Part 20

In Mr. Thackeray’s instance, exception has been taken, on ethical grounds, by no vulgar critic, to his habit of shrinking from moral estimate as well as moral judgment, in dealing with his characters. Into that distinction not without a difference, this is not the place (nor this the pen) to enter. But the critic in question—for some years a main support of the _National Review_—recognises this avoidance of moral judgment as springing from kindly feeling, from the just and humble sense we all should have that our own demerits make it unseemly for us to ascend the judgment-chair, and from a wide appreciation of the variety and obscurity of men’s real motives of action.[24]

_PART-KNOWLEDGE._

1 CORINTHIANS xiii. 9.

“We know in part,” said the apostle; who, therefore, prophesied in part; always with the assurance that when that which is perfect is come, then shall that which is in part be done away. Meanwhile, we see through a glass darkly, through a medium obscurely—“now I know in part.”

If so it was with him that once was caught up into the third heavens, much more with his readers. For we are but of yesterday, and know nothing. “Behold, God is great, and we know Him not.” At the height of our knowledge we can but fall back upon the old saying, “Lo, these are parts of His ways; but how little a portion is heard of Him!” And when we consider the heavens, the work of His hands; the moon and the stars, which He hath ordained; the earth beneath, the ocean round about, the waters under the earth, the pent-up fires within it,—verily He is a God that hideth Himself still, and that revealeth but a portion of His work, clouds and darkness covering the rest. His thoughts are very deep; and what is man that he should know them, or the son of man that he should find them out unto perfection? From the topmost pinnacles attained by science he can see but the utmost part of them, and cannot see them all.

Locke argues the intellectual and sensible world to be in this perfectly alike: that the part which we see of them holds no proportion with what we see not; and that whatsoever we can reach with our eyes, or our thoughts, of either of them, is but a point, almost nothing, in comparison with the rest. Shall he whose birth, maturity, and age, as Beattie has it, scarce fill the circle of one summer day—shall the poor gnat conclude nature in collapse because of a passing cloud, not transparent to the insect’s vision?

“One part, one little part, we dimly scan Through the dark medium of life’s feverish dream; Yet dare arraign the whole stupendous plan, If but that little part incongruous seem. Nor is that part perhaps what mortals deem; Oft from apparent ill our blessings rise. Oh then renounce that impious self-esteem, That aims to trace the secrets of the skies; For thou art but of dust: be humble and be wise.”

Freethinking Lord Shaftesbury begins a section of his “Characteristics” with the remark, that when we reflect on any ordinary frame or constitution, either of art or nature, and consider how hard it is to give the least account of a particular _part_ without a competent knowledge of the _whole_, we need not wonder to find ourselves at a loss in many things relating to the constitution and frame of the universe. Elsewhere he suggestively observes, that in an infinity of things mutually relative, a mind which sees not infinitely, can see nothing fully; “and since each particular has relation to all in general, it can know no perfect or true relation of anything in a world not perfectly and fully known.” And supposing the case of an ignorant landsman presuming to question the details of a ship’s rigging, his lordship breaks out into the apostrophe, “O my friend, let us not thus betray our ignorance, but consider where we are, and in what a universe. Think of the many parts of the vast machine in which we have so little insight, and of which it is impossible we should know the ends and uses; when instead of seeing to the highest pennons, we see only some lower deck, and are in this dark case of flesh, confined even to the hold and meanest station of the vessel.” There is Mrs. Browning’s usual energy of diction in the exclamation,

“Ay, we are forced, so pent, To judge the whole too partially, confound Conclusions. Is there any common phrase Significant, when the adverb’s heard alone, The verb being absent, and the pronoun out? But we, distracted in the roar of life, Still insolently at God’s adverb snatch, And bruit against Him that His thought is void, His meaning hopeless.”

The same good Providence, as Madame de Sévigné writes, that governs all, shall one day unravel all; we poor mortals being, in the meanwhile, so many all but stone-blind and utterly ignorant lookers-on. We suffer, as the author of “Thorndale” says—there is no doubt about that—and we naturally speak and think under the sharp pang of our present agony; but the ultimate and overruling judgment which we form of human life, should be taken from some calm, impersonal point of view. “We should command the widest horizon possible. Of the great whole of humanity we see but a little at a time. We pause sometimes on the lights only of the picture, sometimes only on the shadows. How very dark those shadows seem! Yet if we could embrace in our view the whole of the picture, perhaps the very darkest shadows might be recognised as effective or inevitable portions of a grand harmonious whole.” How closes Thomson his poem of “The Seasons,” drear Winter then his cue?—with the memorable lines:—

“Ye good distress’d! Ye noble few! who here unbending stand Beneath life’s pressure, yet bear up awhile; And what your bounded view, which only saw A little part, deemed evil, is no more: The storms of wintry time will quickly pass, And one unbounded spring encircle all.”

The theme of our part knowledge, so strictly cabin’d, cribb’d, confined, is one to which Thomson repeatedly recurs. For instance, in an earlier book:—

“But here the cloud, So wills Eternal Providence, sits deep. Enough for us to know that this dark state, In wayward passions lost, and vain pursuits, This infancy of being, cannot prove The final issue of the works of God, By boundless love and perfect wisdom form’d And ever rising with the rising mind.”

Again, with emphasis and discretion (as Polonius says), he puts the query—

“Shall little haughty ignorance pronounce His works unwise, of which the smallest part Exceeds the narrow vision of her mind? As if upon a full proportioned dome, On swelling columns heaved, the pride of art, A critic-fly, whose feeble ray scarce spreads An inch around, with blind presumption bold, Should dare to tax the structure of the whole.”

Horace Walpole makes use of a similar figure in one of his three or four thousand published letters: “We are poor silly animals: we live for an instant upon a particle of a boundless universe, and are much like a butterfly that should argue about the nature of the seasons, and what creates their vicissitudes, and does not exist itself to see one annual revolution of them.”

“Earth’s number-scale is near us set; The total God alone can see; But each some fraction.”[25]

Addison, in one of his essays, comments on the body of an animal as an object comparatively adequate to our senses, it being a particular part of Providence that lies within a narrow compass, so that the eye is able to command it, and by successive inquiries to search into all its parts. Could the body of the whole earth, he goes on to say, or indeed the whole universe, be thus subjected to the examination of our senses, were it not too big and disproportioned for our inquiries, too unwieldy for the management of the eye and hand, “there is no question but it would appear to us as curious and well-contrived a frame as that of a human body. We should see the same concatenation and subserviency, the same necessity and usefulness, the same beauty and harmony, in all and every of its parts, as what we discover in the body of every single animal.” To adopt an illustration of Fénélon’s to the same purpose: imagine the letters of a sentence to be so enormous in size, that a man could only make out one of them at a time; in that case he could not read, that is, collect the letters together and discover the sense of them in combination. So it is, argues the benign prelate, with the _grands traits_ of Providence in the conduct of the world at large during the lapse of centuries. It is only the whole that is intelligible, and the whole is too vast to be scrutinised near at hand. Each event in the process of ages is like a separate letter or sign, which is too large for our petty organs, and which is without a meaning when taken apart from the rest. A more vigorous philosopher than the gentle Fénélon compares the universe to a picture, the beauty of which is then alone perceptible when the true stand-point of perspective is taken. There are certain inventions in perspective, or certain beautiful designs, he says, which look all confusion until you either inspect them from the right point of view, or make use of some kind of glass or mirror as the medium of observation. In the same manner the apparent deformities of our fractional side-views, resolve themselves into harmonious unity when the eye is directed aright.

Dr. Johnson was in an unwontedly placid and benignant frame of mind, by Boswell’s account, when the two stood together, one serene autumn night, in Dr. Taylor’s garden, and the sage delivered himself, in meditative mood, of this noteworthy surmise: “Sir,” said he, “I do not imagine that all things will be made clear to us immediately after death, but that the ways of Providence will be explained to us very gradually.” Be that as it may, few could have been found more ready than the melancholic Johnson to agree that meanwhile, until the day star arise and the shadows flee away,

“The ways of Heaven are dark and intricate, Puzzled in mazes, and perplexed with errors: Our understanding traces them in vain, Lost and bewildered in the fruitless search; Nor sees with how much art the windings run, Nor where the regular confusion ends.”

It was at a time of national and household tribulation, when darkness that might be felt seemed to encompass altar and hearth, that Joseph de Maistre wrote to a friend in trouble: “Be it enough for us to know, that for everything there is a reason with which we shall one day become acquainted; let us not weary ourselves with seeking out the why and the wherefore, even when possibly they might be discerned.” He would have his correspondent bear in mind that the epithet “very good” is a necessary adjunct to “very great;” and that is sufficient. The inference is self-evident, that under the sway of the Being who combines in himself those two qualities—the _très-bon_ and the _très-grand_—all the evils we either suffer or witness must needs be acts of justice or means of reformation equally indispensable. In the declared love of God to man, M. de Maistre found a general solution of all the enigmas that can offend (_scandaliser_, in the New Testament sense of putting a stumbling-block in the way of) our ignorance. “Fixed to one little point of time and space, we are insane enough to refer all to this point; and in so doing we are at once blameworthy and absurd.” If De Maistre’s collation of the _très-bon_ with the _très-grand_ resembles the lines of Drummond’s hymn beginning,

“O King, whose greatness none can comprehend, Whose boundless goodness doth to all extend,”

so is the scope of his argument at one with what follows:

“Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see Shadows of shadows, atoms of Thy might, Still owly-eyed when staring on Thy light.”

What we call this life of men on earth, as Mr. Browning’s island-poet has it, is, as he finds much reason to conceive,

“Intended to be viewed eventually As a great whole, not analysed to parts, But each part having reference to all.”[26]

Pope’s well-worked line is of perpetual application,

“’Tis but a part we see, and not the whole.”

So is the avowal of the present laureate:

“I see in part That all, as in some work of art, Is toil co-operant to an end.”

To us, as Sir Benjamin Brodie remarks, in one of his psychological discussions, the universe presents itself as an assemblage of heterogeneous phenomena, some of which we can reduce to laws of limited operation, while others stand by themselves, bearing no evident relation to anything besides. We may well, he thinks, suppose that there are in the universe beings of a superior intelligence, and possessed of a greater range of observation, who are sufficiently “behind the scenes” to be able to contemplate all the immense variety of material phenomena as the result of one great general law. Their standpoint may enable them to see a Cosmos, a world of order, where to lower intelligences Chaos alone is discernible, a world comparatively without form and void, with darkness upon the face of its deep. And as with the physical, so with the metaphysical. As with the material, so with the moral.

“Experience, like a pale musician, holds A dulcimer of patience in his hand; Whence harmonies we cannot understand Of God’s will in the worlds, the strain unfolds In sad perplexèd minors....

“We murmur—‘Where is any certain tune Of measured music, in such notes as these?’— But angels leaning from their golden seat, Are not so minded! their fine ear hath won The issue of completed[27] cadences,— And, smiling down the stars, they whisper—Sweet.”[28]

_RULING THE WAVES._

PSALM cxiv. 1-5; ST. MARK iv. 39.

When Israel went out of Egypt, it was under the guidance of One whose hand being mighty to save, the sea saw it, and fled; Jordan was driven back. “What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou wast driven back?” The trembling was at the presence of Him who hath placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it. The commotion, the fleeing, the driving back, was at the bidding of Him who, and who alone, can say to the sea, Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed.

The men of Galilee marvelled when, at the storm that once arose on their sea, and the ship was in jeopardy, there arose One who rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. What manner of man was this, that even the winds and the sea obeyed Him?

What manner of man? Be it legend or history, the story of royal Cnut on the seashore, forbidding, at his flatterers’ instigation, or by his own desire to rebuke their folly—forbidding the farther approach of the incoming tide, is pregnant with instruction on this head. The royal Dane might be a man of men, but the surging waves were not obedient unto his voice. King though he was, the tide was responseless as deaf adder to any charming of his, charmed he never so wisely, enjoined he never so straitly. What manner of man, then, but the Son of man? What manner of king but the King of kings?

The Dane might have enforced the lesson on his parasites by such a strain as that of a defeated monarch in Shakspeare:—

“Farewell king! Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence; throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, For you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread, like you, feel want, taste grief, Need friends:—subjected thus, How can you say to me I am a king?”

A king, that is, in _their_ sense of right Divine, and Divine extent. So with poor, mad, discrowned Lear, drenched in that terrible storm on the heath, and remembering soft speeches of cozening courtiership, only of yesterday too. “When the rain came to wet me, and the wind to make me chatter; when the thunder would not peace at my bidding; there I found them, there I smelt them out. Go to, they are not men of their words: they told me I was everything; ’tis a lie, I am not ague-proof.” Mark, again, from the opening scene of the “Tempest,” the rough, blunt, uncivil words with which the boatswain cuts short the addresses of his royal passengers:—

“Hence! What care these roarers [the waves] for the name of king? To cabin: silence: trouble us not.

“_Gonzalo._ Good; yet remember whom thou hast aboard.

“_Boatswain._ None that I love more than myself. You are a counsellor; if you can command these elements to a silence, and work the peace of the present [instant], we will not hand a rope more: use your authority. If you cannot, give thanks you have lived so long, and make yourself ready in your cabin for the mischance of the hour, if so it hap. Cheerily, good hearts.—Out of our way, I say!”

Of Antiochus Epiphanes, and his pride that had a fall, it is written in the book of Maccabees: “And thus he that a little afore thought he _might command the waves of the sea_ (so proud was he beyond the condition of man), and weigh the high mountains in a balance, was now cast on the ground.”

An elder king than Cnut, and not a wiser, not only lashed the winds that blew contrary to his will, but bound the sea with fetters, after a sort:

“Ipsum compedibus qui vinxerat Ennosigæum.”

Much good it did him: witness his return from his great expedition, in a poor skiff, wind-tossed across waves red with the blood of his slaughtered host, _cruentis fluctibus_. The stars in their courses once fought against Sisera, and the fettered waves were little more propitious to speed the fortunes of Xerxes. He might have spared his chains. At any rate he lost his army. Archdeacon Hare practically applied the extravagance of the Great King, as they of Persia were styled, in designating the present (or, rather, what was to him the present) as an age when men will scoff at the madness of Xerxes, yet themselves try to fling their chains over the ever-rolling, irrepressible ocean of thought; nay, they will scoop out a mimic sea in their pleasure-ground, he goes on to say, and make it ripple and bubble, and spout up prettily into the air, and then fancy that they are taming the Atlantic; which, however, keeps advancing upon them, until it sweeps them away with their toys.

It is edifying to read in the Diary of Mr. Pepys how, one July afternoon, soon after the king had come back to enjoy his own again, that gentleman went upon the river, but had to put ashore and shelter himself from the rain that rained so hard; during which time came by the king in his barge, going down towards the Downs to meet the queen: “But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.”

Instructive, too, is the tenor of the legend of King Robert of Sicily, which has been so attractively treated in prose by Leigh Hunt, in his Jar of Honey from Mount Hybla, and in verse by Professor Longfellow, in his Tales of a Wayside Inn. There we read how the king with his nobles proudly sat at vespers, on St. John’s Eve, and heard the priests chant the Magnificat:—

“And, as he listened, o’er and o’er again Repeated, like a burden or refrain, He caught the words, ‘_Deposuit potentes_ _De sede, et exaltavit humiles_;’ And slowly lifting up his kingly head, He to a learned clerk beside him said, ‘What mean these words?’ The clerk made answer meet, ‘He hath put down the mighty from their seat, And hath exalted them of low degree.’ Thereat King Robert muttered scornfully, ’Tis well that such seditious words are sung Only by priests, and in the Latin tongue; For unto priests and people be it known There is no power can push me from my throne!’”

The sequel teaches him a different lesson, which he learns by (and lays to) heart.

In those days, however, if any order of men might, or did, claim authority over such turbulent subject-matter as the sea, it was not kings, but priests. Ecclesiastical history relates the calamitous visitation of earthquake and inundations by which Epidaurus must once, and for ever, have been overwhelmed, had not the prudent citizens placed St. Hilarion, an Egyptian monk, on the beach. “He made the sign of the cross; the mountain-wave stopped, bowed, and returned.” One’s respect for the great qualities of the fearless Akbah, traversing the wilds of Africa, and at length penetrating to the verge of the Atlantic, is not lessened by what Gibbon relates of him:—that his career, though not his zeal, being checked by the prospect of a boundless ocean, Akbah spurred his horse into the waves, and raising his eyes to heaven, exclaimed with the tone of a fanatic, “Great God, if my course were not stopped by this sea, I would still go on, to the unknown kingdoms of the West, preaching the unity of Thy holy name.” And the picture reminds us of another, some eight centuries later, when Constantinople was besieged and taken by Mahomet II., who, while his ships were engaged against those of the Genoese, sat on horseback on the beach, to encourage by voice and presence the valour of the faithful: “The passions of his soul, and even the gestures of his body, seemed to imitate the action of the combatants; and, as if he had been the lord of nature, he spurred his horse with a fearless and impotent effort into the sea.” Sir Archibald Alison moralises on the spectacle of Napoleon, in 1804, reviewing, or intending to review, the naval force by which he designed to crush the British power: the flotilla being tempest-tost when it hove in sight, and several vessels stranded—an event “destined to teach the French Emperor, like Canute the Dane, that there were bounds to his power, and that his might was limited to the element on which his army stood.” The sea—_c’est autre chose_.

It is of Tiberius, absolute master of the vastest, richest empire ever seen under the sun, that an eminent French preacher is treating when he says that an adulatory senator kept repeating to him in every tone and accent that his authority was without bounds. Tiberius would fain have believed the assurance, if the illusion had been possible,—if he had not felt himself at every instant _heurté contre une barrière infranchissable_. The emperor’s flatterers had forgotten, for one thing, to secure a peremptory decree against the inconvenient limitation called time. His days were numbered. And in vain Tiberius essayed to trick and elude death, and dissembled with himself as to the stubborn fact of its resistless advance.

Kings, great nobles, and the like, as a popular essayist observes, have been known, even to the close of life, to violently curse and swear, if things went against them; going the length of stamping and blaspheming even at wind and rain, and branches of trees and plashes of mud, for insubordination and disrespect of persons. A popular novelist, again, having to describe a fashionable wedding in the country on a portentously wet and stormy day, makes the Lisford beadle, “who was a sound Tory of the old school,” almost wonder that the heavens themselves should be audacious enough to wet the uncovered head of the lord of Jocelyn’s Rock. “But it went on raining nevertheless.” It was in no such spirit that John Bunyan once was all but resolved on putting to the test the reality of his faith, by commanding some water puddles to be dry.