Part 20
What may be termed the material side of the intellect receives assistance in England, that is to say, in the aristocratic and political world of England; wit and perception and knowledge of character are quickened and multiplied by it. But the brilliancy, liberty and spirituality of the imagination are in it dulled and lowered. If a poet can find fine and fair thoughts in the atmosphere of a London Square, he would be visited by far finer and fairer thoughts were he standing by the edge of the Adrian or Tyrrhene Sea, or looking down, eagle-like, from some high spur of wind-vexed Apennine. The poet should not perhaps live forever away from the world, but he should oftentimes do so.
The atmosphere of Italy has been the greatest fertiliser of English poetical genius. There is something fatal to genius in modern English life; its conditions are oppressive; its air is heavy; its habits are altogether opposed to the life of the imagination. Out-of-door life in England is only associated with what is called ‘the pleasure of killing things,’ and is only possible to those who are very robust of frame and hard of feeling. The intellectual life in England is only developed in gaslight and lamplight, over dinner-tables and in club-rooms, and although the country houses in some instances might be made centres of intellectual life, they never are so by any chance, and remain only the sanctuaries of fashion, of gastronomy and of sport. The innumerable demands on time, the routine of social engagements, the pressure of conventional opinion, are all too strong in England to allow the man of genius to be happy there, or to reach there his highest and best development. The many artificial restraints of life in England are, of all things, the most injurious to the poetic temperament, which at all times is quickly irritated and easily depressed by its surroundings. There is not enough leisure or space for meditation, or freedom to live as the affections or the fancy or the mind desires; and the absence of beauty—of beauty, artistic, architectural, natural and physical—oppresses and dulls the poetic imagination without its being sensible of what it is from the lack of which it suffers.
It has been said of a living statesman that he is only great in opposition. So may it be said of the poet who touches mundane things. He is only great in opposition. Milton could not have written a Jubilee Ode without falling from his high estate; and none can care for Shakespeare without desiring to expunge the panegyric on a Virgin Queen written for the Masque of Kenilworth. The poet is lord of a spiritual power; he is far above the holders of powers temporal. He holds the sensitive plant in his hand, and feels every innermost thrill of Nature; he is false to himself when he denies Nature and does a forced and unreal homage to the decrees and the dominion of ordinary society or of ordinary government.
‘Both are alien to him, and are his foes.’
This line might fittingly have been graven on Shelley’s tombstone, for it was essentially the law of his soul. The violence of his political imprecations is begotten by love, though love of another kind: love of justice, of truth, of tolerance, of liberty, all of which he beheld violated by the ruling powers of the state and of the law. With the unerring vision which is the birthright of genius, he saw through the hypocrisies and shams of kings, and priests, and churches, and council-chambers, and conventional morality, and political creeds. The thunder of the superb sonnet to England which begins with the famous line,
‘An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king,’
came from his heart’s depths in scorn of lies, in hatred of pretence, in righteous indignation as a patriot at the corruption, venality and hypocrisy of
‘Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, But leech-like to their fainting country cling.’
It is perhaps to be lamented that the true poetic temperament should ever turn aside to share the fret and fever of political strife. It is waste of the spirit of Alastor to rage against Swellfoot. But the poet cannot wholly escape the influences of baser humanity, and, watching the struggles of ‘the blind and battling multitude’ from afar, he cannot avoid being moved either to a passion of pity or to a passion of disdain, or to both at once, in view of this combat, which seems to him so poor and small, so low and vile. Men of genius know the mere transitory character of those religions and those social laws which awe, as by a phantasm of terror, weaker minds, and they refuse to allow their lives to be dictated to or bound down; and in exact proportion to their power of revolt is their attainment of greatness.
The soul of Shelley was, besides, deeply imbued by that wide pantheism which makes all the received religions of men look so trite, so poor, so narrow and so mean.
‘Canst those imagine where those spirits live Which make such delicate music in the woods? . . . . . . . . . . ’Tis hard to tell: I have heard those more skilled in spirits say, The bubbles, which enchantment of the sun Sucks from the pale, faint water-flowers that pave The oozy bottom of clear lakes and pools, Are the pavilions where such dwell and float Under the green and golden atmosphere Which noon-tide kindles through the woven leaves; And when these burst, and the thin, fiery air, The which they breathed within those lucent domes, Ascends to flow like meteors through the night, They ride on them, and rein their headlong speed, And bow their burning crests, and glide in fire Under the waters of the earth again.
If such live thus, have others other lives, Under pink blossoms or within the bells Of meadow flowers, or folded violets deep, Or on their dying odours when they die, Or on the sunlight of the sphered dell?’
The loveliness of Nature filled him with awe and deep delight.
‘How glorious art thou, Earth! and if thou be The shadow of some spirit lovelier still, Though evil stain its work, and it should be Like its creation, weak yet beautiful, I could fall down and worship that and thee.’
‘My soul is an enchanted boat, Which, like a sleeping swan, doth float Upon the silver waves of thy sweet singing; And thine doth like an angel sit Beside the helm conducting it, Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing It seems to float ever, forever. Upon that many-winding river, Between mountains, woods, abysses, A paradise of wildernesses! Till, like one in slumber bound, Borne to the ocean, I float down, around Into a sea profound, of ever-spreading sound.’
This intimate sympathy with Nature, this perception of beauty in things seen and unseen, this deep joy in the sense of existence, make the very life of Shelley’s life; he is the ideal poet, feeding
‘on the aerial kisses Of shapes that haunt thought’s wildernesses.’
Taine has said, with truth, of modern life,—
‘Nous ne savons plus prendre la vie en grand, sortir de nous mêmes; nous nous contennons dans un petit bien-être personnel, dans une petite œuvre viagère.’ [He is writing in the mountains beyond Naples.] ‘Ici on reduit le vieux et le couvert au simple necessaire. Ainsi dégagée l’âme, comme les yeux, pouvait contempler les vastes horizons tout ce qui s’etend et dure au déla de l’homme.’
Modern life gives you six electric bells beside your bed, but not one court or chamber that a great artist would care to copy. The poet yawning among the electric bells becomes a common-place person, with a mind obscured by a gourmet’s love of the table and the cellar; he is the chameleon who has lost his luminous and magical powers of transfiguration, and become a mere gorged lizard stuffed with sugar.
Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, were in their different lives so great because they had all the power to reject the drowsy and dulling influences of the common world of men, and withdraw from it to Ravenna, to Lirici, to Rydal. The commonplace of life, whether in occupations, relationships, or so-called duties, eats away the poetry of temperament with the slow, sure gnawing of the hidden insect which eats away the tiger-skin until where the golden bronze and deep sable of the shining fur once glistened, there is only a bald, bare spot, with neither colour nor beauty left in it. There are millions on millions of ordinary human lives to follow the common tracks and fulfil the common functions of human life. When the poet is dragged down to any of these he is lost. The moth who descried the star lies dead in the kitchen fire, degraded and injured beyond recall.
‘There is a path on the sea’s azure floor; No keel has ever ploughed that path before.’
Such should be the poet’s passage through life. Not his is it to sail by chart and compass with common mariners along the sea roads marked out for safety and for commerce.
Above all else, the poet should be true to himself—to his own vision, his own powers, his own soul,
‘like Heaven’s pure breath Which he who grasps can hold not; like death, Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way Through temple, tower and palace, and the array Of arms.’
The supreme glory of Shelley is that he, beyond all others, did go where ‘no keel ever ploughed before,’ did dwell more completely than any other has ever dwelt
‘on an imagined shore Where the gods spoke with him.’
The poet is wisest, and his creations are most beautiful when his thoughts roam alone in
‘fields of Heaven-reflecting sea, . . . . . . . . . . Beneath the uplifting winds, like plains of corn Swayed by the summer air;’
and when he, like Proteus, marks
‘The shadow of fair ships, as mortals see The floating bark of the light-laden moon With that white star, it’s sightless pilot’s crest, Borne down the rapid sunset’s ebbing sea; Tracking their path no more by blood and groans, And desolation, and the mingled voice Of slavery and command; but by the light Of wave-reflected flowers, and floating odours, And music soft and mild, free, gentle voices, That sweetest music, such as spirits love.’
And he is wisest when he says, with Apollo,
‘I shall gaze not on the deeds which make My mind obscure with sorrow, as eclipse Darkens the sphere I guide; but list, I hear The small, clear, silver lute of the young Spirit That sits i’ the morning star.’
If ever poet held that lute on earth, Shelley held it all through his brief life; and if ever there be immortality for any soul, his surely is living now beside that Spirit in the light of a ceaseless day.
‘Death is the veil which those who live call life; They sleep, and it is lifted.’
SOME FALLACIES OF SCIENCE[K]
‘Le génie fait les philosophes et les poetes: le temps ne fait que les savants.’—FONTENELLE.
Sir Lyon, _now_ Lord, Playfair, read to the assembled members of the British Association, when they met at Aberdeen, a discourse both eloquent and well suited to excite the enthusiasm of his audience, already disposed by taste and bias to salute its propositions as gospel. That there were truths in it, no one would dispute; that it was exclusively composed of truth is not so evident to minds unswayed by scientific prejudice. It, at all events, was a curious and complete example of the scientific mind, of its views, conclusions and expectations, and is therefore interesting in itself, if not as overwhelming in its persuasions to the dispassionate reader as it was to the sympathetic and selected audience to which it was addressed. Scientific persons usually never address themselves to any other audience than one thus pannelled and prepared. They like to see a crowd of their own disciples in their halls ere they let fall their pearls of wisdom. The novelist does not demand that he shall be only read by novelists. The painter does not think that none but painters can be permitted to judge a painting. The sculptor does not ask that every critic of his work shall be a Phidias. The historian does not insist that none but a Tacitus shall pass judgment on him. But the scientist does exact that no opinion shall be formed of him and of his works except by his own brethren, and sweeps aside all independent criticism on a principle which, if carried out into other matters, would forbid John Ruskin ever to give an opinion on painting, and would prohibit Francisque Sareey from making any critical observations on actors. This address satisfied its audience, because that audience was composed of persons already willing to be satisfied; but if we can imagine some listener altogether without such bias, if we can suppose some one amongst the auditors with mind altogether unprejudiced, such an one might without effort have found many weak places in this fine discourse, and would have been sorely tempted to cry ‘Question! Question!’ at more than one point in it.
Footnote K:
Suggested by an Address to the British Association at Aberdeen, 1885.
Taken as a whole, the address was an admirable piece of special pleading in favour of science, and of her superior claims upon the resources of all states and the minds of all men. But special pleading has always this disadvantage: that it seeks to prove too much; and the special pleading of the President of the Aberdeen meeting is not free from this defect. We know, of course, that, in his position, he could hardly say less; that with his antecedents and reputation, he would not have wished to say less; but those who are removed from the spell of his eloquence, and peruse his arguments in the serene air of their studies, may be pardoned if they be more critical than an audience of fellow-workers, and mutual admirers, if they lay down the pages of his admirably-worded praises of science, and ask themselves dispassionately: How much of this is true?
The main object of the discourse was to prove that science is the great benefactress of the world. But is it proved? To the mind of the scientist the doubt will seem as impious as the doubt of the sceptic always does seem to the true believer. Yet it is a doubt which must be entertained by those who are not led away by that bigotry of science, which has so much and so grievously in common with the bigotry of religions.
Let us see what are the statements which the President of the British Association brings forward in support of the position which he gives to Science as the goddess and the benefactress of mankind. First, to do this he casts down the Humanities beneath his feet, as the professors of science always do; and, as an illustration of the uselessness which he assigns to them, he asserts that were a Chrysoloras to teach Greek in the Italian universities he would not hasten perceptibly the onward march of Italy!
What does this mean? It is a statement, but the statement of an opinion, not of a fact.
What is comprised under the vague term ‘the onward march of Italy?’ Does it mean the return of Italy to her pristine excellence in all arts, her love of learning, her grace of living? or does it mean the effort of Italy to aggrandise herself at all cost, and to engage in foreign and colonial wars whilst her cities groan under taxation and her peasantry perish of pellagra? In the one case the teaching of Chrysoloras would be of infinite value; in the other it would, no doubt, not harmonise with the vulgar greeds and dangerous ambitions of the hour. If the ‘onward march of Italy’ means that she is to kneel to a Crispi, submit to a standing army, wait slavishly on Germany, and scramble for the sands of Africa, the teachings of Chrysoloras would be wasted; but if it mean that she is to husband her strength, cultivate her fertile fields, merit her gift of beauty, and hold a high place in the true civilisation of the world, then I beg leave to submit that Chrysoloras, or what his name is here taken to symbolise, would do more for her than any other teacher she could have, certainly more than any teacher she now possesses. Could the classic knowledge and all which is begotten by it of serenity, grace, trained eloquence and dispassionate meditation, be diffused once more through the mind of Italian youth, it would, I think, produce a generation which would not applaud Eritrea and Kassala, nor accept the political tyrannies of state-appointed prefects.
The scientists take for granted that the education of the schools creates intelligence; very often it does no such thing. It creates a superficial appearance of knowledge, indeed; but knowledge is like food, unless it be thoroughly assimilated when absorbed, and thoroughly digested, it can give no nourishment; it lies useless, a heavy and unleavened mass. It is the fashion in these times to despise husbandmen and husbandry, but it is much to be questioned if the city cad, with his smattering of education, his dabbling in politics, his crude, conceited opinions upon matters on which he is absolutely ignorant, be not a far more ignorant, as he is undoubtedly a far more useless, person than the peasant, who may never have opened a book or heard of arithmetic, but thoroughly understands the soil he works on, the signs of the weather, the rearing of plants and of animals, and the fruits of the earth which he cultivates. The man of genius may be many-sided; nature has given him the power to be so; but the mass of men do not and cannot obtain this Protean power; to do one thing well is the utmost that the vast majority can well hope to do; many never do so much, nor a quarter so much. To this vast majority science would say: you may be as indifferent weavers, ploughmen, carpenters, shopmen, what you will, but you must know where the spermatic nerves are situated in the ichneumon, and you must describe the difference between microzoaires and miraphytes, and you must understand the solidification of nitric acid. Nor is the temper which science and its teachers seem likely thus to give the human race, one of fair promise. How much have not the men of science added to the popular dread of cholera, which in its manifestation of cowardice and selfishness has so grossly disgraced the Continent of Europe of late years? Their real or imaginary creation, the microbe, has invested cholera with a fanciful horror so new and hideous in the popular mind, that popular terror of it grows ungovernable, and will, in great likelihood, revolt beyond all restraint, municipal or imperial, whenever the disease shall again revisit Europe with violence. Again, how many nervous illnesses, how many imaginary diseases, have sprung into existence since science, popularised, attracted the attention of mankind to the mechanism of its own construction? It is a familiar truth that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and of no knowledge is it truer than of physiological knowledge. It has been said, that every one at forty should be a fool or a physician, and so far as knowing what to eat, drink and avoid, every one should be so; but, unhappily, those who become the latter, _i.e._, those who become capable of controlling their own constitutional ailments and weaknesses, are apt to contract in their study of themselves an overweening tendency to think about themselves. The generalisation of physiology amongst the masses means the generalisation of this form of egotism. A child who was told and shown something of anatomy, said, naively: ‘Oh, dear me! now that I know how I am made, I shall be always thinking that I am coming to pieces.’ In a less innocent way the effect of the popularisation of physiology is the same on the multitude as on this child: it increases valetudinarianism, nervousness and the diseases which spring from morbid fears and morbid desires. Those nervous illnesses which are the peculiar privilege of modern times, are largely due to the exaggerated attention to themselves which science has taught to humankind. The Greek and the Latin said: ‘Let us eat and drink and enjoy, for to-morrow we die.’ Modern science says: ‘Let us concentrate our whole mind on ourselves and our body, although our mind like our body is only a conglomeration of gases which will go out in the dark.’ The classic injunction and conclusion are the more healthy and the more logical, and produced a race of men more manly, more vigorous and more consistent with themselves.
To return to the assertions contained in this address which we now consider: in the address it is stated as a fact which all must rejoice over, that in Boston one shoe factory, by its machines, does the work of 30,000 shoemakers in Paris, who have still to go through the weary drudgery of hand-labour. Now, why is the ‘drudgery’ of sewing a shoe in any way more ‘weary’ than the drudgery of oiling, feeding and attending to a machine? Machine-work is, on the contrary, of all work the most mechanical, the most absolute drudgery. There is no kind of proof that, because the work of 30,000 shoemakers is done by a machine, mankind at large is any the happier for this. We know that all machine-made work is inferior to hand-work; inferior in durability, in excellence of quality, and in its inevitable lack of that kind of individuality and originality which handwork takes from the fingers which form it. In the _Seven Lamps of Architecture_, there is an admirable exposition of this immeasurable difference in quality which characterises hand-labour and machine-made work; of the stone cut by steam and the stone cut by hand. Let us only consider what ruin to the arts of India has been brought about by the introduction of machinery. The exquisite beauty of Oriental work is due to the individuality which is put into it; the worker, sitting beneath his grove of date-trees, puts original feeling, individual character, into each line graven on the metal, each thread woven in the woof, each turn given to the ivory. Machines destroy all this. They make machines of the men who tend them, and give a soulless and hateful monotony to everything which they produce.
Despite the vaunt of Playfair, the cobbler who sits on the village green, doing sound, if simple work, honestly, giving a personality to the shoe he labours on, and knowing on what foot it will be worn and whither it will go, is a man, and maybe in his own humble way a good artist; but the attendant who feeds the shoe-machine with oil, or takes from it its thousands of machine-cut leathers, is no better than a machine himself; so far from being ‘set free,’ he is in servitude. The cobbler on the village green knows far more of freedom than he.
This curious statement that hand-work, with its scope for originality and individual interest is slavery, whilst the work of factories, mechanical, monotonous and done in ugly chambers and unwholesome air, is liberty, is surely the oddest delusion with which the fanatical and biased mind of science ever delighted itself. Who can compare the freedom of the native child in a village of Benares, shaping an ebony or cocoanut toy under the palm-fronds of his home, with the green paroquets swinging, and the monkeys chattering in the sun-lit bamboos above his head, with the servitude of the poor little sickly and weary Hindoos, thronging in patient flocks the noisome factory-chambers of Bombay?