Part 11

Indeed, if you should wish to see how recently we are out of the range of Aristotle, you have only to read the chapter on Human Anatomy, which occurs in the early part of dear old Robert Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_. Here is an account of the body which makes curious reading for the modern biologist. I give a line here and there. The body is divided into parts containing or contained, and the parts contained are either humors or spirits. Of these humors there are four: to wit, first, blood; next, phlegm; third, choler; and fourth, melancholy; and this is part of the description of each.

"Blood is a hot, sweet, temperate, red humor, ... made of the most temperate parts of the chylus in the liver.... And from it spirits are first begotten in the heart. Phlegm is a cold and moist humor, begotten of the colder part of the chylus in the liver. Choler is hot and dry, begotten of the hotter parts of the chylus. Melancholy, cold and dry, ... is a bridle to the other two hot humors, blood and choler. These four humors have some analogy with the four elements and to the four ages in man." Having disposed thus of humors, we have this account of spirit or the other contained part of the body. "Spirit is a most subtle vapor, which is expressed from the blood, and the instrument of the soul to perform all his actions; a common tie or medium between the body and the soul, as some will have it; or as Paracelsus--a fourth soul of itself." Proceeding to other parts of the body, here are the lungs. "The lungs is a thin spongy part like an ox-hoof.... The instrument of voice; ... and next to the heart to express their thoughts by voice. That it is the instrument of voice is manifest in that no creature can speak ... which wanteth these lights. It is besides the instrument of breathing; and its office is to cool the heart by sending air into it by the venosal artery," &c., &c.

This anatomy of Burton's includes the soul, and here are some particulars of it. "According to Aristotle, the soul is defined to be emtelecheia, ... the perfection or first act of an organical body having power of life.... But many doubts arise about the essence, subject, seat, distinction and subordinate faculties of it.... Some make one soul; ... others, three.... The common division of the soul is into three principal faculties--vegetal, sensible and rational." The soul of man includes all three; for the "sensible includes vegetal and rational both; which are contained in it (saith Aristotle) _ut trigonus in tetragono_, as a triangle in a quadrangle.... Paracelsus will have four souls, adding to the three grand faculties a spiritual soul: which opinion of his Campanella in his book _De Sensu Rerum_ much labors to demonstrate and prove, because carcases bleed at the sight of the murderer; with many such arguments." These are not the wanderings of ignorance; they represent the whole of human knowledge, and are an epitome made up from Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius, Fallopius, Wecker, Melancthon, Feruclius, Cicero, Pico Mirandola, Paracelsus, Campanella, Taurellus, Philip, Flavius, Macrobius, Alhazen the Arabian, Vittellio, Roger Bacon, Baptista Porta, Cardan, Sambucus, Pliny, Avicenna, Lucretius, and such another list as makes one weary with the very names of authorities.

These details of antique science brought face to face with the weighing of air at Gresham College, and with Sir Isaac Newton, represent with sufficient sharpness the change from the old reign of enmity between Nature and man, from the stern ideal of justice to the later reign of love which embraces in one direction, God, in another, fellow-man, in another, physical nature.

Now, in these same sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in which we have seen science recovering itself after having been so long tongue-tied by authority, a remarkably similar process goes on in the art of music. If, as we did in considering the progress of science, we now place ourselves at a standpoint from which we can precisely estimate that extension of man's personal relation towards the unknown during these centuries, which resulted in modern music, we are met with a chain of strikingly similar facts and causes. The Greek music quite parallels Greek physical science. We have seen how, in the latter, a Greek philosopher would start off with a well-sounding proposition that all things originated in moisture, or in fire, or in air, and we have seen how, instead of attacking moisture, fire and air, and of observing and classifying all the physical facts connected with them, the philosopher after awhile presents us with an amazing superstructure of pure speculation wholly disconnected from facts of any kind, physical or otherwise. Greek music offers us precisely the same net outcome. It was enthusiastically studied, there were multitudes of performers upon the lyre, the flute, and so on, it was a part of common education, and the loftiest souls exerted their loftiest powers in theorizing upon it. For example, in Plato's _Republic_, Socrates earnestly condemns every innovation upon music. His words are: "For any musical innovation is full of danger to the State.... Damon tells me, and I can quite believe him ... that when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them;" ... (therefore) "our guardians must lay the foundations of their fortress in music." Again, in Book III., during a discussion as to the kind of music to be permitted in our Republic, we have this kind of talk. Socrates asks: "Which are the harmonies expressive of sorrow?" It is replied, they are "the mixed Lydian and the full-toned or bass Lydian."

"These must be banished.... Which are the soft or drinking harmonies?"

"The Ionian and the Lydian."

These, it appears, must also be banished.

"Then the Dorian and the Phrygian appear to be the only ones which remain."

Socrates "answered; of the harmonies I know nothing; but I want to have one warlike which will sound the word or note which a brave man utters in the hour of danger or stern resolve, or when his cause is failing ... (and he) meets fortune with calmness and endurance; and another to be used by him in times of peace and freedom of action.... These two harmonies I ask you to leave: the strain of necessity and the strain of freedom, the strain of the unfortunate and the strain of the fortunate, the strain of courage and the strain of temperance; these, I say, leave."

Simmias draws a charming analogy in the _Phaedo_ between the relation of a beautiful and divine harmony to the lyre and that of the soul to the body; Pythagoras dreams upon the music of the spheres; everywhere the Greek is occupied with music, practical and theoretical. I find a lively picture of the times where in Book VII. of the _Republic_, Socrates describes the activity of the musical searchers: "By heaven," he says, "'tis as good as a play to hear them talking about their condensed notes, as they call them; they put their ears alongside of their neighbors.... one set of them declaring that they catch an intermediate note and have found the least interval which should be the unit of measurement; the others maintaining the opposite theory, that the two sounds have passed into the same, each party setting their ears before their understanding."

And in this last clause we have a perfectly explicit statement of that lack of personal relation to facts which makes Greek music as meagre as Greek science. We found it the common fault of Greek scientific thought that it took more satisfaction in an ingenious argument upon a pseudo-fact than in a solid conclusion based upon plain observation and reasoning. So here, Socrates is satirizing even the poor attempt at observation made by these people, and sardonically accuses them of what is the very pride of modern science--namely, of setting their ears before their understanding,--that is, of rigorously observing the facts before reasoning upon them.

At any rate, in spite of all this beautiful and comprehensive talk of harmony and the like, the fact is clear, that the Greek had no harmony worth the name; he knew nothing but the crude concords of the octave, the fourth and the fifth; moreover, his melody was equally meagre; and altogether his ultimate flight in music was where voices of men and women sang, accompanied in unison or octave by the lyre, the flute and the like.

And if we consider the state of music after the passing away of the Greek cultus up to the fifteenth century, we have much the same story to tell as was just now told of mediaeval science. For a time the world's stock of tunes is practically comprised in the melodies collected by Gregory, known as the Gregorian Chant. Presently the system of polyphonic music arises, in which several voices sing different melodies so arranged as not to jar with each other. But when we now come down to the sixteenth century, we find a wonderful new activity in music accompanying that in science. Luther in Germany, Gondimel in France, push forward the song: in Spain, Salinas of Salamanca, studies ancient music for thirty years, and finally arrives at the conclusion that the Greek had no instrumental music, and that all their melody was originally derived from the order of syllables in verse. In Italy, Montaverde announces what were called his "new discords," and the beautiful maestro, Palestrina, writes compositions in several parts, which are at once noble, simple and devout. England at this time is filled with music; and by the end of the sixteenth century the whole land is a-warble with the madrigals and part-compositions of Weelkes, Wilbye, John Milton, Sr., and the famous Dr. John Bull, together with those of Tye, Tallis, Morley, Orlando Gibbons, and hundreds more. But as yet modern music is not. There is no orchestra; Queen Elizabeth's dinner-music is mainly drums and trumpets. It is not until the middle of the seventeenth century that Jenkins and Purcell begin to write sonatas for a small number of violins with organ accompaniment.

A curious note of the tendency towards instrumental music at this time, however, is found in the fact that people begin to care so little for the words of songs as to prefer them in a foreign language. Henry Lawes, one of the most famous musicians of the middle of the seventeenth century, he who suggested Milton's _Comus_ and set it to music, endeavored to rebuke this affectation, as he supposed it, by a cruel joke: he wrote a song, of which the words were nothing more than the index of an old volume of musical compositions, and had it sung amidst great applause. It must have been in the same course of feeling that Waller--several of whose poems had been set to music by Lawes--addressed to him the following stanza:

"Let those who only warble long, And gargle in their throat a song, Content themselves with do, re, mi; Let words of sense be set by thee."

And so through Allegri, Stradella, the Scarlattis and a thousand singers, players and composers we come to the year 1685 in which both Bach and Handel were born. Here we are fairly in the face of modern music. What then is modern music? Music at this time bounds forward in the joy of an infinitely developable principle. What is this principle? In its last analysis it is what has now come to be called Harmony, or more specially Tonality. According to the modern musical feeling when any tone is heard it is heard in its relation to some other tone which from one circumstance or another may have been taken as a basis of such relations. By a long course of putting our ears before our understanding,--a course carried on by all those early musicians whose names I have mentioned, each contributing some new relation between tones which his ear had discovered, we have finally been able to generalize these relations in such a way as to make a complete system of tonality in which every possible tone brings to our ear an impression dependent on the tone or tones in connection with which it is heard. As the Pupil at Sais ere long began to see nothing alone, so we hear nothing alone. You have only to remember that the singer now-a-days must always have the piano accompaniment in order to satisfy our demand for harmony, that we never hear any unmixed melody in set music, in order to see how completely harmony reigns in our music, instead of bare melody. We may then broadly differentiate the modern music which begins at the same time with modern science, from all precedent music, as Harmony contrasted with Melody. To this we must add the idea of instrumental harmony, of that vast extension of harmonies rendered possible by the great development of orchestral instruments whose compass greatly exceeds that of the human voice, which formerly limited all musical energy.

It is tempting, here, to push the theory of personality into fanciful extremes. You have seen how the long development of melody--melody being here the individual--receives a great extension in the polyphonic music, when individual melodies move along side by side without jostling: and how at length the whole suddenly bursts into the highest type of social development, where the melody is at once united with the harmony in the most intimate way, yet never loses its individuality; where the melody would seem to maintain towards the harmony almost the ideal relation of our finite personality, to the Infinite personality; at once autonomous as finite, and yet contained in, and rapturously united with the infinite.

But without pressing the matter, it now seems clear from our sketch that just as in the 17th century the spirit of man has opened up for the first time a perfectly clear and personal relation with physical nature and has thus achieved modern science with Sir Isaac Newton, so in this 17th century, the spirit of man opens up a new relation to the infinite, to the unknown, and achieves modern music in John Sebastian Bach.

Nor need I waste time in defending this category in which I placed music, as a relation to the Unknown. If you collect all the expressions of poets and philosophers upon music, you will find them converging upon this idea. No one will think Thomas Carlyle sentimental; yet it is he who says "music which leads us to the verge of the infinite, and lets us gaze on that."

And so finally, with the first English novel of Richardson in 1739-40, we have completed our glance at the simultaneous birth of modern science, modern music, and the modern novel.

And we are now prepared to carry forward our third and fourth lines of thought together: which were to show the development of the novel from the Greek Drama, and to illustrate the whole of the principles now advanced, with some special studies of the modern novel. These two lines will mutually support each other, and will emerge concurrently, as we now go on to study the life and works of that George Eliot, who has so recently solved the scientific problem which made her life one of the most pathetic and instructive in human history.

VII.

Our custom, in these studies, of passing at the earliest possible moment from the abstract to the concrete, and of verifying theory by actual experiment, arrives at a sort of beautiful climax and apotheosis as we proceed from the abstract principles formulated in the last six lectures, to their exquisite concrete and verification in George Eliot.

At our last meeting we saw that during a period of time which we fix to a point by sweeping the mind from the sixteenth century to the middle of the eighteenth, the growing personality of man sent out three new processes, which have remarkably changed and enlarged the whole form of our individual and social structure.

I have found it highly useful in more than one connection to acquire a clear notion of these three processes by referring them all to a common physical _concept_ of direction. For example: we may with profit construct a diagram in which it shall appear that at the renaissance period mentioned the three great and distinctive new personal relations which man established for himself were (1) a relation upward,

unknown (Music)

Personality ---->[**arrow right] Fellow-man. (The Novel)[**arrow up to "Music"]

[**arrow down from "Personality"]Nature. (Physical Science.)

towards the unknown, (2) a relation on our own level, a relation towards our equal,--that is towards our fellow man, and (3) a relation towards our inferior,--in the sense that the world is for man's use, is made for man,--that is, towards physical nature. We have seen how from the beginning of man's history these three relations did not acquire the vividness and energy of personal relations, nor any fixed or developable existence at all until the period mentioned.

I cannot help expressing earnest regret that the limits of my present subject have not allowed me to give any development whatever to this conception of the actual significance of the Renaissance as a significance which crystallizing into Music, the Novel, and Science, has left us those as the solid residuum of that movement; and it is not a mere sentimental generalization but a hard, scientific and unifiable fact that music is the distinctive form in which man's new relation to what is above him has expressed itself; the novel is the distinctive form in which man's new personal relation to his fellow-man has expressed itself; and science is the distinctive form in which man's new personal relation to nature has expressed itself.

I am perfectly well aware, for instance, that when one thinks of the Italian Opera with its banalities and fleshly frenzies; or when one thinks of the small, low, unmanly sensual lives which so many musicians have led under our eyes; one may well feel inclined to dispute this category to which I have assigned music, and to question whether music does belong to this wholly religious sphere. I long to be able to remind such questioners of the historic fact that music has been brought into the church as the mouthpiece of our worship, not by the sentimental people but by the sternest reformers and the most untheoretical and hard-handed workers: I long to remind them now it is the same Luther who would meet his accusers though ten thousand devils backed them, that cares most assiduously for the hymns of the church, makes them, sings them: how it is the same Puritan who fights winter and hunger and the savage, that is noted for his sweet songs, and must have his periodic opening of the musical avenue up towards the great God: or, passing far back to the times before music was music, and so making the case stronger, I long to remind them of a single line in a letter from Pliny the younger to Trajan in the year 110, which puts before me a dewy morning picture of music and Christian devotion that haunts my imagination--a line in which Pliny mentions some people who were in the habit of "meeting on a certain day before daylight and singing a hymn to Christ as to a God": or how in the fourth century the very Ambrosian chant which preceded the Gregorian chant is due to the fact that the good Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, casting about for solace, collects a number of psalm tunes and hymns and appoints them to be sung for the express purpose of consoling his people in their afflictions: and coming down to the birth of modern music, I long to remind these questioners of the noble and simple devoutness which Palestrina brings into the church worship with his music; of the perfect calm creative life of John Sebastian Bach whose music is so compact of devotion as to have inspired the well-known declaration that wherever it is played, it makes that place a church; and finally I long to remind them how essential a part of every modern church the organ-loft and the choir have come to be--and in full view of the terrible mistakes which these often make, of the screechy Italian opera music which one hears floating from this or that church on a Sunday, of the wholly undevout organ music with which the unfortunate flippant-minded organist often sends us forth--to declare that music is yet, as we have seen, a new art, that we have not really learned the uses of it, much less the scope of it; that indeed not all of us have even yet acquired the physical capacity or ear for it,--and that finally we are at the very threshold of those sweet applications we may hereafter make of that awful and mysterious power in music to take up our yearnings towards the infinite at the point where words and all articulate utterance fail, and bear them onward often to something like a satisfactory nearness to their divine object.

But all this must be left aside, and we must now pass on to consider that remarkable writer who for something more than twenty years past has been chaining the attention of our English world purely by virtue of her extraordinary endowment as to all three of these relations which I have here sketched in diagram--these relations to the growing personality of man to that which is above him, or the unknown--to that which is in his level, or his fellow-man; and to that which is beneath him, or nature--which have resulted respectively in music, the novel, and science.

If I could be allowed to construct a final text and summary of all the principles which have been announced in the preceding lectures, I could make none more complete than is furnished me by two English women who have recently been among us, and who, in the quietest way have each made an epoch, not only in literature but in life. These two women are Elizabeth Barrett Browning and George Eliot; and although our studies now lie more immediately with the latter, I shall find a frequent delight as we go on in comparing her printed words with those of Mrs. Browning, and in showing through what diverse forms of personality--so diverse as to be often really complementary to each other--these two have illustrated the doctrines I have hitherto expounded.

In beginning to get some clear view of the actual living personality which I have hitherto designated as George Eliot, one is immediately struck with the fact that it has enjoyed more of what Jack Falstaff would call a commodity of good names than falls to the lot of most mortals. As one rehearses these names it is curious also to reflect what a different train of associations each one suggests. It is hard to believe that Marian Evans, Amos Barton (for when the editor of Blackwood's was corresponding with her about her first unsigned manuscript, which was entitled, _The Sad Fortunes of the Rev. Amos Barton_, I find him addressing her as "My dear Amos"), George Eliot, Mrs. Lewes, and Mrs. Cross are one and the same person. Amid all these appellations I find myself most strongly attracted towards that of George Eliot. This was the name which she chose for herself; it was under this name that she made her great successes; it was by this name that she endeared herself to all who love great and faithful work; and surely--if one may paraphrase Poe--the angels call her George Eliot. Since therefore we are mainly interested in Marian Evans, or Mrs. Lewes, or Mrs. Cross, just in so far as they bear intimate relations to George Eliot, I find myself drawn, in placing before you such sketch as I have been able to make of this remarkable personage, to begin with some account of the birth of the specific George Eliot, and having acquired a view of the circumstances attending that event, to look backward and forward from that as a central point at the origin and life of Marian Evans on the one hand, and of Mrs. Lewes and Mrs. Cross on the other.