Chapter 3

He could never have trusted in any good and effective development from Humanity alone.

Nationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced the whole world. He said it was the mission, the special vocation of all who felt the mutual responsibility of men. But nationality of Italy meant to Carlyle, only "the glory of having produced Dante and Columbus," and he cared for them not for the national thought they interpreted, but as gigantic men. Mazzini cared for "the progressive history of mankind," Carlyle for "the Biography of great men."

Carlyle's sadness "unending sadness," came, Mazzini thought from looking at human life only from the individual point of view. And a poem by Browning, "Cleon" would have afforded him another example of "the disenchantment and discouragement of life," from individualism.

Browning was as great an individualist as Carlyle; he stood as far apart from belief in Collective Humanity, and Democracy as Carlyle did, though in Italy, he felt the thrill of its nationality, as Carlyle did not. But Mazzini might have said also truly of Browning, that, with the exception of Italy, "he sympathised with the separate life of each man and not with their collective life." The sadness Mazzini attributed to Carlyle's strong individualistic point of view, ought logically then to have been the heritage of Browning also. _If_ Mazzini's explanation was the true one, it is another proof of the difficulty of tabulating humanity, or of making a science of human nature. For the Individualist Browning, far from being remarkable for sadness, was the greatest of optimists amongst English poets. He had a far wider range of sympathies, than Carlyle, for failure attracted him, as much as victory, the Conquered equally with the Conqueror, indeed every shade of character interested him. Perhaps he expresses through "Cleon" some of his own strongest feelings, his insistence on the worth of individuality, his craving for deeper joy, fuller life than this world gives, and his horror of the destruction of personality. Cleon, the Greek Artist, is indeed "the other side" to the poetic altruism of "The Pilgrims" and "The Choir Invisible." Never was the yearning for Personal Continuance more vividly and more humanly presented. The Greek Artist, without any knowledge of, or belief in Immortality, hungers after it. Browning represents him as writing to and arguing with the King, who has said:

"My life...... Dies altogether with my brain, and arm,...... ....triumph Thou, who dost _not_ go."

And Cleon says if Sappho and Æschylus survive because we sing her songs, and read his plays, let them come, "drink from thy cup, speak in my place."

Instead of rejoicing in his works surviving he feels the horror of the contrast, the life within his works, the decay within his heart. He compares his sense of joy growing more acute and his soul's power and insight more enlarged and keen, while his bodily powers decay. His hairs fall more and more, his hand shakes, and the heavy years increase.

He realises:--

"The horror quickening.... The consummation coming past escape, When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy-- When all my works wherein I prove my worth, Being present still to mock me in men's mouths, Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou, I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man, The man who loved his life so over much, Shall sleep in my Urn. . . It is so horrible."

He imagines in his need some future state may be revealed by Zeus.

"Unlimited in capability For joy, as this is in desire for joy, To seek which the joy hunger forces us:"

He speculates that this life may have been made straight, "to make sweet the life at large."

And that we are: "freed by the throbbing impulse we call Death." But he ends by fearing that were it possible Zeus must have revealed it.

This passionate pathetic longing for joy, and life beyond death finds an echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of "The Pilgrims" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After considering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved itself into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and adapts to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our Hopes and Faiths, and Despairs.

For from whence comes the real power thinkers possess over us? It is not in their forms of thought, as Matthew Arnold said most truly, but in the tendencies, in the spirit which led them to adopt those formulas. Every thinker has some secret, an exact object at which he aims, which is "the cause of all his work, and the reason of his attraction" to some readers, and his repulsion to others.

What was the secret aim then in George Eliot which made her believe so firmly in the permanent influence of Humanity, and in the annihilation of personal existence? Was the tendency of temperament developed by her life and circumstances?

What was it that developed so strong an Individualism in Carlyle and Browning and awoke in Browning such unlimited hope, and in Carlyle such "unending sadness?"

Why did the darkness and the storm of his life give Mazzini so passionate a belief in Humanity, and such an intimate faith in God? These and such-like are the problems we should have in our minds as we study the works of Great Writers, if we would penetrate into the innermost core of their nature, in short, if we would really understand them.

III.

MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET.

Maeterlinck, in his first essay, "The Treasure of the Humble," is, undoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he asserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, "Wisdom and Destiny," it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his translator points out. In this book "he endeavours in all simplicity to tell what he sees." He is a Seer.

Maeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we call Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which exercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls.

He takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man, said Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to all circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his soul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by external events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul. Maeterlinck asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the evil of Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a wise man had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul--a Jesus--had been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of four deaths have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the unnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in revenge alone? And revenge never can be a duty. Hamlet thinks much, continues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise. Destiny can withstand lofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts. We only triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would have us commit. _No tragedy is inevitable_. But at Elsinore no one had vision--no one saw--hence the catastrophe. The soul that saw would have made others see. Because of Hamlet's pitiful blindness, Laertes, Ophelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die. Was his blindness inevitable? A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of murder. Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his shadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free. Had there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of Elsinore had not been shrouded in horror. All depended not on destiny, but on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was the centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than himself on whom to depend.

Maeterlinck's doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very captivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of Hamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to conquer fate, through lack of soul-power.

How Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty to have given up revenge is clearly suggested. We might, perhaps, sum up Hamlet's right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in a sentence. Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his uncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward happiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced his wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and reformed. Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should have had no tragedy of Hamlet. This explanation sounds rather conventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed, Maeterlinck's doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:--

All the wise are serene, Hamlet was not serene, Hamlet was not wise.

That is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature. But Hamlet's nature cannot be packed into a syllogism. A Theorist, who tries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to understand that nature. The external event that froze Hamlet's soul with horror, and deprived it of "transforming power" was a supernatural event, not "disease, accident, or sudden death!" The mandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb said in a suggestive and interesting paper: "The Genuine text of Shakespeare," October number of the "National Review, 1903," "it was utterly impossible for that soul to perform it," or it might be added, to cast it aside. He was betrayed by the apparition "into consequences as deep as those into which Macbeth was betrayed by the instruments of darkness--the witches." We cannot reason about Maeterlinck's thought that if expressed "would have arrested all the forces of murder" because we do not know what the thought was, nor can any one gauge or estimate rightly the power of Hamlet's soul to conquer external events, without taking into careful account that the Vision from another world came to Hamlet, when he was outraged at the re-marriage of his mother and full of emotion that the sudden death of his father called forth in his meditative mind.[4] But Maeterlinck never refers to anything of this sort. He does not seem to realise what the effects of the vision must have been on a complicated character--on "a great gentleman in whom the courtier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, were all united." Hamlet was _not_ an example of the normal type of the irresolute man--but the mandate laid upon his nature, it could not perform. The vision was his destiny--for Destiny lay in the nature of the mandate, as well as the nature of the man, and unhappiness was inevitable; yet Maeterlinck says, "No tragedy is inevitable, the wise man can be superior to all circumstances by the initiative of the soul. To be able to curb the blind force of instinct is to be able to curb external destiny." Did not Hamlet curb his instincts of love for Ophelia, and love for books and philosophy, under pressure of the great commandment laid upon him? He could not curb the power of his intellect--it was too subtle and supreme, but he concealed all else. Yet Hamlet could not escape his Destiny, by curbing his instincts. The initiative of his soul worked against the duty he had to perform. And it was through his "simple, tender, good," thoughts of, and love for his father that he kept to his task, and could not "withstand his complicated destiny." Maeterlinck is surely wrong, too, in saying Hamlet was moved by a fanatical impulse to revenge for he spent his life in weighing _pros_, and _cons_, and in combating the idea that he must fulfil the duty laid upon him. So unfanatical was he that he even doubted at times whether the apparition was his father's spirit. But supposing there had been "one brave soul to cry out the truth" (Maeterlinck does not say what the truth was); we will suppose that Hamlet had resolved to forgive fully and generously, would he, then, have gained the fortitude and serenity, which Maeterlinck evidently means by inner happiness? Not if he kept a shred of his inner nature. Hamlet "saw no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding." Could such a nature be serene? But was it unwise? Judicious, wise, and witty when at ease; he could not escape the dark moods that made him indifferent to the visible world.

"If OEdipus had had the inner refuge of a Marcus Aurelius, what could Destiny have done to him?" asks Maeterlinck. Fate we suppose would have had no power over him, if he had calmly reasoned over the terrible circumstances in which he found himself involved, and if he preserved his equanimity to the end, as M. Aurelius would have done. Does this prove more than that the two men may have had very different temperaments? But, individuality cannot be made to agree with theory, and can be tabulated in no _science_ book of humanity. When Maeterlinck says, "Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness," we may well ask ignorance of what? Was it ignorance of the power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will. "He would have been greater had he been less great." The "concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity" was in Hamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack? And because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him blind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance with a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the unflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: "Hamlet thinks much but is by no means wise." How does Hamlet show he had not the wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying moods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural command. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many words of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all." We feel that Hamlet was "a being with springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can search." But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves into an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he was not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in himself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes delightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's thoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and experiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader has _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one of the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom has borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of life when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but ourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we read his thoughts. If "it is _we_ who are Hamlet," as Hazlitt said, it is a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to ourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of the serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and playful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep questionings, and his melancholy.

For wisdom "dwells not in the light alone But in the darkness and the cloud."

IV.

AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.

Philosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this is unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be; whether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael, or of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its degeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course, changes, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not from Chronology. That indispensable and indescribable thing which is of the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art is ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential difference from science. In its essence, art is neither ancient or modern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of an illimitable idea. We find before the Christian Era more beautiful sculpture than after it. "Ah!" Victor Hugo says in his "William Shakespeare," "You call yourself Dante, well! But that one calls himself Homer. The beauty of art consists in not being susceptible of improvement. A _chef d'oeuvre_ exists once and for ever. The first Poet who arrives, arrives at the summit. From Pheidias to Rembrandt there is no onward movement. A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet never throws a Poet into the shade. Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides, Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not; Pheidias not. Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not. There is movement in art, but not progress. The Frescoes of the Sistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the Metopes of the Parthenon. Retrace your steps as much as you like from the Palace of Versailles to the Castle of Heidelberg. From the Castle of Heidelberg to the Notre Dame of Paris. From the Notre Dame to the Alhambra. From the Alhambra to St. Sophia. From St. Sophia to the Coliseum. From the Coliseum to the Propyleans. You may recede with ages, you do not recede in art. The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on a fore plan. Masterpieces have the same level--the Absolute. Once the Absolute is reached, all is reached." And Schopenhauer says, "Only true works of art have eternal youth and enduring power like nature and life themselves. For they belong to no age, but to humanity--they cannot grow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new, down to the latest ages." Let us disclaim then any such word as Modern in relation to art, particularly in relation to a philosophy which has to do with the principle and essence of art. Is a Philosophy of Art possible? There must be some who will think it is impossible. Have we a philosophy that explains such an apparently simple thing as how one knows anything--or of simple consciousness? Every philosopher that has attempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge in assumptions. At any Philosophical Society, if you ask for the explanation of simple Consciousness, the avalanche of answers, each differing from the other, will bewilder you. We know the outward appearance of an object, of which we say that we know it, but what is it _in itself_? Of that we are as much in the dark as we are of the mind that knows. We say, each of us--I know, but in philosophy we are not clear whether there is a thing that knows. We know we are conscious, but we know nothing but that bare fact. We do not know how an object swims into our consciousness. We do not know in the scientific meaning of knowledge, how we come to know any object. Our abysmal ignorance is this, that, of the thing known, and of that which knows, and of the process of knowing, we know nothing. Who can tell us how the movement of matter in the brain causes what we call thought. Is it a cause, or merely a concurrence? When we can know this much, then art may have a philosophy in which we can all agree. But, what signs are there of even the beginnings of agreement? Certainly art is not known as we know a science--perhaps we do not wish it ever to be so. And the process of art is as indescribable as the process of knowing. The advance we have made in philosophy seems to be this, that whereas one philosopher after another according to his temperament has thought he knew and has supplied us with hypotheses, and with successive clues to the mystery of Being, and with many systems of thought, we know now that none of them were adequate to supply even initial steps, and so, for the most part, we fall back on the knowledge that comes to us from living, from being, from knowing appearances, from action, and from feeling; on that position in short which Schopenhauer thought so despicable in a human being, _i.e._, Refuge in the common sense attitude, and practically the giving up of philosophy. The outcome of all the brain work on philosophy, since the time of the Greeks, is that despair has entered into our minds of ever achieving any knowledge of the _Real_, beneath and beyond Phenomena, of a knowledge which _commands_ assent. Can even a Hegel write a convincing Philosophy of Art--which implies a philosophy of complex knowing and feeling; the feeling or emotion, or sensation, which vibrates in music and colour and poetry. Could Hegel himself answer this objection: that poetry eludes all tests--that that which you can thoroughly explain in any way is not poetry, as Swinburne has said? It is the inexplicable, then, which lies at the essence of art and it is this, which if there is to be a Philosophy of Art must be its object. The Inexplicable must be the object for the thinker with his orderly sequences, his logical search for causes and results. It is not that artistic feeling is too subtle as a subject; it is that we cannot get hold of it at all. It is where? Here, in our emotion, our feeling, our imagination; it flies from us and it comes again.

We do not ask for a philosophy of artistic _creations_ (whatever they may be, in music, painting, or poetry), for a Philosophy of Art must be a philosophy of the artistic _faculty_ that creates, and that admires and understands and is absorbed in the creations. Philosophy of Art is the philosophy of the creative--receptive qualities. We feel these qualities, but we are not able to explain them, we cannot even help another to feel them. The capacity comes from within. In ourselves is a nameless response to Beauty. All art is an expression of the artist thrown out towards a reproduction of some intuitive Idea within, and what artist has ever satisfied his inward aspiration? Why tell us that harmonies of art may be traced down to the simplest lines, and, that at the root, lies an aim of edification? Simplify the lines, as we will, let the basis of edification lie at the root of all beauty, still the initial question remains unanswered. Why do certain lines in a poem, curves of beauty in a statue, colour in a picture, produce in us the feelings of beauty and delight? Why does edification, if it is such, produce in me, the sense of a nameless beauty?