of
all which had preceded it, is itself attributable to the
25 Catholicism of the Middle Ages. The Christian Faith,
which was the theme of Dante's Song, had produced this
Practical Life which Shakespeare was to sing. For Religion
then, as it now and always is, was the soul of Practice;
the primary vital fact in men's life. And remark here, as
30 rather curious, that Middle-Age Catholicism was abolished,
so far as Acts of Parliament could abolish it, before Shake-
speare, the noblest product of it, made his appearance. He
did make his appearance nevertheless. Nature at her own
time, with Catholicism or what else might be necessary,
35 sent him forth; taking small thought of Acts of Parliament.
King-Henrys, Queen-Elizabeths go their way; and Nature
too goes hers. Acts of Parliament, on the whole, are small,
SHAKESPEARE 425
notwithstanding the noise they make. What Act of Par-
liament, debate at St. Stephen's, l on the hustings or else-
where, was it that brought this Shakespeare into being?
No dining at Freemasons' Tavern, opening subscription-
lists, selling of shares, and infinite other jangling and true 5
or false endeavouring! This Elizabethan Era, and all its
nobleness and blessedness, came without proclamation,
preparation of ours. Priceless Shakespeare was the free
gift of Nature; given altogether silently; received alto-
gether silently, as if it had been a thing of little account. 10
And yet, very literally, it is a priceless thing. One should
look at that side of matters too.
Of this Shakespeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one some-
times hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right
one; I think the best judgment not of this country only 15
but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion,
That Shakespeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the
greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left
record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole,
I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, 20
if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such
a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things
imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a
tranquil unfathomable sea! It has been said, that in the
constructing of Shakespeare's Dramas there is, apart from 25
all other " faculties " as they are called, an understanding
manifested, equal to that in Bacon's Novum Organum.
That is true; and it is not a truth that strikes every one. It
would become more apparent if we tried, any of us for him-
self, how, out of Shakespeare's dramatic materials, we could 30
fashion such a result! The built house seems all so fit,
everyway as it should be, as if it came there by its own law
and the nature of things, we forget the rude disorderly
quarry it was shaped from. The very perfection of the
house, as if Nature herself had made it, hides the buiMer's35
merit. Perfect, more perfect than any other man, we may
1 St. Stephen's: House of Commons.
426 THOMAS CARLYLE
call Shakespeare in this: he discerns, knows as by instinct,
what condition he works under, what his materials are,
what his own force and its relation to them is. It is not a
transitory glance of insight that will suffice; it is deliberate
5 illumination of the whole matter; it is a calmly seeing eye;
a great intellect, in short. How a man, of some wide
thing that he has witnessed, will construct a narrative,
what kind of picture and delineation he will give of it
is the best measure you could get of what intellect is in the
10 man. Which circumstance is vital and shall stand prom-
inent; which unessential, fit to be suppressed; where is
the true beginning, the true sequence and ending? To find
out this, you task the whole force of insight that is in the
man. He must understand the thing; according to the
15 depth of his understanding, will the fitness of his answer
be. You will try him so. Does like join itself to like; does
the spirit of method stir in that confusion, so that its
embroilment becomes order? Can the man say, Fiat lux,
Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Pre-
20 cisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.
Or indeed we may say again, it is in what I called Portrait-
painting, delineating of men and things, especially of men,
that Shakespeare is great. All the greatness of the man
comes out decisively here. It is unexampled, I think, that
25 calm creative perspicacity of Shakespeare. The thing he
looks at reveals not this or that face of it. but its inmost
heart, and generic secret: it dissolves itself as in light before
him, so that he discerns the perfect structure of it. Creative,
we said: poetic creation, what is this too but seeing the thing
^o sufficiently? The word that will describe the thing, follows
of itself from such clear intense sight of the thing. And
is not Shakespeare's morality, his valour, candour, tolerance,
truthfulness; his whole victorious strength and greatness,
which can triumph over such obstructions, visible there too?
35 Great as the world ! No twisted, poor convex-concave
mirror, reflecting all objects with its own convexities and
concavities; a perfectly level mirror that is to say withal,
SHAKESPEARE 427
if we will understand it, a man justly related to all things
and men, a good man. It is truly a lordly spectacle how
this great soul takes-in all kinds of men and objects, a P'al-
staff, an Othello, a Juliet, a Coriolanus; sets them all forth
to us in their round completeness; loving, just, the equal 5
brother of all. Novum Organum, and all the intellect you
will find in Bacon, is of a quite secondary order; earthy,
material, poor in comparison with this. Among modern
men, one finds, in strictness, almost othing of the same rank.
Goethe alone, since the days of Shakespeare, reminds me 10
of it. Of him too you say that he saw the object; you may
say what he himself says of Shakespeare: " His characters
are like watches with dial-plates of transparent crystal;
they show you the hour like others, and the inward mechan-
ism also is all visible. " 15
The seeing eye ! It is this that discloses the inner harmony
of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has
wrapped-up in these often rough embodiments. Something
she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were
discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can 20
laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some
way or other genially relate yourself to them you can, at
lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own
and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically
exterminating and extinguishing them! At bottom, it is the 25
Poet's first gift, as it is all men's, that he have intellect enough.
He will be a Poet if he have: a Poet in word; or failing that,
perhaps still better, a Poet in act. Whether he write at all,
and if so, whether in prose or in verse, will depend on
accidents: who knows on what extremely trivial accidents, 30
perhaps on his having had a singing-master, on his being
taught to sing in his boyhood! But the faculty which enables
him to discern the inner heart of things, and the harmony
that dwells there (for whatsoever exists has a harmony
in the heart of it, or it would not hold together and exist), 35
is not the result of habits or accidents, but the gift of Nature
herself; the primary outfit for a Heroic Man in what sort
428 THOMAS CARLYLE
soever. To the Poet, as to every other, we say first of all
See. If you cannot do that, it is of no use to keep stringing
rhymes together, jingling sensibilities against each other,
and name yourself a Poet; there is no hope for you. If
S you can, there is, in prose or verse, in action or speculation,
all manner of hope. The crabbed old Schoolmaster used to
ask, when they brought him a new pupil, " But are ye sure
he's not a dunce?" Why, really one might ask the same thing,
in regard to every man proposed for whatsoever function;
10 and consider it as the one inquiry needful: Are ye sure
he's not a dunce? There is, in this world, no other entirely
fatal person.
For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man
is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shake-
is speare's faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and
think I had included all under that. What indeed are
faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct,
things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination,
fancy, etc., as he has hands, feet and arms. That is a
20 capital error. Then again, we hear of a man's " intellectual
nature," and of his " moral nature," as if these again were
divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do
perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I
am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But
25 words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to
me, our apprehension of this matter is, for most part, radi-
cally falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to
keep forever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but
names; that man's spiritual nature, the vital Force which
30 dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible; that what
we call imagination, fancy, understanding, and so forth, are
but different figures of the same Power of Insight, all indis-
solubly connected with each other, physiognomically related;
that if we knew one of them, we might know all of (hem.
35 Morality itself, what we call the moral quality of a man,
what is this but another side of the one vital Force whereby
he is and works? All that a man does is physiognomical
SHAKESPEARE 429
of him. You may see how a man would fight, by the way
in which he sings; his courage, or want of courage, is visible
in the word he utters, in the opinion he has formed, no less
than in the stroke he strikes. He is one; and preaches the
same Self abroad in all these ways. 5
Without hands a man might have feet, and could still
walk: but, consider it without morality, intellect were
impossible for him; a thoroughly immoral man could not
know anything at all! To know a thing, what we can call
knowing, a man must first love the thing, sympathise with 10
it: that is, be virtuously related to it. If he have not the
justice to put down his own selfishness at every turn, the
courage to stand by the dangerous-true at every turn,
how shall he know? His virtues, all of them, will lie recorded
in his knowledge. Nature, with her truth, remains to the 15
bad, to the selfish and the pusillanimous forever a sealed
book: what such can know of Nature is mean, superficial,
small; for the uses of the day merely. But does not the
very Fox know something of Nature? Exactly so: it
knows where the geese lodge! The human Reynard, very 20
frequent everywhere in the world, what more does he know
but this and the like of this? Nay, it should be considered
too, that if the Fox had not a certain vulpine morality, he
could not even know where the geese were, or get at the
geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflec-25
tions on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune
and other Foxes, and so forth ; and had not courage, prompt-
itude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces,
he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that
his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; dif-3o
ferent faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life!
These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them
acts with manifold very baleful perversion, in this time:
what limitations, modifications they require, your own can-
dour will supply. 35
If I say, therefore, that Shakespeare is the greatest of
Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is
430 THOMAS CARLYLE
more in Shakespeare's intellect than we have yet seen. It
is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue
in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks
of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too,
5 deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying.
Shakespeare's Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it
is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from
the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a
voice of Nature. The latest generations of men will find
10 new meanings in Shakespeare, new elucidations of their
own human being; " new harmonies with the infinite struc-
ture of the Universe; concurrences with later ideas, affin-
ities with the higher powers and senses of man." This
well deserves meditating. It is Nature's highest reward
1 5 to a true simple great soul, that he get thus to be a part
of herself. Such a man's works, whatsoever he with utmost
conscious exertion and forethought shall accomplish, grow
up withal wwconsciously, from the unknown deeps in him;
as the oak-tree grows from the Earth's bosom, as the moun-
20 tains and waters shape themselves; with a symmetry
grounded on Nature's own law r s, conformable to all Truth
whatsoever. How much in Shakespeare lies hid; his sor-
rows, his silent struggles known to himself; much that was
not known at all, not speakable at all: like roots, like sap and
25 forces working underground! Speech is great; but Silence
is greater.
Withal the joyful tranquillity of this man is notable. I
will not blame Dante for his misery: it is as battle without
victory; but true battle, the first, indispensable thing.
30 Yet I call Shakespeare greater than Dante, in that he fought
truly, and did conquer. Doubt it not, he had his own sor-
rows: those Sonnets of his will even testify expressly in what
deep waters he had waded, and swum struggling for his
life as what man like him ever failed to have to do? It
35 seems to me a heedless notion, our common one, that he sat
like a bird on the bough; and sang forth, free and offhand,
never knowing the troubles of other men. Not so; with
SHAKESPEARE 431
no man is it so. How could a man travel forward from
rustic deer-poaching to such tragedy-writing, and not fall-in
with sorrows by the way? Or, still better, how could a man
delineate a Hamlet, a Coriolanus, a Macbeth, so many
suffering heroic hearts, if his own heroic heart had never 5
suffered? And now, in contrast with all this, observe his
mirthfulness, his genuine overflowing love of laughter!
You would say, in no point does he exaggerate but only in
laughter. Fiery objurgations, words that pierce and burn,
are to be found in Shakespeare; yet he is always in measure 10
here; never what Johnson would remark as a specially
" good hater." But his laughter seems to pour from him
in floods; he heaps all manner of ridiculous nicknames on
the butt he is bantering, tumbles and tosses him in all
sorts of horse-play; you would say, with his whole heart 15
laughs. And then, if not always the finest, it is always a
genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty;
never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will
laugh at these things. It is some poor character only
desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. 20
Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not " the
crackling of thorns under the pot." Even at stupidity and
pretension this Shakespeare does not laugh otherwise than
genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts;
and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: 25
but we like the poor fellows only the better for our laughing;
and hope they will get on well there, and continue Presidents
of the City-watch. Such laughter, like sunshine on the deep
sea, is very beautiful to me.
We have no room to speak of Shakespeare's individual 30
works; though perhaps there is much still waiting to be
said on that head. Had we, for instance, all his plays
reviewed as Hamlet, in \\'ilhdm Meistcr, is! A thing which
might, one day, be done. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a
remark on his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, 35
which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of
National Epic. Marlborough, you recollect, said, he knew
432 THOMAS CARLYLE
no English History but what he had learned from Shake-
speare. There are really, if we look to it, few as memorable
Histories. The great salient points are admirably seized;
all rounds itself off, into a kind of rhythmic coherence; it is,
5 as Schlegel says, epic; as indeed all delineation by a great
thinker will be. There are right beautiful things in those
Pieces, which indeed together form one beautiful thing.
That battle of Agincourt strikes me as one of the most
perfect things, in its sort, we anywhere have of Shakespeare's.
10 The description of the two hosts: the wornout, jaded
English; the dread hour, big with destiny, when the battle
shall begin; and then that deathless valour: " Ye good
yeomen, whose limbs were made in England!" There is
a noble Patriotism in it far other than the " indifference "
15 you sometimes hear ascribed to Shakespeare. A true
English heart breathes, calm and strong, through the whole
business; not boisterous, protrusive; all the better for that.
There is a sound in it like the ring of steel. This man too
had a right stroke in him, had it come to that!
20 But I will say, of Shakespeare's works generally, that we
have no full impress of him there; even as full as we have of
many men. His works are so many windows, through
which we see a glimpse of the world that was in him. All
his works seem, comparatively speaking, cursory, imperfect,
25 written under cramping circumstances; giving only here
and there a note of the full utterance of the man. Passages
there are that come upon you like splendour out of Heaven ;
bursts of radiance, illuminating the very heart of the thing:
you say, " That is true, spoken once and forever; where-
30 soever and whensoever there is an open human soul, that
will be recognised as true!" Such bursts, however, make us
feel that the surrounding matter is not radiant; that it is in
part, temporary, conventional. Alas, Shakespeare had to write
for the Globe Playhouse: his great soul had to crush itself, as
35 it could, into that and no other mould. It was with him, then,
as it is with us all. No man works save under conditions.
The sculptor cannot set his own free Thought before us;
SHAKESPEARE 433
but his Thought as he could translate it into the stone that
was given, with the tools that were given. Disjecta mem-
bra l are all that we find of any Poet, or of any man.
Whoever looks intelligently at this Shakespeare may
recognise that he too was a Prophet, in his way ; of an insight 5
analogous to the Prophetic, though he took it up in another
strain. Nature seemed to this man also divine; wwspeakable,
deep as Tophet, high as Heaven: "We are such stuff as
Dreams are made of!" That scroll in Westminster Abbey, 2
which few read with understanding, is of the depth of any 10
seer. But the man sang; did not preach, except musically.
We called Dante the melodious Priest of Middle- Age Catholi-
cism. May we not call Shakespeare the still more melodious
Priest of a true Catholicism, the " Universal Church " of the
Future and of all times? No narrow superstition, harsh 15
asceticism, intolerance, fanatical fierceness or perversion:
a Revelation, so far as it goes, that such a thousandfold
hidden beauty and divineness dwells in all Nature; which
let all men worship as they can ! We may say without offence,
that there rises a kind of universal Psalm out of this Shake- 20
speare too; not unfit to make itself heard among the still
more sacred Psalms. Not in disharmony with these, if we
understood them, but in harmony! I cannot call this
Shakespeare a " Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to
the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading 25
them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about
his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about
his Faith. Such " indifference " was the fruit of his great-
ness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere
of worship (we may call it such) ; these other controversies, 30
vitally important to other men, were not vital to him.
But call it worship, call it what you will, is it not a right
glorious thing, and set of things, this that Shakespeare has
1 Scattered pieces.
2 The passage in Shakespeare's "Tempest" from which the \frords
quoted in the preceding sentence are taken, is inscribed on the scroll
in the hand of Shakespeare's statue in Westminster Abbey.
434 THOMAS CARLYLE
brought us? For myself, I feel that there is actually a kind
of sacredness in the fact of such a man being sent into this
Earth. Is he not an eye to us all; a blessed heaven-sent
Bringer of Light? and, at bottom, was it not perhaps far
5 better that this Shakespeare, everyway an unconscious man,
was conscious of no Heavenly message? He did not feel,
like Mahomet, because he saw into those internal Splendours,
that he specially was the " Prophet of God:" and was he
not greater than Mahomet in that? Greater; and also, if
10 we compute strictly, as we did in Dante's case, more suc-
cessful. It was intrinsically an error that notion of Ma-
homet's, of his supreme Prophethood; and has come down
to us inextricably involved in error to this day; dragging
along with it such a coil of fables, impurities, intolerances,
15 as makes it a questionable step for me here and now to say,
as I have done, that Mahomet was a true Speaker at all,
and not rather an ambitious charlatan, perversity and
simulacrum; no Speaker, but a Babbler! Even in Arabia, as
I compute, Mahomet will have exhausted himself and become
20 obsolete, while this Shakespeare, this Dante may still be
young; while this Shakespeare may still pretend to be
a Priest of Mankind, of Arabia as of other places, for un-
limited periods to come !
Compared with any speaker or singer one k ows, even with
25^ z Eschylus or Homer, why should he not, for veracity and
universality, last like them? He is sincere as they; reaches
deep down like them, to the universal and perennial. But as
for Mahomet, I think it had been better for him not to be
so conscious ! Alas, poor Mahomet ; all that he was conscious
30 of was a mere error; a futility and triviality as indeed
such ever is. The truly great in him too was the unconscious:
that he was a wild Arab lion of the desert, and did speak-
out with that great thunder-voice of his. not by words which
he thought to be great, but by actions, by feelings, by a
35 history which were great ! His Koran has become a stupid
piece of prolix absurdity; we do not believe, like him
that God wrote that! The Great Man here too, as always
SHAKESPEARE 435
is a Force of Nature: whatsoever is truly great in him
springs-up from the warticulate deeps.
Well: this is our poor Warwickshire Peasant, who rose to
be Manager of a Playhouse, so that he could live without
begging; whom the Earl of Southampton cast some kind 5
glances on; whom Sir Thomas Lucy, many thanks to him,
was for sending to the Treadmill! We did not account
him a god, like Odin, while he dwelt with us; on which
point there were much to be said. But I will say rather,
or repeat: In spite of the sad state Hero-worship now lies 10
in, consider what this Shakespeare has actually become
among us. Which Englishman we ever made, in this land
of ours, which million of Englishmen, would we not give-up
rather than the Stratford Peasant? There is no regiment
of highest Dignitaries that we would sell him for. He 15
is the grandest thing we have yet done. For our honour
among foreign nations, as an ornament to our English
Household, what item is there that we would not surrender
rather than him? Consider now, if they asked us, Will you
give-up your Indian Empire or your Shakespeare, you 20
English; never have had any Indian Empire, or never have
had any Shakespeare? Really it were a grave question.
Official persons would answer doubtless in official language;
but we, for our part too, should not we be forced to answer:
Indian Empire, or no Indian Empire; we cannot do without 25
Shakespeare! Indian Empire will go, at any rate, some day;
but this Shakespeare does not go, he lasts forever with us;
we cannot give-up our Shakespeare!
Nay, apart from spiritualities; and considering him
merely as a real, marketable, tangibly-useful possession. 30
England, before long, this Island of ours, will hold but a
small fraction of the English: in America, in New Holland, 1
east and west to the very Antipodes, there will be a Saxon-
dom covering great spaces of the Globe. And now, what
is it that can keep all these together into virtually v one 35
Nation, so that they do not fall-out and fight, but live at
1 New Holland: Australia.
436 THOMAS CARLYLE
peace, in brotherlike intercourse, helping one another?
This is justly regarded as the greatest practical problem,
the thing all manner of sovereignties and governments
are here to accomplish: what is it that will accomplish this?
5 Acts of Parliament, administrative prime-ministers cannot.
America is parted from us, so far as Parliament could part
it. Call it not fantastic, for there is much reality in it:
Here, I say, is an English King, whom no time or chance,
Parliament or combination of Parliaments, can dethrone!
10 This King Shakespeare, does not he shine, in crowned
sovereignty, over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest
of rallying-signs; wdestructible; really more valuable in
that point of view than any other means or appliance
whatsoever? We can fancy him as radiant aloft over all the
15 Nations of Englishmen, a thousand years hence. From
Paramatta, from New York, wheresoever, under what sort
of Parish-Constable soever, English men and women are,
they will say to one another: " Yes, this Shakespeare is
ours; we produced him, we speak and think by him; we are
20 of one blood and kind with him." The most common-
sense politician, too, if he pleases, may think of that.
Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an
articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak-
forth melodiously what the heart of it means! Italy, for
25 example, poor Italy lies dismembered, scattered asunder,
not appearing in any protocol or treaty as a unity at all;
yet the noble Italy is actually one: Italy produced its Dante;
Italy can speak! The Czar of all the Russias, he is strong,
with so many bayonets, Cossacks and cannons; and does
30 a great feat in keeping such a tract of Earth politically
together; but he cannot yet speak. Something great in
him, but it is a dumb greatness. He has had no voice of
genius, to be heard of all men and times. He must learn
to speak. He is a great dumb monster hitherto. His
35 cannons and Cossacks will all have rusted into nonentity,
while that Dante's voice is still audible. The Nation that
has a Dante is bound together as no dumb Russia can be.
CHARLES LAMB *
WALTER PATER
THOSE English critics who at the beginning of the present
century introduced from Germany, together with some other
subtleties of thought transplanted hither not without
advantage, the distinction between the Fancy and the Imag-
ination, made much also of the cognate distinction between 5
Wit and Hnmoiir, between that unreal and transitory mirth,
which is as the crackling of thorns under the pot, and the
laughter which blends with tears and even with the sub-
limities of the imagination, and which, in its most exquisite
motives, is one with pity the laughter of the comedies of 10
Shakespeare, hardly less expressive than his moods of
seriousness or solemnity, of that deeply stirred soul of sym-
pathy in him, as flowing from which both tears and laughter
are alike genuine and contagious.
This distinction between wit and humour, Coleridge and 15
other kindred critics applied, with much effect, in their
studies of some of our older English writers. And as the
distinction between imagination and fancy, made popular
by Wordsworth, found its best justification in certain
essential differences of stuff in Wordsworth's own writings, 20
so this other critical distinction, between wit and huniour,
finds a sort of visible interpretation and instance in the
character and writings of Charles Lamb; one who lived
more consistently than most writers among subtle literary
theories, and whose remains are still full of curious interest 25
for the student of literature as a fine art.
1 From " Appreciations," 1889.
437
438 WALTER PATER
'The author of the English Humourists of the Eighteenth
Century, coming to the humourists of the nineteenth, would
have found, as is true pre-eminently of Thackeray himself,
the springs of pity in them deepened by the deeper sub-
5Jectivity, the intenser and closer living with itself, which
is characteristic of the temper of the later generation;
and therewith, the mirth also, from the amalgam of which
with pity humour proceeds, has become, in Charles Dickens,
for example, freer and more boisterous.
10 To this more high-pitched feeling, since predominant in our
literature, the writings of Charles Lamb, whose life occupies
the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first
quarter of the nineteenth, are a transition; and such union
of grave, of terrible even, with gay, we may note in the circum-
15 stances of his life, as reflected thence into his work. We
catch the aroma of a singular, homely sweetness about his
first years, spent on Thames' side, amid the red bricks and
terraced gardens, with their rich historical memories of
old-fashioned legal London. '^Just above the poorer class,
20 deprived, as he says, of the " sweet food of icadrmic institu-
tion," he is fortunate enough to be reared in the classical
languages at an ancient school, where he becomes the com-
panion of Coleridge, as at a later period he was his enthusiastic
disciple. s So far, the years go by with less than the usual
25 share of boyish difficulties; protected, one fancies, seeing
what he was afterwards, by some attraction of temper in
the quaint child, small and delicate, with a certain Jewish
expression in his clear, brown complexion, eyes not precisely
of the same colour, and a slow walk adding to the staidness
30 of his figure; and whose infirmity of speech, increased by
agitation, is partly engaging.
'And the cheerfulness of all this, of the mere aspect of
Lamb's quiet subsequent life also, might make the more
superficial reader think of him as in himself something slight,
35 and of his mirth as cheaply bought. ''Yet we know that
beneath this blithe surface there was something of the fateful
domestic horror, of the beautiful heroism and devotedness
CHARLES LAMB 439
too, of old Greek tragedy. His sister Mary, ten years his
senior, in a sudden paroxysm of madness, caused the death
of her mother, and was brought to trial for what an over-
strained justice might have construed as the greatest of
crimes. She was released on the brother's pledging him- 5
self to watch over her; and to this sister, from the age of
twenty-one, Charles Lamb sacrificed himself, " seeking
thenceforth," says his earliest biographer, " no connection
which could interfere with her supremacy in his affections,
or impair his ability to sustain and comfort her." The 10
" feverish vonuntic lie of love " he cast away in exchange
for the "charities of home." Only, from time to time, the
madness returned, affecting him too, once; and we see the
brother and sister voluntarily yielding to restraint. In
estimating the humour of Elia, we must no more forget the 15
strong undercurrent of this great misfortune and pity,
than one could forget it in his actual story. So he becomes
the best critic, almost the discoverer, of Webster, a dramatist
of genius so sombre, so heavily coloured, so macabre. 1 Rosa-
mund Grey written in his twenty-third year, a story with 20
something bitter and exaggerated, an almost insane fixedness
of gloom perceptible in it, strikes clearly this note in his
work.
For himself, and from his own point of view, the exercise
of his gift, of his literary art, came to gild or sweeten a life 25
of monotonous labour, and seemed, as far as regarded others,
no very important thing; availing to give them a little
pleasure, and inform them a little, chiefly in a retrospective
manner, but in no way concerned with the turning of the
tides of the great world. And yet this very modesty, this 30
unambitious way of conceiving his work, has impressed
upon it a certain exceptional enduringness. For of the
remarkable English writers contemporary with Lamb,
many were greatly preoccupied with ideas of practice
religious, moral, political ideas which have since, in some 35
sense or other, entered permanently into the general con-
1 Macabre: very grim.
440 WALTER PATER
sciousness; and, these having no longer any stimulus for a
generation provided with a different stock of ideas, the
writings of those who spent so much of themselves in their
propagation have lost, with posterity, something of what
5 they gained by them in immediate influence. Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Shelley even sharing so largely in the unrest
of their own age, and made personally more interesting
thereby, yet, of their actual work, surrender more to the
mere course of time than some of those who may have seemed
10 to exercise themselves hardly at all in great matters, to have
been little serious, or a little indifferent, regarding them.
Of this number of the disinterested servants of literature,
smaller in England than in France, Charles Lamb is one.
In the making of prose he realises the principle of art for
15 its own sake, as completely as Keats in the making of verse.
And, working ever close to the concrete, to the details, great
or small, of actual things, books, persons, and with no part
of them blurred to his vision by the intervention of mere
abstract theories, he has reached an enduring moral effect
20 also, in a sort of boundless sympathy. Unoccupied, as he
might seem, with great matters, he is in immediate contact
with what is real, especially in its caressing littleness, that
littleness in which there is much of the whole woeful heart
of things, and meets it more than half-way with a perfect
25 understanding of it. What sudden, unexpected touches of
pathos in him ! bearing witness how the sorrow of humanity,
the Weltschmerz, the constant aching of its wounds, is ever
present with him: but what a gift also for the enjoyment
of life in its subtleties, of enjoyment actually refined by the
30 need of some thoughtful economies and making the most
of things! Little arts of happiness he is ready to teach to
others. The quaint remarks of children which another
would scarcely have heard, he preserves little flies in the
priceless amber of his Attic wit and has liis " Praise of
35 chimney-sweepers " (as William Blake has written, with
so much natural pathos, the Chimney-sweeper's Song),
valuing carefully their white teeth, and fine enjoyment of
CHARLES LAMB 441
white sheets in stolen sleep at Arundel Castle, as he tells
the story, anticipating something of the mood of our deep
humourists of the last generation. His simple mother-
pity for those who suffer by accident, or unkindness oi" nature,
blindness for instance, or fateful disease of mind like his 5
sister's, has something primitive in its largeness; and on
behalf of ill-used animals he is early in composing a Pity's
Gift.
And if, in deeper or more superficial sense, the dead do
care at all for their name and fame, then how must the souls 10
of Shakespeare and Webster have been stirred, after so long
converse with things that stopped their ears, whether above
or below the soil, at his exquisite appreciations of them;
the souls of Titian and of Hogarth too; for, what has not
been observed so generally as the excellence of his literary 15
criticism, Charles Lamb is a fine critic of painting also.
It was as loyal, self-forgetful work for others, for Shake-
speare's self first, for instance, and then for Shakespeare's
readers, that that too was done: he has the true scholar's
way of forgetting himself in his subject. For though 20
" defrauded," as we saw, in his young years, " of the sweet
food of academic institution," he is yet essentially a scholar,
and all his work mainly retrospective, as I said; his own
sorrows, affections, perceptions, being alone real to him of
the present. " I cannot make these present times," he says 25
once, " present to me."
Above all, he becomes not merely an expositor, per-
manently valuable, but for Englishmen almost the dis-
coverer of the old English drama. "The book is such as I
am glad there should be," he modestly says of the Specimens 30
of English Dramatic Poets who lived about the time of Shake-
speare; to which, however, he adds in a series of notes the
very quintessence of criticism, the choicest savour and
perfume of Elizabethan poetry being Boiled, and stored
here, with a sort of delicate intellectual epicureanism, 35
which has had the effect of winning for these, then almost
forgotten, poets, one generation after another of enthusiastic
442 WALTER PATER
students. Could he but have known how fresh a source of
culture he was evoking there for other generations, through
all those years in which, a little wistfully, he would harp
on the limitation of his time by business, and sigh for a better
5 fortune in regard to literary opportunities!
To feel strongly the charm of an old poet or moralist,
the literary charm of Burton, for instance, or Quarles, or
The Duchess of Newcastle; and then to interpret that charm,
to convey it to others he seeming to himself but to hand on
10 to others, in mere humble ministration, that of which for
them he is really the creator this is the way of his criticism ;
cast off in a stray letter often, or passing note, or lightest
essay or conversation. It is in such a letter, for instance,
that we come upon a singularly penetrative estimate of the
15 genius and writings of Defoe.
Tracking, with an attention always alert, the whole process
of their production to its starting-point in the deep places of
the mind, he seems to realise the but half-conscious intuitions
of Hogarth or Shakespeare, and develops the great ruling
20 unities which have swayed their actual work; or "puts
up," and takes, the one morsel of good stuff in an old,
forgotten writer. Even in what he says casually there comes
an aroma of old English; noticeable echoes, in chance turn
and phrase, of the great masters of style, the old masters.
25 Godwin, seeing in quotation a passage from John Woodvil,
takes it for a choice fragment of an old dramatist, and goes
to Lamb to assist him in finding the author. His power
of delicate imitation in prose and verse reaches the length
of a fine mimicry even, as in those last essays of Elia on
30 Popular Fallacies, with their gentle reproduction or car-
icature of Sir Thomas Browne, showing, the more com-
pletely, his mastery, by disinterested study, of those elements
of the man which were the real source of style in that great,
solemn master of old English, who, ready to say what he
35 has to say with fearless homeliness, yet continually overawes
one with touches of a strange utterance from worlds afar.
For it is with the delicacies of fine literature especially, its
CHARLES LAMB 443
gradations of expression, its fine judgment, its pure sense of
words, of vocabulary things, alas ! dying out in the English
literature of the present, together with the appreciation
of them in our literature of the past that his literary
mission is chiefly concerned. And yet, delicate, refining, 5
daintily epicurean, as he may seem, when he writes of giants
such as Hogarth or Shakespeare, though often but in a
stray note, you catch the sense of veneration with which
those great names in past literature and art brooded over his
intelligence, his undiminished impressibility by the great 10
effects in them. Reading, commenting on Shakespeare, he
is like a man who walks alone under a grand stormy sky,
and among unwonted tricks of light, when powerful spirits
might seem to be abroad upon the air; and the grim
humour of Hogarth, as he analyses it, rises into a kind of 15
spectral grotesque; while he too knows the secret of fine,
significant touches like theirs.
There are traits, customs, characteristics of houses and
dress, surviving morsels of old life, such as Hogarth has
transferred so vividly into The Rake's Progress, or Marriage 20
a la Mode, concerning which we well understand how, com-
mon, uninteresting, or even worthless in themselves, they
have come to please us at last as things picturesque, being
set in relief against the modes of our different age. Customs,
stiff to us, stiff dresses, stiff furniture types of cast-off 25
fashions, left by accident, and which no one ever meant
to preserve we contemplate with more than good-nature,
as having in them the veritable accent of a time, not alto-
gether to be replaced by its more solemn and self-conscious
deposits; like those tricks of individuality which we find 30
quite tolerable in persons, because they convey to us the
secret of lifelike expression, and with regard to which we
are all to some extent humourists. But it is part of the
privilege of the genuine humourists to anticipate this pen-
sive mood with regard to the ways and things of his own 35
day; to look upon the tricks in manner of the life about
him with that same refined, purged sort of vision, which
444 WALTER PATER
will come naturally to those of a later generation, in observ-
ing whatever may have survived by chance of its mere
external habit. Seeing things always by the light of an
understanding more entire than is possible for ordinary
5 minds, of the whole mechanism of humanity, and seeing
also the manner, the outward mode or fashion, always
in strict connection with the spiritual condition which deter-
mined it, a humourist such as Charles Lamb anticipates
the enchantment of distance; and the characteristics of
10 places, ranks, habits of life, are transfigured for him, even
now and in advance of time, by poetic light; justifying what
some might condemn as mere sentimentality, in the effort
to hand on unbroken the tradition of such fashion or accent.
" The praise of beggars," " the cries of London," the traits
15 of actors just grown " old," the spots in " town " where the
country, its fresh green and fresh water, still lingered on,
one after another, amidst the bustle; the quaint, dimmed,
just played-out farces, he had relished so much, coming
partly through them to understand the earlier English
20 theatre as a thing once really alive; those fountains and sun-
dials of old gardens, of which he entertains such dainty
discourse: he feels the poetry of these things, as the poetry
of things old indeed, but surviving as an actual part of the
life of the present, and as something quite different from
25 the poetry of things flatly gone from us and antique, which
come back to us, if at all, as entire strangers, like Scott's
old Scotch-border personages, their oaths and armour.
Such gift of appreciation depends, as I said, on' the habitual
apprehension of men's life as a whole its organic wholeness,
30 as extending even to the least things in it of its outward
manner in connection with its inward temper; and it involves
a fine perception of the congruities, the musical accordance
between humanity and its environment of custom, society,
personal intercourse; as if all this, with its meetings, partings,
35 ceremonies, gesture, tones of speech, were some delicate
instrument on which an expert performer is playing.
These are some of the characteristics of Elia, one essen-
CHARLES LAMB 445
tially an essayist, and of the true family of Montaigne,
" never judging," as he says, " system-wise of things, but
fastening on particulars;" saying all things as it were on
chance occasion only, and by way of pastime, yet succeed-
ing thus, " glimpse- wise," in catching and recording more 5
frequently than others " the gayest, happiest attitude of
things;" a casual writer for dreamy readers, yet always
giving the reader so much more than he seemed to propose.
There is something of the follower of George Fox about him,
and the Quaker's belief in the inward light coming to one 10
passive, to the mere wayfarer, who will be sure at all events
to lose no light which falls by the way glimpses, sugges-
tions, delightful half-apprehensions, profound thoughts
of old philosophers, hints of the innermost reason in things,
the full knowledge of which is held in reserve; all the varied 15
stuff, that is, of which genuine essays are made.
And with him, as with Montaigne, the desire of self-
portraiture is, below all more superficial tendencies, the real
motive in writing at all a desire closely connected with
that intimacy, that modern subjectivity, which may be 20
called the Montaignesque element in literature. What he
designs is to give you himself, to acquaint you with his like-
ness; but must do this, if at all, indirectly, being indeed
always more or less reserved, for himself and his friends;
friendship counting for so much in his life, that he is jealous 25
of anything that might jar or disturb it, even to the length
of a sort of insincerity, to which he assigns its quaint " praise;"
this lover of stage plays significantly welcoming a little
touch of the artificiality of play to sweeten the intercourse
of actual life. 30
And, in effect, a very delicate and expressive portrait of
him does put itself together for the duly meditative reader.
In indirect touches of his own work, scraps of faded old
letters, what others remembered of his talk, the man's
likeness emerges; what he laughed and wept at, his sudden 35
elevations, and longings after absent friends, his fine casuis-
tries of affection and devices to jog sometimes, as he says,
446 WALTER PATER
the lazy happiness of perfect love, his solemn moments of
higher discourse with the young, as they came across him on
occasion, and went along a little way with him, the sudden
surprised apprehension of beauties in old literature, reveal-
5 ing anew the deep soul of poetry in things, and withal the
pure spirit of fun, having its way again; laughter, that most
short-lived of all things (some of Shakespeare's even being
grown hollow) wearing well with him. Much of all this
comes out through his letters, which may be regarded as a
10 department of his essays. He is an old-fashioned letter-
writer, the essence of the old fashion of letter-writing lying,
as with true essay-writing, in the dexterous availing oneself
of accident and circumstance, in the prosecution of deeper
lines of observation; although, just as with the record of
15 his conversation, one loses something, in losing the actual
tones of the stammerer, still graceful in his halting, as he
halted also in composition, composing slowly and by fits,
" like a Flemish painter," as he tells us, so " it is to be re-
gretted," says the editor of his letters, " that in the printed
20 letters the reader will lose the curious varieties of writing
with which the originals abound, and which are scrupulously
adapted to the subject."
Also, he was a true " collector," delighting in the personal
finding of a thing, in the colour an old book or print gets
25 for him by the little accidents which attest previous owner-
ship. Wither's Emblems, " that old book and quaint,"
long-desired, when he finds it at last, he values none the less
because a child had coloured the plates with his paints.
A lover of household warmth everywhere, of that tempered
30 atmosphere which our various habitations get by men's
living within them, he " sticks to his favourite books as he
did to his friends," and loved the " town," with a jealous
eye for all its characteristics, " old houses " coming to have
souls for him. The yearning for mere warmth against
35 him in another, makes him content, all through life, with
pure brotherlinesSj " the most kindly and natural species
of love," as he s'lys, in place of the passion of love. Brother
CHARLES LAMB 447
and sister, sitting thus side by side, have, of course, their
anticipations how one of them must sit at last in the faint
sun alone, and set us speculating, as we read, as to precisely
what amount of melancholy reall accompanied for him
the approach of old age, so steadily foreseen; make us note 5
also with pleasure, his successive wakings up to cheerful
realities, out of a too curious musing over what is gone and
what remains, of life. In his subtle capacity for enjoying
the more refined points of earth, of human relationship,
he could throw the gleam of poetry or humour on what 10
seemed common or threadbare; has a care for the sighs,
and the weary, humdrum preoccupations of very weak
people, down to their little pathetic "gentilities," even;
while, in the purely human temper, he can write of death,
almost like Shakespeare. 15
And that care, through all his enthusiasm of discovery,
for what is accustomed, in literature, connected thus with
his close clinging to home and the earth, was congruous
also with that love for the accustomed in religion, which
we may notice in him. He is one of the last votaries of 20
that old-world sentiment, based on the feelings of hope and
awe, which may be described as the religion of men of letters
(as Sir Thomas Browne has his Religion of the Physician),
religion as understood by the soberer men of letters in the
last century, Addison, Gray, and Johnson; by Jane Austen 25
and Thackeray, later. A high way of feeling developed
largely by constant intercourse with the great things of
literature, and extended in its turn to those matters greater
still, this religion lives, in the main retrospectively, in a
system of received sentiments and beliefs; received, like 30
those great things of literature and art, in the first instance,
on the authority of a long tradition, in the course of which
they have ! inked themselves in a thousand complex ways to
the conditions of human life, and no more questioned now
than the feeling one keeps by one of the greatness --say 135
of Shakespeare. For Charles Lamb, such form of religion
becomes the solemn background on which the nearer and
448 WALTER PATER
more exciting objects of his immediate experience relieve
themselves, borrowing from it an expression of calm; its
necessary atmosphere being indeed a profound quiet, that
quiet which has in it a kind of sacramental efficacy, working,
5 we might say, on the principle of the opus opcratum, 1 almost
without any co-operation of one's own, towards the asser-
tion of the higher self. And, in truth, to men of Lamb's
delicately attuned temperament mere physical stillness has
its full value; such natures seeming to long for it some-
10 times, as for no merely negative thing, with a sort of mystical
sensuality.
The writings of Charles Lamb are an excellent illustration
of the value of reserve in literature. Below his quiet, his
quaintness, his humour, and what may seem the slightness,
15 the occasional or accidental character of his work, there
lies, as I said at starting, as in his life, a genuinely tragic
element. The gloom, reflected at its darkest in those hard
shadows of Rosamund Grey, is always there, though not
always realised either for himself or his readers, and re-
20 strained always in utterance. It gives to those lighter mat-
ters on the surface of life and literature among which he for
the most part moved, a wonderful force of expression, as if
at any moment these slight words and fancies might pierce
very far into the deeper soul of things. In his writing, as in
25 his life, that quiet is not the low-flying of one from the first
drowsy by choice, and needing Ihr- prick of some strong
passion or worldly ambition, to stimulate him into all the
energy of which he is capable; but rather the reaction of
nature, after an escape from fate, dark and insane as in old
3 o Greek tragedy, following upon which the sense of mere relief
becomes a kind of passion, as with one who, having narrowly
escaped earthquake or shipwreck, finds a thing for grateful
tears in just sitting quiet at home, under the wall, till the
end of days.
1 Opus operatum (a phrase from Catholic theology) : the work per-
formed through the sacraments baptism, confirmation, etc. the
efficacy of which is not dependent on the participants.
CHARLES LAMB 449
He felt the genius of places; and I sometimes think he
resembles the places he knew and liked best, and where his
lot fell London, sixty-five years ago, with Covent Garden
and the old theatres, and the Temple gardens still unspoiled,
Thames gliding down, and beyond to north and south the 5
fields at Enfield or Hampton, to which, " with their living
trees," the thoughts wander " from the hard wood of the
desk " fields fresher, and coming nearer to town then,
but in one of which the present writer remembers, on a brood-
ing early summer's day, to have heard the cuckoo for the 10
first time. Here, the surface of things is certainly humdrum,
the streets dingy, the green places, where the child goes a-
maying, tame enough. But nowhere are things more apt
to respond to the brighter weather, nowhere is there so much
difference between rain and sunshine, nowhere do the clouds 15
roll together more grandly; those quaint suburban pastorals
gather a certain quality of grandeur from the background
of the great city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent
of storm in the rapid light on dome and bleached stone
steeples. 20
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 1
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
THAT very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger, once invited
four venerable friends to meet him in his study. There
were three white-bearded gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne,
Colonel 'Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, and a withered gen-
5 tlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They
were all melancholy old creatures, who had been unfortunate
in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was, that they were
not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medbourne, in the vigor
of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost
I0 his all by a frantic speculation, and was now little better
than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best
years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful
pleasures, which had given birth to a brood of pains, such
as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body.
15 Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame,
or at least had been so, till time had buried him from the
knowledge of the present generation, and made him ob-
scure instead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly,
tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day;
20 but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion,
on account of certain scandalous stories, which had prej-
udiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a cir-
cumstance worth mentioning, that each of these three old
gentlemen, Mr. Medbourne, Colonel Killigrew, and Mr.
25 Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and
had once been on the point of cutting each others' throats
for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely
1 From " Twice Told Tales," 1837.
450
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 451
hint, that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were some-
times thought to be a little beside themselves; as is not
unfrequently the case with old people, when worried either
by present troubles or woeful recollections.
" My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motioning 5
them to be seated, " I am desirous of your assistance in
one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself
here in my study."
If all stories were true, Dr. Heidegger's study must have
been a very curious place. It was a dim, old-fashioned 10
chamber festooned with cobwebs, and besprinkled with
antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken book-
cases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of
gigantic folios, and black-letter quartos, and the upper
with little parchment-covered duodecimos. Over the cen- 15
tral bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which,
according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed
to hold consultations, in all difficult cases of his practice.
In the obscurest corner of the room stood a tall and narrow
oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully 20
appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung
a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within
a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories
related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all
the doctor's deceased patients dwelt within its verge, and 25
would stare him in the face whenever he looked thither-
ward. The opposite side of the chamber was ornamented
with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in
the faded magnificence of s'lk, satin, and brocade, and with
a visage as faded as her dress. Above half a century ago 3
Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage wdth this
young lady; but, being affected with some slight disorder,
she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died
on the bridal evening. The greatest curiosity of the study
remains to be mentioned; it was a ponderous folio volume, 35
bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There
were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the
452 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of
magic; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely
to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet,
the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the
S floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the
mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned,
and said " Forbear! "
Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer after-
noon of our tale, a small round table, as black as ebony,
10 stood in the center of the room sustaining a cut-glass vase
of beautiful form and elaborate workmanship. The sun-
shine came through the window, between the heavy festoons
of two faded damask curtains, and fell directly across this
vase, so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the
1 5 ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four
champagne glasses were also on the table.
" My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, " may
I reckon on your aid in performing an exceedingly curious
experiment? "
20 Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentleman,
whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand
fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be
it spoken, might possibly be traced back to mine own vera-
cious self; and if any passage of the present tale should
25 startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the
stigma of a fiction monger.
When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of his
proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more won-
derful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the
30 examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar
nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of
pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply,
Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned
with the same ponderous folio, bound in black leather,
35 which common report affirmed to be a book of magic.
Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took
from among its black-letter pages a rose, or what was once
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 453
a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals
had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower
seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands.
"This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, "this
same withered and crumbling flower, blossomed five and 5
fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose
portrait hangs yonder; and I meant to wear it in my bosom
at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured
between the leaves of this old volume. Now, would you
deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever 10
bloom again? "
"Nonsense!" said the Widow Wycherly, with a peev-
ish toss of her head. " You might as well ask whether an
old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again."
" See! " answered Dr. Heidegger. 15
He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into
the water which it contained. At first, it lay lightly on
the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its
moisture. Soon, however, a singular change began to
be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and 20
assumed a deepening tinge of crimson, as if the flower
were reviving from a death-like slumber; the slender stalk
and twigs of foliage became green; and there was the rose
of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward
had first given it to her lover. It was scarcely full blown; 25
for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around
its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were
sparkling.
" That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the
doctor's friends; carelessly, however, for they had wit- 30
nessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show; " pray how
was it effected?"
" Did you never hear of the ' Fountain of Youth '? "
asked Dr. Heidegger, " which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish
adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago?" 35
" But did Ponce De Leon ever find it?" said the Widow
Wycherly.
454 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
" No," answered Dr. Heidegger, " for he never sought
it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth,
if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part
of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco.
5 Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias,
which, though numberless centuries old, have been kept
as fresh as violets, by the virtues of this wonderful water.
An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such
matters, has sent me what you see in the vase."
10 "Ahem!" said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not
a word of the doctor's story; " and what may be the effect
of this fluid on the human frame? "
" You shall judge for yourself, my dear Colonel," replied
Dr. Heidegger; " and all of you, my respected friends,
1 5 are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid, as may
restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part,
having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry
to grow young again. With your permission, therefore,
I will merely watch the progress of the experiment."
20 While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been rilling the four
champagne glasses with the water of the Fountain of Youth.
It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas,
for little bubbles were continually ascending from the
depths of the glasses, and bursting in silvery spray at the
25 surface. As the liquor diffused a pleasant perfume, the old
people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable
properties; and, though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent
power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr.
Heidegger besought them to stay a moment.
30 " Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said
he, " it would be well that, with the experience of a life-
time to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules
for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils
of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if,
35 with your peculiar advantages, you should not become
patterns of virtue and wisdom to all the young people of
the age!"
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 455
The doctor's four venerable friends made him no answer,
except by a feeble and tremulous laugh; so very ridiculous
was the idea, that, knowing how closely repentance treads
behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again.
" Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing; " I rejoice 5
that I have so well selected the subjects of my experiment."
With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to their lips.
The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger
imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human
beings who needed it more wofully. They looked as ifio
they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had
been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray,
decrepit, sapless, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping
round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls
or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of growing 15
young again. They drank off the water, and replaced their
glasses on the table.
Assuredly there was an almost immediate improvement
in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been
produced by a glass of generous wine, together with a 20
sudden glow of cheerful sunshine, brightening over all their
visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their
cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look
so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that
some magic power had really begun to smooth away the 25
deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so
long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wychcrly
adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again.
"Give us more of this wondrous water!" cried they,
eagerly. "We are younger but we are still too old! 30
Quick give us more!"
"Patience, patience!" quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat
watching the experiment, with philosophic coolness. " You
have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might
be content to grow young in half an hour! But the water 35
is at your service."
Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of youth,
456 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half
the old people in the city to the age of their own grand-
children. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the
brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from
5 the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp.
Was it delusion? Even while the draught was passing down
their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their
whole systems. Their eyes grew clear and bright; a dark
shade deepened among their silvery locks; they sat around
10 the table, three gentlemen, of middle age, and a woman,
hardly beyond her buxom prime.
"My dear widow, you are charming!" cried Colonel
Killigrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while
the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from
15 the crimson daybreak.
The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killigrew's
compliments were not always measured by sober truth;
so she started up and ran to the mirror, still dreading that
the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze.
20 Meanwhile, the three gentlemen behaved in such a manner
as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth pos-
sessed some intoxicating qualities; unless, indeed, their
exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness,
caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr.
25 Gascoigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but
whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not
easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases
have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled
forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, national
30 glory, and the people's right; now he muttered some perilous
stuff or other, in a sly and doubtful whisper, so cautiously
that even his own conscience could scarcely catch the secret;
and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply
deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to bis well-
35 turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been
trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing his glass in
symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 457
the .buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly. On the other
side of the table, Mr. Medbourne was involved in a calcula-
tion of dollars and cents, with which was strangely inter-
mingled a project for supplying the East Indies with ice, by
harnessing a team of whales to the polar icebergs. 5
As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror
courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting
it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world
beside. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether
some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's-foot had indeed 10
vanished. She examined whether the snow had so entirely
melted from her hair, that the venerable cap could be safely
thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with
a sort of dancing step to the table.
" My dear old doctor," cried she, " pray favor me with 15
another glass!"
"Certainly, my dear madam, certainly!" replied the
complaisant doctor; "see! I have already filled the
glasses."
There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of this 20
wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effer-
vesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter
of diamonds. It was now so nearly sunset, that the chamber
had gtX'A'n duskier than ever; but a mild and moonlight
splendor gleamed from within the vase, and rested alike 25
on the f< ur guests and on the doctor's venerable figure.
He sat in a high-backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-
chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well
befitted that very rather Time, whose power had never
been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even 30
while quaffing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth,
they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious
visage.
But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young
life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy 35
prime of youth. Age, with its miserabL 1 train ',( cares,
and sorrows, and diseases, was ixmcmU-n-d only as the
458 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke.
The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which
the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded
pictures, again threw its enchantment over all their pros-
spects. They felt like new-created beings, in a new-created
universe.
"We are young! We are young!" they cried exult-
ingly.
Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-
10 marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimi-
lated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters,
almost maddened with the exHiberant frolicsomeness of their
years. The most singular effect of their gayety was an
impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which
1 5 they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly
at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and
flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap
and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the
floor, like a gouty grandfather; one set a pair of spectacles
20 astride of his nose, and pretended to pore over the black-
letter pages of the book of magic; a third seated himself
in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity
of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped
about the room. The Widow Wycherly if so fresh a damsel
25 could be called a widow tripped up to the doctor's chair,
with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face.
" Doctor, you dear old soul/' cried she, " get up and
dance with me! " And then the four young people laughed
louder than ever to think what a queer figure the poor old
30 doctor would cut.
" Pray excuse me," answered the doctor, quietly. " 1
am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over
long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will
be glad of so pretty a partner."
35 " Dance with me, Clara! " cried Colonel Killigrew.
" No, no, I will be her partner! " shouted Mr.
Gascoigne.
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 459
" She promised me her hand fifty years ago! " exclaimed
Mr. Medbourne.
They all gathered round her. One caught both her
hands in his passionate grasp another threw his arm
about her waist the third buried his hand among the 5
glossy curls that clustered beneath the widow's cap. Blush-
ing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath
fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage
herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never
was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with be- 10
witching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception,
owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and the antique
dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have
reflected the figures of the three old, gray, withered grand-
sires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a 15
shrivelled grandam.
But they were young: their burning passions proved
them so. Inflamed to madness by the coquetry of the
girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her
favors, the three rivals began to interchange threatening 20
glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled
fiercely at one another's throats. As they strangled to and
fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a
thousand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed
in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings 25
of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decline of summer,
had alighted there to die. The insect fluttered lightly
through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of
Dr. Heidegger.
"Come, come gentlemen! come, Madame Wycherly," 30
exclaimed the doctor, " I really must protest against this
riot."
They stood still, and shivered; for it seemed as if gray
Time were calling them back from their sunny youth,
far down into the chill and darksome vale of years. They 35
looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in his carved arm-
chair, holding the rose of half a century, which he had
460 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase.
At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resumed their
seats; the more readily because their violent exertions
had wearied them, youthful though they were.
$ " My poor Sylvia's rose! " ejaculated Dr. Heidegger,
holding it in the light of the sunset clouds; " it appears
to be fading again."
And so it was. Even while the party were looking at
it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it became as dry
10 and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the
vase. He shook off the few drops of moisture which clung
to its petals.
" I love it as well thus, as in its dewy freshness," observed
he, pressing the withered rose to his withered lips. While
1 5 he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's
snowy head, and fell upon the floor.
His guests shivered again. A strange chillness, whether
of the body or spirit they could not tell, was creeping grad-
ually over them all. They gazed at one another, and
20 fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm,
and left a deepening furrow where none had been before.
Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been
crowded into so brief a space, and were they now four
aged people, sitting with their old friend, Dr. Heidegger?
25 " Are we grown old again, so soon? " cried they, dole-
fully.
In truth they had. The Water of Youth possessed
merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The
delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes!
30 they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that
showed her a woman still, the wido\v clasped her skinny
hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid were
over it, since it could no longer be beautiful.
'' Yes, friends, we are old again," said Dr. Heidegger;
35" and lo! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground.
Well I bemoan it not; for if the fountain gushed at my
very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it
DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT 461
no, though its delirium were for years instead of moments.
Such is the lesson ye have taught me! "
But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson
to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pil-
grimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night,
from the Fountain of Youth.
MARKHEIM *
ROBERT Louis STEVENSON
" YES," said the dealer, " our windfalls are of various
kinds. Some customers are ignorant, and then I touch a
dividend on my superior knowledge. Some are dishonest,"
and here he held up the candle, so that the light fell strongly
on his visitor, " and in that case," he continued, " I profit
by my virtue."
Markheim had but just entered from the daylight streets,
and his eyes had not yet grown familiar with the mingled
shine and darkness in the shop. At these pointed words,
and before the near presence of the flame, he blinked pain-
fully and looked aside.
The dealer chuckled. " You come to me on Christmas
Day," he resumed, " when you know that I am alone in
my house, put up my shutters, and make a point of refusing
business. Well, you will have to pay for that; you will
have to pay for my loss of time, when I should be balancing
my books; you will have to pay, besides, for a kind of manner
that I remark in you to-day very strongly. I am the essence
of discretion, and ask no awkward questions; but when a
customer cannot look me in the eye, he has to pay for it."
The dealer once more chuckled; and then, changing to his
usual business voice, though still with a note of irony, " You
can give, as usual, a clear account of how you came into the
possession of the object?" he continued. " Still your
uncle's cabinet? A remarkable collector, sir!"
And the little pale, round-shouldered dealer stood almost on
tip-toe, loking over the top of his gold spectacles, and nodding
1 First published in 1885.
462
MARKHEIM 403
his head with every mark of disbelief. Markheim returned
his gaze with one of infinite pity, and a touch of horror.
" This time," said he, " you are in error. I have not come
to sell, but to buy. I have no curios to dispose of; my
uncle's cabinet is bare to the wainscot; even were it still 5
intact, I have done well on the Stock Exchange, and should
more likely add to it than otherwise, and my errand to-day
is simplicity itself. I seek a Christmas present for a lady,"
he continued, waxing more fluent as he struck into the speech
he had prepared; "and certainly I owe you every excuse 10
for thus disturbing you upon so small a matter. But the
thing was neglected yesterday; I must produce my little
compliment at dinner; and, as you very well know, a rich
marriage is not a thing to be neglected."
There followed a pause, during which the dealer seemed 15
to weigh this statement incredulously. The ticking of many
clocks among the curious lumber of the shop, and the faint
rushing of the cabs in a near thoroughfare, filled up the
interval of silence.
" Well, sir," said the dealer, " be it so. You are an old 20
customer after all; and if, as you say, you have the chance
of a good marriage, far be it from me to be an obstacle.
Here is a nice thing for a lady now," he went on, " this hand
glass fifteenth century, warranted; comes from a good
collection, too, but I reserve the name, in the interests 25
of my customer, who was just like yourself, my dear sir,
the nephew and sole heir of a remarkable collector."
The dealer, while he thus ran on in his dry and biting voice,
had stooped to take the object from its place; and, as he had
done so, a shock had passed through Markheim, a start 30
both of hand and foot, a sudden leap of many tumultuous
passions to the face. It passed as swiftly as it came, and
left no trace beyond a certain trembling of the hand that
now received the glass.
" A glass," he said hoarsely, and then paused, and repeated 35
it more clearly. " A glass? For Christmas? Surely not?"
" And why not?" cried the dealer. " Why not a glass?"
464 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
Markheim was looking upon him with an indefinable
expression. " You ask me why not?" he said. " Why,
look here look in it look at yourself! Do you like to see
it? No! nor I nor any man."
S The little man had jumped back when Markheim had so
suddenly confronted him with the mirror; but now, per-
ceiving there was nothing worse on hand, he chuckled.
" Your future lady, sir, must be pretty hard favored," said
he.
10 " I ask you," said Markheim, " for a Christmas present,
and you give me this this damned reminder of years, and
sins and follies this hand-conscience! Did you mean it?
Had you a thought in your mind? Tell me. It will be better
for you if you do. Come, tell me about yourself. I hazard
15 a guess now, that you are in secret a very charitable man?"
The dealer looked closely at his companion. It was very
odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was
something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but
nothing of mirth.
20 " What are you driving at?" the dealer asked.
" Not charitable?" returned the other, gloomily. " Not
charitable; not pious; not scrupulous; unloving, unbeloved;
a hand to get money, a safe to keep it. Is that all? Dear
God, man, is that all?"
25 " I will tell you what it is," began the dealer, with some
sharpness, and then broke off again into a chuckle. " But
I see this is a love match of yours, and you have been drink-
ing the lady's health."
" Ah!" cried Markheim, with a strange curiosity. " Ah,
30 have you been in love? Tell me about that."
" I," cried the dealer. " I in love! I never had the time,
nor have I the time to-day for all this nonsense. Will you
take the glass?"
" Where is the hurry?" returned Markheim. " It is
35 very pleasant to stand here talking; and life is so short and
insecure that I would not hurry away from any pleasure
no, not even from so mild a one as this. We should rather
MARK HELM 465
cling, cling to what little we can get, like a man at a cliff's
edge. Every second is a cliff, if you think upon it a cliff
a mile high high enough, if we fall, to dash us out of every
feature of humanity. Hence it is best to talk pleasantly.
Let us talk of each other; why should we wear this mask? 5
Let us be confidential. Who knows, we might become
friends?"
" I have just one word to say to you," said the dealer.
" Either make your purchase, or walk out of my shop."
"True, true," said Markheim. "Enough fooling. Toio
business. Show me something else."
The dealer stooped once more, this time to replace the
glass upon the shelf, his thin blond hair falling over his eyes
as he did so. Markheim moved a little nearer, with one
hand in the pocket of his greatcoat; he drew himself up and 15
filled his lungs; at the same time many different emotions
were depicted together on his face terror, horror, and
resolve, fascination and a physical repulsion; and through
a haggard lift of his upper lip, his teeth looked out.
" This, perhaps, may suit," observed the dealer; and then, 20
as he began to rearise, Markheim bounded from behind upon
his victim. The long, skewerlike dagger flashed and fell.
The dealer struggled like a hen, striking his temple on the
shelf, and then tumbled on the floor in a heap.
Time had some score of small voices in that shop, some 25
stately and slow as was becoming to their great age; others
garrulous and hurried. All these told out the seconds in an
intricate chorus of tickings. Then the passage of a lad's
feet, heavily running on the pavement, broke in upon these
smaller voices and startled Markheim into the consciousness 30
of his surroundings. He looked about him awfully. The
candle stood on the counter, its flame solemnly wagging in
a draught; and by that inconsiderable movement, the whole
room was filled with noiseless bustle and kept heaving like
a sea: the tall shadows nodding, the gross blots of dark- 35
ness swelling and dwindling as with respiration, the faces
of the portraits and the china gods changing and wavering
466 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
like images in water. The inner door stood ajar, and
peered into that leaguer of shadows w r ith a long slit of day-
light like a pointing finger.
From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes
5 returned to the body of his victim, where it lay both humped
and sprawling, incredibly small and strangely meaner
than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in that ungainly
attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim
had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet,
10 as he gazed, this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood
began to find eloquent voices. There it must lie; there
was none to work the cunning hinges or direct the miracle
of locomotion there it must lie till it was found. Found!
ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry
15 that would ring over England, and fill the world with the
echoes of pursuit. Ay, dead or not, this was still the enemy.
" Time was that when the brains were out," he thought;
and the first word struck into his mind. Time, now that
the deed was accomplished time, which had closed for
20 the victim, had become instant and momentous for the
slayer.
The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and
then another, with every variety of pace and voice one
deep as the bell from a cathedral turret, another ringing on
25 its treble notes the prelude of a waltz the clocks began
to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.
The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb
chamber staggered him. He began to bestir himself, going
to and fro with the candle, beleaguered by moving shadows,
30 and startled to the soul by chance reflections. In many
rich mirrors, some of home designs, some from Venice or
Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it
were an army of spies; his own eyes met and detected him;
and the sound of his own steps, lightly as they fell, vexed
35 the surrounding quiet. And still as he continued to fill his
pockets, his mind accused him, with a sickening iteration,
of the thousand faults of his design. He should have
MARKHEIM 467
chosen a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi;
he should not have used a knife; he should have been more
cautious, and only bound and gagged the dealer, and not
killed him; he should have been more bold, and killed the
servant also; he should have done all things otherwise; 5
poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to
change what was unchangeable, to plan what was now use-
less, to be the architect of the irrevocable past. Meanwhile,
and behind all this activity, brute terrors, like the scurry-
ing of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more remote chambers 10
of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would fall
heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a
hooked fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock,
the prison, the gallows, and the black coffin.
Terror of the people in the street sat down before his ij
mind like a besieging army. It was impossible, he thought,
but that some rumour of the struggle must have reached
their ears and set on edge their curiosity; and now, in all
the neighbouring houses, he divined them sitting motionless
and with uplifted ear solitary people, condemned to spend 20
Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and
now startlingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy
family parties, struck into silence round the table, the
mother still with raised finger: every degree and age and
humour, but all, by their own hearths, prying and hearken- 25
ing and weaving the rope that was to hang him. Some-
times it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the
clink of the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a
bell; and alarmed by the bigness of the ticking, he was
tempted to stop the clocks. And then, again, with a swift 30
transition of his terrors, the very silence of the place appeared
a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the passer-
by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud
among the contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate
bravado, the movements of a busy man at ease in his own 35
house.
But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that,
4G8 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
while one portion of his mind was still alert and cunning,
another trembled on the brink of lunacy. One hallucina-
tion in particular took a strong hold on his credulity. The
neighbour hearkening with white face beside his window,
5 the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the pave-
ment these could at worst suspect, they could not know;
through the brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds
could penetrate. But here, within the house, was he alone?
He knew he was; he had watched the servant set forth
losweethearting, in her poor best, " out for the day " written
in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course;
and yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could
surely hear a stir of delicate footing he was surely con-
scious, inexplicably conscious of some presence. Ay, surely;
15 to every room and corner of the house his imagination fol-
lowed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had eyes
to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet
again behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with
cunning and hatred.
20 At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open
door which still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was
tall, the skylight small and dirty, the day blind with fog;
and the light that filtered down to the ground story was
exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the threshold of the
25 shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness, did
there not hang w r avering a shadow?
Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentle-
man began to beat with a staff on the shop-door, accom-
panying his blows with shouts and railleries in which the
30 dealer was continually called upon by name. Markheim,
smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no ! he lay
quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these
blows and shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence;
and his name, which would once have caught his notice
35 above the howling of a storm, had become an empty sound.
And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from his knock-
ing and departed.
MARKHEIM 4G9
Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done,
to get forth from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge
into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the
other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence
his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another 5
might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the
deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhor-
rent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's
concern; and as a means to that, the keys.
He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the 10
shadow was still lingering and shivering; and with no con-
scious repugnance of the mind, yet with a tremor of the
belly, he drew near the body of his victim. The human
character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed
with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on 15
the floor; and yet the thing repelled him. Although so
dingy and inconsiderable to the eye, he feared it might
have more significance to the touch. He took the body
by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely
light and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, 20
fell into the oddest postures. The face was robbed of all
expression ; but it was as pale as wax, and shockingly smeared
with blood about one temple. That was, for Markheim,
the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him back,
upon the instant, to a certain fair day in a fishers' village: 25
a gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the
blare of brasses, the booming of drums, the nasal voice of
a ballad singer; and a boy going to and fro, buried over
head in the crowd and divided between interest and fear,
until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse, he 30
beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally
designed, garishly coloured: Brownrigg with her apprentice;
the Mannings with their murdered guest; Weare in 'the
death-grip of Thurtell; and a score besides of famous crimes.
The thing was as clear as an illusion: he was once again 35
that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same
sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still
470 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
stunned by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that
day's music returned upon his memory; and at that, for
the first time, a qualm came over him, a breath of nausea,
a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must instantly
5 resist and conquer.
He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from
these considerations; looking the more hardily in the dead
face, bending his mind to realise the nature and greatness
of his crime. So little a while ago that face had moved with
io every change of sentiment, that pale mouth had spoken,
that body had been all on fire with governable energies; and
now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as
the horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of
the clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more
1 5 remorseful consciousness; the same heart which had shud-
dered before the painted effigies of crime, looked on its
reality unmoved. At best, he felt a gleam of pity for one
w r ho had been endowed in vain with all those faculties
that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who
20 had never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence,
no, not a tremor.
With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations,
he found the keys and advanced towards the open door
of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and
25 the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence.
Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were
haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and
mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim
approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his
30 own cautious tread, the steps of another foot withdrawing
up the stair. The shadow still palpitated loosely on the
threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
muscles, and drew back the door.
The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare
35 floor and stairs; on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert
in hand, upon the landing; and on the dark wood-carvings,
and framed pictures that hung against the yellow panels
MARKHEIM 471
of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through
all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be dis-
tinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and
sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance,
the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of 5
doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter
of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water
in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon
him to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted
and begirt by presences. He heard them moving in the 10
upper chambers; from the shop, he heard the dead man
getting to his legs; and as he began with a great effort to
mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed
stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how
tranquilly he would possess his soul! And then again, 15
and hearkening with ever fresh attention, he blessed himself
for that unresting sense which held the outposts and stood
a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned continually
on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their
orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half- 20
rewarded as with the tail of something nameless vanishing.
The four-and-twenty steps to the first floor were four-and-
twenty agonies.
On that first storey, the doors stood ajar, three of them
like three ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of 25
cannon. He could never again, he felt, be sufficiently
immured and fortified from men's observing eyes; he longed
to be home, girt in by walls, buried among bedclothes,
and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he won-
dered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the 30
fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It
was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of natYire,
lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should
preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared
tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some 55
scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful
illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending
472 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
on the rules, calculating consequence from cause; and
what if nature, as the defeated tyrant overthrew the chess-
board, should break the mould of their succession? The
like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when the winter
5 changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall
Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and
reveal his doings like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout
planks might yield under his feet like quicksands and
detain him in their clutch; ay, and there were soberer
10 accidents that might destroy him: if, for instance, the house
should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim;
or the house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen
invade him from all sides. These things e feared; and,
in a sense, these things might be called the hands of God
15 reached forth against sin. But about God himself he was
at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his
excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among
men, that he felt sure of justice.
When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the
20 door behind him, he was aware of a respite from alarms.
The room was quite dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and
strewn with packing cases and incongruous furniture;
several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld himself at
various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures,
25 framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall;
a fine Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and
a great old bed, with tapestry hangings. The windows
opened to the floor; but by great good fortune the lower
part of the shutters had been closed, and this concealed him
30 from the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a pack-
ing case before the cabinet, and began to search among the
keys. It was a long business, for there were many; and it
was irksome, besides; for, after all, there might be nothing
in the cabinet, and time was on the wing. But the closeness
35 of the occupation sobered him. With the tail of his eye he
saw the door even glanced at it from time to time directly
like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good
MARKHEIM 473
estate of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The
rain falling in the street sounded natural and pleasant.
Presently, on the other side, the notes of a piano were wakened
to the music of a hymn, and the voices of many children
took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable 5
was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Mark-
heim gave ear to it smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and
his mind was thronged with answerable ideas and images;
church-going children and the pealing of the high organ;
children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on the I0
brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navi-
gated sky; and then, at another cadence of the hymn,
back again to church, and the somnolence of summer Sun-
days, and the high genteel voice of the parson (which he
smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and 1 5
the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.
And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was
startled to his feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting
gush of blood, went over him, and then he stood trans-
fixed and thrilling. A step mounted the stair slowly and 20
steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob,
and the lock clicked, and the door opened.
Fear held Markheim in a vice. What, to expect he knew
not, whether the dead man walking, or the official ministers
of human justice, or some chance witness blindly stumbling 2 S
in to consign him to the gallows. But when a face was
thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room, looked
at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and
then withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his
fear broke loose from his control in a hoarse cry. At the 3
sound of this the visitant returned.
" Did you call me?" he asked pleasantly, and with, that
he entered the room and closed the door behind him.
Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes.
Perhaps there was a film upon his sight, but the outlines of 35
the newcomer seemed to change and waver like those of the
idols in the wavering candle-light of the shop; and at times
474 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
he thought he knew him; and at times he" thought he bore
a likeness to himself ; and always like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not
of the earth and not of God.
' 5 And yet the creature had a strange air of the common-
place, as he stood looking on Markheim with a smile; and
when he added, " You are looking for the money, I believe?"
it was in the tones of everyday politeness.
Markheim made no answer.
10 " I should warn you," resumed the other, " that the maid
has left her sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be
here. If Mr. Markheim be found in this house, I need not
describe to him the consequences."
" You know me?" cried the murderer.
15 The visitor smiled. " You have long been a favourite of
mine," he said; " and I have long observed and often sought
to help you."
" What are you?" cried Markheim; " the devil?"
" What I may be," returned the other, " cannot affect the
20 service I propose to render you."
" It can," cried Markheim; " it does! Be helped by
you? No, never; not by you! You do not know me yet;
thank God, you do not know me!"
" I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind
25 severity or rather firmness. " I know you to the soul."
" Know me! " cried Markheim. " Who can do so? My
life is but a travesty and slander on myself. I have lived
to belie my nature. All men do; all men are better than
this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see
30 each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have
seized and muffled in a cloak. If they had their own con-
trol if you could see their faces, they would be altogether
different, they would shine out for heroes and saints! I
am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse
3513 known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could
disclose myself."
" To me?" inquired the visitant.
MARKHEIM 475
" To you before all," returned the murderer. " I supposed
you were intelligent. I thought since you exist you
would prove a reader of the heart. And yet you would
propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it; my acts!
I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have 5
dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother
the giants of circumstance. And you would judge me by
my acts! But can you not look within? Can you not under-
stand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not see within me
the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any wilful 10
sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not
read me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity
the unwilling sinner?"
" All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, " but
it regards me not. These points of consistency are beyond 15
my province, and I care not in the least by what compulsion
you may have been dragged away, so as you are but carried
in the right direction. But time flies; the servant delays,
looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on the
hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, 20
it is as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through
the Christmas streets! Shall I help you; I, who know all?
Shall I tell you where to find the money?"
" For what price?" asked Markheim.
" I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the 25
other.
Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of
bitter triumph. " No," said he, " I will take nothing at
your hands; if I were dying of thirst, and it was your hand
that put the pitcher to my lips, I should find the courage to 30
refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing to com-
mit myself to evil."
" I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed
the visitant.
" Because you disbelieve their efficacy!" Markheim cried. 35
" I do not say so," returned the other; " but I look on
these things from a different side, and when the life is done
476 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
my interest falls. The man has lived to serve me, to spread
black looks under colour of religion, or to sow tares in the
wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak compliance with
desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he
Scan add but one act of service to repent, to die smiling,
and thus to build up in confidence and hope the more
timorous of my surviving followers. I am not so hard a
master. Try me. Accept my help. Please yourself in
life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply,
10 spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins
to fall and the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your
greater comfort, that you will find it even easy to compound
your quarrel with your conscience, and to make a truckling
peace with God. I came but now from such a death-bed,
15 and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the
man's last words: and when I looked into that face, which
had been set as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling
with hope."
" And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked
20 Markheim. " Do you think I have no more generous
aspirations than to sin, and sin, and sin, and, at last, sneak
into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this,
then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you
find me with red hands that you presume such baseness?
25 and is this crime of murder indeed so impious as to dry
up the very springs of good?"
" Murder is to me no special category," replied the other.
" All sins are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your
race, like starving mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out
3 of the hands of famine and feeding on each other's lives.
I follow sins beyond the moment of their acting; I find in
all that the last consequence is death; and to my eyes, the
pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces
on a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore
35 than such a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow
sins? I follow virtues also; they differ not by the thickness
of a nail, they are both scythes for the reaping angel of
MARKHEIM 477
Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not in action, but
in character. The bad man is dear to me; not the bad
act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down
the hurtling cataract of the ages, might yet be found more
blessed than those of the rarest virtues. And it is not 5
because you have killed a dealer, but because you are Mark-
heim, that I offered to forward your escape."
11 I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim.
" This crime on which you find me is my last. On my way
to it I have learned many lessons; itself is a lesson, a mo- 10
mentous lesson. Hitherto I have been driven with revolt
to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty, driven
and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in
these temptations ; mine was not so : I had a thirst of pleasure.
But to-day, and out of this deed, I pluck both warning 15
and riches both the power and a fresh resolve to be myself.
I become in all things a free actor in the world; I begin
to see myself all changed, these hands the agents of good,
this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of
the past; something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath 20
evenings to the sound of the church organ, of what I fore-
cast when I shed tears over noble books, or talked, an
innocent child, with my mother. There lies my life; I
have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my
city of destination." 25
" You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I
think?" remarked the visitor; " and there, if I mistake not,
you have already lost some thousands?"
" Ah," said Markheim, " but this time I have a sure
thing." 3 o
" This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor,
quietly.
" Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.
" That also you will lose," said the other.
The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. " Well, 35
then, what matter?" he exclaimed. " Say it be lost, say
I am plunged again in poverty, shall one part of me, and that
478 ROBERT LOUTS STEVENSON
the worse, continue until the end to override the better?
Evil and good run strong in me, haling me both ways. I
do not love the one thing, I love all. I can conceive great
deeds, renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen
5 to such a crime as murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts.
I pity the poor; who knows their trials better than myself?
I pity and help them; I prize love, I love honest laughter;
there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but I love it
from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life,
10 and my virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lum-
ber of the mind? Not so; good, also, is a spring of acts."
But the visitant raised his finger. " For six-and-thirty
years that you have been in this world," said he, " through
many changes of fortune and varieties of humour, I have
15 watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years ago you would
have started at a theft. Three years back you would have
blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is
there any cruelty or meanness, from which you still recoil?
five years from now I shall detect you in the fact ! Downward,
20 downward, lies your way; nor can anything but death avail
to stop you."
" It is true," Markheim said huskily, " I have in some
degree complied with evil. But it is so with all: the very
saints, in the mere exercise of living, grow less dainty, and
25 take on the tone of their surroundings."
" I will propound to you one simple question," said the
other; " and as you answer, I shall read to you your moral
horoscope. You have grown in many things more lax;
possibly you do right to be so; and at any account, it is
30 the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please
with your own conduct, or do you go in all things with a
looser rein?"
" In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish
35 of consideration. " No," he added, with despair, " in none!
I have gone down in all."
" Then," said the visitor, " content yourself with what
MARKHEIM 479
you are, for you will never change; and the words of your
part on this stage are irrevocably written down."
Markheim stood for a long while silent, and indeed it
was the visitor who first broke the silence. " That being
so," he said, " shall I show you the money?"
" And grace?" cried Markheim.
" Have you not tried it?" returned the other. " Two
or three years ago, did I not see you on the platform of
revival meetings, and was not your voice the loudest in the
hymn?" 10
" It is true," said Markheim; " and I see clearly what
remains for me by way of duty. I thank you for these
lessons from my soul; my eyes are opened, and I behold
myself at last for what I am."
At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang 15
through the house; and the visitant, as though this were
some concerted signal for which he had been waiting, changed
at once in his demeanour.
" The maid! " he cried. " She has returned, as I fore-
warned you, and there is now before you one more difficult 20
passage. Her master, you must say, is ill; you must let
her in, with an assured but rather serious countenance
no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success! Once
the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity
that has already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this 25
last danger in your path. Thenceforward you have the
whole evening the whole night, if needful to ransack the
treasures of the house and to make good your safety.
This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger.
Up!" he cried; "up, friend; your life hangs trembling 30
in the scales; up, and act! "
Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. " If I be
condemned to evil acts," he said, " there is still one door
of freedom open I can cease from action. If my life be
an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be, as you say 3 5
truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by
one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all.
480 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
My love of good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let
it be! But I have still my hatred of evil; and from that,
to your galling disappointment, you shall see that I can
draw both energy and courage."
5 The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful
and lovely change: they brightened and softened with a
tender triumph; and, even as they brightened, faded and
dislimned. But Markheim did not pause to watch or
understand the transformation. He opened the door and
10 went downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His
past went soberly before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly
and strenuous like a dream, random as chance-medley
a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed it, tempted
him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet
15 haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked
into the shop, where the candle still burned by the dead
body. It was strangely silent. Thoughts of the dealer
swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And then the
bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.
20 He confronted the maid upon the threshold with some-
thing like a smile.
" You had better go for the police," said he; "I have
killed your master."
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS
WITH SOME TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND FOR
COMPOSITION
(Note. The selections named below are as a rule short; and, since
they are contained in standard works of modern prose, they are access-
ible in the average library. Page numbers in parentheses refer to
the present volume.)
I. THE PERSONAL LIFE
(a) William Hazlitt, On Personal Character, in " The
Plain Speaker ": How the main thesis differs from that in
Emerson's Self -Reliance (page i). (6) Walter Pater,
Diaphaneite, in " Miscellaneous Studies ": The substance
of the ideal personality here delineated, and how it differs 5
from the type suggested by Emerson, (c) Matthew Arnold,
Doing as One Likes, or Hebraism and Hellenism, in " Culture
and Anarchy ": The main principles of personal endeavor
suggested in either of these essays, (d) Plutarch, Marcus
Cato, in " Lives," Vol. II of Clough's translation: i. Cato'sio
Self-Reliance. 2. Cato's type of character in American
public life, (e) Walter Scott, fragment of Autobiography,
in Lpckhart's " Life of Scott: " A comparison of Scott's
early training with Ruskin's. See also the early chapters
of (/) Trevelyan's " Life of Macaulay " and (g) Froude's 15
"Life of Carlyle." (/?) Charles Darwin, Autobiography,
in " Life and Letters: " i. The change which came over
Darwin's attitude toward literature. 2. The contrast be-
tween Darwin's type of mind and Lamb's as revealed in
Old China (page 40) and Pater's essay (page 437). 20
481
482 SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS
II. EDUCATION
(a) R. W. Emerson, The American Scholar, in " Nature,
Addresses, Lectures: " The main points in the view here
given of education. 2. Certain considerations, somewhat
neglected by Emerson, but developed by Newman (page
552). (b) Woodrow Wilson, The Training of Intellect (an
address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Yale University) :
How far your own course of study is fulfilling the require-
ments here set forth, (c) William Hazlitt, On Applica-
tion to Study, in " The Plain Speaker: " i. Hazlitt's view
10 of the study of composition. 2. How the principles of
application which he advocates may be applied to some
other study in which you are interested, (d) T. H. Huxley,
Science and Culture, in " Science and Education: " i.
How far the principles here set forth bear out Huxley's
15 definition of education (page 47). 2. The main point
at issue between Huxley and Arnold (Arnold's essay, page
75, is a reply to Huxley), and your own view of the matter
drawn from your own experience, (e) J. S. Mill, Inaugural
Address at Si. Andrew's, in " Dissertations," Vol. IV:
20 Mill's main contentions as to the exact purpose and value
of the study of language and literature in universities.
(/) H. D. Thoreau, Reading, in " Walden: " The author's
views in regard to reading not done in connection with
school work, (g) A. G. Balfour, Pleasures of Reading, in
25 " Essays and Addresses " (written as a reply to Harrison's
claims, page 97): The main points at issue between
Harrison and Balfour, and your own view of the matter.
(h) John Lubbock, The Choice of Books, in " The Pleasures
of Life : " Whether this essay goes to support Harrison's
30 or Balfour's view, and how. (/) Woodrow Wilson, essays
in " Mere Literature." (j) John Ruskin, Sesame and
Lilies, (k) Consult several biographies of great men for
example, Morley's Gladstone, Froude's Carlyle, Darwin's
Life, Huxley's Lifeand make a comparative study of their
35 early reading.
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 483
III. RECREATION AND TRAVELS
(a) George Santayana, on Work and Play, sections 3
and following, in " The Sense of Beauty," Part I: i. The
distinction between working and playing. 2. The relation
between the sense of beauty and the sense of pleasure, (b)
William Hazlitt, On Living to One's Self, in " Table Talk: " 5
i. The general method of enjoying life, which is developed
here and illustrated further in On Going a Journey
(page 116). (c) R. L. Stevenson, Walking Tours, in
" Virginibus Puerisque; " and Roads, in " Essays of Travel: "
i. The several ways in which these essays reflect Hazlitt's 10
views; the points which are peculiar to Stevenson. 2. How
far your own methods of securing outdoor enjoyment are
in accord with Hazlitt's and Stevenson's, (d) W. H.
Hudson, Idle Days, in " Idle Days in Patagonia : "
What the author's so-called idleness consisted in. (e) 15
Francis Parkman, Hunting Indians, in " The Oregon
Trail: " The mental experiences of the writer himself in
the course of the exploit he describes.
IV. SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS
(a) R. W. Emerson, Culture, in " The Conduct of Life: "
The relation which the central thought bears to that of 2 o
Behavior (page 154). (b) Matthew Arnold, Sweetness and
Light, in " Culture and Anarchy: " i. The chief motives
and characteristics of culture. 2. The relation between
culture and bodily vigor. 3. The " Social Idea." 4.
A comparison of Emerson's and Arnold's attitude toward 25
culture, (c) R. W. Emerson, Manners, in " Essays, Second
Series." How Emerson's view of the relation between
manners and fashion supplements Spencer's contention
(page 172). (d) Henri Bergson, the first part of Chapter I
in "Laughter:" The function of laughter in social life. 30
(e) William Hazlitt, On the Spirit of Obligations, in " The
484 SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS
Plain Dealer: " The relation between good sense and
good nature. (/) R. L. Stevenson, The Truth of Intercourse,
in " Virginibus Puerisque: " The complex meaning of
truthfulness in social life, (g) W. M. Thackeray, George II,
5in "The Four Georges:" The chief characteristics of
Georgian society.
V. PUBLIC AFFAIRS
(a) Plato, The Apology, in the " Dialogues," translated by
Jowett, and by others: i. The part played by Socrates in
the public life of Athens. 2. What function Socrates could
10 fulfil in American public life. (6) J. S. Mill, Civilization, in
"Dissertations and Discussions," Vol. I: The ill effects of
civilization, and how they may be overcome, (c) Henry
George, The Persistence of Poverty amid Advancing Wealth,
in Book V of " Progress and Poverty:" George's exposition
15 of the problem tested by your own experience. (</) J. S.
Mill, Of the Dangers to which Representative Government is
Liable, in " Considerations on Representative Government:"
The extent to which Mill's contentions apply to the United
States. (e) Josiah Royce, Some American Problems, in
20 "The Philosophy of Loyalty:" i. The general solution
proposed. 2. How this solution might be applied to some
public or college problem you know of.
VI. SCIENCE
(a) Herbert Spencer, The Genesis of Science, in "Illus-
trations of Universal Progress:" The essential nature of
25 sicence. (b) T. H. Huxley, The Method of Scientific Investiga-
tion, in " Man's Place in Nature:" The relation between
scientific and everyday modes of thinking, (c) John
Tyndall, On the nature and function of the sun, in Chapter
XIV of "Heat as a Mode of Motion:" The general rela-
30 tion between the facts presented by Tyndall and those
presented in The Physical Basis of Life (page 240). (d)
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 485
A. R. Wallace, Darwinism as Applied to Man, in " Darwin-
ism": A comparison of this piece, in respect to aim and
method, with Darwin's Mental Powers of Men and Animals
(page 263). (e) Charles Darwin, On the flower of the ladies 1
slipper, in Chapter VIII of " Fertilization of Orchids by 5
Insects." (/) T. H. Huxley, On the Formation of Coal,
in " Discourses Biological."
VII. NATURE
10
(a) R. W. Emerson, Mature, in "Essays, Second Series:"
The effect of nature on the human mind. (b~) H. D. Thoreau,
Spring, in " Walden:" i. The formative principle in nature.
2. A comparison of Thoreau's attitude toward nature,
as revealed here and in " Walden Pond " (page 306), with 15
that of Emerson, (c) John Burroughs, The Pastoral Bees
in "Locusts and Wild Honey:" The communal life of the
bees, (d) W. H. Hudson, The Perfume of an Evening Prim-
rose, in " Idle Days in Patagonia:" The association of
phenomena of nature with events in one's life, (e) Leslie 20
Stephen, Sunset on Mont Blanc, in " The Playground of
Europe:" An analysis of the circumstances which com-
bined to give this sunset its peculiar interest. (/) John
Ruskin, descriptions of water, sky, clouds, and foliage in
" Modern Painters," Vol. I (look up passages other than 25
those selected for the present volume, page 325): in each
case, distinguish the chief beautiful effect which the author
wishes to bring out.
VIII. CONDUCT AND INNER LIFE
(a) William James, The Will to Believe, in " The Will to
Believe, and other Essays:" The bearing of religious
conviction on volition and conduct, (b) Josiah Royce,
Loyalty to Loyally, in "The Philosophy of Loyalty:" 35
i. The exact meaning of the title. 2. How the main thesis
is fundamental for Loyalty and Insight (page 365). (c)
486 SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS
R. W. Emerson, The Over-Soul, in " Essays, First Series:"
i. How the conception here developed appears tigain in
other essays of Emerson which you have read. 2. How-
Emerson's attitude toward spiritual truth differs from that
5 of James; see (a), above, (d) Josiah Royce, What is Vital
in Christianity? in " William James and Other Essays:"
The central thought as compared with Seeley's (page 351).
(e} George Santayana, The Poetry of Christian Dogma, in
" Poetry and Religion:" The full significance of the title.
io(/) J. R. Seeley, Christ's Royalty, in " Ecce Homo:" The
significance of the term " King " as applied to Christ.
(g) G. L. Dickinson, The Greek View of Religion, in " The
Greek View of Life:" i. How the Greek differs from the
Christian view. 2. The most admirable features of the
15 Greek view, (h) Walter Pater, A Study of Dionysus, in
" Greek Studies:" \Vhat Dionysus was symbolic of. (i)
William James, Habit, in " Psychology," Vol. I: The
significance of habits, tested by your own experience.
(_/) W. E. H. Lecky, The Management of Character, in
20" The Map of Life:" Specific methods by which one may
mold one's own character.
IX. LITERATURE AXD ART
(a) George Santayana, Art and Happiness, in " The Life
of Reason," Vol. IV: i. What is Art? 2. The position
of literature among the arts. 3. What art needs at the
25 present day. (b) Walter Bagehot, On Wordsworth, in
" Essay on Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning:''
The nature of pure art. (c) Matthew Arnold, Wordsworth,
in " Essays in Criticism:" A comparison of Arnold's
main thesis in regard to Wordsworth with Bagehot's; see
30 (6) above, (d) G. H. Lewes, The Principle of Sincerity, in
" The Principles of Success in Literature:" The relation
between sincerity and success in literature, (e) Thomas
Carlyle, Dante, in " On Heroes and Hero- Worship:"
i. The chief differences between Dante and Shakespeare
SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS 487
(see page 423). 2. How the principle of sincerity (see (d)
above) is illustrated in the case of Dante. (/) P. B. Shelley,
Defence of Poetry: A comparison of Shelley's attitude
toward poetry with Bradley 's (page 389). (g) G. L. Dickin-
son, Chapter IV in the " Greek View of Life " (the part 5
preceding the section reprinted in the present volume) :
How the principles determining the nature of Greek tragedy
appear also in the other Greek arts, (h) S. H. Butcher,
What we Owe to Greece, in " Some Aspects of Greek Genius:"
Ideals we have inherited from the Greeks, (i) A. C. I0
Bradley, The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy, in " Shakes-
spearean Tragedy:" The conception of the relations between
good and evil which appears in Shakespeare's tragedies.
(/) Sophocles, Oedipus Rex (translated by Gilbert Murray) :
A comparison of the theme of this tragedy with the theme I5
of Shakespeare's Richard III, Macbeth, or Lear.
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