Part 23

Humanity 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 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 criticize each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy.... If 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 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 common Father, no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own. There is nothing 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. An eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love Christ bore to it.

SIR J. R. SEELEY (_Ecce Homo_).

* * * * *

On parent knees, a naked, new-born child, Weeping thou sat’st while all around thee smiled: So live, that sinking to thy life’s last sleep Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.

SIR WILLIAM JONES (1746-1794) (_From the Persian_).

* * * * *

Can the earth where the harrow is driven The sheaf of the furrow foresee? Or thou guess the harvest for heaven When iron has entered in thee?

AUTHOR NOT TRACED.

This was quoted by Lord Lytton in an essay on _The Influence of Love upon Literature and Real Life_.

* * * * *

These pearls of thought in Persian gulfs were bred, Each softly lucent as a rounded moon; The diver, Omar, plucked them from their bed, Fitzgerald strung them on an English thread.

J. R. LOWELL (_On Omar Khayyam_).

* * * * *

It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence, and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid earth and are liable to heavy dining.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Daniel Deronda_).

* * * * *

So, then, as darkness had no beginning, neither will it ever have an end. So, then, is it eternal. The negation of aught else, is its affirmation. Where the light cannot come, there abideth the darkness. The light doth but hollow a mine out of the infinite extension of the darkness. And ever upon the steps of the light treadeth the darkness; yea, springeth in fountains and wells amidst it, from the secret channels of its mighty sea. Truly, man is but a passing flame, moving unquietly amid the surrounding rest of night; without which he yet could not be, and whereof he is in part compounded.

G. MACDONALD (_Phantastes_).

In the story an ogre is reading this passage from a book. _Phantastes_ is MacDonald’s finest work.

* * * * *

There, on the fields around, All men shall till the ground, Corn shall wave yellow, and bright rivers stream; Daily, at set of sun, All, when their work is done, Shall watch the heavens yearn down and the strange starlight gleam.

R. BUCHANAN (_The City of Man_).

This is the poet’s vision of the city of the future, and will be interesting to the allotment-holders in English cities to-day.

* * * * *

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

R. BROWNING (_A Toccata of Galuppi’s_).

* * * * *

Quand on n’a pas ce que l’on aime, Il faut aimer ce que l’on a.

(When you have not what you love You must love what you have.)

THOMAS CORNEILLE (_L’Inconnu_).

* * * * *

At last methought that I had wandered far In an old wood: fresh-washed in coolest dew The maiden splendours of the morning star Shook in the steadfast blue....

At length I saw a lady within call, Stiller than chiselled marble, standing there; A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, And most divinely fair.

...

I turning saw, throned on a flowery rise, One sitting on a crimson scarf unrolled; A queen, with swarthy cheeks and bold black eyes, Brow-bound with burning gold....

“I died a Queen. The Roman soldier found Me lying dead, my crown about my brows, A name for ever!—lying robed and crowned, Worthy a Roman spouse.”

TENNYSON (_A Dream of Fair Women_).

Helen of Troy and Cleopatra—but, as Peacock mentioned in _Gryll Grange_, Cleopatra was of pure Greek descent and could not have been a “swarthy” lady.

* * * * *

One pond of water gleams; ... the trees bend O’er it as wild men watch a sleeping girl.

R. BROWNING (_Pauline_).

* * * * *

I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful, a faery’s child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery’s song.

KEATS (_La Belle Dame sans Merci_).

* * * * *

He put the hawthorn twigs apart, And yet saw no more wondrous thing Than seven white swans, who on wide wing Went circling round, till one by one They dropped the dewy grass upon.

W. MORRIS (_The Earthly Paradise, the Land East of the Sun_).

* * * * *

Quoth Christabel.—So let it be! And, as the lady bade, did she. Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.

S. T. COLERIDGE (_Christabel_)

The six quotations above are word-pictures (see note p. 85).

* * * * *

It is a mistake into which spiritually-minded men have fallen, that God is apprehended and known by a special faculty. The fact is that every faculty is serviceable in this noble work. We reach the Divine through our aesthetic faculties when our soul is stirred by a grand burst of music, or by the contemplation of a magnificent landscape. We reach the Divine through our purely intellectual faculties, when, by true reasoning, founded on sound observation, we master any great law by which God governs the world. We reach the Divine through our emotional nature when pure grief or pure love, holy longing, unselfish hope, righteous indignation, elevate us above the prosaic level of customary equanimity, and help us to realize the incomparable beauty of holiness.

Just as the weeping Magdalene[32] stood bewailing the loss of what even to her was only sacred clay, all unconscious that her Saviour had been given back to her without seeing corruption, in a glorified and eternal form, not dead, but alive for evermore, whom she could love with ever increasing ardour of devotion: so, we say, there are not a few in our time whose lot it is to wring their hands over the grave of lost ideas, which they loved and their fathers loved, but for which God himself is substituting ideas nobler and better far, which earlier ages failed to grasp only because they were not in circumstances to feel their higher worth.

One cannot demonstrate on any physical or visible basis whatever, that it is a nobler thing to suffer injustice than to commit it, that truth-speaking is honourable, forgiveness of injuries magnanimous, and loving self-sacrifice for others sublime. Honour, purity, humility, reverence, tenderness, courtesy, patience, these things cannot be weighed on physical scales, cannot be handled or touched, or melted or frozen in any mechanical or chemical laboratory. They belong to a different order of realities from acids and vapours: they are denizens of what, for want of any more definite or accurate expression, we are accustomed to call the spiritual world.

One can see how religion should, to a young person, be associated with repressive and prohibitive laws. Youth is the time for the luxuriating of newborn, and, therefore, delicious vital forces. But its very luxuriance is disorderly, and religion cannot coexist with disorder. Therefore, that which is so continually warning the young against impulse, and passion, and irregularity, ought not to be too greatly displeased if it should, by and by, come to be regarded by the young as a synonym for mere repressive force, and, therefore, as an unpleasant and unpopular thing. I believe, too, that there is no exception to the uniformity of the experience, that all young countries adopt freer systems of religion, and divest religious bodies more completely of all political and properly coercive power than older countries. It is all an illustration of the same thing. Young life, which most needs regulation, most dislikes it.[33]

As the genius of the bard is in the poem, as the wisdom of the legislator is in the law, as the skill of the mechanician is in the engine, as the soul of the musician is in the harmony and melody, as the words of a man’s lips issue from the inner world of his mental and spiritual character—so every work of God, and conspicuously man, as the noblest of God’s works, may truly be said to shadow forth a portion of the mind of God.

We talk of creation as a past thing. But the truth is, creation is eternal. Creation never ceases. Every time the clouds drop in rain, every time the waters freeze into new ice, every time the juices of nature gather into another violet, every time a new wail of life is heard upon a mother’s breast, every time you breathe another sigh, or shed another tear, there is God as truly present in His miraculous creative capacity as on the day when He said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

P. S. MENZIES (_Sermons_).

Apart from their intrinsic value, the above extracts are given because this book of sermons is of special interest to Australians and because it has passed into oblivion. There are very few copies in existence.

Menzies came from Glasgow to Scots Church, Melbourne, in 1868 and died at the early age of thirty-four in 1874. At the Glasgow University he had been largely influenced mentally and spiritually by Principal Caird.

The sermons published in this book were selected by his widow after his death. Although not revised by their gifted young author, the fine thoughts expressed in chaste and beautiful language remind one of James Martineau.

* * * * *

Our sweet illusions are half of them conscious illusions—like effects of colour that we know to be made up of tinsel, broken glass, and rags.

GEORGE ELIOT (_The Lifted Veil_).

* * * * *

My _Galligaskins_ that have long withstood The Winter’s Fury, and incroaching Frosts, By Time subdued, (what will not Time subdue!) An horrid Chasm disclose, with Orifice Wide, discontinuous.

JOHN PHILLIPS (1676-1709) (_The Splendid Shilling_).

_Galligaskins_, trunk-hose. “The Splendid Shilling” is a famous parody on Milton.

* * * * *

We would not pray that sorrow ne’er may shed Her dews along the pathway they must tread; The sweetest flowers would never bloom at all, If no least rain of tears did ever fall.

GERALD MASSEY (_Via Crucis, Via Lucis_).

* * * * *

But his wings will not rest and his feet will not stay for us; Morning is here in the joy of its might; With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us; Now let him pass and the myrtles make way for us; Love can but last in us here at his height For a day and a night.

SWINBURNE (_At Parting_).

* * * * *

That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Middlemarch_).

In the story Dorothea has found her husband to be a man of narrow mind and unsympathetic nature. Such a disillusionment after marriage frequently happens, and we are not deeply moved by what is not unusual, although it may mean a real life-tragedy. Ruskin says “God gives the disposition to every healthy human mind in some degree to pass over or even harden itself against evil things, else the suffering would be too great to be borne” (_Modern Painters_ v., xix., 32). Only thus could we have lived through the horrors of the present war.

George Eliot’s analogy between intensity of the emotions and acuteness of the senses reminds one of Pope’s lines (“Essay on Man,” Ep. I.) where he says life would be insupportable, if we had the acute hearing, smell and other senses of insects and other animals; we should

Die of a rose in aromatic pain.

* * * * *

Man that passes by So like to God, so like the beasts that die.

W. MORRIS (_The Earthly Paradise_).

* * * * *

There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist; Not in semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power, Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; Enough that He heard it once: we shall hear it by and bye.

R. BROWNING (_Abt Vogler_).

Abt—or Abbé—Georg Joseph Vogler, 1749-1814, a German organist and composer, is probably chosen by Browning because, although an important musician, his compositions have perished. In this fine poem Vogler has been extemporizing, and his inspired music has lifted him in ecstasy to heaven. The sounds are his slaves who have built palaces of music, as in the Arab legends angels and demons built magic structures for Solomon. He grieves that this wonderful music should apparently have vanished for ever; but is comforted by the thought that no good thing, no fine aspiration, no great effort or noble impulse can really die, but must exist for ever in the mind of God.

If Browning had known the evidence now afforded scientifically by hypnotism and otherwise, he might have come to the conclusion that all our thoughts and feelings, _both good and bad_, are recorded deep down in our own consciousness. Moreover, the existence of thought-transference leads to the somewhat dreadful suggestion that this record of all our inmost thoughts and feelings may possibly become open to the inspection of every one.

The quotation reminds one of Wordsworth’s sonnet on the “Inside of King’s College Chapel, Cambridge.”

Where music dwells Lingering—and wandering on as loth to die; Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof That they were born for immortality.

* * * * *

... Had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth; Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause, Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:—

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought; It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!

ROBERT BROWNING (_Abt Vogler_).

See the preceding note. The poet says that Painting and Poetry are “art in obedience to laws,” but the musician exerts a higher _creative_ will akin to that of God. The painter has before him the pictures he reproduces, the poet borrows his imagery from visible things and has apt words in which to express his thoughts: the musician has nothing visible, nothing outside his own soul, to assist him, and can use only the meaningless sounds which we hear everywhere around us. By combining, however, three of those empty sounds (in a chord) he evolves a fourth sound, which so transcends all that other arts can do in expressing emotion that Browning compares it to a “star.”

But this expresses only part of the poet’s meaning. In using this tremendous comparison to a _star_, as also in enthroning music supreme above art and poetry, he means that it transcends their loftiest flights and rises _above our world_ to the heavens above. In the earlier part of the poem the “pinnacled glory” built by the slaves of sound at the bidding of the musician’s soul is based “broad on the roots of things” and ascends until it “attains to heaven.”

F. W. H. Myers, in “The Renewal of Youth,” has a passage on music. His theme is that while music (as in Mozart’s operas) may express human passion, it also (as in Beethoven) rises to greater heights and appears to voice the emotions of a world beyond our senses. In the lines I have italicized in the following passage he no doubt refers to Browning’s line, “That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star!”—the “star” meaning that music ascends to a higher world than our own:—

... Music is a creature bound, A voice not ours, the imprisoned soul of sound,— Who fain would bend down hither and find her part In the strong passion of a hero’s heart, Or one great hour constrains herself to sing Pastoral peace and waters wandering;— _Then hark how on a chord she is rapt and flown_ _To that true world thou seest not nor hast known_, Nor speech of thine can her strange thought unfold, The bars’ wild beat, and ripple of running gold.

Not only does Browning unselfishly assert that the sister-art is superior to his own, but he goes further, and doubts if music is not the greatest of all man’s gifts. I do not discuss either contention—leaving musicians to rejoice in the tribute of a great poet.

* * * * *

Although a gem be cast away, And lie obscured in heaps of clay, Its precious worth is still the same; Although vile dust be whirled to heaven, To it no dignity is given, Still base as when from earth it came.

SADI (_L. S. Costello’s translation_).

* * * * *

Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done.... Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

TENNYSON (_Ulysses_).

* * * * *

Jenny kissed me when we met, Jumping from the chair she sat in; Time, you thief, who love to get Sweets into your list, put that in! Say I’m weary, say I’m sad. Say that health and wealth have missed me, Say I’m growing old, but add Jenny kissed me.

LEIGH HUNT.

“Jenny” was Mrs. Carlyle.

* * * * *

A gracious spirit o’er this earth presides And o’er the heart of man: invisibly It comes, to works of unreproved delight And tendency benign, directing those Who care not, know not, think not what they do. The tales that charm away the wakeful night In Araby; romances; legends penned For solace by dim light of monkish lamps; Fictions, for ladies of their love, devised By youthful squires; adventures endless, spun By the dismantled warrior in old age, Out of the bowels of those very schemes In which his youth did first extravagate; These spread like day, and something in the shape Of these will live till man shall be no more. Dumb yearnings, hidden appetites, are ours, And _they must_ have their food. Our childhood sits, Our simple childhood, sits upon a throne That hath more power than all the elements.

WORDSWORTH (_The Prelude_, Bk. V.)

* * * * *

The world is so inconveniently constituted, that the vague consciousness of being a fine fellow is no guarantee of success in any line of business.

GEORGE ELIOT (_Brother Jacob_).

* * * * *

Wasted, weary,—wherefore stay Wrestling thus with earth and clay! From the body pass away!— Hark! the mass is singing.

From thee doff thy mortal weed, Mary Mother be thy speed, Saints to help thee at thy need! Hark! the knell is ringing.

Fear not snow-drift driving past, Sleet, or hail, or levin blast; Soon the shroud shall lap thee fast, And the sleep be on thee cast That shall know no waking.

Haste thee, haste thee to be gone, Earth flits past, and time draws on,— Gasp thy gasp, and groan thy groan, Day is near the breaking.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

From _Guy Mannering_. Scott says it is a prayer or spell, which was used in Scotland or Northern England to speed the passage of a parting spirit, like the tolling of a bell in Catholic days.

* * * * *

The world is full of Woodmen who expel Love’s gentle Dryads from the haunts of life, And vex the nightingales in every dell.

SHELLEY (_The Woodman and the Nightingale_).

* * * * *

Evil of every kind, being familiar to us as an _object_ of apprehension, appears to be external to ourselves. And yet it is invested with the greater part of its severity by the mind: it acts upon us by the ideas it awakens, the affections it wounds, the aspirations it disappoints. If its outward pressure were all, and it dealt with us as beings of sense alone, it would lose most of its poignancy and would dwindle down into a few animal pangs.... It is our higher nature that creates immeasurably the greater part of the ills we endure: they are ideal, not sensible: and it is the privilege of reason to have tears instead of groans; of love to know grief instead of pain; of conscience to replace uneasiness with remorse.... Penury, disgrace, bereavement, guilt, are evils which we must be human in order to feel; and it is the penalty of our nobleness, not only to be weighed down by their occasional burthen, but to be perpetually haunted by the phantom of their approach.

JAMES MARTINEAU (_Hours of Thought_, II, 150).

* * * * *