{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_13766/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_13766","id":"gutenberg_13766","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13766","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Philosophy"],"text":"COBWEBS OF THOUGHT\n\nby\n\n\"ARACHNE\"\n\nLondon\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\nCHAPTER\n\n  I. OUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES\n\n II. CONTRASTS\n\nIII. MAETERLINCK ON HAMLET\n\n IV. AN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY\n\n  V. IMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND\n\n\n\n\nMOTTO.\n\n\n\"The first philosophers, whether Chaldeans or Egyptians, said there\nmust be something within us which produces our thought. That something\nmust be very subtle: it is breath; it is fire, it is ether; it is a\nquintessence; it is a slender likeness; it is an intelechia; it is a\nnumber; it is harmony; lastly, according to the divine Plato, it is a\ncompound of the _same_ and the _other_! It is atoms which think in us,\nsaid Epicurus after Democritus. But, my friend, how does an atom\nthink? Acknowledge that thou knowest nothing of the matter.\"\n                                                           --VOLTAIRE.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\n\nOUR IGNORANCE OF OURSELVES.\n\n\nSelf-Analysis, apart from its scientific uses, has seldom rewarded\nthose who have practised it. To probe into the inner world of motive\nand desire has proved of small benefit to any one, whether hermit,\nmonk or nun, indeed it has been altogether mischievous in result,\nunless the mind that probed, was especially healthy. Bitter has been\nthe dissatisfaction, both with the process, and with what came of it,\nfor being miserably superficial it could lead to no real knowledge of\nself, but simply centred self on self, producing instead of\nself-knowledge, self-consciousness, and often the beginnings of mental\ndisease.\n\nFor fruitful self analysis it is apparently necessary then to have a\nclear, definite aim outside self--such as achieving the gain of some\nspecial piece of knowledge, and we find such definite aims in\npsychology, and certain systems of philosophy--Greek, English, and\nGerman, in Plato Locke, Kant, and in the meditations of Descartes, and\nmany others. Self-analysis is the basis of psychological knowledge,\nbut the science has been chiefly used to explain the methods by which\nwe obtain knowledge of the outer world in relation to ourselves. When\na philosopher centres self on self, in order to know self as a result\nof introspection, the results have been disastrous, and have\ncontributed nothing to knowledge, properly so-called. If religious\nself-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical\nself-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those\nwho care for thought for thought's sake--the so-called Hamlets of the\nworld, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas\nand dreams, and who never progress towards any clear issue. Amiel's\n\"Vie Intime\" is a study of this kind. It adds nothing to any clear\nknowledge of self, absorbing and interesting as the record is. It is\nsuggestive to a great degree, and in that lies its value, but it is as\nvague, as it is sad. It appeals deeply to those who live apart in a\nworld of their own, in thoughtful imaginative reverie, but its effects\non the mind were deplored even by Amiel himself in words which are\nacutely pathetic. The pain which consumed him arose from the\nconcentration of self on self. Self was monopolised by self,\nself-consciousness was produced, though without a touch of selfish\negoism.\n\nOut of this self-conscious introspection, grew that sterility of soul\nand mind, that dwindling of capacity, and individuality, which Amiel\nfelt was taking place within him. A constant, aimless, inevitable\nhabit of self-introspection was killing his mental life, before the\nend came physically.\n\nAnother philosophical victim to the same habit was John Stuart Mill,\nat one time of his life. His father analysed almost everything, except\nhimself, and John Stuart Mill had grown up in this logical atmosphere\nof analysis, and to much profit as his works show. But when he turned\nthe microscope on his own states of feeling, and on the aims of his\nlife, the result was melancholia--almost disease of mind. His grandly\ndeveloped faculty of analysis when devoted to definite knowledge\noutside himself, produced splendid results, as in his Logic, and his\nEssays, but when he analysed himself, he gained no additional\nknowledge, but a strange morbid horror that all possible musical\nchanges might be exhausted, and that there might be no means of\ncreating fresh ones. He also feared that should all the reforms he,\nand others, worked for, be accomplished, the lives of the reformers\nwould become meaningless and blank, since they were working for means,\nnot ends in themselves. Out of this hopeless mental condition there\nwas only one outlet possible, and that was to leave self-analysis of\nthis sort alone for ever, and to throw himself into its direct\ncontrary, the unconscious life of the emotions. John Stuart Mill did\nthis, and it saved him. In Wordsworth's poetry he found sanity and\nhealing. Happily for him that was not the age of Browning's \"Fifine at\nthe Fair.\" Had he fallen in with dialectical analysis in the garb of\npoetry, it must have killed him!\n\nAnd yet \"Know thyself\" has always been considered supremely excellent\nadvice, as true for our time, as for the age of Socrates. It certainly\nis disregarded by most of us, as fully as it was by many of the\nGreeks, whom Socrates interrogated so ruthlessly. Is there then a sort\nof self-analysis, which can be carried out for its own sake, and which\ncan be, at the same time, of vital use? Is all self-analysis when\npractised for its own sake necessarily harmful, and unprofitable? It\nis time to ask these questions if we are ever to know how to analyse\nourselves with profit, if we are ever to know ourselves. And we none\nof us do. As students, we are content with every other knowledge but\nthis. After all the self probing of the religious and philosophical,\nduring long centuries, what have we learned? Truly to ourselves, we\nare enigmas. To know everything else except the self that knows, what\na strange position! But it is our condition. The one thing that we do\nnot know--that we feel as if we never could know is the Self in us.\nOur characters, our powers, our natures, our being--what are they? Our\nfaculties--what can we do? And what can we not do? What is the reason\nof this faculty, or that want of faculty? We have never reached an\nunderstanding of ourselves, which makes us not only know, but perceive\nwhat we are capable of knowing; which makes us aware, not only that we\ncan do something, but why we can do it. We are an unknown quantity to\nourselves. We can calculate on a given action in a machine, but we\ncannot calculate on our own, much less on our moods. If we would but\ntake half the trouble to understand ourselves that we take to study a\nscience or art--if we could learn to depend on the sequence of our own\nthoughts as an engineer can on the sequence of movements in his steam\nengine--if we could dig, and penetrate into the depths of our own\nbeing, as a miner penetrates into a seam of coal--we might then\ncultivate with some profit our own special lines of thought, our own\ngifts, that portion of individuality, which we each possess. But it is\nso difficult to get to know it--we are always on the surface of\nourselves. What power will unearth our self and make us really know\nwhat we are and what we can do? It is because we do not know\nourselves, that we fail so hopelessly to give the things which are of\nincalculably real worth to the world, such as fresh individuality, and\nreality of character. Among millions of beings how few exist who\npossess strong original minds! We are _not_ individual for the most\npart, and we are _not_ real. Our lives _are_ buried lives; we are\nunconscious absorbers, and reproducers, under other words of that\nwhich we have imbibed elsewhere. We need not only fresh expressions of\nold statements, but actually new ideas, and new conceptions. (The\nfresh _subjects_ people talk about, are really fresh _conceptions_ of\nsubjects.) We shall never get this bloom of freshness, and this sense\nof reality and individuality of view unless we cultivate their\nsoil--to have fresh ideas, we must encourage the right atmosphere in\nwhich alone they can live. We must not let our own personality,\nhowever slight, be suppressed, or be discouraged, or interfered with\nby a more powerful, or a more excellent personality.\n\nIndividuality is so weak and pliable a thing in most of us that it is\nvery easily checked--it requires watchfulness and care, and not to be\noverborne, for the smallest individual thought of a mind of any\noriginality, is more worth to the world than any re-expression of the\nthought of some other mind, however great.\n\nEven the \"best hundred books\" may have a disastrous effect upon us.\nThey may kill some aspirations, if they kindle others. Persons of\nmature age may surely at some time have made the discovery that much\nhas been lost through the dominating influence of a superior mind.\nMany persons, for instance, have felt the great influence of Carlyle,\nand Ruskin, in their youth. Carlyle could do incalculable good to some\nminds by his ethics of work, but irremediable harm to others; minds\nhave actually become stunted and sterile through that part of his\nteaching, which was unsuited to them. Carlyle's temperament checked\ntheir proper development. Youth has a beautiful capacity for trust and\nbelief, and it accepts everything as equal in goodness and truth from\nan author it reverences. The young do not know enough of themselves,\nand they do not trust enough to their own instincts to discriminate.\nThey are dominated and unconsciously suppressed. Ruskin, in his\nethical views of art, and strange doctrines about some old masters,\nhas done nearly as much harm to susceptible minds as Carlyle. Ruskin\nrestricted and perverted their art ideals on certain lines as Carlyle\ncrushed ethical discrimination. Mind have been kept imprisoned for\nyears, and their development on the lines nature intended them to\ntake, has been arrested, by the want of belief in their own\ninitiative. What was inevitable for Ruskin's unique mind was yet wrong\nfor readers, who agreed to all his theories under the influence of his\nfascinating personality, and through the power of his individuality.\nIn life, we sometimes find we have made a series of mistakes of this\nsort, before at last we get glimmerings of what we were intended to\nbe, and we learn at last the need of having known ourselves, and the\nvital necessity of cultivating the atmosphere and colour of that mind\nof ours, which has been used merely as a tool to know everything else.\n\nSpiritualists and Theosophists talk of a Dominant Self, and an Astral\nbody, and of gleams of heavensent insight. Gleams of insight and\ndreams do come to us, and teach us truths, which \"never can be\nproved,\" and without some such intuitions the soul of man would indeed\nbe poor,\n\n  The soul that rises with us, our life's star,\n  Hath had elsewhere its setting,\n  And cometh from afar.\n\nBut the value of the intuitions is relative to the soul which has\nthem; they cannot be conveyed to any one else, or demonstrated; they\ncan never become Truths valid to all minds. And these last are the\ntruths we want if we would make some orderly progress towards a given\nissue. And so we resort after all, to science, to see if it can solve\nthe intellectual riddle of our being. What can it do for us? If we\nwould really know ourselves, we want a depth of self-analysis; not a\npitiful search for motives, not the superficial probings of a\nmoralist, not the boundless, limitless, self-absorbed speculations on\nthe nature of self of the philosopher, not the sympathetic noting of\neach emotion that crosses the horizon of the soul--the introspection\nof the Poet; these will never teach us the reason why we think and\nfeel on certain lines, and not on others--these will never explain to\nus what the mind is, that is in us--what that strange thing is, which\nwe have tried so vainly to understand. And without this knowledge how\nworthless is the work of the moralist; of what practical use is it for\nhim to endeavour to alter a man's character, when he does not even\nknow the ingredients that constitute character, still less the cause\nwhy character is good or bad. Mr. Robert Buchanan said in one of his\nessays: \"I can advance no scientific knowledge for seeing a great\ngenius in Robert Browning, or a fine painstaking talent in George\nEliot, for thinking George Meredith almost alone in his power of\nexpressing personal passion, and Walt Whitman supreme in his power of\nconveying moral stimulation. I can take a skeleton to pieces\nscientifically, but not a living soul. I am helpless before Mr.\nSwinburne, or any authentic poet, but quite at my ease before Macaulay\nor Professor Aytoun.\" Mr. Buchanan could presumably take the last two\nto pieces and analyse them as if they were skeletons; but before\nSwinburne, \"the living soul,\" he is helpless. Now we want a scientific\nreason for all this; we want to analyse, not the skeleton, that has\nbeen done often enough, but \"the living soul.\" We want to know the\ningredients of character that constituted Mr. Buchanan's preferences.\nWhat composition gave him his special temper and character? Why did\nhis mind tend towards Robert Browning, and away from George Eliot? Why\nin short did his mind work in the way it did? The more original the\nmind, the more its investigation would repay us. But it must be\nself-investigation; what we want are facts of mind, mental data and in\norder to get them, we must investigate the living mind All the usual\nexplanations of Temperament, Nature, Heredity, Education are the same\ndifficulties, expressed in different words. Heredity is a\ncircumstance, which has to be reckoned with, but we have to\ninvestigate, not circumstances, but results. Here is a living complex\nmind, no matter how I inherit it, here it is; now then, how does it\nwork, what can I do with it? And then comes the further inevitable\nquestion--What is it? What is this thing, this me, which tends to feel\nand act in a certain direction--to admire spontaneously, this, and to\ndespise with as perfect ease, that. What we need for scientific\ninvestigation into the ME is \"to utilise minds so as to form a living\nlaboratory\" _Mind_ vivisection without torture, cruelty or the knife.\nWhat we want to know definitely from science is: How does this thing\nwhich I call my mind work? Science regards mind as the sum of\nsensations, which are the necessary results of antecedent causes. It\nendeavours to know how and in what way these sensations can be trained\nand perfected. Nearly twenty years ago, a writer in the Psychological\nJournal \"Mind\"[1] Mr. J. Jacobs, attempted to form a Society for the\npurpose of experimental psychology. Thinkers and scientific men have\ncarried out this work, but the general public has not been greatly\ninterested or interested for any length of time. No such society\nexists among the English public. The greater number of enthusiastic\nstudents is to be found in Italy and America. But Germany has\nfurnished great individual workers, such as Fechner, Helmholtz, and\nWundt. Collective investigation was necessary to separate individual\npeculiarities from general laws. Science of course aims at changing\nthe study of individual minds/into \"a valid science of mind.\" Mr. J.\nJacobs wished a Society to be organised for the purpose of measuring\nmind, measuring our senses, and for testing our mental powers as\naccurately as weight and height are tested now, and also for\nexperimenting on will practice. He believed it possible to train the\nwill on one thing until we got it perfectly under control, and in so\ndoing we should modify character immensely. If this proved possible,\nwe ought to persevere until conduct becomes an art, education a\nprinciple, and mind is known as a science is known. Mr. Jacobs wanted\nsystematic enquiries to be made into powers of attention, such as \"Can\nwe listen and read at the same time, and reproduce what we have read\nand heard.\" And into the faculties of observation and memory, with\nafter images, and the capacity for following trains of reasoning,\n&c., &c., \"When we read a novel, do we actually have pictures of the\nscenes before our minds?\" Mr. Jacobs wished for enquiries into every\nkind of intelligence ordinary and extraordinary; out of all\ningredients of character, out of early impressions, out of classified\nemotions to build up an answer to the question: \"Is there a science\nof mind?\" Since he wrote, much has been done in experiment by the\nscientific. Children's minds are constantly being investigated, and\nthe results given to the public. Mr. Galton has to some extent\npopularised this sort of investigation. But it is still generally\nunpopular. Novelists, and artists, leisured people, women, everyone\ncould be of use, if they would investigate themselves, or offer their\nminds for investigation. But after all that the scientific French,\nGerman, American, Italian, and English workers have done, we are as\nyet only on the threshold of mind knowledge--of what we might know--if\nwe had ardour enough to push self-analysis in to the remotest corner\nof the brain, noting down, comparing, tabulating the most involuntary\nand ethereal sublimities that appear to flit through the mind, the\nmost subtle emotion that hardly finds expression in language. We must\npush on and on till we arrive at the knowledge of a mind science. Our\nscientific enquirers want, as we all do, more ardour, they are dulled\nby a cold, uninterested public. Psychologists now seem to despair of\nobtaining any large results from the science. Mr. E.W. Scripture in\n\"The New Psychology\" says, in 1897, \"It cannot dissect the mind with a\nscalpel, it cannot hope to find a startling principle of mental life.\"\nIf psychological experiment could be presented somewhat apart from its\ntechnicalities, and if minds could play freely round its discoveries,\nhow much more interesting it would be felt to be by the general\npublic! The great experimental worker, Mr. J. Mck Cattell has given[2]\nsome clear idea of the results he obtained by analysing and measuring\nsensations. The physical processes, which accompany sensations of\nsound and light for instance, unlike as they must be to sensations,\nbeing facts of matter in motion, yet share with them this\ncharacteristic, that sensations also have each an _order in time_, the\nmental processes can be measured, equally with the physical. Of course\nmeasuring sensations is only measuring \"the outside of the mind\"--but\nit produces among others one very suggestive result: \"that as time is\nrelative, if all things moved much more slowly or quickly than at\npresent, we should not feel any change at all. But if our objective\nmeasures of time moved twice as fast, whilst physiological movements\nand mental processes went on at the same rate as now, the days of our\nyears would be seven score, instead of three score years and ten, yet\nwe should not be any the older, or live any the longer. If on the\nother hand the rate of our physiological and mental motions was\ndoubled and we lived exactly as many years as before, we should feel\nas if we lived twice as long and were twice as old as now.\" This is a\nsuggestion for Mr. Well's \"Anticipations\" Is evolution leading us in\nthis direction or the other? Is it retarding or \"quickening the\nmolecular arrangements of the nervous system?\" Are we becoming \"more\ndelicately balanced so that physical changes proceed more quickly as\nthoughts become more comprehensive, feelings more intense, and will,\nstronger.\" Does the time it needs to think, feel, and will become\nless? And we may add are the physical and mental processes of the\nintelligent brain, quicker, or slower than the unintelligent? For if\nit is the sensitive quick witted organisation, which is destined to\nlive twice as long as it does now, how will it bear the burden of such\nadded years? Leaving aside inquiries into Time, and Space Sense--(and\nwhat enormous faculty our minds must have that can supply these)--let\nus go on to Mr. J. McKeen Cattell's analysis of memory--which is\nperhaps the most interesting of all to the student of mind--the\nanalysis of memory, attention and association of ideas. Just as the\neye can only see (attend to) a certain number of vibrations, for if\nthe requisite amount is added to, the result is blankness, darkness,\nso the mind can only attend to a certain amount of complexity--add to\nthe complexity and attention ceases, but, a certain degree of\ncomplexity is necessary to produce any conscious attention at all. In\nexperiments with a Metronome and the ticking of a watch, it is found\nthe attention at certain intervals gets weaker--from 2 to 3 seconds.\nThe impression produced by the ticking of the watch is less distinct,\nit seems to disappear and then is heard again. \"This is not from\nfatigue in the sense organ,\" but apparently represents \"a natural\nrhythm in consciousness or attention,\" which interferes with the\naccuracy of attention. What a suggestive fact this is! Have we not all\nat times, felt an inexplicable difficulty in listening and attending\nto certain speakers, which may perhaps be explained by a difference\nbetween the rhythm of our own consciousness, and that of the voice of\nthe speaker. In Association of Ideas the time that it takes for one\nidea to suggest another has been determined, but of course, it must be\nthe average time, for people differ enormously in the speed in which\nideas occur to them. It is impossible to allude here to more points,\nbut in the same interesting article Mr. Mck Cattell considers it\nproved that \"experimental methods can be applied to the study of mind,\nand that the positive results are significant,\" and he hopes, \"one\nday, we shall have as accurate and complete a knowledge of mind as we\nhave of the physical world.\" Beyond this knowledge of mind as a\nmachine, the Psychologist goeth not. He ends, and what do we know more\nas to what mind is? Philosophy properly so-called, begins here or\nought to begin. In science we experiment widely and constantly with\nmind and arrive at some knowledge of its workings and capacities; we\nlearn occupation with the mind itself as a subject for observation,\nand we practise a self-analysis, which adds to the sum of general\nknowledge. Through this study we know more about our senses and their\nfaculties, more of our own tendencies and idiosyncrasies, and in what\ndirection they tend. We are on the way to solve some such problems as:\n\"the influences of early impressions, the ingredients of character,\nthe varying susceptibility to mental anguish, the conquest of the\nwill,\" and many another. These are beginnings--there is much more to\nattain to, if we would know mind even scientifically, for we have only\nattacked its breast works, but we are on the right road, as we\nbelieve, towards this most interesting of all sciences--Mind Science.\nFrom Philosophy we do not as yet know definitely that mind _is_, or\nwhat it is, or why it is. The psychologist accepts the word mind, but\nit is not accepted as a _philosophical_ term; it is called\nConsciousness, Being, Ego, and anything else but mind. Notwithstanding,\nwe all feel what we mean by the word. Though the senses divide the\nnon-ego, the world outside us, into five separate parcels, things\nseen, things heard, things smelt, things touched, things tasted,\nthere is a faculty of unifying, a sensation of unity in us, which\nmakes us conscious of all these separate sensations as forming a\nwhole in any object which comes into our consciousness. Kant has\ngiven this unifying faculty, or sensation, a long name, which does\nnot make it any clearer. What is this inner power, which unifies\nsensations and how does it come? In some way the mind supplies it to\nits mental states or consciousness. And _within_ us this unifying\nfaculty, which we call Mind, is felt through the infinite number of\nmodifications of sensations or mental states, for we are aware that\nwhat we call a mind exists in us. It is this consciousness of unity in\ncomplexity, which makes memory and identity possible. The exploded\nidea of mental substance and its attributes, held by the School men,\nwas probably suggested to them by the consciousness of this mental\nunity. In our mentality there is something which makes each one say\n\"My mind,\" not \"My minds.\" Now it is this unity of sensations, which\nis lost, and the mind with it, if the ego is divided as Professor W.\nJames divides it into many egos such as--the inner self--the complex\nself--the social self--the intellectual self--and so on. For how does\nthat help us? It is the same unknown quantity in different\ncircumstances. The self that ponders in thought, knows itself as the\nsame that talks in society. The strange power of being able to analyse\nourselves at all is one of the strangest things about us. What a world\nof difference lies between the unconscious self of the animal and this\nconscious self of man! Professor James' brilliantly written chapter of\ninvestigation into the self leaves us amused rather than enlightened.\nAgainst all arguments to the contrary, we should refuse to give up the\nword mind, whether it is considered vague or defective in any or every\nway. Mind in all its complexity, is what we have to investigate\nscientifically. Mind in all its complexity is what the philosopher has\nto explain, not mind, analysed into simple acts of consciousness. The\nhypnotist talks of double, treble and quadruple personalities with\ntotally different characteristics \"under suggestion,\" but it helps us\nlittle for we have not yet defined mind on its sane and normal sides.\nConsidering the acuteness and the sanity of the French mind, it is\nsomewhat strange that the French psychologists should devote\nthemselves chiefly to the study of the insane and hysterical.\nPhilosophy, though it gives us soaring thoughts, grand speculations,\nand metaphysical schemes, from Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer,\nto Herbert Spencer, and Mr. Mallock, cannot give us any knowledge in\nwhich they mutually agree. Mr. Mallock sums up philosophy as a\nnecessity to the mind. We _must_ believe in some theory of mind, some\nreligion, some philosophy, else life is dreary and unlivable. This\nappears to be the result of his book \"The Veil of the Temple,\" and\nthis is simply the doctrine of utility. But no philosopher, can tell\nus why mind works on certain lines and not on others, because they\ncannot tell us definitely that they _know_ what mind is. Mind is a\nfunction of _Matter: Matter_ is a function of thought: Mind is\nNoumenon the unseen and unknown, as contrasted with Phenomena the seen\nand known; the universe, the creation of the mind; the mind, the\nproduct of the universe. All these ideas and many others so widely\ndiffering can none of them receive a demonstrable proof;--these\ncontrary statements show how far we are from possessing any real\nknowledge of what mind is. After all that has been written, elaborated\nand imagined, do we actually _know_ more than Omar Khayam knew?\n\n  \"There was the door to which I found no key;\n  There was the veil through which I could not see;\n  Some little talk awhile of Me and Thee\n  There was--and then no more of Thee and Me.\"\n\nPhilosophy is still powerless to tell us what mind is; the self, the\nego always vanishes as we seem to be nearing it, it always eludes our\ndeepest probings--we only demonstrate our failure in regard to our\nknowledge of it. All this is true, but should we therefore despair? If\nwe are born with the record on the brain of the inexorable desire to\n_know_, the very failure should stimulate us to further, and greater,\nand more fruitful questionings.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n\nCONTRASTS.\n\n\nCARLYLE, GEORGE ELIOT, MAZZINI, BROWNING,\n\nAll contrasts drawn between writers, and thinkers should have for aim\nthe setting forth of some striking and fundamental difference in\nthought, and it would be hard to find anywhere a greater and a more\nvivid contrast than that between Carlyle and George Eliot. For George\nEliot's philosophy was centred in the well-being of the Race.\n\nCarlyle's was summed up in the worth of the Individual.\n\nGeorge Eliot teaches in prose and still more in poetry that\nPersonality, with its hopes, loves, faiths, aspirations, must all be\nrelinquished, and its agonies and pains endured, should Humanity gain\nby the sacrifice and the endurance.\n\nShe considers the Individual as part of collective humanity, and that\nhe does not live for himself, he has no continuance of personal life,\nhe has no permanence, except as a living influence on the Race. This\nis the Positivist creed, the Racial Creed.\n\nBeyond the influence that it exerts, spiritual personality is doomed.\nIt is not humanity in God but humanity in itself which is to exist\nfrom age to age, solely in the memory of succeeding generations.\n\n  \"Oh may I join the Choir Invisible\n  Of those immortal dead, who live again\n  In minds made better by their presence.\"\n\nPermanence and continuance and immortality are in the race alone.\nGeorge Eliot's strong accentuation of the race is the Gospel of\nannihilation to the individual. Yet the most personal and imaginative\nof poets has treated this lofty altruism in his strange, sad,\nbeautiful poem of \"The Pilgrims,\" with a fervour greater even than\nthat of George Eliot.\n\nHere are two stanzas:\n\n  \"And ye shall die before your thrones be won.\n  Yea, and the changed world and the liberal sun\n  Shall move and shine without us and we lie\n  Dead; but if she too move on earth and live,\n  But if the old world with the old irons rent,\n  Laugh and give thanks, shall we not be content?\n  Nay we shall rather live, we shall not die,\n  Life being so little and Death so good to give.\"\n\n  \"Pass on then and pass by us, and let us be.\n  For what life think ye after life to see?\n  And if the world fare better will ye know?\n  And if men triumph, who shall seek you and say?\"\n\n  \"Enough of light is this for one life's span.\n  That all men born are mortal, but not Man:\n  And we men bring death lives by night to sow,\n  That man may reap and eat and live by day.\"\n                                              --SWINBURNE.\n\nTurning from the moral grandeur of self-abnegation that fills the\nphilosophy of humanity, we feel the contrast of strong human\npersonality, which animates us with an inspiring sensation as we\nlisten to the prophet of individualism.\n\nFew can have read Carlyle's writings in their youth, without having\nexperienced an indescribable and irresistible stimulation, to\naccomplish some real work, to make some strenuous endeavour \"before\nthe night cometh.\" Carlyle's contempt for sloth, stings; his bitter\nwords are a tonic, they scourge, encourage, and at times plead with\npoetic fervour. \"Think of living. Thy life wert thou the pitifullest\nof all the sons of earth is no idle dream, but a solemn reality. _It\nis thy own; it is all thou hast to front Eternity with._ Work then\nlike a star unhasting and unresting.\"\n\nThe man's soul, naked through sloth, or clothed through works, has to\nmeet its doom, and to bear it as it best can. For Carlyle ignored the\ncollective view of mankind, the single soul had to prostrate itself\nbefore the Supreme Power. This Supreme Power was almost as vague (to\nhim) as George Eliot's Permanent Influence is to us. For Carlyle did\nnot believe \"that the Soul could enter into any relations with God,\nand in the sight of God it was nothing.\" There is nothing singular in\nthis. The religious, but independent-minded Joubert thought \"it was\nnot hard to know God, provided one did not force oneself to define\nHim,\" and deprecated \"bringing into the domain of reason, that which\nbelongs to our innermost feeling.\"\n\nThis very well represented Carlyle's view, but it occupies but a small\nplace in his writings. All his books, his letters, pamphlets,\nhistories, essays show his profound living belief in the worth of\nindividual men, as the salt of the earth, and the young are always\ngreatly influenced by strong personalities. But the mature mind that\nstruggles after catholicity of taste, and wide admiration, receives\nsome rude shocks from Carlyle's treatment of humanity, as Dr. Garnett\nhas well shown in his excellent biography of Carlyle; indeed it has\nled with some to the parting of the ways. For the hopes and\ninspirations of poet, reformer, teacher, became in great part to him\nas \"the idle chatter of apes\" and \"the talk of Fools.\"\n\nMazzini's world-wide sympathies, his life of many deaths for his\ncountry, were unintelligible to Carlyle, who also described, as \"a\nsawdust kind of talk,\" John Stuart Mill's expression of belief and\ninterest in reforming and raising the whole social mass of toiling\nmillions.\n\nBracing and stimulating, as is Carlyle's strong, stern doctrine of\nindependence, of work, and of adherence to Truth for its own sake, we\nfeel the loss his character sustained, through the contempt that grew\nupon him for the greater part of humanity. The Nemesis of contempt was\nshown in his inability at last to see even in individuals, the\ngreatest things. Physical force came to be admired by him for itself.\nFrom hero-worship, he passed \"to strong rulers, and saviours of\nsociety.\"\n\nThe worth of the individual, withered and changed, and Carlyle's hopes\nrested finally on strength alone, just as George Eliot's thoughts\ncentred on the influence human beings exercised on each other, and\nthere is extraordinary beauty in this idea. How striking is her\nconception of the good we all receive from even the simplest lives, if\nthey have been true lives. \"The growing good of the world is partly\ndependent upon unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with\nyou and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who\nlived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.\" But some\nwho read her books feel an underlying tone of sadness--a melancholy\nwhisper as of a finality, an inevitable end to all future development,\neven of the greatest personalities. Many other writers have believed\nthat men live in the world's memory only by what they have done in the\nworld, but George Eliot is definite that this memory is all, that\npersonality has no other chance of surviving. Her hopes rested on\nbeing:\n\n  \"The sweet presence of a good diffused,\n  And in diffusion ever more intense,\n  So shall I join the Choir Invisible\n  Whose music is the gladness of the world.\"\n\nBoth George Eliot and Carlyle over accentuated one the race, the other\nthe individual.\n\nMazzini's place in thought was exactly between the two.\n\nHe believed in God _and_ Collective Humanity. Humanity in God. He\nsaid: \"We cannot relate ourselves to the Divine, but through\ncollective humanity. Mr. Carlyle comprehends only the individual; the\ntrue sense of the unity of the race escapes him. He sympathises with\nmen, but it is with the separate life of each man, and not their\ncollective life.\"[3]\n\nCollective labour, according to an educational plan, designed by\nProvidence, was, Mazzini believed, the only possible development of\nHumanity.\n\nHe could never have trusted in any good and effective development from\nHumanity alone.\n\nNationality, he reverenced, and widened the idea, until it embraced\nthe whole world. He said it was the mission, the special vocation of\nall who felt the mutual responsibility of men. But nationality of\nItaly meant to Carlyle, only \"the glory of having produced Dante and\nColumbus,\" and he cared for them not for the national thought they\ninterpreted, but as gigantic men. Mazzini cared for \"the progressive\nhistory of mankind,\" Carlyle for \"the Biography of great men.\"\n\nCarlyle's sadness \"unending sadness,\" came, Mazzini thought from\nlooking at human life only from the individual point of view. And a\npoem by Browning, \"Cleon\" would have afforded him another example of\n\"the disenchantment and discouragement of life,\" from individualism.\n\nBrowning was as great an individualist as Carlyle; he stood as far\napart from belief in Collective Humanity, and Democracy as Carlyle\ndid, though in Italy, he felt the thrill of its nationality, as\nCarlyle did not. But Mazzini might have said also truly of Browning,\nthat, with the exception of Italy, \"he sympathised with the separate\nlife of each man and not with their collective life.\" The sadness\nMazzini attributed to Carlyle's strong individualistic point of view,\nought logically then to have been the heritage of Browning also. _If_\nMazzini's explanation was the true one, it is another proof of the\ndifficulty of tabulating humanity, or of making a science of human\nnature. For the Individualist Browning, far from being remarkable for\nsadness, was the greatest of optimists amongst English poets. He had a\nfar wider range of sympathies, than Carlyle, for failure attracted\nhim, as much as victory, the Conquered equally with the Conqueror,\nindeed every shade of character interested him. Perhaps he expresses\nthrough \"Cleon\" some of his own strongest feelings, his insistence on\nthe worth of individuality, his craving for deeper joy, fuller life\nthan this world gives, and his horror of the destruction of\npersonality. Cleon, the Greek Artist, is indeed \"the other side\" to\nthe poetic altruism of \"The Pilgrims\" and \"The Choir Invisible.\" Never\nwas the yearning for Personal Continuance more vividly and more\nhumanly presented. The Greek Artist, without any knowledge of, or\nbelief in Immortality, hungers after it. Browning represents him as\nwriting to and arguing with the King, who has said:\n\n  \"My life......\n  Dies altogether with my brain, and arm,......\n  ....triumph Thou, who dost _not_ go.\"\n\nAnd Cleon says if Sappho and \u00c6schylus survive because we sing her\nsongs, and read his plays, let them come, \"drink from thy cup, speak\nin my place.\"\n\nInstead of rejoicing in his works surviving he feels the horror of the\ncontrast, the life within his works, the decay within his heart. He\ncompares his sense of joy growing more acute and his soul's power and\ninsight more enlarged and keen, while his bodily powers decay. His\nhairs fall more and more, his hand shakes, and the heavy years\nincrease.\n\nHe realises:--\n\n  \"The horror quickening....\n  The consummation coming past escape,\n  When I shall know most, and yet least enjoy--\n  When all my works wherein I prove my worth,\n  Being present still to mock me in men's mouths,\n  Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou,\n  I, I, the feeling, thinking, acting man,\n  The man who loved his life so over much,\n  Shall sleep in my Urn. . . It is so horrible.\"\n\nHe imagines in his need some future state may be revealed by Zeus.\n\n  \"Unlimited in capability\n  For joy, as this is in desire for joy,\n  To seek which the joy hunger forces us:\"\n\nHe speculates that this life may have been made straight, \"to make\nsweet the life at large.\"\n\nAnd that we are: \"freed by the throbbing impulse we call Death.\" But\nhe ends by fearing that were it possible Zeus must have revealed it.\n\nThis passionate pathetic longing for joy, and life beyond death finds\nan echo in many hearts, which yet can admire the grand altruism of\n\"The Pilgrims\" and the selfless spirit of the Impersonal Martyr. After\nconsidering all this clash of thought, it seems as if it all resolved\nitself into the individual temperament which settles and modifies and\nadapts to itself the forms of our philosophies and religions, our\nHopes and Faiths, and Despairs.\n\nFor from whence comes the real power thinkers possess over us? It is\nnot in their forms of thought, as Matthew Arnold said most truly, but\nin the tendencies, in the spirit which led them to adopt those\nformulas. Every thinker has some secret, an exact object at which he\naims, which is \"the cause of all his work, and the reason of his\nattraction\" to some readers, and his repulsion to others.\n\nWhat was the secret aim then in George Eliot which made her believe so\nfirmly in the permanent influence of Humanity, and in the annihilation\nof personal existence? Was the tendency of temperament developed by\nher life and circumstances?\n\nWhat was it that developed so strong an Individualism in Carlyle and\nBrowning and awoke in Browning such unlimited hope, and in Carlyle\nsuch \"unending sadness?\"\n\nWhy did the darkness and the storm of his life give Mazzini so\npassionate a belief in Humanity, and such an intimate faith in God?\nThese and such-like are the problems we should have in our minds as we\nstudy the works of Great Writers, if we would penetrate into the\ninnermost core of their nature, in short, if we would really\nunderstand them.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n\nMAETERLINCK ON HAMLET.\n\n\nMaeterlinck, in his first essay, \"The Treasure of the Humble,\" is,\nundoubtedly, mystical. He does not argue, or define, or explain, he\nasserts, but even in that book and far more so in his second, \"Wisdom\nand Destiny,\" it is real life which absorbs him as Alfred de Sutro his\ntranslator points out. In this book \"he endeavours in all simplicity\nto tell what he sees.\" He is a Seer.\n\nMaeterlinck's aim is to show that contrary to the usual idea, what we\ncall Fate, Destiny, is not something apart from ourselves, which\nexercises power over us, but is the product of our own souls.\n\nHe takes many examples to prove this, of which Hamlet is one. Man,\nsaid Maeterlinck, is his own Fate in an inner sense; he is superior to\nall circumstances, when he refuses to be conquered by them. When his\nsoul is wise and has initiative power, it cannot be conquered by\nexternal events, and happiness is inevitable to such a soul.\nMaeterlinck asks: Where do we find the fatality in Hamlet? Would the\nevil of Claudius and Queen Gertrude have spread its influence if a\nwise man had been in the Palace? If a dominant, all powerful soul--a\nJesus--had been in Hamlet's palace at Elsinore, would the tragedy of\nfour deaths have happened? Can you conceive any wise man living in the\nunnatural gloom that overhung Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet\ninduced by a fanatical impulse, which tells him that duty consists in\nrevenge alone? And revenge never can be a duty. Hamlet thinks much,\ncontinues Maeterlinck, but is by no means wise. Destiny can withstand\nlofty thoughts but not simple, good, tender and loyal thoughts. We\nonly triumph over destiny by doing the reverse of the evil she would\nhave us commit. _No tragedy is inevitable_. But at Elsinore no one had\nvision--no one saw--hence the catastrophe. The soul that saw would\nhave made others see. Because of Hamlet's pitiful blindness, Laertes,\nOphelia, the King, Queen, and Hamlet die. Was his blindness\ninevitable? A single thought had sufficed to arrest all the forces of\nmurder. Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his unhappiness, and his\nshadow lay on Horatio, who lacked the courage to shake himself free.\nHad there been one brave soul to cry out the truth, the history of\nElsinore had not been shrouded in horror. All depended not on destiny,\nbut on the wisdom of the wisest, and this Hamlet was; therefore he was\nthe centre of the drama of Elsinore, for he had no one wiser than\nhimself on whom to depend.\n\nMaeterlinck's doctrine of the soul and its power over Destiny is very\ncaptivating, but it is doubtful if he was fortunate in his choice of\nHamlet as an example of ignorance and blindness, and of failure to\nconquer fate, through lack of soul-power.\n\nHow Hamlet should have acted is not told us, but that it was his duty\nto have given up revenge is clearly suggested. We might, perhaps, sum\nup Hamlet's right course, from the hints Maeterlinck has given us, in\na sentence. Had he relinquished all idea of revenge and forgiven his\nuncle and mother, he would have ennobled his soul, gained inward\nhappiness, spread a gracious calm around and have so deeply influenced\nhis wicked relations, that they would have become repentant and\nreformed. Thus his evil Destiny would have been averted and we should\nhave had no tragedy of Hamlet. This explanation sounds rather\nconventional and tract-like put into ordinary language, but, indeed,\nMaeterlinck's doctrine might be compressed into a syllogism:--\n\n  All the wise are serene,\n    Hamlet was not serene,\n    Hamlet was not wise.\n\nThat is the simple syllogism by which Maeterlinck tests human nature.\nBut Hamlet's nature cannot be packed into a syllogism. A Theorist, who\ntries to fit into his theory a peculiar nature cannot always afford to\nunderstand that nature. The external event that froze Hamlet's soul\nwith horror, and deprived it of \"transforming power\" was a\nsupernatural event, not \"disease, accident, or sudden death!\" The\nmandate laid on his soul was a supernatural mandate, and as Judge Webb\nsaid in a suggestive and interesting paper: \"The Genuine text of\nShakespeare,\" October number of the \"National Review, 1903,\" \"it was\nutterly impossible for that soul to perform it,\" or it might be added,\nto cast it aside. He was betrayed by the apparition \"into consequences\nas deep as those into which Macbeth was betrayed by the instruments of\ndarkness--the witches.\" We cannot reason about Maeterlinck's thought\nthat if expressed \"would have arrested all the forces of murder\"\nbecause we do not know what the thought was, nor can any one gauge or\nestimate rightly the power of Hamlet's soul to conquer external\nevents, without taking into careful account that the Vision from\nanother world came to Hamlet, when he was outraged at the re-marriage\nof his mother and full of emotion that the sudden death of his father\ncalled forth in his meditative mind.[4] But Maeterlinck never refers\nto anything of this sort. He does not seem to realise what the effects\nof the vision must have been on a complicated character--on \"a great\ngentleman in whom the courtier's, scholar's eye, tongue, sword, were\nall united.\" Hamlet was _not_ an example of the normal type of the\nirresolute man--but the mandate laid upon his nature, it could not\nperform. The vision was his destiny--for Destiny lay in the nature of\nthe mandate, as well as the nature of the man, and unhappiness was\ninevitable; yet Maeterlinck says, \"No tragedy is inevitable, the wise\nman can be superior to all circumstances by the initiative of the\nsoul. To be able to curb the blind force of instinct is to be able to\ncurb external destiny.\" Did not Hamlet curb his instincts of love for\nOphelia, and love for books and philosophy, under pressure of the\ngreat commandment laid upon him? He could not curb the power of his\nintellect--it was too subtle and supreme, but he concealed all else.\nYet Hamlet could not escape his Destiny, by curbing his instincts. The\ninitiative of his soul worked against the duty he had to perform. And\nit was through his \"simple, tender, good,\" thoughts of, and love for\nhis father that he kept to his task, and could not \"withstand his\ncomplicated destiny.\" Maeterlinck is surely wrong, too, in saying\nHamlet was moved by a fanatical impulse to revenge for he spent his\nlife in weighing _pros_, and _cons_, and in combating the idea that he\nmust fulfil the duty laid upon him. So unfanatical was he that he even\ndoubted at times whether the apparition was his father's spirit. But\nsupposing there had been \"one brave soul to cry out the truth\"\n(Maeterlinck does not say what the truth was); we will suppose that\nHamlet had resolved to forgive fully and generously, would he, then,\nhave gained the fortitude and serenity, which Maeterlinck evidently\nmeans by inner happiness? Not if he kept a shred of his inner nature.\nHamlet \"saw no course clear enough to satisfy his understanding.\"\nCould such a nature be serene? But was it unwise? Judicious, wise, and\nwitty when at ease; he could not escape the dark moods that made him\nindifferent to the visible world.\n\n\"If OEdipus had had the inner refuge of a Marcus Aurelius, what could\nDestiny have done to him?\" asks Maeterlinck. Fate we suppose would\nhave had no power over him, if he had calmly reasoned over the\nterrible circumstances in which he found himself involved, and if he\npreserved his equanimity to the end, as M. Aurelius would have done.\nDoes this prove more than that the two men may have had very different\ntemperaments? But, individuality cannot be made to agree with theory,\nand can be tabulated in no _science_ book of humanity. When\nMaeterlinck says, \"Hamlet's ignorance puts the seal on his\nunhappiness,\" we may well ask ignorance of what? Was it ignorance of\nthe power of will? Certainly his intellect was greater than his will.\n\"He would have been greater had he been less great.\" The\n\"concentration of all the interests that belong to humanity\" was in\nHamlet. Except the gifts of serenity and calmness, what did he lack?\nAnd because he was not inwardly serene, Maeterlinck considers him\nblind and ignorant. It is strange to connect blindness and ignorance\nwith a wit of intellectual keenness, an imagination of a poet, and the\nunflinching questioning of the philosopher. Maeterlinck says: \"Hamlet\nthinks much but is by no means wise.\" How does Hamlet show he had not\nthe wisdom of life? Maeterlinck, no doubt, would dwell on his varying\nmoods, his subtle melancholy, his nature baffled by a supernatural\ncommand. If he was not wise how strange he should have said so many\nwords of truest wisdom both of Life and Death, \"If it be now, 'tis not\nto come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet\nit will come; the readiness is all.\" We feel that Hamlet was \"a being\nwith springs of thought and feeling and action deeper than we can\nsearch.\" But the elements in his nature could not resolve themselves\ninto an inner life of calm. Therefore, according to Maeterlinck, he\nwas not wise, for he could not conquer his inner fatality--destiny in\nhimself. Maeterlinck's ideas are very beautiful, and he writes\ndelightfully, but his test of wisdom is questionable, for Hamlet's\nthoughts have captured and invaded and influenced the best minds and\nexperiences of thinkers for centuries, How many a Shakespearean reader\nhas _felt_ that Hamlet is one of the very wisest of men as well as one\nof the most lovable and attractive! Not his ignorance, but his wisdom\nhas borne the test of study and time. He did not bear the tragedy of\nlife when the supernatural entered it, with an unshaken soul, but\nourselves and the realities of life become clearer to us, the more we\nread his thoughts. If \"it is _we_ who are Hamlet,\" as Hazlitt said, it\nis a great tribute to his universality--but a greater one to\nourselves. Indeed, we learn wisdom, not only from the lucubrations of\nthe serene and calm, or from Hamlet, magnificent in thought, acute and\nplayful, but also from Hamlet in his mortal struggles, in his deep\nquestionings, and his melancholy.\n\n  For wisdom \"dwells not in the light alone\n    But in the darkness and the cloud.\"\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n\nAN IMPOSSIBLE PHILOSOPHY.\n\n\nPhilosophers talk of a philosophy of art, ancient and modern. But this\nis unnecessary. Art is always art, or never art, as the case may be;\nwhether it is art in the days of Pheidias and Praxitiles, of Rafael,\nor of Turner, or whether it is not art as in the days of its\ndegeneration in Greece and Italy. The outward expression of course,\nchanges, but it changes through individual and national aptitudes, not\nfrom Chronology. That indispensable and indescribable thing which is\nof the essence of art, is the same in all times and countries; for art\nis ever young, there is no old, no new, and here is its essential\ndifference from science. In its essence, art is neither ancient or\nmodern, because it is incapable of progress, it is the expression of\nan illimitable idea. We find before the Christian Era more beautiful\nsculpture than after it. \"Ah!\" Victor Hugo says in his \"William\nShakespeare,\" \"You call yourself Dante, well! But that one calls\nhimself Homer. The beauty of art consists in not being susceptible of\nimprovement. A _chef d'oeuvre_ exists once and for ever. The first\nPoet who arrives, arrives at the summit. From Pheidias to Rembrandt\nthere is no onward movement. A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet\nnever throws a Poet into the shade. Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides,\nParacelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not;\nPheidias not. Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not.\nThere is movement in art, but not progress. The Frescoes of the\nSistine Chapel are absolutely nothing to the Metopes of the Parthenon.\nRetrace your steps as much as you like from the Palace of Versailles\nto the Castle of Heidelberg. From the Castle of Heidelberg to the\nNotre Dame of Paris. From the Notre Dame to the Alhambra. From the\nAlhambra to St. Sophia. From St. Sophia to the Coliseum. From the\nColiseum to the Propyleans. You may recede with ages, you do not\nrecede in art. The Pyramids and the Iliad stand on a fore plan.\nMasterpieces have the same level--the Absolute. Once the Absolute is\nreached, all is reached.\" And Schopenhauer says, \"Only true works of\nart have eternal youth and enduring power like nature and life\nthemselves. For they belong to no age, but to humanity--they cannot\ngrow old, but appear to us ever fresh and new, down to the latest\nages.\" Let us disclaim then any such word as Modern in relation to\nart, particularly in relation to a philosophy which has to do with the\nprinciple and essence of art. Is a Philosophy of Art possible? There\nmust be some who will think it is impossible. Have we a philosophy\nthat explains such an apparently simple thing as how one knows\nanything--or of simple consciousness? Every philosopher that has\nattempted to explain consciousness or how we know, takes refuge in\nassumptions. At any Philosophical Society, if you ask for the\nexplanation of simple Consciousness, the avalanche of answers, each\ndiffering from the other, will bewilder you. We know the outward\nappearance of an object, of which we say that we know it, but what is\nit _in itself_? Of that we are as much in the dark as we are of the\nmind that knows. We say, each of us--I know, but in philosophy we are\nnot clear whether there is a thing that knows. We know we are\nconscious, but we know nothing but that bare fact. We do not know how\nan object swims into our consciousness. We do not know in the\nscientific meaning of knowledge, how we come to know any object. Our\nabysmal ignorance is this, that, of the thing known, and of that which\nknows, and of the process of knowing, we know nothing. Who can tell us\nhow the movement of matter in the brain causes what we call thought.\nIs it a cause, or merely a concurrence? When we can know this much,\nthen art may have a philosophy in which we can all agree. But, what\nsigns are there of even the beginnings of agreement? Certainly art is\nnot known as we know a science--perhaps we do not wish it ever to be\nso. And the process of art is as indescribable as the process of\nknowing. The advance we have made in philosophy seems to be this, that\nwhereas one philosopher after another according to his temperament has\nthought he knew and has supplied us with hypotheses, and with\nsuccessive clues to the mystery of Being, and with many systems of\nthought, we know now that none of them were adequate to supply even\ninitial steps, and so, for the most part, we fall back on the\nknowledge that comes to us from living, from being, from knowing\nappearances, from action, and from feeling; on that position in short\nwhich Schopenhauer thought so despicable in a human being, _i.e._,\nRefuge in the common sense attitude, and practically the giving up of\nphilosophy. The outcome of all the brain work on philosophy, since the\ntime of the Greeks, is that despair has entered into our minds of ever\nachieving any knowledge of the _Real_, beneath and beyond Phenomena,\nof a knowledge which _commands_ assent. Can even a Hegel write a\nconvincing Philosophy of Art--which implies a philosophy of complex\nknowing and feeling; the feeling or emotion, or sensation, which\nvibrates in music and colour and poetry. Could Hegel himself answer\nthis objection: that poetry eludes all tests--that that which you can\nthoroughly explain in any way is not poetry, as Swinburne has said? It\nis the inexplicable, then, which lies at the essence of art and it is\nthis, which if there is to be a Philosophy of Art must be its object.\nThe Inexplicable must be the object for the thinker with his orderly\nsequences, his logical search for causes and results. It is not that\nartistic feeling is too subtle as a subject; it is that we cannot get\nhold of it at all. It is where? Here, in our emotion, our feeling, our\nimagination; it flies from us and it comes again.\n\nWe do not ask for a philosophy of artistic _creations_ (whatever they\nmay be, in music, painting, or poetry), for a Philosophy of Art must\nbe a philosophy of the artistic _faculty_ that creates, and that\nadmires and understands and is absorbed in the creations. Philosophy\nof Art is the philosophy of the creative--receptive qualities. We feel\nthese qualities, but we are not able to explain them, we cannot even\nhelp another to feel them. The capacity comes from within. In\nourselves is a nameless response to Beauty. All art is an expression\nof the artist thrown out towards a reproduction of some intuitive Idea\nwithin, and what artist has ever satisfied his inward aspiration? Why\ntell us that harmonies of art may be traced down to the simplest\nlines, and, that at the root, lies an aim of edification? Simplify the\nlines, as we will, let the basis of edification lie at the root of all\nbeauty, still the initial question remains unanswered. Why do certain\nlines in a poem, curves of beauty in a statue, colour in a picture,\nproduce in us the feelings of beauty and delight? Why does\nedification, if it is such, produce in me, the sense of a nameless\nbeauty?\n\nThere is that in us which we call the sense or Idea of beauty, and we\nrecognise it in works of art. What causes it in us? It is a sentiment,\nbut it is more than a sentiment. It is indissolubly connected with\nexpression, but it is more than expression. It raises all kinds of\nassociations, but it is more than associations. It thrills the nerves,\nit stimulates the intellect, but it is more than a thrill, and other\nthan the intellect; it is treatment, but who can give laws for it? The\nanswer which explained the sense of beauty that we feel in works of\nart would go straight to the revelation of the essence of beauty. All\nthat \u00e6sthetic teachers tell us is, that certain lines and colours and\narrangements are harmonious, and the philosopher fails in telling us\nwhy they are harmonious. Does Hegel? Even if we are told there is an\nIdea in us which is also an Idea in Nature, and, therefore, we can\nunderstand the Idea, because We are It, does that throw light on what\nthe Idea really is? We are the human side of nature, and have the same\nhuman difficulty as before in interpreting the Idea. Yet there is one\nphilosopher, as many readers must have felt, who has brought us nearer\nto the interpretation of the artistic attitude, than any other, and\nthis is Schopenhauer on what we may call his mystical side in his book\nof \"Will and Idea.\" Perhaps most philosophers have erred in too rigid\nan exclusion of feeling and imagination. It is impossible to help\nfeeling that his philosophy is largely moulded and created by his\nfeeling for art--and by his oriental mysticism. He can be curiously\nprosaic at the same time, and this is another proof of the infinite\ncomplexity of the mind:--he can be inartistic and unpoetic so that he\nalmost staggers us, as in his unillumining remarks on Landscape Art.\nVegetation, according to Schopenhauer's theory, is on a lower grade of\nWill Objectification or Manifestation, than men and animals are, and\nlandscape painting is, therefore, altogether on a different plane.\nThrough his theories he loses the power of seeing that art is\nconcerned with treatment, with conception and expression, that beauty\ndepends not on the object, but on the treatment of the object.\n\nBut if we turn to his mystical theory of the Unconscious, we do get a\nbeautiful description of the absorption, that is, of the essence of\nthe artistic nature. He shows how the artist loses his own personality\nin the object of contemplation, so completely that he identifies\nhimself mentally with it. Schopenhauer describes the artistic mind\nwhen it is affected by the beautiful and the sublime. By losing all\nsense of individuality and personality the artist is so possessed by\nhis object of thought and vision that he is absorbed in it and feels\nthe Idea, which it represents. This theory put into ordinary language,\nis that the artist has in him the sense of a great Idea, such as\nBeauty, and in his power of vision into objects of beauty he lives in\nthe sense of Beauty, which they represent. They represent to him the\nIdea of Beauty itself. He lives in the Idea, is isolated in it,\nabsorbed in it, and by the privilege of genius can keep the sense of\nthe inner world of beauty and can produce beautiful works of art.\n\nWith joy and innocence, his whole soul absorbed in the beautiful forms\nwhich he creates, he represents the ideas within him, and he loses the\nsense of life and consciousness and Will, which, according to\nSchopenhauer, is to be freed from constant demands, and strivings. He\nis no longer bound to the wheel of desire--he has no personal\ninterests--no subjectivity.\n\nHe is a \"pure will-less, time-less subject of knowledge\" of \"pure\nknowing,\" which means complete absorption. He excites and suggests in\nothers the knowledge of the Ideas, which, beautiful objects represent.\nThus, through the works of Genius, others may reach an exalted frame\nof mind, for, indeed, if we had not some artistic capacity for seeing\nand feeling the Ideas which works of art represent, we should be\nincapable of feeling or enjoying them. Perhaps, to make this abstract\nthought clearer, it would be well to endeavour to find some examples\nwhich will illustrate Schopenhauer's meaning. And Shakespeare offers\nus incomparable examples. In his great tragedies--such as Othello, for\ninstance--we feel the knowledge or Idea of Life, in all its varied\nhuman manifestations. Life, manifold, diverse, and abundant--and all\nfelt intuitively from within. Into his creations, Shakespeare pours\nwide and overflowing knowledge of life; there is nothing narrow or\nshut in, in his conceptions, but every character is alive in the great\nsense, illustrating no narrow precept or trite morality, no cut and\ndried scheme of a petty out-look on life, but the great morals of life\nitself, as varied, as intangible and as inexplicable. He represents\nthis sense of varied life as manifested or objectified in his\ncreations, _i.e._, his characters. In _Othello_, for instance, we have\nsuggestions of love and jealousy that go down to the very depth of the\nheart, through imaginative insight. And what we are brought close to,\nis the vivid intense life of feeling that Shakespeare's creations\nhold, and that we, ourselves, are capable of holding in our own\nhearts. In this presentation, Shakespeare flashes the sense of life\nwith all its complexities of heart and brain into us. He does not\nstand, as it were aside, as a commentator on the faults or weaknesses\nof his characters, but he wafts us out of our circumscribed lives, out\nof our limitation of thought, we know not how, into an atmosphere\nquivering with passion, and felt by us all the keener, because we\nrecognise that the Poet never thought about _us_ at all. He excites\nour sympathies by his own intuitions into the clashing ideas, which he\nrepresents in the tragedy of a passionately loving and a jealous\nnature. We learn truths, not of fact, but of life, focussed and\narranged as an artist arranges them, and permeated with that strange\nsense of wonder which only Life can give. We feel the suggestion of an\ninevitable dim something beyond, to explain the unexplainable, the\ntragedy of character, and the tragedy of circumstance.\n\nThese make the great crises which break up lives. But the play goes on\nwith all the wild force of life itself. We feel the Idea of jealousv\nforming itself in the noble nature of Othello, and bringing with it\nanguish, the bitterer throes of life, those intense and hopeless\nmoments when struggle only makes the coil close tighter round the\nvictim. And after we have felt these, no nature remains quite the same\nas before. There has entered into us a power of imaginative sympathy\nwhich Art alone can inspire and only when it most inwardly reveals\nLife itself. Of all things, the \"Too late\" and the \"Might have been\"\nare the most sorrowful, and the divine possibility, cruelly realised\ntoo late, gives the sharpest edge to Othello's mental agony, when the\nwhole truth of Desdemona's life--an \"objectification\" of loyalty,\nlove, and purity--is only revealed to him as she lies there dead\nbefore him, killed by his own hand. All that it means rushes then like\na torrent on his soul; when Othello falls on the bed, by Desdemona's\nbody, the remorse and love that rend him with their talons are beyond\neven Shakespeare's power of expression.\n\nWith groans scarcely uttered, Othello gives the only outlet possible\nto the blinding, scathing storm of passions within him. There is one\ntouch, and only the intuitive artist of humanity and of life could\nhave known it, and given it--only one touch of consolation that could\nbe left him, and it comes to Othello as he is dying! \"I kiss'd thee,\n'ere I kill'd thee.\"\n\nHe fastens on this as a starving man fastens on a crumb of bread.\n\nWhy is this so true as to be almost intolerable--and yet so beautiful?\nThe characters have art necessities. Schiller said Art has its\ncategorical Imperatives--its _must_, and Shakespeare's characters\nfulfil them. We feel how inevitable is their fate. They make their own\ntragedy. The Poet compresses a Life Tragedy into a few pages of\nmanuscript. He, with the great sense and Idea of Human Life in him,\nhas to choose what he will portray, and the greater an artist the more\nunerring is his selection. Then begins his own absorption in the\ncharacters. Conception and expression come to him and come nobly and\nspontaneously--and so spontaneous is his touch--so completely is he\nabsorbed in, and one with his characters--that it makes our rush of\nsympathy as spontaneous as his own.\n\nWe feel the Identification of Shakespeare with Othello--with\nIago--with Desdemona He _is_ them _all_. _He_, William Shakespeare, is\n\"the will-less--time-less--subject of knowledge,\" living in \"pure\nknowing\" and absorbed in the creations that represent his varied and\nhis intuitive knowledge of the great Idea of Life. And he excites and\nsuggests in us the same absorption in his creations--that is, if we\nhave the capacity to feel it.\n\nIt is a land of marvel and of mystery when all personal interests and\nall consciousness of individual temperaments are lost, fall off from\nus, and nothing remains, nothing exists to us but the love, the\nbetrayal, the agony, and the struggles of the noble nature, that \"dies\nupon a kiss.\" We are so much part of it, we become so possessed by it,\nthat we do not even know or feel that we are knowing or feeling.\nShakespeare _is_ Othello--and so are we, for the time being.\nShakespeare had the insight and power of genius, and so could retain\nand reproduce his vision into the inner life. We alas! often cannot;\nwhen the play is over we become again, a link in the chain that binds\nus to the ordinary world of consciousness; the veil of illusion has\nfallen again between us and real vision, we are again among the\nshadows, with some general impressions more or less blurred, but the\nvivid vision of the Poet which made us feel in the manifestations he\ncreated, the very Idea of Life itself--has faded from us, we are no\nlonger in the Ideal world which is the real world.\n\nWe will take one other example, not of a play, but of a picture. The\nAscending Christ for instance at the Pitti Palace, Florence, by Fra\nBartolomeo.\n\nIt is well enough known, with the rapt faces of the four evangelists,\ntwo on either side, gazing at their Master, with more of love for Him\nthan of understanding even then, in their expression. And the two\nlovely little angels beneath, oblivious of everything but the\nmedallion they are holding, as is the way with old Masters. It is the\nChrist alone that rivets our attention. The majestic, noble form, and\nthe sad, grave, beautiful eyes, revealing the Victor over Life and\nDeath, as He leaves the earth, triumphant indeed, but with the\nsolitariness of triumph of the Divine Man, Who knows now the awful\nsorrow of humanity. It is Life human and divine in the Artist's\nConception or Idea. How absorbed must he have been in his\nrepresentation of this idea since he could suggest, and that\nspontaneously, such problems of unutterable thoughts in those divine\neyes. The whole vision of humanity, as it might be in the mind of\nChrist, and as it was felt in the artist's vision, is flashed into our\nown minds--it is an artistic inspiration. Art suggests, it does not\nexplain. A picture focusses into a few inches of space a whole drama\nof life and thought. We read it there, we feel it, and with no\nconscious effort, for this is the gift of Genius.\n\nAnd our absorption in a work of genius is untouched even by\nconsideration of technique. The methods of conveying the impression\nmay be noted afterwards, and we may delight in form and colour, and\nlight and shade. But it is the _result_ of all these that the art\nlover feels so spontaneously and unconsciously. Learned art critics\nand dealers will study the size of ears, the length of noses, the\nbreadth of thumbs, the manner of curving the little finger in order to\nmake sure of the authenticity of the artist. It is more important to\nthem than the enjoyment of the work of art itself. The lover of art\nhas a receptive nature, so that he does not concern himself much, with\nthese considerations, he does not even compare pictures. All _that_\nmay come afterwards, if he is a student, as well as a lover. But, at\nall events, at first, he will find a response simply in his own soul\nto the picture, which represents to him an idea. His own personality\nand individuality leave him; unconsciously he is possessed. Instead of\ngetting to understand it, and attacking a work of art as if it were a\nmathematical problem, he discovers that the picture is possessing him,\nand that is what Schopenhauer means. Art has d\u00e6monic power, it takes\nhold of us wholly, and in proportion to our faculty of receptiveness\nwe understand it more or less fully. Architecture can hold us in this\nway, sculpture can, a great city can with its architecture and\nassociations combined. Rome _does_. The very essence of the artistic\nquality hangs round the old walls of Rome. Rome itself can teach us,\nenter into us, possess us in a way of its own. The great bond of\nsimilarity between all the arts is their having this _possessing_\npower, this revelation of ideas, in whatever form they are expressed.\nRafael in the exquisite outline of the peasant girl's face, saw\nwithout conscious effort the vision of maternity, as the perfect\nform of the Madonna della Seggiola rose before him. This is\nidealism--seeing the idea in the object of contemplation. And the\nspectator, gazing at the picture, also without consciousness of\neffort, is moved into \"a passionate tenderness, which he knows not\nwhether he has given to heavenly beauty or earthly charm\"; he feels\nmotherhood, and to quote again Mr. Henry James in \"The Madonna of the\nFuture,\" he is intoxicated with the fragrance of the \"tenderest\nblossom of maternity that ever bloomed on earth.\" Critics may question\nits manner, method and style; but the art lover feels its \"graceful\nhumanity,\" he does not \"praise, or qualify, or measure or explain, or\naccount for\"--he is one with its loveliness--one with the purity and\nthe truth of the ideal which it represents.\n\nThis may explain something of the attitude towards art in\nSchopenhauer's philosophy, though to reproduce and exemplify thought\nis always difficult, and abstract philosophical thought is especially\nso. The real comprehension of a philosopher's mind depends mainly on\nhow far we are able to get into the atmosphere of his thought; it\ndepends upon affinity in fact, and this is why philosophy must be the\nstudy, mainly, of the lonely thinker. Explainers and lecturers\nnecessarily intrude their own individualities into their explanations,\nwhich have to be discounted. Yet when discounted, certain\nindividualities do help us in philosophy, and even in poetry. Some\nminds may be more akin with the philosopher's or poet's than are our\nown, and a thought will become more vivid and clear to us, and a poem\nmore lovely, when we understand it or view it, through a mind to which\nit appeals _directly_, and to us through that other. And now, after\nendeavouring to grapple with Schopenhauer's theory of art, what does\nit come to at last? Is it more than this that the philosopher explains\nit as unconscious absorption in the manifestation of an Idea, and that\nit is a refuge from life and its woes _We_ may have _felt_ all that he\nhas described, and, for a philosopher, Schopenhauer has a great gift\nof expression, indeed the love of art and literature glows on almost\nevery page of his book. But his theory is surely scarcely more than a\nre-statement of what we _feel_, and if we ask whence comes the\nartistic quality--from the heart or the nerves--or the brain;--what is\nthe philosophical definition of the _compulsion_ in art; how does\nphilosophy account for its strange compelling, unique, possessing,\npower--we get no answer at all, it eludes all tests. We get no\nexplanation of what the strange insight is which we find in the man of\nGenius, or of the faculty that gives the capacity for absorption and\nthat excites it in us. The genesis of this wonderful faculty remains\nunknown to us, undefined. Unconsciousness is a necessary ingredient in\nit, according to Schopenhauer, and this helps us to realise the\ndifficulty of expressing it. What thinker will reduce the quality to\nintellectual symbols? Until that is done, however, Philosophy of Art\nmust remain a philosophy of the Undefined, and the Undefinable!\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n\nIMPRESSIONS OF GEORGE SAND.\n\n\nPerhaps the keynote to the charm of George Sand's art is given in her\npreface to her exquisite novel \"La Derniere Aldini.\" Here is none of\nthe accuracy and patience of the scientific enquirer into the\n\"mysterious mixture\" man, which we find in George Eliot's preface to\n\"Middlemarch.\" Indeed these prefaces sum up the remarkably differing\ncharacteristics of the two writers. George Eliot is occupied with \"the\nfunction of knowledge\" in regard to the \"ardently willing soul.\" She\nexplains in her preface that the aim of her book is to trace the fate\nof the Saint. Theresas of a past age, in the ordinary environment and\ncircumstances of our time. The problem was, how were detachment of\nmind and spiritual longing and love to find their developments in a\nmodern prosaic setting. George Eliot brought to bear on this enquiry\nall her great powers of observation, discrimination and thought. Each\npage of the novel reveals the conscious endeavour of the born thinker\nto express in artistic form some conception that would help to clear\nthe outlook on which the answer to the problem depended. George Sand,\nwho had also her philosophising, and her analysing moods, was yet\ncapable of feeling that novels may be romances. She could write under\nthe sway of pure emotion and apart from theory. George Eliot never\nregarded her novels as mere romances. \"Romances,\" said George Sand in\n_her_ preface, \"are always 'fantasies,' and these fantasies of the\nimagination are like the clouds which pass. Whence come the clouds and\nwhither do they go? In wandering about the Forest of Fontainebleau\nt\u00eate \u00e0 t\u00eate with my son I have dreamed of everything else but this\nbook. This book which I wrote that evening in the little inn, and\nwhich I forgot the next morning, that I might occupy myself only with\nthe flowers and the butterflies. I could tell you exactly every\nexpedition we made, each amusement we had, but I can not tell you why\nmy spirit went that evening to Venice. I could easily find a good\nreason, but it will be more sincere to confess that I do not remember\nit.\"\n\nThe mind of George Sand, instead of being engaged with a problem, was\nlike an \u00c6olian harp breathed upon \"by every azure breath,\n\n  \"That under heaven is blown\n  To harmonies and hues beneath,\n  As tender as its own.\"\n\nSo responsive was she that she gave back in wealth of sentiment and\nidea, the beauty wafted to her by the forest winds. So instinct with\nemotion, so alive and receptive and creative that a passing impulse\nresulted in a work of art of the touching beauty of \"La Derniere\nAldini.\" So unanalytic of self, that she could not remember the\ndriving impulse that caused her to write the novel. Impulses like\nclouds come and go, and the artist soul is the sure recipient of them.\nIt sees and \"follows the gleam\"--it feels the mystic influences. This\nis the foundation of that inexplicable thing inspiration, genius. This\nreceptive-creative faculty is the gift George Sand received, and this\npreface is the keynote to it.\n\nIt is this gift, which is power, and in George Sand it is a liberating\npower; it freed her own soul, and it freed the souls of others. She\nherself felt--and she made readers feel, as in \"Lelia,\" that outward\nlimitations and hindering circumstances were as nothing compared to\nthe great fact of freedom within, freedom of heart and soul and mind\nfrom \"the enthralment of the actual.\" We are _free_;--it is a great\nthing to be as sure and as proud of it as St. Paul was of having been\n\"Free born.\" Some of us achieve freedom with sorrow and with bitter\ntears and with great effort--sometimes with spasmodic effort, and\nGeorge Sand obtained inward freedom in that way.\n\nBut however obtained, the first time a mind feels conscious of it, it\nis a revelation, and it may come as an influence from an artist soul.\nGeorge Sand had \"l'esprit _libre_ et vari\u00e9.\" George Eliot \"l'esprit\nfort et pesant.\" George Sand was widely, wisely, and eminently human.\nShe felt deep down in her heart all the social troubles and problems\nof her day--and created some herself! But she was true to the artist\nsoul in her--to the belief in an ideal. Art was dormant when she wrote\ndisquisitions, and sometimes her social disquisitions are very long\ntreatises. But her art was not dormant when from her inmost soul she\nsketched the fate of the Berri peasant whom she loved so well. In the\nintroduction to that simple delightful Idyll \"La Mare au Diable,\"\nwhich should be read by all social reformers and by all who really\ncare for the poor and the causes of poverty, she conveys her\nconceptions of the mission of art towards the oppressed unhappy\nlabourer; oppressed and unhappy, because with form robust and\nmuscular, with eyes to see, and thoughts that might be cultivated to\nunderstand the beauty and harmony of colour and sounds, delicacy of\ntone and grace of outline, in a word, the mysterious beauty of the\nworld, he, the peasant of Berri, has never under stood the mystery of\nthe beautiful and his child will never understand it; the result of\nexcessive toil, and extreme poverty. Imperfect and condemned to\neternal childhood, George Sand recounts his life, touching gently his\nerrors, and with deep sympathy entering into his trials and griefs.\nAnd a deeper ignorance, she adds, is one that is born of knowledge\nwhich has stifled the sense of beauty. The Berri peasant has no\nmonopoly in ignorance of beauty, and intimate knowledge of toil and\nextreme poverty, but not many of us feel with the peasant's fate, as\nGeorge Sand felt it. She never ceased to care for the cause of social\nprogress, just as she was always heart and soul an artist. George\nEliot has written words \"to the reader\" about the ruined villages on\nthe Rhone. In \"The Mill on the Floss,\" she writes, and again the\nremarkable difference between the two writers appears as forcibly as\nin the two prefaces. \"These dead tinted, hollow-eyed skeletons of\nvillages on the Rhone, oppress me with the feeling that human\nlife--very much of it--is a narrow ugly grovelling existence, which\neven calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its\nbare vulgarity of conception, and I have a cruel conviction that the\nlives, of which these ruins are the traces were part of a gross sum of\nobscure vitality that will be swept into the same oblivion with the\ngenerations of ants and beavers.\" George Eliot saw in imagination\nthese unhappy and oppressed peasants with clear, unsparing eyes. She\nwas right in calling her conviction \"Cruel,\" for she saw merely the\noutside of the sordid lives of oppressive narrowness, which seemed to\nirritate her, these lives of dull men and women out of keeping with\nthe earth on which they lived. She never alluded to any possible\nexplanatory causes, such as excessive toil and extreme poverty, which\nif she had realised, as George Sand realised them, would have brought\nthe tender touch of sympathy with individual lives and griefs that we\nfind so often in George Eliot's novels. But George Sand could _never_\nhave written of any peasants as \"part of a gross sum of obscure\nvitality,\" because she could never have felt towards them in that way.\nShe was too imaginative and tender. She did not look at the peasantry\n\"en masse\"--but individually, and loved the Berri peasants\nindividually, as they loved and adored her. Her artistic sense and her\nhumanity illumined her view of them, and she saw their latent\npossibilities, and knew why they were only latent. She knew indeed,\nmany--if not all kinds of humanity. Once it is recorded she said to\nPere Lacordaire, \"You have lived with Saints and Angels. I have lived\nwith men and women, and I could tell you (and we may well think she\ncould) some things you do not know.\" She had indeed run through the\ngamut of feeling, and it was in one of those moments when her\nexperiences of life were overwhelming her--that she exclaimed \"J'ai\ntrop bu la vie.\" But her gift of genius kept her always vivifying. She\nnever depresses. From her first years at Nohant to the end of her long\nlife, she was always _alive_. In the political troubles of 1848, when\nshe wrote of herself as \"navr\u00e9 jusqu 'au fond de l'ame par les orages\nexterieurs,\" and as trying to find in solitude if not calm and\nphilosophy, at least a faith in ideas, her soul shrank from blood shed\non both sides. \"It needed a Dante,\" she thought, \"with his nerves, and\ntemper, and tears to write a drama full of groans and tortures. It\nneeded a soul tempered with iron, and with fire, to linger in the\nimagination over horrors of a symbolic Hell, when before one's very\neyes is the purgatory of desolation on the earth.\" But \"as a weaker\nand gentler artist,\" George Sand saw what her mission was in those\nevil times;--it was to distract the imagination from them, towards\n\"tenderer sentiments of confidence, of friendship, and of kindness.\"\nHer political and social hopes and aims were always dear to her, but\nto interpret nature, to live the quiet life of the affections were the\nphases of her middle life. And so she wrote a \"sweet song\" in prose,\none of the most delightful of her Bergeries, \"La Petite Fadette.\" It\nwas her contribution to the hatreds and agitations of the time--she\ngave a refuge to the souls that could accept it--an \"Ideal of calmness\nand innocence and reverie.\" \"La Petite Fadette\" and \"Le Meunier\nd'Angibault\" reveal her fascinating intelligence and her idyllic\nimagination. \"Le Meunier d'Angibault,\" she tells us, was the result of\na walk, a meeting, a day of leisure, an hour of _far niente_, followed\nby Reverie, that play of the imagination which, clothes with beauty\nand perfects, and interprets, the isolated and small events and facts\nof life. There are books of hers in early life that are simply\nself-revelations--outpourings of her indignations. She is not at her\nbest in these. \"Indiana,\" written in her age of revolt, is too\nobviously a pamphlet to reveal her passionate hatred of marriage. In\nit she looked on marriage as \"un malheur insupportable.\" But\n\"Consuelo,\" \"La Comtesse de Rudolstadt,\" \"Lettres d'un voyageur,\"\nLelia, Spiridion, Valv\u00e9dre, Valentine, \"History of her Life and\nletters,\" and many other books reveal her agonies and agitations, her\nhope and power, her love of beauty both outward and inward as\nrepresented in Consuelo herself, who is contrasted with the mere\nbeautiful \"animal\" Anzoleto, the artist in his lowest form. He cared\nonly for physical loveliness, he was a great child, who needed nothing\nbut amusement, emotion and beauty. But George Sand herself felt the\ndelight of existence. She says of Joy \"It is the great uplifter of\nmen, the great upholder. For life to be fruitful, life must be felt as\na blessing.\" In all she wrote we feel the rare charm of perfect ease\nand naturalness, combined with the cadences of beauty. We never feel\nthat she is \"posing.\" And yet the author of the bitter attack \"Lui et\nelle,\" accused her of continual \"posing.\" Edonard de Musset wrote with\nan envenomed pen, (but we must remember he was defending a brother),\nin that strange literary duel between him and George Sand. Alfred de\nMusset had accused her of assuming the maternal \"pose\" towards poets\nand musicians who adored her, whilst she absorbed their loves and\nlives and then deserted them. It is certainly very striking how her\nstrong vitality seemed to sway and overpower some of those with whom\nshe came in contact. She was the oak, and the others were the ivy.\nWhen they were torn apart, the oak was scarred but not irreparably\ninjured, it was the ivy that was destroyed. In, \"Elle et Lui,\" George\nSand claims that hers was a protecting love for the wayward, gifted\nchild of art, the poet whose ingratitude she bore with, whose nerves\nshe soothed, and whom she cared for and nursed in illness. Kindly time\nthrows a softening veil over the acutest differences, and the clash of\ntemperaments, even where they remain inexplicable. But the answer to\nAlfred de Musset's reproaches must be looked for not in one book, but\nin the whole tenor of her life. Does this show that her maternal\nattitude was a \"pose.\" It is often said that women are born wives or\nborn mothers. George Sand was undeniably a born _mother_. Mrs.\nOliphant resembled her in this respect. They both show the deep\npassion of maternity in books and autobiographies and letters. Both\nwere devoted to their children, there was no company they cared for in\ncomparison, and they spared neither trouble or time in their\ninterests. But George Sand cared much, not only for her children but\nfor the peasants--for the poor and oppressed. Yes, and for the poets,\nthe painters--the singers and the musicians, with their temperaments\nof genius, their loves, jealousies, and their shattered nerves. For\nupwards of six years she treated Chopin with a mother's care; she had\nthe passion of maternity in her towards them all, with whatever\nfeelings it may have been complicated in her life of manifold\nexperiences and with her artist temperament. She may have leant\nheavily on it at times, it may have served as a weapon of defence when\nshe was attacked, and used thus it may well have suggested a \"pose.\"\nBut however used, whatever the purpose--that the maternal instinct was\nstrong in her there is no denying. To explain definitely her social\nand personal moral standards requires a biography that has not yet\nbeen written. Socially she had a hatred of feudalism, of religious and\nmilitary despotism. She sympathised with and helped the aspirations\ntowards a wider, a more humane view of a social system, and fraternal\nequality and social liberty were to her holy doctrines. Perhaps fully\nto understand George Sand from within may require the genius of a\nFrench mind and one of her own generation; for the French of the\npresent day neither study her, or appear to care much for her books.\nHer letters should aid in giving a discriminating record of her\nintense and intricate life as viewed from within, and the ideas on\nwhich that life was lived. What then were the leading principles, and\nwhat was the force in George Sand, which while conquering life and\nharmonising it enabled her to realise herself? If heredity influences\nmoral standards the mystery certainly is whence George Eliot derived\nnot her morality, but her \"fire of insurgency.\" It is not difficult to\naccount for it in George Sand when we remember her mother's life and\ntemperament, and her own early years. Her father was a good soldier,\nbut had also many literary gifts. George Sand herself said: \"Character\nis hereditary, if my readers wish to know me, they must know my\nfather.\" George Eliot's creed and pervading view of life was the\nsupreme responsibility of it, and the inevitableness of the struggles\nof the spirit warring against the senses. Her ideal is attainment\nthrough great trial. George Sand, the born hater of conventions,\ndeveloped life into a harmony. We feel ultimately in her, a sense of\npeculiar serenity and peace, of self realisation, more akin perhaps to\nPlato's ideal of a character in harmony with itself, whose various\nimpulses are so attuned that they form practically a single desire and\nthis desire satisfies all the forces of the nature. What was this\ndesire that was involved in the whole aim or system of George Sand's\nlife? The ethical poet who affirmed emphatically that \"conduct was\nthree-fourths of life,\" expressed the highest admiration of George\nSand's aims and ethics, and according to Matthew Arnold, her ruling\nidea was, that this ordinary human life of love and suffering was\ndestined to be raised, into an ideal life, and _that_ ideal life is\nour real life. Matthew Arnold has written one of his most beautiful\nand eloquent and touching essays in this record of his impressions and\nestimate of George Sand. Well does he say that \"her passions and her\nerrors have been abundantly talked of.\" She left them behind her, and\nmen's memory of them will leave them behind also.\n\nThere will remain the sense of benefit and stimulus from that large\nand frank nature, that large and pure utterance. Matthew Arnold gives\nthree principal elements in her strain. Instead of the hopeless echo\nof unrealised ideas we hear from her the evolution of character: \"1,\nThrough agony, and revolt; 2, Through consolation from nature and\nbeauty; 3, Through sense of the Divine ('Je fus toujours tourment\u00e9 des\nchoses divines') and social renewal, she passes into the great life\nmotif of her existence;\" that the sentiment of the ideal life is none\nother than man's normal life as we shall one day know it. Matthew\nArnold saw George Sand in his enthusiastic youth when she was in the\nserenity and dignity of middle age at Nohant.\n\nBrowning came across her in her journalistic career in Paris, and he\nwas not touched with the same admiration.\n\nMr. Chesterton suggests in his biography of the poet that Browning was\nconventional by nature--and through the greatness of his brain he\ndeveloped. He certainly developed on many sides, but his development\ndid not include admiration for George Sand and her circle. It was\nsocial tone, his biographer believes, more than _opinions_, which\ncreated this strong aversion in the author of \"The Statue and the\nBust.\"\n\nBut Mrs. Browning, though her life had been mainly one long seclusion\non her sofa, was unhampered by these conventional barriers. What she\nfelt was the attraction of the massive and fascinating brain and heart\nof the great French woman, what she heard was \"that eloquent voice,\"\nwhat she saw was \"that noble, that speaking head.\" She had warm, quick\nsympathies and intuitional appreciations of genius. In regard to so\nwide and so complicated a character as George Sand's, we cannot be\nastonished at finding very different judgments and impressions; indeed\nwe are prepared to feel in all of them some note of inadequacy and of\nincompleteness. But in our relation to her as a Great Writer, of this,\nas readers, we are assured, we _know_ that it is no common matter to\nhave come into contact with so gifted and great a nature, with a\ngenius that possessed \"a current of true and living ideas,\" and which\nproduced \"amid the inspiration of them.\"\n\n\n\n\nNOTES:\n\n\n\n[1: 1886. \"Mind\" Vol. 11. \"The need of a Society for experimental\nPsychology.\"]\n\n[2: 1888. \"Mind\" Vol. 13. \"The Psychological Laboratory at Leipsic.\"]\n\n[3: Essays. On the genius and tendency of the writings of Thomas\nCarlyle. \"The Camelot Series.\"]\n\n[4: See supplementary notice of \"Hamlet\" in Charles Knight's Pictorial\nEdition of Shakespeare.]","title":"Cobwebs of Thought","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":15861}