Chapter 16
His is the type of mind which would have sided with King John against granting the Magna Charta; the type of mind which would have opposed the ratification of the Constitution of the United States because he would have found so many holes in it. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Monroe Doctrine on the ground that it was dangerous. His is the type of mind which would have opposed the Emancipation Proclamation on the ground of taking away property without due process of law. His is the type of mind which would have opposed Cleveland's Venezuela message to England on the ground that it was unprecedented. His is the type of mind which did its best in 1912 to oppose Theodore Roosevelt's effort to make the Republican Party progressive.
Such a mind would have no use for Roosevelt, for instance, because Roosevelt was not bound by precedents, but made precedents of his own. The typical critical mind, such as Arnold's, would deny the title of philosopher to a man who has no constructive talent, who could not build up his own philosophy into a system. He would deny another the title of poet because his verse has not the Miltonic qualities of simplicity, of sensuousness, of passion. Emerson was not a great man of letters, Arnold said, because he had not the genius and instinct for style; his prose had not the requisite wholeness of good tissue. Emerson's prose is certainly not Arnold's prose, but at its best it is just as effective.
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It is a good idea of Santayana that "the function of poetry is to emotionalize philosophy."
How absurd, even repulsive, is the argument of "Paradise Lost"! yet here is great poetry, not in the matter, but in the manner.
"Though fallen on evil days, on evil days though fallen." "To shun delights and live laborious days."
Common ideas, but what dignity in the expression!
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Criticism is easy. When a writer has nothing else to do, he can criticize some other writer. But to create and originate is not so easy. One may say that appreciation is easy also. How many persons appreciate good literature who cannot produce it!
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The rash and the audacious are not the same. Audacity means boldness, but to be rash often means to be imprudent or foolhardy. When a little dog attacks a big dog, as so often happens, his boldness becomes rashness. When Charles Kingsley attacked Newman, his boldness turned out to be rashness.
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Little wonder that in his essay on "Books" Emerson recommends Thomas à Kempis's "Imitation of Christ." Substitute the word Nature for God and Christ and much of it will sound very Emersonian. Emerson was a kind of New England Thomas à Kempis. His spirit and attitude of mind were essentially the same, only directed to Nature and the modern world. Humble yourself, keep yourself in the background, and let the over-soul speak. "I desire no consolation which taketh from me compunction." "I love no contemplation which leads to pride." "For all that which is high is not holy, nor everything that is sweet, good." "I had rather feel contrition, than be skilled in the definition of it." "All Scripture ought to be read in the spirit in which it was written." How Emersonian all this sounds!
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In a fat volume of forty thousand quotations from the literature of all times and countries, compiled by some patient and industrious person, at least half of it is not worth the paper on which it is printed. There seem to be more quotations in it from Shakespeare than from any other poet, which is as it should be. There seem to be more from Emerson than from any other American poet, which again is as it should be. Those from the great names of antiquity--the Bible, Sadi, Cicero, Æschylus, Euripides, Aristotle, and others--are all worth while, and the quotations from Bacon, Newton, Addison, Locke, Chaucer, Johnson, Carlyle, Huxley, Tennyson, Goethe are welcome. But the quotations from women writers and poets,--Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Jean Ingelow, and others,--what are they worth? Who would expect anything profound from J. G. Holland or Chapin, O. W. Holmes, or Alger, or Alcott, or Helps, or Dickens, or Lewes, or Froude, or Lowell? I certainly should not.
Such a selection is good to leaf over. Your thought may be kindled or fanned here and there. The subjects are arranged alphabetically, and embrace nearly all themes of human interest from ability to zephyrs. There is very little from Whitman, and, I think, only one quotation from Thoreau.
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The death of Howells gave me a shock. I had known him long, though not intimately. He was my senior by only one month. It had been two years or more since I had seen him. Last December I read his charming paper on "Eighty Years and After" and enjoyed it greatly. It is a masterpiece. No other American man of letters, past or present, could have done that. In fact, there has been no other American who achieved the all-round literary craftsmanship that Mr. Howells achieved. His equal in his own line we have never seen. His felicity on all occasions was a wonder. His works do not belong to the literature of power, but to the literature of charm, grace, felicity. His style is as flexible and as limpid as a mountain rill. Only among the French do we find such qualities in such perfection. Some of his writings--"Their Wedding Journey," for instance--are too photographic. We miss the lure of the imagination, such as Hawthorne gave to all his pictures of real things. Only one of Howells's volumes have I found too thin for me to finish--his "London Films" was too filmy for me. I had read Taine's "London Notes" and felt the force of a different type of mind. But Howells's "Eighty Years and After" will live as a classic. Oh, the felicity of his style! One of his later poems on growing old ("On a Bright Winter's Day" it is called) is a gem.
IX
SUNDOWN PAPERS
RE-READING BERGSON
I am trying again to read Bergson's "Creative Evolution," with poor success. When I recall how I was taken with the work ten or more years ago, and carried it with me whenever I went from home, I am wondering if my mind has become too old and feeble to take it in. But I do not have such difficulty with any other of my favorite authors. Bergson's work now seems to me a mixture of two things that won't mix--metaphysics and natural science. It is full of word-splitting and conjuring with terms, and abounds in natural history facts. The style is wonderful, but the logic is not strong. He enlarges upon the inability of the intellect to understand or grasp Life. The reason is baffled, but sympathy and the emotional nature and the intuitions grasp the mystery.
This may be true, the heart often knows what the head does not; but is it not the intellect that tells us so? The intellect understands the grounds of our inability. We can and do reason about the limitations of reason. We do not know how matter and spirit blend, but we know they do blend. The animals live by instinct, and we live largely in our emotions, but it is reason that has placed man at the head of the animal kingdom.
Bergson himself by no means dispenses with the logical faculty. Note his close and convincing reasoning on the development of the vertebrate eye, and how inadequate the Darwinian idea of the accumulation of insensible variations is to account for it. A closer and more convincing piece of reasoning would be hard to find.
Bergson's conception of two currents--an upward current of spirit and a downward current of matter--meeting and uniting at a definite time and place and producing life, is extremely fanciful. Where had they both been during all the geologic ages? I do not suppose they had been any _where_. How life arose is, of course, one of the great mysteries. But do we not know enough to see that it did not originate in this sudden spectacular way?--that it began very slowly, in unicellular germs?
At first I was so captivated by the wonderful style of M. Bergson, and the richness of his page in natural history, that I could see no flaws in his subject-matter, but now that my enthusiasm has cooled off a little I return to him and am looking closer into the text.
Is not Bergson guilty of false or careless reasoning when he says that the relation of the soul to the brain is like that of a coat to the nail upon which it hangs? I call this spurious or pinchbeck analogy. If we know anything about it, do we not know that the relation of the two is not a mechanical or fortuitous one? and that it cannot be defined in this loose way?
"To a large extent," Bergson says, "thought is independent of the brain." "The brain is, strictly speaking, neither an organ of thought, nor of feeling, nor of consciousness." He speaks of consciousness as if it were a disembodied something floating around in the air overhead, like wireless messages. If I do not think with my brain, with what do I think? Certainly not with my legs, or my abdomen, or my chest. I think with my head, or the gray matter of my brain. I look down at the rest of my body and I say, this is part of me, but it is not the real me. With both legs and both arms gone, I should still be I. But cut off my head and where am I?
Has not the intelligence of the animal kingdom increased during the geologic ages with the increase in the size of the brain?
REVISIONS
I have little need to revise my opinion of any of the great names of English literature. I probably make more strenuous demands upon him who aspires to be a poet than ever before. I see more clearly than ever before that sweetened prose put up in verse form does not make poetry any more than sweetened water put in the comb in the hive makes honey. Many of our would-be young poets bring us the crude nectar from the fields--fine descriptions of flowers, birds, sunsets, and so on--and expect us to accept them as honey. The quality of the man makes all the difference in the world. A great nature can describe birds and flowers and clouds and sunsets and spring and autumn greatly.
Dean Swift quotes Sir Philip Sidney as saying that the "chief life of modern versifying consists in rhyme." Swift agrees with him. "Verse without rhyme," he says, "is a body without a soul, or a bell without a clapper." He thinks Milton's "Paradise Lost" would be greatly improved if it had rhyme. This, he says, would make it "more heroic and sonorous than it is."
Unobtrusive rhyme may be a help in certain cases, but what modern reader would say that a poem without rhyme is a body without a soul? This would exclude many of the noblest productions of English literature.
BERGSON AND TELEPATHY
Bergson seems always to have been more than half-convinced of the truth of spiritualism. When we are already half-convinced of a thing, it takes but little to convince us. Bergson argues himself into a belief in telepathy in this wise: "We produce electricity at every moment; the atmosphere is continually electrified; we move among magnetic currents. Yet for thousands of years millions of human beings have lived who never suspected the existence of electricity."
Millions of persons have also lived without suspecting the pull of the sun and moon upon us; or that the pressure of the atmosphere upon our bodies is fifteen pounds to the square inch; or that the coast of this part of the continent is slowly subsiding (the oscillations of the earth's crust); or without suspecting the incredible speed of the stars in the midnight sky; or that the earth is turning under our feet; or that electrons are shooting off from the candle or lamp by the light of which we are reading. There are assuredly more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy, many of which we shall doubtless yet find out, and many more of which we shall never find out. Wireless messages may be continually going through our houses and our bodies, and through the air we breathe, and we never suspect them. Shall we, then, infer that the air around us is full of spirits of our departed friends? I hope it is, but I fail to see any warrant for the belief in this kind of reasoning. It does not lend color even to the probability, any more than it does to the probability that we shall yet be able to read one another's thoughts and become expert mind-readers. Mind-reading seems to be a reality with a few persons, with one in many millions. But I cannot therefore believe in spiritualism as I believe in the "defeat of the Invincible Armada." Fleets have been defeated in all ages. Facts are amenable to observation and experiment, but merely alleged facts do not stand the laboratory tests.
If memory is not a function of the brain, of what is it a function? If "judgment, reasoning, or any other act of thought" are not functions of the brain, of what are they the functions? The scientific method is adequate to deal with all questions capable of proof or disproof. If we apply the scientific or experimental method to miracles, where does it leave them? Ask Huxley. Thought-transference is possible, but does this prove spiritualism to be true?
I know of a man who can answer your questions if you know the answers yourself, even without reading them or hearing you ask them. He once read a chemical formula for Edison which nobody but Edison had ever seen. I am glad that such things are possible. They confirm our faith in the reality of the unseen. They show us in what a world of occult laws and influences we live, but they tell us nothing of any other world.
METEORIC MEN AND PLANETARY MEN
There are meteoric men and there are planetary men. The men who now and then flash across our intellectual heavens, drawing all eyes for the moment, these I call meteoric men. What a contrast they present to the planetary men, who are slow to attract our attention, but who abide, and do not grow dim! Poets like Emerson, Whitman, and Wordsworth were slow to gain recognition, but the radiance of their names grows. I call such a poet as Swinburne meteoric, a poet of a certain kind of brilliant power, but who reads him now? Stephen Phillips with his "Marpessa" had a brief vogue, and then disappeared in the darkness. When I was a young man, I remember, a Scottish poet, Alexander Smith, published a "Life Drama," which dazzled the literary world for a brief period, but it is forgotten now. What attention Kidd's "Social Evolution" attracted a generation or more ago! But it is now quite neglected. It was not sound. When he died a few years ago there was barely an allusion to it in the public press. The same fate befell that talented man, Buckle, with his "Civilization in England." Delia Bacon held the ear of the public for a time with the Bacon-Shakespeare theory. Pulpit men like Joseph Cook and Adirondack Murray blazed out, and then were gone. Half a century ago or more an Englishman by the name of M. F. Tupper published a book called "Proverbial Philosophy" which had a brief season of popularity, and then went out like a rush-light, or a blaze of tissue paper. Novels like Miss Sprague's "Earnest Trifler," Du Maurier's "Trilby," and Wallace's "Ben Hur" have had their little day, and been forgotten. In the art world the Cubists' crazy work drew the attention of the public long enough for it to be seen how spurious and absurd it was. Brownell's war poems turned out to be little more than brief fireworks. Joaquin Miller, where is he? Fifty years ago Gail Hamilton was much in the public eye, and Grace Greenwood, and Fanny Fern; and in Bohemian circles, there were Agnes Franz and Ada Clare, but they are all quite forgotten now.
The meteoric men would not appreciate President Wilson's wise saying that he would rather fail in a cause that in time is bound to succeed than to succeed in a cause that in time is bound to fail. Such men cannot wait for success. Meteoric men in politics, like Elaine and Conkling, were brilliant men, but were politicians merely. What fruitful or constructive ideas did they leave us? Could they forget party in the good of the whole country? Are not the opponents of the League of Nations of our own day in the same case--without, however, shining with the same degree of brilliancy? To some of our Presidents--Polk, Pierce, Buchanan--we owe little or nothing. Roosevelt's career, though meteoric in its sudden brilliancy, will shine with a steady light down the ages. He left lasting results. He raised permanently the standard of morality in politics and business in this country by the gospel of the square deal. Woodrow Wilson, after the mists and clouds are all dispelled, will shine serenely on. He is one of the few men of the ages.
THE DAILY PAPERS
Probably the worst feature of our civilization is the daily paper. It scatters crime, bad manners, and a pernicious levity as a wind scatters fire. Crime feeds upon crime, and the newspapers make sure that every criminally inclined reader shall have enough to feed upon, shall have his vicious nature aroused and stimulated. Is it probable that a second and a third President of the United States would ever have been assassinated by shooting, had not such notoriety been given to the first crime? Murder, arson, theft, peculation, are as contagious as smallpox.
Who can help a pitying or a scornful smile when he hears of a school of journalism, a school for promoting crime and debauching the manners and the conscience of the people?--for teaching the gentle art of lying, for manufacturing news when there is no news? The pupils are taught, I suppose, how to serve up the sweepings from the streets and the gutters and the bar-rooms in the most engaging manner. They are taught how to give the great Public what it wants, and the one thing the great Public wants, and can never get enough of is any form of sensationalism. It clearly loves scandals about the rich, or anything about the rich, because we all want and expect to be rich, to out-shine our neighbors, to cut a wide swath in society. Give us anything about the rich, the Public says; we will take the mud from their shoes; if we can't get that, give us the parings of their finger-nails.
The inelastic character of the newspaper is a hampering factor--so many columns must be filled, news or no news. And when there is a great amount of important news, see how much is suppressed that but for this inelasticity would have been printed!
The professor at the school of journalism says: "I try to hammer it into them day after day that they have got to learn to get the news--that, whatever else a reporter can or cannot do, he isn't a reporter till he has learned to get the news." Hence the invasion of private houses, the bribery, the stealing of letters, the listening at key-holes, the craze for photographing the most sacred episodes, the betrayals of confidence, that the newspapers are responsible for. They must get what the dear Public most likes to hear, if they have to scale a man's housetop, and come down his chimney. And if they cannot get the true story, they must invent one. The idle curiosity of the Public must be satisfied.
Now the real news, the news the Public is entitled to, is always easy to get. It grows by the wayside. The Public is entitled to public news, not to family secrets; to the life of the street and the mart, not to life behind closed doors. In the dearth of real news, the paper is filled with the dust and sweepings from the public highways and byways, from saloons, police courts, political halls--sordid, ephemeral, and worthless, because it would never get into print if there were real news to serve up.
Then the advertising. The items of news now peep out at us from between flaming advertisements of the shopmen's goods, like men on the street hawking their wares, each trying to out-scream the other and making such a Bedlam that our ears are stunned.[6]
[Footnote 6: This fragment is hardly representative of the attitude of Mr. Burroughs toward our worthy dailies, and, could he have expanded the article, it would have had in its entirety a different tone. He lived on the breath of the newspapers; was always eager for legitimate news; and was especially outspoken in admiration of the superb work done by many newspaper correspondents during the World War. Furthermore, he was himself always most approachable and friendly to the reporters, complaining, however, that they often failed to quote him when he took real pains to help them get things straight; while they often insisted on emphasizing sensational aspects, and even put words in his mouth which he never uttered. But the truth is, he valued the high-class newspapers, though regarding even them as a two-edged sword, since their praiseworthy efforts are so vitiated by craze for the sensational.--C. B.]
THE ALPHABET
Until we have stopped to think about it, few of us realize what it means to have an alphabet--the combination of a few straight lines and curves which form our letters. When you have learned these, and how to arrange them into words, you have the key that unlocks all the libraries in the world. An assortment and arrangement of black lines on a white surface! These lines mean nothing in themselves; they are not symbols, nor pictures, nor hieroglyphics, yet the mastery of them is one of the touchstones of civilization. The progress of the race since the dawn of history, or since the art of writing has been invented, has gone forward with leaps and bounds. The prehistoric races, and the barbarous races of our own times, had and have only picture language.
The Chinese have no alphabet. It is said that they are now accepting a phonetic alphabet. The Chinese system of writing comprises more than forty thousand separate symbols, each a different word. It requires the memorizing of at least three thousand word-signs to read and write their language. The national phonetic script is made up of sixty distinct characters that answer to our twenty-four. These characters embrace every verbal sound of the language, and in combination make up every word. The progress of China has been greatly hampered by this want of an alphabet.
Coleridge says about the primary art of writing: "First, there is mere gesticulation, then rosaries, or wampum, then picture language, then hieroglyphics, and finally alphabetic letters,"--the last an evolution from all that went before. But there is no more suggestion of an alphabet in the sign language of the North American Indian than there is of man in a crinoid.
THE REDS OF LITERATURE
A class of young men who seem to look upon themselves as revolutionary poets has arisen, chiefly in Chicago; and they are putting forth the most astonishing stuff in the name of free verse that has probably ever appeared anywhere. In a late number of "Current Opinion," Carl Sandburg, who, I am told, is their chosen leader, waves his dirty shirt in the face of the public in this fashion:
"My shirt is a token and a symbol more than a cover from sun and rain, My shirt is a signal and a teller of souls, I can take off my shirt and tear it, and so make a ripping razzly noise, and the people will say, 'Look at him tear his shirt!'
"I can keep my shirt on, I can stick around and sing like a little bird, and look 'em all in the eye and never be fazed, I can keep my shirt on."