Chapter 2
But we would not be misunderstood. When we speak of the refined state as not out of nature, we mean such results as proceed from the legitimate growth of our mental constitution, which we suppose to be grounded in permanent, universal principles; and, whatever modifications, however subtile, and apparently visionary, may follow their operation in the world of sense, so long as that operation diverge not from its original ground, its effect must be, in the strictest sense, natural. Thus the wildest visions of poetry, the unsubstantial forms of painting, and the mysterious harmonies of music, that seem to disembody the spirit, and make us creatures of the air,--even these, unreal as they are, may all have their foundation in immutable truth; and we may moreover know of this truth by its own evidence. Of this species of evidence we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. But there is another kind of growth, which may well be called unnatural; we mean, of those diseased appetites, whose effects are seen in the distorted forms of the _conventional_, having no ground but in weariness of the true; and it cannot be denied that this morbid growth has its full share, inwardly and outwardly, both of space and importance. These, however, must sooner or later end as they began; they perish in the lie they make; and it were well did not other falsehoods take their places, to prolong a life whose only tenure is inconsequential succession,--in other words, Fashion.
If it be true, then, that even the commonplaces of life must all in some degree partake of the mental, there can be but one rule by which to determine the proper rank of any object of pursuit, and that is by its nearer or more remote relation to our inward nature. Every system, therefore, which tends to degrade a mental pleasure to the subordinate or superfluous, is both narrow and false, as virtually reversing its natural order.
It pleased our Creator, when he endowed us with appetites and functions by which to sustain the economy of life, at the same time to annex to their exercise a sense of pleasure; hence our daily food, and the daily alternation of repose and action, are no less grateful than imperative. That life may be sustained, and most of its functions performed, without any coincident enjoyment, is certainly possible. Our food may be distasteful, action painful, and rest unrefreshing; and yet we may eat, and exercise, and sleep, nay, live thus for years. But this is not our natural condition, and we call it disease. Were man a mere animal, the very act of living, in his natural or healthy state, would be to him a continuous enjoyment. But he is also a moral and an intellectual being; and, in like manner, is the healthful condition of these, the nobler parts of his nature, attended with something more than a consciousness of the mere process of existence. To the exercise of his intellectual faculties and moral attributes the same benevolent law has superadded a sense of pleasure,--of a kind, too, in the same degree transcending the highest bodily sensation, as must that which is immortal transcend the perishable. It is not for us to ask why it is so; much less, because it squares not with the poor notion of material usefulness, to call in question a fact that announces a nature to which the senses are but passing ministers. Let us rather receive this ennobling law, at least without misgiving, lest in our sensuous wisdom we exchange an enduring gift for a transient gratification.
Of the peculiar fruits of this law, which we shall here distinguish by the general term _mental pleasures_, it is our purpose to treat in the present discourse.
It is with no assumed diffidence that we venture on this subject; for, though we shall offer nothing not believed to be true, we are but too sensible how small a portion of truth it is in our power to present. But, were it far greater, and the present writer of a much higher order of intellect, there would still be sufficient cause for humility in view of those impassable bounds that have ever met every self-questioning of the mind.
But whilst the narrowness of human knowledge may well preclude all self-exaltation, it would be worse than folly to hold as naught the many important truths which have been wrought out for us by the mighty intellects of the past. If they have left us nothing for vainglory, they have left us at least enough to be grateful for. Nor is it a little, that they have taught us to look into those mysterious chambers of our being,--the abode of the spirit; and not a little, indeed, if what we are there permitted to know shall have brought with it the conviction, that we are not abandoned to a blind empiricism, to waste life in guesses, and to guess at last that we have all our lives been guessing wrong,--but, unapproachable though it be to the subordinate Understanding, that we have still within us an abiding Interpreter, which cannot be gainsaid, which makes our duty to God and man clear as the light, which ever guards the fountain of all true pleasures, nay, which holds in subjection the last high gift of the Creator, that imaginative faculty whereby his exalted creature, made in his image, might mould at will, from his most marvellous world, yet unborn forms, even forms of beauty, grandeur, and majesty, having all of truth but his own divine prerogative,--_the mystery of Life_.
As the greater part of those Pleasures which we propose to discuss are intimately connected with the material world, it may be well, perhaps, to assign some reason for the epithet _mental_. To many, we know, this will seem superfluous; but, when it is remembered how often we hear of this and that object delighting the eye, or of certain sounds charming the ear, it may not be amiss to show that such expressions have really no meaning except as metaphors. When the senses, as the medium of communication, have conveyed to the mind either the sounds or images, their function ceases. So also with respect to the objects: their end is attained, at least as to us, when the sounds or images are thus transmitted, which, so far as they are concerned, must for ever remain the same within as without the mind. For, where the ultimate end is not in mere bodily sensation, neither the senses nor the objects possess, of themselves, any productive power; of the product that follows, the _tertium aliquid_, whether the pleasure we feel be in a beautiful animal or in according sounds, neither the one nor the other is really the cause, but simply the _occasion_. It is clear, then, that the effect realized supposes of necessity another agent, which must therefore exist only in the mind. But of this hereafter.
If the cause of any emotion, which we seem to derive from an outward object, were inherent exclusively in the object itself, there could be no failure in any instance, except where the organs of sense were either diseased or imperfect. But it is a matter of fact that they often do fail where there is no disease or organic defect. Many of us, perhaps, can call to mind certain individuals, whose sense of hearing is as acute as our own, who yet can by no possibility be made to recognize the slightest relation between the according notes of the simplest melody; and, though they can as readily as others distinguish the individual sounds, even to the degrees of flatness and sharpness, the harmonic agreement is to them as mere noise. Let us suppose ourselves present at a concert, in company with one such person and another who possesses what is called musical sensibility. How are they affected, for instance, by a piece of Mozart's? In the sense of hearing they are equal: look at them. In the one we perceive perplexity, annoyance, perhaps pain; he hears nothing but a confused medley of sounds. In the other, the whole being is rapt in ecstasy, the unutterable pleasure gushes from his eyes, he cannot articulate his emotion;--in the words of one, who felt and embodied the subtile mystery in immortal verse, his very soul seems "lapped in Elysium." Now, could this difference be possible, were the sole cause, strictly speaking, in mere matter?
Nor do we contradict our position, when we admit, in certain cases,--for instance, in the producer,--the necessity of a nicer organization, in order to the more perfect _transmission_ of the finer emotions; inasmuch as what is to be communicated in space and time must needs be by some medium adapted thereto.
Such a person as Paganini, it is said, was able to "discourse most excellent music" on a ballad-monger's fiddle; yet will any one question that he needed an instrument of somewhat finer construction to show forth his full powers? Nay, we might add, that he needed no less than the most delicate _Cremona_,--some instrument, as it were, articulated into humanity,--to have inhaled and respired those attenuated strains, which, those who heard them think it hardly extravagant to say, seemed almost to embody silence.
Now this mechanical instrument, by means of which such marvels were wrought, is but one of the many visible symbols of that more subtile instrument through which the mind acts when it would manifest itself. It would be too absurd to ask if any one believed that the music we speak of was created, as well as conveyed, by the instrument. The violin of Paganini may still be seen and handled; but the soul that inspired it is buried with its master.
If we admit a distinction between mind and matter, and the result we speak of be purely mental, we should contradict the universal law of nature to assign such a product to mere matter, inasmuch as the natural law forbids in the lower the production of the higher. Take an example from one of the lower forms of organic life,--a common vegetable. Will any one assert that the surrounding inorganic elements of air, earth, heat, and water produce its peculiar form? Though some, or all, of these may be essential to its developement, they are so only as its predetermined correlatives, without which its existence could not be manifested; and in like manner must the peculiar form of the vegetable preëxist in its life,--in its _idea_,--in order to evolve by these assimilants its own proper organism.
No possible modification in the degrees or proportion of these elements can change the specific form of a plant,--for instance, a cabbage into a cauliflower; it must ever remain a cabbage, _small or large, good or bad. _ So, too, is the external world to the mind; which needs, also, as the condition of its manifestation, its objective correlative. Hence the presence of some outward object, predetermined to correspond to the preëxisting idea in its living power, is essential to the evolution of its proper end,--the pleasurable emotion. We beg it may be noted that we do not say _sensation_. And hence we hold ourself justified in speaking of such presence as simply the occasion, or condition, and not, _per se_, the cause. And hence, moreover, may be inferred the absolute necessity of Dual Forces in order to the actual existence of any thing. One alone, the incomprehensible Author of all things, is self-subsisting in his perfect Unity.
We shall now endeavour to establish the following proposition: namely, that the Pleasures in question have their true source in One Intuitive Universal Principle or living Power, and that the three Ideas of Beauty, Truth, and Holiness, which we assume to represent the _perfect_ in the physical, intellectual, and moral worlds, are but the several realized phases of this sovereign principle, which we shall call _Harmony_.
Our first step, then, is to possess ourself of the essential or distinctive characteristic of these pleasurable emotions. Apparently, there is nothing more simple. And yet we are acquainted with no single term that shall fully express it. But what every one has more or less felt may certainly be made intelligible in a more extended form, and, we should think, by any one in the slightest degree competent to self-examination. Let a person, then, be appealed to; and let him put the question as to what passes within him when possessed by these emotions; and the spontaneous feeling will answer for us, that what we call _self_ has no part in them. Nay, we further assert, that, when singly felt, that is, when unallied to other emotions as modifying forces, they are wholly unmixed with _any personal considerations, or any conscious advantage to the individual_.
Nor is this assigning too high a character to the feelings in question because awakened in so many instances by the purely physical; since their true origin may clearly be traced to a common source with those profounder emotions which we are wont to ascribe to the intellectual and moral. Besides, it should be borne in mind, that no physical object can be otherwise to the mind than a mere _occasion_; its inward product, or mental effect, being from another Power. The proper view therefore is, not that such alliance can ever degrade the higher agent, but that its more humble and material _assimilant_ is thus elevated by it. So that nothing in nature should be counted mean, which can thus be exalted; but rather be honored, since no object can become so assimilated except by its predetermined correlation to our better nature.
Neither is it the privilege of the exclusive few, the refined and cultivated, to feel them deeply. If we look beyond ourselves, even to the promiscuous multitude, the instance will be rare, if existing at all, where some transient touch of these purer feelings has not raised the individual to, at least, a momentary exemption from the common thraldom of self. And we greatly err if their universality is not solely limited by those "shades of the prison-house," which, in the words of the poet, too often "close upon the growing boy." Nay, so far as we have observed, we cannot admit it as a question whether any person through a whole life has always been wholly insensible,--we will not say (though well we might) to the good and true,--but to beauty; at least, to some one kind, or degree, of the beautiful. The most abject wretch, however animalized by vice, may still be able to recall the time when a morning or evening sky, a bird, a flower, or the sight of some other object in nature, has given him a pleasure, which he felt to be distinct from that of his animal appetites, and to which he could attach not a thought of self-interest. And, though crime and misery may close the heart for years, and seal it up for ever to every redeeming thought, they cannot so shut out from the memory these gleams of innocence; even the brutified spirit, the castaway of his kind, has been made to blush at this enduring light; for it tells him of a truth, which might else have never been remembered,--that he has once been a man.
And here may occur a question,--which might well be left to the ultra advocates of the _cui bono_,--whether a simple flower may not sometimes be of higher use than a labor-saving machine.
As to the objects whose effect on the mind is here discussed, it is needless to specify them; they are, in general, all such as are known to affect us in the manner described. The catalogue will vary both in number and kind with different persons, according to the degree of force or developement in the overruling Principle.
We proceed, then, to reply to such objections as will doubtless be urged against the characteristic assumed. And first, as regards the Beautiful, we shall probably be met by the received notion, that we experience in Beauty one of the most powerful incentives to passion; while examples without number will be brought in array to prove it also the wonder-working cause of almost fabulous transformations,--as giving energy to the indolent, patience to the quick, perseverance to the fickle, even courage to the timid; and, _vice versâ_, as unmanning the hero,--nay, urging the honorable to falsehood, treason, and murder; in a word, through the mastered, bewildered, sophisticated _self_, as indifferently raising and sinking the fascinated object to the heights and depths of pleasure and misery, of virtue and vice.
Now, if the Beauty here referred to is of the _human being_, we do not gainsay it; but this is beauty in its _mixed mode_,--not in its high, passionless form, its singleness and purity. It is not Beauty as it descended from heaven, in the cloud, the rainbow, the flower, the bird, or in the concord of sweet sounds, that seem to carry back the soul to whence it came.
Could we look, indeed, at the human form in its simple, unallied physical structure,--on that, for instance, of a beautiful woman,--and forget, or rather not feel, that it is other than a _form_, there could be but one feeling: that nothing visible was ever so framed to banish from the soul every ignoble thought, and imbue it, as it were, with primeval innocence.
We are quite aware that the doctrine assumed in our main proposition with regard to Beauty, as holding exclusive relation to the Physical, is not very likely to forestall favor; we therefore beg for it only such candid attention as, for the reasons advanced, it may appear to deserve.
That such effects as have just been objected could not be from Beauty alone, in its pure and single form, but rather from its coincidence with some real or supposed moral or intellectual quality, or with the animal appetites, seems to us clear; as, were it otherwise, we might infer the same from a beautiful infant,--the very thought of which is revolting to common sense. In such conjunction, indeed, it cannot but have a certain influence, but so modified as often to become a mere accessory, subordinated to the animal or moral object, and for the attainment of an end not its own; in proof of which, we find it almost uniformly partaking the penalty imposed on its incidental associates, should ever their desires result in illusion,--namely, in the aversion that follows. But the result of Beauty can never be such; when it seems otherwise, the effect, we think, can readily be traced to other causes, as we shall presently endeavour to show.
It cannot be a matter of controversy whether Beauty is limited to the human form; the daily experience of the most ordinary man would answer No: he finds it in the woods, the fields, in plants and animals, nay, in a thousand objects, as he looks upon nature; nor, though indefinitely diversified, does he hesitate to assign to each the same epithet. And why? Because the feelings awakened by all are similar in kind, though varying, doubtless, by many degrees in intenseness. Now suppose he is asked of what personal advantage is all this beauty to him. Verily, he would be puzzled to answer. It gives him pleasure, perhaps great pleasure. And this is all he could say. But why should the effect be different, except in degree, from the beauty of a human being? We have already the answer in this concluding term. For what is a human being but one who unites in himself a physical, intellectual, and moral nature, which cannot in one become even an object of thought without at least some obscure shadowings of its natural allies? How, then, can we separate that which has an exclusive relation to his physical form, without some perception of the moral and intellectual with which it is joined? But how do we know that Beauty is limited to such exclusive relation? This brings us to the great problem; so simple and easy of solution in all other cases, yet so intricate and apparently inexplicable in man. In other things, it would be felt absurd to make it a question, whether referring to form, color, or sound. A single instance will suffice. Let us suppose, then, an unfamiliar object, whose habits, disposition, and so forth, are wholly unknown, for instance, a bird of paradise, to be seen for the first time by twenty persons, and they all instantly call it beautiful;--could there be any doubt that the pleasure it produced in each was of the same kind? or would any one of them ascribe his pleasure to any thing but its form and plumage? Concerning natural objects, and those inferior animals which are not under the influence of domestic associations, there is little or no difference among men: if they differ, it is only in degree, according to their sensibility. Men do not dispute about a rose. And why? Because there is nothing beside the physical to interfere with the impression it was predetermined to make; and the idea of beauty is realized instantly. So, also, with respect to other objects of an opposite character; they can speak without deliberating, and call them plain, homely, ugly, and so on, thus instinctively expressing even their degree of remoteness from the condition of beauty. Who ever called a pelican beautiful, or even many animals endeared to us by their valuable qualities,--such as the intelligent and docile elephant, or the affectionate orang-outang, or the faithful mastiff? Nay, we may run through a long list of most useful and amiable creatures, that could not, under any circumstances, give birth to an emotion corresponding to that which we ascribe to the beautiful.
But there is scarcely a subject on which mankind are wider at variance, than on the beauty of their own species,--some preferring this, and others that, particular conformation; which can only be accounted for on the supposition of some predominant expression, either moral, intellectual, or sensual, with which they are in sympathy, or else the reverse. While some will task their memory, and resort to the schools, for their supposed infallible _rules_;--forgetting, meanwhile, that ultimate tribunal to which their canon must itself appeal, the ever-living principle which first evolved its truth, and which now, as then, is not to be reasoned about, but _felt_. It need not be added how fruitful of blunders is this mechanical ground.
Now we venture to assert that no mistake was ever made, even in a single glance, concerning any natural object, not disfigured by human caprice, or which the eye had not been trained to look at through some conventional medium. Under this latter circumstance, there are doubtless many things in nature which affect men very differently; and more especially such as, from their familiar nearness, have come under the influence of _opinion_, and been incrusted, as it were, by the successive deposits of many generations. But of the vast and various multitude of objects which have thus been forced from their original state, there is perhaps no one which has undergone so many and such strange disfigurements as the human form; or in relation to which our "ideas," as we are pleased to call them, but in truth our opinions, have been so fluctuating. If an Idea, indeed, had any thing to do with Fashion, we should call many things monstrous to which custom has reconciled us. Let us suppose a case, by way of illustration. A gentleman and lady, from one of our fashionable cities, are making a tour on the borders of some of our new settlements in the West. They are standing on the edge of a forest, perhaps admiring the grandeur of nature; perhaps, also, they are lovers, and sharing with nature their admiration for each other, whose personal charms are set off to the utmost, according to the most approved notions, by the taste and elegance of their dress. Then suppose an Indian hunter, who had never seen one of our civilized world, or heard of our costume, coming suddenly upon them, their faces being turned from him. Would it be possible for him to imagine what kind of animals they were? We think not; and least of all, that he would suppose them to be of his own species. This is no improbable case; and we very much fear, should it ever occur, that the unrefined savage would go home with an impression not very flattering either to the milliner or the tailor.